Passing all of the road signs I've failed to notice. Hitting all of the bumps where new pavement was laid. All of the trees I've glanced at, but never saved. Every store, restaurant, boulder in the median, everything I’ve looked at but never actually seen. All present to me now, even more to miss. Funny, how we tune out the little components in life until we find a reason to look back. I look out the window at all of the scenery that I’ve glanced passed in the past. I take out the coin, one side a bronze steer-skull, with a backdrop of Texas painted in glossy red. On the back side, a sheriff star. The coin was given to me by my uncle. An agent in the Secret Service; he gave it to me right before he moved from his location in Arlington, to D.C. How the irony is strong. He gave me this coin and said to bring it wherever I might feel frightened. I’ve never felt so frightened in my entire life than in this rusty, faded white Honda Civic coupe. Two Berretta PX4 Storms lay in the trunk, in a useless gun case that I will never get to use again. I have never been one to cry, one to cower, one to fight. The driver, dressed completely in black, sped down the highway, almost there. I flipped the coin once more. Heads. Nobody can beat the coin toss, than why is it so hard to beat now? My motives are clear. I have grown tired of all of the unnecessary competition, the bragging, and the dominance. The coin toss is fair game. Nobody is better at flipping the coin than the next clown in line. I flip again, for good fortune, maybe this time things will change. Heads. I really didn't want it to come to this. I've never been violent in my past, always looking for the best in people. I flip. Heads. Looking at the steer, I tremble. Thirty heads, zero tails. The irony is that my uncle gave me this coin, under the impression that it would give me the motivation to do something great, to make a change, to do something great. Here I am, in some car, with someone I found on craigslist. Things are about to change. Heads.


Dragons are neither mythical nor magical. Merely rare. When humans think of us, many things leap to their minds. Many of those things are untrue. Others are not. We do, for example, have a tendency to hoard treasure, but what constitutes treasure to a dragon is individual. I’ve never met one of my kind who actually hoards gold, though some do, I’m sure. I, myself, hoard books. Most dragons would frown on me for collecting objects of human origin. Most dragons would frown on me for making my lair in a human structure. But my predilection for their writings necessitates proximity to those who would harm me. I am careful not to be seen by humans and I feel no need to defend my treasure of choice. Some of them tell wonderful tales. I stretched out on the platform of the abandoned subway station in which I live, enjoying my third attempt at understanding more than seventy percent of *Blood Meridian* by Cormac McCarthy when a noise broke my attention away from the pages. An old man lay collapsed between the disused rails of my entrance tunnel. A Niagara of lank, filthy hair poured out from under his Yankees baseball cap. His clothes were ripped and dirty. A bottle in a brown paper sack he had been clutching nestled beside him. I snaked my head between the support columns lining the platform to get a closer look at him. He looked unwell. One of the thousands of “tempest-tost” to whom this city promised illusory refuge. I suppose he must have drunkenly wandered his way into my lair, likely unknowing of his own actions. No human sound of mind would walk the subway tunnels let alone chance upon the hidden entrance of my home. As I scrutinized his shallow breathing form, a well of unexpected pity opened within me. This pathetic creature posed no threat. It was clear he led a life as lonely as my own, though for him it was not by choice. I folded my wings close to my body and moved closer. I grasped his limp frame, careful not to graze him with my talons as I lifted. I lowered him to the concrete station floor amidst my mountains of books and his glassy eyes cracked open. He looked up at me, swimming in delirium, for a moment before his eyes closed again. I found a blanket and laid it over his huddled curling body. He swooned in and out of consciousness. I have read that for humans, extreme abuse of alcohol can sometimes produce hallucinations. I believe he must have thought I was one such delusion. Late into the night, he began to shake and quiver beneath the blanket. Sweat beaded on his forehead. I crouched over the sickly man. “I wish I could help you,” I said. His agitated trembling seemed to be growing worse. “I wish I knew what to do.” His eyes were open but glazed in feverish half-sight. He curled a fistful of blanket to his face and muttered. I lowered my head closer. “What did you say?” I asked. Sour tears crept along the furrows of his nose peaking above the blanket. “Said ‘m sorry,” he murmured. “Sorry for what? You’re not…” I trailed off. He didn’t seem to be speaking to me. “’M sorry, mom…’m so sorry…didn’t mean t’be like this.” “It…it’s OK, son,” I said. I wasn’t sure what else to say. “…It’s OK, sweetheart.” I smoothed some of his greasy hair along his cheek with a talon, uncertain if this would bring any sort of comfort. Perhaps my voice sounded like his mother’s, I reasoned. His glossy eyes focused momentarily on the heaping tomes stacked all around us. “Will…will you read t’me?” he whispered. “Like you used to?” “Of course, dear…what would you like me to read?” “Th’one you always read…when I was sick…Th’chocolate factory.” There could only be one book to which he was referring. I weaved my head and neck between the towers of leather and paper until I found *Charlie and the Chocolate Factory* by Roald Dahl. I carefully slid it out from the pile with my teeth and returned to the man. I transferred the book to my claws and opened it, laying my head down beside him. “*These two very old people…*” I began. His bearing relaxed visibly but his tremors aggressed. I read. I did voices for each character. I turned the book to show him the illustrations, though I’m uncertain if he really saw them. He quaked. He listened. He thanked. He apologized to his mother. To me. I voiced Charlie on the final page. “’*Please don’t be frightened,’ he said. ‘It’s quite safe. And we’re going to the most wonderful place in the world!’*” A few lines remained, but I stopped reading as the man’s movements broke my attention away from the pages. His eyes clenched shut and a few violent spasms later, he lay still.


# 2. The Not So Great Beyond It took the better part of the afternoon for Adam to stop asking repetitive questions. Otis sat patiently through three hundred ‘why’s and ‘where’s before finally losing his cool and telling the man to suck it up. “We all got to die some time, just happened to be your day was today.” Those words had sent a cold silence into Adam that carried the three deceased into evening. No longer compelled to help by the young man’s weeping, Otis floated over to Maggie as she stared across the desert toward the setting sun. Despite the macabre nature of the hill, it provided spectacular views of the mountains, towering high and jagged above the flat expanse of dried rock. “That’s breaking it to him gently?” she asked with a hint of a smile. Otis sighed and stayed quiet for a minute, looking for something far away. “No, I’m not sure there’s a way to do that. It’s why we bet, isn’t it?” “No doubts there, but ‘we all have to die sometime’ is a bit rough.” Otis shrugged. “How about: Sorry, kid, there might be a great beyond but this ain’t it. All your friends are somewhere high above the clouds while you’re stuck here kicking around with our dusty old asses.” “It is an improvement.” A fly buzzed through Maggie’s nose, she swatted at it. It had been nearly fifteen years since losing her body, but she still hadn’t managed to kick the instinct. “Never thought I’d miss squashing flies.” “And I never thought I’d miss repairing shoes for people who hated my guts, but here we are.” Beneath the tree, Adam finally managed to float from his kneeling position to an awkward stand. A hard determination had replaced the tears in his eyes. “He’s going to run,” commented Maggie. “They always do.” Otis glided toward Adam, but the kid was already moving. Adam churned his legs as if it still mattered and zoomed across the dusty ground like an undead bullet. Otis and Maggie watched as his pale form streaked across Hangman’s Hill, heading for the desert beyond. “You really don’t want to do that,” called Maggie, putting no effort into it. “Everyone has to experience it at least once.” Adam heard neither of them and ran as fast as he could, trying to outrun whatever horrible limbo he was stuck in. Then, he hit the barrier. A blinding wall of white energy shot into the sky, soon fading to a wisp like a transient version of the Aurora Borealis. Adam flew backward, his otherworldly energy bursting and throwing up puffs of greenish white steam. “And down he goes. Good legs on him though. Took me forever to figure out how to move like that.” Otis flexed his legs as they hovered an inch above the ground, a strictly performative act that helped bring a sense of normalcy to a situation that was anything but. In the spirit world, movement was a matter of will more than anything else, and Adam clearly had that in spades. The explosive force of the barrier threw Adam backward, leaving him stunned and rotating midair. When he had recovered enough to feel pain, he let out a curse so loud that it could have cleared the desert for miles. Of course, the only people that heard it were the deceased. “Now that’s a swear I haven’t heard before.” Maggie whistled. “Alright, I guess I’ll take a turn.” She walked to where Adam was floating, still sizzling from his collision. “Hurts like a bitch, don’t it?” “How? How does it hurt?” Adam’s voice was strained and filled with pain. “Not sure exactly, but most try it at least once.” “Where the hell are we?” Maggie floated down, kneeling so they were eye level. “I don’t know, but we have some guesses. Why don’t you come over with Otis and me? We’ll fill you in.” Adam tried pushing himself to a standing position but succeeded only in pushing his limbs through the unnoticing earth. He grimaced and kicked his feet, sending himself into a slow spin. “Ah, yeah, that’s not how it works here. Try thinking about floating upright, but make sure you don’t go too high. Next, you’re going to get the bright idea that you can fly out of here, but let me tell you, it’ll hurt worse.” Maggie thought about her first attempt and felt the burning sensation on her scalp from where she had hit. “Suffice it to say, we’re penned in. It’s a pretty pen – when there aren’t rotting corpses that is – but it’s still a pen.” Adam strained, floating to a lopsided standing position. “Is this Hell?” “If it is, God didn’t put anyone here to torment us except us.” Maggie smiled. “Probably closer to the biblical concept of purgatory.” She floated in Otis’s direction and motioned for Adam to follow. He didn’t move, instead looking at her with suspicion. “Oh, come on, you’re part of the club now.” Maggie motioned to the scar around her neck and tried to ignore the neat bullet hole in the center of Adam’s forehead. Lucky for the kid, there were no mirrors and he wouldn’t be able to feel it. Adam floated forward, unsteady at first, but finding his way. “As far as we can tell, we’re stuck here.” Otis made a motion to the hill. “On Hangman’s Hill?” asked Adam. “Well, as it turns out, that’s not what the natives called it. The first hangman probably thought it looked like a good place to die, and didn’t bother to read the carvings at the base of the tree, or the signs along the trail to get here for that matter.” Adam squinted at the base of the tree. “Those are words?” “Just because our forefathers were ignorant, doesn’t mean we have to be.” Maggie rolled the words over in her mind, feeling a sting of pain saying them again. “She’s a bit touchy on the subject. It’s why she was hung in the first place.” “For reading the native tongue?” “Shoshoni,” corrected Maggie. “For suggesting we’re equal with them.” “Turns out, freedom isn’t actually meant for everyone.” Maggie stopped the rage bubbling inside and thought about the memory of what it was like to take deep breaths. It helped bring her back to a sense of relative calm. “In a fitting fate, the men who hung me couldn’t read Shoshoni. This was a place of communion with the gods, and that script was meant to keep unwanted spirits out of the conversation.” “Unfortunately, we think that’s what’s got us penned in.” Adam put his head between his legs, turning his slow spin into an endless somersault. “So, we’re stuck here forever?” Maggie chuckled at the morose corpse spinning like a children’s top. In death, she had found humor in the little things. “Not to put too fine a point on it, yes. You can stop that spin if you like, just think—” Adam let out a choked sob. “You’re embarrassing yourself more than usual for a man who’s soiled himself in front of company.” They might not have been able to smell it, but there was a telltale drip off Adam’s corpse as it swung lightly in the evening breeze. Adam stopped spinning and glowered at her. “You have some kind of—” “Boy, the sunsets sure are nice,” broke in Otis. “Why don’t we all take a moment and enjoy that before we return to this existential debate.” Over the horizon, the sun sank low in its arch, bathing the desert in blood red light. The blue sky turned shades of purple streaked with gold. Jagged outlines of far distant mountains became silhouettes of teeth consuming the fleeing sky. A coyote howled in the distance, waking for a night of hunting. Adam took a moment away from his petulance to appreciate the natural beauty of their surroundings, but quickly became distracted by the memory of his own corpse. Otis looked at him with genuine pity. “That’ll be gone soon enough, don’t worry about it.” “What happened to yours?” “Well…” “I think there’s still a rib bone over there somewhere.” Maggie pointed toward the hanging tree. “But the animals out here are hungry and quick. Trust me, they may not be here yet but they’re coming.” “What my tactful friend here is trying to say is that it’s all part of the cycle of life. The earth has fed you for many years, and now it’s your turn to give back.” Otis gave Maggie a reproachful look. “That is a nicer way of putting it,” admitted Adam. “Best we turn around and talk about something else.” On cue, moonlight reflected off a pair of eyes approaching from the darkening desert. Otis grimaced. “Maggie’s right though, they’re hungry. This might be the way of things, but it’s going to be gross. Why don’t we just walk away?” Adam’s eyes were fixed on the coyote. “You really don’t want to watch that.” Maggie was already floating away. Adam didn’t move. “Look, you might think you’ve seen it all, being that you’ve died and arrived on the spiritual plane, but watching yourself get eaten… No one needs to see that.” Adam remained silent. “Suit yourself, kid.” Otis joined Maggie just as the first coyote made its way up the hill. “Shoo! Get out of here!” Adam yelled. Otis shook his head. “That one’s going to be a handful.


“Where are we going, Daniel?” “The only place we can after what you did.” “…You know it was an accident, right?” “Yes, yes. And I promised not to tell anyone. As we discussed. ” “Boy… holding him is kind of…could you pick up the foot there?” “I’m not touching anything. I’m helping you out, Max. Besides, you’re stronger than me, aren’t you? A big, tough brute? Surely this can’t be your first-” “- Stop it! Of course it is. I don’t- I wouldn’t-” “Don’t tell me you’re about to cry.” “I’m not. I’m just tired and I don’t know where we’re going and oh my god I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” “It isn’t me you need to be apologizing to, Maxie.” “…Why are you here anyway?” “Why am I here? Well, well, Maxie, you have some nerve. Can’t a fellow take a walk around the campgrounds before dinner?” “We were just meant to be shooting at… the squirrels. You know that, don’t you Daniel? I know we weren’t supposed to but… oh god, he’s a lot.” “How long has he been dead?” “Dead…” “He’s dead, isn’t he?” “Yes…” “Well, how long?” “Maybe…half an hour? Before you came.” “Half an hour, damn it Maxie. You really sat on the lawn for an hour with his body slumped over there, where anyone could see?” “I didn’t know what to do .” “You really didn’t mean to, did you?” “Of course not!” “Why do you say ‘of course not?’ Is it so unreasonable to think you might have had something against him?” “I just…I don’t know what happened. I thought I heard something, saw something even, and then- then…Bernard was my friend .” “People do strange things sometimes. Even to friends. Or so I hear. I wouldn’t know, would I?” “Dan.” “My name is Daniel.” “Daniel. I know we weren’t the nicest to you. t’s- when we said those things about you…” “Yes?” “We were just playing around, you know.” “…I don’t think you were.” “No, I mean, I guess I can’t talk for the others- ahh! watch, there’s a root there, almost got me, watch for it- but sometimes when we see something we don’t understand, we act…wrong, at first. You know.” “What is it…that you don’t understand?” “Well, uhm. It’s. Like just these little things, I guess. Maybe rumors. Brendan said you talked in your sleep, but it wasn’t like normal words and your eyes were open.” “Brendan is an idiot.” “Ha. Yeah… that’s true, isn’t it?…I guess there’s also things like that feather you’ve got around your neck.” “What about it?” “Henry tried to touch it and you were all weird about it.” “Henry should have asked, shouldn’t he?” “Well, yeah, but-” “Have you ever had something precious to you, Max? Something that you liked to keep close, like a secret?” “I don’t like it much when anyone else touches my drum set, I guess.” “Well, this is like that. Except much, much more.” “Hhhh… man, I feel like I need to rest a little. What’d’you mean, it’s more?” “This, Maxie, is a talisman. It’s the feather of a barn owl. Do you know anything about barn owls, Max?” “No. They the ones with the white faces?” “We had a bunch of barn owls back where I come from. You learn things, if you listen to them long enough. If you know how to listen. Most people don’t. I was alone a lot as a boy, you know.” “Sorry.” “I did not say lonely. I said alone.” “Is there a difference?” “Oh yes, Max. During this time, the owls showed me many things.” “I don’t really like owls, much. There was this story my gramma told me and in it whenever someone saw an owl it meant something bad. Like they were gonna die or something. It was messed up. Plus they sound kind of spooky.” “They are hard to understand and so you think them…wrong?” “Um. I guess. You got me. Are we close yet?” “We are. Come this way. You can stop a little here, but then we’ve got to keep going.” “You think they’ll wonder where we’ve gone?” “They won’t. … You are awfully silent now, Max.” “Yeah. I guess I was just thinking…am I doing the right thing? I feel like I should tell someone. Maybe we should just go back to the camp and-” “And what good would that do? Your friend would still be dead and you would be taken away.” “I just feel so… heavy. Like there’s a pile of rocks building up in the bottom of my stomach. And I don’t know if…even if I never get caught for it, will I ever stop thinking about it? Will the rocks ever clear away, or will they just pile higher and higher? Wh… why are you smiling at me like that?” “You are a good person, Max.” “I don’t-” “Yes. You are a good person, and I like you. And that is why I am helping you, Max.” “I really do appreciate it, but I don’t understand where this place is? What makes it different from any old place in the woods? Couldn’t we dig a hole?” “We could, Maxie. But if we never want your friend to be found, there are better ways. Better places. I know these woods well, Max. I’ve been here many times before. I know the twists and turns of the drying creek, I know the change of the seasons, the approach of an animal. I know the places no one comes back from.” “…How close are we? It’s getting dark.” “Almost, Max. You can feel it, can’t you?” “It’s kind of hard…to breathe a little bit.” “Yes. That’s natural when approaching the veil.” “The what? What’s that there, a cave?” “If you want.” “I don’t like it. It doesn’t feel right.” “Oh Max. Don’t be so judgmental.” “Do I just… put him in there? Like…that? Oh that’s weird. Daniel, will he be- that’s not a normal cave is it? If I put him in there, will he be-?” “Gone? Isn’t that what you wanted?” “It’s not…what’s that noise? It sounds like, oh god, it sounds like f-feathers. A lot of them. Oh my god. They’re here, aren’t they? The owls. They’re here.” “There, there Maxie. Don’t panic. As long as you don’t look up, you’ll be fine. A lot of people disappear in these woods.” “You… you?” “What about me, Maxie?” “Those others… from camp. It wasn’t- you didn’t, you weren’t the one who-?” “The one who what? We’ve been over this, Max. Sometimes things just… disappear.” “I want… I want to go back.” “I’m afraid that’s not possible.” “I’m bigger than you. I could-” “Now, Max. You and I are friends now, wouldn’t you say that? We share the most important of things; we share secrets. Only friends share precious things with one another. So I am going to share something precious with you right now, something of my very own.” “…Don’t. I don’t….” ‘Would you like to touch the feather, Max?”


           As trash collection truck driver Tommy Robinson sat down for his second cup of coffee in the break room of Atlas Disposal Services he tried to again rid himself of the stench of packing other people’s discards into his truck.

           “Thought I had gotten used to this rotten job,” he said, “but this week tops them all. Today, while tooling my way through the overprivileged Watchung Mountain suburbs, I stumbled over a doubled-packed trash bag–knocking it across the roadside on Commonwealth Turn.      “For the third time this week what spilled out stopped me in my tracks.       “Of course, in 30 years of this so-called profession, both in hotsy-totsy suburbia and in the crappiest areas of the Garden State’s urban ghettos, discovering plastic hypodermic needles used to help heroin addicts to get their latest high should come as no surprise.       “The size of this week’s discoveries knocked me off my feet–I found hundreds of narcotics injection tools on the property of estates in one of New Jersey’s, and the nation’s, most high end suburbs.        “Couldn’t let this just pass as a normal run, so I looked up my customer registrations as soon as I got back to the garage. The mansions from which I made these collections during the last few weeks belong to some of the top surgeons in the county’s top-of-the-line medical center. These guys, even if they were stupid enough or had fallen so far, should have known better than to so carelessly dispose of the evidence.       “I’ve heard that kids from down the hill have begun using the driveways of these showplace homes as shooting galleries because they believe the bigshot MDs who live in the palaces at the top of these long driveways either can’t see all the way to the bottom of the hills or don’t care to bother with the riff raff, just as long as we come along twice a week to clear away the evidence, but you would think the local cops would have busted the addicts and pushers by now and brought the bigshots the negative publicity they avoid like the plague.”       Turns out the mansion owners knew more than Tommy imagined–they, in fact, supplied the “product” needed to continue the local drug trade–from the hospital’s own dispensary.        “Even with the six-figure salaries, these physicians couldn’t afford to maintain these elaborate homesteads on the hills, buy uber-luxury cars every year and hold their wild parties every week. These extras required substantial extra income. That’s why the doctors signed on as suppliers to the local addiction-production industry.         “I have a few friends in law enforcement that are so scared about payback for opening their mouths. They told me the heroin pipeline operators have carefully mapped out their strategy, up to now, including payoffs to law enforcement to keep their operation secret, and undisturbed.”           After watching the drug pipeline feed the destruction of too many lives in his town, his neighborhood and even in his own family, the sanitation man decided to cut off one of the tentacles of the octopus.          Tommy pledged to work for the rest of his life to save the lives of kids like the ones who had wasted away in the ghetto and now laid dead along the roadways on the fringes of one of America’s most wealthy areas.

         Additionally, the drug plague had claimed the life of his 17-year-old brother, Jimmy, only five years before.          Jimmy had fallen prey to the glitz and glamour of the fast life promised by the merchants of death, who had persuaded him to inject their poison into his veins. Finally, he could not escape the iron grip of the deadly narcotic.          Thinking back to the suffering of his brother, Tommy told his co-workers, “Kids from areas like my old hood should no longer have their lives wasted away so that some uber-rich suburbanites can destroy these children to allow the pushers and their supporters to reside in palaces at the top of the hill and clmb to the top rung of the social ladder.”

          Six months later, with his retirement from the sanitation industry,Tommy used a good chunk of his lifelong savings to help permanently shut down the drug pipeline. Careful investment had resulted in a nestegg amounting to about $1 million.           He used his savings to establish the Recycling Human Potential Foundation.

The organization worked with the top educational and medical minds in the country to offer to pay for complete rehabilitation services and full tuition at a community college for any youth who signed an agreement to bring one other addict into the program once they graduated,             The former trash collector also enlisted the help of the Drug Enforcement Administration in breaking up the corruption-laden hospital-law enforcement chain.

         The DEA gave the destruction of the drug supermarket its top priority, setting up a huge interagency task force to cut off the tentacles of the far-reaching operation.          Hundreds of federal agents from across the country joined forces with Tommy, his fellow foundation leaders and right-thinking hospital administrators and local law enforcement to cut off the corruption and stop the flow of narcotics down from the hills into the nearby city’s ghettos.            They busted narcotics operations at every level, arresting pushers operating in palatial estates, darkened alleys behind police stations and hospital dispensaries. Even their expensive luxury automobiles and other millionaires’ toys financed by the operation did not escape the long arm of the law.            Those involved in pedaling the poison didn’t go down without a fight,

and Tommy suffered a number of severe injuries and close brushes with death at the hands of the gangsters’ enforcers.

      Yet, he and his foundation didn’t give up. They rescued over 200 youngsters over 10 years and resolved to continue the fight until they saw the drug lords locked behind the bars of the state prison or a federal penitentiary .             The drug cartels recruited an army of attorneys in an effort to tie up the work of the foundation and its law enforcement partners in the courts.

            Breaking through the legal spiderwebs created by the pushers and their supporters,Tommy and his partners refused to surrender. After many months tied up in litigation, they saw far more success than any previous effort to rid the area of the narcotics plague that had controlled it for decades.              The former trash collector felt Jimmy smiling down on him as he led his foundation in recycling many previously hopeless victims of the heroin trade into productive human beings and disposed of the trash that had destroyed his brother and so many others.


In the lord’s gardens at Lincolnshire, Isaac Newton knew of a tree that held the secret to all knowledge. Some said the tree had grown from a seed stolen by Marco Polo during his trip to the Orient. They claimed that Marco Polo had climbed the Himalayas and infiltrated a secretive order of monks who guarded a sacred tree. The leader of their order had the privilege of taking a single bite from its fruit in his lifetime. The monks believed that the fruit was so strong that a second bite would prove fatal, and that even the first bite would open the mind of man to the mysteries of the world which only the strongest of men could perceive and not go mad. And that Marco Polo, knowing these things and fearing for his life, escaped with a single seed from that tree, for which he earned a king’s ransom. Some said that the tree was cursed, that it had grown on a graveyard believed to be fallow before being transplanted to the lord’s gardens. That its fruit was haunted by the dreams of the dead the plant had absorbed, and those who tasted of it were filled with memories and impressions not their own, driven mad by spirits with unsettled business on this earth. And there were those who said that the tree was the original tree from the garden of Eden, for which God had exiled humanity from paradise simply for taking that first bite which extinguished our innocence, and awakened the potential for good and for evil. The tree had been stolen back from the promised land during the crusades and protected by good Christians ever since, who swore never to defy God’s commandment again. The last bite had changed the world. A second might destroy it. Only two things were certain. The tree was the prized possession of the lord of Lincolnshire. And no one was allowed to eat of it. The lord could sometimes be seen admiring it, but even he never succumbed to temptation: any fruit it produced was quickly collected and burned, under his watchful eye. To the undiscerning, it might have appeared to have been an ordinary apple tree. But young Isaac Newton knew better. The lost treasure of the east, the tree that carried the souls of the dead, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil... One of the stories had to be true. Perhaps even all of them. Isaac did not know how he would do it, or what the consequences would be, but he knew he had to eat of its fruit. The tree was sealed behind a gate of iron with bars too firm to bend even if Isaac had been exceptionally strong, which he was not. The gates were topped with a wide row of spikes making climbing them treacherous even if Isaac had been exceptionally agile, which he was not. The path through the castle to the garden was watched by guards too proud of their loyalty to their lord to allow so much as a child to slip through even if Isaac had been exceptionally charming, which he was not. Isaac was of average wit and ability, and had only one advantage on his quest to eat the apple. His mind was filled with dreams of its potential, and nothing, not even what seemed impossible, would deter him from his objective. Anyone who expressed interest in the tree gained the watchful eye of the guards: one of Isaac’s friends had heard the legend and asked one of the gardeners about it, and his trips to the garden quickly gained a chaperone. So Isaac never asked about the tree. To loiter around the gardens was also to gather suspicion, another friend had hovered near the outer gardens as the fruit ripened in the springtime, and had kindly been asked to leave. So Isaac never spent too much time near the gardens. One young lad had tried to rush his way to the tree, and earned a cuff on the ear from the guards and a lecture from his parents. So Isaac vowed to make no attempt on the tree until he could be certain of success. Once a year, come early May, Isaac would take a trip down to the gardens with a blanket in his pack, watching the tree, waiting for one single fruit to fall in the range he needed it to. He would push his luck for an hour, pretending to be admiring the spring air, before returning home empty-handed. A year would pass, the fruit would once again be ripe, and Isaac would return to the tree, staring up at it and hoping for a miracle. It was during what was to be his last year in Lincolnshire that the impossible finally happened. Isaac couldn’t say how, but just looking at the tree’s branches shake with the wind, he knew it was almost time. The miracle he had been waiting for was about to arrive. Sensing his opportunity was near, Isaac unfurled the blanket under the gate, rolling it down to where the edge of the blanket reached to where the farthest branch of the tree stretched out. As if on cue, there was a tiny snap from the tree and a single apple fell onto the edge of the blanket. Exhilarated, and scarcely believing his luck, Isaac carefully pulled the blanket back towards him, keeping the apple balanced on top until it was in grabbing range. Snatching the magical fruit and the blanket up, Isaac tore off in a sprint back to his home. Isaac couldn’t have said if anyone had seen him. His heart felt like it was beating a thousand times a minute as he raced his treasure home. It wasn’t until he reached the privacy of his own room that he trusted himself to look at his prize. A flawless red apple, with a tiny green leaf attached. The food of kings. Of gods, even. The Greeks had told a story of an apple hurled by Eris, the goddess of discord, into a party of the gods which had sparked the Trojan war over who would claim it. And if he believed some of the stories, that same fruit was in his hands. For only a moment, Isaac considered what would happen if he sold the fruit, or tried to plant a tree of his own from the seeds. But he knew what he needed to do. He had waited too long to think of anything else. Isaac took a single bite of the pure red apple and swallowed, waiting for the divine revelation to descend upon him, and the mysteries of the universe to be unraveled. And Isaac Newton felt nothing. Isaac paused, anticipating the moment when he would feel different, for some unexpected sensation to take him over. But the experience had produced nothing mystical in him. It had felt like nothing so much as eating an apple. Sitting in silence, after almost a minute had passed, praying he was not proving too greedy, Isaac took a second bite, chomping down onto the apple and savoring its mix of sweetness and bitterness before swallowing it down. And still Isaac Newton felt nothing. Isaac began to grow concerned. How long were the effects supposed to last? Was he meant to eat the whole thing in a single go? Isaac stared at the walls around him, his hands, and the contents of his room, waiting for his world to overflow with transcendent knowledge that would prove this had all been worth it. Isaac waited nearly an hour, and still feeling nothing, consumed the rest of the apple in a rush. And after all that, still, Isaac Newton felt nothing. Isaac stared down at his sticky hands and the remaining apple core, and felt like he wanted to cry. As best as he could tell, nothing special had happened, there had been no miracle contained in that fruit. He felt as though the scales were finally beginning to fall from his eyes, as the slightly bitter taste in his mouth started to nauseate him. The bright world of magic and mystery he had believed in was beginning to unravel, and be replaced with cold mundanity. There was a far more plausible explanation for everything he knew about the tree. The fruit was not of a variety intended to be eaten: perhaps slightly poisonous, or simply not as sweet as the apples he was used to. The lord must have admired the tree, but was careful not to let any reckless children eat from a plant he wasn’t sure was safe. It felt so obvious now that Isaac had thought of it, a thousand times more plausible than the childish supernatural fancies he had allowed to fill his head. Isaac lay in bed restlessly that night, unable to sleep, a mix of indigestion and disappointment. What a fool he had been. For thinking that all it would take was eating one fruit, and somehow he would be able to do more than anyone who had come before him in unlocking the mysteries of the universe. And then Isaac Newton began down the path that would lead to him doing more than anyone who had come before him in unlocking the mysteries of the universe. Lying in bed, trying to put his mind past the apple that had occupied his thoughts for years, a single nagging thought crept into his mind before he fell asleep that night. Why had the apple fallen? The question stuck with him until the next day. It seemed so obvious a point that everyone else must already know the answer, Isaac felt like a simpleton for even considering it. To mention it to his parents would be to admit ignorance. So at the end of his school day, Isaac mustered up the courage to ask one of his teachers in private: why did apples fall to the ground? And Isaac Newton was told that it was simply in the nature of apples to fall. And for a time this answer satisfied him. But after only a day, something about the answer began to rub him the wrong way, like an itch he couldn’t scratch, or a barb stuck in his shoe. Like the answer was glossing over something fundamental, a patch applied over a tear in cloth, or a coat of paint on a rotting house. The next day, Isaac came back to his teacher with another question: why did oranges fall? Or balls? Or any other object? And Isaac Newton was told that it was simply in the nature of all objects to fall. And for a time this answer satisfied him. But the more that he thought about it, the more questions he uncovered. The astronomers claimed that the moon, the stars and the planets floated through space. Why? What force compelled them to circle the earth in their skewed orbits? What caused the tides to change with the year, and be drawn in and out? And Isaac Newton was told that it is simply in the nature of planets to circle the Earth, the stars to float in space, and the tides to go in and out. And this answer did not satisfy him in the slightest. Isaac began to suspect that all of this was wrong. Or not so much wrong, as incomplete. That where his teachers had hundreds of reasons: one for every object, one for every phenomena on the earth, there was a single reason. Some unifying principle that could make sense of all of this, and show why all these things had to be true at the same time. Isaac’s teachers told him that objects fell more quickly based upon their weight. A man named Galileo Galilei claimed to have stood on top of the leaning tower of Pisa, and dropped two weights of identical shape but varying weight, and proved that they fell at equal speed. But Galileo could not explain why. Isaac’s teachers said the Earth was at the center of all creation, orbited by a moon, planets, and the sun in ever greater circles. Galileo alleged that he had seen through a telescope that the planet Jupiter had its own moons, and that the universe was filled with bodies circled by other bodies. But Galileo could not say why this was. Galileo had even argued for a great heresy: that the ground on which they stood was not immoveable, but that the Earth flew through space at unthinkable speeds in the orbit of the sun. But Galileo could not explain why this was true either. A mathematician named Zeno had once claimed that motion was impossible, since any object must first cross half the distance to reach somewhere, then half the distance again, and half the remaining distance, and so on forever. Something as simple as motion and describing the fall of an apple required a description of how the apple would cross an infinite number of intervals. And mathematics was not equipped to handle infinity. At least, not yet. Isaac Newton studied mathematics, and found it lacking. Mathematics could describe aspects of the way the world was, but not how it changed. Isaac Newton studied the philosophies of Aristotle, and found it lacking. Aristotle claimed it was in the nature of objects to fall according to their weight, a principle believed for nearly two thousand years. But if the stories were true, Galileo had shown otherwise. Isaac Newton studied the stories of astrologers who claimed that the stars and planets in heaven were moved by supernatural forces, and found their claims lacking. The planets moved with regularity, not purpose. They were less like men who chose to move, and more like apples. Compelled to move. Isaac imagined an apple, floating in space, that began to accelerate downwards, at two meters per second. Its acceleration would be constant, a flat line. The speed it had picked up could be defined by a line sloping up the graph at the rate of its acceleration. But what about its position? Since the apple picked up distance at every moment, its position had to be the area under the curve defining its velocity. Isaac drew the sides of a triangle that filled in the area under the curve of the sloped line up to a point. That area was a triangle, or half a square, so the position had to grow with the square of time… a parabola. Isaac looked at what he had written for each equation. “Position = X^(2)”. “Velocity = 2X”. “Acceleration= 2”. There was a profound relationship between each of those simple descriptions. Going forward, each equation described the rate of change of the last equation. Going backward, each equation described the area under the curve of the next equation. Given any graph, any pattern of movement, there had to be a similar relationship that could be described: the change taking place, and the impact of a change that took place at that rate. And so Isaac began to develop the mathematics of change. The mathematics of the infinite. It was many years later, after untold hours spent buried in his notes and research that Isaac Newton wrote a book describing the mathematics of infinity, and how it could be used to describe the force of gravity that bound reality. His encoding of gravity in numbers and strange symbols would have looked like witchcraft to the illiterate, trapping the complexity of the universe in arcane runes. He called it The System of the World. The moon circled the Earth, the tides of the Earth shifted with the moon, and apples fell all for the same reason. Because all matter in the universe was drawn together by a force proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. All the motion in the world, from people, to ships, to avalanches were a consequence of Isaac Newton's laws of motion. Objects at rest remained at rest, objects acted on by a force changed their momentum in proportion to that force, and any force acting on an object produced an equal and opposite reaction. These were not simply stories that could be told, like “apples want to fall.” These were mathematical principles that could be used to predict the eclipses of the sun, the trajectory of an arrow, and the future of the world itself. For a brief moment, half a billion humans were alive on planet Earth, but only one of them could look at the world and see the fundamental forces that drove it, the machinery of nature expressed in mathematical equations. Untold trillions of creatures had lived out their lives on Earth watching the sun moon and stars float above them in the sky without understanding what caused the sun to brighten the day and disappear by night, and Isaac Newton became the first able to explain why. The first equipped with the knowledge to predict and change reality. And then Isaac Newton unleashed his science upon the world. The seed of knowledge planted by Isaac Newton would spread across the entire surface of the Earth. Knowledge of his Calculus and physics would allow for the creation of new kinds of machinery, great and terrible in destructive power, powered by energies gathered from deep beneath the Earth’s crust. It would allow the human race to send vessels to the sky to reach celestial bodies they had only glimpsed through telescopes, and reshape the Earth according to the will of mankind, shrinking the boundaries of nature and diminishing the role of magic and mystery. Some of this, Isaac would begin to see in his lifetime. Other parts of this story are still being told. It was many years later that Isaac returned to the gardens of the lord of Lincolnshire as an older and wiser man, to find that the tree had disappeared. A new lord ruled in the castle, and had no interest in an old tree the previous owner was afraid to let anyone eat from. Isaac Newton had been the last to ever eat of its fruit. Isaac stared at the place where the tree had once stood, filled with sadness and gratitude for the journey it had sent him on. When Isaac was asked in public how he had developed such amazing insights into the world, Isaac would modestly shrug, and say that if he had seen further, it was because he had stood on the shoulders of giants. But when asked by his closest friends, his thoughts would turn back to his memories of that garden and the legend of a tree’s fruit. And Isaac would say that all of it, the whole thing, had happened because of an apple.


Many people outside of the entertainment world might just believe that being and entertainer is a glamorous life. It is but it isn’t. With that being said, let me introduce myself. My real name is Royce Nesby. Yet everyone calls me Dancer! I been dancing longer than I been walking. My mother would tell anyone who would listen that I even danced out of her womb. Maybe she drank one too many Margarita’s the late morning I was born. My father is a classic pianist, while my mother dabbled in the arts. I was destined to be a star in which never quite materialized as everyone believed. Oh, I did quite well for myself. You see, I’m a back up dancer. For those of you who may not know what exactly a back up dancer is I’ll try an explain. A backup dancer also known as background dancer is a performer who dances with or behind the lead performers in a live musical act or in a music video. Their movements provide a visual symmetry and rhythm to accompany the music. Dancers like myself must regularly attend rehearsals, costume fittings, tapings and concert dates as part of my job. While it's not necessary to have a college degree in dance, but it doesn’t hurt. I attended New York University Tisch School of the Arts by acquiring a full four year scholarship. The synchronized steps, glamorous costumes and proximity to stars make a career as a backup dancer seem like a dream come true for many. While the finished product may seem polished and desirable, however, the long hours and physical strain make dancing one of the most demanding careers today. Depending on the type of job, its length and other factors such as skill and experience, a dancer salary can vary from modest to lucrative. Mines was lucrative. Dancers are typically paid by the gig and pay-per-gig can reach over $1,000. Outside of money, compensation also comes in the form of lodging, exposure and/or costumes. It’s important to remember, however, that pay can be contingent upon other factors including ticket sales. Because of the gig-to-gig nature of dancer income, dancers also find other ways to bring in money between performances; this can be through teaching, food service or arts administration, among other day jobs. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the hourly wage of a dancer at $17.15 per hour as of 2017. The dancer salary in companies and on Broadway is about $1,861 a week. Depending on the gig, your dance job may also come with benefits including health insurance, dancewear (shoes, sweatpants, etc.) and access to massage or physical therapists. This truth I share with you today is what most people believe a back up dancer truly, is behind their backs: A person who isn't important. A person who hides in the shadow of the star or someone else. A copy cat fake moon walker. Yo, Sis did you hear about that back up dancer Royce we went to dance school with? Na, what's up with him? He's just a back up dancer! Okay, enough with the shop talk. Let me give you the real low down and dirties about back up dancing. For 12 years straight I never had a vacation or basically a day off. My first video was with an entertainer known as Vanilla Ice. Myself and another dancer danced along with Vanilla Ice to Ice-Ice Baby. Much of the video was filmed inside a rat infested dingy warehouse. I remember because one of the stagehands got bit by a rat the size of a small armadillo. I was paid a measly $300. I must have did something right because my mother who had volunteered to be my manager got a call from Madonna. When I went to audition for her Blonde Ambition World Tour I was immediately told never to speak personally with the star. I stayed with her for four years. To me it was a gig I really made good money. I got along with a few of the dancers. I never liked the ones who tried to upstage her or suck up to her. Her name truly fit her. Because it seemed that we dancers were always competing for her attention in this concentrated amount of time, we weren’t tight at all. I think a lot of that is positioning, for her and it kind of put us in relation to her in a certain way that I guess she felt it benefitted her. But I didn’t feel like we were a family. It was a job and it was really cool and we were sharing our art; that’s what my relationship with her always felt like. It was different, totally different when I started back up dancing for the King of Pop Michael Jackson. I’m not here to throw no shade on that wonderful entertainer. He out danced and out worked all of his back up dancers. He was the constant pro and a real perfectionist. I can say that for the 3 years I danced along side him I learned more about dancing than I did in College. I was truly sadden by his untimely demise like many of his fans. But like in show business the show must go on and I danced along the sides of Luther Vandross, Patti Labelle, Mariah Carey and Mary J. Blige to name a few. It wasn’t until I sprained my ankle that I realized that I had never spent a holiday with friends nor family or even by myself. Those holiday occasions were for the fans and when I made the most money. All I really wanted to do for the first time in my dancing life was to do what normal people do during the holidays. You know like read a novel, fly a kite, let off a few fireworks, get drunk and have my ex girl friend call the police on me, walking a neighbor’s dog to pick up chicks, eat until I have to unbutton my pants, wait up all night to actually see how Santa Claus comes down the chimney in my condo, go to a nice restaurant at around 7pm, go to church, truly honor our soldiers who fought to protect us, to know what labor day is and celebrate a birthday. Like I said earlier having a back up dancing career isn’t that bad unless you consider all the enjoyment you miss during the holidays.


(WP) A Bitter Lovers’ Quarrel “I told you it didn’t have to happen this way,” His beloved snarled. She was sitting on the bed with her arms crossed, her full, luscious lips twisted in disgust. “I tried to tell you!” Her voice was soft, but carried an undertone of steel that would have sent him running for cover, had he been anyone else. But he was Paris, Prince of Troy, and he refused to be cowed, even by his own lover. Paris’s arms felt empty without Helen within them. Even though his lover was technically married to King Menelaus, it hadn’t stopped him from falling in love with her the moment he laid eyes on her. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and after all that logic and reason flew straight out the window. “That was one of the members of my family, Paris. And now Hector is gone! I tried to tell you that there was a way out of this that didn’t involve war and bloodshed!” Her back was turned to him, and that alone felt like the worst sort of rebuke. For all her beauty, it was easy for even him to forget that she was a demigod, the King of the Gods her father. He wanted to say that she hadn’t protested when he’d stolen into her room that first night, and they’d kissed, never mind that her own husband was lying next to her. It was the first time that Paris had ever tasted her, and it was that madness that prompted him to steal her away from her husband and people. Both Trojans and Greeks wondered if the prince had been struck by one of Aphrodite’s stray arrows; that had to be the only reason that both armies were now falling to ruin. “I’m not sorry,” Paris replied at last, and once the words left his mouth, he realized that it was the truth. “Of course, you’re not sorry!” Helen snapped through gritted teeth. “Why would you be? He wasn’t part of your family.” She remembered all the time she’d spent with Hector, despite his seniority. He’d been as dear to her as her own father, and despite the fact that she adored Paris, she wasn’t certain if she could forgive this particular trespass. Before Paris could see them, Helen wiped her face of tears. Despite herself, she found herself missing her husband and Sparta. Standing on the other side of what could be her greatest impulse or ruin, Helen found her heart crumbling to pieces inside of her ribcage. How had this even begun? Was it her own way of distracting herself from her yawning, all-consuming boredom, despite being a queen with a loving husband? Had Paris been nothing but a shiny, well-oiled distraction from the gilded cage from which she’d ruled on high? She’d grabbed on to him with both hands, duty, decorum and all the gods be damned, never mind that she’d left her old life in shambles in doing so.


True, but not all scars are created equal. I've got a doozy on my right eyebrow like Jason Mamoa and I hate to think of how it'd look if I hadn't ended up in the ER on the most traumitizing day of my life. Many years ago, my good friend Fitz and I made an impromptu road trip to visit my brother in Tampa. Upon arriving, I was notified that my brother had been incarcerated earlier in the day. Luckily, I had a key, and I knew where he kept the Valiums. We found 20, so we decided, regretfully, to split them and make our way to Ybor City. In no time, we were buying strangers all the Everclear daiquiris they would willingly drink and matching them 1:1. I was an unwavering idiot at the time so afterwards, my friend and I attempted to drive home and got hopelessly lost. After about a half hour of wrecklessly swerving around blurry streets that I had never seen before and making absolutely no progress towards even departing Ybor, I could no longer hold my piss. I pulled over in a parking lot and told Fitz that I was going to piss around the corner. I guess I had been sitting long enough for the grain alcohol to catch up because I only made it about eight floundering steps before I faceplanted into the pavement. It was freezing outside so I had my hands in the pockets of my white hoodie - I didn't even come close to getting them out in time to help break my fall. Face first into a mucky water puddle of some random asphalt parking lot in the hood. I'm not sure how long I laid there but I somehow managed to eventually get myself up. I should've been (remained?) unconscious; I was definitely concussed. My formerly white hoodie was an appalling mix of brown sludge and the most blood I'd ever seen in my life. I made it back to the car a good while later. I opened the driver's side door to awaken my passed out companion. "Dude, look what I did," I slurred, pointing drunkenly at my bloody face and rust-colored hoodie. "You think that's bad?" he replied apathetically, "Look what I did!" Too drunk to attempt to vacate my passenger seat, Fitz had thoroughly pissed himself. We both laughed and drove home, as invincible fucktards in their early '20s are wont to do. I woke up the next afternoon to some chick or another I was fucking at the time shaking me violently while being significantly louder than my pounding head could comfortably abide. Apparently I was supposed to stay with her the night before and I had never showed, never called, and had been unreachable all day. So she just showed up at my house to find my head in a bloody ruin. She said she thought I was dead. Looking at my pillow, I wondered if I might actually be. Strange afterlife, I thought. I felt close to death anyway, but I had no idea what she was talking about. I remembered very little of the night before until I stumbled into the bathroom and literally saw after being completely fucking obliterated by Ivan Baranchyk staring back at me in the mirror. She demanded I go to the ER--immediately if not sooner--and after the initial shock wore off, I agreed with her. That was the day I discovered what true pain was, and also that everything I previously thought I knew about the subject was unforgivably wrong. So fucking wrong. The gaping wound had completely dried up and was pretty much scabbed over. Before they could stitch it up, that all had to be removed. The Verna lemon-sized lesion in the side of my head had to be reopened. I'll spare you the gory details but I want to at least mention that because of the alcohol still in my system or because the masochistic nurse wanted to teach me a hard lesson or for some other reason I can no longer remember, they couldn't use any local anesthetic. Fucking Christ I'm shuddering just thinking about it. What followed was an eternity of infernal cutting, scraping, and peeling. The nurse said I was the most difficult patient she had ever had, which is fitting because she inflicted more pain in me than I had ever known was possible. I was a sobbing, swearing, utter mess. I was lucky though, the doctor said I could've gone blind in that eye and that if they hadn't been able to stitch it because I had waited any longer or for whatever other reason, I would've looked undeniably similiar to round 3 Glass Joe for the rest of my life and never gotten laid again. Plus I totally should've bled out every drop of my emaciated blood in my sleep that night. The only reason I can tell this story is because of two women I can only vaguely remember the appearance of saving my life that day. Shoutout also to Jason Mamoa for making eyebrows scars great again. God I was such a fuckup. I'm gonna do everything possible to prevent my kid from following in my footsteps - incurring avoidable scars included.


The sunset makes the darkening sky blush and adds rose highlights to the emerald water. A young couple, a man and a woman, perhaps in their early twenties, tanned and trim, golden-skinned in their bathing suits, have their beach blankets spread on the white sand. They sit close together, facing the sea and the sunset. In a three-story beachfront house, an elderly couple are on the balcony outside the second floor. They are sharing a bottle of white wine, crisp and cold in the warm air. “Like Adam and Eve,” the husband says. "Don't you think?" The wife smiles. “They look blissful down there. So young.” “Doesn’t it remind you?” “It’s like yesterday,” she says. “And a million years ago.” “That too.”

“So much time has passed, and still …” “I know.” She reaches out to hold his blue-veined, wrinkled hand. She squeezes, then lets go, sighs, contented. “The sunset is beautiful, just like it was the day we met.” “Soak it up. Take the heat from the sun,” he says. “Let it heal you, like in that book we just read, by, oh, what’s his name?” “Ishiguro.” “That’s right. It worked for the little girl. The sun healed her.” “Oh, honey.” “I’m not giving up on a miracle drug.” “You never give up,” she says. “I love you for that.” “We’re gonna break the monster’s back,” he says. “Believe it.” “It’s hard to believe.“ “I know.” "You're the one who prays," she says. "I do too, in my way. But now I’m one step closer to knowing. It’s so beautiful here. It’s perfect. Right now. This moment. This is a good moment.” “Yes, it's perfect,” he says. ”A perfect moment. Let’s stop time. Freeze everything in place with the sun right where it is, barely touching the horizon, the warm breeze, everything just so.”

"I have to tell you." She takes a sip of the cold white wine. “I feel that I’m getting ready to leave the ground.” He is quiet for a long time, then: “I don’t know if I can take it.” She says nothing, sets the wineglass down on the small table between them, reaches out and squeezes his hand again, and this time she holds on.

Until she doesn’t.

He knows it has happened. No more pain. That’s good. That part is good. There has been so much pain. But the other part ... He’s not ready to look over at her, to have it be final and real, so he closes his eyes, feels the warm rays of the setting sun on his face, drifts off while thinking about her, and lines from a song come to him: ' A house doesn't make a home, don't leave me here alone .' Then, she is there, and he feels her familiar lips on his.

He opens his eyes. “You,” he says. “Me.” She smiles. "Hi." She looks just like the day they met, more than seventy years ago, when they were both in their twenties.

He sits up, looks at her, drinks her in. Then he notices his own tanned skin, his trim shape, the energy of youth, the beach blanket, the warm sand.

“Like Adam and Eve,” she says. “It was us, down here, waiting, for when we were ready to let go.” He turns and looks back at their beach house, to the balcony on the second floor, where he can make out their old skin and bones, empty. “I prayed for this,” he says. ”That we would go together. It’s perfect.” “It’s even better than a miracle drug.” She smiles, stands up, holds out her hand. He takes it, gets up, and they both stand together, looking out towards the sunset at the horizon, arms around each other.

"The water looks fine," he says.

"Let's go in." They wade into the shallows, the cool water lapping their ankles, then their shins. "What's this?" She reaches down, bringing up a seashell, water dripping. The shell cracks open in her hand. A soft light illuminates her face. She gasps. "Oh, I didn't remember." "What is it?" "Can't you see?" "No." "It's something from my early childhood," she says. "I'd forgotten all about it. You really can't see? For me, it's like I'm there, living it all again." He finds a seashell of his own.

"You're right," he says. "It's like being there, in the moment." "But you can't see mine," she says, "and I can't see yours." "I can tell you about it," he says. "If you want to." "I think that's the point," he says. "If we want to, we can share. When we're ready." "Leaving a bit of mystery." "Yes, and space. The mysterious distance that makes life together an act of discovery. It reminds me of something from that book your mom gave us at our wedding." "Oh, yes. Gibran: ' But let there be spaces in your togetherness .'"

"I wonder if ... " He looks around, selects a larger seashell, bright white, fishing it out of the seabed. When it cracks open, they both gasp.

Afterwards he says. "What a wonderful memory, our wedding day." "And to think of all that happened after, all the time we had together." "Seventy years, and then some. And now, we get more time together." "Eternity." "Just us." "For now," she says. "I have a feeling, when we're ready, there will be others. Family, friends." "God." "I think He is always here." "I wonder," he says. "If we will see God, face to face." "When we're ready." "I want to try something." He lifts one leg out of the water, plants his foot on the surface, then steps up, standing on the sea. He holds out his hand, and she joins him.

Together, they walk on the sea, hand in hand, towards the horizon, in the direction of the sun. "I'm thinking about what you said." "When?" she says. "Right before." "Oh." "You said: ' I'm getting ready to leave the ground '. I wonder if we can fly." "I'm sure we can," she says. "I think anything is possible for us now. But if you don't mind, I'm having such a lovely walk, let's keep enjoying this for a while." "For as long as you want." "And then, when we're ready — let's fly!"


(I wrote this as a spur of the moment idea let me know if it's worth continuing/fully fledging it out.)  This summer was forecasted to be the hottest in California history. The sun beat down on the 108 degree sand as a tall, thin, man shouldered a rifle and fired a few shots. Unfortunately for the man on the receiving end of the shots Jonathan was a talented marksman. The sound of bullet ripping through flesh was a unique one at that, the wet slap of the target being hit followed by the projectile planting itself in the sand with a hard thud. The wounded man clutched his chest as he fell to the ground, praying that this not be the end for him. He flipped himself over just in time to see Jonathan walk up to him, the M16 rifle still fully attached to his shoulder. “Spill it, samuel.” He barked at the wounded man, pushing his weapon further in his face. “You and I…” Sam took pained breaths as his hands shook uncontrollably. “Both know that can’t happen.” “I don’t want to do this to you Sam!” Jonathan held onto the barrel of his gun like his life depended on it. He didn’t want to kill his friend, that’s the absolute last thing he wanted out of this. “Just do it Jon! Do what you have to do! Get it over with!” Sam knew he wasn’t making it out of this desert, he knew he was never seeing the hollywood streets again, he was okay with it. This city has taken more out of him than he could have ever predicted. “Jonathan!” Sam screamed at him, sitting up to put the barrel of the gun to his forehead. “C’mon just talk! I don’t want to do this, Man!” Jon had tears in his eyes as he took his finger off of the side of the gun, placing it firmly on the trigger. His hand was shaking. He didn’t want to have to be the one to pull the trigger, responsible for the death of a dear friend. “It has to be you.” Sam spoke quietly. “You know they won’t let me–” Sam’s words were cut off by the ear piercing sound of the rifle finally relieving the tension in the air. The sound of the soul being removed from his body and smacking against the sand was all that Jonathan had left. He threw the rifle to the ground and dropped to his knees, unleashing an awful, painful scream into the hot air. Several minutes went by before he brought himself to his feet, picking up the rifle and walking back towards the old blue truck they came in. He slung the rifle into the bed of the truck before opening the door and driving off. The car witch once carried two men started up with a rumble and Jon began driving away from the man he once, called a friend. As he disappeared into the horison, the sound of vultures could be heard above the scene of the crime.


My mother is gone. I am sitting at my computer, my fingers frozen over the keyboard. I want to record this momentous event, the loss of one of the most important people in my life, but I don’t know how to do it. Where to start. Where to end. I knew it was coming, but was amazed when it actually arrived. I sat by her bedside, her withered hand in mine as her spirit slipped away. Words refuse to come. There seems to be no way to make sense of her complicated life. My father brings me a brown cardboard box. On the lid, written in Mom’s loopy script, the word: Memories. He holds it out to me as if it might contain a bomb. His voice is harsh. “Your mother wanted you to have this. You always complained that you never really knew your mother. Maybe you’ll find some answers here. I don’t want to look at any of it.” I begin on the couch in my office, but there is not enough room. I repack the few items I have removed and take the box to the dining room table. I give a small smile as I remember Mom sorting papers, photos, Christmas cards and letters on this table. “Like mother, like daughter, ” I whisper. One by one, I remove items and compile stacks: a series of yearbooks, letters tied with a pink ribbon, my birth certificate. The remains of a life. I slip one of the letters from the pack. It is from Richard. I know about Richard. My aunts have told me the story. They told me lots of stories about my mother. She seemed to have a strange power over men, enticing them until they were crazed with love, then dismissing them. They thought she was a witch. Maybe she was. She seemed to live in a world mere mortals could not reach. Richard was the one man she truly loved. Her wealthy father broke up the relationship because he believed Richard only wanted my mother’s fortune. He proved his point by assuring the man that he would have never be accepted and that my mother’s funds were tied up in unbreakable trusts. Upon hearing this, Richard melted away like a snowball on a sunny winter afternoon. Mom’s best friend, Liz, introduced her to my father, a Hungarian refugee with no credentials, no money and no social standing—a man who cared nothing for wealth or position. He was her revenge.

 I lift a yellowed page-a marriage certificate. Behind it, attached by a paperclip, a photo. My heartbeat quickens. My mother allowed no early photos of herself to grace our home. Daddy said she destroyed them all after the wedding. She insisted that she had no life before she married my father. We celebrated all our holidays at home or with my father’s family. In the the photo my mother wears her customary somber expression. Her eyes stare into a place she alone visits. Her ebony hair falls around her shoulders like a blackout curtain. She wears a midnight-blue, velvet dress, high in the collar and cinched with a wide silver-buckled belt. It is her wedding dress. My father stands with his arm draped across her shoulder. He stares directly at the camera with a look of triumph in his eyes. He has won the prize. He wears what I have been told was his one and only suit-a suit my mother bought for him. The thousand-yard stare is the look I remember most from my childhood—a fragile woman sitting at a chipped-enamel table, smoking endless cigarettes and drinking cold , black coffee. Her hair is long and flowing. She looks like Morticia Adams. Maybe she was a witch. My aunts-my father’s sisters- seem to think she was. My father tried hard to make things work but, in the end, he remained the impulsive, seductive bad boy. Gradually, poverty and a sick wife wore him down. My memories of him swing from Sunday chicken dinners that he cooked while my mother “rested” upstairs and Uncle Remus bedtime stories, embellished with the voices of Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox, to drunken rages and threats to shoot Santa Claus so no presents would arrive at our house. Later, I realized that his rage came from his inability to buy Christmas gifts at all. Most wedding photos depict a happy couple-a smiling bride, a proud groom-two people high on life and confident about the future. It is only later that marriages unravel. When a tragedy occurs—a nasty breakup, a spousal murder—the newspapers and TV stations run happy wedding photos and videos as if to ask, “How could something that seemed so perfect at the beginning go so wrong at the end?” My parents did not start their marriage with a joyful nuptial shot. Did their bleak wedding photo foreshadow their desperate marriage? I smooth the photo and study it to tease meaning from the way the couple faces the camera, how they are standing in relation to one another and what their eyes tell me. I want to understand the story behind the images The photo slips from my fingers and floats to the table, turning over as it falls. On the back, the same loopy scrawl.

Joanie, If you see this, I am dead and glad of it. This photo is a prelude to what marrying for revenge costs. I know you plan to marry Mark to spite Peter. Turn this over and think again. I turn the photo over. The image of my parent’s wedding photo is gone, replaced by a wedding photo of me and Mark. Of course, no such photo exists. Mark and I are only engaged. Yet there it is. My wedding photo shows a very young girl with very big dreams and no knowledge of the world. My new husband’s arm does not drape casually or protectively; it holds me with sure authority. I smile. He is grim. A cold chill runs down my back. Memories that I pushed aside intrude. Mark staring at me with cold fury in his almost black eyes. A raised hand. A derisive smile. Cutting words. Yet, he can be so warm, so caring. He returned to me after I left him for Tom. Tom who discard me for my best friend. No cold eyes then, just warm. compassionate understanding. His face in my hair as he murmurs. “We all make mistakes. Marry me and I will make everything right. That fool will rue the day he let you go.” I look down at the diamond glittering on my finger. It slides off my finger as if I have greased it. I feel a cold chill down my back. My mother’s face floats in front of me. “It’s OK Momma, I understand. I love you.”


Every movie and television show, every novel, every video-game. They all seemed to portray the post-apocalyptic world the same way. A barren wasteland where nothing can grow. It’s not their fault, really. Humanity always assumed that the end would come in the form a mushroom cloud. Ironically, that was the case. It just didn’t happen the way we expected. Nuclear war wasn’t the cause of our demise, it wasn’t caused by our own hand, but by nature. A spore was released by an aggressively invasive crossbreed of mushroom that spread across the globe and wiped out each and every person alive. Everyone, that is, expect me. It would be funny if, you know, everyone hadn’t died. Parents always told their children to eat their vegetables, and it turned out to be great advice. Even as a young girl I was obsessed with mushrooms. I cannot remember a time when some form of mushroom was not a part of each and every meal I consumed. Portobello, Shitake, Porcini. Baked, boiled, fried. And yes, I’ve eaten those types of mushrooms too. I was in my late teens, and I couldn’t really call myself a fungi connoisseur if I didn’t experiment with every variety. I even ate some poisonous mushrooms. I did so with the utmost care, micro-dosing on the smallest of samples and gradually increasing the amount when my body had built a resistance. This is what saved me. When the mushroom spores were released and humanity was wiped out, my immune system saved me. So much so that, although the planet is now covered in these lethal fungi, I find it the staple of my diet. But it’s not just the mushrooms that have thrived, all of nature has. Vegetables and fruits only found in foreign lands now grow where council estates were once erected. Creatures of all shapes and colours roam the lands and oceans. The world is now covered in lush greenery and the water in the streams is clearer than it has ever been since man first created machines. Occasionally I’ll come across some relic from the past, the metal shell of a car or the crumbling remains of a building, yet in two decades most of what humanity had created was gone. Nature had pushed its way through the steel and concrete and now flourished once again. Sometimes, I wonder why I write this stuff down, it’s not as if anyone will ever get to read it. I managed to salvage some notepads and pencils in the early days of this great reset, and I try to write a little now and again. Maybe it’s for my own sanity, or maybe it’s just something to pass the time until I too join the rest of my kind. Or maybe it’s to remind myself of the great empire humanity had built, and just how quickly it all faded away. We thought of ourselves as the pinnacle of all existence. But to nature, we were merely a brief inconvenience.


Your Room Is Ready . . . Janis was arriving on a plane at 4:00, and she needed a safe spot in which to recover. So Meredith woke up with just one clear thought in her mind that morning, I’ve run out of time and I’ve run out of excuses. I have to clean the guest room – NOW! She got out of bed, slipped into her Mom jeans and a tee shirt, and went right to the guestroom. She stripped the sheets off the bed and put them in the washer. Then she went to the kitchen and made a pot of coffee. Carrying her coffee mug back to the guest room, she sank into a comfortable chair. Where do I begin…? s he thought as she surveyed what had once been a very pretty room. But, like all rooms that fall into disuse, this one had become a catch-all for stuff. Suitcases that weren’t put away between trips, boxes of Christmas ornaments and an artificial tree, miscellaneous things that had been designated for a hypothetical garage sale that would happen sometime, outgrown children’s clothes, and sporting equipment covered most of the floor space. She could just barely see the pretty woven rug she had shopped for, for months. Declutter first ! Meredith decided and made alternate trips to the garage and trash can as she redistributed everything that didn’t belong in the guestroom. Huffing and puffing, she poured another cup of coffee and returned to the guest room chair. With a wry smile, she let the trite but true phrase cross her mind; Oh yeah, if these walls could talk . It was once one of the busiest rooms in the house. Memories of what she thought of as her one-night-stand era came up first. From the time she divorced Phil’s father when he was 10, until he left for college at 18, Meredith did very little dating. But once her son was no longer even in the same State, she slowly entered the dating pool. After she knew a guy for a while, she sometimes invited him to come home with her for the night, but she always took him to this room - the guest room - reminding them both that he was just a guest. There were no plans to be made for a long-term relationship. Funny, she could only remember a few of their names, but she remembered other things. There were a few less-than-sterling choices, but for the most part, they had been nice men, who weren’t any more interested in making a commitment than she was and that system worked well for her - until she met Jim and brought him home to her bedroom - for good. Armed with a mop, her vacuum, and cleaning supplies, she tackled the job of removing dust and grime, accumulated over years, and while she cleaned, she remembered other times the guest room had been in full use. Her Aunt Jill and Uncle Ed came down from Vermont to stay for a number of years from late November until May, and they took over a big part of her home and her life. It was glorious. In those years, Meredith was working in Real Estate Sales, determined to earn as much money as she could to pay for Phil’s first year of college. When she and Phil were alone, she juggled housekeeping and his extracurricular activities along with her work, but while Jill and Ed were there, they shopped, cooked, cleaned, and chauffeured Phil wherever he needed to be, leaving Meredith free to do whatever she needed to do. And whatever time she came home from work, they greeted her, brought her up to speed on that day's activities, and fed her a hot and delicious meal. They loved being in the warm weather with family for the winter and she loved having them. They were both gone now – but she had enough good, really good memories of them to last her, and Phil, a lifetime. Then there was the time when Janey and her mother came to spend a week with Phil and Meredith. . Before coming to Florida, Meredith and Phil’s father lived in Vermont in a duplex. Janey was “the girl next door.” Phil was three, and Janey was five, and they fell madly in love. He even proposed marriage to her and Janey’s Mother and Meredith began to call each other “mother-in-law.” The children never stopped talking about each other and so when Janey turned 12, her mother and Meredith planned a visit. They expected the two older children to renew what had been a magical childhood relationship.

But so much for maternal expectations. Both mothers had failed to calculate the difference in energies between a 3 and 5-year-old boy and girl and a ten-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl. They totally disliked each other. Janey told her Mother that Phil was just “wicked weird,” and Phil confided in Meredith that he suspected that Janey had “terminal cooties.” They argued over restaurants, movies, TV shows, and games they did and didn’t want to play for six days, but the mothers had managed to ignore most of it and in the end, agreed that it had been a memorable mistake that turned out for them to be surprisingly entertaining. And in the line-up of interesting guests, she certainly couldn’t forget her cousin Sandy from Boston and her husband, Randy. Sandy and Randy were as whacky as their names and filled with boundless energy. Despite dire warnings from Meredith, Randy insisted that they all drive 250 miles to Orlando to go to SeaWorld, on a day that a hurricane was making its way north in the Atlantic.  “SeaWorld is miles from the coast,” Randy scoffed as they drove directly east, into the outer bands of the massive storm. Shortly after they paid their entrance fee, the staff began closing down the outdoor exhibits one by one to protect the animals. They did attend a few indoor shows and spent some time in the gift shops, but after two hours, they were politely invited to leave the attraction, soaking wet, without seeing a single killer whale. They salvaged the day, though, by stopping on the way home at the Medieval Times Restaurant, which featured lavish shows of jousting and sword fighting and falconry and dinner served with no silverware to allow for eating with your fingers. They were a fun couple, and Meredith could never even hear their names without smiling. Meredith put her cleaning tools away and poured a cold drink. Then she began to plan the little “extra’s” that would make her friend’s stay as comfortable as possible. She gathered the latest magazines and a couple of trashy paperback novels for diversion. She made up a basket of comfort items – toothbrush, toothpaste, hand lotion, nail file, hand sanitizer, make-up remover, pain killers, Kleenex, etc., in case Janis forgot to pack any of those things. Then she turned the TV on to make sure it worked, put the remote in the drawer of the bedside table, and began to make the bed. And her thoughts turned to the last guest to use the guestroom. It was Jim’s sister Irene, who flew in from England for their wedding and to serve as Meredith’s maid-of-honor. At the wedding, Edith met Jim’s business partner Roger, who was also Jim’s best man. Focused on their own wedding, neither Meredith nor Jim noticed the instant attraction that struck Edith and Roger like a proverbial thunderbolt and so they were stunned to return from their honeymoon to find a legal folder on the guestroom bed turning full ownership of Jim’s partnership over to him and a note saying that they had discovered they couldn’t live without each other and didn’t want to. They had flown to Vegas to get married and were on their way to England to live. It had been five years since then. Edith and Roger had visited twice but chose to stay in a hotel. They had one child and another was on the way.

The ultimate happy ending , Marilyn mused as she stood in the doorway of the room, a can of air freshener in her hand, and surveyed her day’s work. The room sparkled. A lush green plant in a handsome Chinese bowl stood in the area of the room designated to draw health and well-being to that space, according to the laws of feng shui. The beautiful white islet duvet and shams, plus a mound of lush pillows made the bed worthy of a page in House Beautiful, and Meredith still just loved (and knew she always would) the large watercolor painting of a field of daisies that hung above the headboard. It was a gift to her from one of the “one-night-stands” – a young, unknown artist at the time, whose paintings now hung in major museums across the country and in his lavish gallery in New York. She had mirrored the painting on the dresser directly across from it with her grandmother’s milk glass vase filled with real daisies that she had remembered to pick up on her way home from work the night before. The final effect was beautiful. “Take care of this next lady, please,” Meredith said out loud to the room at large. “Janis was my college roommate. We’ve been friends for 25 years. She’s fresh off her third run of chemo and has in her hand a report from her Dr. that says “cancer-free.” She’s ready to celebrate, and she’s worthy of this sanctuary and all of the peace, love, and joy you always offer to my guests. Then Meredith closed her eyes for just a minute, breathed deeply three times, pushing back some unexpected, happy tears - and added, “Oh, and by the way, this has been a surprisingly good day. Thanks for the memories.”