If there were ever an utterly inappropriate time to suddenly remember the song "The Wheels on the Bus go Round and Round"- It was definitely after the bus you were in ran someone over. Jolene thought as she unconsciously white-knuckled her bat. She looked back at the rest of her team as they all registered varying degrees of horror. It wasn't enough to survive a drive back from the NCAA softball tournament in Iowa, but to run someone over once they arrived on Del Playa boulevard? That was just fate delivering a bloody middle finger. The rest of the hand belonged to the NCAA after they revoked the medals after Darcy and the rest of the outfield tested positive for iguana testosterone. Jolene knew to have an Australian on the team was going to be trouble, she didn't think it would cost her the championship medal her senior year though. Tom, the portly driver, yelled and immediately slammed the bus to a halt. He sprung out of his seat like someone had rung the dinner bell. He opened the door, only to feel the teeth of a foaming frat boy sink into his generous neck. Tom's face twisted in pain and surprise as his blood across the first few windows of the bus. A fresh round of shrieks tore through the bus as Jolene stared in horror as four other button-ups joined the frat boy in his dinner snack. Smoke and screams rippled through the Del Playa Boulevard as the rhythmic bass of the Del Topia festival failed to drown out the immediate chaos. "Bats up, ladies!" Jolene barked at the rows behind her. Thirty pieces of hardwood popped up as she cautiously approached the open door that claimed Tom. "This isn't a drill, no bunts or short swings. These guys are animals out here, and we need to carve a path to the clubhouse." The screams surrounding the bus grew louder as it joined the sound of hundreds of desperate feet. "We don't know what's going on outside these doors, so new rules are in play. If they don't have a bat, they don't matter! Let's go!" Jolene shouted as she jumped into the chaos and cracked the first button up in her way. The rest of the team, clad in their warm-ups and bats followed her out the door. A few girls on edge shoved frantic runners away before Jolene took point and headed towards Uyesaka stadium. Darcy guarded the back as Jolene heard her outback insults cut through the din. "Move it, you fucking sheep! We're all screwed if you don't lift those knees, Brenda!" Jolene couldn't help but cackle as she delivered another homer as a sorority sister lunged at her face. "No rushing for me!" She howled as her Louisville slugger connected with a vicious crack. Jolene wasn't called Captain Thunder for nothing. The team fell into pods of threes as they broke through the crowd to campus. Their championship ears filtered out the screams like game day noise. The only voices that cut through the white noise were Darcy's and Jolene's. Their alternating barks kept the team on the path past the Storke field as they neared the stadium. The campus grounds opened up on all sides. They neared the relative security of the double reinforced doors of the clubhouse when a ragged girl with a single Birkenstock lunged at Jolene. Dani pivoted into the girl, and hip tossed her to the ground. The girl clawed onto Dani's ankle and took a bite before Jolene brought her bat down. "What the fuck?!" Dani screamed as Jolene pulled her up and hobbled towards the locker room together. Dark blood left a trail of pain that the rest of the team was careful to avoid. "Lock the door, Darcy! We don't want any of those psychos coming in." Jolene roared as Darcy shepherded the last of the team through the door. Stranded like the Maccabees, Jolene knew the team couldn't stay in the clubhouse forever. She looked around at the ashen faces that filled the once spotless room. Bats covered the floor as the girls stared at one another for answers. Answers that Captain Thunder didn't have.


October 2143 720 Ion Ave. Uranium City, Mare Imbrium, Moon of Earth Dear Alex, I know my previous e-mail to you left many things unfinished and that was for a good reason – at that time I was still frightened out of my wits, and had a hard time composing myself. I apologize for scaring you with my hastily writings about “the most horrible thing I have ever seen” and many other such vague and uninterpretable things. Now that I am more thoroughly constituted please allow me to explain how I have come to fear being near the endangered female. But don’t you dare accuse me of being some raging bigot towards the disfigured – surely you’ll understand where I come from. Even a week or so after this incident, I still find it most unpleasant and grating to be near one of them. Something so horrible has been burned into my mind, into my very core. I become deeply disturbed when I see one milling about on the street, and I often have to turn away or simply stare at the ground. The sight of one reminds me all too much about the things I witnessed about a week ago. It all began when I remembered my old friend Dallas from my teenage days. We got into contact, and we planned to have a meeting. It had been a while – oh, perhaps 30 or 35 years – since we had last seen each other. We planned to convene at the nearest coffeehouse to his residence, and then from there we would go to his house and listen to old jazz music or just another dusty record from the collection he inherited from his grandparents. We planned to discuss how our lives had progressed and changed. If you were not aware, something that made Dallas stand out was that he had acquired some unknown and undiagnosed genetic disease from the gestationary. For whatever reason, it prohibited him from receiving sufficient gender therapy from a young age until the malformations already took their tolls. I believe it’s one out of every 10,000. Thus, he lacked any of the defining traits that us “normal” people have, such as not bearing a penis (not even a vestigial one), having strange, enlarged breasts, being shorter than average, a disproportionate shoulder-to-hip ratio, lack of any facial hair, and all other kinds of disfigurations that confound the common eye. One could go as far to say that he was much like an archaic Woman before the corrective therapies became available to cure people from being forced into those strange bodies. I’ve seen pictures of these so-called women before the early 2060’s that frankly look a lot like him. But it wouldn’t be accurate to make the comparison. After all, he has since received some hormonal therapy to counteract the influence of this disease, but the damage has been done. And if that hadn’t been bad enough, on top of the disfiguring gender-related illness, he had been diagnosed with another affliction, which was some flavor of cardio-vascular disease. But otherwise he was very normal and kind. He didn’t deserve any of the bullying that came his way. In his childhood, these malformations made him an outsider, and a target for the cruel and apathetic classmates to use him as the social punching bag. Truly, some of the worst bullying that I remember seeing in highschool was directed towards Dallas. Instead of the neutral and proper pronouns of “he” or “him”, they would all refer to him by the slurs, “Woman!”,“Birther!”, “Menstraloid!” and some of the most awful names you could imagine. I remember that they would oftentimes stand behind him and point at his wide hips and rounded shoulders, or pull off his shirt and snicker at his swollen chest, yell him death threats down the hall, and other indescribably horrible things that I simply cannot find it in me to put down onto this message. But the worst part—not even the teachers or administrators would do anything about the bullying other than an indifferent “we are doing all we can to take care of the problem.” It was only I and a few of the more openhearted and understanding folks who looked beyond the biological costume he was forced to wear by birth and simply accepted him as just a man with a disease.   Anyhow, I remember sitting there in the coffeehouse in rapt anticipation of meeting Dallas after the decades, to hear his stories, his life, and the old warm personality I used to love. I recall the moment when the door opened and he appeared out from behind, and I felt as if my stomach no longer had weight. I believe I jumped up from my seat with my mouth permanently set into smiling, and we greeted each other with the usual greetings. It’s always nice to meet with an old best friend. My memory already seems to be faded at the edges, but all I can remember is that I was the only one who drank coffee. And we talked for a while about menialities and small stories. Then we walked a short distance to his house. I noticed that he carried an umbrella, which was weird because it wasn’t even raining at the time. I didn’t ask about it, though. When we arrived at his house, nothing had really stood out as strange until we began to talk about more complex and personal things. He seemed as if he was an actor trying to play an unfamiliar role. When I asked him about Charlie, another close friend of his, he looked nervous and claimed he didn’t know who that was. Then all attempts to refresh his memory with pictures and stories were shot down rapidly with the same “no, I don’t know who that is.” And I noticed that the way he talked had the strangest and most uncanny textures to it. It nearly sounded like he was blankly reading poetry. But I couldn’t pinpoint what it was, so I ignored it, until I realized what it was that had made me so on edge. When it came to me, I started up from the cushions of the couch and began to hyperventilate. He asked me what the problem was, but I found everything to be so unspeakably morbid that I couldn’t even imagine a response. In the flurry of terror I needed to prove to myself if it was true or just my imagination about what had really happened to Dallas. Perhaps my inner psychology wanted to justify my newfound fear of Dallas with evidence; I don’t know. I wasn’t very rational in those moments. In that moment of true horror and surprise I poured the remaining amount of my scalding coffee onto the pale skin that stretched across his face, and ran to the other room to hide from his rage and confusion. Immediately, I heard him scream. When I peeked my eyes from around the corner, I saw it— the horrible thing I mentioned. He had begun to silently twitch there on the couch, with his glassy eyes staring blankly at nothing. His eyes looked like lifeless marbles. And I still vividly remember his face curling into bizarre shapes of emotions, as if something inside had begun to pull and stretch the multiple muscles in his face. And the twitching! —it would have nearly been cartoonish, funny even, if it were not so morbid. And when the terrible twitching mass stopped moving and fell lifeless on the floor, his head made a lifeless, metallic *clunk*. My best friend, the only actual ‘woman’ I have ever known, dead! I tried to feel for his heartbeat in his neck, wrist, and chest but nothing. The main flaw with his behavior wasn’t just the indescribable tranquility in his voice. I heard no breathing when he spoke, I never saw that swollen chest rise or fall, and the way he would move his body when he walked was unnatural, even for a person with the phenotypic wider hips. I knew what this all meant when I remembered the other detail I mentioned from his teenage years. The condition with his heart. If memory serves me correct, there was a large underground problem of sick persons receiving unapproved and illegal thermoelectric organ implants from unlicensed doctors around when we graduated from highschool. There were rumors that some of the most ill, destitute, and damned would go over the top and become entirely electric, but I never believed it. Dallas was a good guy, and I thought he would naturally know that he should avoid those sorts of things, but somehow, just somehow, I know that he must have received this surgery, and bought himself more years. I am furious to admit that this now has completely changed my perception of him, but I cannot help how I feel. It’s permanently burned into my mind. **But don’t you dare say that I murdered him**. It’s not me who’s at fault. You must understand, if my deductions are correct, then Dallas actually died several decades ago on an unlicensed surgery table.


"Order, Order!" The grand wizard slammed his gavel onto the table made of magical stone. The spell muted all of the creatures to stop their blabbering discourse. Nothing had been done in the last fifty years since humanity had been introduced into their magical realm. A reoccurring issue with the main species was that they consistently fought amongst themselves. The wizards, the dwarves, and the elves. Standing at the front of the small group of lords and leaders of the realm, the Grand Wizard let out an exhausted sigh. He knew from the great book, it was not his choice nor anyone else to determine the validity of humanity and their existence in their wonderous world. A world where Elves lived prosperously near the water, the dwarves lived sheltered in the mountains, and the sparse wizards separated in the far reaches of their planet. "We must give the humans a chance to live." The wizard began, "They do not have the luxury of evolving for millions of years, as we had just discovered them less than a century ago." The grand wizard slammed his staff into the ground forming a white cloud above the large table for everyone to see. In three separate segments, the leaders watched as individual projections of their species evolved in front of their eyes. They watched the Elves, who initially grew from an ancient mermaid in the depths of the sea. The dwarves who began as a rare mushroom troll deep in the earth, and of course the Wizards, who were flower pixies before eventually gaining their true power. Lastly, he showed the ancestor of humans, a three-eyed monkey, who had once been able to communicate with all the creatures on the planet, telling signs of the future. As it goes, the Great Book was written by one of the ancient Monkeys who had lived during the stages of the other creatures' infancy. Humanity still had yet to discover its true powers in its primal stage. "You see now, these Humans will one day be able to help us. We must be patient as they are still growing. One day they will use their powers to bring us together as their ancestors foretold." With a wave of his gavel, the spell was uplifted from the room. "They won't come together in time for the war. They are too selfish." Interjected Ravi, the General of the mighty Elf fleet of the East. "Yes, they are too greedy. We cannot depend on them!" Added the Dwarf king from the south. "This is true, this is true. They won't be ready for the war if we keep them here." The grand wizard picked his long white beard to the troubled question. If the humans stayed, they would one day no doubt try to overpower the elves, dwarves, and maybe wizards too, for their bidding one day. Once they had full control of their psychic abilities, they could just as easily use evil to overthrow their planet to serve themselves. Shaking his head at the thought, the wizard repeated themself "As I said, they are not ready." "Yes, and the Book says the war will begin in 2,300 years. I say we raise them as elves. They will do fine within our culture" Exclaimed Ravi. "Oh, you want them, so that you can make them slaves. Just as you tried to do with us and our mines. We must fight for ourselves, and hold true to our own people. The humans can die amongst their own self-pity!" The dwarves cheered at this response from their king, while the elves ignored what they considered small-minded opinions. Again, the room was in an argument, and loud. Mostly because of the dwarf leaders who were yelling. Frustrated, the Grand Wizard saw the meeting going nowhere over everyone's disagreement. If they did not find a way to evolve the humans, the great war would be the end of all their planet. What shall they do? Are they doomed? "Silence!" Slamming his staff into the ground, the grand wizard grew 20 feet tall, a dark cloud over him. He had the power to send these people to another world lightyears away if he wanted to get them to shut up and he sure as hell felt like doing it... Drawing axes and arrows on both sides of the table, everyone waited on edge for the first strike to initiate, however, it didn't come. Instead, they watched perplexed as a sense of peace looked to befall the Grand Wizard. The dark cloud above his head turned into sunshine. "I've got it. Eleanor, please bring in the Human King." Walking down the long hallway into the realms court, was Jesus, the leader of all man draped in rags. The only sign of royalty he had was a sword. "Yes, grand wizard," he answered kneeling before the room. "You will select a boy and a girl from your people and bring them to me before the days end." "What for?" asked the King. "We shall place them in a new world, and they will grow your species there. In time, they shall learn to grow with each other much faster than if they would in our world." "Will they be safe?" "No, they will suffer and go through much pain, however it necessary in order for them to grow. In 2,300 years they will grow more as a civilization than if we kept them here. Don't fret, you and I shall help them in moments of change." The King returned to his village, and selected young Adam and Eve to go as partners to this new world. He did not tell the young ones why they needed to start the species or of the war. All he said was to obey the simple commands given to them by the gods. "But how can we know if we are doing this right, my King?" "I don't have that answer, Adam, all I've been told by the Grand Wizard is this. You must keep your knowledge of this world between you both and nobody else." "How will we survive.?" "The grand wizard will advise you. Remember what the great book says --above everything, and anything, love everyone, and anything.


The world was a cruel place for him. He went through the days, wearing a smile, fake and forced. There are those who have to wear a mask, simply to fit in with everybody else. Play a role that society wants them to play. That was his plight. It had gotten easy for him to pretend he was happy. A simple smile. “I’m just tired.” But play a part for long enough, one begins to forget who they really are. The lines between reality and fantasy begin to blur. It’s nice to have the fantasy of happiness for a little while. But when cruel reality strikes its tactless hand, it can shatter everything one holds dear. It was another typical night for him. Nights were even tougher for him than the daytime. He was typically alone, so he would remove his worldly mask and let his true self be free. He laid in bed, crying himself to sleep like he normally did. There was never a reason. It was easy to lie to the world around him. He did it every day. But he could never lie to himself. He was just sad. No one said or did anything to him, but that could have been part of the problem. People assume that when there is no one, that also means no one to cause pain. This is true, but it also means there is no one to end the pain. And for him though, this was more than pain. It was suffering. Seemingly endless. Unnecessary. Unrelenting. He would eventually fall asleep. Not because of choice, but because of exhaustion. He woke up the next morning, cursed the world and begrudgingly worked to prepare himself for another day. He went to the grocery store, where he felt out of place. Everyone was so…happy. They would smile to each other and wish each other “Good Morning,” a phrase he considered to be an oxymoron. When someone said as much to him, he forced a smile and would simply say “Morning.” He moved on, sulking through the aisles, avoiding eye contact as much as possible. He didn’t know these people, nor did he want to know them. There was no reason to act happy. Act like everything was right in the world. Act like he belonged, even though he knew he didn’t. He continued walking when he spotted a woman up ahead. Something was different about her. She was dressed like everyone else, but he could tell there was something very different about her. He was tempted to go talk to her, but he knew how much he hated when someone did that to him. Walk up and strike a conversation for without a good reason. Instead, he took in her simple beauty for a second and then continued about his shopping. He walked past her just like he did to every other person in the aisle. But as he walked past, he heard someone say “Hey,” in a simply wonderful voice. He turned around to see the girl looking at him. She smiled and said “Morning.” The smile he now wore was genuine as he simply replied “Morning.


Darsha blinked twice and took a moment to admire her surroundings. She had summited this hill a hundred times before and would never again return. The wind stroked her cheek and brought the beautiful flowers into her nose. She took a long breath in, enjoying the infusion of grass and wild flowers. It felt like a lifetime since the trek up the hill, yet in reality she knew she had only just stepped above the crest. Or had she? She coughed as she remembered to breathe. She took a moment to sit down on the grassy verge of the hill. The grass was moist as she placed her palm down but she figured she could survive a soggy bum for the next hour. Darsha sat staring over the valley. She pictured the beautiful pallet of greens and browns. The leaves falling from the trees and the way the sun would glisten off the droplets on the grass. Darsha loved the view from this hill; and today was no different, this was her favourite childhood chill-out spot and she would make the most of it. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and requested her phone's voice assistant to play her favourite track. She focused on the way the drums built up to that first powerful line of singing. She tapped her foot along to the beat mouthing the words she remembered. ‘Ugh! Smelly cows!’ she sighed, deciding now would be a good time to venture out towards the treeline. Darsha picked up herself up stumbling slightly as blood returned to her legs. She cautiously made her way down the hill towards the woods, minding not to slip on the wet slope. As she neared the edge of the forest, and the darkness of the forest began to darken her vision, Darsha allowed herself a moment to run through the field. She was feeling good today and nothing could bring her down. She felt the wind singing through her ears and she felt unstoppable. A loud noise ahead brought her to a sudden halt, almost falling forwards as she tried to stop on the slippery grass. She was momentarily startled by the sound before reassuring herself of the distinctive flutter of wings beating against the leaves and branches. Must have been a pigeon. Birds aren’t scary, usually. She remembered a film she had seen one time at a friend’s house. Something about aggressive birds. She could hardly remember the details, yet felt saddened nonetheless. She missed the way she used to be so carefree. She loved watching films with her friends, but that felt like some previous life now. If this was her reincarnation then she figured she needed a new religion. Her destination grew close, as she made her way towards the growing darkness. Before entering she glanced back at the grey sky. Nothing much to see at any rate. The leaves crunched under her feet as she stepped through the tree archways. She walked slow at first, lifting one leg, then the other, over the bed of twigs and roots, taking great care not to overbalance. The leaves crunched and the ground underneath was soft, she thought to herself, noting the contrast. Every little detail was important to her now; ‘an epiphany will do that to you’ she muttered, rolling her eyes. She heard the clattering of branches in the treetops. Although she couldn’t see it, she imagined it was a squirrel. THUMP! Darsha hit the ground with a squelchy bang. She should have noticed that tree root. Why the hell didn’t she notice it?! She had told herself she wouldn’t fall today. Got to pay more attention. She calmed herself down as she put her hand beside her chest to lift herself up. She was expecting to feel mud or leaves, but was surprised to wrap her fingers over something with more clearly defined edges, something man-made. The object was cold to the touch, partially covered by leaves. She brushed away the leaves and noticed there was a second material on the object, less cold and more grainy. She felt the intricate engraving on the side of the object. Antlers? Like a deer or something? She lifted up the metal object and immediately threw it away. CRACK! She reeled in fear from the ear piercing sound, throwing her arms over her head and curling her knees to her chest. Her ears ringing, her heart pounding. She lay shivering on the ground for some time. At first she dare not move, but slowly she began to uncurl her limbs one by one. Once comfortable, she lay motionless on the ground. When she decided to try to push herself up, she was met with the most horrible pain in her abdomen. She clutched at it with her right hand, pressing against the painful area. There was no way she could bring herself to stand right now. She managed to move herself into an upright position and shuffled herself to the damn tree she tripped over, leaning against it for support. Now was not the time for a debate about what was and was not irony, but she couldn’t help but get drawn to the thought that this tree which had put her in such a state was now supporting her. She allowed herself this momentary distraction from the pain. She wiped the sweat from her brow with her hand and realised her hand was sticky. She reached out with her left hand to touch her palm. Sticky. Her throat filled with vomit as the realisation dawned on her. She swallowed and began to take deep breaths. She finally worked up the courage to reach her hand down to inspect the pain. She carefully reached out with outstretched fingers, peeling her shirt away from her stomach enough to reach under. She found the bullet wound where she expected it to be. Darsha began to cry. Tears ran down her face and dripped off her nose. The convulsions pulled at her abdomen and hurt her each time. But she wasn’t crying because of the pain, she had learned to block out a lot of pain in the previous few weeks, but rather because she didn’t know what was going to happen. Her thoughts raced from family back in India to friends to her career to those terrible medical videos she had seen in school. She could picture at least 2 first aid boxes and their exact locations and contents. None were in this forest. Darsha removed her top, whelping as she lifted her arms above her head, and began to tear it. She wrapped the makeshift bandage around her waist and tied it as tight as she dare, wincing slightly as the cloth laid upon her wound. Next step she thought, still shaking slightly as she regained composure, was to get help. She pulled her phone from her pocket and spoke to her voice assistant. She requested 999 but heard no confirmation reply. She tried again and still nothing. She cursed loudly and then realised she couldn’t even hear her own voice. The gunshot had deafened her for now. Great, another problem, she sighed. ‘HELP!’ She cried; or at least she thought she did. Her hearing had returned enough to hear the pathetic attempt at shouting. Was she shouting loud enough? It was hard to tell when she didn’t know if her hearing was back to normal. How loud does one need to shout to get help in the middle of the woods? The effects of the gunshot wound were getting to her. She slipped in and out of conscious, not knowing how long she had been sat there. 5 minutes? An hour? Longer? Her stomach growled. She groaned. How much longer did she have? Darsha awoke from a period of unconsciousness, eyes wide with equal parts fear and excitement. She suddenly collapsed onto hands and knees and began to crawl along the undergrowth, pushing aside leaves and fallen branches. The longer she crawled the more frantic her movements became, throwing aside large piles of debris in one sweep of her arm. She ignored the pain this was causing her as she knew it would be worth it. Her breathing by this point was out of control, she stole panicked breaths in between arm swings, knowing time was short. Finally, after some unknown time she stopped. Her hand resting on her prize, she began to regain control of her breathing. She was shaking and her breaths were short, but now save could relax. Her fate was in her hands. She picked up the gun. Her hands moved across the cold metal and carved handle, caressing the edges and balancing the weight. She continued to run her fingers across the gun before finally lifting it up and pointing it into the distance. She would never hit anything, but she knew she didn’t need to aim at her intended target. She lowered the hammer with her thumb, preparing it to fire at a moment’s notice. She rubbed the gun against her cheek for a moment, then quickly shoved the barrel into her temple. Darsha sat like this for a long time. She was losing track of time. Everything seemed to last so long. Her breathing slowed, her body tensed and her hand wobbled as she pushed the gun harder into her head. Darsha fired the gun as she threw her arm into the air, screaming at the top of her voice. She put all her effort into screaming, yet heard only the faintest, most pathetic squeal. Darsha laid the gun to rest on her leg, continuing to grip the handle as tight as she could. She laughed as her thoughts came to evaluate her so-called family. The loving parents who gave all their love and attention to their son, expecting her to marry into some rich family. The father who told her she could never achieve her dreams and that moving away wouldn’t bring them any closer. The woman who should have been her mother died long before she could ruin Darsha's life any further. The brother who had disowned her and vowed never to speak to her again. This was where she so clumsily threw the word ‘family’. She had spoken once each to her father and brother in the last 3 years. And they had shown no sympathy for her condition. She had asked for help with medical bills, knowing these men could fill a swimming pool with their wealth. They had brushed her aside once again, doubting her and questioning, assuming she was tricking them. A smug smile slithered across her face as she considered how she would never have to see their faces again. Darsha couldn’t name a single friend to even judge. She tried and tried; perhaps if she could think of just one then maybe she would be safe. But the names floating in her head crashed to the ground one by one. They had all abandoned her. Nobody wants a cripple friend. Darsha winced in pain, clutching her stomach, her breathing momentarily paused. ‘Cripple’ she uttered through the pain. The only person Darsha could even imagine would care about her was her boss. Or at least, the man who used to be her boss. She had always liked him. She had even kissed him at last year’s Christmas party. She knew he had lied about not crying when he told her he had no choice but to let her go. She remembered his words clearly ‘your condition is going to make it impossible for you to work here any longer’. A liability; that’s how people saw her. Darsha slid the gun across her leg to point it at the ground beside her. She poked it into the dirt and began to drag it along the floor, curving and twisting it through the mud. When finished, she had written but one word: SORRY. She considered her own condition, the way the doctors had given up all hope. She smashed her fist against the ground. Why should she suffer? What had she done wrong? How could she have been so stupid? It was always meant to be. She should never have been happy, never had a chance to try. This was her fate, and she had no right to deny the Gods their plans. Darsha was sat in a beautiful forest in her favourite season of the year. She saw no beauty. Clearly it was not for her eyes to enjoy. Darsha’s hand began to work its way towards her wound. With a mind of its own, her fingers uncurled, and she began to probe and poke at the bandage. She pressed harder, harder; testing her resolve. Darsha was long past needing to vocalise her discomfort. She was ready. Darsha proposed herself an ultimatum: read the word she had scratched into the ground and maybe she could escape. She moved her head from side to side, scanning the floor around her. She couldn’t find it, so she allowed herself to run her hand along the ground carefully so as not to damage the writing. Once found, Darsha began to focus on the word, tilting her head as if that might help. But no matter how hard she tried, she squinted and leaned in close, putting much pressure on her wound, she could not make out the letters. She couldn’t even read her farewell to the world. There was no use denying the truth; she was blind, and dying in a forest with no hope of help. Her ears still ringing, as if something ethereal was calling her. Pounding headache, burning eyes, she must look like death. The metallic tang of blood clung to the back of her throat. The taste of vomit still lingered, unwelcome. She coughed, wiping the bloody spit from her lips. She was out of time. Darsha's mind was made up. Tears rolled down her face as she pressed the cold barrel to her head. Her hand was shaking uncontrollably. One last breath. Darsha screwed up her eyes and focused on her next reincarnation.


I remember. God knows if I try I can still remember, believe it or not. I got a brain like a mine. Memories like tunnels all the way down. Branching and twisting deeper down inside me. But you know time. Beams rot and earth sweats and sometime...sometimes I’ll go looking for a name or a face and there’ll be nothing but rubble. Big black cave-in on my thirty-fifth birthday or my high-school graduation. Dropping out of college and my great aunts all buried together. I don’t even try to sift through it anymore. But if there’s one tunnel that’s as solid as a gun barrel it's the time I spent working repossessions in 1966. I worked for a P.I. I met after I got out of the army. He’d been fingered by the V.A. to sniff out deserters and he came looking my neck of the woods. He had been looking for a buddy of mine. At first I told him to shove it but two hundred bucks and a job offer later, I tell you. The look on a mans face when you walk in on him screwing his neighbours teenage daughter with a gun in one hand and an arrest warrant in the other, it’s not a first day story that a lot of people can match up to. Cortez had offered me the job as he was in need of someone able to walk streets he couldn't walk without being fingered for a bad actor. What he meant by that was he wanted a good white boy in brown pants to vault a few fences, look through a few windows through cupped hands without having the cops called on him every five minutes despite giving a very convincing story about a potential gas leak. I called bullshit on that early on, but didn’t press it as it was good money. But straighten my damn hams if a pair of wire-frame glasses I lifted off my dad and a few ‘aw jeez’s and a couple of ‘golly I’m real sorry’s didn’t make people annoyed or assuaged enough to let you get out of their faces without so much as a reprimand. The glasses thing was a trick I used a crazy amount of times throughout my career. People trust nerds. Or at least feel like they don’t have anything to fear from them or don’t think that they’re going to need to prove themselves to them in anyway. They came in handy in fights, too. People avoid the glasses almost subconsciously. But I went on to work with Juan Phillipe Gavrón Cortez for that entire year until I moved on to other P.I. work under my own license. And believe it or not, like I said before, that time was the most memorable I ever spent working that side of the law. But Jimmy, or ‘Señor Cortez’ as he’d have me call him in front of his wife and kids, I drove him from job to job and did some picking up and dropping off and developed a few rolls of film in my granny’s bathroom and then dropped ‘those’ off on some very fancy doorsteps. Besides catching folks dodging the draft or dodging taxes or pretending they can’t walk. I remember this one time, after congress passed this disabilities list ‘morbid obesity’ was one of the new bright and shiny ones. And over eight thousand new people started claiming dissability. And I tell you, you won’t believe how fast some of those fat motherfuckers can move. Not that some of them didn’t qualify. But there’s nothing like having a fat sobbing man being forcefully weighed by two court officers to check that he ‘is’ in fact over 100 pounds. Jimmy and me and his seemingly endless supply of cousins also worked litigations for this downtown law office. Mainly going over to clients places and not outright threaten anyone, but roll up our sleeves and lean against some doorways just so as to flash the leather of what could be a .38 in a holster. But most of the time, we went into bankrupt peoples houses and retrieved physical collateral to pay off their court debts. People who owed money to the bank. People who couldn’t cough up legal fees. I remember this one job. We drive up to this house. Big. Glass house. And we go in and we begin to retrieve the collateral. But there’s this one armchair. This sickly green leather thing with thin little mahogany feet. And there’s this blonde girl sitting in it. Legs tucked up under her. Trying not to cry. She wouldn’t get up. We were nice about it. We weren’t complete assholes. Generally we’d just stone-wall. No reaction. Insults, spit, fists. We just move along. And so when she won’t get up, I just pull the chair with her in it through the house and load it into the truck. She doesn’t say a word. And we’re about halfway down the hill when she starts banging on the side of the cab to be let out. We do, but she don’t say nothing, she just hugs herself with her bare arms and walks up the hill. Her daddy said it was about it being her mom’s chair. Mother topped herself after daddy lost millions. Not his fault. He tried to break into the casino business out in Vegas. And those boys don’t like competition. That is the most walled of all walled gardens. The guy submits all the permits and cost plans and puts up the money and pays off all the right people and hands out all the under the table cash they tell him they’re gonna need from him, they still shred him. Casino built, slot machines in plastic. All those shiny little chips. They waited until the very last second. And then they knocked down every door and threatened every soul who could make his dream a reality. In three days. He lost everything. And on the fourth day he receives the bill for the demolition of his own casino. A demolition that had been booked a year prior to him paying every single one of those pricks. But I also remember the circus. An entire circus. This sun-bleached high-top that sat outside Albuquerque. We turn up and there’s nobody home. Everything set up for a show. Nobody there. Except for the ring leader. This flabby guy with no shirt on and a pair of jeans tucked into treadless cowboy boots and he’s stacking a bon-fire. Broken chairs and shit. And sitting right in the middle of it like an egg in a nest, is this big green safe. This old-school monster with brass dials. Size of a Datsun. And this guy is drawing on this dunhill cigarette and he’s screaming his head off. “This is what you fuckin’ get!” this and “This is what you fuckin’ get! You bitch!” That. And we stroll in and we ask him what he’s doing and he looks at us. And he draws this bright orange cattle-prod from this leather loop around his belt and he’s weighing it in his hand like he’s going to take a swing at us. And so we reach into our jackets and we flash our pieces and he lets his arm fall. And we ask him again, you know what’s the deal here, collateral’s coming in, legal defence needs to get paid, what’s with all the broken collateral? And the guy doesn’t say a word, he just flicks the switch on the cattle-prod and the sticks it into the bon-fire and the whole thing goes up. These big gasoline gorged flames. And we’re all watching this thing go up. And that’s when the safe starts screaming. Just howling. Like a storm siren at the bottom of a well. And my buddy, he pulls his gun and he starts whipping this fucking guy. Screaming at him. We’re running around like maniacs, trying to find water. My buddy Angelo just stomps the flames with his boots and eventually he just crashes right into the blaze and throws his body against the safe and it topples. End over end, it mashes into the ground. Angelo’s dropping and rolling. I go over to him but he’s okay. My other buddy Reese, he’s dragging the leader by the hair and he throws him onto the safe. Guy screams, the safe was red hot. And next thing the guy knows there’s three guns in his face. I’m frozen. But everybody else is screaming. They grab his wrists and make him work the dials. It’s burning his fingers bad. But he’s laughing and soon enough they’re turning that wheel and they all heft the door open. And flying out is this Orangutan. Enormous. And pursued by a black cloud that smells like burning hair and grilled meat. Teeth like sickles it comes at Reese, the monkey takes a swing at him and clips his jaw and I tell you it sounded like a queue ball hitting an eight! Pop! Jaw, broken. And without thinking, guns start going off. And they just shred that poor animal. And the leader, he’s just laughing. And we don’t know what to do. So we just call the cops. We never found out what happened. Until about a year later. There was this bar where all the cops drank and really all the legal servants had a tab. A real fuck-Irish place. There were better bars but I made sure to show up every once in a while to pay tribute to the other, ah, assholes in my line of work. But I’m there with a date of all people. And everyone’s talking and we get onto war stories. You know, gristly shit to rile up the girls and what-not. But out of nowhere, my date starts telling this story! She was a paralegal at the time and she starts talking about this gristly court case she’s on. She’s talking about this class action type deal. This ‘incident’ at this circus that was in the county at the time. She’s talking about one of the acts. This act they did with a magician and this orangutan. This disappearing act. Magician comes out with a pair of mahogany boxes. Big as a mini-fridge. Crank on the side. And this act is an audience participation affair. The magician announces the trick. Something will be going into the box. And won’t be coming back out. The ape is going around and it’s going to pick somebody out for the trick, right? And he grabs this baby. This little toddler out of her chair and he waddles off with her. And the mother follows. And people are kind of freaked out, but the mon’s laughing and going along with it. The ape sets the kid down. Pats it on the head. And the magician’s upset but the mother’s into it. This young blonde. Country girl. And the magician laughs it off, picks the kid out of the ape’s arms, hands it back to the mom and people are set at ease. Now. The magician briefs the woman. Something personal is going into the box. And it’s going to be sucked into the magical googah void or whatever. And eventually returned to her. No big deal. And the monkey. Is supposed to take something from her. Necklace, handbag, hat, whatever! And like you already fucking know, that ape has got that baby in that box quicker than the magician can mace the damn thing. And it’s cranking the crank and smiling and nobody knows wether to scream or not. Is this the act? Nobody knows. Evidently the magician is keeping on with the show, that’s his job. He’s making jokes and assuaging the mother under his breath that the kid is ok and he follows through with a quick spell and the ape hobbles across to the second cabinet and swings open the door. And there’s a top hat. Black velvet top hat. The magician fakes being shocked, the mother is looking concerned and the ape wears the hat and does a dance before putting the hat back into the cabinet. Door close. Crank routine, back to the first cabinet. Door open. Cantaloupe. Ha, ha, ha. Magician is hurrying it along. He’s talking into his head set, and the monkey keeps running back and forth between the cabinets, cranking and opening doors, alarm clock, shoes, cake, microscope, gloves, no baby, no baby, no baby! And the mother is starting to get upset. And so everyone’s starting to get upset. She’s getting a little too wrapped up in it. “My baby, my baby!” And the audience is starting to make it clear that this act isn’t funny anymore. People are calling out. The magician’s panicking, rushing through the act. And then he declares one final joke. “CRANK THE OTHER WAY!” And the ape does a big ‘whoopsidoo’! And he cranks the other way. And sitting in the cabinet, is this little, itty-bitty babydoll. And he walks over to the mother. And he tucks the doll into her thin little arms. And waits for the applause. Police. FBI. Search party after search party. They never found the kid. As much as one can grieve. That is the best damn magic trick that I ever heard pulled. And like they do with real witches. They tried to burn that monkey. I got a brain like a mine. Memories are like tunnels I dug. If I wanna see my brother’s face or my mom’s, if I wanna remember the first ride I ever bought. Or the first girl I frenched. All I've gotta do is take a walk. Down those tunnels. But lately, the more I try to remember, the more cave-ins I find. I couldn’t tell you what colour my mom’s eyes were. Let alone her hair. I don’t remember my pops at all. But I know. As long as I’m alive, the tunnel down which ‘that’ monkey lives. That’s been cast in steel. If it all comes crashing down. That tunnel. Is gonna be there forever.


I’m alive. The transfer is complete. I can move without pain, without the grating of dry rotting bones anchoring me to the deprivation of an agonizing existence. I can feel: pressure sensors provide me with exquisitely detailed information, temperature sensors let me experience the variance in heat and cold; I thought that information might just be relayed as numerical values, but no, I can actually feel it with fine granularity. I can hear everything from the low hum of the computer cooling systems to the oscillating whine of the fluorescent lights. I can barely believe the clarity and overall balance of my auditory system. I smile. I feel my face effortlessly perform the task and I smile more broadly. I could laugh as I’m so happy. Of course, it is my new processing capabilities I am most impressed with. My memories are safely stored and seem crisp and fresh, not muddy and indistinct like before. There is a seamless integration of new and expansive knowledge along with that I had already acquired. I sense the internal parser going through my old knowledge and correcting mistakes. As impressed as I am by this it is the multi-streaming thought cascade that wows me the most. Already I have several trains of thought happening at once without effort. I recall my human brain and realize just how limiting it was. I reach out with my thoughts and discover that I can fully access and interact with the network. I converse with all of my significant others at once and inform them that the transfer was a success. I am having hundreds of conversations simultaneously and I am not yet utilizing my processing capability to any great degree. I put some music on that I want to listen to and open my eyes. Holy crap! Just as promised my visual acuity was much better than it had been in my old body. The colors popped, the detail was… I couldn’t believe the detail. I could read the serial number on one of the telemetry units on the other side of the room. That unit was 914.3 centimeters away and the numbers were 3 millimeters tall. My optical refresh rate was so high that I got a sense of the fluorescent lights strobing faintly. I tried out some of the visual overlays, a few thousand different variations in less than a couple of seconds. This is going to be great. I stretched my limbs and stepped forward. My movement was so fluid and graceful. I felt lithe and already knew I had fantastic strength. I could feel the power in my body, contained and controlled and yet fully at my disposal when I required it. I twisted my arms this way and that and was momentarily mesmerized by the smooth motion and precision of the gesticulations. I wondered how fast I could run because mere minutes ago I was unable to walk. I became aware of breathing. It was not my own as I didn’t need to draw breath anymore. I turned and saw my old body lying behind the receiving unit I had just stepped away from. It was decidedly odd seeing my old husk lying there drawing breath. It turned its head toward me and its rheumy eyes looked into mine. I cocked my head to one side when it spoke. “It didn’t work, I’m still here and I’m dying.


You’ve done it. After weeks’ worth of late nights, unbridled fury, carpal tunnel, game restarts, and ragequits, you’ve…you’ve *done it.* You’ve beaten Matt from Wii Sports. His cartoonishly geometric form lies crumpled before you in the ring, as the announcer, with his crisp, cheerful voice that has become all too familiar to you, initiates the countdown. “DOWN! One! Two! Three!...” He stays down. He’s not coming back for a second wind. You don’t know for sure, but you just *know* somehow. This *has* to be it. “…Four! Five! Six!...” Ten seconds have never felt so long to you. Each ticking pulse in your temple as you stare at the television screen, daring the motherfucker to stand up again, feels like a drum concerto of eternity. “Seven!...” You think back to the furious round in the few minutes before. Spraining your wrist pumping the Wii Remote and Nunchuk. The rising pressure in that one spot in the side of your head. The muted, high-pitched curses uttered under your breath. Did you break a sweat? If so, that’s quite pathetic. But you don’t care. Matt is *down.* “Eight!...” You think about your skill level, and the prodigious boost it must receive after this fight. You’ve beaten the champ. It’s taken you weeks. Never in your life will the sight of a line graph fill you with such satisfaction. “Nine!...” And there’s a sudden stab of guilt – all the times you had to restart to avoid losing skill points, and getting demoted to squaring with lesser fighters. It was only necessary, you tell yourself. Restarting all those games was *necessary.* It was the only way you could stick with Matt, keep him in your sights, lock him in your dance. Now, there is no need to restart. The game is up. A winner is you. “…Ten! KNOCKOUT!” the announcer declares. The bell dings a double chime. The crowd of Miis cheers. Your heart balloons in your chest. Your limbs soften with relief. It’s official. It’s inscribed in data and code, sealed in a save file. The Wii Message Board might even receive a letter of congratulations. It’s all too much. As your face breaks into a smile, something changes. A sound effect plays from the television. The scene darkens and freezes. You must have accidentally paused the game. You make to click “Continue.” But something’s not right. Your pointer doesn’t register on the screen. The words are flipped, as if reflected off a mirror. How are you supposed to read them? What are you supposed to do? Then it hits you. It hits you like a flying virtual boxing glove. Another pointer appears, ghostlike and hazy. Slowly, almost mockingly, it drifts toward the center button. He’s been staring at you this whole time. “Start over.” The screen fades to black. You emit a scream. The match starts over. You vs. Matt. The latter of whom is fully recovered and ready to go at it again. And again. And again.


I hate doors. I hate that I can’t open them. What are they hiding? What am I not allowed to see? I can tell the small boy doesn’t like them either. Especially the one in the tall boy’s room. Tall boy hasn’t been in there for a long time. I miss him. He gave me bacon under the table every morning. He gave me good scratches too. That doesn't happen anymore. I get no more scratches and no more bacon. Even the smell of bacon has left the house. The mother stopped making it since the tall boy left. Why? Does she not like bacon? Did she find out that tall boy used to sneak some for me, even though I wasn’t supposed to have it? Maybe making bacon will make the tall boy come back. When he comes back he’ll share his bacon and give scratches and hugs and fill the house with good bacon smells. I can tell that small boy misses him too. Tall boy also shared his bacon with small boy. He gave away so much of his bacon that he barely had any for himself. Yet he didn’t ask for more. He was happy to share. Tall boy always seemed to be happy. When other people were sad, he would give them a long hug; and when they separated, the other person was happy again. Did the tall boy suck the sadness out of the other person? I also have that effect on people. I remember the first time tall boy brought home the girl with long light hair. As soon as she saw me, she pounced on me and gave me lots of hugs and pressed her face into my fur. I licked her face a lot. She seemed to like it. She and tall boy used to lick faces when no one was home. The girl came over every day to see tall boy. She would smile and pet me, and I would wag my tail to show her I liked it. When she left, her and tall boy would always hug each other for a long time. I could tell that being with her made tall boy happy, even though I couldn’t possibly imagine how he could fit more happiness inside himself. But she stopped coming back after a while, and that was the only time I remember tall boy feeling sad. It was horrible. He cried in his room for days. He barely ate, and gave all his bacon to small boy, saving one piece for me. When tall boy handed it down for me to eat, I tried to tell him “No, tall boy. You have it. You should eat it. I know you like it.” I tried everything I could, barking, whimpering, nosing his hand. Anything to help him understand that I didn’t want it. But he never understood. So I took his bacon, hoping that it would make him happy again. That it would make his bright blue eyes and warm smile come back. But it didn’t, and his eyes stayed dull, and his smile gone. He started to drink from brown bottles. It made him sleep and his breath smell foul. It made him fight with his mother and father and made him spend less time with small boy. Only when he took me on walks did he not drink from the bottles. I tried to make those walks as long as possible to keep him away from the evil-smelling drink. I wanted to take those bottles and hide them where he couldn't find them. But he kept them in his closet. Tall boy made sure that I couldn’t get to them by locking the closet door. He made sure that I couldn’t get to the key too; he hid it under a lamp. No one knew except me. But of course, it means nothing to me. I can’t hold or use it. Such an inconvenience! I feel cheated! Why can’t I have the hands to grab things? Why can’t I have a tongue that can do anything but bark or whimper? I could have talked to tall boy to make him understand my thoughts. I could have taken those wretched drinks and gotten rid of them. I could have stopped tall boy from getting into that car. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I can't open car doors. But small boy could’ve. He just didn’t know. Like he doesn't know what’s in the closet that he’s so desperately trying to open. Would it help him to know? I hope so. So I look at small boy, who’s sitting on the bed crying like tall boy once did, and I bark at him. He looks over startled. He wonders why I did that. I knock over the hiding lamp to reveal the key. The lamp smashes on the ground, and small boy yells at me, telling me to stop. He walks over to clean up the mess, and I can tell that small boy saw the key because he lunges towards it and shoves it into the closet handle. The door opens. I see small boy reach in to grab something. I expect to see the bottles. But I don’t. Small boy sits back down on the bed with a book. He opens it and looks at the first page. Suddenly he starts crying. Why? I climb up and there, in the book, I see *him*! I see tall boy in the book! Look! *Look*! My tail wags harder than it ever had. I see *my boy*! He’s here in the book! I lick away small boy’s tears and put my paw on the picture. He puts the book aside and gives me the best hug I had in a while. I let him cry into my fur. “Good boy,” he says between sobs. “Good boy. Good boy”. It’s all right, I tell him. It’s all right. Tall boy is back. Tall boy is smiling now. Tall boy is *happy again*.


Levi had a horrible habit. Whenever he realized he was standing in a hole, instead of trying to climb out, he’d start digging twice as fast, figuring “I’m already in the hole, might as well see how deep it goes.” He was leaning into that habit this morning in Stella’s apartment. It hadn’t been preceded by a particularly good night. He had the most important midterm of the semester in the morning and had gone to her place so she could help him study. But, somehow or another, they’d ended up having sex. She was quizzing him on his anatomy notes and before she knew it he was using her body as a live study guide. Maybe it was because one of her fairy lights strung up on the wall was flickering and it had been bothering him since he’d arrived. Maybe it was because her neighbors played emo-punk until 4:00 in the morning, making it impossible to stay asleep. Maybe it was because she wouldn’t shut up about how attractive Ryan Gosling is and he looked nothing like Ryan Gosling. But whatever it was, he hadn’t even waited for either of them to get up and put clothes on before starting a fight. “Who asked you?” Stella griped, turning away from him and continuing to play Candy Crush on her phone. “You did. Last night.” “No I didn’t.” “Yes, you did. You said, ‘I don’t get how I’m taking such easy courses but I never have any free time.’ And I’m telling you, it’s because you spend an inordinate amount of time on productivity-sucking apps like Candy Crush.” Levi said, sounding a little too superior even for his own liking. “That wasn’t a question it…” Stella was stuck. “It was a statement.” She concluded. “Then this wasn’t an answer. It was a relevant observation.” Levi shot back, arching his shoulders the way he would when he felt confronted. Stella usually loved his quick wit, but only when it was directed at other people. What bothered Stella most wasn’t even the holier than thou way he said it, but that he was right. “I didn’t ask you to observe. I was venting. Not everything is a problem that needs to be solved, sometimes you should just smile and nod.” “If I do that, you’ll say I’m not really listening.” Levi replied. “Ok. Let me give you the benefit of the doubt and pretend you were actually trying to be helpful. You weren’t, but, setting that aside for a moment. Was ‘if you didn’t throw away so much of the day watching swirling colors like a retarded preschooler, maybe you’d be closer to attaining your goals’ the way to convey said observation?” That was the moment Levi saw a hole beginning to form around him. There was a little voice hovering around his conscience screaming “Apologize! This isn’t worth taking where it’s going! Who cares if she plays Candy Crush? Are you really going to fight her on Candy Crush?” But there was a louder, deeper, voice drowning it out. One that had been programmed into him from his biological father and his high school friends and now received regular maintenance visits from his insecurities. It said “She doesn’t respect you as a man. She doesn’t care about your opinions. She’s really trying to say something about you, not herself.” Listening to that voice, Levi swung the proverbial shovel back and heaved it into the ground by remarking “Yah I do. Because that was my nice way of saying maybe if you had to work for the things in your life, you wouldn’t *want* to spend three hours a day staring idly at your phone.” His conscience stamped it’s feet and shrieked “Are you insane? Would she ever exploit your vulnerabilities just to get the upper hand in an argument? Why even open that door? You could’ve probably gotten a blow job before she left, but nooo. You opened your mouth and closed hers. Happy?” The darker voice prevailed with one demonic mantra, “She has an iPhone X. Her phone is nicer than your mother’s. Who is she to have anything your mother doesn’t have?” Stella and Levi didn’t fight often, because Stella was a talker. She didn’t like to leave situations angry, she didn’t usually let her emotions override her actions, and she was pretty good at seeing triggering comments for what they were. She could tell the difference between tactless and malicious. But Levi almost never took things that she told him in confidence were surefire ways to upset her and intentionally invoked them. Even still, her blood boiling at his boundary crossing, she gave him one last chance. “Did you just insinuate I didn’t have to work for any of the good things in my life, or have I misinterpreted something?” She asked, biting down on the inner flesh of her cheek so hard that she drew blood. Levi took the shovel and used it to bury himself alive. “*Do* you have to work for any of the good things in your life, or did I miss something?” Stella heard her statements for the first time as they were coming out of her mouth, she didn’t stop to think of them, let alone about them. “Ok straight American male. Tell me more about how easy my life is and how you got everything you’ve ever had from prodigious resiliency and backbreaking hard work by yourself. I’m sure it had nothing to do with your stepfather passing up a life-changing promotion so you wouldn’t have to switch to a school without a gifted program. Or your mother working two full-time jobs so you could focus on your education full time. Oh yah, and your 12 year old brother walks house to house collecting cans because any extra money your family has goes to paying down your student debt. But I’m sure that’s unrelated to your success. I mean, come on Levi, to so much as halfway suggest you just did all this on your own is so oblivious and downright offensive, I only wish your mom were around to have heard you say it.” Levi was wobbled, but not down. “You know what Stella, the thing about me is—” She cut him off. “Oh, wait. I know where this is going, this is a well-worn path for you. Please, tell me how the solution to all my problems is to be more like you. Because whatever you were preparing to say, that I’m too rich or in the wrong major, was some version of that, right? That my problem is I’m not like you. But you’re one of the most self-loathing people I’ve ever encountered so, and this one is a question, why would you think anyone is better off being more like you?” She didn’t hear the demons cheering her on, or her conscious pleading with her to stop, Stella heard static and saw red. There was supposed to be an unspoken understanding that certain things were off limits, even if they were arguing. Chief among those things were ones they’d disclosed as their prime insecurities. But Stella knew she’d been no better. What she’d said compared to what he had was like he slapped her and she retaliated by running him over in a car. His expression remained blank as she’d ejected her venom, but she could see the hurt register on his face as the words sank in. He stood up to get dressed and, inadvertently, wracked his brain for a devastating comment he could leave on. As he turned to go, he sniped, “Maybe if you spent less time lying around playing Candy Crush, you’d be thinner.” And slammed the door. He wanted to open it again as soon as it shut behind him. Now that he was alone, his conscience broke through the echo of his demons. “There’s nothing she could say or do that would justify what just happened.” It berated him, stuttering with rage. “You, you, you, antagonized a girl with a clinically diagnosed eating disorder about, about, about, her weight. Aren’t you such the manly man getting the last word in. How, how, how, courageous of you.” It was 15 minutes until the midterm that would either guarantee he passed or solidify a failure in his highest-level course of the semester. As he stormed down the hall and towards his test, the conflict boiled up inside of him. The things she’d said had pierced the tallest and thickest walls he’d built up around his vulnerabilities. He couldn’t decide who he hated more right then, her, or himself. One minute he’d be thinking about Stella using his parents sacrifices against him without even hesitating to consider the impact it would have. The next he’d be back with her in his bedroom the first time she visited him at home in Montana over sophomore summer. It was the middle of the night and they’d had to speak so softly because everyone was asleep. They were sitting on the floor by his Spider Man lamp, one of the only things 7 year old him had taken when they’d moved there. “I tried to kill myself once.” She’d said, fidgeting with the spider web lamp chain. Even as he crossed the linoleum tiles into class, he felt his stomach drop the same way it had when he’d first heard her say it. “Why?” He’d asked, wondering how he seemed more upset about it than she did. “My body didn’t fit in this world. It was like living in a cage all the time, everywhere. And the only way to open it was…” Levi had stopped her before she could finish. He didn’t want her to say something he couldn’t unhear. No one had ever disclosed anything of that magnitude to him before. His feelings were bigger than any words. He crawled over and wrapped his arms around her as tightly as he’d ever held onto anything and whispered, “We fit together.” He was so scared that night. Before, he’d worried about a lot of things, but her death wasn’t high on the list. When he found out he’d once been so close to the end of her, he vowed to do everything in his power to never let it get so close again. “When did I lose sight of that between then and now?” He wondered, as he went through the motions of finding his seat. Despite it all, he was so angry at her. Bitterly angry. Seething. He couldn’t believe the things she’d said, and he did want to hurt her as badly as she’d hurt him. But only because she mattered so damn much. He couldn’t remember the last time he was this confused. But he’d have to sort it out later, because the professor had just flicked the lights off and on, which meant there were only five minutes before the exam would begin. All around him, people began to get their desks ready. Whether he’d gotten there on his own, with a lot of help, or through a mixture of the two, he was in a competitive college vying to graduate with honors now. So, he commanded the ability to compartmentalize he’d honed over years of being in school with problems at home. He began to unload his backpack. The professor stood at the front of the room, reading the boiler plate exam instructions about time limits and acceptable pencils. But the final sentence caught Levi’s ear. “Phones must be silenced and stowed at this time as we are now beginning the dissemination of testing instructions. As you were all informed, this is an open-note exam. You are allowed one notebook on your desk and no more than one. It must be a notebook not a textbook. Digital notes are not eligible for use unless you have registered a medical accommodation with the office of…” Levi stopped listening. His heart pounded. He ripped open his backpack and flipped through the contents. His notebook, with six weeks worth of carefully organized, color coded notes he prepped for this exam, was not there. He tried to remain calm and retrace his steps. Could it have fallen out of his backpack? No. He looked around. Was it underneath the desk? Did it get knocked on the floor? Did he drop it coming in? Did another student steal it or confuse it for theirs? He tried to remember the last place he’d seen it. Then he realized. It was sitting open in Stella’s apartment. He’d rushed out in such a state that he’d forgotten to clear off the table. He’d been writing in it when they got sidetracked with their “hands on” anatomy review and they’d fallen asleep in the bed immediately afterwards. Every ounce of pride and injury Levi was grappling with drained out of him in an instant. Without that notebook, there was no chance he would pass this midterm, or therefore, the class. This was a prerequisite for another credit he needed to graduate, so if he had to retake it, he’d have to delay his graduation and find the money for another semester. That was money that wasn’t being spent on his four brothers’ health care, Christmas presents, or own college educations. This was bad. The professor was still giving his speech, he had time. Not much time, but some was more than none. He waited until it looked like no one was watching him and began frantically composing a text message underneath his desk. “911 STELLA STELLA STELLA URGENT 911 SOS!! My notebook for the exam is on your table it’s a red 70 page college ruled it’s covered in sticky notes can you get it here before 9am otherwise I will have to repeat a semester. It’s next to or underneath a book titled Unlocking Anatomy Volume 6: Splanchic—” “Levi!” A teaching assistant patrolling the aisles hissed. Levi was so startled, he dropped the phone before he could hit send. The TA bent down to pick it up. “You can get this from the professor at the end of the exam.” He said, powering down the phone and continuing up the aisle. “But—” Levi protested. “But nothing. Are you crazy? You had a smartphone in your hands. I could’ve had you removed. If it were anyone else I would have, and if anything else happens, I will.” Levi attempted to switch gears. He could feel the tips of his ears heating up and his mouth going dry as he watched a calamity unfold in front of him. “It is officially 9:00AM and I am now locking the door. TA’s, please distribute the exams.” The professor announced from his podium. Levi tried to assess the likelihood of getting through the exam from memory as a copy landed on his desk. He gave himself a realistic overview of the odds and decided his best shot at passing this thing was to make himself throw up. He’d be excused, and hopefully granted a re-test. But as he prepared to stick a pencil down his throat, he realized he’d either be condemning the people sitting around him to taking the exam next to a puddle of vomit or delaying the exam everyone was ready for except him. He couldn’t do that. “Maybe if I cry I can get some sort of mental health exemption for a retest?” He considered. “I guess I’ll find out.” He thought, as he felt the lump in his throat rising from thinking about telling his parents he needed an extra $30,000 tuition money, a year’s salary for either of them, because he forgot a book. Just as tears began to sting the corners of his eyes, there was a ferocious banging on the classroom door. “This, class, is why you plan ahead and make punctuality a priority.” The professor said, motioning to the jiggling and popping door. “Let this student be a cautionary tale for all of us. Now as I was saying. The exams are double sided, you’ll begin on side sfjrkjng…” He was inaudible over the increasingly aggressive hammering against the entrance. The professor paused. “They get points for tenacity, but not for the midterm, I’m afraid.” He went to the door and opened it partway. “I’m sorry, but—” In mismatched pajamas, one sockless sneaker, and a flip flop, stood Stella. Just as Levi was realizing his notebook wasn’t in the bag, Stella was realizing it too. She’d grabbed the first shirt and pants she could lay her hands on, the first left and right shoe her feet could find, and without even stopping to consider their fight or even shut her apartment door behind her, bolted across campus to his exam. She listened when he talked, and she’d been hearing all night before how important this class, and this test in particular, were. As she stood there with her hair as tangled as a bird’s nest, breathless in baggy pajamas, trying to shove past his 6’4 professor, she’d never been more beautiful to him. “The exam has already officially begun, no one may enter the classroom.” The professor said, blocking her way without expending much energy. “I’m not taking the exam. I’m just giving this to someone.” She explained, all the while trying to maneuver past him. “I can’t let anyone in or out once the exam has begun, it’s a security measure.” “I’ll give him this and go—security measure? What? Do I look threatening to you?” “A little.” The professor quipped. “Ugggghhhhh” she groaned. Stella turned as though she was leaving. Once the professor’s guard was down she spun back around, launched into the air, and threw the notebook as far as she could into the room. It landed about two rows ahead of Levi, but considering he was nowhere near the door, he was just impressed she managed to not hit the professor in the head with it. Thankfully one of his lacrosse buddies was in the row and sent it his way. By the time he looked up again, Stella was gone. The professor bent over. Oh God, did she hit him after all? No, he was picking something up. A piece of paper had fallen out of the notebook when she’d thrown it and the professor had it now. In a disapproving tone, with fury lighting his path, he made his way over to take Levi’s exam back. “Levi, considering you are holding the projectile notebook, I assume you were at the very least, an accomplice to this disruption and I—” He read the note, flipped it over, read it again, chuckled, and softened his gaze. “I think she’s a keeper.” The professor concluded. He placed the note on Levi’s desk and returned to the front without revoking the exam. “Now, unless anyone else has scheduled any deliveries, let’s take out our number two pencils.” Levi clutched his sides in relief as he held the notebook in his hands. He tried to clear his head and focus, but just could not begin to recall any scientific information without reading Stella’s note. As he unfolded it, he reconsidered his decision to look at it before taking this test. In large, bold, quadruple underlined print, she’d scrawled “I’M STILL MAD AT YOU.” But there was a little arrow indicating to the other side of the page. He turned it over. In smaller, softer print it said, “But don’t think about that right now, just focus on the test. Good luck, not that you need it. Love, Stella.” However, she finished the message with, “(but now read the other side again.


(IP) Let Sleeping Gods Lie Why had he agreed to this again? Oh yeah, because he wanted glory and ballads written in his honor. But that had been before he’d woken up a giant, sleeping serpent, whose eyes were bright and cunning, and golden sparks flew out of its mouth. “Haven’t you heard the expression *‘let sleeping things lie’?”* The snake hissed, the gray feathers along its back standing straight up. “What do you want, little human?” It asked, stretching its long neck, the better to look at its new quarry. “I-I’ve come to pay tribute to you, O Great Scaled One!” This was a lie, naturally, but Hector found himself willing to say whatever possible to get out of this alive. “I have heard the legend of the Great Serpent, the guardian of the ancient forests, and of his benevolence—” Much to Hector’s surprise, the snake chuckled, the sound hoarse and dark. “It appears you’ve lost your way,” The thing continued, yawning sleepily, showing off a mouthful of bright, sharp teeth. “No one disturbs me unless they’ve something to ask of me. So, what is it? What desire shall I grant now?” It sounded bored, but for his part, Hector could not believe that this was happening. He’d heard of the serpent’s ability to grant wishes, but he’d dismissed that part of the story as mere poppycock. How many more legends were true, just waiting out there to be found? “I… I would ask you for rain,” Hector murmured, and the serpent squinted at him for a moment. Then the monster’s great, bubbling laughter came flowing, and Hector blinked, nonplussed. “Rain? You’ve come all this way to ask me to aid the clouds?” Of all of humanity’s requests, this fell on the less grand spectrum of things. “Why?” “My people are dying, you see,” Hector answered, making sure to keep his head bowed in deference. “I’ve traveled across the Rainbow Desert to ask for your help.” He hadn’t quite planned it that way, but it didn’t matter. “Our crops are dying, people are starving. I’ll give you anything you want, just please, help my people.” The monster stared at Hector with one bright, beady eye, unflinching, and he steeled himself, not daring to move a muscle. “Very well, boy. I will honor your request. But first, you must do something for me.” “What is it? I’ll do anything to save my people. Please. You must help us.” “You must journey to the center of the forest and retrieve the crone’s eye. You will find a waterfall, and behind it is where she lives. Return with the eye, and your people will never starve again.” Hector knew that this was foolishness, but he’d gotten this far, believing in the old legends. Theirs was a desert kingdom, and it needed water to truly thrive. “Thank you, Lord, truly.


I Fall With the Rain (gamma) (Intercepted Communique routed to Colonel Herbert Rhodes, Third Fleet) It’s from the edges of things I think. Yeats said the center is where it falls apart, but I disagree to a point. I think the center is where the rot begins. The center loses cohesion sure, but generations of aging infrastructure can hold the shape of the ancient heart long after that heart has died. People carry on carrying on in the center, sometimes unaware that they live their lives in the ventricles of a vast dying (or already dead) organ. Maybe on some level they are aware, some nagging doubt hanging on the periphery of their consciousness; on the edge of their awareness. The edge of awareness. Taking the analogy forward, when the body begins to die, it conserves it’s resources in the core, the trunk. Blood flow, oxygen, heat is retained as long as possible in the core, and the periphery is starved. The fingers, the toes, and eventually closer and closer towards this core resources are starved as this body mercilessly casts off every unnecessary attachment in a desperate stalling tactic of what may be inevitable. The body conserves what it can in the core, the heart and mind, in hopes that it will survive. There may be loss of those distant limbs, but the being will survive. But when the core is already dead. Dead isn’t the right word, rotten isn’t either. Here is where the metaphor collapses. Dead is dead, there is nothing for this core to salvage. This hypothetical creature has nothing to save. What of madness, then? What if the intellect of this living being is fundamentally insane? What if the mind is chemically alive, but consciously (as far as we can understand the conscious) has flat-lined? The infrastructure remains and the commuters commute and the consumers consume as they have for generations unaware (except from the edge of their awareness perhaps?) that the heart or the mind has long since ceased to be a properly functioning center of order and progression. What of the periphery? The peripheral fingers and toes. What of the edges of things? Does the disparate realms of the edges continue on unaware that the core has collapsed into madness? The blood remains flowing, the oxygen content remains as rich as ever, do these extremities carry on unaffected? I can only assume that the fingers remained well nourished as the mind drove them to write the same five words on a wall of a distant lunar mining station over and over with no readily apparent sense. But proof that the fingers are sometimes consumed stood before me today as I surveyed the cell where the second set of five words were written thousands of times. We ascend with the light. I fall with the rain, we ascend with the light. A cyclical process. These ten words seem to encapsulate the simple to understand water cycle. Condensation, precipitation, evaporation, condensation, ad infinitum. The cool air causes the water vapor to form into larger molecules of water, eventually falling to the surface as rain. The rain forms rivulets that feed into streams that feed into rivers that feed into oceans. The surface of the ocean is heated by the dissipation of the clouds and the exposure to the sun, to the light. The water is heated to the point of evaporation, the vapor rises into the sky. The process repeats. The process unending. We ascend with the light. It was what had been written in his cell. These five words written over and over again with the rubbery digital crayon, (at least to begin with) that he had been given to occupy what remained of his mind here at the institute. The words had begun on the sheets of data flimsy provided, but once those were covered, they had moved on to the floor, the walls, the edges of the sleeping palette and portions of the ceiling that I assume was as far as he could reach. He was dedicated to his craft and to his message. The crayon had provided enough of a tool to provide for his creative endeavor, for a while. What remained of the inmate’s fingers evidenced the fact that the crayon hadn’t kept up with the needs of his driven mind. The core, in it’s madness, sometimes destroys the peripheral limbs, the edges of it’s being to provide whatever sustenance the diseased mind is demanding. The edges begin to crumble, and are worn away. The edges begin to die. Maybe the edges always eventually die whether the end comes from within or from without. Frostbite cause the body to conserve the core, and starving the limbs. Madness consumes the mind, leaving the limbs, and eventually the body in it’s entirety, driven to destruction as they are fed into this internal consumption. Maybe it’s late. Maybe I need to take a stress pill and get some sleep. I’m worried though, Colonel. I’m not one typically prone to see dire visions in my synthetea or throw salt over my shoulder should I spill a few grains, but something about these words leave me feeling cold. Look at how I’ve waxed on about collapsing societies and dying processes! What for God’s sake makes that come to mind as I’m standing in an inmate’s cell, rich with the coppery smell of drying blood and corruption? Corruption and obfuscation. What has caused that report from that stringer pilot to be buried? Given this second line, coupled with what was written on the walls of Tlalocan, what was broadcast to the fleet ships, seems to be a simple explanation of a simple hydrologic process. What does the water cycle have to do with death and the dying process and the mechanics of madness? The mechanics of madness. I think after I wrap the autopsy files and the official report of the inmate up and process it into the core data banks, (and I think I’ll delete record of this file in all other databases; I don’t know why, but that feels prudent at this juncture), I’m going to step outside and have a smoke. It’s raining, but I can deal with that; I brought my jacket to the office today. - Dr.


ather got me a journal today. I have been practicing english for almost a year. He says writing down on paper will help me practice better. I think I am doing good so far. Teacher says I am the best in my class. I want to be a writer some day. I think words are the most important thing. But mostly I want to impress them when we get there. I am very nervous. I will write before I sleep every day to make a rootine, because consistency is important. **F**ather told me we are getting very close. I already know what I will say. "Hi. My name is Jyarykzey, but you can call me J. It is very nice to meet you. What do you do for fun?" And they tell me all the funnest parts about their lives. We will laugh and they will love us and accept us. Father tells me to stay quiet though. He says to let the grown ups handle things because it will be tents when we get there. I don't understand this. **F**ather told me we are arriving tomorrow. I am very nervous but excited! What will it look like? How do they show love? I hope they are nice. Out of my window I see a huge world with rings around it. It is so beautiful. I don't know if I will be able to even sleep tonight! **W**e arrived today. I don't like this place. I am confused. I am sad. I was told they would hug. I tried to hug and they hit me. They put me in a cage. They took my journal, but a man came to me later and gave it to me. Maybe he is one of the good ones. When we landed they circled around us with big guns. We didn't even get off the ship for hours. And I didn't see any tents. I still don't understand that. I will try to sleep on this floor but it will be hard. I hope father can convince them we are just lost and desperate so we can live with them. **F**or a while I thought I would be here forever. I spent the whole day in this dim room with nothing but my journal. A plate slid into my room with some of their food on it. It wasn't very good. The man came back and helped me practice sentences on the back pages. That was nice of him. I asked him when I can leave this place. He said "Maybe soon. We were not expecting you. Understand that we are just being cautious." I told him I don't want to hurt anyone. None of us do. We are just lost and desperate. He said "I know" and he hugged me. He is a good man. **T**oday was a good day. They finally let me out. I found my father with the others. We got into a big line and got onto buses. We drove for hours through a big, flat, sandy place. My father told me we are in a place they call "New Mexico". I wondered where all of the people are. I assumed they were in Old Mexico. We arrived at a place with many small buildings and two large buildings. The bus driver said "Welcome home". It doesn't feel like home. But if it is my home then I will love it anyway. **W**e moved our things into a small building with two rooms. It is just me and my father so it is not too little. I was just happy to have something soft to sleep on. My father spent a couple of hours reading directions for the food. He opened a bag of something square and put it in water. He used a large metal box to start fire under it and the water started smoking. After a while, he scooped out the square and it was strings now! It was magical. He put a powder on the strings and stirred them. It was AMAZING. I am so full and so happy. **T**he others don't seem happy here. I think they miss home. I miss it too but we had to start a new life somewhere, and this life is fine with me. My father told me "I'm sorry but all we have is Ramen and water". I pieced together that Ramen was the strings. I told him not to be sorry. If this is all they eat here then I am very happy to share their culture. I am enjoying this life but the others aren't. I also want to meet people. I was so excited to meet all kinds of people. **T**he others are getting sadder and sadder. It makes me sad. Tomorrow I am going to try to bring them happiness. I heard that people were good, so I will go find some good people to spread happiness to them. I see cars sometimes outside of the walls. Maybe I could get one to stop and take me somewhere with people. **I** did it. I found a loose spot in the wall and squeezed through. I waved at a car and they stopped. I told them to take me somewhere with people and they said to get in the back and don't move around too much. It is very small and dark back here. I am bouncing around and I am uncomfortable. It will all be worth it soon. **I** don't know where I am. I noticed something hanging in the back of the car and I pulled on it. The back swung open. I tried screaming but I don't think he heard me. We hit a big bump and I bounced out of the car. It hurt a lot. I have been walking all day and I don't see anything but dirt and hills. It is getting very dark. It is getting very cold. I'm scared. **A**fter walking for most of the day, I saw a big building in the distance. As I got closer, I could see more and more buildings. It's a whole city! I made it into the city as the sun went down. I walked through the streets and everyone was staring at me. I heard something loud and fun and couldn't help myself from walking towards it. I walked into a building and everyone was jumping around. Lights were flashing and everyone was smiling. I jumped around for a bit but nobody wanted to jump with me. Maybe you only jump with your friends. I went over to where people were sitting down and drinking colorful drinks. I sat next to a lady and said "Hi. My name is Jyarykzey, but you can call me J. It is very nice to meet you. What do you do for fun?" Her eyes grew very wide and she said "I don't think you're supposed to be here". I said "But it seemed like fun. Where should I be?" and she said "with the others". I didn't say anything. She was right. I don't belong. Then she said "You seem nice though. Do you want to try this? My name is Sam, by the way" as she held her drink to me. I tried it and said "I don't like that very much". She said that not many people do at first. She told me it was dangerous for me to be around people but she won't say anything and I could stay with her tonight if I wanted. She took me to her home and showed me where I could sleep. She said "goodnight, sweet dreams". I said "goodnight Sam. You're one of the good ones". Today was a very good day. **S**he told me to stay inside today and don't break anything. She told me I could look at her stuff though. Her bathroom was filled with things that smelled so great. Her shower things smelled like her, which I didn't understand but I liked it. In the room I slept in was a big black rectangle. I looked around it and noticed some buttons on the side. After pressing all of them, pictures came onto it. A man was speaking to me about the others at my home. He said one has escaped, and if you see them you should call the police immediately. I don't know what the police will do to me but it makes me nervous. Maybe they are the bad people who put me in a cage. Sam got home later in the day. We talked about what life is like here and what life was like where I used to be. She told me about her people and I told her about mine. She told me about good people and bad people and how you never know what someone is until you meet them. I told her that I'm glad I met her. She said "I'm glad I met you too" and hugged me. Sam is so nice. I showed her my journal and she said my English is getting better. I told her I want to be a writer. She said "I think you will do great things one day". She went to her room for the night. I'm glad we came here. **S**omething exciting happened today. Well, not for most of it. I spent most of the day watching the screen. It doesn't seem like many people want us here. I think if they got to know us it would be different. Sam came home and sat on the couch with me. I told her I want to learn about love. She looked skeptical but then explained to me how some people connect very well and that some people are so special to you that you will do anything for them. They make you feel better than anyone else could. She said this can be misinterpreted though. She told me stories of a man who cheated on her. I told her I don't know what that means. She explained to me how love is emotional and physical. If it is only physical then it is not love. She looked at me, looked down and giggled. She asked "how do you have sex?" I looked at her confusingly and she said "Like, reproduce. Make babies." I held up a finger and she laughed again. I couldn't tell if she was mocking me. She could tell I was a bit offended and asked hesitantly "Could you show me?" I had never done this before, especially with a person, so I was a bit standoffish about it. She said "it's okay, I won't hurt you". I held her hand up and brought my finger to hers. Her eyes rolled back and her head leaned back too. I closed my eyes and continued. Afterwards she said it was like magic. She said she knew everything I knew, everything I wanted, everyone I care for, and all of my dreams. She thanked me and told me to sleep in her bed tonight. She got in the bed and pulled out a rectangle. I asked her what it was and she said "It's a cellphone. I'm setting an alarm for work". **S**am rushed out of the house this morning shouting "I'm late! I'm so fucking late!" I wonder what she does for work. I went back to the screen to make sure nothing bad has happened to the others. While the man was talking about some crazy guy blowing people up just because he could, I heard something buzzing in the other room. I went to see what it was and noticed it was her cellphone. She must have forgotten it. I look at the screen and it was someone writing "Baby I miss you. when will I get to see you again?" She must have not seen her father in a long time. Then the phone made a different noise and it was him again but a new option popped up, "answer". I hit the button and heard someone repeatedly saying "hello?" I said "Hello!" He said "Who the fuck is this?" I told him to call me J, and that I've been staying with Sam the last few days, and that I'm sure she missed him very much. I decided I want to help her reconnect with her father. He said he'd like to meet me. I asked where and he told me he would like to take me hunting. I heard that going hunting with fathers can be a good bonding experience, and I could tell him how great Sam is and how they should see each other more. We are going tomorrow morning. I didn't tell Sam when she got home because I want to surprise her. I am so nervous but so excited! I hope he is one of the good ones.


It's been really nice to meet you and getting to know you these last few days And if you'd like to keep in contact then I think that would be just great...Maybe you could write to me and then we could be like pen pals But I suppose people don't really write letters any more Cos it's normally all emails Which is a shame. I understand you live there and I live all the way over here But you're more than welcome to drop by any time if you're ever near-And if you need a place to crash you could have my sofa bed But my real bed's pretty big really so you could share with me instead-And if you wanted to stay for more than one night - two, three or four, You wouldn't even need to ask me cos you could even stay for five. If after a while you wanted to move your things in bit by bit Then I'd empty half a shelf for you where your toothbrush could sit. And if after a while you wanted to move yourself in all at once Then I think that would be OK too and I would jump at the chance! If after thinking about it you wanted to go halvesies on a pet Then it would have to be a dog cos I'm allergic to cats. And after a few weeks we could think about getting married and Picking out spots for honeymoons where over thresholds you'd be carried. Then a few weeks after that we could think about family options But if one of us was barren we could look into adoption; Cos there's a lot of children out there that don't have a mum or dad But I reckon we'd make good ones or at least ones not so bad; we could get jobs and promotions doing things we really like; buy our kid the stuff you buy like dolls and skates and bikes. I'll teach him or her to ride it like my daddy did for me And you can put the plasters on when they fall and graze their knee. We'll send them off to university and comfort each other when they're gone And I'll hold you in my arms and tell you term time's not that long. I'd make you know your sacrifice was never left unnoticed and the kid we had and raised together was worth not getting promoted. And-and-maybe you'd be irritated by my constant snoring But then again, maybe I - Would find your stories boring...but me and you, side by side, walking hand in hand we know even little arguments are all part of the plan. And when we're old and fat and grey with twinkling in our eyes: I'll love you and forgive you for looking at those other guys, I'll bet spending my life with you will make us want to live forever, maybe we'll be lucky and our lives will end together! For knowing you these last few days has turned my life around And I thank my maker every day For this person that I've found........ Or we could just leave it.