I've got nothing to wear but my ego

My body was making sounds I'd never heard before. It felt like I was in the booth for a sound effects reel and just letting loose. My insides had developed their own language and were chatting back and forth adamantly. Probably about what an awful host I am. They would know. My organs. Blind and resentful.  Another ghoulish squirm floated out and I clasped my hand tight to my stomach to quiet it, but it was no use. There was no mouth these noises protruded from, which made them all the more impressive. The sounds echoed in, around, and through my bedsheets. Churns and sloshes and fleshy mechanisms served as a repetitive mantra of alarm. 

Along with the sounds came a sort of weird pain. Not a sharp or stabbing pain, nor a long or consistent one, but an intermittent, dull, leeching ache. Incongruent and separate from the cacophony, the pain ebbed and flowed from me like a blocked up drain; bubbling and gurgling and never making progress. Each time the pain would fade I'd experience the best relief of my life. It was tragic indeed, to have such joy stolen away. Simple joy in not hurting sent away with feverish disregard every few minutes. I was caught in a circuitous path of suffering and delight. 

I spun around to face the other wall and curled up fetally in an effort to quiet myself. The noise and the pain were tricked into submission for a short while as they adjusted to their new orientation. The only comfort I felt was in the pure dark of my surroundings.  Washed over with sightlessness, I lay wrapped up in my sheets, cocooned in the familiar comfort of blankets, juxtaposed with the unrelenting and annoying pain of something.  I did not know what quite yet.  I sat up and rubbed my eyes to remove the blur.  It took longer than I anticipated.  I struggled for quite a bit to be able to see clearly, and the blue-green splotch of my digital clock eventually became unmuddled.  From a paint splatter to an unfocused word, to a bit of double vision trying to correct itself, then eventually to numbers.  4:16 AM.

That annoyed me even further.  That means I'd been laying in bed with this troublesome issue for more than seven hours.  And it felt like it, too.  This is when things really get called into question.  Unable to sleep and angry at my own body, you start to wonder about things.  Not for long though, because my mind is forced to other things.  Real things happening to me.  So I laid there and wished I could be someone else.  Someone who wasn't me.  Someone who was better off than me.  Not in any grand sense of things.  I didn't want to be a rich entrepreneur, or a smart and savvy artist, or a talented musician.  I wanted to be someone who was asleep and not experience a grotesque, unnerving spiral of hurt and squalor.  A simple request it seems, but it was not granted.

Simplicity ruled over me and I threw the covers off in a surly fashion.  I displayed my dismay to no one at all, but it still made me feel better.  I marched over to my couch and turned on the TV.  I knew there would be nothing on at this time, but if I couldn't sleep I might as well try to squeeze any amount of enjoyment out of this night.  A movie was on one of the higher channels.  A movie I had seen tens of times before.  I didn't particularly like it, but I couldn't will myself to change the channel.  I sat through hatred-inducing commercials, but it always came back and reengaged me.  It was a modern day magic spell.  And then another movie came on.  A marathon of sorts.  The same mesmerizing enchantment fell over me.  I sat there, knees to my chin, wrapped up with my blanket like a babushka.   I had been through three movies before I realized my pains had subsided.  It was almost 11 AM now, but I had made it through.  I had come out on the other side not unmade, but reforged.

This was wonderful.  Perfect, even.  The mindless, ridiculous joy of film held my attention so firmly that I was finally allowed to satiate my body's wants and instead get what my mind desired.  Sleep, at last.  Perfect.  But perfection is so few in this world that I don't value it's merit.  To be perfect is supposed to be desirable, supposed to be sought after.  Perfection is a farce.  All things are with flaw, and to seek something so wholly unattainable is admirable, but ultimately futile. I found my own brand of perfection that night.  The shrine of opportunity.  Indulgence gave way to respite.  To be at peace is perfect.  To not take things for granted.  Fuck perfection.  And I slept and I dreamed.  And I woke up hungry and alert and dry-mouthed and sloppy.  I was overjoyed.  Awake and in control.  Sheer perfection.

Lady Luck looked away

We weren't the first group of people to attempt to cross the Dread Sea, but we hoped to be the first to succeed. I suppose all the others hoped the same. I like to think there was something different about this trip, that we were the ones who would make it. Why shouldn't we? It's us. And me. I'm special. In reality we were just another unprepared, foolish group of men, daring to go into the unknown.  Every once in a while, a fool will have a lucky stumble and end up looking a capable and even adept journeyman. That was what was running through the back of my mind. Up front I thought only that I was destined to succeed. For I was a man and I had determination and confidence. So like and unlike all other men before and after me.

My crew and I set sail at midnight. We always do, in order to set ourselves apart from the others. It worked sometimes. We left the tavern we were in abruptly and boarded our ship. Even at this hour, we had peasants and townsfolk and a so-called oracle run ship side to tell us not to go. The sea is true to it's name! You'll die like all the rest!  Nobody knows what is out there! They hollered and shouted but we ignored it. Their wailing accompanied us out across the water, playing a warning song that fell on deaf ears. You could say we were foolhardy, you could say they were right. But we had an ace up out sleeve. Or so we thought.

The nights leading up to this one had us visit the Blue Mars trading company. They didn't even call it The Dread Sea. They called it Oil Ocean. Apparently they crossed it all the time, and the stories were fabricated for some reason or another. Whether it be pure bravado or twisted wives tales, they were certain the water was most passable. I didn't give it another thought. Perhaps I already had my mind made up before I even went to them. Either way it makes no difference. I asked what lay on the other side. They told me the same as this side, only farther away.

A full day into our travels and nothing of significance occurred. We rode the sea harshly, and at times she bucked, but we stayed onward as we always do. We were kings among shipmen. At least in our heads. Then days continued to roll over. Dark skies would greet us, and we would prepare for a storm that never came. Waves would lift up to crash down on us and then softly roll away. The rising sun would greet us, and a bright moon would watch over our dreams. I hadn't seen in a cloud the entire time. To be honest, I've never had an easier time at sea.   We rolled along the water, making great time. I assumed as much,  as I had no real idea of our destination. And eventually my shipmates took me aside in confidence and started to express concern. They had to muster all of their willpower to even speak to me, which in itself was strange, but what they reported to me was even stranger. We had been on open water for a full 23 days and 1 half day. I was taken aback, and visibly stirred. How are we not low on food? How are we not tired or sick or have landed? We were, they said. We are. But it isn't bothering us. We can't think. And I tried to figure out why this may be, but I couldn't.

I lost track of time. We all did. The sea was our home now.

Nobody was sure how long we had really been out there. And at this point we were all praying for something to happen to remove ourselves from this situation. It was as if we knew everything and nothing at once. Anything would be better than this. As if listening to our thoughts and obeying our commands,  the sea split wide and began to swirl. At first we traveled in small loops. Figure eights and little twists and swirls, before finally pooling in a large, open whirlpool.  We spun around the top lip for quite some time. Circling and expanding. The whirlpool grew ever wider. Our viewer, up in the nest, almost standing sideways, was the mightiest of us all. He never left his post and was always looking out to the horizon, though I don't know which one. Over the rush of water I could have sworn I heard him shout he saw land. Shouting that this wasn't over for us. If any of us were special, it would be him. Sadly it was over, and we weren't.

As the whirlpool grew, and we continued to fall deeper into the center, I held myself tight to anything strong and sturdy. At one point I looked for the other side of the whirlpool, and in a fit of disarray I failed to see water. This spinning water trap had spread so far open that I could not see it's far side! I only knew that it existed because we traveled it. Below us the water went down for an eternity and more. It opened into a deep black pit. Deeper on, water took on properties I didn't know it had, and in ways I couldn't understand. It looked as if the water sprung waterfalls from it's sides. It flowed straight down at points and up at others. It splashed and flopped and frightened me wholeheartedly. I closed my eyes. When I opened them nothing had changed but our location. We were deep in the pit. So deep that we stopped moving. I don't know how, but we sat on still water at the bottom of a spinning, cascading water funnel. We could only but hear it. Above us, the bright moon cast a spooky light down on us. It was the only light we had at this point. It illuminated the top of the shaft, allowing for a beautiful sight. A viewfinder of water and sky and a glowing moon. Around us was,  I assumed, water, and a cold black. Motionless we stayed on the still water, waiting, thinking. How many others has this happened to? Was this the fate of all the Dread Sea travelers? I could not know.

My eyes hurt from staring into the featureless walls of our cage. Our tomb. But I stared nonetheless. Nobody spoke. Nobody moved. Even as the thick fleshy tendrils protruded from the ether. Even as they gripped the ship and tore it to shreds. Later, when we tried to scream, it was muffled by these appendages as we were fed to their owner. We could see nothing. Just as those before. I could feel the bones of others as I was chewed and mashed apart. Just as all the others. I am not special.

The uncertainty of lore

A man's fingers claw at the wooden barricade placed in front of him. A question arises of whether he is truly a man at all. His skin and hair and bones and blood and flesh can surely classify him as such, but deep under all of that, or perhaps on the surface, fundamental changes to humanity seek to categorize him as a different being altogether. Maybe a categorization is too scientific, too inhumane itself, too unnecessary. We must have a name for the flow of our tale, though. The object of focus, the crux of our situation lies in him, and it would suit us all better to define it. For all the humanity his body suggests, his mind lies dormant and different. Vision belongs to him, touch and taste are his own, even his generous skin bacteria continue to gnaw at him with indifference. Behind his kind grey eyes lays nothing at all. No memory, no purpose, no growth of character and no will. Yet he claws at his cage. Still yet he moves. Therefore he must have a name. Digship.

Digship doesn't know where he is. He hasn't the thought the figure it out. Reaching his arms out to his sides for a moment and disregarding the scratching he had been so feverishly doing since he opened his eyes, he felt more wood to his sides, not allowing his arms to fully straighten, or even halfway for that matter. Below him held the same fate. It seems he is in a wooden box somewhere. This did not matter to him. He was being fed a purpose from elsewhere, and it whispered to him: escape. His scratching resumed and did not cease for minutes. Hours. Days. Weeks. Beyond the scratching lay cold dirt and more scratching. As the wood recessed it allowed him to broaden his territory and replace the chamber with dirt as it poured down on him from above. The struggle proved uneventful as he methodically and robotically clawed his way further and further upward. Time never halted in all this work, and many days and nights flew by. To most people, a month would have passed. Digship only watched dirt fall and listen to the sounds of his own, pale hands move him about the small space he had come to find himself in. Eventually, after all this time continued as it always does, he reached up, as he always did, only this time reaching past dirt and into open air. There was a chill present that was lost on him, and his fingertips stretched out in all directions as he grasped for something solid. The caress of his touch landed upon dull green grass, though he could not see it, and he grabbed a handful and yanked it down to himself. The process continued for a bit longer, just a blink more, and now Digship had finally achieved new surroundings. Finally he was allowed a new view, and with it, a new purpose. He hoisted himself out above his waist and sat on the rim of a dirty hole, legs dangling, while this purpose took hold. The light of the moon shone down on him, illuminating a hideous white figure. He was wearing only a white t-shirt and blue slacks. His black work boots were still hidden by dirt, and his bloodless white skin was only darkened by the mud he had so adamantly removed himself from earlier. He stood up and took in his surroundings in the abnormally bright moonlight. Thick, short, stone pillars surrounded him. Most of them squared at the edges and forming neat little rectangles, but some larger and more ornate, and others smaller and rounded. Some didn't even rise from the ground but an inch. Beyond that there were few trees and grass and short black gates. He should have been able to see far, as he was nearly on top of a hill crest, but a dense fog of some sort clouded his vision past a certain point. What he saw though, was familiar. He knew the name for such a place, but it wasn't important. Only one thing mattered and it was filtering into his head slowly, like water through a sewer grate. WALK.

Legs marched on, towing Digship along with them. His head a swivel, his arms useless and limp, his legs autonomous and sturdy and driving. As if each of his body were working separately, he observed his surroundings hastily while the rest of him acted of their own accord. Desperately, he tried to recall information. He was seeing things he remembered, he knew he remembered them, but it was locked away. Controlling his head, he gazed at houses bathed in shadow and moon, while his uncontrolled legs gracefully danced over cobblestone streets. The brick buildings he was taking in were stacked neatly next to each other in rows, with only small discrepancies for the streets to pass by. Houses changed shape and size to signify homes from storefronts to businesses and bars, but none of this was apparent or known by Digship. Instead he recalled all the base elements. Stone, glass, wood, box, stair, dirt, metal, water, dark, light. Words shone in his mind and then disappeared, flashing terms he knew but not what they created in conjunction. It was an incredible struggle to even do this, but he experienced no fatigue or wear. It was as if he didn't even have his own thoughts. In fact, he had no mind at all. He was a superficial thing, being drug along with only a loose recollection of matter he had seen before. His eyes and his head spun wildly as he took in everything that passed by, and before he knew it he was stopped still in the middle of the street. Another purpose was imposing itself upon him. For a time, he was paralyzed, waiting for it to overtake him. Then it hit him harder than before and brought with it an agility he had never before possessed. SEEK.

His feet were already pushing him sideways when he turned to look where he was headed. Swiftly, he bounded up towards the nearest wall and hugged it tight, peering into the window near him. Inside, a soft candlelight illuminated the room from the center, and shadows flickered back and forth around it on all sides. Flat arms pressed against the cold black stone, holding him in place snugly while his eyes scanned the home for something. He did not know what, but he was certain his body did, somehow. The rest of him would know when he saw it. Then his fingers found support on the wall and pulled the rest of him upwards. His legs kicking up the side for extra boost and traction. His vessel had sprung him up to the second story window to do a bit more surveying, and it had done it with ease. Digship hung there precisely motionless. Working as a machine, not a fiber of his being moved except for his gaze, peering across the darkness of the room for an unknown quantity. Then he dropped down and bounded to the next window, across the street. It was a frantic act, all of it, but Digship felt nothing for it. Not unpleasantness nor glee nor excitement nor fear. He was but a traveler in his own body, watching it make choices and decisions without him. He continued to watch as his body continued this pattern for several houses. Many houses indeed. Climbing up walls and staring down families; being unseen, graceful, and agile. The passage of time, still foreign and mystical to Digship, pulsed through the night as it's heart. Thumping and beating as were his arms and legs. Bounding down rocky streets and up light posts and across bridges and all around. In circles and squares, and darting down passageways. Even sometimes venturing into a home, if the door was unlocked, or a window could be pushed in.

Digship stood on top of a slanted roof and gazed off into the distance, perusing the town. At this point his body stopped sharply and crouched down on the balls of it's feet, and with one hand down in front of him. It began to sniff the air and he could feel the air rushing into his nostrils, but was not allowed the sensation of smell. His body clambered over to the chimney, where a soft, dark smoke was rising out of it. It fully plunged it's head into the smoke, veiling his sight and enveloping the only sense he retained. It was almost pleasant, staring into that chimney, or it would have been if Digship had been feeling emotions in this state. The smoke would twist and swirl around his eyes, but he felt no irritation or burning. He could peer at the inside of the haze at will and come out unfazed. Suddenly his head jerked up. It had smelt something in this that it either liked or didn't like. Or that it simply wanted to find. It crawled over to the side of the house creepily and gripped the edge of the rooftop, knuckles down. It slowly let it's head drip over the edge and lowered his body with a mechanical precision. Once his chest and arms impeded his progress, he promptly stood his body straight up in a handstand and went down as far as his arm lengths would allow. He spun on his wrists and retained his grip at a new angle. He hung directly in front of a window, and his body kicked his feet out to the sill and let them sit there for a moment, then swung, using his momentum to precariously balance on the tiny windowsill, holding the top with his hands for grip. His face was pushed up against the glass, and he felt the rush of air that signified he was sniffing again. He quickly spread his legs out and let himself fall, catching himself on the bottom of the sill with his fingertips. He dropped again to the ground and ran around to the outside of the house and looked down into the basement through a small, rectangular window. There was a light coming from behind a shoddy wooden door. A glow came from around it's rim, and yellow pierced through patches where the wood of the door didn't quite touch. The door slowly crept open and a man stepped out into full view. He wore brown silken pants and a pale blue, sequined shirt. On his head rested a white circlet, and he clutched something tight in his right hand, closed up like an oyster. Digship's pupils widened and his nose sniffed as before. His whole body began to shiver and shake gently, then more viciously, then slowly again, only in the span of a second. He pulsed like this a few times until his eyes and body and some ethereal force synced up and he received his last transmission. It overtook him wholly and he was acting once again in a different manner than those two previous, but altogether the same. Robotic and determined, he took this new message clearly and began his new course. It burst through his head and his veins and his skin and hair all at once. KILL.

The window resisted the push of his hands for a moment before they crashed through it. Not with a blast or a blow, but by a constant, unmoving force. His arms got carved up by shards of glass but there was no pain to be felt and no damage dealt the body could not deal with. Until it was rendered immobile, it would trudge on through scar and gash and wound. The man reacted instantly and spun around to run back into the room from where he came. The door was in the process of slamming shut when Digships palm stopped it's momentum. He had already slid in the small window and made his way across the room. He hadn't sprinted or ran, but walked without impedance. His outstretched arms pushed up against the door and his feet dug into the stone basement floor as he drove his legs. Steadily and with an impressive display of strength, he threw the door back as he walked, driving the man backwards and stumbling. The room was now on full display. Digship did the only thing he could and took in his surroundings visually, noting certain things. A ritual display lay in front of him; pages of a journal, assorted pastes and plants, drawings in blood, traces of bone, rings of salt and dust. He wouldn't know what to make of it had he his full faculties, so now it was all mere scenic garbage. The man tried to back up and bumped into a small wooden table in the middle of the room, knocking things about. He tried to spin off of it and run further, but Digship ended the chase by seizing him by the throat and bending him backwards over the table. The man sputtered out words and promises and spit and cries but the body heard nothing. It's grip ever tightened and the life was purged from the man. He lay limp on top of his table for a moment before crumbling to the ground.

When the body was heard crashing to the floor, almost as if on cue, a resurgence of life found it's way to Digship. All his memories flooded back into his head, and he relived them all in an instant. His birth, growing up, schooling, adolescence, meeting his wife, love, hurt, pain, children. He fell down a flight of stairs and never walked again. Not until this night. Then a new set of memories implanted themselves in him retroactively. A woman above his grave. Whispering incantations into the dirt and sprinkling dark materials upon his tiny headstone. Clawing at his coffin. Breaking into the night. Searching the town for a traitor. Not to his cause, but to the woman's. Finding the man. Ending him. And now he stood in a mysterious basement room, covered in dirt and his own blood, and confounded by a sensory overload. He was living and breathing again after he had died. He began to cry without moving. Then the clocked ticked over a few more seconds and he fell to the ground in a heap. Death came for him once more, his allowance was up.

And we are all left only with questions. What makes a man? His name? His motives? His former or current actions? It would stand to reason that you need your own mind to be a man, and not the mind of another. A mind separates man from animal, and also man from himself. A man without his own mind is a liar. A man on someone else's mission is a fraud. A man brought back from his grave to be a tool is not a man at all.

A woman showed up at the house eventually and took Digship's body. She burned the bones and skin to a char and ground them into an ashen dust. This dust was collected and set adrift on a boat across the ocean. For it is said that a man who wanders the sea long enough will find paradise. 

The space of a blink

     As I sat in my car after just starting it, I had that feeling where you walk into a room and forget where you're going. Temporary amnesia. You sit aloof and ponderous, briefly stuck in a state of idiotic bliss.  Exiting my womb, I came to the realization I had saliva in my mouth. I gathered it up and spat it right into the windshield. That brought me back to reality faster than an alarm yanking me from dreamland. The clear, new spit hung tight on the window, as I tried to wrap my simple mind around what just happened. I was unprepared for the mess I'd made so I pulled my coat sleeve up over my fist and wiped at it awkwardly. The angle of the window and the length of my jacket's arm made it difficult to get entirely, and so I disembarked with a new window slime and an appreciation for a clear view.

     I got to my cousin's house late. Thinking about how I might explain this lapse of thought to anyone who might encounter the result consumed what was left of my mental resources and caused me to drive past the turn for his house and 4 blocks further still until my body once again caught up to my brain and rectified the situation. For a while I contemplated not even going. A few seconds in the wrong direction and I was already caving in to doubt. Doubt was always on the edge of my thoughts, sliming up the perimeter and greasing the causeway. Then a monotonous hammer of infinitesimal inconvenience breaks down the fragile neural wall my brain aggravatingly just fixed. Even still, a wall several times rebuilt is as strong as it's most recent erection. This one was structurally defective.

     I decided not to go. I wouldn't even make up a lie. I parked and texted my cousin I wouldn't be over. Faced with a now overwhelming amount of free time, I pondered my options. I went with the old classic. Listen to music on my bed with the lights off. It was around 5 pm, but it was raining, so the natural shine creeping in the windows was few and gray. Concise beams of cloudy sun made pretty shapes that had never been made before. I got lost in the sounds of the chords and the rhythm of the light. Almost 3 hours had passed before the light disappeared entirely and left me in a deep shade.  The only light now was the LED glow of my phone. It was so drowningly dark and I loved it. Even the sound was darkened. I couldn't rightfully explain it but I felt at home in the darkness. Concealed, hidden, and safe. The deep blue artificial beep of my phone's glowing notification indicator briefly illuminated parts of my room to my focused eyes. I was a spy on a secret mission, deep in enemy territory, looking over my surroundings for strengths and weaknesses. I was a spectre surveying his shadow kingdom, in tune with the very essence of the air and connecting with it in an ethereal way. I was a young boy, lost and alone on a distant planet, with only a faint unfamiliar light to guide his way. I was a teenager sprawled out on his bed.

I remembered I had somewhere to be at this precise moment. I rolled over and closed my eyes.

Veilish and effete

There is a certain feeling you can get sometimes. It doesn't quite have it's own word yet. It's a bit of a niche word. I imagine Inuits or Germans or one of those cool cultures with words for all kinds of stuff we don't have words for have a word for it. Something so simple, so not-thought-of, but still so jarring and important to people. You've gone out all day; shopping, working, gallivanting through public places packed dense with people, then you get home to rest and you step in front of a mirror. And the whole time you had a spot of dirt on your cheek or a tuft of hair sticking up or piece of food in your teeth or any number of slightly embarrassing things that you wish you had been told about but hadn't. Then you begin to wonder. Were they just being polite and not wanting to fluster me? Had they not seen it? Maybe I'd gotten away with it all day. No, that can't be the case, it's a bit of a blunder. Of course they saw. Maybe they don't like me and it was a fun game to them to watch me walk around like a lost clown. And that is where your mind takes over and begins to ask questions it knows it will never get the answer to. If we had a word for that it would make the telling of this next part much easier.

Amber gets home from work and skips the bathroom entirely. The word we spoke about, this feeling, haunts her. Day in and day out she questions everyone around her. Their motives, their disposition, their resolve, all called in to question regularly. Not actively called into question, but in her mind, making it all the worse. And I suppose we don't have a word for this either, or maybe we do and I am just not as smart as I like to pretend, but there is another feeling that Amber has to deal with consistently that she cannot describe. Each day, after she comes home and notices herself in the mirror, questions run rampant through her mind for what seems like hours on end. Then after she finally calms down, after she finally regains her composure, she finds herself completely exhausted. Tired only from thought. The labors of cognition do not relent and are often more tiring than going for a run or lifting a dead body. There must be a word for that. What is the procedure for making new words? Eh, it matters not.

The reason Amber's case sticks out is because she has something on her face each day. Every single day of her life for years now. And nobody says a thing. Now this may not be wholly unusual. It may even be a common occurrence. But the substance of the disturbance is what makes Amber exhaust her mental capabilities. Maybe it's her pleasant demeanor, or maybe it's fear or something simple, but most people would have spoken up by now. Amber is different from most people though, in several ways. So each morning after she gets dressed, and does her makeup, and eats breakfast, and all that boring junk, she heads outside, and each day, people look directly at it and say nothing. And Amber questions things until she gets home. Maybe it's not there today. But she knows it is. And she steps in front of the mirror with her eyes closed. And she crossed her fingers and hopes that nothing is there, but deep down, she knows it will be. And when she opens her big blue eyes she is greeted with a blemish of otherworldly proportions. A horrific, pulsating, parasitic black sludge is splotched across her jaw.

From the corner of her mouth to her right ear and down to a part of her jaw weaves a sickening, tar-like glue. An abstract painting that was inspired by boiled oil and thrown on a bubbly canvas. It doesn't hurt, it doesn't grow, it just sits on her face and beats like a heart. Thumping and pumping and slowly heaving in and out. An unwelcome guest, at any rate.

Amber is running herself ragged trying to figure things out. Is it even real? Maybe she is having a mental breakdown? Surely someone would have said something by now. Surely a single person would have acknowledged such an unsightly mess of a face. Thus, here lies her dilemma. Dreading getting home every day because she knows her mind will place questions in front of her that she doesn't have answers for. She'll spend most of her free time pacing and wondering and not getting anywhere before she goes to sleep and wakes up the next day to do the same thing. It's a wonder she gets anything done in the first place.

Amber lost count of how long she has had this -thing- on her face. Does it even matter anymore? Not really, she surmises, and she steps out the door. It's been years now, she thinks, maybe it really doesn't matter. Nobody has said anything, so I shouldn't care. If it's not acknowledged then I can go on living normally, even with this eye-catching mess. She was thinking differently today and she didn't know why. But she didn't question it. Finally her heart was at rest. Something went off, something clicked in her that made her apprehension die down, made her fear roll away, made her days and nights productive. And this went on for a while. Amber was happy with things. Nobody said anything to her, and she didn't care. She became accustomed to having it, and likened it to an unsightly birthmark. I'll be all right after all, she thought. As it turns out, it doesn't matter at all, she thought.

A few days later Amber was jovially walking down the sidewalk. And by jovially I mean it. Overcoming a burden such as this was practically a windfall given to her directly by a God she didn't believe in, and it put a literal bounce in her step. So she goes on, bobbing down the sidewalk like some sort of cartoon character, and she passes two young men, two teenagers, who stare her down as she walks. She just smiles back and keeps on walking. Only teenagers can face situations like this with such brevity and clarity. One of them stops and turns to her after she has passed. “Hey lady!” He shouts to her, “You got some shit on your face!”

Reset Button

Day 1

I thought the end of the world would make me feel different. I'm surprised with how calm I am. Just this morning, an emergency news broadcast went out, informing us that NASA has detected an asteroid or a pair of asteroids or a super comet or something, headed directly for Earth. No way to stop it, no way to change it's course, we're just done. They've calculated it crash into us in 33 days. You think they'd notice something like that sooner. Or maybe they did and the people in charge just decided to tell us now. How awful of a situation would that be? Somewhere out there is someone or someones who think they know when it's best to tell everyone on the planet that they're going to die. Some group of assholes could have collectively decided that 33 days is the perfect amount of time to give everyone to come to grips with death. I'm not a scientist, but I'm pretty sure NASA can see storms happening on other planets, so I'm not about to submit to the fact that they just found out about this. Now that I mention NASA, I wonder why they didn't mention the space program on air. I guess it would be pandemonium. There we go again. The higher-ups, these super leaders decide who the best and brightest minds are. Who gets to try and escape on a spaceship and live out humanity's days plowing through space. I wonder who gets to go? Scientists? Farmers? Professors? Probably not. Definitely not airline pilots. I can't pilot them through space.

I suppose I should be more upset. But hopefully this will be my contribution. Hopefully. Hopefully I can be a time capsule for some future race. I can be a mark on history for some other race or species or... maybe even humans if someone does survive. One of the chosen ones can find my innermost thoughts on the destruction of humanity and I'll be a little bit bigger speck of dust than I am now. I wish I was a better writer. Anyway here goes.

I actually went to work today. Oh god I must have been one of five people in this city who went to work. Good thing I ride my bike though because the roads were jam packed. I initially asked myself where they were all going, but the first thing that popped into my head was family. If you're just some guy or girl, living in Tucumcari, New Mexico, you probably want to spend your last month with your family. I imagine that's a nice way to go. Huddled together on the couch, preparing for the end. Better than a long battle with cancer or alzheimers. Or getting stabbed. But it turns out a lot of people don't live with their families, so it was my job to get them there. Someone asked me when I was going to be with my family. I told him I don't have one. The silence was predictable. I am an only child and my parents died when I was 13. Drunk driver. My last serious girlfriend was 7 years ago and I have no idea or care where she is.

So I spent 22 hours flying planes. That's illegal. I wanted to feel like a hero, but I knew I wasn't. I just had nothing better to do. Besides, I already decided that I'm putting in my two weeks notice today. I think that would be funny.

Day 9

I found a gun in somebody's house about 4 miles away from my own. This, to me, brings up an important question. Who would care enough about their life to buy a gun, but not bring it with them when they vacate their home during the end times? I suppose they could have had an epiphany. "I don't need that gun anymore, darlin', we're all gonna be dead soon." I actually said that part out loud just now. I was acting it out as I jumped around on their king size bed. Not much better to do. This bed is darn comfortable though. I ate all the count chocula these kind folks had so I went back out on the road to find a new house to rummage around in. A surprising amount of people left town entirely. I am unsure now about my "family" theory. I was positive everyone wanted to be with their families in the end. Maybe they still do, but they don't want to be in Tucumcari. Like it matters where we are when we all get splattered by a meteor.

I went down to the TV station yesterday. Jim was still doing the news on a nightly basis! He would also go to the station early in the morning and do the morning show and then lunch stuff and basically be on TV all day for the few people left. What a guy. We became fast friends. We bonded over our common interests: Not wanting to die, being scared, not knowing a dang thing. He told me he was sure a bunch of people would live through this. Something about there being a slim chance, and that the space rock wouldn't straight up shatter the Earth into bits or anything. I told him we're about to be the dinosaurs of this age. Then I stomped around with my arms tucked in and made screechy growly noises. We broadcasted all of this. It was the first time I saw Jim smile since I visited him this morning. The last time I would see him smile, too. He wasn't broadcasting the next morning, so I went to the station. He was on the floor next to the table. The gun was still in his hand. There was a note next to him on clean, white paper. It just said "I'm sorry." It's okay Jim. See ya around, buddy.

Day 17

You can actually see it now. I was being adventurous and climbed a metal tower of some sort. I think it was an electric line tower or whatever you call them. I'm not really sure. They have that 'A' shape at the bottom, but look like big, metal cacti up top. Bunch of wire running across the top. Whatever. Anyway I was on top of one that was also on top of a big hill and I saw it. It's 16 days away still and I can see it! 16 days away. Jeez. That thing must be stinking massive. There is no way this journal is going to survive. Oh well. I'm going to keep writing in it for my own sanity. Whatever sanity I have left. Doesn't seem to be much. I sat on top of a metal tower today and shouted things. There was a fun echo. I sang a little bit. I spit off of it. I climbed down.

It must have been there for a few days now that I think about it. You probably could have seen it for a while, I just have been looking at other things than the sky. The sky is so boring anymore. It used to be fun to lay and dream and cloudgaze and hang out. Now I root through people's belongings and take their pictures for my idea. I figured I would grab as much stuff as I could and then find somewhere safe to put all of it in case I survived. We could all reconvene here eventually. Imagine the joy someone would find when they traveled back to Tucumcari and found me and I had a picture of their wife and kids playing in the yard. They'd go "I thought that was lost forever!" and I'd go "I thought you were lost forever!" and I'd hug them. We'd go over to my stores of beans. Beans would be the only thing left because I don't like them so I would just store them for others. I would have eaten all the good stuff by now because I like to eat and there isn't much to do now except eat. Seriously people left behind so much food. Enough that I will scatter it around someone's kitchen and make it look like a struggle took place. Then I'll put a couple sticks of asparagus behind my ear like a crazy person and kick the door open. I'd won the fake fight! I'd cock my licorice shotgun and fire skittles into the street. "I'm the best villain ever! The candyman!" But asparagus isn't candy, nobody would retort. "Shut uppa you face!" I turned into an Italian/New Jersey hybrid caricature and lobbed a gushers grenade at them. It was 5 packs of gushers wrapped up in fruit by the foot. "Stay offa my land, see!" I'd shout. I looked like a lunatic. Maybe I was.

Day 30

Uh. It's really hot. I don't know what's going on with this meteor thing. Sometimes I can see it, sometimes I can't. It's seriously over 100 ever day. I can't breathe outside sometimes. The air is so thick and sweaty it hurts to breathe. I have to wrap a cold towel around my face to travel outside and my skin hurts. Darn. This is ruining everything. Tucumcari was a virtual paradise for me now that all the inhabitants had gone. Anybody who was left now surely weren't leaving their house. Carly was going to stay inside and make sure her dog was cool. Her husband, Lane, too I guess, but she was obsessed with that dog. They were a newly married couple, each just 25 years old. I threw them a honeymoon party, even though they had been married about 8 months. They liked it, I think. The Candyman made an appearance. Nobody expected it. Nobody ever does. I saw them about 2 days ago, but they're probably fine. I'll have to make the rounds tonight when it cools off.

Cara was probably 90 years old. I spent a lot of time at her house because she's old, but she is so very slow. I might go over there now because it's going to be hotter tomorrow so I probably won't be able to move as much. There were only 2 women I found left in town so far and they both had C names. That's a crap, I said. Can't they change it. C'mon. That's all the c words I know. I've expertly honed my humor in these past few weeks. I'm funny now!

I'm no space expert or NASA scientist guy but I'm pretty sure it's not supposed to be this hot. I mean even with a giant rock bearing down on us. Something is funky to me. It's outrageously hot. And everything is seemingly a red hue. Not like overbearing or anything but there is a tint in the sky. Like it's always the sunrise or sunset. Or something. Guess I'll never know. Add that to the list of things that I will never get an answer to.

There is a mansion in the ritzy part of town. It has a huge, finished basement. I told everyone we should bring as much as we can and want to it tomorrow and plan to finish our days there. It's no bunker, but it was the best I could find in the time I had. It's going to be a pain to move in the heat, but we've got to do it. I'm confident we can survive this thing. We have to. Someone has to survive. Dang it. I'm so worried these pages are going to burn. Why do I even want people to see this? I'm a terrible journal writer. You look at like Civil War journals and people talk about the generals and entire histories are extrapolated from them. I talk about the idle musings of my mind and the niceties of my hometown. The only town I've known. Nobody is going to care about Tucumcari after this thing hits. They're going to care about the crater where their face used to be. Ugh.

Time to wait for nightfall. I'm going to gather everyone around midnight so it's cooler and we can move to the house and get in our basement. Time is ticking.

Day 33

I'm writing this in the morning because I don't know if I'll have time to write later on. The day is here. We're all crowded up in our maniac mansion. The basement. There are several rooms down here and carpeting and beds and couches and TVs and stuff. It's actually pretty nice. This is almost nicer than my apartment. It's me, Tommy, Carly and Lane, Randy and Greg. I went over to Cara's house when we were all moving in. She wasn't moving. I put my finger under her nose and didn't feel breath. I picked her up and she didn't resist and hung limp over my arms. I took her outside and everyone saw. I didn't know what to do so I brought her. I don't know if it was the right thing but I needed to. I was just so angry. 3 days! She missed it by 3 days. Dang. It's okay Cara. You're still with us. I always wondered where her family was. I was going to ask her when we were holed up in our home together. Well, no matter. She can be my family now. Our family, if they all want. Night, grandma.

Lane brought over a bunch of radios and receivers and transponders. I don't know what any of them does or how to work them and neither does he. Tommy knows them quite well and he said he "set them up." No idea. Anyway that happened, so that's pretty cool. We're going to try to contact people or we can be contacted? I'm still not sure, but it's nice to have. Tommy did a great job. So we're all set up in our different rooms with different beds and everything and we're settled in. Now we wait. I'm pretty good at this, but I'm worried about everyone else. I'm pretty sure the world is supposed to be messed up really good after this, so even if this basement protects us, I don't know if we can go out there. There are gonna be like mega volcanoes or something. Dang I wish I was smarter. Reading this back over I sound so stupid. I rarely have any idea what I'm talking about. Some good that airline piloting did for me. 1 day of knowledge and 32 days of stupidly walking around an abandoned desert town. Dang it.

Well anyway, this is it. I don't think the basement is going to save us anyway. We've got food and heat and cold and shelter and pretty much all we need. We'll see. Hope is all we have left.

Goodnight everyone, I love you all.

..............

Day 1277

A voice came over the radio today. It came in halfway through a message and it had been sputtering and whirring but I'm sure of what I heard. "...mostly empty, but keep checking houses. We need to be sure. You know the drill. If you find a dead body, burn it. If you find a live one, make it dead. Over."

The Finder

Each footstep looked more foreign than the last. Boot over boot I trekked down the path; cold, brown dirt in the middle and rows of short, vibrant, dark green grass on either side. It was an incredible juxtaposition that I enjoyed looking at more than the crackling sky or the looming tree canopies. A conveyor belt of Earth passed before me as I gave myself the perception of a natural treadmill. When you walk in such a way, nothing or no one will bother you. So with my chin tucked into my chest, I walked.

Walking this way I often find myself in a particular situation. I finally lift my head and will be completely unable to find familiarity in my surroundings. Spinning and pivoting on my boot heels I absorb as much of my new environment as possible, breathing in the fresh new sights. Put simply, I get lost.

Eventuality is my creed, hoisted upon me by fate. For even though I wander without purpose or direction, I always stumble back to friendly territories. Maybe it is due to being so well traveled. After grounding my blind paths for so many years, it has become a challenge to find myself unaware of my location. Not a challenge I partake in, but one that pursues me.

And so, as I carved my way through what I could only guess was a shortcut for lazy animals, I overcame my involuntary challenge. My foot stopped short, mostly without my guidance, and I thanked it, for a murky purple puddle of liquid lay below it. It blended so evenly and smoothly with the terrain I didn't realize it was there until I was almost in it. I took a step back and assessed the area. A small lake, or a large puddle, or a newborn ocean lay flat in front of me. The color at first seemed purple, changing to brown and now a deep green, speckled with blues. The water was surrounded on all sides by steep rock mountain sides, climbing up and out of the puddle in every direction. The sky above was open and clear and looked as if it might swallow the whole world at any moment. A malevolent maw of some unknown cosmic entity, expressing mercy for the time being. It struck me as a wonderful thought. I quite briskly shook the thought from my mind and turned around. My memory told me I walked along a dirt path to get here, but my memory was being shown to be a liar and a fraud. Behind me lied only fog and cloud and endless landscape. I paced to the edge of the cliff, only a few feet away, and stared out. The air felt dull, but holding meaning. The whites of the fog affixed a mysterium upon the view, both filling me with a giddy child's enjoyment and a cautious adult's fear. It was pure feeling and a majestic void. I turned away from it.

Back at the water, I struggled to find my reflection. The lake seemed as if it was a thick paint one moment and a translucent silk the next. I could see fish flittering about in the water at times, and I only just now started to question the legitimacy of this water. I sat down at its edge and thought.

My thinking process was cut short when I looked to my right and noticed a man standing against the mountainside. His back was against the rocks and one leg was bent at the knee, foot flat against the stone behind him. His arms were crossed in front of him and he seemed to be looking at me and over me at the same time. We stood there for a long while. I was caught, dumbfounded, mouth agape and mind running wild, and this surprise guest looked at home and only just slightly sinister.

I turned away from him and back at the water. There have already been too many surprises today. I watched him adjust himself in my periphery. He clearly wanted me to talk, but I wasn't about to give in. My legs began to cramp as I sat there and so I stood. I struggled to my feet and looked around. It felt as if whole weeks have passed, but it might have been minutes. I was tired of thinking. I grew tired of second guessing myself, stumbling over questions which don't have answers and outcomes that differ so little. Twisting my body, I spun about face so my back was to the water. The time for thinking was over. Decisive action would take place once more.  I would get lost in the water. I spread my arms to my sides and fell back. I heard the stranger shout no loudly, but my eyes were closed and I was already set in motion. Water splashed around me, coating the dreamy sky in splashes of creativity. It felt cold and warm and wet and dry all together. An overload of senses turned my vision black.

When my vision returned I was laying flat-backed in a grassy field with a blue, cloudy sky overhead.  I was comfortable, so I laid there for a while and just stared at the shapes overhead.  I eventually sat up and realized I had no idea where I was.  The sky seemed more natural, the grass more earthen, the birds and bugs happier and energetic, the land less tainted.  But that was probably all in my head.  Standing up and stretching out in a wide, unnatural stance I glanced around but saw nothing in particular I liked.  I closed my eyes to succumb to the black, voluntarily this time, and spun around a bit.  I let my head drop down and when I reopened my eyes I saw only grass and dirt again.  There was a caterpillar on my boot.  I watched it as I stomped down the path.  It was green, purple, and unmoving.  One of my own.  I loved it.  We could get lost together.  So we did.

Angela Park

I went to Nescopeck Creek today and tried taking pictures.  I saw these nice flowers.  They were being assholes.  They let me look at them all I want but they were so camera shy.  I had to pay them for this.  That's how nature stays so prim and elegant.

The woods are pleasant when you aren't being followed.

Can you spot the metal, rusty, unknown contraption?  Sometimes industry and fauna intertwine and you don't even know it, creating a symbiosis that we didn't even know we needed until it was too late and the Earth was but a barren core.  This is one of those times. 

This shot was probably 300 feet from a highway.  That only made it more beautiful to me.  Also about 75 feet further on we found a whole mess of condom wrappers.  The beauty was palpable.

In an effort to inspire creation and photographic integrity in myself I was creeping around the woods.  This is the soon-to-be-sought-after style of "Peeping Tomography."  I have 30 more of the waitress at Denny's thong climbing out of her jeans.

If the camera had simultaneously been snapping 'graphs of my face, you would be able to categorize the exact look of regret.  If it had been snapping pics of my undies, you would find an undesirable brown mess of fear.  In the end, the stupid reptile slithered off into the woods to probably die.  Animals cannot take care of themselves.  Fucking limbless moron.

This gentle bastard thought he was camouflaged.  Too bad I've got keen eyes and hyper senses.  And blind luck.  And indomitable flatulence.  Anyway, check out this cute water rat.  Cheers!

Out of the Void

The other day I got stuck only thinking in rhymes. Having a song part trapped in your head on repeat is awful, but this was a travesty. I started to feel guilty about this after a bit of time. As if this was some sort of gift I should be using. Putting these rhymes to prose, at least. Eventually I came out of it. I don't remember exactly when but I remember being overjoyed that I could think normally again. To have my thoughts belong to me and nobody else. Rhymes became loathsome to me. After having them forced into my conscious I couldn't stand them at all. I suppose I'm biased but that's the way it was. "Shelly," I'd say to my wife Karen, "why don't we throw out all those Dr Seuss books? The man was an utter fool." Response was given in the form of a stare over the brim of her glasses, never really stopping motion on the clothes she was hemming. Admittedly it was a strange request. I hadn't told her of my cognitive troubles from earlier, so it just seemed like I was jealous of a children's book author. I think he was also famous as a voodoo priest, but most people remember him from writing those colorful rhyming books. You would think I eventually calmed down about the whole thing, and you would think right. Too bad eventually ended up being about 7 years later. I was furious with my own mind the whole time for taunting me, until I met someone who only spoke in rhymes. I realized that there are very few instances where someone does not have a worse, yet related, issue. That didn't mean my own struggle with keeping my mind free of wanton poetry was meaningless, I simply found peace in the evidence of communal suffering.

Therein lies a topic I became addicted to. I say addiction but it felt more like compulsion. My innards would creep around my body and squirm if they didn't get their way. "Complain about people cutting in line!" They'd shriek at me with their slopping and stirring. "Talk about how the best things in life are still low-grade piles of rat shit." They'd bellow from deep in the chambers of my heart and subsections of my large intestine. And I'd appease them the only way I know how: Getting on my weathered soap box and projecting a mist of vitriol onto anyone unlucky enough to be in my incredible vocal range. In a way I added to the very suffering I was madly barking about. Everyone had already come to the same realization as I had. We're all suffering together. They didn't need me vomiting diatribe in their direction. I was a modernized Bible audiobook that nobody had purchased.

And I'd trudge home after a long day, satisfied. Imagine that. I was content that I was doing good work. I was more foolish than that fucking clown Seuss. The bastard got me. I've only my wonderful Karen to thank for damming me. I'd walk through the door, begin round 5 or 6 or 7 of my unwanted sermon, and she'd give me that wonderful glare as she sewed or knitted or tinkered or whatever her beautiful little hands were doing. Eventuality got to me again, and after enough piercing eyes and dismissive love, I wound down from a speaker-on-high to one of the accepting people of the masses. You don't always need to strive to be above the torment and punishment and dissatisfaction. Not when you've got brothers and sisters that are holding your hand through the rain. When you've got cousins who know all your pain. We all float together, and we know that we circle the drain.

The River Nile

Clouds so close you can touch them. And fast too. An off-black cotton candied balloon flowing overhead.  Overtaking the previously white and blue polka dotted view. How swiftly thunder rolled in with the clouds.

A downpour and a fog. Rain smacking off hard cement, stone, and metal and glass alike, without prejudice in it's landing zone. Raindrop melody singing the earth's praises. The song and dance of storms has arrived at last.

We hope that the storm will wash away the disgrace, but it only takes the evidence. The feeling is ours to wash away however we can. No wind nor rain nor darkness of sky can eliminate memories. These memories outlast even time.

A new rain arrived, following a prophet. Adjudicator downpour.  With it came penance, mercy, or judgement. Some couldn't tell the difference. All they cared about was watching the rolling black as the heavens swept over them. The rain washed away their sins. Be it by death or forgetfulness meant nothing. Two sides of the same coin. The arbiter became a god. The people became as husks. The clouds never ceased to escort storms to the source. Humankind boiled and bubbled as it does, but there was a subtle worship that twisted their simple, malleable minds.

And after the prophet was gone,  we were left with no lesson learned, no solace, no matter taken. Disgrace persisted. Weather had lost. But it still came aplenty.

Might Over Matter

I've always been a little bit of a pen fanatic. The feeling of ink gliding across a smooth surface to produce something I created gives me a buzz unlike any other. My cigarettes and drink can't compare to the natural high I've honed from putting pen to paper. After careful consideration and minutes-to-years of testing and teasing, a pen has found it's way into my arsenal for good. The Bic Atlantis. It is a sleek extra finger used solely for spreading my mind across space. I doubt it will ever fail me.

Having found such a phenomenal pen put me into a ridiculous and unfounded predicament. I became bored with regular paper. Actual weeks were spent learning how to and then subsequently producing my own paper from trees I cut down in a section of woods I probably wasn't supposed to be in behind my grandmother's apartment complex. They all turned out small and brownish and barely resembled paper at all. More closely related to coffee filters, I'd say. So I wrote on these for a while and I was loving it. I felt a sort of bliss that is felt by people who pretend to accomplish things. It was pure joy in a simple form.

As I have grown accustomed to doing, I became complacent with my created paper. It, too, began to feel like just paper to me. I was writing a massive story and throwing it out every day. The pen was the pinnacle but the medium was unsettling. Where once stood a man, stood an indecisive shambling mess of a struggling writer. Though I did not struggle with content, but channel. Never requiring inspiration for my stories, I was festering in my home, languishing in my inability to innovate. In a fervor I grabbed my coat and stormed out into the winter storm and walked in no direction in particular. After a few blocks my feet forgot about inertia and allowed the slick ice hidden under the soft snow to up end me. Twisting unnaturally in the air, and without proper attire, I landed hard on my side, and scraped a good bit of my naive skin off my right palm. Knelt in the snow like a clown, I gripped my ribs and my head at the same time and noticed a little droplet of my warm blood interrupt the peaceful colorlessness the snow was enjoying. I let it drip in different spots, drawing circles and squares and altogether unheard of shapes. Probably heard of, but not by me, or people who don't frequently think about shapes. I signed my name at the bottom with my DNA and then I sat still for a while and counted my breaths. Gathering myself up, I rushed home and washed up, forgoing speech and thought and writing for clean up and sleep. Dreams rushed to me of a group of painters with easels in a field of colorful wheat. The field was on a rock suspended above a whirling yellow pool. It was all pleasant and still, yet moving just the same. My hibernation ended.

Seasons were allowed to change as they normally do before I finally had a solid replacement for everyday normal paper. Mid-spring would be my incredible new debut! Walking aimlessly, my hands resting in my pockets, I wandered the city in a white t-shirt and jeans; no destination but with immeasurable purpose. Something caught my eye as if a movie camera were focused on it. Part of a discarded church flyer, bent in half and bearing shoe marks, entirely un-literally spoke to me. I snatched it up without hesitation and sat down on the nearest curb. The honking horn of the car pulled me out of my trance momentarily to realize that I had stumbled into the middle of a busy intersection to grab my treasure. Whatever, I was busy. So my butt rest painfully on the concrete sidewalk as I set to work. I filled up as much empty space on that flyer as I could. Before you knew it, an entire six paragraphs of one chapter were plastered upon this discarded relic. This wandering library. Not wanting to burden the public with my trepidation, I immediately released it for publication. I kept all the proceeds and eliminated all middlemen. As the wind picked up I tossed the flyer back into the air and walked away. Simultaneously, litter had gained worth and I had gained stardom. In anticipation of my meteoric rise I asked the closest person if they had heard of Hamilton Byrnes. The answer fell on deaf ears as I had scittered off to write paragraphs seven through nine on the margin of a grocery store receipt. I left it stuck to a branch of a tree sprouted mid-sidewalk. I was finally doing my part. I was finally doing my pen justice.

Sisters in Arms

One day.

That was their mantra, their motto, and their promise.

Two girls stood holding hands in front of a drab, gray wall. Together they imagined the possibilities of things awaiting on the other side. Their minds were so depraved of experience that they had a hard time picturing anything other than what they were used to: smooth metal corridors, colorless cells, and electric barriers.

The girls stood on a crack-less cement pavement walkway, perpendicular to it's suggested trajectory. Two lines of others just like them marched behind them wearily. The echo of their footsteps bounced around the seamless walls and up to the high ceiling, cascading back down again; a self-conducting orchestra of despair. Before long the chains shackled to the arms of the dreamy prisoner girls were pulled along by their compliant partners-in-captivity. They were ripped out of their meditative state and fell in line with the rest of the despondent many. One day.

One day.

Each day was the same thing for the girls. Everything was the same. Though this prison housed no torture, no pain, and no physical suffering, it touted a psychological burden that was much worse. They were in cells side by side and exactly alike, just as everyone and everything else. All the walls smooth and dark gray, all the floors stone and hard on foot, all the ceilings high and white, all of the areas restricted by visible electric barriers, all of the guardsmen cloaked in silence and black and default mask. A world devoid of feature, and vacant hope. Even the skin of these unfortunate prisoners has grown simultaneously dismal and porcelain in the unnatural halogen glow overhead. There was no ambition or desire or aspiration among the prison folk; optimism sank and circled the drain. Yet two young girls had an innate desire for freedom. Two young girls who were born into this colorless madness found each other and found a way to look upward and onward. Each day, on the walk to the feeding hall, they stepped out of line and faced their wall. It was theirs now. And with their faces mere inches from it, they searched their own minds, apart and collected, for a life on the other side. Talking in whispers, they would build pleasant confusion in one another. I bet there is warmth out there. And soft. And fresh. For these things they longed, having only had involvement with their counterparts.

After stepping out of line for only a few short seconds, not even enough to constitute one single minute, they would be tugged along their path and ushered back into the succession. Back to the plain and ordinary and life as they new it. On the outside, they were just like everyone else around them, generic and manufactured and docile. Inside though, they were combating their surroundings. Before they get yanked back into the life of nothing, they sprinkle water onto the soil and seed of their hearts. If any two words could hold vast meaning it was the two words they chose to inspire life in their born-dead vessels. One day.

One day.

She awoke naturally, turning in bed in a just-woken state of confusion. All at once her head was flooded with questions. There was no blaring morning alarm pouring out of the wall speakers. There was no guard outside her door, and even stranger, the electric prongs that normally create a cell door were uncharged and dull. With trepidation she approached the area of the non-existent electric field, and after a seemingly long session, stepped through to the short outer corridor. She ventured to the cell to her left and looked inside. The girl's eyes met; one pair out in the corridor, the other pair above a huddled body, knees and chin keeping each other company. Strength was to be found in each other, as usual, and they joined hands to walk the hallway. The reached the end, where they normally are herded for roll call, and walked in with a triumphant disdain. A gun was shoved into their collective. It wasn't a merciless and stoic guard, but a man with face and color and care. He spoke to them. He hugged them. He told them an army had finally been mounted. The war was being won. They were about to be freed. They knew of no war, no army, no freedom. They knew of one life and one home and one master. They had nothing to say. There was no response to be given, but it was not waited for, anyway. He grabbed them and ran them through their course. All the familiar sights had given way to things unknown, and they could not comprehend the new features being placed before them. It was as if you had grown an altogether entirely new sense and your body couldn't process the new stimuli given. They passed by salvation and justice and intervention long-awaited, without acknowledgment.

The following moments were erased from their memories. Not due to any force other than inability to retain. The soldier led them to a leader. The leader led them to a gate. They were spoken at and congratulated and hugged and talked to and overwhelmed. All of this forgotten in favor of the ultimate memory. The one they had pretended to be having the whole time. The memory they had been dreaming of without knowing what it possibly could be. The only memory they could ever want.

They were led to a gate. A button was pressed. The interlocking teeth of the only irregular wall they had ever seen began to separate. All was white for a while.

Before they had realized what was happening, they had been ushered out into open air. They choked on the freshness and the liveliness. They were scared of the cool green grass and the gentle, invisible drifting winds. Their nostrils were flooded and overflowed with pollen and smoke and pheromones and sweat and blood and all manner of earthen delight. Finally, their eyes adjusted to a powerful sun. It took time, as it was their first exposure. Involuntarily, their hands had already clasped. They stood triumphantly outside the prison and turned to face it. It's walls burning and crumbling, and the black flag atop it being torn down and trampled on. Their only home ever was being demolished and desecrated and it brought legitimate, natural, innate smiles across their faces. They turned again and faced the outside. The outside. The perfect memory. Their heads turned inquisitively and sharply as they took in the greens, reds, browns, blues, oranges, and yellows of the flora and fauna. Unnatural shapes reared their heads in the form of trees, clouds, fields of green grass and ferns, roads, hills, valleys, skies, dirt, and rocks. Their shoeless feet dug into the soft mound and they fell to the ground with tears of elation. Cuddling and rolling and feeling. After an eternity of experience, they found themselves stood once again. Much of the commotion had died down. And they found this time appropriate to pay tribute to their saving grace, their mantra, their maxim. One day.

Day one.

Cavewoman

"Your psionic powers won't work here!"  The advancariist said before laughing and thrusting her arms to her sides in an overly grandiose motion.  It turned out to be adequately grandiose as she summoned a ball of fire from another dimension. The fire instantly eradicated her and the person she was talking to because she didn't know how to control it.  Don't play with fire. 

Re-Routine

There are times when you contemplate life, but pushing the vending machine back and forth trying to free your chocolate milk isn't one of them.  A few thoughts were going through my head, but none of them pertained to the current state of my life. I pushed it up against the wall and let it rock forward again. A Fanta slipped out of place and slid to the bottom.  Damnit. I tried a few more times with no luck and resigned myself to my unwanted orange beverage. Defeat was truly personified by me that afternoon. Slumped at the bottom of a drink vending machine outside a bait shop, head between my knees except to sip another burning sip of a drink I didn't want. In an effort to stay positive I lamented the fact that I hadn't been crushed to death. I read in a magazine once that more people die each year from vengeful vending machines than from shark attacks. I also read in the same magazine a recipe for a spicy shrimp pasta. My thoughts had redirected me to negativity again. Now I'm out a drink and a meal. Oh well.

I picked myself up and headed down the street. The pavement was cracked and broken all down the sidewalk. For the bugs living there, a world torn asunder, for me, a slight bother.   I realized I had started walking the wrong way. I awkwardly stopped in my tracks and lost my balance, spinning on the balls of my feet and landing again sideways. Normally another contemplative moment, but I chose to forgo embarrassment and trudge off in the other direction whimsically.  I reached the public parking lot and immediately forgot where I parked. I started calling out the make and model of my car out as if calling for a lost dog. I thought it was funny, even though nobody was around to laugh. I laughed for them. I eventually found my car, even though it never answered me. A  1993 silver Chevy Cavalier. There was no upholstery on the ceiling and my friends had all carved their names in the asbestos-laced, dirt-stained foam.  The asbestos part was facetious on the part of my friends and I, but it was truly hideous. The muffler was annoyingly loud for everyone around me, but somehow the decibel level lessened considerably inside. The stereo was from my old car and it didn't fit. It was jammed into an empty radio compartment and jutted out a full 4 inches, though the duck tape secured it  quite nicely. I turned my broken MP3 player on shuffle and revved my engine to give myself another laugh.

I drove to the supermarket and it was densely packed. I already forgot what I needed but I went on in, to wander aimlessly.  I grabbed a shopping cart and went through the aisles, putting in things that looked appealing. It had a half gallon of orange juice, a package of cookies, two lightbulbs, paprika, Rolling Stone magazine, and some bendy straws in it when I abandoned it in the middle of the aisle.

I walked into the crowded restroom and assumed the position in front of the only open urinal. My boxers had somehow twisted themselves into an ampersand without my permission and right under my nose. This was preventing me from pissing, so I just stood there for half a minute and pretended. Then I walked, unzipped, to the stall. At this point I had already turned a simple task into a project so I sat down to splash out. The cold porcelain was a treat on my buttocks. I stayed until my legs fell asleep and then awkwardly hobbled out of a still crowded restroom on pins and needles. 

I decided I didn't really want anything in my cart so I went and put it all back on the shelf. I walked out feeling a little bit like a criminal for leaving the store without any products. Nobody cared.

 I got stuck on traffic on the way home.  I could smell the disdain in the people around me. Frowning, slumped down, jittery. People have no patience. Whether caught up with other drivers on the road for 30 minutes or stuck at a red light for 20 seconds, they become irate and filled with
malice. I enjoy traffic. It gives me an excuse to skirt responsibility for just a while longer. I was sat there, music flowing through my speakers quietly, hands drumming on the wheel, head bobbing enthusiastically, and just forgetting about stresses and worries. This is when I had my contemplative moment. A group of steaming metal vessels trapped in a stuttering conveyor belt together. Humans jammed into boxes and not a one of them interacting with each other, save for the occasional honk or lane switch or passionate vocal tirade. Everyone collectively deciding to follow the rules, no matter how much it irked them.  I wanted so desperately to rebel but I didn't want to hurt anyone or make a statement. I just didn't want to follow the path of the complacent any longer.  I put my car in park and grabbed my belongings. One broken MP3 player, one tube of chapstick. Not too much, it seems. I walked home that day. Seven miles of wandering and taking in the sights and sounds. I bought myself a bike the next day and made an effort to see as much of the city as my legs would allow. I showed up to work two weeks later as though nothing had happened. Nobody confronted me. Back to the grind.

Movers and Shakers

The experiment started at a Christmas party last June. After moving around so much for my whole life I decided to not. I made this decision without any forethought and plopped my buttocks down in the middle of my neighbor's couch and that was that. Parties are interesting when they are happening all around you. My eyes picked up all the laughs, some frowns, the awkward body language, the group love. My nose was less fortunate with it's sensing. The party ended late. After two AM, but I couldn't see the rest of the clock from where I was seated. I remained seated even after the lights went out and everyone had gone. It's March now, and this couch has become my pedestal, atop which I gaze upon my subjects. The rug, the walls, the dust, the cushions, the TV, the ceiling, the lights. All loyal to me throughout. They paid service to me in sights and sounds, keeping my senses busy in my new motionless life.   We had a scenic kingdom together without animation. It was good.

I would have stayed there much longer if it wasn't for Hurricane Ferdinand. It was states away, but hearing about a hurricane every day on TV made me think it was my fault. The Earth was balancing out my stillness by pushing wind around wildly. The world wasn't used to having people not walk on it. Apparently, people were supposed to move. So I got up and left my people. There was no uproar, but I could tell they would miss me. If you could tell such a thing, I certainly could.

I was going to walk. Do that walking thing; kick my shoes across the country, but people walk all the time and that's stupid. Walking is possibly the least enjoyable and definitely the most annoying thing a human can do. I had to brainstorm a while. I resigned myself to a walker for the time being. I would climb a tree but I didn't want the monkeys to resent me. Spent some time in a pond, but I didn't want to become water myself. I was a door for a while. Life was good. Finally I landed on my destiny. I was sitting on top of my brother's house, pretending to be a satellite dish, when I saw a shooting star. That would be nice, to be a star. So I did. I stowed away in a space shuttle. It was surprisingly easy. There aren't really people trying to stop you going to space, so I just walked on. They handed me a suit, and with my three co-pilots we left our planet. They had different intentions than I, but we were all spacemen together. The time came for a space walk and I did what I do best. I stepped into the airlock without a suit and haphazardly ejected myself into the cold black of eternity. I regret it sometimes. Being a star. Don't get me wrong, it's the best decision I ever made, but I miss my neighbor's room. I find myself wondering if the lamp is thinking about me, as I think of her. I hope she doesn't mind I'm making natural light now. I pushed the thought out of my mind and went back to my new lifestyle. Let's see the Earth balance this out.

Repeater

"Hey Em," Jake called affectionately to his sister Emily, "do you ever wonder if we are destined for something greater than this?"

"Destiny is a farce," Emily quipped instantly, "A human construct."

"We're humans, Em."

"Not entirely."

Jake and Emily lay flat backed on the side of a grassy hill. It was the ending part of their tradition. They would cap off the night, talking, listening, staring at the stars. It was their 13th birthday.

"I don't want it to happen again," Emily said as she turned to face her brother.

"Don't say that. It's all we have."

They laid there until midnight showed it's face and then Jake hopped up swiftly. He stood at Emily's feet and held out his arms. She reached out for them and laid limp as he heaved her to her feet. He pulled her up on his back and she piggy-backed all the way to her front steps. He dropped her off, they hugged, and she went inside. His hands found his pockets and he trudged home and met his warm bed.

Jake hated dreaming but there was nothing he could do to stop it. Trapped in his head were lifetimes of memories, waiting until his brain was no longer preoccupied before they all flooded forth. The dam of forgetfulness is broken by slumber, and waves of recall crash into Jake's head. A junked up mess of resurgence.  Emily didn't dream at all. It was a deep black from pillow to pillow.

Time passed swiftly for the twins, and before they could blink they were 33 again.  Jake was at Emily's bedside, as he had done time and time again. They were both prepared for what would happen, so they sat silently, hand in hand, looking into each other's eyes. Jake looked at the clock and watched the second hand tick through a few numbers. His gaze shifted back to Emily and her eyes met his. He nodded at her and she responded by gripping his hand tighter. Action descended upon the silent room in a quick fury. Jake's brain rebeled against him turning him from a sat straight human to a lump of flesh in an instant. In the same instance Emily succumbed to her disease. They lay, hands locked, Jake collapsed atop his sister, dead in the hospital.

*************

Sunlight blasted through the clouds, escaping the cold reaches of space for a cozy little picnic area on a grassy hill. Shoes were discarded in favor of the pleasant feeling of cool grass on hot skin. Two shadows lined up to match their makers, only stretched out and darkened, like reflections in a fun house mirror. The shadows belonged to two children, twin brother and sister, aged 13. The boy spoke to the girl.

"This is always the best time, you know? Playing in the wilderness without anything to worry about. Getting to see you after so long. You think we'd have grown out of it by now."

The girl replied.

"I... want to hate it. I want to be an adult. I want to grow old and retire and travel. But I find myself only caring about my 13th birthday. I want to be normal."

"You are normal, Em."

"No I'm not. Neither are you. Can you even remember how many times we've died? I can't. I love being a kid. I love living with no responsibilities and REALLY getting to live. But I'm tired of it. There is more to life than being carefree and childish. Than running around in the woods and skipping rocks and eating cake. So we don't have to pay bills or save for retirement. We're missing out! We could be evolving and growing. I want responsibility. "

"Why? Most people don't get this. We could be kids forever. "

"I don't want to be anything forever."

"There is nothing we can do. That's how it is. That's how it always will be. Sometimes things just happen and you have to live with it."

"Not to me. Not anymore."

And Emily ran off.

Normally, or rather, completely not normally, every 13 years the twins find each other on that hill and regain their memories of all their past lives. It's as much tradition as it is predetermination. This time, a cursed little girl with infinite wisdom was determined to control her own fate. She didn't live her life as normal. She wouldn't see her brother Jake. A recluse, but also an ambitious thinker. Entropy personified. Time marches on, and Emily finds herself 33 and laid up in a hospital bed. Jake stepped into the room and Emily was surprised by her chagrin. A ritual of silence had begun as he crossed the space between them and she allowed her hand to be scooped up into his. Emily motioned for Jake to bend closer. He leaned in and Emily held him there for a while, her weak wrist and hand clinging to the back of his head. After a few moments like this, she whispered at Jake with a melancholy tone.

"I dreamt last night that we shared a bed on clouds... Mom was there. Our mom. She walked me to the edge of the cloud. We held hands as we leapt off. It was beautiful. "

Emily began sobbing gently.

"Jake. I'm not coming back. I love you. Goodbye."

As soon as the last syllable bounced off her tongue and into the air, she submitted to her illness. Jake was spared seeing his sister die by suffering a brain aneurysm at the same moment. His body slumped over on top of hers and over her knees. Even in this weird position, their hands remained interlocked. 

Thirteen years passed by before the hill was graced with a visitor again. A young boy sat lonely on it's slope.

The End of Chores

"I'll do it tomorrow," Lloyd spoke dimly, without turning his head to the recipient of his words. He hadn't even heard what his mother had asked him to do, due to being encapsulated by his book. Feverishly he typed, one headphone in listening to jazz music, thinking he had something great on his hands. The idea had come to him in a dream. A semi-autobiographical horror novel about a colony of people from one of Jupiter's moons being terrorized by the titular character who thinks he is Satan. It was pure rubbish. The writing of this novel, Lloyd felt, was more imperative than his mother's request to vacuum his room. He would be proven right for the wrong reasons.

Lloyd typed deep into the night. Around 6 AM he noticed he was struggling to keep his eyes open and made the decision to shuffle off to bed. He took off his clothes, laid in bed, and blissfully went to sleep, content with himself. All of those things being done for the last time, for Lloyd and for many others. Around noon, Lloyd's mother ventured jovially into his room. She was unsurprised to see him comatose, room unkempt, carpet unvacuumed. The usual routine fell into place as she picked up dirty clothes around her sleeping son and left the room, not fully closing the door. That was the last time she would do that as well. Routines were about to become extinct. Mere moments later, before Lloyd's mother could touch her black coffee to her lips, before her husband could walk in the door on lunch, before Lloyd's dream was halfway over, in a flash, in an instant, tragedy struck. Not just this simple family, but all families. As well as all not families. The scroungers and drifters and millionaires and homeless and presidents and peasants alike received an unwanted gift from the cosmos. One that you sadly couldn't return for something you actually liked. A celestial power blasted through the Earth, splitting the hunk of rock we call home into pieces. A gamma ray burst shot through the planet, core and shell, and rendered it inert. It's something you cannot be prepared for. All things suddenly became upended at once, inverting things and intangibles just the same. Millions upon millions of people died in an instant, with the rest of them following shortly.  Anyone who wasn't finished off in the actual space catastrophe was left with an uninhabitable state of being. Earthquakes so vicious it shook your vision and blurred your senses. Tidal waves only possible in this exact scenario. Oceans drained and overflowed as gravity ricocheted around the world, adjusting and readjusting to the new chunks of mass that used to be one. Houses and streets turned sideways and spun out of control. It was truly a waking nightmare, though it lasted only a few seconds.

Lloyd had an ending most people wish they could have themselves. He was catapulted from his bed, and thankfully the roof had simultaneously been torn from its base, or he would have been splattered then and there. But no, he was instead launched through the air about 400 feet. He broke his fall with his soft, delicate head, and it shattered into bits as if he had been an unruly child's dinner. That doesn't sound pleasant or desired, which it isn't for most, but it was in these few seconds of flight that envy would have been focused on, if there was any left in the world. Lloyd's first thoughts in this time of deathly crisis, went to his horrible and hopeless book. Sprung from his bed, unjustly tossed through suburban skyline, the very first thing to cross his mind was excitement over being awake. Excitement to sit down and type up something personal that he had only stopped doing a handful of hours ago. In those moments, those short instants, he thought about a new character, a clever line, and where he left his moon colonists. In his morning stupor, he felt only joy and pride for his work, and desire to do more. No fear, no anxiety, no sadness, no remorse. Only hope for the future, when everyone else had none at all. Lloyd was absolutely overflowing with tenacious creativity, having absorbed the rest of the population's. And at the very end, in the unquantifyable seconds before he impacted destructed Earth, he felt a hint of guilt. He never vacuumed the rug. His mom sure would be annoyed.