I can hear the engine turn over in the parking lot as the bell on the glass door rings, and this is all so familiar. I let the door swing shut behind me and I am remembering how we used to do this all the time, a hundred years ago--you waiting in the truck with the air conditioning on to relieve you from the mid-July heat, me paying for our gas and slushies. “Hey there!” I try not to feel too annoyed as the kid at the counter comes around to ask me how I’m doing, but we are in a hurry and it’s like he’s never even heard the words “personal space” before. “Oh, I love blue raspberry,” he informs me as I try to fit a medium lid on your large slushie. “Here,” he says, handing me the right size. I don’t look at him; my blond hair hangs in my eyes, freshly dried from the rain that fell two hours ago. “Thanks.” “No problem.” His skinny arms are folded across the chest of his dark uniform, which hangs loosely about him, and he is still smiling at our blue slushies as I fit the lids on. “My mom used to hate these things,” he says. “She still does, actually. I love them, but she’s always like, ‘Blue raspberry? Why don’t they just call it sour blueberry or something? Don’t they know there’s no such thing--’” I am pulling a hundred and fifty dollars out of my jeans and dropping it at his feet because I cannot afford patience right now. “Oh. Uh... sorry,” he mutters as the bell on the door rings again. He is scraping the bills off of the white tile floor, and people like him need to learn to be less comfortable. He clearly hasn’t been hit or pushed or told to back the hell off enough times in his life. He’s the sort of person to get into the front seat of an Uber, although I’m sure he has a pair of soft-hearted parents who drive him to work every morning and kiss him on the cheek, so he doesn’t have to worry about that. “Hey,” you say. I smile and you are smiling too. We sip our slushies as we merge onto the highway, resuming our journey to paradise. The day our world fell apart was yesterday. At least, that’s the way it seems. I can remember it all in perfect detail, the tears in your viridian eyes and the annihilating sensation of true love being torn away from you. When I picked you up for dinner that night, you were happier than you are now. You were wearing a perfect red sundress covered in flowers, vibrant petals of yellow and pink and white, and your face was fresh and beautiful, even with the makeup you think you have to wear, and there were three rings on your left hand. I had a ring too, the same one I am wearing now as we hold hands across the centre console. The ring is wrought in the shape of a silver flower, and you gave it to me after I told you how much I loved it, exactly one week before I picked you up in your red dress. “Jake, will you wear rings with me?” “Of course I’ll wear rings with you.” “Really?” “Yes. Give me the flower one.” And so the flower ring was mine, and I wear it everywhere now. If anyone judges me, I’ll just show them a picture of you and tell them, “she gave it to me,” and what will they say to that? You’re the most gorgeous girl in the world, my dear Aleta Colley. The others were already at the restaurant when we arrived: my cousin, Jamie, and your best friend, Gabby, were by the doors, laughing about something on Jamie’s phone, while Jamie’s friend Ryan stood leaning against the dark windows to their left. Ryan was dressed in a plain white button-down that he had clearly spent an hour ironing and some brand new jeans and a pair of freshly polished white vans and his face. His face, I could imagine the way it dropped when he realized Jamie was coming. “Don’t feel bad,” Jamie told me earlier that day. “He’ll feel awkward for a while and maybe he’ll hate me, but it’s fine. Hopefully he’ll leave Gabby alone after tonight.” A part of me did feel bad, though. A little. Another part of me knew that some people know how to find beautiful love, and some don’t. I spent months wanting you, remember, and I wanted you quietly. I waited, I was patient, and Ryan was like the overeager kid in the gas station. He was chasing the wrong girl, and he had to slow himself down. The two girls working the front desk informed us they were full, but they could have a table for five ready in about twenty minutes, and isn’t that just the saddest thing you’ve ever heard? A table for five. I could almost taste the blood in Ryan’s face. After dinner, we bid our friends goodbye--Ryan practically sighed with relief once the bills were paid--and I drove you to our favorite cafe downtown. We sat in a booth, my arms around you in the corner, our bags in the other seat across the table, two chocolate milkshakes waiting on the mahogany surface. “Jake,” you said. “Aleta.” “I love you.” “And I love you.” “And I’ve been missing you.” I kissed your ear until you pushed me away, giggling, and I told you, “Being alone is so weird, Aleta. I always have my hands in my pockets when I’m at the store or something, and I’m so used to having them in yours.” “Aww, Jake.” “But I know I’m only without you physically. And this is growth.” We’d been spending less time with each other lately, and the time we did have was beautiful. We cherished it, because we knew it mattered now. We would both be starting university in the fall, and we would need time to focus and study, to work hard. “Because I don’t want to enjoy you while you last, Jake. I just want to enjoy you. Forever.” “So do I, Aleta.” You sat a little straighter in the booth and held my face between your hands. “I’m really proud of us.” I held your wrists, our noses touching. “Me, too.” “We’re a lot stronger than we were a small time ago. We’re better at being apart--we’re doing things that seemed impossible a few months ago, and I feel way more ready to talk to my parents about it all. I’m still nervous about what they’ll say, and... I don’t know. I know we should’ve told them way earlier, but--” And then your mother was settling down in the cushioned seat across the table from us, the metallic sound of change in her purse, the brushing of her wool sweater as she propped her elbows on the table and clasped her hands together. “We need to talk.” Do you remember the tulips I bought for you on your birthday, in December? I mean, everything about that is artificial--everything except for my love, of course. But tulips in December? What a fragile, short-lived gesture. You accepted them gratefully, but the tulips, of course, did not come naturally. They were either grown somewhere far away, or in a massive, corporate sized greenhouse here in Canada. In December. They were grown for the sole purpose of marketability and, as soon as they were beautiful, ready to sell, began to die. We are like those tulips, you and I. Love has never looked so desperate as us on the 17th of July, five hours before your plane was scheduled to leave the airport and deliver you to Switzerland, forever away from me. You had family there, and your dad had found a new job overseas, and-- And I doubted you. This was desperate, it was mad, and as I sat in my truck at the end of your street at five o’clock in the morning, the sun cresting the horizon, my body trembling with anticipation, I began to tell myself that you were not coming after all. Surely, you had realized how crazy this was, how much saner you’d be to just get on that plane and start your new life in Switzerland and forget about Jake Devland, the dream of a boy you lived in for a while. Your dad would start his new job in a few short days and you wouldn’t have to sleep on couches or in hotel rooms with me, and-- But there you were, easing the front door shut behind you, hopping quickly and quietly down the concrete steps you’d been climbing for years, refusing to even glance at the windows you’d been gazing out of every day of your life. No looking back now. We didn’t start driving for a while. You threw your duffel bag in the back seat and we just sat there, leant over the centre console, holding each other. I let you cry and shudder and kiss me with your wet lips, telling me you love me. And then we left. At six o’clock in the morning, the quarry is a dreamscape of emptiness. I have never seen a place so tranquil and pristine, so fit for the setting of not a goodbye but a tragic hello, a hello to a new beginning. “Jake,” you say as we walk, hand in hand down the winding roads of pale sand. And then you are shuddering in my arms. “I’m scared.” “It’s okay,” I say, but maybe this was a mistake. Maybe... but no. No, because when I imagine going to sleep at night, knowing you are across the world forgetting about me, knowing I found you only to lose you, it kills me inside. I need you, and we are exactly where we are meant to be, here on the ghostly shores of paradise. You are kissing my bare chest, my arms, and I am staring over your head at the cliffs above, where the train tracks stretch for miles in either direction. The air is still in this isolated place and the water is calm and constant, a single, seductive eye. I will be constant like that to you. I am calm and strong and it is such a wonderful feeling, to be so certain about someone. We’ve helped each other grow and I am ready to care for you, and so I know we will be okay. We are going to be something to remember, you and I. We lay together on our towels, silent for a time with our hands intertwined, and every time we squeeze, it is like saying all of the words in our young, terrified hearts without actually saying them, like eating without eating, infusing the words into our veins through silver needles. After some minutes, I prop myself on my elbow and bring your chin up with my two fingers, so our foreheads are together. “How do you feel?” You smirk, and until this moment I had thought smirking sadly was impossible. “I feel like a criminal,” you say, drawing pensively in the sand, and suddenly you are crying again. “I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing.” “I know,” I say, and I am wishing you’d stop crying, but I understand. “I feel like everyone we know would say we’re stupid,” you cry. “There’s no one in my life who would respect me if they knew I was doing this.” Your skin was bronze, your hair silk, and your eyes two seas as deep and wet and clear as the open water before us as you gazed across its waveless surface. “It isn’t too late,” I say, and I am praying that you won’t make me bring you back and say goodbye to you. You take a quivering breath and release my hands. “We both know that’s not true.” You are hugging your knees to your chest, and neither of us have a chance to say anything more before we realize that is, in fact, not too late, because there is a voice calling from the railroad tracks above. Your body tenses as your head whips around and you gasp, “What the f--? Dad? ” On one of my last nights at home, a few days before I moved here and fell in love with you, I fell asleep at the top of the big red slide at Callander Park. I stayed there until morning, comatose, because I didn’t want to see the end of the night. I was moving away in two days and I tried to convince Harrison, who had to work early the next morning, to stay with me. “Just drink a few coffees before your shift,” I said. “I’m moving soon, you’ll regret it if you don’t stay.” But it was just the two of us, no girls or any real excitement, just us and our drugs on the playground, and he left me there. “You sure you don’t want a ride?” “Nah, I wanna stay here a bit longer. I can walk.” So I stayed there, and I was alone when I woke up because I am always striving to make the good times last longer than they should. I’ve always had a hard time accepting that the golden moments are not meant to be forever, and that’s what got us into this mess in the first place. And this is where we end. We know this, both of us, as I hold you fiercely, your parents descending the rocky slope, bringing the awful truths of reality with them. There are a lot of things we should have done differently, a lot of mistakes we’ve made together, but none of it matters anymore. What matters are your tears on my skin and your lips on mine as they watch, because this is the last time. “Please don’t fight them,” I say. My voice feels choked and distant. “It’s okay, Aleta.” “How can you say that?” “Because it is. It’s okay.” We could never run away. No, we were never going to make it. We are seventeen years old with a total of maybe 16 grand to our names, no plan, no jobs, no-- No. I know you need a life with your family. I know you will need a wedding they can attend, one they approve of. You need guidance and safety and nights of peace where you fall asleep knowing that, yes, you are safe. Maybe you would settle for less, for me, but I no longer want that. I want the most for you, which is why I am watching you cry from afar for the first time, something I am not used to doing because, until now, I have always been there to hold you while your tears fall. You don’t look back, and I wait until you are over the hill before I collapse to my knees and let my own tears fall. I dig my nails into the dirt and I am shuddering, but I feel sure that we have done the right thing. We will have some time between us now, a few thousand miles, but that’s the beautiful thing about love. I need you, Aleta, and I know you need me too, and so, of course, if God appears to tell me that I have to wait five or six or a hundred years to see you again, I will hate Him for it. But I will be here waiting.


Author's Note: Hello! This story has been a bit of a whirlwind. I just joined Reedsy two days before this is due. I wrote over two thousand words, but somehow half of it didn't save, so I has to re-write the majority of the story. It may be rushed, and it may be of poor quality, but I think I learned from this experience. Enjoy! Trigger Warnings: Minor Mentions of Alcohol abuse, subjective dialogue, etc. Lulu Stadnik, the little girl with the little bow flopping up and down in her black sea of hair. But now, little Lulu is left in the dull-lit room with her dull hair, in contrast to her bright bow and the bright lights that flickered on and off over her head. The lights flickered and blinked with a dying energy, the girls overactive mind pictured teensy little googly eyes and mouths on each tiny bulb, gasping for air, there last breaths. Until they die out. Because the Party is over, and little Lulu is left to clean up the big teenager’s mess. The girl with the dashed and freckled face, with flowing Black hair billowing downward in unorthodox spirals hugging closely to her cheekbones. Little Lulu with her lopsided jaw and stubby legs. Lulu and her puffy lips and perking ears and chipping nails. That's why Lulu was left out of the big kid party, with the 16's and 17's and even a few 20 somethings. In a house with two older siblings, Priscilla, and Derik. Ugly names, but proportional faces. Cool kids. She was a dork, a geek, for lack of a better term. But stubby legged, short, freckle faced Lulu was dull enough in the head just like her hair to think that a lack of an invitation was due to her age. Young Lulu, not freckle face, or even the U word. U g l y Someone with a house so clustered and crowded between smoky breath and parties every other night wouldn't be as lonely as little Lulu? But she was alone, left alone to clean up the big kid’s mess. Well, to say she was alone would be a fabrication of the truth, and who wants that? Ben, "Benny" Tangent, the tall, fellow freckle faced basement dweller, with bony limbs and a slanted facial shape. Shaggy blonde hair and Hazel eyes, a plain lime green polo tucked into tan khakis. He, along with Lulu, thought they were guest to the prestigious Big Kid Party, Lulu even wore a hand-me-down dress from her aunt. A murky white dress, more like a crooked weaving of rags with a thick coating of dust, and a shredded edge remaining in dangling strands. But, nonetheless, the two pals were met with a finger pointing to the basement door, exiling them to the deep depths of boredom. "The trash bag is, pretty full..." Benny bellowed across the room. He heaved a white garbage bag, packed to the absolute brim with crumbled cups, with splashes of an 'unknown liquid', shattered glass, LED Lights, and chipped edges or corners of furniture that is no more. "Pass me another one will ya?" He called. "Yeppers- lemme see... Yeesh, we've already gone through a whole box! Party must have been..." "Wild?" He pressed his foot onto the bottom of the bag, and sharply jerked the two ties of the bag upwards and pulled them into a tight bow. "Pretty much, well. The basement was fine, at least we got-ta hang for a bit, ya know?" "Yeah, where's your crazy siblings at?" He asked curiously. But Lulu simply shrugged in response, eyes darting upwards to an upper layer of LED Lights, strung in a transverse wave like pattern and held up with duct tape. She crossed her brows and pinned her fist to her hips. "Stupid tall people..." "What?" "Oh! Nothing." She glanced over at her tall friend, but little Lulu was stubborn. She extended her arms upwards and hopped, like a baby birdie who just, couldn't fly. Yet she mistook her stubbornness for persistence, a frequent delusion for the youngster, and she indeed persisted. "You need help with tha-?" Benny started, but abruptly Lulu shook her head. She furrowed her brows and stretched upwards again. The dull haired girl and her dull brain couldn't comprehend her surroundings, the obvious hints to just, give up. She refused to acknowledge the existence of chairs, scattered across the room, that she could simply prop against the wall and step atop. She neglected the existence of her friend Benny, tall Benny. Decent Benny. Benny with his blonde hair and hazel eyes, and his top test scores and his gaming victories and... "Dude, come on. Just let me-" "no-No-NO!" Lulu stomped her foot down and pursed her lip. She looked like a child, throwing a tantrum. But she wasn't a child, she knew that. She needed, to know that. The girl flung her arms upwards and hopped up and down, her fingers extending upwards and tightly clutching the air. She made a few audible squeals, her curls danced around her face violently as she gritted her teeth. Her face turned red after a few moments, a mix of frustration and embarrassment. She swung her arms up as the lights twinkled and shook above her. She leaped up, legs thrusting back and forth. “Alright...” Benny pulled a few stray locks of hair away from his eyes, tucked behind his pointy ears. He leaned down and snatched another white plastic bag from the small pile, perched against the back of a wooden chair. The bag swished as it spread apart, and he started to toss some empty party cups and pressed a couple dozen shards of glass scattered across the marble floor into a pile. His eyes darted back to Lulu, flapping her arms up and down and squirming midair. “Pfft- ya look like flappy bird.” Benny was town proclaimed, ‘King of the Arcade”. The boy could click and crank those chipping pastel buttons and levers as if it was witchcraft. At the top of all those notorious leaderboard screens, his name was plastered in white bubble font with tacky flash animations lining the edges. Little Lulu with her dull hair and dull brains had stubby little fingers that couldn’t twitch and turn like Benny’s could. Little Lulu didn’t have her name between flashing and flickering animations in bright letters. “Well- I’ve almost got it...” She murmured to herself, her face now inflated and pulsing red. Little Lulu with her short tempter, all over an insignificant strand of LED lights, dangling above her, taunting her in abstract loops and curves. Little Lulu who couldn’t even clean up after her big sibling’s party. Even though the two couldn’t clean up after themselves, and the two made it apparent not to tell Aunt Marge, meaning Lulu couldn’t tell Aunt Marge, not that she would believe her. Lulu had to clean up the mess, otherwise the crumbled cups and smashed furniture would be somehow blamed on her... and her aunt would be returning home in less than an hour. “Dude, it’s almost 7- your Aunt’s gonna be home, just go help me with the rug spill and I’ll do the LED lights later....” Benny started but was met with a piercing gaze. “No. I’m-getting these lights down...” She said with an abnormal raspy tone. Lulu had always felt equal to Benny, even though he was smarter. And looked better, even with his slanted grin and long, dangling limbs. But Benny was a fellow basement dweller, he liked wacky cartoons and having mature conversations around subject matter in books and satire and dorky little comic books and movies. But yet, Benny was taller, he had a solid 4.0 while Lulu was hanging with low C’s in most classes. “Come on, let me just...” “no-No-NO!” Lulu shouted, panting, fingers clutched into fist as she stomped up and down like a child. Her hair flung around in a spiraling whirlwind, black locks whipping her eyes and lower cheeks. She paused, realizing she was throwing a fit, like a toddler who lost her favorite toy. She wasn’t a child, not like everyone said she was, a whiney brat. After a moment, she exhaled and released the tension in her limbs, looking back to Benny with a pursed frown. She glanced up at the LED lights, but rather then try and reach them in a desperate hop, she knelt down and felt her limbs collapse to a sudden relaxed prediction. She slowly tucked her knees into her chest and pinned her back to the sandy tan painted wall. “Gee- Lu, it’s just some lights, what’s the big deal?” Benny crossed his brows, stepping over to Lulu and slid down into a crisscrossed pose. When Lulu gave no response, other than burying her cheeks in the palms of her hands. “This is, about more then, the lights, isn’t it?” “No... yes, I dunno. I guess first it was just about, not being able to reach them... but you can reach them.” “So? It’s not a big deal.” “To you maybe! Because you’re Benny! Perfect Benny!” “Wha-?” “Stupid Benny with your stupid smooth blonde hair and, and smart brain and... stupid games! And your- uh... I dunno...” Lulu felt a short flash of guilt at what she just spat out to her best friend. She switched shades from red to pale white, until she shook her head and perched her head on top her kneecaps. “I-I didn’t mean it...” “I know you didn’t.” Benny said with a slight shrug, fiddling with his foot and smacking his lips to ease the tense silence. “I, I guess I feel kinda, worthless, compared to you.” “No-No don’t say that. Were both geeks, it’s how we...” “But your like, king of geeks! Good at games! Good grades! And your stupidly perfect! Stupid Benny with his stupid... You pry have like, all the records at the Arcade! And me? I’ve got nothing... all I can do is throw myself an unwarranted pity party...” Benny tensed up, unsure of how to reply. After a few moments of a swelling silence, he exhaled slowly and pressed his lips together. “Stupid Lulu.” “Huh?” Lulu pulled her smooth black curls out of her face and crossed her brows. “Stupid Lulu! Stupid Lulu, whose always able to wake up with a smile on her face!” “That’s not an accompli- I know what you’re doing.” “And her stupid curls that she can always iron like, perfectly! And her stupid feistiness! She’s like, the best one on the debate team!” Lulu blushed, “I was kinda great last trial.” “Yeah you were! I don’t care if you struggle in school! Who cares! I mean, whoever cares, and says something about it! I’ll punch them with my, really weak arm.” He smiled, a wide, goofy smile, like one sloppily painted in bright red on an exaggerated emoji. Lulu giggled, and glanced back up at the lights, they looked less taunting, more cheerful, like gentle flickers in the plain tan room. “I’ll stay here all night until you get them down if I have to. Cause you can do it-...” “Nope.” Lulu smiled upwards at the twinkling shades of the rainbow. “Keep them there, I’ll keep them there.” She smirked and pushed herself to a standing. “Let’s clean that rug.” Benny nodded and snatched a wet rag and tossed the other to Lulu. The stared at the large ‘juice’ stain on the floor, grinning with crooked and sloppy smiles. Little Lulu, and tall Benny, with there freckled faces and goofy grins, cleaning up the imperfections of the room. And it was perfect.


In 2001, I bought a bag of magic mushrooms in Shibuya. They were legal at the time and could either be bought at designated mushroom shops with big neon mushroom advertising, or on the street where they were displayed on top of makeshift wooden tables. Stringy shriveled dry things in transparent bags for 2000 yen. I bought a bag, put the contents in my mouth and chased them down with an Asahi beer to quash the taste, then walked up the hill to a free trance party in Yoyogi park to dance with the freaks. Mushroom drapes hung off a nearby pedestrian bridge and a small pop-up bar sold tequila. In amongst all the twisted and exalted faces that danced around was a fire-sprite named Kayo. She had frizzy dyed-brown mid-length hair that glowed in the sun and a mischievous pretty face. She lay under the sound system in Cleopatran gold attire, clothes that looked like she’d made them in art college, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her. The World Cup was fast approaching and the Mayor was beginning to sweat. Hordes of drunk football tourists and foreign media would soon arrive, and the whole planet would be watching. So the Mayor decided to clean the city in order to create a good impression. He closed down the trance parties in Yoyogi Park and got rid of the rock bands that played alongside the main park road every weekend. He outlawed magic mushrooms and painted over the street art. He banished the punks, rockers, metal heads, freaks and snuffed out all the colour. The World Cup arrived and the city was clean! Sparkling new concrete everywhere, but a few smudges remained. The Mayor hadn’t gotten the cleaning brush into all the corners. One evening, a buddy and I walked through one of said smudges - an ill-lit backstreet in Kabukicho district with rats scurrying around in it, and lined with yakuza-run strip joints and fuck parlours. A ponytailed man in his 30s with cheap sunglasses and alligator skin shoes stood in the dark behind a portable wooden table and ushered us over to inspect his wares. On the table were bags of different kinds of dried mushrooms, twisted and dry cunning things, and some little bottles and vials too. After some back-and-forth with the seller about what everything did, he sold us two little pipette bottles of 2-CI for 2000 yen each which we uncapped, swallowed and washed down with beer. The 2-CI had a battery-acid taste the beer couldn’t hide and it wasn’t long before we were bent and twisted. We slithered on foot from Shinjuku to Roppongi which is quite an odd thing to do if you know the layout of the Tokyo subway. On arrival in Roppongi, we were greeted by a large swaying green wall of horribly drunk Irish football fans in heavy song standing along the stairs of the Dubliners and facing off with a line of riot police. In the middle of that impenetrable green wall was a solitary round red and white thing that bounced around at a different pace to everything else around it. It looked like a rubber ball vibrating and fragmenting. Riding the 2-CI peak we were! Ireland won that night. England did too, 3-0 against Denmark, although you would never have known it looking at that speedy red and white ball-thing which I later came to realize, once the drugs had levelled off, was a solo Dane with his face painted with the Danish flag celebrating manically amongst the Irish. The 2002 WC circus came and went. Fast forward to 2020 and the current mayor is up to the same tricks.


“A sharp inhale with pursed lips.” My father randomly said that during one of the many silences we shared. It’s how he said a beer sounded when you opened it. He had a bunch of phrases and quotes that stuck with me. “You’re not a drunk if you’ve never been genuinely dejected by the words, ‘Alcohol Free’ on a bottle of mouthwash.” “Everything is, or isn’t, Ice Cream.” “Fuck is the most versatile word in the English language.” He had a point. Verb, Noun, Adverb, Interjection, it’s like the swiss army-knife of swear words.   He’d tell stories, too. Like the time he got drunk while on leave in the Army and accidentally invaded Jordan. I can barely picture it. Two dudes, a stolen dingy, and a megaphone hurtling toward the Jordanian Coast Guard while screaming, “Give us all your pita bread!” A lot different from who I knew. Sure the man drank, but quietly.   This was the drunkest I ever saw him: a couch between him and I while the TV was blaring. Red was screaming at Blue about something neither of us cared about. He sipped on almost a full bottle of tequila that night, and a point came where he made one of those old man noises. He was only 40 or so, I’m not sure anymore, but he made the noises--the gurgle grump throat rumble noise, and stood up, but when his legs went straight, they wobbled. He tilted forward a bit, and then back. “I’m going to bed,” he said, and then he did. That was the drunkest I ever saw him.   “Don’t make me parent.” Something else he always said. Odd thing to say to your kid, but I got what he meant eventually. During one of those tedious parent teacher conferences he was told of my “test taking difficulty,” how I would hand in half blank scantrons or simply walk away in the middle of one. I thought he was upset because he was gonna have to parent. Rather, he explained how he was the same way as a kid. His head would get all fuzzy and his chest would get tight during a test or when a teacher called on him.   “It’s not a big deal,” he said. “Whenever you think your nerves are gonna get bad and you feel you gotta run, don’t be a bitch. Just say, ‘Fuck it’, and get your shit done.” That was half of his philosophy. Get your shit done, and don’t be a dick. “Don’t be a dick is second because sometimes you have to be to get your shit done,” he explained.   He’d be the first to tell you that he wasn’t good with kids. Too often he would speak to them as adults and expect them to figure it out. It’s why he wasn’t mad when he was called down to the principal’s office the next week for his ten-year-old son randomly screaming, “Fuck it!” in the back of a classroom to calm himself down. He laughed his ass off and called me an idiot, but he wasn’t mad. Fuck ups and stupidity were a part of the process. He only got mad when I lied, or was lazy. Even then, he never used his hands when his words would do. Sure, when I was being a dickhead he would slap me in the back of the head and tell me to shut up, but he never beat me, or anything like that. He did throw me into a brick wall once, but it was for pushing my baby sister so it doesn’t really count. Last time I saw him he reminded me about that. And the milk story. That was always his favorite.   I was helping him unload groceries one day, where I climbed into the truck bed to hand him bags as he walked them inside. The last two items were two, one-gallon jugs of milk. I picked up both of them thinking I was the shit and walked to the end of the truck bed. The gap between the bed and the floor was as tall as me, so I just stood there staring down, sincerely perplexed as to how I was going to descend without putting the jugs down. He watched me do half, one legged squats for a few minutes until I realized my legs weren’t long enough to reach the ground. When I finally noticed he was there, this idiot little boy looked up with the most serious face and said, “Dad. I did not think this through.”   “That’s when I knew,” he told me, “That’s when I knew you were gonna be okay.   \*\*\*   Last June I woke up with a broken hand and an anvil on my chest, crying. I rolled over and hacked what was left of my lungs, coughed until my eyes watered and when I was done, they were flooded. Part of me loved it. I thought to myself, *It’s like a weight being lifted off my shoulders*, and then I was furious at how fucking cliché that sounded so I decided to shut it down. Started off small with the classic, *Don’t be a pussy*, but then came, *Fuck, that’s a cliché too*, and then I was feeling more guilty than I already was. Small thinking failed so onto the macro. A quick little, *You have nothing to cry about*, and I was wondering why I’m not thought of as the deplorables. “They’re not sending their best,” they say, as if the best are already here. I am part of “the best.” White, middle class, educated. I have never raped, nor have I murdered, and according to Red these be the sole criteria of what makes someone a good person, as if that’s all there is to it. That’s what they see when they look at me.   I wonder what they would say if they knew part of me comes from a “shithole,” that 25% of me had the gall to slither its way into this country to study its practices and heal its citizens, mixing with what it found. Only about half of them even notice, usually along the lines of, “so what else are you,” which begets questions. Does this make me one of them? If I tell Red will they send 25% of me back? If I tell people from my 25% will they protect me? Hell, would they believe me? Or would they correct me and say I didn’t do any of that so I should just shut the fuck up? Would make sense to me if they did. 25% isn’t big enough to place in the pockets of understanding.   I don’t know how to combat that feeling. Guilty over something I have no control over, yet immensely benefit from. What should I do? Post a black square on Instagram? Retweet something else someone else said? Virtue signal to the world so I can look myself in the mirror and call myself an ally? As if it’s up to me. I’m as clueless as when I was as a child whenever a white lady would ask me if my father was actually my father. Certainty this stern-faced brown man with what they assumed to be a scared little freckled white boy was something that needed to be stopped. That’s what they saw. I looked up and saw Dad. I hate that white lady now, the sort of person who only thinks of humanity and its ails to distract her from her own... Fuck.   \*\*\*   A kiss on the cheek shouldn’t be as commonplace as it is. It should be an indicator that someone is so in love, they can’t wait to get to another’s lips. That energy is anything but. The energy of a thousand little red ants crawling over a thousand more to build a bridge, climbing one over the other, one over the other, like a spear flying in slow motion. A bright red spear of a thousand little red ants climbing on top of a thousand little red ants--a kiss on the cheek. Sometimes a hole in the wall. Or a pan thrown at your face. A burger on the floor.   I didn’t say anything to Mia at first. I did sing along to “Lovebug,” by the Jonas brothers. Quietly, of course. Didn’t want to make things worse. Just loud enough for her to laugh at how horrible I am at singing. Took an intermission when we pulled up to the drive thru so I could tell the underpaid teenager her order. No tomatoes and no onions. I had already eaten. Didn’t think I was gonna see her that night. I told her I was busy, but really I had been avoiding her for the last few days out of fear. Never made it this far with anyone else, and my head had been telling me to run. Yet, when she called, I didn’t think at all. Just brushed my teeth, sniffed my balls, drove over there, and started singing. After we got the food, I parked the car a little ways away so she could start eating. That’s what I wish happened. That she just sat there and ate the damn burger. Everything was okay until she started talking.   “Five years ago,” she said, sobbing. “Five years ago today my best friend, Emily, died in a hit and run accident. She was walking home from my house when a drunk driver hit her crossing the street and just kept on going.”   I had seen people talk about death before, but never like this. She was feeling everything she was saying as she was saying it.   “She was alive for a while, too. Just bleeding in the street alone. I should have walked her home. Or told her to stay a little longer so my dad could drive her. I didn’t think anything of it.”   I was thinking.   “Our favorite band was the Jonas Brothers,” she continued.   What the fuck was I thinking for thinking?   “Lovebug was her favorite song, actually. We had this jar in my room to save up for tickets. We were so close to making it that year, too.”   I left the car then. Told her I had to go to the bathroom. I walked back to the restaurant, where I pulled out my phone and searched, *drunk driver kills teenage girl june 2014 Santa Ana*, *santa ana hit and run dead june 2014*, *emily dead santa ana 2014*, and every other variation of it. When I got back to the car I didn’t speak right away. She didn’t either. She was too busy leading me down those streets that T.S. Eliot talked about.   “I just wish I could’ve told her--" “I don’t believe you,” I said. “I think you’re lying.” “That’s a fucked up thing to say.” “I know,” I said. “Tell me I’m wrong. Please.”   I thought I hated being wrong. I’m so stubborn that I would jokingly tell her that I’m always right and she would point out every time I was wrong. Turned into a little game we played where we would keep score, and the loser had to do something the other hated. If she had won I would have had to do something like go on a ferris wheel. If I had one I would have made her just eat the damn burger.   It was the first time I hated being right. It was the first time I saw her afraid and the first time she saw me angry. First time I broke an air conditioner vent with my fist, or took a cheeseburger out of someone’s lap and threw it on the ground, and the first time I left someone in a parking lot alone at night.   My friend got a new pair of shoes, though. He’s very religious, when he’s not fucking other men, and occasionally hangs out with other people who are very religious. I was at his house a few days later, surrounded by people whose only vices were tea and video games. They asked me if I was sleeping with anyone, had I ever done drugs, what it was like being drunk. They looked at me like I had knowledge of this secret world that they’d only seen on TV. That’s what they thought. That my life was an episode of Entourage where I could drink forever without getting drunk and fuck anyone I wanted. They didn’t understand that after one drink I would start to feel drunk. That the volume of consumption was not to reach a threshold but to maintain one. Or that, devoid of an orgasm, sex is nothing more than two uncomfortable people trying their best not to be.   Then they asked me about my hand and I told them all I remember was trying to stand on some grass next to a lake and the next thing I knew, I woke up with a broken hand and an anvil on my chest. My friend filled in the blanks.   “Mia called me, worried about you. Vanessa was busy, so I tracked you down and took you to the lake to sober up. Where you tried to fight a pole. That’s how you broke your hand. Said it was trying to fuck with you. But that was after the lake. One of the times you tried to stand up you fell back down and just sort of lied there for a bit. A duck walked up towards you and you mumbled something about it staring at you. So you snatched it with both hands and puked all over it. Its wings were flapping the vomit everywhere, all over me.” “I puked on a duck?” “You puked on a duck,” he said.   I puked on a duck.   Mia paid for his shoes to say sorry and that was that. For a while. Eventually I would ask another question. At least my friend got a new pair of shoes out of it.   \*\*\*   My mother once slapped me across the face once when I asked if she needed help doing the dishes. I’m talking a proper, Grant Theft Auto type of backhand with the rings and everything. Said I was being sarcastic. Can’t blame her. She was drunk. That wasn’t odd. The odd came from the fact that I was too young to know what sarcasm was, and once I did, it made even less sense. She always got mad when I told her she was a drunk like her mother or that if I were her father, I would have left sooner, not when I was joking. To be fair, her mom is a fucking nightmare, but I can see how that could be considered rude, now. Doesn’t mean it’s not true. It’s not like he abandoned them for poverty, no matter how much she tries to convince you otherwise. Her dad was a nightmare too, the type of guy that gets pissed off when you tell him the soup tastes like shit as he washes his fingers in it. Though, to his credit, if you’re going to abandon your wife and three children, his was a solid way. He left them on Father’s day, with his wife’s best friend, right after taking his company public. He threw twelve million at them and fucked off. Dick move, absolutely, but the man committed. I’d only like to kick him in the balls respectfully, like a President or a Priest.   When I was fourteen I didn’t do math homework for three days in a row and she told me, “I give up. I’m just waiting for you to die now.” I didn’t bring it up for years, until one day she was giving me shit for ditching school. “I thought you were just waiting for me die?” I said so she kicked me out of the house. Didn’t really make a difference to me. I was halfway moved out as is, so I never looked back. Already had a key, a toothbrush, and a parking spot at a friend’s apartment. Officially, it was just him and his mom, Lisa, that lived there. Unofficially, there were about nine to ten different people coming and going out of that place. Immediate friend group along with whomever we thought we loved at the time.   Lisa let us get away with murder in that place, but that’s not why I loved her. There were plenty of other reasons. Hands down, makes the best cookies in the world. She used to make these caramel, snickerdoodle shits and they’re better than comfortable sex. Me and her ate a whole tray of those once watching the Bravo channel and those shitty Lifetime movies. Lisa made you feel like being there was what you were supposed to be doing, which made me feel guilty for taking advantage of that whenever I could. Especially since her son treated her like shit. Never cleaned up after himself, constantly asked her for money when she was barely affording rent, blamed her for the divorce. It pissed me off to no end. I tried cleaning whenever I could, or tackling the seemingly endless mountain of dishes. But if I’m being honest, I did more harm to that place than help. I could’ve done more. Chipped in for groceries, maybe. Hell I was there so much I probably should have paid rent. Fuck, I miss her.   When I showed up at her house with a garbage bag full of clothes all she asked me was if I knew how to open a bottle of wine. I told her I taught myself how to when I was a six so I could empty it into the sink after my mother passed out. Told her how it never made sense to me, how they got that cork in there yet no one can ever get it back in, the foil around it all. I didn’t understand why they made it so difficult to get to. I didn’t understand a lot of things back then. Why the couch cushions got flipped around a lot. Why some nights Mom was quiet and stable and others she was loud and clumsy. Just thought she was unlucky. Always spilling and dropping everything. It made sense to pour it out. Save the couch, a ton of would be shattered glass and ceramic, and make it quiet again so the refs could hear us during Lakers games. It didn’t take her long to figure out it was me and not just her drinking more than she thought she had. I told Lisa how I learned not to do that again and that’s when I stopped watching Lakers games. I told Lisa everything. Slapping for sarcasm, pans thrown at my head, and waiting to die, but she didn’t hug me. She hugged me the first time I met her but not then. She didn’t tell me she was sorry to hear that because she had heard that too many times about her ex. She didn’t do anything that normal people would do.   “Why are you friends with these guys, my son,” she said. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t exactly fit in.” That’s the kindest thing anyone has ever told me.   \*\*\*   For seventeen years I looked out my window and stared at a bench tucked away in the backyard, pressed against a fence I shared with a neighbor I never knew. Its back legs rested on a pile of rocks that were lower than the cement the front legs rested on. It tilted upward towards the sun over the years and the wood lost its color. What was once a strong, hickory brown became an ashy grey, dry to the touch, covered in cracks and splinters. It withered for years as I stared at it. That decrepit, ashy grey, splintery bench.   I got sick of looking at the fucking thing, so about a year before I broke my hand I dragged it out from the rocks away from my window to the center of the yard. I took sandpaper that I found in the garage, different grains and colors and sizes, some full sheets, others oddly shaped scraps leftover from when they were cut. I took all of them and I started grinding away, not realizing just how much work sanding a bench is by hand. After about an hour of me sanding the same spot over and over again, Dad peeked his head out from the side yard and I was ready to go. The man always had a way of doing things that rendered everyone else’s entirely wrong. I was ready to tell him to fuck off and leave me alone, but then he left. Returned a few minutes with a mask, a yellow can, a blue tarp, a paint brush, and a paddle with a razor on the end of it.   “Step back,” he said. The smell of whatever was in that can nearly knocked me on my ass. It was still burning my nostrils even after the thirty minutes he told me to wait. I took the paddle and sliced off the wet, ashy grey strips with ease, and they fell down to the blue tarp. By the time I was done Mom had shown up with sheets of fresh sandpaper and a bucket of varnish.   I spent the rest of the weekend sanding. Every time I took a breath, I would choke on dust. I went over every plank and corner twice, revealing a swirl of colors--yellow, red, brown, orange--all mixed together and breathing comfortably. When I was finished that bench was smoother than anything. No cracks, no splinters, no ash. Like if Don Draper, Shaft, and the Dos Equis guy all had a baby that somehow didn’t get the misogyny gene, type of smooth. I was proud, and didn’t bother hiding it. Thought I found something I was finally good at, too. Mom was excited because it would be nice enough to be put in the front yard again and Dad liked the fact his son had done something without being told.   Mia didn’t give a shit. Told me it would have been more impressive if I built it. I loved her as soon as she said that. We were both dating other people at the time. Her a nice boy who opened doors and asked her how she felt. Me, someone who tried her absolute best to support me in every way imaginable. It was a horribly boring time. They were both good people, but Mia and I had common interests. Like fucking each other in the bathroom while our respective partners are downstairs, rejoining the party and pretending that nothing happened. Watching her come up with excuses on the spot and her swallowing Plan B an hour later are the two sexiest things I have ever seen. We lasted longer than I thought it would. The lying and the sneaking around lost its appeal and we each did the mature thing. Broke up with our partners and lied to them about why.   Then it was just us two. It stopped being exciting and started getting serious. That bench was where I told her we should stop. That we were doomed to end in a big, beautiful, angry way. A burger on the floor and her alone in a parking lot. She didn’t agree. Told me it was fate. Talked about time being dead and sound freezing when my lips were pressed against hers. How we could say things to each other on this bench that no one else could hear.   “People who die skydiving,” she would say, “kinda have it coming.” “My favorite thing,” I said, “is watching a kid eat shit on a skateboard.”   Everything we said was met with enthusiasm and relief, and slowly but surely the little red ants climbed. A bright red spear of a thousand little red ants climbing on top of a thousand little red ants--I missed and kissed her on the cheek.   \*\*\*   I think about that bench all the time, now that I have the time. The guy behind the glass at the gas station was excited to see me because he hadn’t since last June. He told me how crazy it all is, asked if I still had my job, blah blah blah. I wasn’t listening, really. Kind of hard to hear behind the masks. As loud as the world is to us, we are more muffled to each other than ever before.   Nothing registered until he said, “I don’t know when this is gonna end,” like a sack of potatoes. He added a sincere “stay safe,” and I gave him a nod then walked away. Couldn’t even dignify the man with a response. I stared down at the pack of cigarettes and thought that if this was a movie, I would throw them away. One of those people that you see on a daily basis but never bother to ask anything else, the man who pours your coffee, the woman who takes your order. One of those familiar strangers shows me compassion and my character would decide to be someone else because he realized we can still connect with people, even if it is from six feet away. I haven’t decided who I want to be yet.   I find myself thinking about Dad more. Mainly about all the funny little quotes he would’ve made, what he would’ve thought of everything. I like to think Mother Nature got sick of us screaming at each other so she put everyone in time-out. Gave us all something to share again. I think about Mia too, about how fucked up it would be if the hospital made a person like her work through this shit. Her asthma hasn’t been a problem for a while, but still, I can’t help but think the worst. Speaking of which, I hope Mom is okay too. Haven’t called her since it all started. I made sure she stocked up on all the essentials and my sister drops off groceries weekly, armored in makeshift masks and gloves she stole from the restaurant where she works. I wonder what that bench looks like now, too.   Then another day comes and I’m glad my father’s dead. He would’ve gone stir crazy, anyways. I’ll think that Mother Nature wants to tear us apart for good. I’ll text Mia but only to ask if she’s still alive. She tries to tell me about how the hospital let her go so her and Pops are barely hanging on. I want to give a shit but I also don’t know if she’s telling the truth. “Just don’t die,” I tell her. My mother, on the other hand, can go ahead and croak. Better just to rip the band-aid off now and get it over with. Then I could finally go back and get rid of that goddamn bench. I’m not sure. I notice myself going back and forth and I hate it.   I notice the backwardness of a cruel April and a warm winter, as I flip through the notes and read the likes of Baudelaire and Marvell, Dante, of pearl eyes and the lyrics of love. *Perfer et obdura, dolor hic tibi proderit olim*, he tells me. But how can I have patience as the ground splits beneath my feet? As I go back and forth? I do not want to be screaming across a chasm, nor drown between two, or forget the other existed. I want one foot in four facets like I’m a monument. I want the TV to shut off and flood with Purple, for the ones and zeros to go fuck themselves so we can write eight billion new algorithms for eight billion new people. I want to be a son, a lover, a craftsman, a friend, and a dishwasher. I want words like “ally” and “woke” to become obsolete so words like “Me Too” and “Mass Shooting” can surprise me again. I want this to not sound as ridiculous as it does. I want to care enough to do more than just notice things.   Instead, I open another one. A sharp inhale with pursed lips slices the air and I think to myself, that when I woke up last June, with a broken hand and an anvil on my chest, I should’ve taken a bat to that fucking bench, instead of running and kissing her on the cheek. I wish I could feel the sawdust and planks slapping me across the face as I stare down at the ashy grey pile of splinters and cracks, so I’ll never have to wake up and think of this shit ever again.


*Note: I transcribed this from an audio recording someone made on their phone. Video doesn't exist on the website.* //transcript// Good afternoon. My name is Roland Myr. I’m an aerospace engineer, soon-to-be former employee of NASA, and welcome to my TED Talk, *Success in Science: Space Careers*. Except-- I'm not gonna talk about that. What I’m about to do instead is turn off my phone [garbled] *so they can’t explode my fucking brain*, and talk to you about aliens. [whispers] And not just aliens. Alien invasion. [gasps] No, don’t worry. It’s not going to happen... There’s one simple reason-- (No, that’s OK. You can walk out. We’ll see who’s “fucking crazy”.) --for that: It’s already happened. They’re already fucking here. (Go ahead. Record me. That’s the way this message gets out. What, you think they’ll keep this on the TEd Talks List?) Tell me: you ever notice, sometimes, subtle movements--out of the corner of your eye? Movements *where nothing is*. That's them. That's the peripherals. They exist on the edge of our sensations. Not just sight, but hearing--that ringing in your ears in dead silence; and touch--the chill on your skin when the air is still and warm, and the windows are all closed; and smell--that hideous burning scent clinging to your nostrils... We all sense them. They hide, but imperfectly. (How am I not real? *I'm right here!* You can't Google me because they're scrubbing me off the internet.) I don't know how long they've been here. Twenty years. Thirty. They're what's raising the Earth's temperature. They emit heat. Multiply. Do you smell the burning now? The trick is not to focus on it. [commotion] They exist on the periphery of knowledge too, of consciousness. (I *am* awake. Are you?) Question: Do you have trouble concentrating? Lose interest quickly? Does your attention drift? We used to read books. *As a species, we read fucking books.* Now we can barely follow a headline. You came here to listen to a lecture-- No! You came to consume a fucking soundbite. Wanna blame social media? Think YouTube has somehow gutted your mind? It's--them! They're siphoning off your concentration, your attention span. Distributed-goddamn-cognition. *You're thinking for them.* (None of us have a future. That's the point!) Your focus is shrinking. Your peripheries are expanding. They feast. Humans used to have a wider range. ("Of what?") Of everything! Sight, hearing. (What do *you* see? Your fucking phone screen.) All you hear is bass. *Thump-thump-thump.* They're remaking you to colonise you. They want you to specialise--to narrow your focus so they can expand their environment. You're letting them. (You think this is funny? It amuses you, you cockroach?) You're letting them take us over! [music] The invasion isn't happening! It's already happened! They're already here! ["We are experiencing technical difficulties. The presentation is temporarily suspended--"] (Suspended? You wanna suspend something--) Get your dirty hands off me! (--suspend your fucking disbelief!) ["--and will resume shortly. We thank you for your patience.


“What is the color of your soul?” -- Hh...?! A voice called to him. He turned his head toward it, yet a sharp nothingness filled the room once more; a deep quiet, a silence almost cold. In the quiet, he sat there, at his desk, head looking as if to somewhere far away, as he waited for the voice once more-- for that clear, bright, melodious voice of a young girl; so clear, so beautiful, it was almost sad... But no matter how long he waited in the silence-- her voice resounded no more... He was alone in the classroom, sitting at the only desk in the middle of the room; wearing his black, junior high-school uniform, his hair slightly unkempt. There was nothing else in the classroom, it was all empty-- the blackboard clean, yet seeming dusty; the boards clear, without a note or anything pasted on it; and every desk and chair except his vanished from the floor, including the teacher’s desk in front. It was just him, and him alone-- and there, his head turned to his left, gazed upward... The cold sun glowing pale over him-- he stayed there. Waiting... “Um, Morita...?” “... Hm? ” A voice called him. A different voice. It was softer, with an air of shyness curled into her little chest; and, just hearing it... it filled him with a sense of warmth, a sense of closeness and comfort, of familiarity... His vision flickered-- as if rippling blue-- as a blue butterfly crossed his sight... But just then-- “Morita?” She called again. “ Huh? ” He’d just woken up... Glancing around, he saw that the desks and chairs had all returned, lined up in fine rows, front to back; the teacher’s desk was in front, and gathering near it was a group of girl, laughing, gossiping-- as the sun, a deep, warm orange and gold, colored the room even through the still curtains... “Ah, Morita. You’re awake.” As if just noticing her, he turned to her-- but, looking up at her; he couldn’t see her face... It was as if it were just too dark... as a shadow hung over her features... He tried concentrating, but her features remained hidden; the girls in front were the same... All he could see were their lips... Just then, the girl in front of her parted her lips and spoke, “It’s late. Come on, let’s go home.” And, with just that, she turned away and walked toward the door. Blinking, shaking his head-- he stood up from his seat and grabbed his bag. Then, pushing his chair in, he went after her out the door... Had he been dreaming...? He wondered so, yet couldn’t find an answer. He simply didn’t know. He tried going through his memories-- yet his mind was blank; it’s as if the concept of ‘memories’ itself had ceased to exist-- no, it’s as if the concept had simply never existed in the first place... He didn’t know what happened before, nor did he know anything else. All he knew was that his name’s Morita... Even then, it was because that girl had called him so; though he didn’t know her or who she is... The furthest extent of his knowledge of her was that she knew his name, and that’s it; besides that, he could only assume that she was a shy person from the sound of her voice... Just then-- her voice returned to him... And, at once, he remembered her words and froze in his steps as it sounded through his mind once more. What is the color of your soul...? In his mind, it sounded blurrier, sounding as if muffled in the folds of his ‘memory.’ But one thing that truly came through was that feeling... It was as if some distant bell had sounded-- its weight reverberating in the air, feeling like a cold wave sending shudders up his back... Even now, he could still feel it even in his feet... The moving, soul-bending effect of her voice... resounding, like metal, of emotion... Of feeling... “Morita?” “Ah-” Returning to reality, he looked up and saw her standing there, meters away from him, turned toward him... founding him there, frozen still... “Come on.” “Ahh... yeah...” Feeling a cold sigh escape his chest, he shook his head and went on after her. Walking behind her, he couldn’t help but gaze at her back-- at the movement and gentle sway of her black hair, left and right, as she walked; at the hem of her skirt, quietly tinged in the soft glow of the sun; and at the quiet, little sway of her hips to every step. Somehow, here, painted against the light, against the unknown-- she felt moving, as if just looking at her were enough to sway his heart... It was, in a way, like watching a strip of film move through a projector, seeing each still frame move into the light; he didn’t know what the film looked like and he wouldn’t know unless he looked up to the screen, and yet he kept looking on at the moving pictures speeding through, frame after frame, as if he were bound in its spell and mystery, in its movement. And, somehow, he liked it that way... It was like watching the world move round... Still, he didn’t know who this girl was-- her name, her person, her family: nothing, he still didn’t know a thing. And yet, even so, he was looking at her-- looking as if, just by observing her alone, he would soon, somehow, piece together the whole of who she was... But just then, in a blink-- she turned a faint, scarlet red... And disappeared into the light... And before he knew it-- -- Hh-?? He was back in that class; everything empty, everything quiet... And somehow, he felt as if he had lost a part of himself somewhere in a distant world he didn’t know nor could reach... What happened...? Had it all been just a dream...? Eyes blank, unfocused-- he seemed to be about to pass out, as his skin, quickly, turned pale... But just then, he hears that voice once more... “ What is the color of your soul...? ” His vision blurred and faded-- everything turning blue; along with his pupils... A bright, azure blue... But at that very moment-- everything turned black... as a distant sound pierced his mind... Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing----!!!! “ Hh--?!? ” Waking up, Morita found himself in bed, cold sweat all over his forehead, as he hid his face in his palm and shook his head...


Trigger warning: suicide “Our every action opens a loop that can lead to several results depending on the continuum of our further connected actions” Theories travel open in the minds and the works of people who devoted their whole life finding the secrets of space and time seeking only new inventions and ways. However in my life remained another reason for living - my beloved wife. Tanaka held my hand every time as my wife and as my colleague. Both of us devoted our life to each other and to my insane inventions leading to a dream of crossing time and pass to a different period. Call it the result of our certainty, our desire to help this world and endless effort that one day we found the key to our invention even after being around several antagonist and conspiracies. Maybe it was her magic anyway, that day was already too beautiful to begin with. I had put my outmost struggle and to cherish and support it stayed my beloved Tanaka. If only this fortune could remain any longer. I marked the date - 24th August 2021 and went on a manual configuration of the machine once I had received the resource key for its functioning. The sun was prepared to set any moment and I was inside the open chamber busying my hands over energy slides of its walls. Tanaka was right outside the platform with those eyebrows narrowed over her computer. She had forever been my motivation for working hard until, IT happened. My nerves gave a huge thumb and the energy slides slipped from my fingers. When I noticed it wasn’t just the nerve thumbing, my fingers were DISINTEGRATING into flying dust. I turned towards Tanaka, I wanted to call her name, but I was disintegrating rapidly. What was happening? I knew nothing. Was I dying? It was more frightening to leave into an oblivion. Everything went blank all of a sudden yet I could feel it - the darkness. I opened my eyes, hopefully. I didn’t die. All I could see was a dark roof for a while; my throat was burning dry compared to my body, which weighted a thousand pounds whenever I made any movement. I still managed to move anyway and the room I found myself was a burnt room. Somehow, it felt very familiar but that wasn’t my primal concern that moment. Where was I? What happened? I summed up a wild theory yet it only seemed like a dream till I was inside. I had no idea what awaited me outside. Not the slightest of idea. I walked outside the building and I saw - the future. Yes! The future. I saw a more professional and technical city before me. By the scale of shock I was, I was delighted and amazed too. Screaming in excitement wasn’t enough, I had no idea what to do. I arrived in 2026. I ran through my city as a little kid finally let loose to his chocolate world. Everything came crystal clear to me. It wasn’t dust I had disintegrated too, it was atoms. Reducing to atomic level would possibly be the only way of passing through time and space and I knew just the right person who could pull such an action. I went running straight to my house, no location had altered anywhere. How many kids till now? What was my position? How was my Tanaka? Several questions waited for answering. I reached my mansion and knocked on the front door immediately, impatiently. My heart was ready to burst out in happiness and excitement. The door opened. On other side was a small, unknown woman. Maybe we changed our location for better post. She questioned my arrival and my identity by a thorough look. I had to ask. “Excuse me, is this your house?” “Yes, since a year. Whom do you want?” “Well, I was searching for Dr. Rick Dawson” I should’ve been famous for my name till now, for helping humanity all around the globe. “You mean that MASS MURDERER. He doesn’t live here anymore, now get lost.” My excitement died immediately. “W-What the hell are you talking about?” “What are you? From space? Don’t you know anything that happened five years ago?” “What happened five years ago?” “That bastard killed his WIFE and fifteen other workers in a single night.” “I killed my wife? What type of joke is that? A mass murderer?” The skies shattered down on me. It was mostly impossible and unbelievable. “That man escaped right after. Rumours speak about him living in an abundant barn outside the city.” I returned with a crumbled mind and a heart. Just in hope of her words being false I knocked every house around the area but received the same answer. In future, I was remembered as a mass murderer who killed his wife and fifteen more. Who could that be? I always puked seeing blood, how could I even think of killing. My Tanaka, why in hell would I ever do this? What happened to me? WHAT happened five years ago? My devastated self flashed images of my beloved before me. How she would kiss my cheek each time my body would drain from work, how her warm finger entangle around mine whenever they hesitated, how her smile inspired me to live on happily each day. Her smile was an inspiration, it still is. Why did I travel to future - To know my past and save my people, to save my name, to save my Tanaka? It was time I meet the truth and change it. So, I ran without stopping. Not a single other thing mattered anymore. I reached the barn and quickly went inside. Not a sound of a soul, emptiness wherever eyes went. I walked in further into darkness. Terrifying to its core, until the light went on. It was no ordinary barn, it wasn’t a barn at all. Before my eyes stood the machine I dreamt for eternity - the Time Machine. However, it was in its most ghastly shape, like something from scrap. More than machine, I wanted its owner, and fast. I strolled closer and finally behind it I saw a lowly weakened man. As soon as I stepped closer, he spoke. “I have been waiting, you took quiet long” his voice quivered as he turned to me. I was at surprise again. It was me for sure. The future me I finally met. However, I lacked a complete face. All I had was one side of it, my other half - nothing but a stitched mess of skin and tissues. “I am Dr. Rick Dawson” he said. It pissed me even more. I dashed forward and jabbed right across his remaining face. He didn’t move a bit - A hologram. “If its you Rick, I am sorry to say that we won’t be meeting again. I used my life force to bring you here and how its upon you to change what’s done.” “Why did it turn out this way? How could I become a mass murderer?” “This machine will allow only a counted more travels. Save your name, save the people I couldn’t” saying this, the hologram dismissed. Recording ended. I was to travel back again. This time to another timeline for uncover the truth first. The machine was at a pause. The energy was active. I had to go back through time, once again. For her. Without any delay, I rushed to the station beside the machine. Its second destination was already set - 24th August 2021. It had no trouble starting once more. I stepped in and began disintegrating yet this time the thumbing of my body increased drastically. I opened my eyes once again. Once again, I travelled back through time and my nerves were at their verge of bursting. I should have considered before - the consequences. Time travelling comes with a cost that must clear by the traveller’s body and mind. As soon as I woke up, I spit out blood. It was cold. It was frightening how my entire body shook for a while like it would decay and crumble down to the floor. At this rate I realized how limited my turns of travelling would be. Probably once or twice more. I arrived at night, inside a closed lab three floors below mine. I sneak out; my body had already become a hindrance yet still I drove everything at its limit to reach my Tanaka. I climbed the tedious stairs, which never seem to end. It was my only chance to save her no matter what the cost. There was absolute hope of success I became definite. I stumbled to the top floor, heaving but with a short smile until, I heard GUNSHOTS. Everything stopped for that moment, I ran again towards the entrance and it opened. I had failed already. What lay in front of me was Tanaka as her blood flowed out. I fell on my knees knowing nothing more. How cursing and terrifying it was to see her dead. I wanted to scream but my throat didn’t make a sound. As known, the machine began disrupting too. A drop of tear rolled down my cheek as I spoke her name for the last time before the machine exploded. It’s wave blew away everything into atomic particles under its huge range. Wasn’t this supposed to be the end? Yet I still could hear Tanaka calling my name again and again. I didn’t want to be remembered as a murderer, as a killer. I could smell blood, the sound of my heartbeat - dying. I wasn’t dead. I returned to 2026 - empty-handed and failed. I lay in that barn as images of my past kept me amused. I was yet to stand; my body was ready to give in but not my soul. The case wasn’t solved yet, I didn’t save her yet. If I had to rescue her, the truth behind had to open. Why did I do it? What made me do it? The questions were critically necessary and only if I get their answers, the future would alter. However, a major hindrance stood was my physical endurance. Travelling twice more raised the chances of me dying, massively and still two more was left. I didn’t fissure, I mustn’t. This time, the answers prevailed in a year after the incident. When I was still alive. I altered the timeline destination against it s will. All that I cared was of my Tanaka, not me. The machine began heating and converging energy slides. I stepped in and the disintegrating began. What could be worse than my entire body dying out at ease? The cost of finding the truth. The cost of saving my love and my name. I woke up at THAT abundant building. This time I had to sneak out because that’s where the incident happened a year ago. I slowly walked to the barn once again. I sneaked in, saw him working over the scrap as expected and at the first glance, I knew I wasn’t ready to face the truth. What could have made me do such a thing? He turned back at me with shock. I only managed a few more steps ahead before I collapsed to my knees. I arrived way before he ever planned of having me arrive so he realized the reason behind it. Maybe, that was it because he told me soon after, he told me everything. “Tanaka killed herself.” It was the last time I was closing my eyes. It was the last time I woke up from time travelling. It was the last time I felt pain. It was when I returned to my own time. Nothing more could I do. The sun was till shinning bright, nothing had happened till than. All I could hear and see was the last words of my future self. “Our every action opens a loop of possibilities but what affects more is always the end of it.” “The resource key we thought we GAINED from a huge company was nothing but a political fluke. It was a time bomb meant to destroy everything as soon as it activates. I activated the key. Tanaka absorbed the key’s reaction and shot herself.” “It’s okay” those were her last words he said. She smiled at him before dying. How shattering would that be? I was slowly climbing the stair, unaware of the dripping blood from my mouth and my nose. The time had come for me, its certain but all I had to was one last thing. Stop the trail. Destroy the resource key. The last of my soul ordered me to move against the will of my body. I did it, at last. Finally I made it to our lab. There she was. There was my Tanaka, waiting for me over the station. She was alive. My Tanaka was alive. “ Just a little more” I yelled at myself and entered the lab. She saw me but I didn’t stop until I reached the key. She caught me crying my name but I was not to stop. I grabbed the key and crushed it under my feet, the stone inside broke. The key broke. I did it. I finally saved everyone. I cleared my name. “Tanaka” that’s all I said before I fell. I gave in, at last. “Rick! Rick!” I could hear her voice from afar. Those gentle words crying in worry. No! I must not make her worry. I slowly opened my eyes again but this time there was no pain. I looked up and there she was - my beloved. She was smiling with tears. She was relieved and happy. I saved her. “Hey, Tanaka?” “Y-Yes?” “Let go somewhere. Somewhere away from time.”


Have you ever disliked someone so much... hated even... that you wish that they would just die? Aoife did. Aoife disliked a lot of people throughout her life. When she was 6, there was a girl called Katie in her class in school. One day, their teacher split the class into pairs to do an art project. Amy was paired with a boy Aoife liked called Barry. Aoife instantly became jealous and from that day on, she grew a disliking to Katie. But she didn’t hate her. Another person who Aoife disliked was her friend Marie’s mom, Brenda. Brenda was a strict parent. When Aoife slept over in Marie’s house on occasion, her mom would regularly check on them to make sure that they were okay. But they both knew that Brenda was just being nosey and trying to catch them as they were up to some mischief. Nothing in particular, just mischief. One time, Aoife and Maria caught Brenda eavesdropping on them outside Marie’s bedroom when she was leaving her bedroom to use the bathroom. Of course, Brenda played it off, but they were 12 years old at that time and were well used to Brenda’s snoopiness. Yes, Aoife disliked Brenda too, but she didn’t hate her either. One person who Aoife did hate was Emma Whitmore. Aoife thought that Emma Whitmore was the devil incarnate. Aoife first met Emma when the began secondary school. She was a year ahead of Aoife and made her life miserable for three long years. One time, when Aoife was on her way to biology, Emma pulled her back by her ponytail and she fell to the floor. The other girls in the hallway saw her taking her tumble and they all pointed and laughed, whilst taking videos and pictures on their phones. Another time, at a school disco when Aoife was dancing with her friends, Emma came up behind her and pulled up her dress and held it up as Aoife failed miserably in pulling it back down. A boy who Aoife liked, Brian, was at that disco and saw the whole fiasco. He didn’t laugh, but the damage was done to Aoife. That incident had mentally scarred her for years. Yes, Aoife not only disliked Emma Whitmore, but she hated Emma. Aoife hated Emma Whitmore with a fiery hatred that was so strong, Aoife would physically shake and her heart would race. Aoife had her first panic attack whilst at home thinking about Emma Whitmore. Emma dumped her books out of her bag in school that day and some girls laughed at her again as she picked them up,. Looking pathetic and defeated. As Aoife sat in bed that night, thinking about Emma, she thought about how she bullied her for the past 3 years. “I hate her so much. I hate her. I hate her.” Aoife said to herself, whilst holding her knees to her chest with tears running down her face. “I just wish she would fucking DIE!” Aoife thought about that a lot, but she never said it out loud. But it felt good. She said it again: “ I wish she would fucking die! I wish. She would just. DIIIIEEEE!” She screamed silently under her breath. Aoife hung out with her friends that weekend and had a good weekend. She needed it and she felt much better going into school on Monday morning. On Monday morning at assembly, the school principal, Mr Irwin began the morning with a somber tone. “Ladies, it is with a heavy heart that I begin this week with some very sad news. Unfortunately, one of our students tragically passed away this weekend. Emma Whitmore.” The whole hall gasped simultaneously, including Aoife. “Before we begin this morning’s lessons, I want to make something very clear.” Mr Irwin continued. “This was a tragic accident, and the details will be revealed in due course. In the meantime, I don’t want anyone to spread rumours. As the details have not been released yet, anything you hear today from a fellow student will be false.” Of course, kids being kids, rumours did spread throughout the day, the most popular being that Emma killed herself. Another that came up was a drug overdose, which Aoife immediately dismissed as false. Another was that an intruder broke in and murdered Emma and her family in their sleep. Another theory that made Aoife rolled her eyes. Aoife spoke with her mother about it that evening and her mother also said that she didn’t know what happened. There was a lot of confusion about what happened to Emma. After a couple of more days, once the funeral had come and gone, the truth came to light. Emma Whitmore had merely died in her sleep. The doctors said they couldn’t figure out why. She had no underlying conditions. It was a brain hemorrhage, nor a heart attack. She just... died. Aoife didn’t feel happy when she heard the news. Yes, she hated Emma Whitmore, but she wouldn’t wish her dead, not really dead anyway. But she would be lying to herself if she didn’t feel relieved. From the day Emma Whitmore died, Aoife’s life became much better. She was no longer bullied. People seemed to forget about the disco incident and she never heard the chants “granny’s panties” in the halls again. When Aoife turned 18, she finished secondly school and went on to study Physics and Astronomy in college. She grew a fascination with the universe and how worked. She dreamed that someday she would go on to work for NASA. While in college, Aoife met her first serious boyfriend, Colm. Colm was a country boy who played hurling in secondary school and for his local team. He would drive an hour home 3 times during the week to train and would go home on Sundays for matches. Aoife would often go to his matches on the weekend. She enjoyed watching hurling and seeing as Colm was rather good at it, it only made her more and more infatuated by him. He was a romantic. He bought her flowers on her birthday and bought her random gifts, such as pajamas when it was her time of the month and funny mugs related to private jokes they had. She lost her virginity to Colm and knew from that day on, he was the only person she ever wanted to be with, physically and romantically. Even though it was only a month into their relationship, he was so gentle and tender towards her, she instantly fell in love. Of course, she didn’t tell him she loved him for another couple of months and only after Colm had told her first. Yes, Aoife absolutely adored Colm, and when she found out that he cheated on her while in Tenerife on a boys holiday, it destroyed her. Aoife had never felt pain like it. She received an anonymous photograph of him kissing a girl on a beach at night while lying on a sun lounger. At first, she couldn’t believe it. It couldn’t be him. He told her he loved her a thousand times. But the more she looked at it, she knew it was him. She felt a knot in her stomach and she thought her heart was going to explode. It was a physical pain that she had only heard about in movies, but had never actually experienced herself. Aoife replied to the anonymous message on Facebook asking “who is this?” But the account was deleted soon after. When Aoife approached Colm about it, of course, he denied it. When she showed him the picture, he studied it closely, biting his bottom lip whilst trying to come up with an excuse. Eventually, he dropped his gaze to his feet. He couldn’t look Aoife in the eye. “How could you?” Aoife asked through tears that wouldn’t stop flowing and were making her vision blurry. “How could you?” She screamed this time, demanding a response. “Aoife, I’m sorry,” Colm said again, tears welling up in his eyes. “We slept together one time and I regretted it immediately afterward. I was drunk and I think someone spiked me and..... look that’s no excuse, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” When he looked up, Aoife's mouth was hanging open. She sat down on his bed, staring at the ground. Now she couldn’t look him in the eye. “You slept with her?” She asked.”I thought.... I thought you just kis...” She couldn’t finish the sentence. She felt like she just found out about the cheating all over again. The pain in her stomach. The crushing pain in her heart. Her legs were weak, she thought she was going to be sick. “Yeah, why? What did you hear?” Colm asked, instantly realizing that he had told her more than she knew. And when Aoife looked up at him again, with her bloodshot eyes, tears streaming down her face and puffy cheeks, she could only let out one word: “Why?” And with that, she got up and left Colm’s bedroom and house for the last time. When Aoife went home that night. She cried. She cried in her bedroom as she had cried the past couple of nights since finding out. She had cried harder than she ever had before. Harder than when her grandmother died when she was 11. Harder than when her pet cat, Oliver, died when she was 16. This was a different kind of pain. The ultimate betrayal. She had given every single part of herself to Colm, and he spat on it and threw it away like it was nothing. Had she meant so little to him? So little that he was willing to go behind her back for an easy fuck on a boys holiday? Yes, Aoife loved Colm. She loved him more than she loved anyone ever before. But in that moment, while she held her knees to her chest, crying uncontrollably in bed, she hated Colm. She hated Colm with every fiber of her being. “I hate him,” she said to herself through the tears. “I hate him so fucking much” she to herself though the steering pain in her chest. “I just wish he would fucking die!” And with that, she fell onto her side and wailed, and wailed and wailed some more, until she finally fell asleep. The next morning, Aoife woke up to 5 text messages and 8 missed calls from her friend, Amy. “Can you talk?” One text said. “Call me.” Another read. “Hello?” “Hello?” “Pick up!!!!!!” Another read. Aoife sat up in bed and rang Amy back. Amy answered almost instantly. “What’s wrong?” Aoife asked while whipping her nose with her sleeve. “So you heard?” Amy asked, after hearing Aoife’s tone. She was clearly upset and was crying hard recently. “No?” Aoife responded. There was a pause on the line. “Aoife... Colm passed away in his sleep last night.” Aoife’s jaw dropped open. She didn’t respond. She couldn’t. Her world was caving in on her and there was no way out. “Hello? Are you still there?” Amy asked. Aoife hung up the phone and dropped it. She looked around her room, confused and disorientated. She began hyperventilating and clawing at her chest gasping for air. She was having a panic attack, her first one in a couple of years. Her vision became blurry and soon, she passed out. The next thing Aoife remembered, she was on her bedroom floor, and her mother had a wet rag on her forehead. She took a moment to collect her thoughts. “Aoife? Are you okay? I heard a crash and you were face down on the floor. Did you have another attack?” Aoife sat up a bit in her mother's arms, and then it all came back. She looked at her mother as she felt like her whole being was collapsing in on itself. “Mom... he’s gone.” She squeaked out and she began crying again. “Who? Who’s gone?” Her mother asked. “Colm.” She responded, looking at her mother with tears in her eyes. “He died. Last night. He’s dead mom.” And she began sobbing into her mother's chest so hard she thought that she would never not feel pain again. Yes, Colm had cheated on her. But she didn’t want this. She didn’t know what she wanted, but it wasn’t this. And now all she wanted was to have him back. To go back to 2 weeks ago and lie in bed with him with a cup of tea and watching Netflix with him in the pajamas he bought her a couple of months prior. That’s all she wanted, and she would never have it again. The doctors did an autopsy on Colm and they found no complications or cause of death. The said that it was sudden adult death syndrome. Nothing caused it, he just went. They said that it would have been very quick and painless. Aoife went to the funeral and cried more. And she cried more and more for the next couple of weeks. She didn’t go to class and barely left her bedroom. She lost a stone in weight over the 2 weeks and her classmates sent her their notes and assignments, but she never looked at them. She felt dead inside. She felt nothing but pain. When Aoife did start leaving the house again, she went to see a therapist and kept seeing them for three years. It became a habit for her. An expensive habit, but a habit all the same. She enjoyed going to see her therapist and felt it helped her with her relationships with friends and family. Aoife failed her second-year exams. Colm’s death had taken its toll on her and she decided she would repeat them the following August. After getting a full-time job as a hotel receptionist over the summer, Aoife ended up going full time and dropped out of college completely. She worked at that hotel as a receptionist for 11 years, until her second child came along and she found it too difficult juggling a job and 2 children. And her husband, who she was now married to for 3 years was earning enough so that she could stay at home. Aoife still thought about Colm from time to time. How could she not? He was her first lover, the person she thought she’d have children with and grow old with. When she was standing on the altar and saying her vows to her would-be husband, Craig, she couldn’t help but also think of Colm. Even though she hated him, he had left his mark on her. Aoife loved Craig. She loved him with all her heart, but she gave a piece of herself of Colm, and Colm took that piece with him when he died suddenly that night. On a summer evening on the way home from a family day, Aoife drove as her husband and 2 kids slept after a long day at the beach. Her phone vibrated in the centre console and she picked it up. There was a message from “Mom”. As she went to unlock the phone, she dropped it and it fell to the ground between her feet. “Fuck.” She said and looked in the rearview mirror to make sure the kids were still asleep and didn’t hear her. They were. Aoife reached down with her right hand to try and reach her phone. As she reached down, the car slowly began to drift to the right. When she reached the phone, picked it up, and sat up, she quickly corrected her positioning on the road. She pulled the steering wheel to the left to reposition herself in the centre of the road but pulled the wheel too quickly. The car jackknifed and flipped 6 times before landing right side up and she was knocked unconscious. When Aoife came too, she was being wheeled from her wrecked Nissan Qashqai and 4 firemen were cutting the roof off of it with a buzzsaw. She couldn’t see into the front passenger seat to her husband as the windshield was completely smashed. What she could make out clearly though was the blood on the inside of the windscreen. “What happened?” She asked the paramedics, adrenaline beginning to fill her with panic. “Ma’am, please stay calm, you’ve been in an accident and we’re taking you to the hospital.” “What happened?” Aoife asked again, raising her voice. “My babies, where are my babies? Where are my babies?” She began to scream, the reality of the situation sinking in, as the paramedics put her into the back of an ambulance. There were 2 more ambulances around her, 2 fire trucks, and 2 police cars. There were flashing lights all around her and glass and metal all over the road in front of her. Aoife began to scream in horror and despair. “I need my babies! Let me out!” She screamed at the paramedics in desperation to find her children. A moment later, she was fading and fading until she was eventually unconscious after the paramedics sedated her. The next day, Aoife woke up in a hospital bed. She had a cast on her arm and a bandage on her head. She had a splitting headache and her left eye was completely red from the trauma, but that would also heal in time. Her vision in that eye would be temporarily lost. Her mother was sleeping in a chair next to her. “Mom.” Her Mom jolted awake at the sound of her daughter's voice. “Oh baby,” she said and kissed her cheek gently, careful not to hurt her fragile face. “Mom, where’s Craig?” Her mother’s eyes began to fill up with tears. “Mom, where are my children?” That sickening feeling in Aoife’s stomach and physical pain she had felt in her heart over a decade earlier had returned. Her mother shook her head. “I’m sorry baby, they didn’t make it.” Aoife laid her head back in the pillow and let out a wail that would haunt her mother forever. It was a sound only a mother who had lost her children could make. A sound no one should neither make nor hear. But here was Aoife, wailing in the trauma of the loss of her family, in the realization that she’ll never hold her children or hold her husband again. All she wanted to do was tell them that she loved them and that she was sorry. And she would, every day and night until the day she died, but they would never hear her. As the weeks and months past, Aoife’s pain never subsided. She fell into a deep depression, moved in with her mother, and spent her days doing chores around the house or watching TV. On Wednesday’s her mother would bring her to her therapy session. That was the only time she left the house. She didn’t want to live anymore. She didn’t think she deserved it. She thought that she killed her family and if they couldn’t live, why should she. She thought about killing herself plenty of times, but she was always too afraid too. And she hated herself more for that. So she decided that she would live but it would be a miserable existence. As punishment to herself for what she did. One night, Aoife sat up in bed. The television had some reality TV show on that she wasn’t watching. She was alone, with just her and her thoughts. “I hate you.” She said to herself. She looked left, at the mirror built into her wardrobe door. She rolled off the bed and kneeled, looking at herself in the mirror. “I hate you.” She said again, stronger this time. “Why don’t you just fucking die!” She screamed and punched the mirror. She held her hand in pain, it was bleeding and the mirror was cracked. Her mother came into the room. “Aoife, what did you do? Let me help you, honey.” She brought her to the bathroom where she cleaned her wound and bandaged it up. “I know it’s hard Aoife. I don’t even know what to tell you, or how to help you. I just want you to forgive yourself. You’re not a bad person.” “How can I forgive myself, mom?” Aoife asked through her tears. Her mother helped her back to her room. She turned off the TV and light. “I love you, honey. I’ll see you in the morning. Maybe we could go out for a walk?” “Maybe.” Aoife responded” “Goodnight,” her mother said and closed the door softly. Aoife cried some more that night, as she did most nights. She fell asleep and she dreamt. She dreamt of Colm. Colm said that he was sorry again for hurting her and that he was glad that she was found happiness with her family. "They're waiting for you," he said. She dreamt of her old school bully, Emma, who gave her the finger and spat at her. "Some things never change," she thought to herself. She then saw her family. She saw her children, who came running towards her and she hugged and kissed them and she told them that she loved them. She cried with joy, as she did most nights when she dreamt of her children. They asked her would she bring them to the park and she said, of course she would. And she saw her husband Craig. Craig kissed her on the forehead and put an arm around her. Aoife began to cry and said she was sorry. She told Craig that they deserved better and she wished it was her that died and not them. Craig kissed her on the forehead again and said “It’s okay hun, you're here now. Come on guys, let’s got to the park. And then there was..... nothing.