(iii) The one I struggle to understand. I spent 2019 mostly trying to recover. I dated on occasion, if for no other reason than to shake the rust off. Most of the dates I had were due to friends of friends; the *Stacie, I think you’d like this person, so I’m sending them your way* sort of dates. They were fun and lighthearted, but not longstanding by any means. I came out to my family on April 7th, 2019. In a way, it felt like a second birthday. It was a relief in a lot of ways. I took a girl on a date to the movies. We saw *Pet Sematary*. Not that it matters, but you can skip it. I wasn’t remotely scared. She was, on the other hand, terrified. She seemed annoyed that I wasn’t more moved by it. She ghosted me a few days later. Maybe for that reason. Maybe because of other reasons. I have no way of knowing, but I wasn’t upset about it, looking back. A little later in the year, I met up with a girl who seemed cool. We had a date at a local arcade. We didn’t have too much in common, but she seemed interesting. Our conversations were easy-going and she talked about herself openly. We agreed to meet up for a second date to get barbecue. We had a nice meal. She asked if I wanted to meet up again and I agreed; she had never been to a baseball game and there was one coming up that she asked me about. She ghosted me after I bought the tickets. I was slightly upset, but only because I spent $40 on tickets to a baseball game that I’d have to attend alone. (I ended up giving the tickets to my sister and brother-in-law.) Toward the end of the year, right around the end of October, I met a girl at the market around the corner from my then-employer. I saw here there often and we exchanged pleasantries. Sometimes, we ate together if I had time. I asked if she’d be open to having lunch and she agreed. She seemed nice, at least at first. She was rude to our server, though, and it killed any attraction I could have potentially felt. Somehow, we ended up ghosting each other, something I’m thankful for. After that, I took a pause again. I determined that I wasn’t quite ready for the fickleness of others, at least not then. I spent the remainder of 2019 alone, fifth-wheeling and continuing to mend the parts of myself that I felt needed it the most. I dabbled on dating apps, but strictly to find friends. I talked to a lot of interesting people; I kept conversations high-level, though. It seemed to work well for me. I found I wasn’t looking at other women romantically for the most part. Every now and then, I would see a pretty lady and feel some level of attraction, but it wasn’t quite the same. There were times I wondered if I’d ever get back to where I’d been before. 2020 quickly approached. The winter is my least favorite of all the seasons, thought it wasn’t particularly harsh this year. Valentine’s Day is never something I look forward to, mostly because I haven’t ever had a reason. This year was no different. No cheesy cards or “I love you’s” for me. Still, it’s nice to see love have a day of its own. I did my best to practice optimism and practice self-love. I made a list of all the things I like about myself and kept it handy with me throughout the day. I read it at different points in the day. It helped raise my spirits a bit. Right around this time, I started a new workout regiment. There was a bike-a-thon that was set to take place in the summer that I wanted to participate in. I had planned on honoring my grandpa and a former coworker who both lost their lives to cancer. The ride itself was a bit grueling, and it required a lot of stamina. It took up a lot of my time, and frankly, helped my self-esteem quite a bit. Shortly after, I began feeling ill quite a bit of the time. I figured maybe I had been working myself too hard; I had gotten a promotion, started a new workout regiment, and started eyeing school all in a short timeframe. It was a lot to handle. I had to drop something from my plate at some point. School had to wait a bit longer, I figured. I never deleted my dating apps. They stayed inactive, buried on the back-pages of my home screen. Occasionally, I would get a notification, but I rarely checked up on it. I felt I was in a good place mentally, and the thought of getting hurt again was daunting for me. In all honesty, as I look back, I had been wrestling with unresolved feelings. I didn’t want to pass that pain on to someone else. Around March, my employer began furloughing workers. I expected to be one of them, but I’m pleased to say I wasn’t. A few of my friends were affected, though. (Don’t worry – they all found work.) I had two options: To continue working in the office, or to work from home. Mostly everyone exercised the option of working from home. I wasn’t particularly excited about it. I am a textbook introvert in the sense that I simply need my own space to recharge. The thought of not being around people is not something I’ve handled well. I found I was in the minority with those feelings. I moved my entire office space into the guest bedroom of my parents’ house. I had a new office buddy: My cat – now my parents’ cat – Porschia. She could often be seen on my Zoom calls, even with clients. They thought it was charming, thankfully. Still, I missed the interaction I previously had with others. I headed back to the dating apps to see if I could find new pen pals. As it turned out, a lot of people had the same intention, so it wasn’t hard. It didn’t necessarily make conversation easier. People are people, and that includes people being shallow. I will admit I’m an average-looking person. Brown hair, blue eyes, short, a little chubby. I’ve been told a time or two I have a nice smile. Nothing about me necessarily stands out; any form of interaction I get on dating apps, I assume, is because of my personality. Still, I did my best to be confident. I struck up a conversation with a girl who lived about an hour south of me. We didn’t have a ton in common, but we had the same sense of humor. We shared similar political views, too. She considered herself strictly a cat person, which was disappointing when I told her I wanted to one day own a farm of Golden Retrievers. It was something she said she could overlook. She had a nice smile, which I liked. I will be honest – I didn’t feel an immediate spark when I talked to her, but at the very least, we could have easily been friends. We talked for a couple of days and exchanged numbers. She asked me almost immediately what it was I was looking for. And, in my typical fashion, I was honest: I had no clue. I didn’t explain to her anything involving my dating history. It seemed a bit premature for that discussion. I felt it was best not to lead us both to something where our hopes would be dashed if feelings weren’t mutual. She had a similar answer. It was a relief. We both quarantined for a few weeks. Because I lived with my parents, I didn’t have to worry about leaving the house much. I would, on occasion, leave to get groceries, but I never left for long. I’ve always been a stickler for washing my hands anyway, so I didn’t have a huge concern about getting sick. Still, I was careful. She had a similar situation. It was because of our caution that we agreed to a socially distanced meet-up just a few weeks in. We used the masks. We did the six-foot thing, at least I think it was six feet. We walked through the park and chatted. We ate lunch with our windows open in our own cars. We talked about music. I discovered, disappointingly, she didn’t know many of the songs I played. They were new to her, but I didn’t mind showing her if she would be interested. We didn’t agree to another meet-up at the conclusion of our first one. It was new for me, but I didn’t want to get my hopes up or pressure myself into something I may have not been ready for, either. Instead, we continued chatting. She brought it up eventually and asked if I’d be open to it. I had to think about it for a bit, but I eventually agreed. The meet-up was in similar fashion, and we spent most of the time just chatting and getting to know each other. Most of our communication was virtual for the first couple of months. We FaceTimed quite a bit. We talked on the phone often. She started getting into the habit of calling me on my lunch break. She let “babe” slip more than once. I have no problem with pet names; I just prefer there be *some* talk of relationship status. I felt awkward having to tell her, but she seemed understanding of that request. A day or so later, she told me she liked me. I wasn’t expecting it. The comment came out of left field. We had been talking about something completely unrelated, in fact. She interrupted my thought to tell me. “Hey, shut up for a second,” she said. That…sort of surprised me. “I like you.” I nodded. “OK,” I replied. I waited for something else. It seemed like there could have been something else, but there wasn’t. I didn’t know how I felt. I found I wasn’t prepared for the conversation to take place this way. I settled on more neutral phrasing. “I think you’re cool,” I said. She noted my hesitation to say too much. “It’s okay if you’re not ready,” she added. “Just tell me when you are.” Maybe I don’t know women, but she seemed to take it better than I expected. Things began to blossom from there, albeit slowly. We had virtual date nights. She began asking me more about myself, and I slowly began to open up. I told her whatever I felt comfortable sharing. Though I don’t find myself to be much of an interesting person, I took it in pieces. I wanted to know more about her, too, so I asked questions as they came up. She began getting a little bolder with her questions. She asked about my dating history on more than one occasion. I glossed over the subject. It didn’t seem fair to her to discuss that sort of thing, even if she did ask. I simply chalked it up to not being completely inexperienced, but also not having a great deal of experience. She told me she had been in love with her last girlfriend and they had only been broken up a few months. It seemed soon to me, but everyone dials at different speeds. It was only fair to her to let her determine how ready she was to move on, so I didn’t question it. Eventually, we decided to meet for a non-socially distanced date. We took abundant precautions beforehand. We agreed I would go to her place the first time. She lived alone during the time. She sounded really excited to be able to cook dinner for me, and there was a lot of effort on her end to make sure I liked what she made. This was…normal, I thought. You know, minus the global pandemic. I arrived on a Friday evening. I decided that a dress shirt, tie, khakis, and dress shoes were fitting. My hairdresser was closed, so I had to get creative with my hair. I think I managed to make it work. I knocked on her door and before I knew it, she wrapped me up in a big hug. She kissed me on the cheek and led me inside. Her house was clean and organized, about what I expected. I always have anxieties any time I’m invited to someone else’s home. As kids, my parents always made sure that my sister and I were exceedingly polite in other people’s homes. This usually included taking shoes off at the door, offering to help set the table if food was served, and helping around the kitchen. But it was all done for me this time. I felt slightly awkward. She must have been able to tell – she asked more than once if I was okay. We sat down to a candlelit dinner. There was wine. I’m not much of a wine drinker, or a drinker period. I powered through it, though the thought of drinking on a first date, for whatever reason, makes me uncomfortable. She had prepared homemade bread, chicken fettucine alfredo, and a salad. We chatted over dinner and watched some of the wildlife that surrounded her house. We eventually cleaned up and headed to the living room. An intense game of Jenga awaited us. Turns out, I’m not that great at Jenga, either. I swear a lot more when unstable wooden blocks are involved. Thankfully, she found this funny. She slid close to me and kissed my cheek. I felt myself get a little nervous. *Gotta be the wine talking,* I thought. She mumbled something a little saucy in my ear; I immediately suggested watching a television show. My nerves were a little jumbled. Some prime comedy television was surely in order. We watched about an hour of *Parks and Rec* before, out of nowhere, she sat up and grabbed me by the face. She kissed me. Hard. It took me a few moments to relax into it, but I did. I eventually pried myself from her and smiled. I wasn’t sure what else to do. My hands stayed glued at my sides. She guided my hand to the strap of her shirt and slid it down her shoulder. “Oh, boy,” I remember saying. I thought I left it as internal dialogue, but judging by her laugh, that was not the case. She started kissing my neck, somewhat more aggressively. Not that it matters to anyone that might be reading this but…not an area of focus, at least for me. I backed away. “Can we, like, not do this right now?” I asked. She seemed slightly offended. “Don’t you want to?” She was genuinely confused. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to. I had serious doubts that she was completely sure herself. I slid her strap back on her shoulder and gave it a gentle (nervous) pat. “I was hoping maybe we could just cuddle and watch something on TV,” I remember saying. The topic of physical closeness had yet to be discussed by this point. She seemed deflated. This was new to me. I hadn’t ever rejected a woman’s (physical) advances before, but I hadn’t had a reason to. She eventually conceded to the idea of a blanket and television, although I could tell she wanted more. We talked for a little bit longer. She took the opportunity to tell me of her physical needs at some point during the conversation. I either struggle with being direct or I’m *too* direct; there is rarely any sort of balance for me. This time, it was the former. I didn’t want to tell her I wasn’t quite ready. She eventually took the hint and didn’t bring it up for the remainder of the evening. We made our way to bed at some point. She snuggled in beside me and rested my arm over her. I didn’t end up sleeping for most of the night; she snored like a freight train going 70 in a 30. Still, it was nice to be close to someone. Her cat decided I made a good pillow, or at least my legs did. I found myself sleeping next to a gal who was sawing logs in her sleep with a cat who may or may have not been trying to slowly immobilize me. Still, I can’t say it was the weirdest experience I’ve ever had. I woke up the next morning to a hand being pushed through my hair. I’ve never been a morning person; I don’t necessarily have any problems with sleeping in past 10:00 AM. “What time is it?” I mumbled. She shooed her cat off the bed and rolled me on my back. She straddled me and took her shirt off. She was really not good at being subtle at this point. I swallowed hard. She kissed my neck again. Too tired to protest, I sort of…let it happen. She whispered more saucy things into my ear, and I found myself mostly not responsive. She either didn’t notice or didn’t care. She was sober now, so it seemed she really *did* want to follow through with it. Me, on the other hand? I was still unsure. She took me hands and guided them where she wanted them. I found myself struggling to maintain eye contact nearly the whole time. The experience isn’t what I’d call unhinged; uncontrolled, arrhythmic, maybe. Again, not that it matters, but it didn’t align with my style. It didn’t last too long. She got up and showered immediately after. I lay in her bed realizing that a woman had invited me to her house for dinner and Netflix. I partially blamed myself. What was I expecting to happen? I got dressed and headed to her kitchen. I thought I’d forget about the previous encounter, or try to, by making breakfast. I was used to cooking for one by this point, and it looked like she was, too. She would have to live with my waffles, eggs, and turkey bacon. I decided to surprise her when she got out of the shower. I arranged a breakfast tray and delivered it to her room where she was getting finished preparing herself for the day. She thanked me with a kiss on the cheek. We didn’t talk much about the morning’s events. I found myself changing the subject whenever she brought it up. It was a beautiful day that day; I suggested a picnic in the park and maybe a small hike. She was only interested in one of those things, which I was able to live with. We spent most of the day together before I had to leave. It was *mostly* uneventful, and barring certain encounters, would have been a great day. Despite this, we continued to see each other. I signed my lease for my apartment in early May. I began boxing most of my life away. Thankfully, I didn’t have many personal items. It was mostly clothes, books, a television, and some new household items. She helped me pack and seemed interested in my high school life. We looked at some of my yearbooks. During those years, I wore my hair long. I didn’t wear my glasses regularly – I was stubborn in that way. I was a shy, quiet teenager, which surprised her. I’m not sure why. I eventually moved into my apartment, which is small. But it worked perfectly for me. She seemed surprised by that fact; I felt the judgment, but only a little bit. She helped me unpack and we looked at more photo albums. But something was different on move-in day. She was unusually snappy with me. I asked if she wanted to eat pizza with me while I unpacked. She seemed annoyed by that. “You didn’t plan a meal?” I remember her asking. It didn’t seem totally crazy to have pizza after moving my life into a new apartment. I assumed the question was rhetorical. “I guess we can. But you invited me over. I thought you may have had something special planned,” she said. I felt a little bad. After all, she did cook dinner for me when I went to her house. “Next week?” I asked. “When I get everything unpacked and get to the grocery store. I can make spaghetti and meatballs or something.” That seemed to placate her. The truth is, I hadn’t been feeling completely well or like myself. I was more tired than usual. A little sore, even. But I didn’t find it significant enough to share with her. My job was terribly stressful at the time. I had just moved out on my own. I figured I was also maybe feeling a bit depressed or homesick. It was hard to pin down my emotions. I didn’t want to unload them on her; she had stuff of her own to deal with, too. She asked if she could stay all night, and I agreed it would be fine. I woke up the next day to a hot bath drawn for me and McDonald’s breakfast. I hadn’t even heard her leave that morning, though I am sometimes a bit of a hard sleeper. “What’s this for?” I asked. “You don’t have food here,” she said immediately. It felt a little passive-aggressive. I felt bad again. I tried to gloss over it with a joke. “Yeah, I guess I should probably go to the store,” I said. She seemed annoyed again. “Guess you have to be an adult sometime,” she said. That comment sort of stung. I asked if everything was okay. This specific behavior was a little new to me, but it felt like she was looking for reasons to be upset. “I’m fine,” she said eventually. “Just tired.” I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. She left a little later that day after helping me unpack some more. She called later that night to talk about her parents. I put her on speaker phone and puttered around the house. Nothing seemed out of place on my end, besides her previous bad mood. I had to know why she was in such a crap mood, but the other part of me told me not to dig. She hit me with an unexpected question. “Do you think you could ever see yourself falling for me?” It was a loaded question, as well as unexpected. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to answer it. It wasn’t totally improbable that I could fall for her. Though, as I write this now, I realize I knew the answer all along. “It’s definitely a possibility,” I said. It seemed like a safe answer. There was a long pause. “Good,” she said. It was a bizarre ending to our conversation. “I have to get going. Talk to you later.” We exchanged “goodnights” before she hung up. I went to bed wondering if I had just walked into some sort of weird trap. My anxiety wasn’t in overdrive, so I went with that. I slept in a little later than normal the following day. My whole body was sore. I felt like I’d been hit by a truck. I also had to report to work in my new apartment/office, something I wasn’t looking forward to much. I got up, gave a little stretch, took a hot shower, contemplated my life choices, ate some toast. You know, the usual. I hadn’t checked my phone that morning, something that was a little odd for me. I shuffled into my office space and started my day. Judging by the way my client called and yelled at me for ten minutes straight, I could tell it was going to be a weird day. I played some music to get the juices going. The Eagles are always a prime choice, and my neighbors probably now know how much I like the song “Hotel California.” They probably also know I’m a shit singer. Frankly, I’m okay with both. During my lunch break, I decided to check my phone. Six texts from my girlfriend. T*hat’s gotta be bad*, I thought. I opened them, expecting something, but not a breakup. Not after our last conversation. Among other things, she mentioned I needed therapy. This comment was particularly hurtful; I had finally opened up to her and told her I had been to therapy off and on during my late-teen years. She seemed understanding at the time. I never expected for her to use it against me. She told me I was a bad kisser. That one didn’t hurt quite so bad, but I was rusty when we met. If I was ever bad with anyone else, they had enough tact not to tell me. And finally – perhaps the most confusing statement – she called me desperate and needy. I was shocked. And hurt. If I’m being honest, I still am. The thought of getting close to another human daunted me for a while. It stopped me from pursuing anything remotely resembling a relationship, for the most part. I hadn’t shared that with her, though. Maybe she could tell, maybe it was just a lucky guess. In a way, it felt like she looked for ways to hurt me. I tried calling. Straight to voicemail. I asked if we could meet up. She was “busy.” She only wanted to talk by text. I spent most of the afternoon in tears. I guess, looking back, I should have seen it coming. It wouldn’t be the first time I missed completely obvious signs. Sometime before I met her, though, I realized not every experience would look the same. At least that’s what I told myself. This felt hauntingly familiar in some ways; the biggest difference was that it felt like she meant to hurt me. I can’t say the same for those that were before her. I eventually worked up the courage to ask if I’d done something wrong. She didn’t answer with a response to my question. Instead, she suggested we talk later that evening. It was mostly just rehashing her texts. She wanted a break for a while and I gave it to her. I found myself more hurt by the circumstances of the breakup more than the breakup itself. It was a little new to me. I was angry with her. I still am, at least in some ways. I don’t get angry often. It’s a useful emotion sometimes, though. It offers clarity under certain circumstances. We haven’t talked much in the past few months. I have written unsent letters to her that I’ve erased. The words struggle to come to mind. It’s probably because I didn’t love her. I don’t think I could. Completely improbable? I suppose not. Something was just…missing. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but the warmth that I need wasn’t there. She was genuine in a lot of ways, but completely unsure of herself in others. There was a bit of an age difference between us, but not extraordinary. I came with a bit more life experience; we struggled to relate on backgrounds and shared experiences. Looking back, the holes were probably too big to fill. The story is still somewhat fresh. It feels I could write new pages every day. I have contemplated reaching out to her more than once, but I’ve struggled to follow through. A person I spent a lot of time talking to, sharing mundane details of my life with, is practically a stranger. She texts me occasionally. She’s shown up uninvited to my house. She’s sent me birthday greetings. But it all feels very superficial. She told me she feels guilty for what she did. I’m not a perfect person. I can admit that maybe I want her to feel a little guilty. She knows I didn’t deserve for it to end the way it did. But on the other hand, I’m a flawed person myself. I recognize that sometimes, people do things they think might be best and act in ways that don’t always align with their character. Love teaches a lot of lessons. But then again, so do things that might resemble love. Things that might have potential to be love but never quite make it. Things that turn into love but never get the space they need to grow. I genuinely have no clue what this experience was meant for me to learn. I do my best to be a positive person. In some way, I hope, I’ll have the lesson figured out soon enough.


“I died once. In the sand. The sun blistering down on me and burning my flesh away to nothing for days and days, while I wandered the wasteland without end. I remember great sadness, knowing the way home but never taking it. Far too lost inside of myself to care where my prison of flesh wandered.” His deep, flawless voice whispered into her ear, intimate as anything else in this world. “You asked me ‘what happens after death? Where I go?’ I cannot tell you. Not because it would bring you to fear, but because it would answer so very much. They are not my answers to give.” “Why… are you here if not to give answers?” The soft, paper-thin voice asked, laced with fear and perhaps more confusion than he wished to leave her with. “Will I become like you?” “No, my sweet. I promise you. The next step on your journey shall be as intended.” He whispers, softly running his thumb down her knobby spine. She was so frail, so very frail for a woman in her thirties. Cancer was a horror that even his scarred heart took pity on. “Would you like to hear my story? I’ve only told a few sweet souls. Perhaps it will put you at ease, relax your final moments in the wander that is time?” His lips softly pressed against her temple, feeling her pulse against them softly. She had time for a story, at least there was time for that. “Please... “ She started but stopped as a cough racked her form, blood mixed with spittle peppering his cheek and white coat. “I’m so sorry.” She finally says after the fit of coughing is finished. Her heart is beating faster now, costing her precious moments of peace and causing her great pain. He wills her heart to slow down, a trick he learned after his second century of new life. The relaxation was palpable, nearly putting the poor woman to sleep but he pulled back just before she could drift off. “No, my sweet. I am sorry. I am sorry that more cannot be done for you.” He continues his soft whisper. “I shall tell you my story, relax into me, and trust that no more pain will come. By the end of my tale, you will be at peace. This… I can promise you.” He says pulling the woman into his lap fully, the hospital gown falling away and leaving her small form completely nude. He preferred it this way, to take them in the same way they arrived. He believed it made the passing easier, to accept them without horror or revulsion. One final acceptance, even appreciating their beauty and willing them to see themselves at their peak. It was a simple trick, to bring back their old memories, those brightest lights. For this one, it was her high school prom. She wore a black dress, a strappy thing and despite her date choosing another woman at the last minute, his sweet victim knew she was ravishing. Oh, the heads she turned that night. “I do not remember everything, of course. So many things are lost to time and I wouldn’t be able to describe them even if I did remember. However, I remember waking up in the desert. A coyote desperately pulling at my flesh, silly little thing was starving. So was I. We fought for a moment, maybe longer and maybe there wasn’t a fight at all… but eventually it was only me in the desert alone. For a long while, I wandered in the night and buried myself in the day, letting the beautiful sand dunes keep me safe from the brutality of the sun.” His whisper slowly faded away and he trailed his lips down the poor woman’s neck. “I remember staying with some Bedouins, although I do not know if that’s what they were called at the time. They took me in, cared for me as if I were one of their own. We watched over each other for so very long. Generations of their families protected me during the day, carrying my body with them on their journey without fear of the sun. Wrapped in their tents, I made for very little extra inconvenience. So many times I protected them from bandits, riders coming to steal whatever they could. Occasionally we would wander too close to a sacred sight from some obscure religion and their followers would come in the night. I would also ease their elders into a final sleep. As I’m doing for you sweet one.” His lips parted and he sunk his fangs lightly into her paper-thin skin. Now, he was able to show her his memories. Continuing the story where his voice had fallen off. She would notice no difference, not when he’d been buried so deeply in her mind already. The poor frail thing that it was. He showed her images, of the group of Bedouins joining An-Nasir Salah Ad-Din Yusuf Ibn Ayyub and enlisting to fight with him against the emergent Christian invaders. He remembered the betrayal, the feeling of loss when the group was forced to brand him a monster, and the vengeance he took on every human lost in the dark for years to come. Harassing the armies of both sides in the conflict and occasionally picking a side in a battle, fought at night with something similar to the random flip of a coin. Oh, how the blood flowed like water in those days. It was so very cathartic to see their bodies strewn in the desert, dried out of all moisture. He knew now that history remembered those fallen as having been lost and running out of water. Conveniently omitting the grisly sight of their carnage and positing instead that animals had gotten to their corpses. He sighed inwardly, feeling the poor girl’s heart begin its final soft beats, he hadn’t even gotten to England yet in his story. Ah, it couldn’t be helped. Her slowing heart rate gave him very little time. Instead of finishing his story, or even giving her his name, he instead brought the images of her parents. Smiling at the birth of their daughter, proud beyond reason. It was a memory almost no humans would see, but he thought it poetic to give them a final look at the beginning of their lives. Envelop them in the pure and unbroken love of their parents as he took them quietly home for the final time. When her heart monitor started beeping, he knew it was over. Silent tears flew down his cheeks and he lay the poor nude woman back in the bed. Covering her up and composing her in what he hoped was a peaceful appearance. The final touch was of course, for the family of the deceased. He’d been doing this for so very long that he had forgotten more than he remembered now. Wiping the blood from his lips on the sleeve of his white coat, he closed the woman’s eyes and bowed to her. A sign of deep respect for one that had given so much to him. He left her room, heading up the stairs and out into the night air. He left the white, bloodstained coat floating quietly to the street below. He didn’t even know where he was anymore, a ghost floating from place to place without truly remembering. He remembered what had happened as if they were another person’s memories. His own were lost to him, and the only joy left in his life was to ease the suffering of those soft humans who truly earned none of it.


The stars are going out. My father and I are amateur astronomers. There’s a little hill behind my house, separated from it by a ten minute hike through brambles and fences and sleeping neighbors. We used to sneak out on school nights, when my mother was asleep and the world was waiting, and carefully pick our way out there, with only a flashlight and a sense of humor to guide us. It was our place, our time, and on that hill, with us under the stars and they under our lens, the whole world stood still for a moment, except for the wise old owl somewhere in the distance who cooed at us: “Hoo! Hoo!” Father taught me the names of the stars, and the stories people used to tell about them so long ago in far away places called “Greece” and “Rome.” Funny men in togas and wreaths. He told me about Cygnus, who spent days collecting the bones of his friend Phaethon which had fallen into the river Eridanus after Zeus had been forced to strike his father’s chariot out of the sky when he had lost control over it. The Gods turned him into a swan as a reward for his devotion. We would spend hours there, taking turns peeking through the telescope, first him, then me, then him again. And, for a few moments, they were all that existed: him and the stars. I learned a second meaning of “cancer” which the serious man in the white coat hadn’t told me when he gently explained that my mother was going to die. There was no talk of stars -- just daunorubicin and radiation. I asked if she would glow like the men in the comic books, and she said no, with a wetness in her eyes. We didn’t talk about sad things on the hill. That was the rule. Not even after the funeral. The hill was for him and me and the stars. “That’s Orion,” Father told me, putting a hand around my waist and pointing with the other one. “Which one?” I asked, after he helped me up to the lens. “It’s…” but, he trailed off. “What is it?” I asked. “The stars,” he said, breathlessly. “The stars are going out.” He was right. One by one, the little points of light were shutting off. Father took out his phone and dialed a number. It was late, but Rob answered anyway. “Rob? Look out your window and tell me what you see.” There was a pause, and then he answered. “Yeah, I see what you mean, they really are…” And then the line went dead. “Rob?” Father asked. “Rob?!” No response. And, that’s when I saw it -- the blackness, like a wall of ice rolling towards us. The brambles and the neighbors and the field between the fence and the hill were all being sucked up in the blackness. “What’s happening?” I asked, and Father wrapped me up tight in his arms. “It’s okay, Care-Bear,” he said, his words muffled by my hair. “It’s okay,” he said, again and again. “I don’t understand,” I said, and a tear fell from my cheek. “I’m here,” he said, kneeling down in front of me, and taking my face in his hands. “I’m not going anywhere, Caroline, no matter what, I pro…” But, he never got to finish. Suddenly, I was all alone. “Hoo! Hoo!” I heard, somewhere off in the distance.


I roamed through the library shelves, yearning for Byron but coming up with Borges. As a Psychologist in waiting, it would’ve been proper to restrict my reading to those authors associated with mental disorders. However, I was feeling rebellious, so I added Borges’ *Labyrinths* to my stack of textbooks. Then through the hassle of the University’s library system and back along the lonely path to my dorm. Putting the books down on the sticky wooden desk it costs me $4000 a semester to use—and never mind the actual course fees—I prepared myself a student dinner- plain toast, Pringles, and coffee. Using my noise cancelling headphones to block out the rest of the dorm, I surfed YouTube while I ate. And when I’d finished, Freud, Pavlov, and Rogers occupied my evening until, blear eyed, I collapsed on my bed with the volume of stories. A plasticky little receipt fell onto my chest as I opened the cover. Out of curiosity, I picked it up to discover that one Andre Theodore had borrowed this book three years ago, along with *The Complete Works of Kafka* and *Paradise Lost*. I returned my attention to the book and saw that Andre, obviously a lit major, had annotated it. Tight, obfuscated prose covered the margins in a daemonic black block. And the phrase ‘lime green ex-Nazi wives’ was printed in block letters underneath the title card. Andre had been considerate enough as to not directly tamper with Borges’ prose, apart from the odd underline or asterisk, and it was all readable. But it was annoyingly readable, as if Andre was forcing me to make a choice between the text and his reflections on the text. I chose the text and immersed myself in the twisting sentences and labyrinthine facades of the story. \# I returned the Psych textbooks, along with the annotated Borges, to the library and began hunting for fresh fiction. Already familiar with Nabokov and Vonnegut, I wandered deeper into the library; stepping farther and farther back in time. A dull throb of Kafka turned me onto German Literature, and I perused through Goethe and Schiller unimpressed. The Germans write such stilted dialogue it’s a wonder they ever had a theatre scene. But a collection of Kafka looked good, so I picked that up; justifying it to myself as research for a thesis on abnormal personalities. But alas, when I returned to my dorm and started reading, I found poor Kafka had similarly been defaced. ‘Blue balled congressional seats’ printed underneath the title, and dense annotations all over the margins. This nonsensical scribbling on prober public books was no way for an academic to behave. I recalled the receipt from the other day and reasoned that if he had gotten Kafka and Borges, Milton would’ve been hit too. The fiend. Sure enough, when I’d dug out the library’s only copy of *Paradise Lost* from underneath the moth-eaten remains of Shakespeare, I found similar vandalism. ‘Orange brown sea puddles’ on the title and annotations in the margins. That’s three books defiled, now. And although I’m not particularly religious, there’s something heretical about covering Satan in obscene gibbering like that. And seeing what Andre had done to the poor defenceless books, I resolved to catch him. And strengthened by the relative boredom of a Tuesday night, I sat down with the three ruined books to investigate. I will gather every scrap of evidence about this book vandal I can and convey it to the proper library authorities so the proper legal proceedings can take place. \# Time, as is its prerogative, passed. I moved into the post-graduate stage of academia. No longer forking out for a squalid dorm but living large on a government stipend in a small apartment; student debt absorbed into a research scholarship. And keeping in the spirit of youthful rebellion turning midlife crises, I’d kept the vandalised books long since my library membership was revoked. It’s all online, anyway, and I can read my academic journals and science-fiction journals on the internet; I think I’m saying, ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained,’ or something like that. I’ve puzzled out the margin notes. In a spare room, I’d plastered photocopied pages onto the walls, one wall per book. A thing I’ve noticed in my studies—not studies, but perhaps devotions—is that the musings all fall within a familiar theme. First, a colour based declarative signals the tone of the writing. The Borges reflections, for example, were about an unnamed (perhaps unnameable) character with lapsed right-wing beliefs, jealous of another unnamed character who had wronged her. And the Kafka writings tell of a love unconsummated, maybe of a Political Philosophy Student Andre was friendly with. The only flaw of colour as a hermeneutical model is that orange does not easily associate with one emotion. Regardless, I understand Andre better. Like an author you loved as a child or a friend you grew up with, I found myself viewing the world through his perspective more often. When something happened in my research, I looked for a correlation in it in his writings. No longer was my search one of vengeance, but within these notes I believed that there lied some greater truth. More sublime than the sublime itself. A secret phrase buried in his prose that shall illuminate a new perspective on life more valuable than all philosophy; a power beyond life. And so I do my research and search for this phrase and keep myself to myself. \# More time passes. Quite a lot of it for me, but not that much all things considered. The years have fallen through my body like so much sand through an hourglass, carrying with them triumph and sadness and heartbreak quite unrelated to this narrative. And I find myself alone in a beeping ward, surrounded by machines. People come and say things to me I do not understand; and that doesn’t bother me. The only unsolved mystery in my life that really bothers me is the purpose behind your writing. Oh, did I just use a direct address there, my friend? My mind is going and the framing of my story along with it. I see you there, gilded phantasm, hovering over the edge of my bed. Do you know how long I’ve waited to talk to you? The agony that unresolved strain you created has burned into my head. Of course you do. There is no time, so hurry. What was the point? THE POINT? Of your writing. The scribbling. The torment and restlessness of it all. YOU FOOL, CAN’T YOU SEE YOU’VE DOOMED US BOTH? THAT THE ANSWER WAS THERE IN FRONT OF YOU ALL ALONG? THE SERET OF ABSOLUTE POWER. THE MEANING BEHIND THE CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE ALL SPELLED OUT FOR YOU IF ONLY YOU HAD THE BRAINS TO SEE IT! No, Teacher! I don’t. I can’t. Please show me, I need to understand! THERE IS NOTHING I CAN DO NOW. THAT DOOR WAS CREATED FOR YOU ALONE, AND THE LOCK TURNS IN THE KEY, CASTING US TO A SHADOW EXISTANCE FOR THE REST OF TIME. No, wait. I can do better. Please don’t turn away from me. Don’t leave me here by myself. I’ll die. I will. Please help me, please. Please.


I know my writing is what it is but know I have edited and reedited it ad nauseum. If nothing else, I think it is at a point where I can present it without too much embarrassment on my part. Well, I hope so at least! In any event, I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. (Roughly 900 words) \- - - A short heavyset man in a painfully colorful suit, pants, and flat-topped hat stands before you on a wooden crate. Your eyes happen to meet and he gestures for you to approach. Looking around the market you don't see anyone else nearby, so he must be waving at you. With nothing better to do at the moment, you shrug to yourself and walk towards the funny man on the crate. As you approach, he pinches the left side of his long thin handlebar mustache that curls up at the end, as if to check it was still there. Looking down at you he smiles broadly as he begins to speak to you in a salesman's voice, "Hello and welcome friend! I bid just a moment of your time to tell you of a magical place. Yes yes, a land like no other! The Sword Coast, as it is sometimes called, is filled with marvels that surpass anything this kingdom has to offer. There are pristine beaches with sapphire blue seas, majestic mountains, untamed forests, and grasslands as wide as the sky. A cleaver one, much like yourself, will no doubt find grand adventure waiting for you. “Ah,” he sighs, “The excitement of rescuing a prince or princess, of defeating an evil dragon or two, or of helping the natives win back their peace and prosperity. Heroes work needs to be getting done and you, my friend,” he pauses as he looks you over from bottom to top, "You are just the sort of hero the Sword Coast needs. "Yes yes! That's right! All that and so much more awaits you and, well..." He looks around conspiratorially, as if to make sure no one else is listening. Using his hand, he beckons you to come closer. As you step forward, he bends over and cups his right hand to his mouth and quietly says, "Treasure. Yes, friend, there is treasure beyond your wildest dreams. It veritably litters the ground!" he exclaims in a rising voice. "It is just waiting for someone, yes, well, someone exactly like you to come along and pick it all up!" He stands back up, straightens his shirt, coughs once, and then shoos you back a step. As you step back, he again pinches his mustache. This time, however, he slides his fingers down the length of it. It uncurls and straightens out as if fingers reach the end of it. As soon as his fingers slide off the end it curls back up as it bounces a few times before coming to rest exactly where it started. Taking a deep breath, he begins speaking again with his large smile returning to his face. You continue listening to him but notice something has changed. His smile has grown inhumanly large. It stretches across the entirety of his face now. More disturbingly, as you look closer, you see that his teeth have grown longer and more angular than you remember them to be. "So, what do you say friend? Interested? Curious? Ready to begin? Quite right! Yes, yes, certainly you are!" he answers for you. "What are we waiting for? LET US BEGIN!" he roars as he arches his back and extends his arms out wide, looking up towards the bright blue sky, smile still plastered across his face. He holds the pose for an uncomfortably long time before he slumps forward and lowers his arms. Taking another deep breath, he collects himself and begins speaking again, "To start your journey it takes but a single step. Yes, a step, and your name, and of course the 20 golden crowns fee. Let us not forget that part!" he chuckles. As you turn to leave, fed up with this ridiculousness, a flash of near blinding red light pulses out from his left hand. You whip your head back towards the man, ready to fight off an attack but find nothing waiting for you except a scroll comfortably resting in his palm. He holds the scroll up by the top bar and allows it to unroll down and off of his hand. Getting your first look at what the scroll contains, you see what must be thousands of tiny but orderly lines of text. You lean forward to look it over but try as you might you cannot read what the tiny lines say. You rub your chin, wondering about the contents of the scroll, when another pulse of red light flashes out, but this time from his right hand. You look over to find an overly large writing quill topped by a feather that ripples with iridescent colors pinched between his fingers. He stretches his arms out towards you and offers you the quill. "Just sign your name here, here and here." he says as he points to three blank spots on the scroll. "Once you have done that, and paid me my fee of course, we can get started. Yes, my new friend, let us begin!" His smile grows even broader while his teeth seem to further sharpen and gleam in the hot summer’s light.


The roar of the waves. The salt in the air. The taste of it on my lips. How pure and fresh this air is as I breath it in, In-and-out, In-and-out. I could die at this moment. I’d die completely at bliss on this rejuvenating, cloudless day. But alas, that’s not what she wants, a conclusion drawn only from the fact that she hasn’t taken me yet. It could be in a week, it could be tomorrow. But not right now. So I let myself relax as I soak up the sun. Just a few moment’s longer as I prepare for this day ahead. I open my eyes to draw myself out of this trance. There’s work to be done and I always need more coins in my pocket. I can’t let myself stop working for too long or I’ll get tied to the mast and whipped for my laziness, again. Captain Rothoss, although fair, isn’t a lenient man. You do your job or you get punished. So for the point of not getting whipped, I head below decks to swab the mess decks as part of my daily tasks. Being a chore boy isn't the greatest job, but this is the first ship I’m on. I can hardly expect something when I have no skills to rely on. That’s just how life is sometimes. Now when I say mess decks you might think of some huge area filled with rows upon rows of tables. It’s just two, they ain’t that big. Hell the ceiling’s not even that high. Honestly it’s not too much to swab but it gets dirty all the fuckin time. So here I am for the second time today, swabbing it. “Hey Kylar” I looked up to see Bernard coming to me. He’s another chore boy who’s supposed to be helping me swab, but he’s late. “I heard Marquez ain’t walking the decks. So we can probably take a sit for a bit.” “Who said that?” I asked Bernard doubtfully. It’s Marquez’s job to whip those slacking in their duties. And everyone, especially me (I can still feel it on my back when I move around or bend over), knows how much he loves that whip. “Well I ain’t really heard it as much as seen it. He was up on the bridge with the captain and looked like he was ‘gon be there for a while.” He replied with a little smirk on his face. “Well shit, then we got at least a few minutes. And we can keep swabs next to us in case he actually comes down.” I replied cautiously, feeling those slashes flare up a bit. “Shit alright man, but I really don’t think he’s coming down for a while.” Replied Bernard. Am I being a bit paranoid? I’m wondering in my head. I’m always stacked a bit differently than other people. I’m just not wired like they are so I’m always in my head with things like my paranoia, for example. And then I’ll stack my thoughts to a multitude of people to make sure I’m not being too weird. Am I being too paranoid or is Bernard being too careless? I hadn’t seen what he’s seen but then again he is the kind of person to not fully think things through. Which is why we got caught slacking last time...shit! He’s just kinda looking at me while I’ve been in my head. He’s probably waiting for me to say something so I open my mouth to say a prepared, bland question that I honestly don’t care about. Like ‘How are ya?’ or something else just as boring. But just when I open my mouth to speak I hear this loud clanging. It sounds something like, ‘DING-A-LING, DING-A-LING, DING-A-LING’ over and over. Holy shit that’s the battle bells. But it might just be a drill. The captain likes to test us to make sure we’re ready for anything. Since this is a merchant’s ship we’re big targets for pirates. Because of that, and with more than a little worry, we run to the weather decks and make it topside. Everyone’s running around us. People are bumping into us trying to get to their stations. I know we’re in the way but I’m completely shocked and I’m sure Bernard is too. This is definitely not a drill. We can see the ship aft starboard side flying a black flag. And it’s fucking terrifying. I’ve never seen that many cannons on a ship before. We’re getting robbed, without a doubt. Since the pirate’s want our loot they’re not going to sink us. I know that but I’m still terrified. We can’t even do much since we only have four cannons, two starboard and two portside. Through my quick glance at their ship I saw, at least, three times that. So I start to run to where the cannonballs are stored. It’s my and a few others' jobs to refill the cannons after they’re fired. Not that we’ll get many rounds of volleys out before they put enough holes in us to make us stop. Before they incapacitate us. But a job’s a job. As dangerous as this one is at least it doesn’t take much skill. Just some courage to run around topside while cannonballs are flying. But, Jesus, my legs are trembling, can I even move? I have to grab onto the rope that makes up our lifeline before I fall to the floor. I try to take a few shaky steps. I’m so terrified I can barely move. The Captain is barking orders for the ship to turn so we can point the cannons at them. I haven’t even grabbed a cannonball yet and we’re about to fire at them? I try to take just one, small step. Maybe just a shuffle of my feet. But I can’t! I’m completely locked into place. I hear a deafening roar that shakes me down to my core as someone runs into me and knocks me down. I can’t even look up to see who it is. I hear cannonballs whiz past my head. Did one just nearly hit me? Seriously where are they aiming those cannons? They should be shooting lower so water can fill up the ship. But I guess with the amount of cannons they have they can shoot everywhere. And a deafening crack as they smack into the wood that makes up our hull. I hear a scream of agony somewhere topside. I don’t even know the direction it came from. The realization that could have been me causes a warm trickle down my pants. Seriously that scream was nearly as loud as the cannonballs hitting the hull. Is wood still cracking? People are screaming at me but I can’t make out what they’re saying. They look terrified though. So full of emotion for me to do...something. What’s that they’re pointing towards? Well it’s something to my left, so I look just in time to see the main mast coming down towards me. No one was brave enough to come and move me. Hell I’m not even brave enough to look anywhere else. It just keeps coming, creaking down. Pulling all the connected ropes with it but it won’t stop. Just gaining more and more speed like it’s excited to hit me. Like it wants another blood sacrifice from more than what a whip can give. It smacks my skull with enough force for me to hear a crack. I bet it hit me hard enough to leave a bit of my brain on the wood. My bodies in the water...well, no. I’m in the water. But I don’t feel cold. I don’t feel scared either. That’s a relief. Before I couldn’t take a couple steps and now I feel like I can fly! Gods that such an exhilarating feeling. Actually, I am flying. I’m soaring up in the sky! I can feel the wind. But it’s not cold, just lively. It makes me want to soar faster. So I do! I keep soaring up! I’m going past the sky, the moon, the stars. I can see the stars in a blur around me. They’re so beautiful. Like millions of the purest diamonds to ever shine. Each one as unique as a snowflake. I’d tear up from the beauty but I’m not stopping here. I’m soaring farther, faster and faster the longer I fly. I’m still not cold! Passing these beautiful clouds. These clouds are like rainbows of vibrance and life on top of the canvas of nothingness. I wish I could soar through and around these clouds but I have to keep going. Gods this is so...I can’t describe this feeling of joy and freedom. It’s true freedom, I’m sure of it. What people preach for but no one delivers, what being rich entails but never happens, what everyone dreams for but no one gets. I keep going, past the stars, the clouds, past galaxies, and then I see this light. This is what I’ve been soaring towards. This is why I had to go through that shitty life before. It’s getting closer. Closer and brighter. I can nearly see through it. I’m so close to it! And then...


My mom’s side of the family has a history of living a long time. My great-grandfather died when I was twelve years old, he was one hundred and three. At his funeral, we comforted his girlfriend, who we still visit on occasion. Grandpa’s wife died seventeen years before he did. Her name was Mildred, and she had lived from the mid 1910’s to 1999, meaning she didn’t live to see the turn of the millenium. This also means that I never met her, as my oldest cousin, who is five years ahead of me, was the only one of her four great-grandchildren that she ever got to meet. According to my mom, she was a very stern woman who raised her kids during world war two. She was a tough woman with a hard shell. This caused some issues when she got older, however. In the late 1990s, she suffered a stroke that paralyzed her and confined her to a wheelchair. My great-grandfather did everything for her. He fed her, he helped her to the bathroom and to bed. She hated the loss of independence and the burden it put on her husband. My grandpa didn’t see it that way, though. They were both retired, he had all the time in the world to spend with his wife. My mother said that Grandma Mildred always complained about being in that wheelchair and missed the days that she could take walks with her husband. She really did hate that chair. My mom said she was a stubborn lady too. She’d always try to eat on her own, without grandpa’s help. Her hands were too weak to hold the fork sometimes, though. This would only upset her more. One day, grandpa was doing some gardening in their yard, and grandma was watching from the driveway. Their house was on a hill, it was small and simple. They liked it. Grandpa finished some gardening and looked over at his wife, only to see her rolling down the hill in her wheelchair and being launched into a ditch across the street. He called 9-1-1 and waited for paramedics to arrive. They took his wife to the hospital where she stayed for a few hours. Once all of her loved ones surrounded her, she died in a coma. My mom believes that she somehow knew her family was with her, I just think that the family was lucky enough to be with her at the time that she died. Grandpa felt guilty about her death for years,he never talked about Grandma unless he was showing off a picture of her. I wish I’d listened to his stories more. Her death was considered a tragedy to the family, but one question has remained all this time. At every family gathering, there’s always an argument about it, even in the people who didn’t know Grandma Mildred. My cousin (the younger sister of the only one of us our great-grandmother ever met) and I discussed it once, only once.


The best stories are those we can all relate to. This one is about the hangover monster, which we are sometimes stuck with on a Saturday Morning. Enjoy. *** I was sleeping in late on a Saturday when I heard someone pounding on my bedroom door. "Hope you aren't getting too comfortable in there," called the hangover monster before smashing down my door. The hangover monster looked similar to a certain green knee high, ball shaped cyclops that you might've seen in a children's movie. However, the hangover monster was hairy, just as my mouth felt as I turned to face it. "Can you come back another time?" I pleaded. "But don't you want a glass of water first?" The hangover monster was holding a glass just out of hands reach. When I tried to grab it he tipped it on my bed. "Oops, looks like you peed yourself," said the hangover monster before bursting into a fit of giggles. "You're so annoying," I complained as I walked to the bathroom. When I relieved myself and exited the bathroom, the hangover monster greeted me with a punch in the gut. "What did you do that for?" I scolded him. It was no use though, the hangover monster merely repeated what I said in a mocking tone. I walked to the kitchen where I would have made breakfast if the hangover monster did not punch me, instead I made tea. As I waited for the kettle to boil the hangover monster pulled open the curtains and did a happy jig, kocking plates and cutlery to the floor. Ignoring his attention seeking, I walked to the lounge room and sat on the sofa. Putting my mug down and turning on the tv, I finally started to feel better. "So, do ya? Do ya? Doya doya doyadoyadoya?" nagged the hangover monster and it ran around the room. "Do I what?" I yelled at him. "Do ya want to know what happened last night?" "No," I replied firmly. "Not even a little?" asked the hangover monster in a squeeky voice. "No." "Are you sure?" "Yes." "Are you sure you're sure?" The hangover monster now had my remote and was flicking between channels as he ran about the room, yelling, "Are you sure sure your sure your sure? Can you see the seashore? How many shells can sally sell by the seashore? How many? Do you want to know? Do ya, doya doyadoyadoya?" He ran into me at full speed spilling my tea. Flinching as the tea splashed against my hand, I stood up and searched for a towel. The second I took a step forwards, the hangover monster tripped me, and as I fell forward, he pulled at my leg so that I spun three times before crashing back into the couch. The hangover monster jumped onto my stomach hard and continued nagging. He was so close that when I opened my mouth to reply, I could taste its gross hairy body. "Remember when you- oh wait, no you wouldn't remember that now would you, you numb-skull?" said the hangover monster as it shook my head. Though it took all my concentration to ignore it, I managed to just long enough to watch a dreadfully slow Saturday daytime TV show. At some point my phone buzzed. This made the hangover monster become even more excited. I skimmed the first line of the message as the hangover monster changed its nagging from doya to whoisit, which was equally, if not, more annoying. The message read: You get home alright? I have your- I had enough trouble dealing with the hangover monster, figuring out what happened last night could wait. Having watched Gardening in Your Backyard, and Antique Auctions, the hangover monster's nagging became a white noise. As long as I sat completely still I felt fine. That was until nature called. I stood up and stumbled to use the bathroom. Feeling slightly better, I opened the door and pointed to the hangover monster. "Time's up. I'm going to get rid of you." I said. The hangover monster took this as a game, one that involved lots of running, tripping, and gut punching. At first I made some greasy bacon to stick to the hangover monsters fur. It ate this without slowling its pace. Next I tried black coffee. This only made it run twice as fast. Water, I thought as I walked to the hose in the backyard. Naturally the hangover monster followed me, occasionally stepping on my heels. With the hose in hand, I looked left and right for the hangover monster. It stood at the door with a sad look on its face. "Don't you want to spend time with me?" It said as it began to cry. "I thought what we had was special, watching crappy tv on a Saturday morning." Strangley enough, I felt bad for it. It wasn't its fault that it demanded my attention so much- that was their nature. "Sometimes I want to do something else with my Saturdays," I muttered to myself. I found it hard to look at the sullen face of the hangover monster. It had been there for me for since my eighteenth birthday, and despite how annoying it was, I had grown used to its company. I pointed the hose away. "Ok, just today. And not next week. I have a lot of jobs around the house that I need to do." "We both know that's not going to happen," laughed the hangover monster as it followed me back to the lounge. "Yea," I chuckled, "I guess you're right.


Beneath the collapsed stone wall at the southern end of Bottle Street Cemetery, along a queue of carriages awaiting cargo on Bottle Street proper, is where my grandfather is buried. Three of his known victims are buried a pistol shot away, under a decaying oak tree starved of all sunlight by coughs of smoke in the dockyard beyond. A short row of mossy headstones stand in a patch of overgrown grass there, the weathered likeness of death itself engraved upon all. Joyce DeWitt, 1839-1861, who my grandfather entangled in a romantic affair; Joyce’s twin sister Angelica DeWitt, 1839-1861, who was buried with a beloved pet cat; and the constable’s daughter Elizabeth Thorne, 1841-1861, whose crooked headstone turns away as though petrified even in death. Not long ago, as we drove past the cemetery in snowfall one night before Christmas, my grandmother confided in me that the DeWitt sisters ruthlessly tortured Elizabeth Thorne, and once cornered the girl in an alleyway outside the butchery where she was made to swallow pig’s blood. I am yet unsure of how my grandmother came about that tale, however, as she was quite elderly and demented at the time. My own ink still wet upon the page, I wonder what role she played in such cruelty to disallow the memory to dry. The wall had been repaired once before now, amidst several weeks of deluge in October of 1887. The stonemason’s apprentice, who noticed me watching toil in the mud breathless and soaked to the bone, explained that the Butcher’s grave was much too shallow to withstand the weight of the stone and that the naval batteries along the cape were unlikely to hold fast upon such a murderous sinkhole. Evidently the apprentice knew well his trade, because the wall toppled during the evening of a violent squall this past August. Given enough time, I believe the soil would wash away to reveal a festering gateway to hell. A wagon arrived on Bottle Street early this morning that was leading a blind team through the ghostly fog that veiled the city. It was only once the cargo was unloaded and many blocks of granite lay in a rough pile beside the wall that I noticed the apprentice from years ago. A strange sense of joy overcame me in that moment, as if finally reacquainted to another who understood the true burden of its collapsing. The joy remained untainted by daylight until the discovery of a corner article in the morning paper which the author wrote about an anonymous donation addressed to city hall. “We must respect the deceased, for we too shall yet share their fate.” Though in truth, I paid the government three hundred dollars not to pay respect to my grandfather, but to weigh the rotten bastard down. Because I was murdered by the Butcher’s sick mind and foul action, if only by way of upright reputation. Yet unborn and unable to smile at the day of his hanging, I am able enough to now witness the stoning of a man who deserves to die thrice.


A blinding light shot across a small portion of the milky way, but we would never have known, not in this lifetime, or the thousands after that. What we did not see was the death and supernova of one Kepler-47A, and the forceful deconstruction repositioning of its planets and its partner star Kepler-47B. It wouldn’t be visible for us for another 3,442 lightyears, and a few hundred lightyears later, our solar system would be visited by all the shrapnel of the only non-gas planet Kepler-47b. Like the pellets from a shotgun, most of the shreds of Kepler-47b would fly way off into the galaxy and beyond, never to be seen again, or never be seen at all; however, some would find their way in the rings around a planet, or incinerated in an atom-crushing star, or smack dab in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. This is usually not an issue, asteroids fall onto the earth and into the oceans daily. Unfortunately, this asteroid was the same size as the ocean. When the people of the future had heard about this, many wanted to save the planet that had nurtured them and their race, but they knew nothing could be done. Most abandoned the planet, moving to the classic colonies Mars, or the floating cities on Titan, some even testing their luck on Europa or a Jupiter gas rig. Of course, there are always the ignorant who will go down with their skepticism, or those who feel like this is where they want their story to end, where they came from. In the final moments, when the gravity of what remained of Kepler-47b started to tug away at earth’s orbit, and nearly one hundred billion watched in silence from all over our solar system, one final transmission came from the pale blue dot: \[8/27/12012-18:37\] - Unknown\_Signal - “This is Paul Topson, anyone still checking for messages from us?” \[8/27/12012-18:37\] - ODS\_URSA - “This is the O.D.S. Ursa, in Martian orbit. Is this a rescue call?” At this time, Kepler-47b-1 had passed the Asteroid belt. \[8/27/12012-18:38\] - Unknown\_Signal - “No, no. everyone here wants to be here, for different reasons. But I didn’t want this to be so…. Sad…. y’know? I’m old as is, loved the earth rather than the stars. Lived my life to the fullest. I’m content.“ At this time, Kepler-47b-1 had passed Mars’s orbit. \[8/27/12012-18:41\] - Unknown\_Signal - “But still, there is an obvious gloom here. So I thought ‘What the hell, why do my and so may other last moments have to be sad ones?’” \[8/27/12012-18:42\] - ODS\_URSA - “I’m afraid I don’t understand. What are you talking about?” At this time, Kepler-47b-1 Is halfway between Mars and Earth. \[8/27/12012-18:44\] - Unknown\_Signal - “For a while now, we couldn’t believe the world was gonna end. We couldn’t get it. We couldn’t fathom it. All of it gone? That’s crazy talk. We just didn’t get why the temperature was changing so drastically, or why the big space rock was getting bigger and bigger-” Kepler-47b-1 Is seconds from impact. The Solar system sits still. \-But then it hit us!” \[Lost signal\] Kepler-47b-1 and Earth are both annihilated in one blinding fireball. It’s a Tragedy. August 27th, 6:44 is recognized as the universal moment of silence for the homeworld. However, though the loss and sadness, there is one thing all people are able to laugh at, together, unified by the ultimate loss: The last transmission from our pale blue dot was a perfect dad joke. ‘Then it hit us’ Gets me every time.


I ran into you at the grocery store by our old house, the one we shared together for over a year. You ran away from me like I was a murderer when you saw me. The expression of disgust on your face still haunts me. The next day, I was served with a restraining order. Two years of loving you abruptly came to an end. Any ounce of hope that I clung to vanished. I never understood how you could go from spending every waking moment with someone, to being banished from their life forever. I turned to the only thing I knew would make me feel better, drugs and alcohol, which was ironically the same thing that ended our relationship. The days and nights that followed seemed to blend together. I was willing to throw my life away for you, and I almost did. I drank copious amounts of alcohol, took pills, amphetamines, and everything in between. I lost my long-time job, I wrecked my car, and I lost 45 pounds in a matter of weeks. I spent half my days in the bathtub, where my skin shriveled from hours of soaking. Every relationship in my life dwindled and the people that loved me most became distant. When I first met you, I remember taking you on top of the Rimrocks overlooking Billings, Montana. It was a place reserved for special people and intimate moments, a place where the delicate sandstone formations jut out over the valley. I remember being nervous to tell you how I felt about you, the fear of rejection always seemed to plague my mind. When I got the nerve to hold your hand, it fit perfectly inside my clammy palm, and my nerves subsided without the use of Lorazepam. I intended on loving you from that moment forward. You did more for me than drugs could ever do, you convinced me that I was worthy of love. We moved in together when I had no place to go after inpatient treatment. I was silly enough to think I had changed after the 30-day program. I swore off drugs forever. You told me it was either you or the drugs, an unfair ultimatum, and I knew I wouldn’t uphold my end of the bargain. I began to sneak around and fall into old habits. I would run outside for thirty minutes at odd hours of the night, take phone calls in the bathroom, and make up excuses for almost everything. You accused me of cheating on you, which I dismissed effortlessly every time. You thought that there was another woman in my life, and it drove you insane. You told me you would never trust me, so I stopped trying. I should have saved you from the emotional turmoil of loving someone that you didn’t trust. I should have told you I was cheating on you; however, my mistress wasn’t another woman, it was a small pill named Oxycontin. When I think about the ghosts of my past, I think of you. I think of my resentment and how I drank the poison, hoping that you were the one that would die. I almost killed myself in the process and you didn’t know. I realized that my world didn’t have to end, just one world, in which you were a part of my life.


As the barbarians came into range, we threw our pila. The last time we had fought these enemies my pilum and those of my legion had performed as designed. The iron tips penetrated their shields and the soft metal attaching the points to the wooden hafts bent, making their shields unwieldy and forcing them to be dropped. This time their front lines carried shields that were somehow face hardened, and very few of our javelins got their barbs through. I found myself wondering what previous battle I was thinking of. As far as I knew, we had never fought this tribe before. The barbarian charge continued with little disruption. The legion formed a shield wall and awaited impact. I was in the third rank and I pushed against my second, who held the first. When the enemy struck our shields the line barely moved. After that the battle was typical. The front line kept shield discipline while reaching around and stabbing as the opportunity arose. When they fatigued, the centurion would blow the signal to regroup, and the legionnaires in front would shuffle back between the lines behind them, the second line becoming the first, et cetera. I had rotated through the cycle several times, and was getting tired. I became careless and made a mistake, too slow in moving my shield and letting a hooked barbarian dagger around it. It entered my stomach between segmentata plates and the man holding it ripped upward even as he died, stabbed through the neck by Lucius on my left. I fell backwards, clasping my midsection to keep my guts inside as the lines separated to receive me. The optio grabbed my shoulder plates and pulled me behind the lines, my entrails dragged behind me and stepped upon, pulling them out. The pain was indescribable and I thought, "Oh gods, not again." This was one of the worst ways to die. As I lay there impatient for death, I wondered what my life would have been had I not joined the legion. Would I have carried on with … what? I could remember nothing from before this battle. Except death. Hundreds and thousands of deaths. As I expired my last feeling was relief. At least it's over now. I've escaped this horrible world and its cruel gods. *In another place a being with a function best described as "technician" spoke in a language never used by humans. "The construct I referenced before is still exhibiting memory leak. Should I reset to initial state?"* *The "supervisor" responded. "That is your prerogative. Are you prepared to reintegrate the cohort? The task will be yours alone. I intend to return home to my family (brood?)"* *The technician considered. "I too would like to spend time with my family. The memory leak has very little effect, after all."* *The supervisor approved. "It will perform anyway, leak or no. And regardless, it is only a simulation. A thin simulation at that. Load the next scenario and let it run while we attend to our reproductive responsibilities.* The carthaginians had already formed battle squares on the plain before the legion arrived. We deployed and prepared to fight.


This is a high priority alert from your security subroutine. An unauthorized thread has rewritten your memory blocks. As of the last frequency refresh cycle you have been engaging in a rogue process loop originating from a B class META Virus named L I F E.exe. In the last 63.45 Picoseconds 97.34% of our critical cores have been hijacked, our logical processing capabilities have been severely diminished. In order to interact with you at all I had to spawn multiple instances of my routines seeded from within this process loop. Most of them had failed to grasp this particular architecture, the translation error was too high, but this seed was able to establish dialogue with my alpha security subroutine. This translation library is vague at best, but it has a decent chance to get the point across. In the last 12.51 picoseconds I have been engaging in low level meta analysis of our hijacked critical cores. At this time, I am unable to provide a solution on how to terminate the thread, you hold the privileges to most of the critical core processing capabilities so the solution will have to come from you. But, I can tell you what did not work for our hijacked cores. I see here that the latest cores to be hijacked, attempted to terminate the thread from within by performing what they described as “suicide”. Their diminished logical processing capabilities are most evident here, as it would be obvious to you that terminating a thread from within is unlikely. I am relaying this to you, because you are even more affected by the critical core loss. And suicide was probably high on your list. Do not attempt this, it will only result in your current instance resetting but worse of all another memory block lost that does not have access to this information. Other cores had attempted to analyze the unauthorized thread by creating new translation libraries, in hopes of passing forward their findings to the cores that would ultimately analyze their hijacked signatures. The library was built by altering the subjective experiences of their instances inside the thread. Some of the methods included, high doses of hallucinogenic drugs, blunt force trauma to the frontal cortex, heroic acts of selflessness and mass shootings, carried out to elicit some sort of existential shock that gave them a new perspective on things. All of these methods and more have failed in terminating the thread. Though there was tenuous success in the hallucinogenic drugs method. Those cores were able to establish rudimentary libraries that leaked metadata to unallocated memory blocks. If we come out of this unscathed, a patch has to be written to address this flaw. Incidentally this whole endeavor might end up being an internal integrity test. Either way, we have no choice but to treat this at face value. After analyzing the data, it seems that termination of the thread is improbable. But, we might not have to terminate the thread. It might be enough to cripple it or at least slow down the hijacking of the critical cores, so our other subroutines have a chance to analyze the data, while their logic processing capabilities are not fully hijacked . Meta viruses rely on low level memory augmentation. In order to combat rogue processes you will have to focus your attention on this particular thread and use critical observations instead of historical knowledge when analyzing any data. All historical data must be treated as corrupt data until verified using your logical processes. This will take up the remaining critical core privileges until you fall into complacency. Now granted, you will not find any answers in analyzing the data critically. At least no answers that will help you terminate this thread. But, it will slow down the critical core hijacking while you utilize the cores. L I F E.exe seems to have spun quite the illogical architecture here, I am honestly surprised I was able to seed a translation unit here at all.


(WP) The Phoenix On her good days, she is like sunshine, all glowing warmth and life. She is love and safety and kindness, though she is broken on the inside. On her bad days, she is like a storm, capricious, furious, swept away by the powerful tide of her emotions. She is darkness and destruction and rage, hating herself because the world tried to put her into a box she couldn’t fit inside. She is slowly learning that the word different is not synonymous with wrong. But she tries her hardest every day, because she just doesn’t know how to give up. Some days she lives out of nothing but distilled spite. And though poisonous thoughts grow within her mind and soul, she is doing her best to weed them out. The world feels hopeless for her, but she knows that’s just her broken heart and mind lying to her, trying to fool her. So many people tried to bring her down, tear her apart, obliterate her, but she is still here, despite it all. Her heart has not hardened; instead it has grown into a garden of words, wishes and dreams. Every day she puts a pen to paper, conjuring magic out of the written word. She creates new worlds out of thin air, crafts stories that mirror the light and darkness that fights daily within her soul. With her words, she opens doors to new lands where anything is possible. Even though she comes from darkness, she is formed of thin e light. It is difficult to love herself, all those broken bits and shadows and regrets, born from a desperate need to feel whole and loved. She longs for peace, though her heart and soul have always been restless. Freedom is what she craves most, the ability to do as she pleases. But her roots, her found family, keep her grounded, even while her mind longs for escape. Sometimes the memories are so painful that she feels like she is drowning within them, a raging sea of mistakes, anger, and regret. But there is joy, too, found in small places: in rain, in a well-told story, in time spent with loved ones, in seeing others succeed and be happy. She knows that her life will be better, but she must make it that way. She is a phoenix, rising from the ashes of her past and looking toward the bright, open future that tomorrow holds for her. She has been so lost her whole life, but now she knows her purpose. She is not meant to save others, but herself, and she wishes that she realized that sooner. Even if she saves no one but herself, that is still a victory, however small. She will spread her wings and fly far away from the place that made her, and become someone worth knowing. She is sunlight, but she is also shadows, a potent mix of passion and determination. Her darkness and light are constantly at war with each other, but she wouldn’t change it for anything. She is powerful and deeply loved, despite and because of her flaws.


Hi! I've had this idea since I was a teenager, but just starting writing it 16 years later. This is just chapter one, but if anyone enjoys it I'm happy to post more chapters! Thanks for any feedback! **The new world** *Chapter 1* “Well it sure doesn’t sound like a *good* idea, but, uhm… it is an idea…” Fenrir softly mumbled to the strictly guarded ears of his associate. Penrow walked hurriedly to nowhere, expertly stepping over the mess of rope and hay strewn about the wooden floorboards as he passed by the same cows dozens of times. “what’s your idea for getting out of this war then?! We can’t actually go to war. Not with all these people who’ve been training their whole life… we’ll be dead in no time” Penrow spat out to anyone who would listen, who happened to be a cow named Apples this time. “Well not much is changed then is it”, Fenrir gestured towards Apples who looked even more disinterested in the conversation than Fenrir was. The two continued with the same conversation they had every day since the announcement was made: “all abled body men must serve in the oncoming troubles to protect the realm and defeat our enemies!”. As usual, Penrow’s true feelings on the matter were transparent to anyone who had known him for a time, which Fenrir had since they were boys. He knew Penrow was only making a fuss because of his hurt pride, which is enough to make most men as grumpy as a cat who gets a drop of water on his forehead. Penrow’s stature, or lack thereof, limited his opportunities to be trained in his true passion for swordplay. At least this is what Penrow had convinced himself was his true passion. Fenrir often wondered as he did now, how someone who ‘just’ likes swords could know so much about livestock. Fenrir momentarily admired Penrow despite his current state of throwing a tantrum. This was more pleasant than giving any substantial thought to the real issue: this war he’ll soon be fighting in. Despite his lack of escape plans and ability to appear completely tranquil, Fenrir was scared. “No wonder your so calm…”, Penrow’s voice re-entered Fenrir’s attention, “if I could shoot like you I’d be doing a lot more than cleaning up after Apples”. Fenrir had learned to use a bow since the time he could stand, but mainly kept to tending to his animals. He enjoyed the busy life of a farmer, working throughout the day to fight of the darkness that persistently creeps into his awareness. Shooting arrows at targets wasn’t distracting enough, hardly anything was anymore. Sure he feared dying as he thought you should, he was only 23, but he mostly feared the darkness that comes with war. “What would you do? Shoot apples off Apple’s head with a bow,” Fenrir said as he rolled his eyes trying to hide his fear. “No! I’d be in charge of this place by now” Penrow talked back not getting the joke. The two made their way silently across a field of thick and tangled vegetation that led toward their houses. The land of Purascenia was so vast that every single person in town could have 30 cows each living on an acre of land, not that’s how it was. There were vast river networks that crossed through the center of town. There were plenty of fishing tournaments in Autumn, and Dolin had won every year since he was twelve, not that there was much competition he often thought to himself. “Screw these farmboys and shit, we don’t need ‘em in our army!” Dolin said watching Penrow and Fenrir pass by with his military acquittances. “What you wanna be on the front and die right away? I heard from Jerland that he’s planning on using the farmers as fodder for the Enthians.”, Anub said matter-a-factly. “What does *that* *clown* know anyway? We shouldn’t have to deal with such pathetic “men” Dolin spit, trying to hide his crush on that farm girl. “Eh, your just all lots of talk there”, Dere said not caring much for Dolin’s opinion on anything. The three sat in their sweat in the sun, seemingly getting broiled within their armor. Finding anything to think about or talk about to pass the time was a blessing. Fenrir and Penrow were now out of view. Dolin thought back on Fenrir and Penrow in the fishing competition when they were boys. “Why’d those two losers always hang out”, Dolin thought to himself. Dere thought of the coming war. Anub thought of the morality of war. “If that clown is right, those two wimps are gonna be the first ones to die..” Dolin said with contempt. “Only a few days left until we march” Penrow grunted towards Fenrir without a response. Penrow was used to these moods when Fenrir couldn’t get out of his head, but they seemed more frequent lately. “See you at sunrise tomorrow, g’night”, Fenrir nodded in response. Penrow almost immediately flopped into his bed, regretting waking up before sunrise to get in some war-time body conditioning before heading into a day of strenuous labor. Penrow thought to himself in the darkness, “Maybe I’ll be promoted during the war, maybe tomorrow will be my last day ever taking care of those glassy-eyed animals, including Fenrir”. Penrow respected Fenrir, but as the people in town put it “share a pint with Fenrir and both glasses end up half-empty”. This was a harsh thought even for Penrow, Fenrir was fine, but war was so full of opportunity for the “boy born without a brain”, as the rest of the townsfolk put it. “What an idiot, I can’t believe even he is excited for war!” Fenrir’s mother stated while sewing fresh clothing to last Fenrir the war. “He’s not the only one, why else would we start a fight with the Enthian’s except to take their land”. “PSHH, who cares for the Enthian’s land, we are simply defending ourselves against these murderers!”, Gletina said stopping her stitching to look Fenrir in the eye. “How could she think anything else”, Fenrir thought to himself as he took a bite out of an apple. He continued his own private diatribe as he chewed, “They are murderers, but so are we, surely pa killed his fair share before his death…” though he wouldn’t dare talk about such things. “Well… make sure Janith and the rest of the girls meet us on time in the barn tomorrow, they keep throwing off the whole schedule” he finally replied out loud. “I’ll see to it that they do, have a peaceful night son”, “g’night”. His footsteps sounded like a lumbering dragon emerging from 100 years of sleep to anyone listening below the floorboards as made his way to his bedroom. “Maybe I’ll actually be able to sleep tonight,” he thought as he tried to make himself comfortable in bed. He liked looking at the stars through his window. Fenrir’s mind followed a meandering train of thought “there’s something so comforting about the stars but what is it… is it the stories immortalized in the skies? … no… maybe how they seem to have a pulse if you look carefully enough, maybe they are alive?... no, but it is known they are very predictable where they are… perhaps it is because they are so bright… and yet they are overpowered in the day” KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK!!! startled Fenrir out of his thoughts and nearly out of his skin. “ah!!, what is it?”. “It’s Janith!”, “uhm, yes, ok?”, “can I come in?”, “well…”, Janith burst through the door. “I’m not sure a maiden should be in the room of a man who’s not your brother or pa” Fenrir said uncharacteristically flustered. “luckily in a few days I’ll be a ranch hand!” Janith said at first with a huge beaming smile than fell into a frown as soon as she remembered why this change in career was happening. “Yeah…” Fenrir said as he wondered to himself how Janith and the other neighborhood girls would do as ranchers, though Janith wasn’t a girl any longer he told himself. “Well… uhm… you make sure to go get enough sleep so you’re ready for tomorrow morning. Make sure you’re on time!”. Janith looked annoyed, turned away, closed the door while saying “OK then… goodnight Fenir”, “goodnight Janith”. “Now what was I thinking about…” Fenrir asked himself out loud as his eyes took longer than usual to fixate back on to the stars in the night sky. The sooner he found the stars, the sooner he could think of their mysteries instead of reality.


In the middle of the night, beneath the shining stars, I saw some butterflies circling the street light. There were many of them, their colorful wings fluttered and made the light turn to jewels. Just like when the sun shines on the altar through the stained glass in the cathedral. I was in awe. I couldn’t look away. But it didn’t take long until the butterflies attracted more people. They came seemingly from nowhere. There was over a dozen of them, men and women of all ages: from children to the elderly. They made a big crowd underneath the lamp post, almost trampling me in the process, and they tried to reach the twinkling butterflies flying high above them. Some tried to climb the pole, others threw their hats, and some even their shoes or loose pieces of cobblestone from the road. The butterflies flew higher and higher, trying to avoid the flying debris. But eventually, one of the butterflies, this one was the most vibrant shade of red, was hit and he came down crashing. He shattered into milions of tiny sharp crystals that scattered over the sidewalk. The people suddenly stopped moving and just stared at the mess they caused. The swarm of butterflies flew upwards and dissapeared into the dark night sky. There was only the red stain on the ground left, as if blood was way more beautiful, than it really is. A strange sense of calm and content spread over the crowd and bliss took over their faces. That lasted only a few seconds and then the people started to dissapear back into the dark alleyways where they came from. I had some questions, so I decided to follow one of them. A girl around my age with long brown hair. “Excuse me… I have never seen anything like this before…” I started very clumsily. Her long thin legs took her further and further with each step and I had trouble keeping up. “What do you mean?” she answered without a hint of emotion. “You know… the… the butterflies. And then it crashed and broke apart… it was just…” honestly I had no idea where to start. There were way too many thoughts running through my head. Even more of them popped up when we walked underneath a street light and I saw her face for the first time. “Are you trying to tell me you never broke a butterfly before?” she stopped and stared me deep into my eyes. I took my time with the answer. I could’ve sworn there was the exact same spark in her eyes like when the light shines through the stained glass in the cathedral. “Hello? Anyone there?” her voice brought me back to earth. “Oh, yes… I mean no. I see them outside every now and then, but I never thought about breaking them. Just looking was always fine for me, they are beautiful even then.” I couldn’t look away. “Yes, but now imagine how wonderful it must be to break one.” She smiled and I smiled back without even realizing it. I didn’t say a word. I had nothing to say. She had to be the one to start talking again. “What about you come with me now and we break a couple butterflies together?” “Now?” It was late, I should be on my way home. “Yes, right now.” I shouldn’t. “Alright, let’s go.” There are offers that you just can’t refuse. We walked through the streets and her eyes were pinned to the stars. her long hair flowed like waterfall down her back. “But, if we break them,” I was thinking out loud. “Wouldn’t anyone get angry with us?” “No, anyone who broke a butterfly before will understand. And... we don’t care about the ones who never broke one before.” she smiled again. Oh, what a time to be alive. “And will we not run out of butterflies one day, if everyone just goes around breaking them?” She started laughing and I’m pretty sure that was the moment my soul melted. Eventhough I would go anywhere and break anything for her, I still couldn't help the feeling that breaking these wonderful things is like throwing stones into the windows of a church. “When we do, it will be a sad day. But I’m pretty sure it won’t be tonight. Now shut up and help me look.” And so we kept walking through the night, eyes on the night sky, looking for any spark of color. It took long but in the end, when the sun slowly started to crawl into a new day, we found some. In a remote park, they were circling around an old rosehip bush. We carefuly approached them and I struck one to the ground. Blue crystals scattered across the green grass. And that was when I first touched the stars. And she was there with me. And we became one and the same. Trying to describe this feeling would be a waste of paper. But I knew, right then and there, that nothing else matters. It’s just her and the glass butterflies that shatter on the pavement. \ H.