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I know that all two of our readers have been wondering, "When are these guys who pump out such great stories going to finally get a .com?"
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Plot is Really Secondary

“I really wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he said as he crashed through the oversized wooden double doors of Judge Krill’s chambers. “It might be very bad for business.”

Krill turned away from the girl he was molesting to admire the girl’s boyfriend, the hero, for making it past his overly extravagant phalanx of personal bodyguards. He had thought them quite invincible, what with the blinding drugs they were on to take away all thoughts except obey and fight for him. Krill was impressed and he said so.

“I’m impressed.”
“This has gone on for too long,” said the hero, tearing off what was left of his shirt to expose his blood and sweat soaked pectorals, rippling in all the fury of strained musculature. He was confident, but he also knew the judge’s extensive history: 15 years in KGB, 12 more in American Special Forces, and now, head of both the judge’s seat in the highest court in the land and the most powerful and ruthless crime syndicate in the world. Krill may look old, but you could guarantee the dude still packed a punch; you may not be able to see it, but beneath those black robes stood a body carved out of pure rock. The countless henchmen were nothing compared to Krill. They had all attacked him clumsily and always one at a time, consistently. They watched friend after friend fall in the heat of battle, but insisted on waiting their turn to take their vengeance. In addition, the drugs generally made them make poor choices. They were easy. Krill would be harder.

Judge Krill’s chambers were a little on the gaudy side: mahogany everywhere, curtains flapping in a slight breeze coming from somewhere, a large open wood floor, swords on the wall, a globe the size of a small cottage, various other obstacles lay strewn about the room. Gaudy, but he could afford it. Up till now, only the hero stood between him and world domination through drug trafficking and assassinations of the line of presidential succession. He had killed the President and the Vice, now all that was left was the Speaker. And once the Speaker was dead, it would be over. Which is why he now had her tied up in his chambers. The one flaw in his plan was this hero, an ex-New York detective who had recently been a top Presidential bodyguard, and who was dating the Speaker of the House. He was there for the presidential hit, and he soon put all the pieces together through an arduous process of ass-kicking and evidence collecting. He now had enough evidence to bring down Krill, but that was never going to happen.

So he’d have to bring him down some other way. And that other way was killing Krill, hard.

Krill turned his back on the hero to remove his robes, exposing a smart suit and tie, then he turned back around and attempted one final option before killing the hero -

“You must be an amazing fighter,” he said. “But before you start throwing fists at me, I want you to think about something, namely what are you fighting for?”

“For freedom, for democracy…”

“But what does that mean? Freedom… Democracy… Love… they’re all just words. Words expressing concepts. Concepts which really mean nothing. Can’t you see?”

The hero looked incredulous.

“The things that really mean something are the vices: money, power, sex,” as he said this, he brushed a hand against the Speaker’s cheek. “We’re not so different, you and I. We both fight for something. Our ideologies. Our worldviews. We both fight to keep our world from crumbling around us. We fight to maintain what we believe to be necessary.”

He looked pensive, but still angry.

“The truth is, I’m getting old. After I’ve instated my empire, I will probably not last very much longer, and I need someone to be an heir. I need someone with ideologies, someone who’s not afraid to fight, someone who will protect my empire. Someone like… you.”

“But why would anyone want to protect an empire of crime?”

“Don’t you see? Joining the world into one world order is an end to war! To Hunger! To Strife! We can fix the epidemics in the nations with low GDP’s because we can share GDP’s! The third world will join with the first and we’ll change it. We’ll make it better! More beautiful!”

“But at what cost?”

“A few lives here and there of mostly corrupt politicians. But these lives pale in comparison to the lives we’ll save! Can’t you see it? A bright, new future.”

The hero paused to think. His next line better be a zinger.

“When President Michaelson stood on the docks in Brooklyn and looked out at the harbor, he pointed to Lady Liberty,” the hero spoke calmly and airily, “and he said, ‘This nation was built on her, and on the promise of her.’ The idea that people can be free, to live, to breath, to love. That’s what freedom means. And also he was my father.” It wasn’t the best line in the world, but at least he got everything in there.

Infuriated, Krill tried one more time.

“JOIN ME!”

“Join yourself in hell!”

With this, they launched into a brilliant trade of fists and kicks, each placing their attacks in a well-coordinated, nearly choreographed manner. Punches were blocked, landed, and returned. Grapples ended in a man being thrown like a horseshoe at whatever was around them. They took down the swords and began sword-fighting with the proficiency of old pros.

After a good couple of minutes of intense fighting, neither side gaining much ground on the other, Krill finally decided to try the fighting style he was best at: dirty fighting. He ran over to the Speaker and held her with his saber at her throat. The hero stopped cold.

“Who’s got the upper hand now?” said the judge maniacally. “Put down your sword.”

The hero thought for a moment before deciding to throw his sword at the judge in one last attempt to save the world. It went whizzing over his right shoulder. The judge laughed insanely, but then he heard the sound of the giant globe rolling towards him. The hero had thrown the sword into the globe, loosening it from its moorings and sending it crashing down towards Krill. As Krill turned to see his fate and feel the crushing weight of the world, the hero leaped up and pushed the Speaker out of harm’s way, getting his ankle caught slightly beneath the rolling globe and instantly breaking his foot. But at least it was all over now.

In excruciating pain, he crawled over to his girlfriend and loosened her ropes with his good hand. She embraced him and kissed him hard to show her appreciation, then she picked him up and helped him hobble out the oversized wooden double doors of the judge’s chambers. Out into the sunlight of glorious American freedom, the gloriously bright future, and a huge crowd which had gathered just outside the doors. Read more...

The General's Labyrinth

General Luciano Bravada was 35 years old when he commissioned the labyrinth to be built. The war he had fought since he was 20 had made him paranoid of the world around him. Constantly, he would look all around to find the assassin hidden in his periphery with a dagger, a murderer waiting to plunge into him and claim the war victory for himself. The trees themselves became lethal killers in disguise. Finally, when walking down the open beach, he formed an idea: if I am in the open, he said to himself, I am exposed; I shall, therefore, remove myself from the open to the closed.
Soon thereafter, the carpenters began work on the elaborate labyrinth which was to keep him hidden from the enemy and keep him safe for the rest of his days. They used the sketches Luciano himself had drawn as a design plan: they depicted several tiers hewn into a hillside, one entrance and one direct center which would be where he would spend his days, and an endless maze of dead ends, booby traps, trap doors, twists, and turns. So convoluted was the maze that the carpenters consistently had to ask to make sure they were holding the sketch correctly and building the labyrinth to the general's liking.
They worked fast, and soon, the labyrinth was well underway. About this time, some of the carpenters began to notice that the general had taken to staying the nights in the labyrinth. Confused, they questioned him -
- Why do you stay in the labyrinth?
- It shall be my home.
- What about food? Water?
- I have eaten enough. I have drunk my fill.
- How will you ever get out?
To this question, Luciano simply smiled and walked back to the center of his labyrinth. He had an ingenious plan to guide him through his maze, and he knew that the key to his labyrinth was keeping the secret of his guide to himself. Otherwise, the maze would become completely useless. After all, even this carpenter, as congenial as he is, could be a spy. And even if he isn't, everyone is a spy for the right price.
He would have to let the carpenters work another week before he could start his work on his map. They had to be far enough along that he would never catch up with them, so General Luciano stayed to himself in the center of the labyrinth as the carpenters continued the work around him, making his world more confusing with every cut of the knife, sealing him off more effectively with every portal opened. All the while, Luciano scratched notes into his notebooks and felt the growing warmth of complete safety.
A few days passed, and the general checked the carpenters' progress: they had three outward spirals and were starting the fourth. Luciano concluded that he could begin his guide safely without meeting any carpenters, so stealing a chisel and hammer, he went back to the center and began his work.
He turned to the wall on his left, placed the chisel at the top left corner, about an inch away from the ceiling, and striking it with the hammer twelve times carved, “I” into the wall. He stood back and observed it. It was sloppily done, the vertical did not meet the horizontals exactly right, and it was by no means straight up-and-down, but it was the beginning. The first word of his life, the word that occupied his every breath. “I” is the beginning of every good story, and so it was with the general.
His plan was to carve his life into the stone walls, starting at the center and spiraling out until it finished at the exit. He would cover every wall in scratches, showing every advance, every downfall, every merciless pain he had endured, along with every happiness. He had also developed a multitude of untruths to mislead anyone who tried to seek him out. The idea was simple and cunning at the same time: since the end would be at the door, some assassins would think that being a scholar of the war would be enough to get to the center of the maze and kill the general, but as they went deeper into the caverns, they would find themselves trying to piece together the general's childhood, even some things which only the general himself knew about. They would inevitably fail, either by giving up and trying to find their way back, or by making a wrong choice and finding themselves caught in a trap of some sort, and there to spend the rest of their miserable days.
Taking up the chisel once more, General Luciano began carving steadfastly, with burning determination. He pounded his childhood into the wall, the death of his mother, the abuse of his father, his desire for his sister. He continued, letting his life blood flow onto the walls in vivid color. Page by page, his life began to take its form. He covered wall after wall, floor to ceiling, with his burgeoning lust from his youth, his philosophies, his induction into the military, and at every wrong turn, he would carry into some falsehood, just true enough to lead someone who didn't know to their end.
Meanwhile, the carpenters continued to build outward, always a spiral or two ahead of the general, who soon became phenomenally quick in his work. The labyrinth became more and more confusing as it stretched further and further outward. Some of the carpenters even became lost while working on a section and were never seen again. This led many men to believe the maze to be cursed. They began to think that it was a plot by the general to watch even more innocent young men die in his service, at his command. So a group of them hatched a plan to seek out and kill General Luciano.
Setting out one night after everyone else had gone home, they delved into the dark stone corridors. After passing two outer spirals, they began hearing the incessant pounding of the general. Thinking it was a ghost, or the curse, they ran off in different directions. Only one was ever heard from again, and he was found nearly starved to death three days later. He had stumbled into a work area at midday and immediately collapsed to the ground. He muttered something about the curse of the labyrinth, about how the maze draws a person in and destroys him by changing pathways and misleading them. But his throat was parched, and his body was weak, so none of the men understood what he meant. They all thought it was the effect of having been so badly deprived. He was clearly in no state to reason.
So the carpenters kept building and finally finished the labyrinth and went home.
And General Luciano kept carving the words of his lifetime into the stone. He was now far into the war years, telling tales of deceit and clever strategy, cunning and strength. He told of the young boys he'd seen die around him, and the old men who looked at him with their blue, blue eyes as they whispered a last breath. Wall after wall, he told his story, stories of love and loss and dreams and crushed hopes, until he finally came to his paranoia, the enclosing and entrapped feeling of knowing that there is an assassin so close to you. There simply must be one, behind this tree or that wall, plotting, waiting for the right moment to pounce and destroy the man who had destroyed so much, the General Luciano.
He tapped his dull and well worn chisel through the inception of the labyrinth and the commission to build it,until his life and the maze became so entwined that he could not separate one from the other. He finally arrived at his current age, 67.
Chisel in hand, he carved his final sentence: The rest is the labyrinth, nothing more and nothing less.
Here he stopped, for the first time in nearly 30 years, and looked around to find himself not at the exit of the labyrinth, but within arm's length of the beginning of his story in the center of the labyrinth. That first crooked “I” glared down at him, harshly contrasted to his now nearly perfect handwriting.
Shocked, he took out his sketches and went over them. How had he gone wrong? He had paid close attention to every detail, at every turn making sure he had gone the right way. He followed the map looking closely once again to make sure he had followed every turn correctly, walking down the corridors, left then right, into the darkness and out again, upstairs then down. He followed the map straight through, double checking to make sure the carpenters had not somehow made the maze wrong. He could sense that he was getting into the outer-most spirals, and he was nearly to the exit. He looked up and saw the door and started sprinting to it, overjoyed to find the way out. But when he turned into the portal, he found only the center again, the end of the story to his right and the beginning to his left. The only thing left for General Luciano Bravada to do was wander his labyrinth and go back over his story to try to find where he went the wrong way.
According to legend, he is still doing just that.
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First Date at the Electro

God, she looks fantastic. Her hair is loose, her white sparkled dress is tight, her curves are emphasized, she just looks really great. And she’s smiling, and that helps so much. When she smiles, you can at least imagine that she’s having a good time. It makes the night go a lot easier.
I picked a dance club to take her too, that way there’s an absolute minimum of talking. I can’t hold a conversation with people I’ve known my entire life; I can’t imagine having anything to talk about with someone I just met, thought was attractive, and asked out, no matter how much she’s smiling, and how cute she looks. Even if I was being tortured and interrogated about what I did yesterday, my responses would be monosyllabic at best. So dance club, it is. You get her there, you move your body a little, and next thing you know she thinks you’re the best thing since toasted bread. And you’re in. No conversation required.
I pull her up to the bar and tell the mack, “two.” The eyes he gives her makes it clear he knows that I mean, “be a doll, and put a roofie in one.” She looks fantastic. The mack knows the score. Or he knows me and knows my score. He pours her a stout something-something and dilutes mine a little so I don’t make any stupid mistakes. The International Conspiracy of Men: This Hand Washes That Hand. Thanks, mack.
The music blares some hideous so-and-so with a backbeat. It’s so loud you can’t even really hear it, it’s just muddled vibrations through air and you can only pick out the slight treble here and there. Still she leans close with her drink in hand and says something completely inaudible. This is another reason to opt for the club on a first date: if she wants to talk, the only way is to get really close, licking your ear to get her point across.
I scream, “what?”
And she gets right in my ear saying something like, “I really like this song,” or “I’ve got a sexy thong.” Then she takes a coy drink and flits her eyelids at me. She puts down all the road signs: playing with the hem of her dress as it inches up her white thighs, drinking quickly and keeping eye contact as she puts it away. She even pulled down the front of her dress to expose her dragon tattoo on the leftmost of her exceptional cleavage. The mack paid her no mind, just let her do her thing, he’s done his part.
“You’ve got a lance?” she yells.
Yes, ma’am, I think. “What?”
“DANCE! Want to dance?” Dancing is a beautiful thing. It’s legitimate public eroticism. She bumps and grinds against you just like you would at home in the throes of a sexual revolution. The hormones rage harder than a middle school church camp. Strippers don’t do as much. Prostitutes barely do. It’s all about the contact and the emotion that goes with it. Strippers and prostitutes don’t really have a leg up in that field of contact and emotion.
So we go to the dance floor. And she’s fantastic. She wraps her arms around my neck and pushes her hips into me, smiling a little lecherously. She pulls my hair. She’s rough and I can tell she wants me. And I mean, I’m not one to complain. I mean, right now, I’m fighting my primal instincts off with a baseball bat in my brain. I am closer to violent rape than I’ve ever been before.
Then it happened: Scandal’s The Warrior started playing, and she did that squeal. The “Oh My God This Is My Favorite Song of All Time” Squeal. Her short blond hair became a flurry of motion as she shook her head with incredulity. There are so many things wrong with her excitement at this song.
Firstly, her excitement is what most people call “girlish.” It expresses an immaturity that usually accompanies 16 year olds.
Nextly, the song is a pop-feminist ballad. Patty Smyth yelling the battle-cry “I am the Warrior” and “I’m the heart you’ll win, if you survive.” It’s roughly more discouraging for the female gender than the women’s suffrage movement would have been if it had been lead by Rosie O’Donnell.
But most importantly (and disturbingly) was what she was going to do. The song had only just started, but already she was grabbing my tie and pulling me center-stage. I had no reason to know what was going to happen, but I knew as soon as I saw the reaction to the song. I knew she had a dance. I knew she had a plan.
The first verse played through without a hitch except for her idiotic jumping and headbanging, I forced a smile to conceal my disgust. But it was coming to the chorus. I dreaded the chorus with every fiber of my being because I knew exactly what she was going to do when those words came. Then, like a gunshot in an otherwise healthy evening, it came:
“Shootin’ at the walls of heartache,
Bang! Bang!
I am the Warrior!”
And she did it. She did exactly what you think she did.
“Bang! Bang!”
And she made the guns with her hands.
One for the left. One for the right.
Bang goes the one. Bang goes the other. And my forced smile melts like ice cubes on the sidewalk in Egypt. But she loved the song too much to notice that the evening had been utterly ruined by innanity.
I think the mack must’ve seen too, because as we left later that night, he gave me a look that said, “I’m sorry buddy, I thought she was a good one.” I responded with a sad, “I know” gaze. I walked her to my car, with her drunkenly shouting, “Bang! Bang!” intermittently. I drove her home, all the while with the radio on full-blast, trying to purge the foul sounds and sights from my mind. But there she was, making guns with her hands and Bang Banging left and right.
She said she had fun as I dropped her off. I told her I’d better not stay, what with church in the morning and all.
And as she walked to her door from my car, through the rolled down window I heard her shout, “I’m the heart you’ll win, if you survive.”
Slam it into drive and leave her behind. Sex is good, but not that good.
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I'm Gonna Miss You, Pal

Last weekend was one of the most interesting of my life. First my hard drive crashed and I was forced to use my limited computer knowledge to repair it to avoid buying a new one, since I am broke to the point that bums should be giving me money out of pity. A three day project which ended in success I am happy to say.
Then my dad wanted me to drive two and a half hours through the wretched Oklahoma terrain to assist him in planting this year's wheat crop, something he has never asked of me and even swore not to ask of me and which is made all the more ridiculous by the soaring gas prices and my aforementioned poverty.
Then I helped my best friend pack things into a U-Haul so that she could drive away and out of my life.Unthinkingly. Just trying to be a nice guy. I help her desert me. What was I thinking? Why would I facilitate the vanishing of a friend?
The rest of my weekend has been filled with her absence. She was someone very special to me, a confidante, a pal, a buddy with whom worry and dreariness sort of melted. When we occupied the same room, the only other thing that could fit was our love of each other's company.
I don't want to be misunderstood, here. She's happily entrenched in a long-term relationship, and the thought of her leaving him for me never crossed our minds. It just wasn't like that for us, we were a different kind of close, not the kind that really would or could work in a boyfriend-girlfriend setting. And I think of all the things about her, it's that particular closeness that only we shared that I'm going to miss the most.
Our love for each other's company. Just hanging out in the morning eating grapefruit smothered in sugar while her bird, a slightly vocal cockatiel named CeeCee who happened to adore me, hovered overhead, perched on the ceiling fan and looking down at us like she was waiting for some sort of signal to come join. Just forcing her to watch my hideous cartoons and comedy shows and read my sadistic comics and tolerate my general malaise. Just following her around while she was taking pictures and occasionally stealing her camera to capture my own bits of art. Just laughing about McCain. Laughing about Obama. Laughing about laughing about McCain and Obama.
Even our hideous and stubborn discourse on the nature of satire, which ended in nothing but hard disagreement. These things, all of them. I'm going to miss the hell out of her.
When I met her, I was just starting college. A good Christian boy from a good Christian town. My eccentricities were on full blast to preserve my fragile frame, my own personal security blanket. Most people remember me as the guy who pointed to his nipple and said that he was from there (my right arm extended out made a crude, impromptu image of Oklahoma: the arm forming the panhandle, and my body, the rest of the state. My hometown is located roughly above the right nipple), but she remembers me as the guy who wanted to see a dead hobo in a fountain. This, as is often recounted, is her first real memory of meeting me.
Basically, to explain my dead hobo thing: All too recently, a hobo had been found dead in this fountain we passed by on the way to a school outing. I remarked on the morbid romanticism of a dead hobo in this gaudy fountain, saying it was picturesque or something to that effect. The instant reaction was, my what a strange person. Most everyone else cut my chances of being friends off right there, but for some reason, she didn't.
We started spending more and more time together, me and my polar opposite. I was a good Christian boy, she a good Atheist girl; my dad raised beef and I was ravenously carnivorous, she on the otherhand was violently vegetarian; I was morose and morbid, and she was happy and life-loving. Polar in so many ways, but our friendship really worked.
After the first year, I made lots of mistakes and we ended up drifting for a year, but we came back together very soon, started hanging out again, even moved in next door to each other so we could wake up, walk to class, come home, and eat breakfast and talk about how ridiculous our teacher was. Then we might pack up her cameras and go hiking (which I had hitherto detested) or go to this crazy hotel liquidation store on 23rd.
This place is filled with insanity and repetition. Walking around in there is like walking through a surrealist film, couches on top of couches, rooms full of thousands of copies of the same painting, a large wooden fish attached to a tacky light up tableau waterfall which all together looked like it had spent some time in a Chinese buffet restaurant. There's a look to it, a feel that is entirely indescribable. There was also a cement room with walls lined with the X-bottoms of chairs, stacked to the ceilings, and the light flickered like some horror movie. The room itself looked like it might have been used for interrogation by the intensely foreign owner who was not a little frightening. Here she took some amazing photographs of various things. They looked like fallen Roman pillars.
I spent Saturday morning packing her things and moving them out, piece by piece she emptied her apartment. The couch I had so often passed out on, the table we would eat apple pancakes at, the desk where we would watch new installments of The Onion News Network. Everything left for the van and I was left behind to vacuum.
And my best friend was gone.
It later dawned on me that I would have to do this more and more as I grew older. That people will come and go from my life and that I will have to pack their things for them, because I'm a good guy and that's what I do. My buddies will get married and leave me behind holding the bag as they move on to a more fulfilling relationship with a spouse, and I'll help set up their new home. And then one day, they'll start dying and I'll go to their funerals. Everything I will ever get close to will leave me behind: friends, family, children. They will all go on to something better than I can give them. Just like my cat, who also left this weekend to find a better life far away from me. No one stays, everyone leaves.
And I'm sure there are people who feel the same way about me.
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Out of Her Misery

I never like killing animals. It's not something I enjoy doing. But it is my job.
I'm in one of the most loathed occupations in the world, certainly the most hated in the vet clinic. I mean, when it comes down to it, nobody wants to kill animals. It's just something that... well... it's just a thing. In the 5 years I've been doing animal euthanasia, I've been kicked by children, punched by grown men, snubbed by countless women, scorned by PETA (even to the point of property vandalism when they found out where I lived and decided to throw animal corpses tied to bricks through my living room window), and my right thumb cut off by a punk rock guitarist who screamed, “Try killing defenseless animals now!” as he was being dragged away by mall security.
“I'm left-handed,” I had said sullenly, picking my severed finger off the ground, and the look of utter dismay flooded over his face as though I had just killed his dog. It was the exact same face I'd seen thousands of times. Deal with that face. I dare you. Deal with it once, and then understand that I have to everyday.
Animal euthanasia is the worst job in the world.
I do it because I know that it's best for the animals at a certain stage. It's worse for them to continue living in overwhelming pain that will never get better than for them to simply fall asleep and never wake up. I believe this, and that's how I'm able to keep doing this hideous job, day after day. I do it for their good.
But this time is completely different, and honestly, I can't quite put my finger on why. I brought this dog in myself, a Border Collie about a year to a year and half old, blood red on white on black, breathing heavy, more like gasping. Not moving a muscle, barely making a sound, but looking at me like I was Jesus come to take her home.
She looked at me like I was some sort of angel. Like I was hope, I was everything she needed to be okay, like if she never saw anyone ever again, it would be fine because she would have still seen me. Her eyes were glass in the deep black of her hair and deep red of her slowly caking blood.
She looked at me like I was a savior, but it was me who made her like this in the first place. I hit her with my car. It wasn't her fault, I just wasn't paying enough attention. She... was just there, in the wrong place at the wrong time. I heard her head hit my bumper, and at that moment, I knew I had killed her. She might as well have been already dead. Unfortunately, she wasn't.
I carried her into the Clinic, blood washing over my hands, coating my shirt. All I could feel was her breathing, and how it matched my heartbeat: too quick.
I laid her on the table and checked to see if she had a collar with a name or anything. No. She was alone in the world, no friends, nothing. We were more alike than I had thought. She kept starting at me. I think I was all that she could see, but I believe that she saw me with perfect clarity.
They brought the syringe for me. This is what we do when there's a dying animal and there's nobody to call, after all, we're not a charity case. We can't save animals that need saving just to do it, we have to do it for money. When there's no money, there's no surviving.
She and I locked eyes for a long time. She looked at me because I was all she had, and I looked at her knowing what was coming and wishing someone, anyone, else would do it. But it's my job. This is what I do.
Her breath fogged out on the metal table. Like she's breathing smoke.
I took a breath and drew some pentobarbitol into the syringe. Tap the needle to get air bubbles out, more out of habit than for any purpose, and slid the needle into a vein on one of her front legs. All I had to do was push the plunger and she'd go to sleep, her pain would disappear, and maybe somewhere in doggy heaven, she'd be happy and playful again. All I have to do is kill her to set her free. But I couldn't stop thinking, “Haven't I hurt her enough?”
Her breathing was heavy but consistent, her bloody chest heaved with the effort to continue, but it was all so mesmerizing. I couldn't move. Locked in a trance, I was frozen, her frail body draped in front of me waiting for me to do something... anything.
If only she would stop looking at me. If only she would break eye contact, I could finish this. I could end it. My thumb is on the plunger, the needle is in the flesh ready to overload her system with barbituates... but I don't think I can do it this time. I don't know if I can end this... even if it is best for her and best for me. The pained look in her eyes only beckons me to stay my hand just another second or two. Maybe she'll be fine, maybe I'm misinterpreting the signs. I know I'm not, but I'm telling myself anything to keep her here. But why? There's no special connection between me and this dog other than the whirlwind romance between her and my fender.
But still I freeze. Looking at her and knowing I could save her from her pain by moving my thumb an inch, but not being able to bring myself to do it for some reason. Some reason I'm not certain of.
I just don't know if I can end this.
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The Great Equation

Ok. So here goes.
The Earth is a planet, spinning on an axis, roughly spherical. The particles of the Earth are not connected, but more like compressed, simultaneously being held in by the magical force of gravity (more than likely caused by the Earth’s massive core) and the being repelled by the equally magical centripedal force (more than likely caused by the rotation).
We think it’s all one big ball, but it’s just particles orbiting the center. And those particles have electrons that orbit nuclei. And beyond that, who knows how many orbiting bits.
To continue: The moon revolves around the Earth which in turn revolves around the sun which in turn revolves around a super-massive black hole in the center of our galaxy. Revolution by revolution by revolution, so is it safe to assume that the pattern doesn’t stop there? There is a theory that there is one point in the center of the universe, super-massive as hell, around which everything else turns. One single stationery point which exercises it’s own gravitational pull to give the universe a sembelance of order.
Now imagine that there are some masses near the stationery point. Can we safely assume that these masses will be dragged faster toward the point, colliding with it and eachother and making it even more massive, thereby adding to the gravitational power of the point? Making it able to pull in more and more mass from further and further out, eventually causing the universe to collapse in on itself.
This is called the Universal Collapse Event (UCE), and this would not be the first time it has happened. Remember the Big Bang? The sudden explosion of matter? According to scientists, this is what happens after a UCE. This is not our first universe. Nor will it be our last. Who knows how many we’ve had or will have.
Scientists have estimated that the next UCE will take place in another 900 billion years, but I’ve done the math myself. Measured the dense microwaves eminating from the center over a few years, seen the exponential growth on a day-to-day basis, carried the decimal and the universe ends today. At approximately 2:30, the gravity of the center will become so great that the galaxies will start colliding as they begin their speeding toward the one stationery point. Andromeda collides with the Milky Way collides with Erratz-13 and so on until we reach terminal velocity (at this point, we’ll already be dead, of course). Then it’s reset and it all starts over again.
2:30 this afternoon. That’s when I’ve estimated it starting. That’s what my math shows. Most scientists are off by 900 billion years. I assume they just don’t know what they’re talking about. That or they want to preserve the order so they aren’t telling anybody.
Most scientists would start getting depressed about this, thinking, “But there’s so much we don’t yet understand.” Not me. I think I get it. I mean, I know where they’re coming from. I used to be the same way: even human nature, which is a purely human invention, is a mystery. We fight wars we don’t understand for people we don’t know for rights or land we’ll never have. We work jobs to pay for things that we wouldn’t need if we didn’t have jobs to start with.
But, I got past all that and realized it’s all something we’re not supposed to figure out. I caught on that projectile motion, fluid motion, quantum mechanics, and everything is part of an equation that explains it all. And that equation also explains why such-and-such girl doesn’t like you, why this guy smokes, why this war is happening in wherever where such-and-such person is getting shot. Even the location on his body where the bullet enters and whether or not it goes out again are part of the equation. Everything contributes to everything, the universe is a clock with billions and billions of little parts. That’s why we can’t find the equation to explain it all. Right now, there are trillions of variables we can’t see, because the whole universe gives a little; however, as the UCE occurs, the variables will diminish with the universe.
That’s why I’m sitting at this table looking up at the sky, waiting for the world to end: so I can spend that last bit of life finding the equation, albeit greatly diminished to only a few variables. I know I can’t publish it. I know nothing will come of it. But I just want to know.
I watch my cigarette smoke in the ashtray, the smoke clouds whisping upward, floating toward the sky slowly in a way that only cigarette smoke can.
My prediction is that when it all starts, time will speed up greatly. In fact, time has been speeding up since it started long ago, but soon it will speed up exponentially. Of course, no one will notice since we’re in time-space with everything else, nonetheless that is my prediction. The smoke will continue to float, but were I able to observe it from outside the accelerating timeframe, I would see it burn up almost instantaneously.
At 2:28, the television starts the breaking news: the Andromeda Galaxy crashes into the Milky Way, an incident that is supposed to happen hundreds of billions of years from now. The news anchors call into question all of the various predictions of scientists. I smile, knowing that before the scientists will have time to rebut, it will all be over. I look back at the sky and wait for God to hand down the Great Equation. Read more...

The Mistress

Sitting in the small, cramped and beige hotel room in this city I've never been to before, the drugs my campaign manager gave me are starting to take their effect. I watch the room bend and shake around me, look down at my speech and it's just five blank pages where I could swear there were words a second ago. He said it would be like this at first.
What did he call it? Demitrol? He said they used it to put cats under before they put them to sleep, so it would be mild enough on a guy like me that it shouldn't affect my performance today at the press conference, but it should numb me enough that I stop thinking about the other things going on while I'm talking.
“Relax,” I hear him say from some unseen corner in the room. I can see the sound waves from his voice, but he's nowhere. Logic says I must be breathing heavy or doing something to incite that, but I have no idea what. I can't feel a thing at the moment.
I'm not usually drugged during my speeches. Usually, I'm vibrant and thoughtful and passionate when I speak, but today I can't keep my mind straight.
Why? Because I'm damned.
Somebody somewhere in the world had to say, “Women are the downfall of man,” and that man must have been a politician. He must have been Cicero. He must have been in the same position I was in: she loves me too much, she can't stand me being married, she threatens, and now, she's got the leverage. Poking holes in condoms is the lowest of blows.
But I can't blame her. The truth is, I love her back. I want to leave my painfully pushy wife and move in with sweet, young, beautiful Jenn with her body shaped like an hourglass instead of like a pear. I find her more appealing in every way: she's smarter, more fun, more beautiful, funnier... there's very little about her I don't like. Except how much she can't stand seeing me play charades with this other woman, can't stand my facade.
It's not her fault really, she's a very real kind of person. That's why when I told her I couldn't divorce my wife for political reasons (for 784th time), she found a way to snap me out of it. She knew I wouldn't take the initiative, so she did. She just wanted to show me how stupid I was being, how false I was being.
She even told me she would never vote for me because she knew how much of a liar I was. God, I love her.
Demitrol apparently starts soft then hits hard. My campaign manager saw it coming and had a trash can set up for me to vomit in, my suit jacket hanging far away in the closet, my tie tucked around my neck in the back of my shirt. I miss at first and get a little on my shoes, and an intern is immediately down to scrub them down, tearing off my shoes and starting a deep cleanse while another violently puts my feet in another pair. All while I continue vomiting.
That bitch. I can't believe she would put me in such a bizarre place on purpose. An affair is one thing, but a child is another. An affair is heresy. A child is proof, undeniable, ever-present. She's incriminated me, dragging me down to the level of an adulterer. Who would trust a man whose own wife can't even trust him. Jenn was a slut to start off with, basically throwing herself at me at a local bar. She took me home the first night. I had never been that easy. But a fight with your wife, and a few beers later, you're ready to make all sorts of mistakes.
I can't believe what she's putting me through. How dare she! I agree to keep seeing her for 2 years, and now, at the peak of my career, she pulls this junior high shit on me. I'm lucky I have a great campaign manager who doesn't crack under pressure. He stands by me, and will do anything to help me. He's a great guy.
I feel myself being hauled to a mirror, but at the moment, all I see are vague colors that might be objects or rooms or people, or space ships for all I can tell. My hair is being scraped and plastered to the right, my tie is being straightened, my jacket being slipped on, one arm at a time, but all I can see is white light.
Then like a switch, clarity. I find myself in the bathroom, looking at myself in the mirror, ready for my speech. Except I'm not wearing my reading glasses yet. They're in my pocket.
The campaign manager came up with the plan to take care of her:
Step 1) Abort the child.
Step 2) Ship her to France.
When the election is over, Step 3) Send for her.
That's the plan he told me, which sounds pretty reasonable. Happily ever after, safe from the complications of public rebuke. This would not stress out Woody Allen. So why am I on Demitrol?
Because I know my manager too well, and that is not his real plan. That's the Disney version he told me so that I wouldn't be distracted. But I know that it's easier to cover up a cadaver than a living person.
The words have come back to the pages of my speech, filling a neat little 9 ½ x 7” space on each piece of stationery. I bundle them together and begin my walk downstairs, surrounded by an entourage of young, ambitious cut-throats.
As we arrive downstairs, the press becomes an intimidating blob of black and white flashes. They sit sweetly in their chairs, yelling for their turn to speak to the man of the hour.
I am introduced. There is a flurry of applause.
Thank you. Thank you.
I begin to read my speech.
I'm on Demitrol because at this very moment, men in black suits are breaking down the door of my mistress's loft apartment, paid for by the Political Action Committee. They are breaking her door down to tell her that they are taking her to get an abortion of my illegitimate child. That is what they tell her, and that is what they told me, but that is not the truth. She will be bound, gagged, murdered, and her body tossed somewhere deep in the ocean where my campaign manager will be glad to bet his life savings she will never be found. Technically, that's what he's doing anyway, betting his life savings she'll remain a secret forever. I believe that this is an accurate metaphor for the state of our nation today.
Wild applause. I start wondering if I'm saying these things, or just thinking them behind the veil of my actual speech. At the moment, neither would surprise me. Read more...

The Somnambulist

We had been married for years, happily, lovingly, and simply married. We would work our respective jobs, he at the library, me teaching high schoolers proper grammar usage and writing skills, then we would come home and see each other and be overwhelmed with the happiness that comes with knowing that all day, all this person wanted was to see you. We would watch obscure movies while drinking red wine and eating macaroni and cheese before falling asleep on the couch in each other's arms. We really had a beautiful relationship that, in my mind, completed us as people.
But lately he's developed a habit of disappearing. Not literally disappearing into thin air, but rather mentally vanishing, like taking a leave of absence from reality. He's still here, but he's not on the same plane with me anymore. I suppose it started when we were both 28 years old.
I came home from work, but he wasn't anywhere to be found. I figured he was going to be home later, so I cooked macaroni and cheese for both of us as was our Friday evening wont, but he still didn't show up. Worried, I decided to see if his car had shown up yet, and strangely enough, it had. It was sitting in our driveway in all of its blue and chrome glory, present and imposing, intimidating because it had apparently driven itself into the driveway because my husband was missing completely. In a fit, I leapt out the door to see if I could find him, and I doubt that I would have if it weren't for his shoes and socks tossed haphazardly at the foot of our tree. My eyes craned upwards to find him curled up on a high branch with his pants rolled up staring intently at a book. I called his name, but he didn't respond, so I ran to the foot of the tree to get closer. All it did was make me feel farther, more distant than before. He was so high up through a bramble of barren branches, farther away from me than the sky. I called his name a few more times, but always to no answer, so I decided to climb up after him.
I worked my way up the tree, cutting myself here, scratching myself there, slipping, tripping, nearly falling time and time again, but I struggled on with determination to reach my husband somehow. Soon, I was within feet of him. I could reach out and grab the book away from him. But there was something in his eyes: an intensity that seemed alien and far out of place, which I had never seen before. I reached out and touched his leg, whispering his name while I did it. When he looked up from the book, he was at first shocked to see me. Or rather scared, his glance held more fear than surprise. What's more, it seemed to be fear of me, not of heights or location.
My first impression had been that he had for some reason climbed up there specifically to read, but reading the book was only a part of his state. Really he was all things entwined together: reading a tattered copy of Once and Future King, not wearing shoes or socks, being at this altitude in this tree specifically, ignoring me, and whatever else was going through is mind. Eliminate one, and the rest comes crashing down.
He started shaking with fear, and when I reached out to help him, he cringed, sliding farther away from me. I watched him fall from the top of our tree through all the helpless branches and straight to the ground, where his leg broke from the fall.
When he awoke in the hospital, he said he didn't remember any of what I said he had done. He didn't remember being in the tree or falling out of it, just driving home from the library and waking up in the hospital. The doctor listened almost half-heartedly to the report, then decided that my husband was probably sleepwalking.
I protested, “But he's never sleepwalked before. Why should he start now?” To which the doctor replied that there could be any number of reasons for it. Stress. Family history. General confusion. Any number of reasons. Then he left the room so my husband could heal.
That was the first time I saw it: him living a distant and separate life, living a dream. But it hasn't been the last time. I see him lost and far away all the time, sitting on our porch, on the couch, even driving in the car. He adopts a placid but intense visage which doesn't exist in the real world, but somehow does in his world. He seems to look through me. Not constantly, but many times. And there's nothing I can do about it. And I feel helpless.
But more than that, I feel left behind.
I see him perched high in the tree, or playing in the playground, completely unaware of what he's doing, and I imagine his freedom. The world peels away leaving only him and his imagination and what he wants to do, and it embraces him. But he always goes alone. He never takes me with him. And I can't help wishing that I was sick like him, that I was degenerating slowly in my mind like he is so I could join him, if only once.
Instead, he sits beside me, miles away from where I am. And I know that if I touch him, he would wake up. So I don't. I watch him live in his world from mine, and pray that he comes back, if only to say hello. Read more...

First Date at the Carnival

The carnival for our first date was all lights and electricity. I knew it was just my heart beating faster, but I felt the lights shining brighter, and the people felt warmer as we walked through the Earthly star system to the soul of the world. I told him this and his short, quaint laugh filled me from top to bottom with the love I was ready to pour out for him.
“Yeah,” he said as his eyes strayed away from mine towards the heart of the night. I could tell his thoughts were somewhere else, and I hoped that he was dreaming, like I was. Dreaming about the world and the future and this moment right now. I knew he was distracted by the dream we were living because his only responses were monosyllabic at best. But I would not hold that against him. Tonight was ours, and I was his, and he was the world's.
We went to a booth where he told me he would win a “really big stuffed animal” for me. A this booth, you squirt water from a gun into a clown's mouth and make a little horse run across the big plastic board. I saw the metaphor for our lives instantly unfold. I was the horse – oddly enough, my power animal – and he was shooting the water to make me go faster and faster, reaching for an end to my means. Reaching for a goal: the “really big stuffed animal” (clearly a representation of God and Heaven). And upon reaching the goal, he would smile, holding the water pistol aloft, and we would hold God and Heaven in both our hands and the world would end, drowning us, as he drowned the clown, in symbolic Water of Love.
“Power animal?” he said, with a raised eyebrow. Curious about my world and my reality, he was distracted enough to not win the grand prize, but headstrong enough to win 3rd, which allowed him the choice of a small crab or a box of pencils. He asked which I wanted.
“The small crab,” I said with gusto. “The box of pencils is a bad omen. Sharp ends, you know.” Again, I could see his curiosity bubbling, but he said nothing as he turned and started walking away.
“How about a Haunted House?” he whispered not facing me, which had an extremely sensual effect that I was not expecting. His nonchalant attempt at indifference made it clear how much he wanted me. Even the juxtaposition of his apparent coldness with the looming possibility of a haunted house, which would make me cringe and huddle close to his endearing chest, was extremely sexy to me. So we walked to the haunted house and heard the chainsaws running somewhere within and I turned to him to let him know that the haunted house was like my heart: chamber upon chamber and the people pulsed through it searching for an exit or something to believe in behind the masks and chainsaws. But only we'll know that we're the real spirits, and as spirits, we float through the ravines of the world coming together at the center where we'll stay forever.
Then I reached for his hand and I felt our fingers entwine like a metaphor for our souls. I felt fireworks from nowhere, I felt blood rush to my head. I felt existence crushing in on me. And then he broke off, saying that he didn't feel like “doing the haunted house anymore.” I understood. I don't think I could have taken much more joy either. The overwhelming flood of emotion that had come with our hands touching was like a soliloquy of our souls.
We walked silently, pensively toward the true heart of the world, the center of the universe that spins with all the fury of an out of control solar system: the ferris wheel. Its lights and motion lit and moved the entire world, it was an engine of hearts, a disc of unthinkable wonder, where, when your seat stops at the very top to allow new people on, the universe of possibilities opens up to you...
So it was as it creaked to a halt with me and him perched closer to the stars than anyone else on Earth. Alone, miles from Gaia, feet no longer touching Terra Firma, he leaned over and kissed me. His hand moved to my breast and I told him I'd never felt the fabric of another person's soul until this moment.
As my comment settled in, he leaned back to his side of the seat, a look of shock and aghast sealed on his face. Obviously, he had seen the beauty of my statement and didn't expect something so perfectly right to come from me at that exact moment. But the world is full of surprises.
After, he walked me home, and I paused on my front porch and poised for the good night kiss, but being the gentleman he is, he declined. He said “see you later”, and I watched him as he vanished into the cold darkness, but I was not worried because on his lips hung the promise of later, and despite the suffocating darkness, that promise will live forever. Read more...

Lists

This morning was all-in-all pretty normal. I woke up, checked to make sure no one was beneath my bed before putting my feet down into my slippers, brushed my teeth until they felt clean (3 times on average, 4 this morning, not too outrageous. At 6 I get nervous), hopped on my bike and went shopping at the grocery store. No problems.
Maybe if I analyze in more detail:
I woke up at 6:52, glanced around the room to make sure I was alone and that all the doors were shut and locked and that the radio was off and that there was no hair left on my pillow and that the mirrors were not turned toward me. Had a look underneath the bed to make sure no one was hidden there. I used a special mirror on a hanger I had construed for the purpose.
By 7:05, I had unstuffed the paper in my shoes and replaced it with my feet, and I was off to the bathroom. A quick shower sufficed, which was good because I don't like enclosing myself in such tight quarters for very long. I brushed my teeth four times.
7:53, I'm out of the bathroom and pulling sets of clothes out of my closet. I knew that I was going out today, so I set aside an hour last night to pick out clothes so I'd be ready. I pulled them out of the closet, then out of their protective plastic covering I got from the laundromat and put them on. I tied my shoes with triple knots, making sure the first one was a square knot. That's very important, other knots can get really stuck if you're not careful, but not a square knot. It always comes apart easy. I put a travel pack of Kleenex in my pocket, opened the door to my apartment and used one to close it back. I went down to my bike which had three locks chaining it to three posts in the bike rack. This keeps other peoples' bikes from being too close. I wiped down my seat, handle bars, and pedals and began my second bimonthly trip to the grocery store to buy:
3 Jars of Skippy Creamy Peanut Butter
2 Loaves of Wonderbread
14 Bottles of IBC Root Beer
3 Boxes of Solo Plastic Flatware
1 Gallon of Hiland 2% Milk (Exp not earlier than 2 weeks away)
4 Boxes of Moore Push Pin Thumbtacks
3 Spiral ring College Ruled Meade Notebooks
2 Boxes of Parker Ball point pen/pencil sets
14 Pairs of Hanes Men's underwear
7 Packages of Hanes Men's undershirts (2/pack)
2 Sticks of Oscar Meyer Salami
1 Tub of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter Margarine
2 Bottles of Advil Pain Reliever Medicine
1 Hallmark Mother's Day Card (One that ideally says “Thank you for being my mom”) because Mother's Day is this month
My prescription
When I got to the store, I was immediately aware that Shelly was not there. She was not at the cash register where she usually is and she was not in the Women's Garments section which I could see from the door. I stood there for a second trying to think of what to do: Shelly is the only person I know who works there, and she always helps me and I'm always out of the store within 30 minutes which is good because I don't like being in crowded places for very long. But Shelly was not there, so I had to find someone else to help me. I craned my neck looking for Mr. Takanawa or Mrs. Blanchard or Mr. and Mrs. Starr or Dr. Pasternak, but I didn't see anyone I knew. Luckily, expecting a crowd, I had gone early in the morning when the crowd would be lighter, but there was still a lot of people milling around, and I knew that the longer I stood waiting for someone I knew to come help me, the more people would come to the grocery store to shop, and the more uncomfortable I would get. I felt my deadline. I had an hour max before it would become impossible to do anything. I looked at my watch: 8:25. So really I had 35 minutes before things escalated to a boiling point that I would not be able to handle and I would have to go home and I don't think I have enough things to last another two weeks until my next grocery store trip. I had factored everything to last for exactly 14 days, and while I always had a little bit of peanut butter left over in my last jar I would always throw it away when I came home with the new peanut butter. I started breathing heavy trying to think of what I could do to get out of this situation or how I had met Shelley in the first place like if I had talked to her first or if she had talked to me and whether if I had talked to her first if I would be able to do that again with somebody new or if she had talked me first if anybody else working would be that nice and I was thinking about my deadline and 9:00 and it being 8:27 now and I was still no closer to getting anything done and I was wondering if I should go home right then and give up but I also thought about my prescription and how I took the last pill last night and how I needed it right then but I couldn't get it because nobody would help me. So I decided this was important and that I would have to help myself so I went up to a clean looking cashier with spikey blond hair and his name was Greg and he finally asked me if he could help me and I said, “Yes, Greg. I need 3 jars of Skippy Creamy Peanut Butter, 2 loaves of Wonderbread, 14 bottles of IBC Root Beer, 3 boxes of Solo Plastic Flatware, 1 gallon of Hiland 2% Milk (Exp not earlier than 2 weeks away), 4 boxes of Moore Push Pin Thumbtacks, 3 Spiral ring College Ruled Meade Notebooks, 2 boxes of Parker Ball point pen/pencil sets, 14 pairs of Hanes Men's underwear, 7 packages of Hanes Men's undershirts (2/pack), 2 sticks of Oscar Meyer Salami, 1 tub of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter Margarine, 2 bottles of Advil Pain Reliever Medicine,1 Hallmark Mother's Day Card (One that ideally says “Thank you for being my mom”) because Mother's Day is this month, and my prescription.”
Greg looked crazy at me so I told him everything again and he asked me to slow down but I explained that if I slowed down I would run out of time and it would be 9:00 and I would get claustrophobic which is where you can't breathe when there are lots of people around and I don't like being claustrophobic and I asked him to please help me. Greg still had a look of craziness, but then he changed it into a smile. I like smiles from people I know because I know that they are probably smiling because they are happy or being nice, but when people I don't know smile it makes me a little nervous because I don't know why they are smiling. Maybe they are making fun of me or maybe they're being conniving or maybe they're being nice. I made myself think about Greg being nice as he said he would help me get my things and get out by 9:00, and I didn't think about him being mean or conniving and that calmed me down a little, especially when he ran to go grab a cart.
Greg came back with a cart and said, “Okay, now what was the first thing on your list?” and I explained that I could only think of the list as a whole so I started rattling off the whole list again and he jogged off with the cart saying to, “follow me to the peanut butter aisle,” and jogging was pretty fun. As he pulled the Skippy's Peanut Butter off the shelf, he said that he felt like helping me was kind of like a game where the goal was to get me everything I needed and then checked out and out the door by 9:00. I liked that he wasn't grudging or anything. Greg seemed pretty nice. In 15 minutes (a new record time) we had gotten everything but my prescription and we were at the pharmacy and Greg was at the window saying, “I need to pick up a prescription for...” then he turned around to me and asked for my name. I froze because I didn't want to tell anybody new, especially someone I just met 15 minutes ago, my name and I started breathing heavy as Greg said, “They need your name to go get your prescription.” But the pharmacists saved me. Luckily they knew my face and went to the back to get my prescription, telling Greg that they knew whose it was and that it was no trouble.
The trouble started when they came back and they said, “Here's Mr. Wymer's prescription,” and they handed Greg the bag and he handed it to me like he hadn't just heard but I heard and now he knew my name and I started breathing heavy again. But he kept smiling and acting like he didn't hear anything so I started thinking maybe he didn't hear my name and as I checked out with him at register #3, I started to calm down. He put my groceries in paper sacks smiling the whole time and hurrying as well. When he finished and I handed him my cash he asked what time it was, so I looked at my watch and told him it was 8:49. “Yes,” he exclaimed, “we did it! With time to spare!” and he helped me take my things out to my bike. I had 3 bags, so like I always do, I put two in the front basket and one (with the milk) in my backpack, and I rode home, deciding not to give Greg and the fact that he knew my name a second thought.
But now, having arrived home, and having found the envelope slid under my door while I was gone, I know that I was mistaken about Greg not hearing my name. He had heard and he'd already told the Council of Anarchists and they had already tracked down where I lived and probably knew everything about me and he had probably told them everything about my shopping list and everything about my bike and what I was wearing and what I would be eating and what they could poison the next time I went shopping so that they could take my notebooks and they probably knew what I check when I wake up each morning and how many times I brush my teeth (3 on average) and they were probably planning something to get me and to kidnap me and steal my notebooks. My apartment is no longer safe, it has been compromised. After all these years of paying my rent with cash and staying off the grid, one slip, one instant where I decided to approach Greg instead of Latricia or Jennifer (who were both not as clean, but not as likely to have ties to the Council) and it's all ruined and everything is at stake.
I know what's in the envelope. I don't even have to look in it to know that it's an ultimatum and it says, “Bring the notebooks to us or we will kill your mom” or Shelly or Mr. and Mrs. Starr or Mr. Takanawa or Mrs. Blanchard or Dr. Pasternak or maybe even me. I feel horrible that I've involved them through my carelessness and I think through all my options.
I could run away but then they might start killing everyone I know to find out where I've run off to and my mom would know where I was because I have to send her the Mother's Day card and it would have a return address and if they tortured her, I'm sure she would tell.
I could stay and face them or give them my notebooks but then they would find out all the secrets I know from the codes that people put in newspaper advertisements and radio commercials and they would know all the government's secret plans which would put the government at a complete disadvantage, and they could put together the cipher and use it to decipher more messages. I can't let that happen because I'm a patriot.
I could destroy the notebooks and face them but then they would torture me and I would never be able to keep myself from telling the cipher, I would never be able to withstand the torture.
So I come to the only logical conclusion: I have to destroy the notebooks and kill myself. It's the only answer that extricates everyone and makes sure my notebooks don't fall into the hands of the Council.
I gather up all the notebooks, 1052 of them, and put them in a big plastic bag. I haul the heavy thing down three flights of stairs and hoist it into the trash dumpster, getting a little bit of garbage on my hand, but I don't wipe it off because this task is too important. I can't let them get hold of my notebooks. It would be the end of America. So I douse the trash in lighter fluid, which I had defiantly asked of my neighbor (I figured since they already know about me, there can be no further harm done), and I light the garbage on fire. As the heat engulfs my notebooks, I can see the plastic melt off and the flames twist around the tiny metal spirals. I watch as page after page disappears into fiery oblivion.
Then I go back up to my room and open my bedroom window, first making sure that one of their spies is not already beneath my bed planning on stopping me before I can jump out. Nobody's there, so I lean out and look down the three stories to the ground. It's 9:05 when I jump off the sill and into the empty air.

I wake up in a room I don't know, unable to move. My muscles feel heavy and I can barely move my eyes to look around and see that I'm in a hospital room. My mom sits on my right and beside her sits a doctor with large frame glasses that I can't see through when the light hits them just right. I can barely hear them through the drugs that they've apparently got me on, but the message is loud and clear: the Council has kept me alive to tell them the cipher and they have my mom. In my head I am screaming and running and tearing at the bed, but all I can do is move my right index finger a little bit and out of the corner of my eye I can see that the doctor is smiling. Read more...

Double Shot (This Thursday Only)

For your reading enjoyment: My Rejected McSweeney's Submissions
James Joyce's Refrigerator
Description: A list of things to do located on James Joyce's refrigerator (plagiarized from old New Yorker cartoon).
Reason for rejection: Missed all the obvious jokes, even the ones from the original cartoon. Mostly just a shopping list. Only joke was, “Buy an egg and draw a smiley face on one end to replace left eye with to freak out children,” which isn't funny.

Dilbert Goes To Hellbert
Description: Dilbert is sent to Hell after his boss shoots him for some office-type reason. There he meets Catbert who promotes him to mid-level management in Hellbert.
Reason for rejection: Didn't get it. Don't read Dilbert.

Care Bears on LSD
Description: A vivid (often graphic) description of the classic Care Bears television show if all the characters were to be twisted on various mind expanding drugs.
Reason for rejection: Needs more than one joke. Sleepy Bear not being able to sleep because he snorted a line of cocaine is not enough, especially to off set the extremely depressing prospect of Lionheart overdosing on heroine then the rest of the cast being left in a comatic state after an attempt at the “Longest Care Bear Stare Ever.”

A Day in the Life of Alanis Morissette
Description: Just what you'd think.
Reason for rejection: Surprisingly not funny.

Also enjoy this week's story: Lists. Read more...

Pretty Hitlers

How does anyone get themselves into this kind of predicament? On the run from what has to be the most impossibly small, but constantly angry, demographic in the world: Crossdressing Nazis. I mean, sure, they're not a hard group to piss off. But how do you find an actual group of them centralized in one location and then happen to make the exact wrong remark that would send this hairless herd of dress-clad warriors into a foaming-at-the-mouth rampage?
This night started in a club, me and stage cracking wise with my usual bad jokes. I have no illusions about the career I've chosen. I'm bad at it. It's usually just me onstage for half an hour suffering the insufferable silence of the audience as they cringe at my poor delivery and worse content.
The night ended up with me running as fast as I can down the dimly lit streets of San Fransisco, looking for an alley to duck into or building or anything to get away from these psychopaths behind me, screaming obscenities. And all because I made one little joke, not even a good one I might add, about a gay Nazi strangling a puppy in the Hitler Youth.
Man, they did not like that. A whole table of transvestite fascists (apparently they were having a Pretty Hitlers Convention. Where else but San Fransisco?) suddenly went from simply grunting at my horrible jokes with the rest of the audience to fuming with rage at the thought that their select and incredibly rare demographic would stoop so low as to strangle a puppy.
Appalled. That's what they said, they were appalled. The Hitlers in Drag were appalled. Who saw that coming.
And now, all I can hear over the pounding of my heart and the beat of my shoes against the unforgiving cement (and my inner monologue trying to make sense of the situation) was the growling coming from behind me: faux-German accents screeched across the empty night.
Ve vould nevah harm da sveet, innocent puppies!
Yah! Zey are ze Master Race's Best Friend!
I've got a run in my stockings! You MozerFuckah!
Yah! MozerFuckah!
I can't believe this would happen to anyone, let alone me.

I ducked into a building with an open door and a light on hoping they would pass by. Panting hard, I looked around to make sure I hadn't walked inadvertently into Nazi rally, or UFO Awareness meeting (I had offended those guys last week with a sly poke at Congress using UFO's so that people like Larry Craig can have sex with men and not have to worry about getting caught), or anything that would only exacerbate my current situation.
To my surprise and delight, I saw that I was surrounded by children, all sitting on the floor, playing games, and eating crackers. Apparently, this was one of those day care places where adults took their kids to get away for an evening. It was cheaper than hiring a babysitter and the kids would have someone their age to play with. To my knowledge, I had not yet offended this far more popular demographic.
I felt secure, because I figured if the Pretty Hitlers wouldn't dare strangle a puppy, they certainly wouldn't attempt to do anything that might traumatize children. I sat down amongst the children and asked if I could have a cracker, and with the first bite, horror set in again.
Matza.
Sweet God... They were Jewish. I looked around again and wondered how I could be so stupid: the game they were playing was Spin the Dreidel, they all wore Yalmulkes, there was even a sign on the back wall that said, “TorahTots!” A woman came into the room bearing a tray and calling, “Whoooo waaaaants Latke!”
The kids were overwhelmed with joy.
I had to escape, there was every chance the Nazi Nancy's wouldn't mind killing all these Future Jews of America just to get me also. Two birds, you know. I looked over at the open door where I was dismayed to find a healthy looking skinhead in a warm Gingham gown glaring at me and laughing. He slammed the door and I heard a loud thud as he propped something against it. That's when a Molotov Cocktail sailed through the window and crashed on the floor in an explosion of flame and glass (I couldn't help but wonder where those guys would hide that huge bottle. I decided it was best not to think about it too much, I mean... there's only so many possibilities). Luckily, all the kids were over by the Latke lady, so nobody was hurt. But it did get everyone on their feet.
How does anyone get themselves into this kind of predicament?
I ran over by the kids and yelled, “We've got to find a way out! There's gay Nazis out there who want us all dead!” The response was a tirade of Yiddish:
Faygola!
Oy! Gavalt!
You're Meshuggina!
Oy-Vey!
They've got some Chutzpah!
They were talking like Mel Brooks's dead grandfather. But there was no time to lose, the flames were spreading, and all the doors were blocked. There was a window low enough that we could get out nearby, so I grabbed the closest thing, which happened to be a 6 year-old boy, and hurled him at the glass. He soared with a perfect spiral, like a missile, yalmulke first through the window, shattering it and allowing us all to escape through it and out the alley.

The next day the papers covered it, naming an anonymous hero who had saved them all from the fire then vanished into the night like “a sort of nervous Batman.” A kid was quoted as saying, “He was a mensch.”
I folded up the newspaper, pulled out a pencil and paper, and started trying to think of something funny that has to do with militant computer programmers and their dates not being very receptive to Javascript.
Read more...

Elegy

I knew him deeply in my soul, albeit in function and not in name, the name a drowning symbol of reality gained but lost all too quickly, a clear beam of sunshine alighting opaquely in the gloom, scattering those verminal beasts of wintry reason and hoary conscience. He stood unmoved, ensconced in the wing-tipped shade of the ever-approaching and all-encompassing arm of crystalline Justice, the here-and-now, its stony visage lacking the pity of ancestral wisdom, save the wrinkled tears of a childhood long lost but not forgotten. You must live on in memories, though they be the self-collapsing tombs of fragile parchment, empty words emblazoned thereupon forever devoured by greedy eyes. A pallor of extinguished luminescence, our final witness thrown to the howling wind.


Read more...

Becoming Old

Of all the people my age, she was the last one I thought was going to die. I had seen her just the other day at the store, buying groceries she would never eat: a loaf of bread, a head of lettuce, a box or two of cake mix. We chatted amiably for half an hour then went our separate ways and then she was dead.
Not instantly, of course, but just days later. Natural causes.
What natural causes? She was at least as healthy as I was 2 days ago. Jean-Marie...
I'm old, old enough that people my age are typically prone to dying, old enough that the amount of funerals I've been attending has gone up exponentially over the past few years. I can't really remember how old I am, but I wish I could tell you when I was going to die. How many years I've lived is nothing compared to how many years I've got left, in my books anyway. For instance, I know that Jean-Marie was at least as old as I, but in my eyes, she might as well have only lived one day. Not even one day, half an hour. That moment of time where it was me and her, talking about children and politics. That's all I can really remember of her, try as I might. I can't think of anything earlier or after that. That's how I view my own passing life: I might as well have only been alive the moment before I stop breathing. That's all I'll remember of it anyway.

This morning, I woke up and got dressed for Jean-Marie's funeral. Getting out of bed, my bones ached in fifty different places. Sometimes at my age, you don't even want to move anymore. One of my friends woke up one morning, swung his legs off the side of his bed and threw his hip out. After 2 weeks of hospital care, he was a goner. 3 years later and he was dead, but it all started with that hip. Before that, we would sit on his porch drinking beer every Friday and talk about what it means to be alive.
Before he died, I went to the hospital to see him, dragging along a couple of beers. He didn't even look away from his TV when I walked in and said hello, he just held a vacant stare at some show teenagers like to watch. I sat in the cafeteria drinking my beer and left, resolving never to remember him in that hospital.
In short, you've got to be careful these days. The slightest injury could lead to your becoming a simple vegetable: he's not the only friend I've had to come to this end.
But I digress: I got out of bed carefully, dealing with all the pain in the world focused on no specific part of my body and walked over to my bathroom mirror, steadying myself against the marble counter top, looking over myself. I looked long, like I was looking into a fun house mirror. It seemed like my jaw hung too low and my forehead too high. I wiped the crust from my eye and realized I had been crying in my sleep again. I poked at the mole that had taken over my left cheek seemingly overnight.
Shower, put on clothes (an unreasonably difficult task), take care of hygiene. After all, while I might look like an old man, I have no intentions of smelling like one. One of the most vivid memories from my childhood, and sorry to say one of the few, is the stench of my aging uncle Harold. No one could ever really place his smell, but it was kind of a family game to try: pickles and herring? Urine and coal? Spoiled milk and cabbage? None ever really seemed to fit exactly, but all had some semblance of truth to them. It was almost like a blend of them all.
I decided to walk to the church since it wasn't too far away and who knows when the day would come when I couldn't walk anymore. Brisk morning air caved in around me, suffocating me with cold and movement, but I kept my stride and made it to the church before anyone else was there.
I walked in and Pastor Ericson greeted me with his usual, “Glad you could make it.” He was youngish, about 30 maybe, and his hair was combed to cover up his balding head. He smiled solemnly, like I guess they teach you in seminary: If you're giving a funeral, you smile like this. Wedding, like this. Homily, like this, unless you're making your point, in which case, look sternly at the congregation so that they know that this is when you listen. Raise your voice if you can without seeming too angry.
I walked into the sanctuary where Jean-Marie's coffin was sitting, surrounded by white flowers, orange flowers, a veritable rain forest. The stand she was one had wheels and a crisscross pattern. Her coffin was overly elaborate and gilded. I prayed like hell they wouldn't stick me in one of those God-forsaken boxes when I died. Sure, it's cushioned all to hell, but I want the worms and maggots to be able to get at me easier. The way I see it, the sooner I'm gone the better.
I walked up to the box, sitting open in front of the alter. She looked nothing like she looked the other day. She had become brittle and stretched, whereas the other day, she was vibrant and spritely, smiling at me while we spoke. Today, she wore a starched frown, immovable.
She wasn't really Jean-Marie anymore. But at least she was a few days ago.
I took a seat in the back of the room and watched as people filtered in to pay respects. I read her obituary, which said a lot about her family and a lot about how much of a kind and giving person she was, but said nothing really about her. You could copy and paste the article for probably a thousand other reasonable women in the world. It didn't help me remember her, it didn't help me understand who she was any better. All I had of her was 30 minutes the other day, and that was her whole life for me. I pressed my brain, trying to remember how we'd even met, whether we'd ever loved, what we had done together in our beautiful and destructive youth, but I came to nothing. The memories were blurred and smudged photographs of carnivals or movie theaters or cars. I remembered we were close, but nothing else.
The funeral progressed, and people walked up to have a closer look at the body. When I got there, I leaned down and kissed her lips. I figured if I hadn't done that before, I had probably wanted to ever since I met her. Then I folded her obituary, put it in my pocket, and walked home. Read more...

Cigarette

Ever since I got here I've been having a recurring dream. I find myself treading water alone off the shore of a large, warm lake shortly before sunset. There is no breeze, the water is a boundless expanse of tinted glass. Then I begin to sense something wrong – a disturbance in the surface of the water, although I can’t see or hear a cause. The water, no longer still, forms little peaks and troughs that grow imperceptibly with each iteration. Soon the deeper water is affected, too, and the cold water from far below begins to swirl and encircle my ankles and lower legs. Then I see it – a cigarette boat, moving at an unstoppable clip. The waves, ever larger, begin to pull me under, and as I fight my way back to the surface I realize that although the boat’s path zigzags back and forth, it is heading directly for me. With a violent swoop the cold water encircles my whole body, and I sink out of shock, to forget the terror of the ravaged surface even as thick, slimy seaweed grasps my legs and arms. Suddenly the depth becomes more than I can bear, and in spite of the boat I find myself shooting toward the air. But just before I can surface, the propeller catches my right side, steadily ripping through me for an endless second before throwing me, unconscious, to the shore. When I open my eyes, the lake is empty once again, and the waves are receding. Although the water is warm, I am shivering, but when I try to hold myself I recoil in burning pain from my wound. There is nothing I can do but stare at the reddening water.

The evening started fine. He picked me up wearing something from the back of last month’s Details and took me to some new Italian restaurant, nothing spectacular, but expensive, which was the best I expected from Topeka anyway. Then we saw a little rep company do something awful to American Buffalo - I was genuinely embarrassed for some of the actors, but he seemed to get something out of it, at least I imagined he did. When I told him that I'd only heard Damien Rice in Closer, he was appalled, and insisted we stop by his apartment so he could burn me a CD. So we did. And he did. And while the CD was burning, we sat in perpendicular thatched love seats and talked about nothing in particular. I finally felt like our first date awkwardness was melting away. He got up and poured us each a couple fingers of sweet herbal liqueur and brandy, then put an Elliot Smith album on in the background before sitting down again.

And then, for the first time that night, something seemed wrong. His face froze with a sip, and he as he swiftly placed the drink on the table he grimaced a little before covering his face with his face and beginning to softly shake. I was completely caught off guard. I quickly put down my drink and leaned forward in my chair, flattening my skirt, unsure of what to say or do.
"What's the matter?"
He scraped his hand across his face, pressing against one eyebrow while his eyes darted to me. He held a look I thought was angry at first, but soon decided was scared. I got up to go sit by him, but he darted out of his seat and into the corner, leaning against the outside wall with one hand and his bedroom door with the other. I considered walking myself home to give him some space, but I was genuinely worried about his wellbeing. I followed him to the corner, leaning as casually as possible against the doorframe, placing a tender hand on his right shoulder. He shivered from the contact, and then turned to look at me. His tear-streaked face opened slightly, and he embraced me. After a long period of silence, he finally let go.

Somewhat calmed, he let his arm fall casually on the doorknob and turned it. He opened the door to his bedroom, which was laid out much like the rest of his modest 4th story apartment – mainly faux-vintage furniture sitting beige walls sparsely decorated with framed modern art prints. When the door was opened, I noticed how intently he was gazing at me, and instinctively averted my eyes.
"Thank you so much for being here for me.”
"Is everything alright in your life? Do you want to talk about anything?”
He paused for a moment, then walked into his room.
"Come here a minute."

It's hard to explain my feelings at this moment. While I was certainly not wanting anything intimate that evening, I still had a great deal of innate trust in his decency, and feared that it would be a bigger insult to his pride to turn him away now rather than later, after I'd had a chance to show my hesitation in more subtle ways.
"What is it?" I asked, slowly walking into the room. His footsteps matched mine in the opposite direction, as he walked behind me to his bedroom door and shut it. By the time I was in the center of the room, he was sitting near the head of his bed, leaning on the wall with his legs draping off the side.
"I'm not ready to say goodnight yet. Stay with me a few more minutes."
He reached for my hand, and I took it, again not wanting to hurt his feelings. He gently pulled me to the bed, his arm around me as soon as I sat. I turned to look at him, and his eyes bore into mine, darting to my lips intermittently, until finally embracing me rather unenthusiastically. He kissed me, and I briefly kissed him back, but all energy quickly left his broad shoulders, and his kiss was restless and uninterested. I pulled away with polite and intentional punctuation, taking both his hands in mine and locking our fingers. He hung his head for a minute before trying to kiss me again, but stopped when he sensed my disinterest.

He dropped onto his back and stared enigmatically at the ceiling, red eyes beginning to water. I thought again about leaving. Suddenly his eyebrows began to quiver, and his hand clenched mine. I let out a little shriek as he violently pulled me on top of him, and before I had time to think he had rolled on top of me and begun to roughly navigate my neck with his dry mouth. I tried to move, but I couldn’t overcome the massive force of his lower body. I was hyperventilating. I felt his hand rip down my tank top, angry mouth following. I felt the breeze on my thigh. I was screaming louder than I have ever screamed. The rocking paused momentarily, but quickly resumed much more violently than before. Everything was wrong. I tried to concentrate on flexing my toes, or the pain from my twisted underwear cutting into my flesh, or the hair he was tugging at, but no matter what I tried to think about, my whole mind was filled with a tearing, a devastating, searing cut deep into the center of my flesh, ripping me apart from within.

And then it all stopped. He was leaning out his window, smoking. And then he wasn’t. I was following him out even before he hit the ground.




Read more...

When I Die

I was speeding. I shouldn't have been, I know. Kids, other people on the road, drunk drivers, but I was.
So what.
What's done is done.
Drop it.
Driving is a responsibility. Isn't that what they tell you in driver's ed? A responsibility. But it's not a responsibility like cleaning your room, or doing your homework, or feeding your dog. You're not required to drive. The implication is that when you drive, as you inevitably will, you are to drive responsibly, ie in the way that you take care to feed your dog so nothing bad happens to him. Drive like that. Don't speed.

When I was young, my best friend's grandfather died. Cancer or old age or something. Something that old people generally die of but young people are, for some reason, exempt from. Probably cancer. Anyways, he died, and my friend was sort torn up about it. And so was I really, I mean, I didn't know anything about death. All either of us really knew at that point was that now, his grandpa wouldn't tell us stories about fighting Germans anymore. We would never hear that gravelly, old voice of his as he yelled at his wife to “get us growin' boys some cookies,” never see his San Andreas fault like eyes wink at us when the tray came out.
He would tell us the same story over and over, but it never got old. The blood was still fresh every time he told us. His smell of old and tobacco attacked your senses like the western front, and you were assaulted by his very presence.
And then he died. Not in a war, like he should've, not living the life he always talked about living, but in a chair, his head tilted back. No agony, no destruction to speak of, just a slow and silent fade from life, and he was gone forever.

The freeway this time of night has nobody on it for miles and miles, it's just you and the road and the occasional clump of yellow trash cans filled with sand to keep you from crashing into the concrete support for an overpass. When I was a kid, I used to think that those were for putting your trash in on long road trips. I thought, “Gee, people must get a lot of trash out here on the road,” and that's what I thought till I got arrested for trying to put trash in one. Well, interrogated. Serves me right for being an American after 9/11.
“Were you puttin' a bomb in there?”
“No. I was putting a bag formerly containing Sun Chips in there.”
“You know those aren't trash cans.”
“I do now.”
“Terrorists want to blow up our bridges while we're drivin' over 'em.'”
“Why?”
“Take away our sense a' security. Obviously.”
Serves me right. I should've just littered.

At the funeral, I watched my friend in the front row, and God did I feel sorry for him. He sat there, staring in horror at his dead grandfather crammed into a box three feet in front of him. You could see the loose skin pulling back on his face from lying down so long, the liver spots like cancerous potholes infesting his face, his mouth slightly contorted since they had to wire it shut. But the family wanted a pretty corpse for the funeral, not some dead old man with his mouth wide open revealing his already partially rotted tongue (I read that in a book, somewhere). You could even see that the funeral guys had used blush on the man.
Poor guy. You fight in a war. You kill a German with your bare hands to stay alive so you can see your high school sweetheart again and raise a family. Then you die and some funeral home director puts powder on your face because your family is disgusted by your pale, oblong, and cold visage. They put glass marbles in your eyes so it looks like you still have them. They wire your jaw shut so you look serene, like it's your greatest joy in life to be packed into a box and shipped one-way to heaven. Or hell if the Germans were right. And your dead, for all eternity, with make up on your face.
I saw it. My friend saw it, too. We cried because we knew him and we knew that's not what he would have wanted. And when we asked our parents about it, all they did was wipe the tears from our faces and say, “one day, you guys will have to learn how to deal with death.”

Street lights fly by and my interior flickers like a heartbeat. The lines on the highway pass in a blur of white and pink highway light.
In the car, driving 126 miles an hour, the lines look like their only a couple feet long. But I know that every one is actually more like 12 to 14 feet long. Nothing is as it seems, and especially not at this speed.
I knew the offramp was coming pretty fast, but I decided this time, I'd see if the yellow signs were necessary or whether they were just warnings.
45 mph. Let's try 130. Just a little more gas.

I went outside to feed my dog, Charlie, the next morning, and I sat there and watched him eat for a good half hour, until he was done. And I went and got my friend. He wiped the sleep out of his eyes, after all it was only about 8 o' clock on a Saturday morning. I always was an early bird.
He got dressed and came out to play and we went to my backyard to play with Charlie.
He had caught a bird and was shaking it like it was one of his chew toys. We went up to him to make sure he was ok, because there were feathers flying everywhere and you couldn't make out what was going on. He was moving like a blur. And I'll never forget that first time he snapped at me.
He was just doing it to keep me away from the bird, but he got my hand and I started bleeding a little so I kicked him in the side. He dropped the bird immediately and ran into the corner, whimpering like I had stabbed him. We looked at each other from across the yard, me nursing my bloody hand, and him with a look of terror and confusion plastered on his face. My friend didn't say a word. I got up and went inside.

The first thing that happened when I hit the barrier was the radio stopped playing. Replaced by glass shattering, metal striking cement, and then I must have gone slightly deaf because the sound afterward was all very subdued. I had no control of where my body was going, forward, backward, side-to-side, and I could taste blood everywhere. It was like my skin had taste buds and I just knew that my blood was all over me. I knew that in some time and place not where I was right then, my car was still moving, but I was in a river of inertia. I was the center of the universe.

I came back out with a knife, my friend confused and scared, my dog the same way.
I grabbed his collar and I stabbed him in the side, over and over again. And every time I pulled the knife out and shoved it back in, there was less resistance than before. It got easier and easier until all the red, red blood and guts had spilled out on the green, green grass and I was covered in it and all I was doing anymore was stabbing an empty skin. Stabbing what used to be my best friend.
That's when my dad came outside.

I could feel the car stop moving like it was a part of my body, like I was watching my hand become paralyzed. The seatbelt was wrenched around my neck. Glass was everywhere. I had no idea if my car even resembled a car anymore, or if I resembled a human. I couldn't move, nor did I particularly want to. The only thing I was certain of was that a fire was growing somewhere around me as the light flickered in my interior like a heartbeat.
This is how I wanted to go: in a burst of flame and glory. A shot of violence then it's off to the afterlife. And as the flames climbed inexorably toward the gas tank, I thought, “Serves me right. At least they won't put make up on my face.”

When we buried my dog in the backyard, I had never seen my dad cry so hard. And I had never been so confused about life and death. Read more...

Event 0

The road was empty just like a thousand others in this left-for-dead town, lined with empty houses, empty cars, an eerie calm settles. It's not right for a neighborhood in a city like this to be so quiet, but what's right and wrong has kind of been up in the air since Event 0. But there's no reason to think about that anymore, the only reason left is surviving one more day. So when I mark the long empty houses on this quaint neighborhood drive, I don't see the happiness of children on swingsets in backyards, or the day-to-day bustle of people returning from work, or even the inevitable fights between parents; all I see are possible non-perishables and shelter for the imminent night. Thinking for the present, nothing for the past.
I had ransacked a few houses with a little luck, and night was coming quickly, so I started looking out for a safe place to camp. The best were two story houses with most of the doors and windows. At least then you could barricade yourself upstairs to keep any animals from coming in. I had spotted a good possibility when I noticed something further down the street, a tree appeared to be glowing. Things like this make you cautious. You get to know the truth really well. Animals run rampant, people are few and far between, and trees don't glow, when something breaks these, there's cause for alarm. Animals kept in cages means somebody put them there, and there's a chance they could decide you're an animal. Running into people is like running into the devil, they'll do anything to survive. Since the event, the race for survival had become much closer, and we were all fighting not to come in last.
I decided to check the tree to see what was there, maybe it was a survivor's camp. I had heard cannibals talk about them, saying they were better than buffets. Maybe they hadn't found this one. Only one way to tell.
I sneaked down the street, making every attempt to not be seen. When I got close enough, I could see that the tree was glowing because of a light emanating from within a house, second floor, but this was not candlelight like we've all grown accustomed to, this was real electricity. I hadn't seen electric light for months, with its warm incandescence. You could watch the light flow from its source to its target, and you learned to appreciate that once it was gone. Something about electric light, maybe the fact that it is so organized and easily controlled and so unlike the environment I'd been living in, mesmerized me. I couldn't take my eyes away from its stream of particles splashing so radiantly onto this tree. It was like controlling the sun, in a way. I was led, trance like, to the front door where I stupidly stood and knocked.
Immediately sensing my idiocy, I leaped into the bushes, dried up and withered though they were, in an attempt to hide and prolong my life a little bit longer. Luckily, I am a very small person. This may come as unexpected news, but it's very logical that in this world, the big, bulky people are the first to go, not having the necessary nutrition or if they're lucky, getting eaten. A two-hundred pound man could feed a small village.
While I hid, I heard the door open and saw a small shadow framed in the wondrous electric world that the door opened into. Like a portal to another, more beautiful dimension. Once again, I became delirious and left my safe place, meandering out into the open, in plain sight.
The girl in the doorway had a small frame and looked well fed, about my age: 13 or 14. She wore a smile, which was as rare as finding food, and beckoned me to come in saying her name was Katie. Still mystified by the oddities that surrounded her so naturally, I followed her into her house.
Electricity flooded the place. It was everywhere. For this reason alone, if she had said she was God I would have believed her. Electricity didn't exist anymore. It just didn't. This is truth. And if this is truth, then breaking the pattern of the truth was inevitably a bad thing. I asked her how she had electricity. She explained that her father was a brilliant inventor and had made a sort of generator to keep electricity going when the power went out. It was originally designed for short black outs, but it had stood the test of time pretty well.
“8 months and counting,” she said happily, with her fingers crossed. She spoke like a bird, like there was nothing holding her to the ground. Like gravity didn't exist to her. I asked where her father was, and all she could say was she didn't know. Damn it. An intelligence like his would be useful, although it didn't concern me too much. Teenage boys are really only interested in sex. Even in the face of the apocalypse, all I could think about was getting to repopulate the earth with Katie. Then she introduced me to her twin, and all I could think about was sex and more sex. Who needs repopulation when you have two beautiful women at your disposal. Her twin looked exactly like her, standing next to her and asking me if I wanted anything to eat.
“We have meat,” one of them said, and I nearly died of joy.

I basked in the beauty of electricity while I waited for my meal. They had left me alone to wander the labyrinthine two story house. It figures, I thought, an inventor would have a house like this. It somehow reflected my mind, twists and turns leading to empty rooms. There were floors below ground going who knows how deep, like an iceberg. Soon I heard Katie call my name. Dinner was ready.
We ate in a traditional dining room, and I think she could tell the excitement on my face. I couldn't believe how much her house was like walking into the beautiful past, the days before the event when nothing mattered. When we stayed alive just by remembering to breathe every now and then. The glory days.
The twin had apparently gone to bed early, not wanting to impose on a possible romance between Katie and I. I said nothing about my thinking on the matter, but ate my food cheerfully. The meat was fresh and tender, much better than the canned non-perishables I had become accustomed to. These days, it was hard to find fresh anything, let alone something as delicious as steak. It just didn't exist anymore.
We made some amiable conversation, then she showed me where I would be sleeping. She even kissed me good night, and left with a glamorous smile and a wink. With the light behind her, she had the halo of an angel. I let the worries outside the house drip away like wax, leaving just my own little flame of love and lust, and in my mind we were dancing down deserted streets together, only stopping to breath the beauty of life into each other before we laugh and run onward. Armageddon was starting to seem like a Saturday in the park.
I was still so enchanted by the thrill of electricity and the beauty of these small particles cutting through the curtain of night revealing the wonder of the play, so I decided to sleep with the light on for the first time in months. That was how I knew something was going on.

Somewhere around midnight, the light dimmed like it does when there's an immense draw on the power. Once the light had dimmed, the blinding beauty did also, leaving just the truth: electricity does not exist. So what was going on? Possibilities stretched through the afternoon glow of the electric sun and out my door, so I followed them and began my exploration of the house once more.
There was a low hum coming from downstairs. I made my way from room to empty room until I came to the kitchen, where the hum seemed loudest. The wall seemed to come alive from the grinding, horrible noise and the flicker of the dim bulb and the rattle of dishes. I cautiously walked to the refrigerator and put my hand on it. I could feel the vibrations through the door, so I pulled it open to find that it was not a refrigerator at all, but a doorway opening into a dark stairwell. I can't tell you if it was my curiosity or stupidity from all the electricity that night that led me down that stairwell. I can't even tell you what I saw until I tracked the sound to its source. It was like walking through a dream of purgatory, and just like a dream, when you wake up, you only remember pieces: the inexorable walk, the deep darkness, and the grinding sound looming ahead. And the end of the journey downward, when you actually reach hell.
Katie stood at a control panel. She was the first thing I saw, lit up in all her beauty by a wonderful blue light. I almost asked what she was doing, but then I traced the source of the light. There was a machine in the center of the room glowing and breathing, flexing in its own light. A large, metal cylinder, contracting and expanding, breathing in the darkness. Katie was staring intently at it and so was I. The grinding grew louder and louder, but Katie's gaze never changed, she just calmly watched her machine do its magic.
It finally began slowing down, the grinding became a whir, and eventually the thing stopped making noise all together and the lights brightened to their original glory. The door opened, and Katie emerged, naked and beautiful, looking straight at me. Well, I guess Katie's twin emerged, but she looked like Katie in every way. She stared at me, not moving, seemingly not even breathing, and Katie moved from the control panel to take a closer look. She examined her twin, looking at her from all angles. But I was distracted by the things all over the floor.
The returning brilliance of the lights illuminated the whole room revealing what had been hidden: body parts. Dismembered arms and legs. Heads. Katie's head. It was close by, it was right next to me. I bent down to pick it up. Katie's head. It stared at me in horror, its tongue ripped out, its soft, brown hair caked in blood. Aghast, I screamed, and Katie noticed me.
“What are you doing here?”
“What the hell is this place?”

Then I must have collapsed, because I don't remember leaving. But I woke up in another house nearby, one that I had raided earlier. And on my chest I found a book from Katie and a note that said, “Don't come back. Please.” I opened the book and found a diary. Katie's diary.

June 5th (the day before the event)-
Today we bought a dog from the kennel and named it Charlie and brought him home. Dad said he needed him for an experiment but that when he was done, I could have him. Jil was jealous, but Dad just smiled and winked at me and said it was all our dog. But I knew the truth. He was going to be my dog. And I was going to love Charlie because he was mine and he was just like me. Like when we went into the yard and played and I put him in the swing and pushed him. He really smiled, I saw him. Everybody says I'm lying but I saw him smile at me.

June 6th -
I got in trouble today. Dad locked me in the fall out room and said I couldn't come out until I learned my lesson. Don't hit the dog, and don't hit your sister. Lesson learned.
The dog had bitten me. I was feeding him and he bit me and it really hurt so I kicked him and he yelped and Jil made fun of me so I kicked her too. She's a little brat.
I heard a noise, but I can't get out to see what's going on. I just heard a noise and then nothing and you never really hear nothing. I'm worried, but Dad said he would let me out...

I skipped ahead.

June 28th -
I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely...

I skipped ahead.

July 14th -
I found Charlie at the bottom of the stairs to Dad's lab. He was dead. But in the darkness away from the elements he hadn't rotted that much so I ate him. And he made me sick, but I ate him anyway. And I found the machine that Dad had wanted to use on him, had wanted to try out on him. And inside the machine was another Charlie. Exactly the same. Dead. So I ate him too.

July 15th -
I can't take another day of being alone. I've decided to use Dad's machine. I'll either die or there'll be another me. Either way will be better than how I am now.

July 15th -
I couldn't wait till tomorrow because it worked! I have a friend! I have a little me! It's so great! I'm teaching her to speak!

I skipped ahead.

July 20th -
Feeding two people is worse than feeding just me. We're both so hungry...

July 21st -
I found me dead in the bathroom today. I opened the door and she was lying there, not breathing, just like Charlie. Just like everybody. And she was dead. And I was hungry and I ate her and now I'm back where I started... Hungry and alone. So I went back downstairs and I made another me, and this one will be different...

I read her diary front to back, and I learned her story. Her parents were killed in Event 0, and she was spared because she was in trouble. She should have died there with everyone else, but instead she continued surviving, more by accident than anything, her clones dying of natural causes, then her eating them. Eventually, she started killing them when she got hungry, starting to think of them more as a source of food than anything.
Her diary stopped 3 months ago, who knows if I had talked to Katie or one of the thousand clones she's made since the event. Whether she's dead now or not, she's killed herself enough times to say that she's no longer alive.
I kept the diary to remind myself that I'm still alive. That no matter how depraved I get, if I reach the point of absolute delusion, where I can no longer justify not killing myself, I will do it with no questions asked, because when I die, I want to know I'm dead.
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