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.

The Lady of the Forest

I like to take walks sometimes to clear my head. The path through the woods I follow is peaceful and serene. It allows a gorgeous view. The trees and foliage are lush and deep, green and powerful. Rays of sun shoot through openings in the canopy, gently coating bark and brush with a layer of shine. It's especially nice after a nice rain has soaked into the plants. After a particular heavy rain, I was walking through the woods and I stumbled upon something you don't primarily see in the woods. There is nowhere you primarily see this. A girl sat at the base of a solitary tree, head down and clad in a black hoody and jeans. Her dark brown hair cascaded down the left side of her face, showing off half of her dark complexion. She was crouched down, feet and butt on the ground both, leaned against a door. A solid white house door, no hinges, no knob. The door laid long ways, making an upside down T with the tree. She didn't acknowledge me as I walked past. She didn't even lift her head. I continued my walk, too scared or too shy to approach this sight, even though I wanted to, from the core of my being to the fringes of my fingertips. Alas, I walked on, and eventually my thoughts drifted back to the things they normally drift towards. And I was back on track.

The next day I went through and the door was there, propped up against the tree, standing. It's presumed owner stood leaned against it in a human parabola, head down, studying tufts of dirt and grass. I hustled by once more, too afraid to disturb this woodland relic I've stumbled upon. It's only been two days, but it already has become special to me. To have a unique landmark on my walk was a joy I didn't know I was pining for until I had it and didn't want it to ever go away again. This consumed my thoughts for the rest of the walk, and suddenly I was out in the open and my mind snapped back to reality. Back to basics. 

Days went by in a similar pattern. Weeks. Months. Almost a year came and went, but closer to nine and a half months, before I changed my routine. At this point I'd walk past the forest nymph and her tree door and I'd speculate about it, neither of us paying the other mind out loud. Her clothes would change, but she would always be leaning, head down, against a stood up door. I began to lose focus on my walks. I didn't care about the beauteous nature, or the spectacular leaves, or the clouds or sun or dirt or dust or the pleasant flow of a stream in the distance, or the drip of rain from the tips of branches. I cared only about seeing my totem and her place in the woods. Then the day came when it was decided I would find out something about her. As I crunched over twigs and swiped thickets of greenery about, I stopped in my tracks and turned to face the girl. She lifted her head and shook it, showing me that she could, in fact, move. She was beautiful. I had seen glimpses of her cheek and forehead up until now, but that is not enough to sustain a man's expectations. Her skin was smooth and shiny, dark but glowing. Her brown hair so dark in the light of the wood it looked black, worn about her face as a picture framing an amateur Mona Lisa. Plump, red lips and a slender nose brought her face together and I took as much in as I could. We stared at each other for a short while before I eloquently spoke the word hi. She remarked the same. Now that that was over I was at a loss. With all of the possible questions I had on my mind, choosing one to start with was a task I was unprepared for. My plan consisted of one step: approach her. Mission accomplished. 

Lucky for me, she spoke up first. Her voice was not angelic nor anything special at all, but still pleasant to hear. She asked me if I thought it was a good spot. 

"For what?"

She replied that it was for her home. I didn't understand what she meant so I forged ahead mindlessly. 

"Well it certainly looks nice. I don't think animals care about that, though." 

She told me she meant her home. She was going to live here. I wanted to be stunned but it never came. As usual I ran through a trillion questions in my head and landed on the absolute dumbest one. 

"Aren't you worried about bugs?" 

She told me bugs were mostly helpful, like all things are. She went on for a short while about things bugs do. I hated bugs but I listened anyway.  Sadly I didn't have time to linger. We said our farewells and I went on my way. I spent so long thinking about what she said to me I didn't realize I had stepped out of the forest. And once I exited the wood, my mind cleared and I was free to think about whatever I pleased. 

*****

Each day I would pass by, we would talk for a short while, her being whimsical and enigmatic, me being normal and foolish. For a much longer time. I couldn't imagine a day without my girl from the woods.  And so I didn't.  

A ritual had begun.  We would talk and interact.  Nothing about our lives or families, or any small talk at all.  It was brilliant.  We talked only of our thoughts.  About why a person would want to live in the woods.  The solitary lifestyle.  Interacting with nature.  Being yourself.  Then the questions turned to me.  I was surprised at her sudden questioning, but it had not been sudden at all.  The day she started to ask me questions about my life had not been until several years into our meeting.  I was confronted with things I had never thought about before.  About my path through the woods.  My daily visits.  The state of my life.  We didn't get through all of them before I was hit with a preposition.  She asked why I didn't come live with her in the woods.  I was dumbfounded immediately, and still am today.  A befuddlement that lasts a lifetime reigned down on me.  One of those things that when you realize what happened years into the future it still confuses you up and down.  I told her no.  I told her I couldn't.  I had responsibilities and bills and friends and family and things.  So many things.  I just wouldn't be able to live in the woods, with nothing but a door and the clothes on my back and forest berries.  She told me that one day the woods would be all of our homes, so I might as well get a head start.  She said that the door was just the starting point.  She was preparing the woods for future generations.  I didn't really understand.  Maybe she was being philosophical or metaphorical but I had too much pressure on me now to question anything.  I shuffled off shortly after and I thought about her when I was out of the woods.  I thought about it all night, while I laid in my bed with the moonlight as my mistress.  I thought about it the next day as I sat miserly on a bench and ate my lunch instead of taking a walk through the woods.  I thought about it when I found more and more reasons not to visit again.  It consumed my thoughts until it didn't.  I couldn't bring myself to think on it any more and I couldn't bring myself to go back to to see her.  My indecision had made my decision for me.  

Years pass, as they always have and continue to do.  Time makes dirt of us all.  I was the same as always, only my hair had turned white and gone, and my bones refused to cooperate with one another as they used to.  Sibling rivalry and all that.  My wife had shown herself to me, then she, too, turned to dirt.  Sooner than most do.  My children had become visions of my fondest memories of myself.  I used to tell them stories of the woman I met in the woods.  It seemed a good enough fairy tale as any to tell a child before bedtime to get their imaginations going.  I told them so often they used to ask questions, and as they got older we talked about how it was real.  How there actually was a woman living in the woods.  Plain as you and I, only she wanted to get to know the Earth better than us.  And on my last birthday my children came to me with a desire and a question and a service.  They wanted me to take them to the patch of woods I used to walk through.  They wanted to see if anything was still there.  Of course there were hundreds of uncertainties.  They didn't doubt the legitimacy of my claims, but we collectively doubted even a hint of this woman could have remained in the forest.  

So we set out on a walk.  I had forgotten the pleasantries of the greens.  On we walked, from memory or from basal instinct or completely at random, it didn't matter.  I was absolutely delighted to be sharing the walk through the woods with my children.  And as we got farther in, I started to get scared.  I didn't recognize it anymore.  It had been so many years, but could the woods change that much?  I suppose they have.  And I didn't know what I was more frightened of.  Seeing her, or not seeing her.  My fears did the work for me when we happened upon a bundle of trees, twisted and intertwined and reaching far up to the canopy.  We were viewing an exposed muscle of the planet.  When we wrapped around the other side of the treeblock, I stopped short.  We all did.  At the base of the group of trees, stuck there, half open, connected but not, planted there with juxtaposition and demand, was a door.  The trees had grown around it, and accepted it as their own.  It had created a treehouse that a young boy could only dream up with his pure, innocent imagination.  I slowly stepped over roots and leaves and stood face to face with the door.  I put my hand on it, no knob, no window, and I stood there, touching it, for a very long time.  Not a word was spoken.  My children had given me space.  I assumed they were frozen with mythical apprehension, as I had been so long ago.  Assumptions never were my thing.  Eventually my hand slid to the right and found a crease in the door big enough for my wrinkled fingers.  I pulled gently and the door swung open with ease.  It was a miracle the door had worked in this way.  Miracles never were my thing, either.  The inside was cavernous and huge and only lit by sunlight shining through cracks in the fiber of the structure.  It was pleasant and dim and smelled like coffee houses the world over wish they could smell.  It was natural and vibrant, filling my eyes and ears and nostrils with stimuli that I welcomed with open heart.  My eyes adjusted to the light and I saw a lump in the corner of the room.  A woven blanket of vines, leaves, branches, leaves, and tree bark.  It looked wholly uncomfortable.  It moved gently up and down, or so I thought in the dark.  Sometimes in the dark you see things you want to see, and other things you don't.  This was one of those things.  I approached it and knelt down beside it.  I stayed there kneeling for a neverending few minutes and then I reached out and touched it.  I pulled the natural blanket aside rudely and found my nymph huddled underneath.  I laid my hands gently on her arm and did nothing else.  She awoke without start and devoid of fear or caution.  She rolled over and sat up into a cross legged position.  We stared at each other for a short while before I eloquently spoke the word hi. She remarked the same.  I took her by the hand and told her I was sorry.  She remarked that everything returns to nature.  I took that as an acceptance of my apology and hugged her.  I told her my children were outside and she invited them in.  They talked for a while, as I sat by unmoving.  I was lost in silence and I stared at my surroundings as a man who has achieved sight for the first time.  She answered their questions with her mysterious affront, but also entirely truly.  It was altogether strange.  I asked for some time alone with her and my children said they'd be back in a little bit and I assume left to wander the forest.  There was nothing else they could have done.  We ate berries and drank cold tea out of some sort of wooden canister.  It was all one piece and smooth.  I wondered how she made it, but didn't ask.  The tea tasted awful, and I can only assume it was made with rotten leaves.  I drank it with gusto.  Afterwards we laid down on the floor atop the blanket.  I moved my hand close to hers until our fingers fit into the crevasses of each other's hands.  Our legs found themselves wrapped up, just as the roots and spines of the trees around us.  I asked her how life had been and if she had been mad at me for not coming back.  She told me it was good and she wasn't because she knew I had been mad enough at myself.  I asked if this could be my home now.  She told me it always was.  I asked her if I could know her name.  She said I had to go first.  So I did.

"Ames"

"Ficca"

We laid there until we felt it was time to return to dirt.  Nature was our home now.  Together.

Memory Lane

Once we found out the chemical in our brains that caused nostalgia, there was no going back. It turns out that childhood feelings of freedom and adventure are even more desirable than cocaine fueled rampages or sticking yourself with a needle and drooling. It was wonderful at first. Everyone eating pills to get them that "remember when" feeling. And what a great feeling it was. Looking at the sky on a summer's day and recalling the smells and sounds of being a little child and worrying about what game you would play next. Worrying about if you would get ice cream after dinner. The cares and necessities of life; the bills, the stress, all washed away with recollective scenery. A great feeling indeed. So great it was, that people started living their whole adult lives in a drug-induced nostalgic haze instead of actually living. Now people live their childhoods and teenage years and then spend every waking minute remembering all the good times they just lived and not making new nostalgia for an inevitable future.

And so it went. Instead of inciting a memory with a cue from life and getting a little hint of a simpler, less worrisome time, good memories would get drilled into heads until it was all the head could hold. No longer would a drive in the country remind you of time spent with your mother. No longer would a song from ages ago rekindle a dancing spirit in your body. Memories became the present and everyone forgot to live. At least they were enjoying themselves.

Hell fighters

"I will eat your soul," growled the horned demon, into an empty crevasse along a black mountain.

"I like the saying, but say it a different way," casually remarked the muscle demon, arms crossed and face messed up in thought.

"All right, all right, " the first demon said as he cleared his throat and coughed and sputtered around some otherworldly bile in his chest area, "I will EAT your SOUL!" He nearly screamed this time, and added a flourish to 'soul'.

"Eh nevermind, I don't like it. Next! Next one!" muscles replied, smiling at his statement as if it had been funny or liked by someone. It had not.

"How about this?" demon one asked, and his voice lept out of his veiny throat in a hurry. "Death is upon you." He let the words hang in the air, saying them deliberately and with malice.

"You can't be serious. That line was horrible. You're better than that." The muscle demon was quite the critic, with not a lot else to offer.

"You're quite the critic, with not a lot else to offer," remarked the horned demon, as I wished him to do.

The two demons stood there chatting, hanging out in a hellish landscape. The ground was cracked and broken, and the mountain next to them so black you couldn't see its edges. It was hot and flames burned from seemingly any random point. There was a river of lava nearby, which would have been amazing to see, but they were too accustomed to it to care.

The first demon, the horned one, was lightweight and agile. His body was most reminiscent of a lizards, but still humanoid in appearance, with an altogether unknown third thing thrown in the mix, giving him a truly demonic appearance. In addition to his horns, he had two long appendages protruding from his back that curled over his head and ended in claws. He was almost entirely grey, with blotches of green here and there.

"You will know fear... " the horned demon repeated multiple times, changing his cadence and emphasis.

The muscle demon was tall and bulky. At least 9 feet up and bulging with strength. He was hornless, bald, and imposing. His torso was humanoid, with two great big arms that were too big for the torso and were a dim gold next to his deep purple skin. His head was pointy and misshapen and his mouth was huge and filled with razor teeth. He had 3 legs split out like a tripod that bent like a spiders, only equally as muscled as his arms. Each leg had a hand at the end of it.

"You will be humbled," the horned demon intoned,  gesturing wildly as he spoke.

"I don't like that one, either. Too polite," said the muscle demon, spinning childlike on his feet.

The first demon, with the horns and stuff, began to get frustrated and spoke up.

"Why are we even doing this? It's crazy if you think about it."

"What do you mean? Just get your lines down so we can go impress Kingdra."

"That's just it, though. Why do we need lines? We're introducing ourselves to the humans we're about to attack!"

"You need to send a message. To show off your trademark for next time."

"Why will there be a next time?! I should burst forth from the shadows and eviscerate my foes! Be done with them."

"That's a good one. Use that."

"I'm not using anything... This is so foolish."

The two demons went back and forth arguing, sometimes practicing a spooky line to use on unsuspecting human heroes when they attack them. The horned demon was doomed to lose the argument, not realizing that they were characters in my story, and thus fall into the archetype of demon that has a catchphrase or opening line. Eventually he succumbed to the muscle demon's word power and settled on a line, but compromise had been struck.

He was crouched atop an altar in a desolate and decrepit ceremony cathedral in an animalistic pose, waiting. The large wooden doors burst open as a group of human journeymen entered. They had their torches and swords raised and they progressed hastily towards the altar. The horned demon reared back into an awesome flex, roaring and sending out a wave of fire, lighting the corpses littered around him and illuminating the room. He looked at the humans and said with a newfound menace: "Drink Coca Cola," before dashing towards the front most human on all fours, picking him up easily in his hands and tearing his head from his shoulders.

Eyefuls

I began to notice the stares. Out of the corner of my eye I could see people staring at me. A vicious stare, though not hurtful. It was truly a look I'd never seen before, a new one for the collection of looks I'd ever seen. It was like they were looking at me and through me at the same time. In the beginning it was only people I was familiar with. A coworkers gaze would linger a little too long, or a good friend would peer into me when he didn't think I could see him. It was one of those things you put away in your mind. Of course they aren't staring at you, you're being crazy. Just being crazy. I started to doubt that reasoning when I felt eyes on me from total strangers. Passing a person on the street and you can tell they are examining you from your periphery. It's one of the most unpleasant feelings I'd had the discomfort of knowing. People of all heights and weights and sizes and genders would occasionally look upon me with a certain scowl. As if they didn't know how to process what they were seeing but they knew they didn't like it.

This problem became a regular occurrence after a while. I was afraid to look anywhere but straight down, for fear of noticing the looks that I know are on me. They had become more daring on top of it. Standing in the checkout line, I'd see feet gather around me as I focused on the ground. Pairs of shoes all pointing at me from all around. Sometimes so close they would be only a few inches from my own shoes. I would close my eyes and continue on my way, eventually reaching my house, where I would have respite. Except I would dream about it as well. And everyone would have giant eyes and little pupils and their eyes would end up pressing against me until I was sandwiched between whites and whites. 

Today I woke up with stark determination. My life was in shambles and I was terrified to leave my house. I didn't want to do it anymore. I would defeat one of them today. When I left my house I wasn't accustomed to having people walk by routinely and nobody look my way. Are they toying with me? Maybe I am insane. I walked but a block and as I entered the crosswalk I turned to the nearest person and grabbed them by the arm. It was a black woman in a suit, with a tie over her turtleneck. I didn't realize how ridiculous she looked at first because I immediately locked eyes with her. I felt the feeling again. Suddenly all eyes were on me, almost literally. I stared at this woman, and she stared at me, our eyes making a bridge into each other's brains, and everyone else stared at us. People stopped and rushed towards us, parking themselves a safe distance away and observing. My peripheral vision had peaked by this point and I could see some of them as I battled sight with my challenger. It became wild and ominous. I knew something would go wrong if I messed up. Messed up what, I still don't know, but I needed this. It felt like I did at least. 

There we stood, untouching, unfeeling, incapable of interrupting our ritual. It truly felt like an eternity. Neither of us closed our eyes or looked away. Time escaped me, as I used all of my focus to match gazes with my chosen harbinger. This woman would release me from the all-seeing eyes of the populace. I began to sweat profusely. I was tense. My eyes were drying. My hair knocked around my head as the wind slapped through the scene. And as quickly as I locked her into this silent partnership, things changed once more. It seemed like everything happened at once, but the catalyst to it all was a simple action. Not normally thought about or given precedence or power. A normally involuntary thing. She blinked. 

Caged brain

Out of all the dragonflies in the world, she was the only one that was mechanical. Born in a world of caution paint, alarms and metalwork. Her joints stronger and her legs more functional. She was unknowingly the pinnacle of her kind, though she felt like lake scum. Being free to think and ponder and live among her real-life counterparts was some torture enacted by an unjust creator.

A typical day consisted of her trying to talk to other dragonflies around her. They would respond with a series of buzzes and motions and flaps of their wings. Futility incarnate. Then she would eat. She only ate because she saw others doing it. She never felt hunger or taste and was considerably faster than any insects she would encounter. Lately she would kill a bee or a fly or a beetle and hoist it's corpse around for a while, pretending like it was part of her. This is a new development, as she used to drag them back to her home inside a dead tree and toss them about. She grew tired of it as she does all things. Always thinking of new ways to appease her creator. The one who doesn't ask for appeasement.

Every few days she'll go into her tree and it will get dim. Her body moves against it's will and she goes through certain processes. She touches cold steel, feels warm air, is gripped in a tight chamber, stays still for a very long time, then the process repeats in reverse and her tree home becomes bright again. Sometimes all the middle parts are cut out and it just goes dark then light again with no happenings in between. She used her accursed powers of thought to analyze this situation to no end. It has become the only routine part of her life.

She has outlived every dragonfly she has come in contact with. She has seen them be struck down by larger predators and eaten with gusto. She has been witness to their bodies breaking down and quitting on them. She stands alone atop the spire. An unvirtuous symbol of something unknown. Not wanting attention or treatment but having it forced upon her.

She even tried to break herself before. Flying headlong into trees and bugs and lizards with abandon. Her familiar dark room antics only to wake her up with new parts. Fixed but still capable of thought.
Still broken.

There was a day when things were different. An exercise in patience turned into a differentiation. Refusing to leave her home in her tree, she sat and stared and waited and waited and waited. And waited. And then nothing happened. No darkening, no reawakening. Just waiting. Tons of watching the walls of her tree and staring until she eventually got up and left. Flying in one direction for as far as her body would take her. But wait, why was she slowing down? This had never happened before. She never grew slower or weaker. This time though she was losing altitude and dropping speed. She decided, for the first time ever, to take a rest. And maybe just wait for a little longer. And then the darkness came once more. And it never went away. 

Poryama Part 1

When people say "in the future," they never specify how far into the future they mean. I believe the vagueness is intentional and I know the reason. In the future, technology eventually becomes so advanced that people from your time couldn't even begin to comprehend it. It would rend your mind dull and your senses incapable. Imagine trying to explain color to a house cat, or living your whole life and then finding out you're a cyborg. To shatter perception is no easy feat, and to accept it is wholly unthinkable.

So that leaves us with a timeline. I cannot simply lambaste hordes of folk for not extrapolating on their "future" date and then not give you one. A great many things have taken place between our times; perhaps I should start with the "where."  Earth is a familiar term to you, but the Earth you have touched and dug and grew and defiled and loved to death is only our Earth in essence, spirit, and memory. Our home base, our planet, is Poryama. The history of it is a long retelling for me and will not begin for you for uncountable moments, so allow me to condense things for you. Poryama is, essentially, an artificial planet built on the husk of a dying Earth. 

We've only just touched the basics, but for now, that's enough. I do not wish to keep you in suspense though. Anxiety is bad for your fragile, delicate body. You will come to know more about "the future" in further messages. Your future and my present. To you, just a number. To me, the year 9982. 

The Good Doctor

Tuck Jonner literally waltzed into the room. His feet moved fluidly and with grace, but his arms flopped around like a trash bag stuck in a car door. He was having an induced stroke. He has a disease so potent, the only method of removing it was to mess up your brain real bad and hope it went away. And then hope your brain went back to normal. The success rate was abysmal, but thankfully for Tuck, he didn't know the meaning of failure. If he had, he surely would have refused this operation. 10 weeks later his body was found stripped to the bone of material, except for his perfectly preserved head with an apple in his mouth. It's ironic that he was found this way because he requested that be done to his body in his will, but his family declined to commit. Tuck always gets the final word. 

King of the Jungle

If a man wished enough to be a lion, could he do so? Well not a real lion, any idiot knows that can't happen. But in spirit. Well, during the turn of the 22nd century, any idiot was proven right when a method was invented to turn men into lions. It turns out that is man's greatest dream.

So all these idiots get real happy and pay their life savings to get turned into a lion. What would they need it for? Turns out you just look like a lion, but you're still any idiot on the inside, where I'm told lies things such as your soul and your other human components. It only takes a person being a different thing on the inside for everyone to tell them their dream is wrong and they wasted all their money on an insane and pointless procedure. At least cancer has been cured.

Now we have hordes of lions walking around. Some of them on their back legs, like a human, or a pelican. Some of them even wear clothes and style their manes. Some of them are women. But the procedure was only for males so they've become transgender lions, which is a real problem now. It has something to do about the insides being female and you know how people hate when the inside and outside are all mixed up. My mechanic is a lion. He can barely hold the tools with his big, stupid paws, but I think the owner pities him. We all do. Even the Eskimos.

There is a scourge of homeless lions. They're not good people like regular bums, though. They walk around on all fours, hunchbacked, still not used to being in the body of a natural predator. They roam the streets like a pack of wild dogs, just less organized, and they accost people at random. They'll gallop down to a business man in a suit who managed to avoid throwing his whole life away on animal-based reconstructive surgery and they'll hiss and snap at him clumsily with their jaws. They'll jump up on him and say things like "spare some change?" or "beware the night" or other cryptic bum/lion hybrid lingo. The plucky business man will look down on them in pity and drop a rawhide bone from his briefcase. Nobody knows what's going on anymore.

If there is a God, he should have banned this type of thing. I know nobody likes their leaders to ban their favorite stuff but this is getting ridiculous. My Uncle told me the other day he adopted a lion. Not a real, animal lion, there aren't any left. What type of God lets a person turn themselves into a pet? He's probably half antelope or something. Gods are even more foolish than humans. 

Wreck Effect

Jon's sledgehammer swung down and cracked brick mercilessly. Each brutal swing disintegrating the mortar and stone. Jon stood his hammer up and leaned his weight on it.

"This kinda bugs me, you know? Like why do we have to do this?"

His colleague retorted. "We're getting paid? What do you care, you didn't live here."

"But someone did. It feels like I'm committing a crime."

"You're not. We were paid to knock this building down. It's junk, we're removing it." Jon's teammate didn't stop swinging during the discussion, grunting out words and strings of words in short bursts.

"We're basically destroying history. Someone lived here. It's got culture and feeling and reason. There is no reason to destroy it."

Jon's partner in destruction decided he had enough and swung the hammer hard, releasing his grip and letting it fall into the building after his swing demolished more brick.

"Jon it's not history. It's an uninteresting relic of a lesser time. Someone will destroy our houses one day. It's just how things work."

"We're damaging someone's memories. Good memories. This pains me."

"So you suggest we just let every old building stand forever? We have finite space and infinite ideas. It's not gonna happen."

"I suggest we repurpose it. There are plenty of homes that need living in. We don't need every building to be state of the art and 50 stories high."

"We need some of them to be. This can be one of them instead."

"It could be a home for a family. It can inspire a new generation and create culture. It can still exist."

"It can't and it won't. You're being unrealistic. Nobody needs this house, but they have other things they need. New necessities. This is our culture now. If you don't do it, someone else will. Someone who needs the money."

At that moment, Jon's debate rival picked up his sledge again and began beating the building to bits. After a few short seconds of thought, Jon picked up his sledgehammer as well. He swung with defeat, but he swung nonetheless. Thunk. Plunk. Thunk. Plunk. Plunk. They pounded the building down and down. Finally nothing remained but brick dust and a pile of small rock. Jon let his hammer fall and walked off. His pal dropped his hammer and admired his monument.

Daisy hat

Hats aren't normally a thing paraded around as special. Hats are just hats, often even so not special that they cannot be bothered to be noticed. But Rebecca's hat was special. If only to her, that still made it special. But it truly was.

Some days it rained only on Rebecca. Most days though, she was thoroughly avoided by rain. A nimble fairy, with a whimsical essence allowing her to dodge raindrops. The clouds loomed overhead nonetheless. It seems to me, she thought, the clouds were worse than the rain. Stuck in the air like black paint fallen from a bottle. Jagged and hazy; a sky barricade.

Yesterday Rebecca's brother died. He was a priest. He used to be. Not because he is dead, because he quit. His last day in the church he casually walked out the doors, entering his new life. He walked with a spring in his step up until he got to the stone stairs and slipped. He toppled down, landing hard on his skull and cracking it. His brain bounced around as they are wont to do, even though it's so bad for them. This one was so bad that it never worked again afterwords. It rained that day. It rained today, too. But not on Rebecca.

The next day she went to the church to talk to the new priest. It made sense to her. She sat down next to him in the pew and folded her hands in her lap, staring daggers at nothing at all. Her head was so severely limp on her shoulders it looked as if her neck would sever any moment. The priest spoke first.

"Rebecca I'm sorry about your brother, he was a truly good man and a capable priest."

"Some say it was an act of god. You know people said that to me. That he turned his back on the church."

"No one can speak for God."

"I think it was an act of weather. The rain did it."

"It may have played a factor, but rain does not kill."

"Rain hasn't touched me in a while and I'm just fine."

"Rain touched your brother often, and he only just left us."

She was stoic and fierce. The priest adjusted his seating to face her. She did not match his gaze, though you couldn't tell because the olive green brim of her hat concealed most of her face anyway.

"Rebecca, your brother didn't leave you because he chose to. Your blame doesn't lie with the rain. Fighting the weather is futile and misplaced. You are in the house of God, you are his child. Any rain that falls in here is blessed and sacred. And you share it only with God and I."

Rebecca remained motionless for many more moments. The priest sat patiently, one hand resting in his lap and another on her back. Finally, after an eternity of minutes condensed into one, she looked forward and lifted her hand to her hat, pulling it off gracelessly. It fell to the church floor lightly and without offense. She buried her face in the priest's robes and clutched them tightly. He hugged her gently and closed his eyes. Then for Rebecca the rain came. And it continued to come. It came and went with the winds, as most things do, with the ebb and flow of the spirits. The rain would soak her through and through, and she would return to her normal dry self and repeat with gusto. As the rain came, her hat became less special to her. As all hats do. And order was returned to the hat community as they had once again been reduced to ordinary.

Rain poured down in droves. Rebecca smiled. 

On Mute

I have something to say to you but I don't know what it is. How could I not know? Well it's simple. I just don't. There are too many ideas floating around. Sure, in my head, but everywhere else, too. We should always be saying something to each other. There is so much to say. So much wonder to sift back and forth between our teeth and gums. Gold to be found among the swaths of dirt and grime and mouth pollution. Venerable galaxies of thought colliding into one another, meshing certain frames and smashing the rest to bits. A diamond of wisdom, crushed into existence by pressurous synapse. Blankets of creation, woven by unintentional meditation.

We're all feeling so much but saying so little. Let's say these things to each other. I don't know what I have to say to you, but do you know what you have to say to me? Not nothing, but everything else. Too much to say turns into a drought of voice. But for now, let's think. Then as soon as that thought reaches us, let's speak up. Let's always be talking. We only have conquest. To learn from each other. I have something to say to you and it is everything. And you have everything to say back. But we say nothing. And we let our minds do the talking.

Word Soup

I'm glad you're here.  Glad you came.  I'm glad it didn't have to come to that.  I'm glad we could get together like this.  I'm so glad for us.  So glad.  You're such a nice glad.  Glad you could make it.  Glad.  Glade effervescent diaphragm.  Gleam tendonitis dollhouse.  Glory camaraderie existence.  Glib.  Glum.  Glowing.  Glyph showcase hotel.  Glasses.  Glitter.  Glam.  Glad.  I'm glad about a lot of things.  I'm glad for our time.  I'm glad we had this talk.