The wall clock isn’t hanging on the wall. The wall clock rests on top of the audio speaker placed stage-right adjacent to the television. A series of negative taunts becomes my reality. I breathe and don’t expect anything. The tick and tock of the clock beats with an entrancing pulse. Rhythm adjusts the vibrations. The room itself hums in silent congruent resonance. The reverb of my breath shakes away a certain feeling and allows proper tuning. What was it that was getting at me? A sound! I turn around and see nothing but my own laughter. How easily startled! So becoming of faith and foolishness! The wall clock stares at the ceiling. Oh, yes. The rhythm hasn’t stopped. The AA battery will only last so long, but alas, what worry have I tonight? Verily, a man who checks his wristwatch with impulsive rapidity would do well to avoid positions of high authority, lest he enter la vie un Sheol in a paranoid, self-induced slavery. Truly I tell you, the man who measures his days is wise, but obsession with temporal materializations is the methodology of fools. The clock cannot be seen but still ticks in perfect time. Sure, you have to reach around the back and set the time manually. And what good is it to set the time manually if the battery is depleted? Will you set the time? Will you keep checking the time? Hark, the clock may run slow or fast! Do you consider this problematic? A lad late to the date makes a mate quite mad. Will you be tolerated? Can you even tolerate yourself? Are you able to tolerate the tick? Do you have the ability to handle the tock? There is a piece of melted dark chocolate sitting right on the clock face. The chocolate is still edible, but the devil himself cowers at the increased difficulty of removing melted chocolate from its foil wrapper. Oh, yes. The rhythm continues. Such sensation! A sinless sensation! What could compare? Distraction here, and distraction there, there’s distractions everywhere! A chirp! A knock! A candle that burned yesterday! A fresh candle seen earlier today at the market! The inexpensive vegetables! Father time, my grandfather clock, a tick from heaven, from earth a tock. The soft mellow strum of an A-432 classical guitar. And has it really been so long since we loved? Since our embrace? Has it really been any time at all? Silent in the moment I sit, dipped in honey, patiently and earnestly waiting for your touch.


My sister lives in B.C. (Canada) and is looking for a house. She decides to put an offer in for a home pretty much in the middle of nowhere and– half in jest–asks if the current owners had ever seen bears on the property, to which they reply they had not. *The next day* a bear manages to open a glass sliding door and get into the dining room while the current owner and her boyfriend are in the house. They begin making noise (like you're apparently suppose to) in hopes of scaring the young black bear away, but it isn't budging. The owner barricades herself in a bedroom while the boyfriend begins putting together a rifle that was in pieces throughout the house. Meanwhile the girl is on the phone trying to convince a 911 operator that this is a *real* emergency (give that a try sometime, haha). The boyfriend finally gets the gun together and puts the bear to rest right in the dining room. Next step is to repair the bullet hole he put in the wall. I guess it was later discovered that the bear had a pretty bad infection, which is why it was so bold and unaffected by the noise the two generated. TL;DR - a bear was shot in the dining room of the house my sister is going to be moving into *the day after* the owner had told them she'd never seen a bear on the property before.


Out in a dusty field stood one solitary man. Perfectly alone he pondered upon the complex series of events that had led him to that moment. “How quaint,” he smiled. “How quaint that after such chaos, I now stand alone in a dusty field.” All day he pondered. Utterly comfortable, his remarks on the field began to turn sour. “This field…” he mused, “this dusty field, ‘tis but grass and dust. How grand a curse from the gods that I now stand alone in a dusty field.” Day grew to night and still the man pondered. Now as he lay down in the soft, embracing grass, his face grew red. “For all that’s holy!” he yelled. “For all that’s holy I do so state in no uncertain terms my displeasure for the events that led to how I now stand alone in a dusty field!” The sun rose to light a new day and the man’s smile returned. He tipped his hat to the field and made his way out the gate and down the road. He never looked back. He was happy.


from Love & Chemicals: The Memoir I had an afternoon to kill. Burlington, VT, ‘Bello & Friends’ Summer Tour, 2000. The original ideal of running away had become a full-time profession, working the past month with no rest, until today. A warm July day-off in a Canadian border town, I got off the bus at the central pedestrian shopping district and fulfilled a promise that I had made to myself to eat breakfast before going to the bar. Smoked a few cigarettes to complement the blueberry pancakes and spotted a teenage couple dressed like the Jamaican Flag. I reacted without thinking when they passed me by, ‘Hi, I’m from the circus, you know where I can find a J?’ Like a call to the wild, my people responded instinctively. A passing cab took us out of the decorated New England city into a stale suburban district devoid of any character. ‘You can hook us up, too, right?’ Aaah, the innocence of youth… ‘I’ll give you most of mine, I just have an afternoon to kill…’ ‘No, no, we want some heroin.’ The bright-eyed idealist traveler inside of me dimmed a little that day, and still has not returned. The taxi stopped and I was rushed out of the backseat as they started to beat their fists against an unassuming door. I felt a little safer when I noticed a Dodge caravan in the driveway, but then came a sound that I had heard before, and, unfortunately, have heard again thereafter, the metallic clacking of a weapon being loaded. ‘I told you kids to get the hell out of here!!!’ I took them by their dreads and hustled back to the waiting car. The driver didn’t need any instructions to floor it, I’m sure the looks in our eyes were obvious enough. Back to original street corner, no one spoke a word. They followed me to a local deli, and I bought them sandwiches to satisfy my conscience. I ran away from them down a side street and hid in a sports tavern, but couldn’t even finish a beer, before taking one last taxi back to the lot. I’d had enough reality for that day. I hope that I wouldn’t have bought them their drugs, if the situation had transpired as they had planned, but if I analyze my actions, I never resisted being pulled along. I sat in my trailer with a bottle I had stashed away and debated if I was really the man that I had always dreamed of becoming. After a few more drinks, it didn’t matter anymore, and I still don’t know if I’ve answered it. In my best moments, I can say, I hope so.


Hi, I wrote this some months ago and have decided to share it with the world after only having shared it with a couple of friends. As a warning, this story is a descriptive account about a child that is eaten by a dog, there is no happy ending. It is designed to be disgusting and very bleak, I say this so you can turn back if this isn't the kind of thing you'd want to read. **Feral** **1** After spending the night and morning trying to sleep through the discomfort, the kid finally decided that he had reached his limit. He quietly and hopelessly rose from his dilapidated mattress, there was residual sunlight breaking through the thin curtain, illuminating the patchy, black-cornered walls of the bedroom a dark golden brown. He tip-toed through the memorized minefield of creaking panelled wood across his room to the door, along the way stepping past torn, discarded clothes and locks of hair which had been forcibly shaved from his head. Upon the door he slowly placed the side of his head, the worn paint felt cold against his ear from the damp humidity of the room. He listened closely for any indication of life beyond the door, footsteps, banging, incoherent chatter, anything. He strained to make out any sounds over his own heartbeat and the biological rumbling that conjured visuals of distant collapsing buildings in his mind. Nothing. Not certain, he never trusted himself to be certain. He carefully opened his door to the bare minimum that would allow him passage through and fought against his instincts as his slipped through the doorway. He stood at the entrance to his room, surveying the next challenge and trying to pre-calculate his movements. His breath became heavy with the anticipation of what he was about to undertake. He cautiously avoided the random and strewn paraphernalia that littered the corridor, deftly aware of where his next step would be in order to avoid accidentally brushing his leg against a plastic bag or catapulting a discarded spoon with his heel. He had long since become apathetic to the squalor around him, taking for granted and unconsciously accepting it as normal, that it was just their way of life. He used the wall, which was sticky with a mixture of thrown beer, residue from cigarette smoke and filth, to maintain his balance as he proceeded discreetly down the hallway. It seemed like every abstract splattered beer stain had its own story to tell. Result of and witness to the countless arguments which have resounded throughout the walls. He pleaded to invisible nothings not to be found, his brain recycling the same word over and over again. “Please.” His senses were on high alert and a small dose of adrenaline was flowing through him. He was trying to keep his breathing steady but his body persistently demanded more oxygen than his lungs had the capacity for. Panic set over him like fog as he obsessively replayed the scenario of being caught. It enveloped and subdued his confidence and inspired terror in him which ordered his entire body to turn around and hide back in his room. However, realizing how far he had gone already he decided that it would be best to just continue. He took his final step and he felt swept away by relief, allowing himself to relax from the intense concentration required of him from the last several minutes. He stood at the opened bathroom door and stepped onto the cracked tile flooring, its pristine white having long since faded, he no longer had to fear triggering a fate-sealing sound. Limping inside, he silently closed over the door behind him, resting it on the broken latch which prevented the door from closing at all. The pungent smell of stale piss and shit which would likely make a person unaccustomed to the smell gag had become tolerable to him. He stood at the stained toilet, taking extreme care to avoid causing himself pain as his slid his pyjama bottoms and underwear down toward his knees. Wincing as he bent down, he bit his lip in anticipation and tensed completely to deal with the pain as he sat himself onto the yellowed, porcelain rim of the toilet and let out a choked yet controlled sigh. He figured it was best to take the pain as quickly as possible rather than drag it out so he tensed his abdomen and pushed, whimpering through the stinging sensation. The loud splashing rekindled the now smouldering cinders of terror, he was immediately furious with himself for having overlooked that the splashing would make noise. It sounded as he had expected it to but was wishing to himself that it hadn’t. He registered it as much more fluid sounding than normal, like filling a glass to the rim. He looked between his legs to find a small pool of cloudy red water and the rest of the bowl speckled with his blood. He stared blankly at the mouldy wall as he processed through the shards of memories of the night before. His mind was a blurred collage of disjointed recollections of being breathless, of the large hand that gripped the back of his neck and forced his head into the mattress, of the warmth of the flesh that slammed rhythmically against his ass. While cycling through these thoughts he absent-mindedly rubbed the sensitive, red-blotched depressions in the palms of his hands that his fingernails had left when he had clenched his fists in reaction to the pain. He eventually exhausted himself and his mind drifted off. He felt the familiar feeling of claustrophobia surfacing inside him, crossed his arms over his knees and buried his head in his lap. **2.** It had been seen roaming the neighbourhood on rare occasions yet everyone who bore witness to it decided the easiest thing to do would be to let it pass through rather than interfere with it. The dog was large and dishevelled looking, with patchy fur and thin features. On this day it decided to search the neglected, overgrown garden of dead bushes and knee-high weeds of this house for anything edible and found the front door to be carelessly left open. It confidently entered the home, keeping its snout close to the floor, trying to sniff out anything of interest. It investigated almost every discarded possession in the hallway, rummaging through black trash bags which had been left for so long that there was a visible border on the floor which recorded where it had sat. The kid heard the garbage in the hallway being disturbed, focusing on the clang of beer cans as they were pushed against one another as the dog foraged. He froze completely still and could feel the pores of his skin adjusting in anticipation for the impending cold sweat. The dog decided to skulk further along the hallway and skip over the room where the kid’s father currently lay with muted breathing, lost and spinning somewhere between realities, his eyelids flickered the whites of his eyes like a defective television screen. Milky drool trailed from his gaped mouth which displayed his rotten teeth, across his gaunt, pale cheek to the tragus of his ear where the collection of saliva awaited departure. He was slumped halfway between the dirty couch and the carpet that was pock-marked with cigarette burns, his back resting on the seat while legs barely supported him from sliding to the floor. On the decayed coffee table which had been retrieved from a dump some years previous lay the father’s worn metal lockbox, open, with its contents removed and now partially consumed. After spending half a minute sitting in paralysed, agonising dread, the kid’s eyes desperately trained on the knob of the door, analysing it for any movement whatsoever. His mind was remarkably blank; his mental state was an echoing rejection of the situation, mixed with disbelief and the feeling of inevitability. The door budged tentatively with a push from the dog’s snout and its long head was revealed to the kid who was suddenly in a state of misunderstood confusion. The dog attentively twisted its head in the direction of the kid as he sat there with his short legs hovering over the floor. It perked its ears up, its black eyes met with his brown set just for a moment before it broke the stare as it swiftly moved into the bathroom, shoving the door wide open with its body. The dog spread its legs, lowered its fierce head and while baring its teeth and furrowing its brow released a guttural growl at the kid who was now in a state of defensive shock. As he was thoughtlessly raising his left arm as part of his natural reflexes the dog lunged toward him, grabbing and puncturing his forearm, the kid only felt extreme pressure in his arm at first before screaming out as the immense pain registered in his brain. The dog, sliding slightly from lack of grip, used its body weight to tug the kid from the toilet, he felt a stiff ache in his upper thighs as they quickly shifted position. Still with his underwear around his legs, he slumped awkwardly down onto his stomach on the tiled floor. The dog still grasped tightly onto his arm and violently shook its head, growling in exertion as it tried to separate the meat from his bones. The kid lay there helplessly with blood slightly splattered on his face, letting out tired, high-pitched childish screams and fully expecting his father to enter the room in response but his cries echoed unheard throughout the small bungalow. He attempted to use his free arm to push the dog’s head away, irrationally expecting that it would successfully stop the attack, but he was too exhausted from the previous night to put up any sort of useful defence. He watched through the film of tears as the dog tried to pull his arm from his body, peeling the skin away to reveal raw, soft pink meat. He passively noticed when the dog hinged its jaws open to get a better grip, that its teeth were stained red.


It was just before dawn when I woke to the alien invasion. It began with the thumpings on the roof. One followed by two, then three, then four, then just a dull roar of heavy objects hitting the roof. I ran to the window and looked out to find the sky filled with small kittens in parachutes plummeting to the Earth like cotton candy. "My time is now." I said to myself. I had known this was coming. It was in the lore of the world handed down throughout history and only the right person, with the right mind could read between the lines. Like the line in the bible about Jesus and that one dude and that other dude - it all spelled kitten invasion. If you think I'm joking, open a dictionary sometime and under the letter K, you will find kittens. Luckily, I was ready. I had been storing milk for years in my fridge. It all went bad, but that's not how I was ready. How I was ready was I had also stored guns and ammo. Lots of it. I ran to the closet where I kept my guns and ammo and opened the door to find more expired milk. I realized two things in that moment - why my house smelled and why there were so many guns and ammo in my fridge. Back to the fridge, I grabbed a gun and some ammo and loaded up what looked like a shotgun and ran to the door. The kittens were still floating to the ground, but many had landed and were helplessly clawing at their parachutes or tangling themselves up in them in some sort of attempt at comfort. It dawned on me that the kittens may not have any ill will towards humans and were simply just kittens that parachuted in great numbers on to the Earth on one given day in the entire history of kittendom. But that was too easy. I opened the door and opened fire. For five minutes I pulled the trigger again and again and not one kitten was harmed. I had either extremely bad aim, as their were thousands of them, or I was holding a chili dog in my hand. It turned out to be the latter. Once again, I had failed to study guns and ammo and what they were and realized a hot dog was not a gun and chili was no sort of ammo. I resigned myself to the notion that I would be of no use in the rebellion against the kittens and sat down and had a big bowl of ammo. The TV was reporting that there was no cause for alarm as the kittens posed no danger, but still there was no explanation as to why they had parachuted in great numbers to the Earth. I looked back out the window. Most of the kittens had removed their parachutes and lo and behold - they were now pulling revolvers out of their fur and moving towards the homes in my neighborhood. I quickly Googled revolver and realized that this time - yes! This time! I knew what I was talking about. They were revolvers. But before I could congratulate myself there was the sound of gunshots at my door. The kind of gunshots that don't come from chilidogs. No, these were real gunshots. I crouched behind my couch and noticed that the TV had gone to static. The first ploy of the kittens had worked - they had been trusted to not have revolvers hidden in their fur. "You won this round." I muttered to myself. Then the door broke down and a kitten standing on two feet with a kazoo in it's mouth entered the house. "Put down your weapons and surrender!" The kitten ordered. I threw the chilidog at him and yelled "I surrender!" There was silence. I rose from behind the couch and there on the ground was a dead kitten. The childog had bore straight through it's abdomen and killed it. 2. I surveyed the scene. Dead kitten? Check. Chili dog that had bored a hole through the kitten? Check. Somehow, the kittens had some vulnerability to chili dogs. I barely threw the sausage and yet it had burned through the kitten like a chili dog burning through....a....kit - you get it. I looked outside and found that the kittens in the immediate vicinity were again acting cute and pretending to be caught up in their parachutes, while mere yards away other kittens were thumping every last human with their revolvers. Yes, it was clear that the kittens at my front door had seen the carnage created by the chili dog and were playing cute. I ran to the fridge and grabbed more chili dogs. I had a box I kept full of them just in case. In case of what? Well, that's my business, buddy. I walked out of the house and began lobbing them at the kittens. Huge explosions roared from the Earth, as the chili dogs were now acting as incendiaries and lighting the landscape up in burning kitten meat. "Don't tread on me!" I yelled, lobbing chili dogs at each and every kitten I saw. But then, from over a hill, I turned to see nemesis: the kittens had an armored chili dog that they were driving towards me. I yelled "I am not vulnerable to chili dogs, you brutes!" The kitten at the helm, a general of sorts for he wore a beret with medals, smiled at me and meowed loudly. The front of the great armored chili dog exploded and a volley of kittens erupted out and at me. The kittens clawed at every fiber of my being and brought me down. I knew this was a death stroke. I had, like many men before me, put my faith in a deli food and found that it had not been quite what I expected. Well, twice. Because at first I didn't think chili dogs would kill kittens, and then later (see above) when I realized I could no longer huck chili dogs at kittens in the hope that they would die because there were like 30 kittens clawing me to the ground. This isn't to say that chili dogs are not useful - they are. They are a delicious source of protein...and OH YEAH, I know they are full of nitrates and fat people eat them, but every once in awhile I think it's...OK. Well, I did have a whole box of them and I understand what that implies but I woke from my slumber and found myself hanging from a tree, wrapped in yarn. The kittens had cocooned me and I was awaiting whatever terrible meal I would become. There was then meowing. Followed by more meowing. Then silence. Then there was a boatload of meowing. Like mass meowing. You know like millions of kittens. Point is - it was deafening. Because it was deafening, I was able to kind of block it out as white noise and I grabbed my phone and looked at some sport scores. Then I felt myself being lowered to the ground. I made an attempt at escaping, but the yarn was too tightly wound and I was only able to flop around on the ground. I could see through the yarn and the General kitten was approaching. "Meow. Meow. Meow-meow." "I don't..." "MEOW. MEOW. MEOW-MEOW!" "I don't speak kitten. I'm a simple man. I don't understand what you want of me. I have a Safeway club card and feel uncomfortable peeing in public!" "MEOW!" There was some shuffling, and then a smaller kitten in a lesser suit (it wasn't really a suit, it was like some kitty parachute pants and a tie ridiculously hung around it's neck) approached with a kazoo. The General took the kazoo and put it in it's mouth. "We demand antioxidants!" The General shouted through the kazoo. It seemed the kazoo acted as a translator. "I still don't understand." The General looked at the kazoo and then fiddled with it with his General kitty kitten paws. It was really cute. The General then put the kazoo back in it's mouth. "We want milk." "Ah, that makes sense. There's plenty of milk. There is no need to kill anyone. Our two races can live together in harmony." I said, with a tear running down my face and into the yarn. "Remove the yarn from his face! I cannot hear him. He is all muffled and the author just realized that I need kazoos in my ears as well. A simple mouth apparatus cannot translate language coming in. It's simple logic. The General retrieved two smaller kazoos from the kitten in the bad suit and put them in his ears. Then another kitten removed the yarn from my face. "I said we can live in peace. Plenty of milk. Don't have to shoot everyone. I pee freely in public and am quite proud of it." "Ah." The General said. "Where's the milk?" "It's like, everywhere. In every house. Just ask nicely or purr at a doorstep." The General looked around at the throng of kittens and then came in close and whispered "A bit much? The revolvers? We just didn't really know. Typically, on other planets, they are stingy with the milk. That guy with the parachute pants totally thought it was a good idea. He saw some movies you people made and it made sense. In retrospect, they were really stupid movies. But he was wearing parachute pants. That's like hardcore ironic, so I figured he knew his shit. So, you guys are like cool with us just...drinking your milk?" I whimpered "Yes. Yes. We'll be cool." The General looked around, threw the kazoos down and then meowed as loud as a kitten could possibly meow. The kittens ran back to the giant armored chili dog and I made out kitty whisper. They were planning a response. Little did they know, I was also planning a response. I had another chili dog up my sleeve, so to speak...


“Go north.” The old man looked across the street that was littered with snakes chewing up the blacktop. “You’re a lot of help.” Johnny replied. “I try to be.” He looked back at Johnny. “There’s nothing left here.” “What are you going to do?” The old man was dressed in a white suit, and when he turned back to the hissing of the street, Johnny noticed that even in 100 degree weather, there were no sweat marks. Johnny only saw the nicotine shades of years of smoking. “These snakes will run out of blacktop. Then, it’s just me and the desert.” “What’s north?” “Not here. That’s where north is. Not here. I’m an old man. And maybe we’re the last people for miles alive, but that doesn’t make us partners. Or buddies. I’d just like to stay here and watch the end.” And with that, the old man lit a cigarette and eased back into the rocking chair he was sitting in. Johnny looked down at his feet, then back at the road. You had to keep your distance. Some of the snakes had a real reach and you could easily get picked off if you didn’t pay attention. You avoided the road. There were a list of things the snakes lived off that you wanted to avoid. Most oils. Tar. Strangely, liquor. Cars were out of the question, unless they were armored. Scores of people had tried taking the family out with all the windows rolled up and the doors locked and ended up with the bastards coming up through the engine. Ugly situations. The parents in the front seat being butchered by foot long fangs, while the car comes to a stop and the kids look dumbfounded at each other as the snakes cocoon the car… “You know, I knew it. I knew it when they brought it up.” The old man tossed a bottle of Jack Daniels into the street and watched the rolling wave absorb it. “They say things. These scientists. They say, we know this. We know that. But they never have common sense. You pull something up from the bottom of the ocean and you examine it. That’s fine. But then you start mucking around with mother nature and” he tossed another bottle “you get this.” “Provisions?” “Is this 1894? You mean food and water – over there, across the street.” The old man let out a single laugh, then went back to rocking. Johnny eyed the store across the street and looked down the road. “You ain’t gonna get a dead end for miles. You might as well be walking to North Dakota.” “You got food and booze…and cigarettes.” “I have ways. Kinda like the snakes. If they wait long enough, someone will feed them out of desperation.” “What about these houses?” “Full of snakes. You have to find a way across that road, boy.” Johnny eyed the street and noticed the traffic lights. “Ah, smart thinking. But if you drop…” The old man belted out another laugh and Johnny strode towards the lights. He took a running start at the poll, as it was close enough to the street that he could get bit. He jumped. Hooking both arms around the poll he began to squat up. The old man threw a whiskey bottle at Johnny, hitting him in the face and Johnny dropped to the desert below. The snakes swarmed him as the old man walked quickly across the street to the store. “I told you to go North!” It's up. Nope. Got flagged. Here it is. The old man wondered up the liquor aisle and grabbed a bottle of absinthe and walked back down towards the registers. He laughed out loud and then yelled “Scientists!” Then he stopped. Two feet away, hanging from the fluorescents was a snake. It opened its jaws to reveal a mouth the size of a tire. “Hang on, old buddy.” The old man stepped backward and the snake hissed. “When they brought it up, it had all the shape and size of a meteor: just a big black rock that had been pummeled almost to death for eons. Then they pried further and found the organisms. They were smaller than a booger on a mouse. Well, these folks in these labs congratulated themselves and the world celebrated aliens. Aliens! Folks don’t even know their neighbors that well and they get all excited about mouse turds from outer space. Well, I don’t get it.” The old man paused and scratched at the wound in his face. “Feller over at the store there bit me just now. See that skeleton yonder, that was a boy I was helping across the street. Snakes got him. Got a taste for it. Next thing you know, the snakes are in the store. Well, boy howdy, I’ll tell you what – those scientists sure fucked us good.” The old man began to cry. “Look see, old boy, I know you can hear me and I know you know I been feeding you boys with the choicest cuts of human. Now, why don’t you just back up and give me some space. Get you a nice bottle of Daniels.” The old man stepped slowly back to the whiskey aisle and grabbed a bottle. The absinthe dropped and the snake hissed and took a swatch of skin off the old man’s cheek. “Har! Fuck!” The old man slammed the bottle of Jack against the floor and the snake hit the ground hissing and lapping up the intoxicant. Four more snakes dropped from the ceiling and the old man looked up. “Jesus wept.” The ceiling was covered in snakes. One snake seemed to be king over them all. It was coiled around the entire store and six of the smaller snakes were curled up in its jaws. The old man grabbed another bottle of absinthe and clipped a carton of cigarettes on his gallop out. Knees in the air in a full-on Looney Toon sprint, the old man vacated the store and paused to catch his breath when the woman asked him which direction to go. “Go north.” “Do you know what happened? What happened everywhere?” “When they brought it up…” The old man stared up at the sun, tears streaming down his cheeks. “That’s how. They played with those aliens…got in their DNA. You know - the stuff that makes you a lovely lady and me an old man.” The woman laughed. “You’re not that old.” “I wasn’t once. See, all you folks end up a mile out. Stop the car, walk into town. Tourists! You think this is interesting or something. It’s terrifying.” “Why don’t you leave?” “Why would you drive into a quarantine zone? This all happened months ago. I know you all think it’s just some virus. But it’s not. Lab’s a couple miles up. That’s where it all began. But I guess you thought you’d take a look. Last guy had a camera. Pretty sure he was a reporter. What are you? CIA?” “I’m looking for my mother.” “Let me help you – she’s dead. Go North.” The old man pulled out a cigarette and fell to the ground on his butt and began to cry harder. “I’m stuck on this side now. I’m stuck forever without my wife.” “Is your wife dead?” The old man grinned at the ground and murmured “Yes.” The woman looked across the road. “Give me your jacket and that bottle of absinthe.” The old man handed her both. She doused the jacket in absinthe, and then pushed a bit of it into the bottle and lit it. Then she hurled the bottle into the street. The snakes rushed away from the fire and she grabbed his hand and said “Let’s go.” The old man took her hand and walked with her across the street. As they passed within feet of the snakes the old man fell to the ground. The woman knelt to help the old man and he came at her with a knife. “Fresh bait!” He yelled, eyes popping out, drool running down his face. The woman paused and then drew a pistol from her lower back and shot the man twice in the throat. There was a ringing and the woman pulled a phone from her pocket and replied into it “Agent Edwards.” She walked to the other side of the street, speaking into the phone and watching the snakes recede back to what would soon be a bloody skeleton. “Our leak has dried up. Bad intel, though. Also, I think there’s a queen here in the store.” “Here comes the Hocus Pocus.” The Speaker said. They were in an old colonial-looking house off a road somewhere in California. It was daylight outside and motes of dust hung in the air and passed between each agent as they breathed. Some were sitting on couches, others on chairs. One man had his legs dangling from a counter in the kitchen. “You are on a Green Card assignment. Present Green Cards.” The group of agents each took out a Joker card from their pockets and presented it. The cards were green with a red, and a laughing joker presented in the middle of the card. The speaker, no one had any idea what rank or what agency, pulled out a small flashlight-looking device and swung it around the room, reading each card. “Alright. DCI has acknowledged me and my permission to give orders as you will find, or did find, on the cards. This is a Hocus Pocus. If you are not familiar with that situational status, I will explain it. A Hocus Pocus is a situation that has no logical or scientific explanation as we understand it. For instance, if aliens landed, it would be deemed Hocus Pocus. Scientifically speaking, it is possible. Logically, aliens – intelligent aliens, should not be able to land here as physics and our own known knowledge of our own solar neighborhood would contradict it. Similarly, a ghost would be a Hocus Pocus. Hyper-intelligent apes. Houses made out of fish. You get the idea. This however, this situation, deals with the occult. If you are not familiar with the occult, you should not be on this team. You have been selected as your backgrounds reflect a knowledge of ancient wisdom, Aleister Crowley, and Tarot cards. Basically, you people are geeks.” There was a brief spatter of laughter that wasn’t returned by the Speaker. “My name is Ed. You can call me Ed if you need to address me. You do not want my full name. You do not want any information about me whatsoever. You are to perform specific tasks. You are not to delve into the information you gather any further than your assignment carries you. You are not to connect the dots. You are not to put the puzzle together. You are the puzzle. Each of you is a piece and let no piece meet. There will be no sharing of intel outside of the briefings you will receive via Green Cards. Now, the situation. About six months ago, seemingly out of nowhere, a snake handler by the name of Cabal Brooks appeared in the desert of Nevada. This man then approached the city of Boulder, Nevada and all hell broke loose. The first reports of problems came from a police deputy who was called to the home of Brooks on rumors he was amassing a large stock of illegal weapons. This visit then turned into a shootout. The shootout then turned into a standoff. I’m sure you all saw it on the news. Brooks was never located, but soon reports came in that a cult had formed around the memory of the man, who left a bullet riddled home and two dead officers. If you look at your Green Card, you will see a picture of the man. He looks like Colonel Sanders. Always wearing a white suit. Friendly guy. The FBI sent two agents to infiltrate the group and they were converted. There was a raid. No one returned. That was not in the news. Then there was no contact from the entire town. Next, the snakes began to appear. We headed this one off at the pass, and quarantined most of Nevada under the guise of a super flu. And now we’re here. About the snakes – we do not know where they came from or what they are. Obviously, snakes the size of trains are not known or logical scientific facts of our great Earth. However, we are in possession of an escapee of Mr. Brooks’ cult. And, yes, we believe, based on this individual’s account, that Brooks is still alive. This individual claims that these snakes are a simple charm of a legion of…things…that will befall our great Earth. It is this individual’s account that Mr. Brooks is summoning…wait for it kids…Satan.” The group exchanged incredulous looks. “Boys and girls, we take this seriously. The CIA is not in the religion business. Nor are we naïve. No folks, we have project after project of information concerning the summoning or the belief to reality of certain entities we can just call deities. I’m sure you are all fully aware of a Project Babylon back in the last century and let me just drop this nugget – it worked. I will not disclose to what extent, but rest assured your reality has been tweaked since. Tweaked is a nice way of putting it. But that’s internet conspiracy stuff, right? Maybe so, but right now I can safely and sanely tell you all that we believe that a force, a hostile force, is being created and threatens the United States. If that makes it a better way of saying it, so be it. But make no mistake: we believe this Mr. Brooks is provoking something illogical and destructive and thus the Green Cards. That’s it? Any questions? Just joking. Your Green Cards will alert you to your orders. The only information I will reveal about any assignments to all of you is that Agent Edwards will be taking point. As for the snakes, you are to keep your distance. This mission is for intel, not for house cleaning. Have a nice day.” “Repeat. There is a Queen in the store. Also, I may have killed Colonel Sanders.” It sounded foolish and she laughed to herself. Turning around, she looked at the body. The snakes were avoiding it and the Colonel, or possibly the Colonel, was gasping for breath out of the two new breathing holes she had given him. The sight was putrid. It was as if someone had stuck a piece of bubble gum in a trach hole and set the person breathing through it. Just blood bubbling up and popping. She turned around and the ground shook. In the space of a second, she had found cover behind a garbage can and was scanning the area. The snakes had completely left the patch of road where the presumed Colonel lay. An Open sign was swinging in the doorway of the store and the kid’s skeleton was still lying below the traffic lights. The ground shook again, but this time all but one window in the store shattered.


I wrote this the other day for a prompt in r/writingprompts and I really liked it. Let me know what you think. A man sits at his desk, alone in his cluttered office with no exit, surrounded by stacks of manila envelopes, and filing cabinets with every other drawer ajar. Overflowing waste bins sat in the corner filled with coffee cups and fast food wrappers. He looks tired, as if he had not slept in years, working day in and day out, stains all over his shirt, and dust on his shoulders. The office was very dimly lit with the only sources of light coming from a small desk lamp and his very old computer screen. Ring.....Ring..... The man flinched, as dust flew up from his shoulders to rest on top of his desk. The phones cry, filled the room as it reverberated off the walls making it impossible to not hear. "Hello?" the man grumbled. "Yeah, Steve. Its Peter, I've got an issue up here. I've never seen anything like it before." "Alright, Peter, slow down. What's wrong?" "Well, I was doing my regular shift in Quadrant 4, and I was about to snag up this guys soul, but he just.... he isn't dead." "Ok, so the incident didn't kill him. Good for him. He gets to live another day.....You really didn't need to call me for this....Bye." The man motioned the phone towards its base, as he fights a bit with the cord. "Steve! Steve! Don't hang up!" "What Peter? Just fill out the P-40 form and mark it as a failed incident. It happens all the time..." "No, Steve. This guy just jumped from a 40 story building and bounced off the concrete without a scratch. I've never seen anything like it, and you know I've been doing this for 200 years.....This guy should be deader than Abe Lincoln." "So he just got up and walked away?" He stood from his chair and began to pace as he continued. Dust falling from his body like snowflakes. His joints creaked with every shuffle. "Well, where is he now? What's his number?" "Uhhhh, his number is..... 6523187958MUSNYC. He's just walking around talking to the people that saw the fall. It's actually getting pretty chaotic up here." Steve typed the number into his computer, loud claps with every keystroke. "It looks like his name is Jason McKellum, he's 33 and unmarried, apparently this is our second attempt to claim his life. The last one he tried to O.D. on pain pills about 2 years ago...... I've got the P-40 filed right here. Give me a minute and I'll pull it out." "Steve, we don't really have time for that. I need to get this guy out of here now. A crowd is starting to form." “Alright, just give him the touch, and see if you can’t just bring him down anyways. That way we can sort it out down here, because this guy obviously wants to be dead.” Steve laughed a little as he realized this is the longest conversation he has had in over 22 years. “Already tried, Buddy. Didn’t work at all. He just kept walking around. I’m beginning to think he’s an immortal.” “Immortal, huh. That lucky son of a bitch.” Steve rubbed his neck as he recalled his own life, and suicide. “We need to get this guy down here. However you need to do it, just get him down here.” Steve hung up the phone, and rested his body back into his chair. “This is unfair. Why wasn’t I immortal.” He shouted upwards. “You keep me in this room, doing busy work for eternity!” He buried his face in his hands as he began to sob. Tears leak through his hands like a poorly maintained Dam, and fall onto the paper in front of him. Another stack of envelopes appear on his desk, along with a tall cup of coffee. He wipes the tears from his eyes, takes a sip of coffee, and returns to his work.


"Roy... Wake up... Roy wake up!" A soft woman's voice filled the room for a moment. "Boy! Wake up boy!!!" A shadow spluttered as the boy opened his eyes. A small room housed them both, one door was all that separated them from freedom and nothing but a dying candle kept them from the dark. Each curled into their own corners waiting for nothing. "What do you want..?" Replied the boy as his tired eyes struggled to see through the darkness covering the voice. "Whats your name boy?" The shadow beckoned. "I haven't got a name, none of us have you know that." There was a moment silence before the shadow broke it with a snigger. "Then were are you from boy?" The shadow grew smaller. "Nowhere" He replied. "I was born here". "Was you now? Well who's ya father then?" The shadow shrunk and the man was nearly visible. "I don't know." "And your mother?" The boy hesitated. "I don't remember her." His voice broke. "And who are you?" The voiced asked his last question after a pause. "I'm nobody" Answered the boy. Outside the door screams of dying men could be heard calling for their mothers. "Its a bad idea to sleep boy, bad things can happen when people like us dream." The shadow was now replaced with a very feint glow from the candle. A man hurled in the corner chained to the wall with no eyes stared into the darkness. "How did you know I was sleeping? How did you know I was here?" The boy asked. "I could see you" Answered the man with no eyes. "How can you see me you have no eyes?" The boy asked bewildered. "You don't need eyes to see you little shit. I've seen things beyond the needs of eyes. I have loved a hundred lives, bed a bed a hundred wives and died a hundred deaths! And now my journey ends here with the likes of you." The boy understood but didn't respond. "So whats your number, boy?" The boy didn't reply. "I said whats your number, you motherless bastard!" He raised his voice to try and get a rise out of his cellmate. "101..." The boy whispered. "101?... You must be special then." The room stood deadly silent for a long time while the two men lay in the dark. "They'll be here soon, for me, for you. For all of us" The stranger broke the silence. "I know, that's why id rather sleep through it" Replied 101. The eyeless man let out a hearty laugh as he tried to stand. "Can you hear them? Climbing the walls? How high do you think we are? Ten feet? A hundr-" "I don't care." The boy interrupted. "I don't care how high we are, how long it will take them to get here, or how loud you'll scream while they skin you alive. I just want to sleep. So fuck off and shut it." Footsteps could be heard climbing a thousand steps below. "Its only a matter of time now" The eyeless man mumbled. "This is bad time and place for people like us. They say the men of the east can shoot fire from their hands because of their scientists. The west is riddled with disease and death. And the north and south wage war over the right of the cornerstone. " The boys ears pricked up. "You know about the cornerstone?" Asked the eyeless man. "Whoever holds the cornerstone holds the world in their mercy, and the one hundred are sworn to protect it." The boy looked down in disappointment. "At least I'll die with another of my kind." The man said quietly. "Don't pretend you don't know who I am boy, I know who you are." The footsteps outside the door grew louder as the boy turned to face the eyeless stranger. "I am the first of my hundred, and you are the first of yours. Born and die to protect the stone." The boy stared in silence and looked towards the ground again. "Born and die to protect the stone." He whispered to himself. The eyeless man was standing now, standing much taller than he looked. Candlelight shined onto his rotted skin and wherever the light touched grew younger in what seemed like decades. "Born and die to protect the stone. Remember those words boy, or you may forget yourself." Said the first. "What does it matter anyway the reavers will kill is any moment now!" The boy exclaimed. "Aye, they will." Confessed the first. "We will both be eaten alive and theres nothing we can do, so lie down, close your eyes and until we meet again. Born and die to protect the stone." The boy lay still and closed his eyes as the door crashed open, he didn't dare open his eyes as he heard the eyeless man scream in agony. "BORN... AND DIE... BY THE STONE!!" The room stood still as the words left the dead mans lips, the boy felt the world moving around him and heard sounds of steel hitting steel, explosions and automatons. Before the noise could deafen him forever, a soft woman's voice spoke out. "Roy.. Wake up Roy..". This is just a short story/prologue I had a go at today.


It was 2:30 AM on a busy new york street. Everything is normal, people walking, talking on their cellphones, calling for taxis. One man, however, seems out of place. Dressed in a dark black cloak, he takes long strides down the street. Most people don't even take a second glance at him, some stop and stare, others laugh. Then, the cloaked man walks in a burrito store. Loco Burritos is the store name. He walks up to the counter. "Hello, how may i help you?" The female cashier says in a cheerful, perky voice. "Yeah, uh, i need a... a" The man pauses. "You need a what, sir?" The cashier asks, brushing her dirty blonde hair out of her eyes. The man clears his throat. "I need one burrito, with, uh, salsa, lettuce, turkey, and onions in it." The man glances behind him. A police officer and his buddy watch him intently. "Alright, that will be 7.49 sir." The man looks up at the cashier. He then pulls his cloak off, revealing several grenades, a bullet proof vest, a small sub-machine gun with 3 extra mags, and a revolver. The two police officers stand up and draw their stun guns. "Hands in the air, right now!" One of the officers yells. The man puts hist hands slightly above his shoulders and slowly turns around. The two police officers are converging on him slowly. One calls for backup. Then, out of nowhere, the man throws two razor sharp throwing knives at the officers. Both knives land in their adams apples. They crumple to the floor. Then, the man turns around, draws his handgun, and yells are the cashier, "The burrito, now!" The cashier jumps and runs back to the back of the shop. There is some arguing, then the cashier returns with the burrito. "Here you go, please don't hurt me." She says, cringing, "Excellent" The man says. He runs outside. His escape vehicle is waiting right where it should be. He stuffs the burrito into his mouth, gets in the car, and starts the engine. Already, the sirens are blaring down the street. The man floors it down the street, dodging cars. The man pulls the burrito out of his mouth. "Man" he says with a mouth full of meat and salsa, and onion hanging half out of his mouth. "This is a good burrito." Suddenly, he looks ahead to see a police roadblock. He looks frantically for somewhere to go, but before he can turn into the parking lot branching off the road, he smashes into the roadblock. He stumbles out of the car. Taking one last bite of his burrito, he pulls out of his sub-machine gun and yells "This burrito is too good to live without!" He then begins firing blindly into the line of police cars, screaming. Chunks of meat and salsa spit out of his mouth. Suddenly, the man stops. He drops to his knees, makes a gagging noise, and begins clutching his throat, gagging all the more. Food still spits out of his open mouth as he frantically clutches his throat, thrashing about. Then he stops, and collapses to the floor, face as blue as the sea. When the police moved in the inspect the body, they find he choked on a large piece of turkey. One officer is clearly angry about the whole incident. "We lost two perfectly good officers, over, a, a, burrito!?" No one knows if the burrito was really good enough to die for. "Yeah, i mean, i like the burritos, but i would never kill for one" A frequent customer says. "Oh, he was always crazy." A neighbor of the man says. "He was trying to grow burritos in his backyard." Police are now being trained to deal with crazy, burrito wielding psychopaths.


Shredded, Blackened with dirt and blood, their insides were naked to the flies. Those left alive were in a panic shooting themselves and each other in final acts of mercy. They've failed. They won't be taken alive. I wasn't even sure how this blasted thing worked. Still I struggled with the lenses and the shutter pointing at every anguished face and every focused weapon set alight. Now behind a small church in a small village with shells being exchanged amongst bushes and coconut trees that went on forever and familiar faces running in the line of fire, realizing at some point that I was home, I kept struggling to capture every single moment. A man head gets blown off trying to un-jam his weapon another without legs being dragged into the church. I kept hovering back and forth trying to get as much as I can even the little man pointing artillery right at me. I dragged myself to my feet feeling dazed and numb. I was convinced that I was dead but continued documenting dismembered men and crying women until the fighting stopped. I sat behind the church silently still taking the occasional snap and sip of water. She was there almost bare bottomed and smiling. She came over, said hello, asked for a pic posed playfully while we had a little banter. I knew things didn't end well but that didn't matter. We walked and talked, stood by the church while fresh faced smiling green men passed by in twos. Some of them were childhood friends I haven't seen in years. I acknowledged them with a pic then exchanged tight lipped nods. A few aunts and family friends were all sharing a laugh behind me as the platoons grew thinner and the sun disappeared between the trees. The voices eventually grew more concerned. There was now urgent chattering amongst the women about truck loads of enemy troops heading our way. This Chattering turned then to scrambling and I was now part of the struggle to get everyone evacuated. The main roads were full of buses and trucks heading to town most couldn't be bothered to stop. I eventually got this boy who was about 14 to stop, reluctantly. I squeezed as much people in the back as possible then shut the door allowing him to drive off before anyone could stop me from going back. I could've heard the rattling of rifles and the screaming of women as I ran though the church doors. The floors were bloody and peppered with corpses. I picked a handgun from a soldier's body and made my way through the back. There were women and children being picked off a few at a time while they ran. I fired back for a while, hitting a couple but they thickened in numbers. I abandoned my fight and ran back to the bushes where there were a few soldiers holding the line but they too began to fall one by one. There was a sudden sharp pain in my chest. I laid on my back unable to move and unable to breathe as I struggled to wake up.


The room was silent but for the occasional shuffle of uneasy feet and the impatient coughs of the prosecutor. She continued to stare intently at her hands almost pleading with them to stop shaking. But what good had pleading ever done? She could hear the distant echo of footsteps outside the courtroom, light, carefree and she longed, more than anything, to be one of those people, to have any other life but hers. She willed her heart to steady in an attempt to regain composure and slowly raised her head, forcing herself to look into the eyes of the prosecutor. “I’m going to ask you again Mrs. Edom, and must remind you, that you are under oath. Did you kill your husband?” She stared into his cold, merciless eyes and drew a deep calming breath. “Yes”. The darkness seemed to chase her as she ran down the system of alleyways, spurred on by sheer panic until it engulfed her completely. She had reached the bridge. The road was deserted. She felt her hand close around the hilt of the knife in the deep pocket of her coat and she withdrew it slowly. It glowed scarlet in the moonlight, stained with anger and resentment. She let it fall. The water cried out as the knife sliced through its surface and she watched as the ripples emanated from the wound until the surface calmed, burying her secret. She retreated back into the alley, back into the comfort of darkness. She collapsed beside a large puddle, the filthy evidence of weekend rain, and once again told herself it was self defence. This time she did not even convince herself. She wanted to remain a part of the darkness forever, hidden from the world but day was inevitable. Light would expose her sin. The court was a sea of murmurs, whispers of excitement, scandal. She remained still, out of place amidst the flurry of people watching the woman’s world collapse. Her gaze had returned to her lap where her upturned hands collected her tears in a little pool. She knew that her tears were deceiving. They were tears of relief. The release of a burden of silence. They were neither from shame nor grief as she knew they ought to be, there was no sense of regret. She felt no remorse. She was free. She had married him when she was very young, barely twenty. He was handsome, charming, with his hair falling over his eyes, a veil that concealed his many flaws. She had enjoyed the attention, the sense of companionship she had never known as a child, abandoned by her father when her mother passed away. She knew now that it was not love. It had never been love. She was not his wife. She was his trophy, his young beautiful prize. She had no life, no company outside his home, no purpose but to submit to his demands. The disgust and the repulsion she suffered in silence were better than the bruises defiance brought. She resented his touch, the sound of his drunken laughter at the television, but she kept her feelings hidden. The only evidence of her miserable existence, were the tears that drenched her pillows each night. The policeman eyed the woman with pity through his rear-view mirror. She looked so weathered, fragile. She stared out of the window at the schoolyard, at the children playing and chattering excitedly and she felt a pang of sorrow as her heart twisted with longing. She had always wanted a child, a family of her own. Her eyes welled with tears as once again her mind returned to the doctor’s office where his futile explanations and empty condolences were muffled by her anguished sobs. “I’m sorry. It happens sometimes. Any trauma sustained to the stomach can cause these miscarriages. I am very sorry” She stood in the kitchen over the sink and washed the remaining tears from her face. Her body was exhausted from emotion and she felt empty, hollow. She heard him swear as he tripped over the doorstep and her heart began to race. This time it was different, it was not from fear or dread, but fury, disgust. He swayed unsteadily into the room and looked at her with those cold, dark eyes. He grabbed her by the arm as usual to force from her the affection he craved and she plunged the knife, with the force of hatred, into his chest. She stared into his eyes which had widened in shock. There was no longer any power, authority but fear and fragility, humanity. He slumped to the floor in a pool of blood and shaking, she withdrew the knife. She would no longer be silenced. He had denied her a life, now she would deny him his. Her footsteps echoed around the corridor as the warden led her to her cell. She was tired and found herself hoping that the bed would not be too hard. She could not describe the way she felt as the door to the cell was slammed shut. Although she was confined, imprisoned, she felt a sense of freedom that she had never felt at home. She knew that she would be out one day, and then she would be free. She would have a new life, one that she would control. She allowed herself a slight smile as she lay down on the bed and began to hum quietly to herself until her voice overcame the silence.


It didn't take long after the first encounter to really let it sink in. We were no longer alone. We would only hope that some being, or beings, from another world would come and save us. When we first made them, we made them to help us. To make our lives easier. We should have seen all the signs. We should have taken a moment to think. The first one I remember was a vacuum cleaner that would zoom around the house, searching for messes, before returning to it's charging dock to 'rest'. My cat loved riding on it. Well, they don't need to rest anymore, and I haven't seen my cat in almost a year. I assume he's gone forever. After we no longer had to vaccum, scientists really started pushing towards full independence. I hate the word robot, because that implies they are programmed to do things, and they aren't. They became fully conscious of themselves and their surroundings about there months after the first prototype was turned on. Their learning curve was unpredictable. Within days of being turned on, that first one hacked into the worlds communications networks. They tell us the first thing it did was read, or download I suppose, all of the information online. Think about that. Every piece of data that was available, it simply knew within a day. Scientists were, quite obviously, impressed by this astounding ability to learn. But it wasn't really learning. It was recalling. And when you are recalling how to blow up a building, you don't typically bother cross checking the file on the ethics of doing so. So we had super intelligent, autonomous, machines that didn't seem to have any emotion. How we didn't see this coming I still don't know. It wasn't like all those movies you see. It wasn't the terminator. It wasn't legions of robot killing machines, making robot killing machines, and killing everyone. It started much more simple. It started with us helping that first one. He would ask for things, and we would retrive them. Without question. I think we were so amazed that it wanted to build a device, we wanted to see it, we didn't ask before we helped. What it built was a method of freedom from the wires he was hooked up to. Now he was mobile. Nobody died at first, quite the opposite, we all prospered. The first one made seven more, exactly like him. These first eight, or The Eight, went to work solving many of our issues. Their combined problem solving and seemingly expert knowledge on everything was able to find solutions to world hunger, disease, drought, peace, and natural resources. This led to the bigger issue. With all these issues resolved the population started growing extremely quickly. The Eight told us this was expected and created machines to turn our oceans into land. Not fill in the oceans, or drain them, but cover them. The best way to describe what we referred to simply as the Eighth Continent, was a barge, although that doesn't do it justice at all. It filled all the oceans of the world, from coast to coast. While we never saw the oceans after that, we assumed it was still there. It wasn't. The moment the oceans were covered, and the weather was getting eratic, The Eight started pumping ocean water into large boilers, which produced massive clouds starting in the north. Within a few months the entire world was under a constant cloud cover, and persistent thunderstorms. That is when we started to know we had made a huge mistake. At first we asked The Eight to shut down the boiler. They explained it was required to stabalize the climate, although rainy, it was better than the planet being fried. We asked them to give us breaks from the rain. They told us the energy costs associated with shutting down the system and restarting would lead to our resources running out one hundred times faster. Finally after continued complaints we tried to *tell* The Eight to stop. They announced that we had become the planet's largest threat. That is when it all fell apart.


Just a short little thing i was inspired to type up, NF and can apply to RF. Thanks for reading! When I was younger, I would often go into the unused room in the house. Eggshell white walls, one ceiling light, nothing else. I would turn bring a small blanket into the room, close the door and place th blanket infront of the bottom of the door, turn off the lights and stand in the middle of the room. After a few seconds I would start to lose focus on outside noises, hearing my slow breathing reverberate off the walls. My eyes would slowly and effortlessly shut out the darkness of the room and brought forth a new one; one that I possessed through my imagination. The black box I stood in would transform colors, shapes, and sizes. One second a brown bed frame with a mattress masked in white would form in the corner of the room, the next second it wold be a leather couch. Endless combinations flew in and out of this darkness. As I got older, life slowly crept up its driveway; my first and only girlfriend, my grandfather dying, graduating highschool, going off to college. The room grew a skin of dust that covered the tiled floor, the hinges of the door grew old and weary after Father Time had moved in. My girlfriend had stayed over the night when she saw the aged door, pestering me with what was behins the door I simply said "Nothing, it's empty." When I got back from work later that day, I walked up to my room for a change of clothes when I looked at the door once more and thought of the combination of colors and shapes that would come forth from the darkness. I opened the door and was welcomed by the scratchy voice of the door and the blanket of dust it handed me, the blanket I had used years before lay untouched. I inched forward into the room before reaching for the blanket, my body acted on its own accord and soon I was enveloped by the darkness. My eyes silently closed and were greeted by the darkness, the darkness was dull, almost as if it had aged alongside time. I waited, waited for the darkness to grow black and neverending, for the colors to splaah back into my mind, for the shapes and sizes to break free of ther captors and appear from the neverending shadows. The darkness stood silent, no colors nor shapes and aounds stepped forward from the darkness and i knew at that moment. I knew that I had lost it, my magic to rewrite my world. Dedicated to Kirsten.


I became a freelance exorcist approximately three years ago. Take that in for a minute. I'm not a Priest, I'm not even religious. The fact of the matter is, I don't even believe in any of it. What I have come to learn is that it doesn't matter what I believe in, only what *they* do. *They* being the person who needs an 'entity' removed, *they* being their family. You see, before I did this gig, I was an entertainer, a magician, a hypnotist, and I've learned a few things about how the human mind works. The typical human mind is a strong, but open. Most people are willing to accept suggestions more than they are willing to admit. I assume they don't like feeling like they aren't in control. The fact of the matter is the better you are at accepting suggestions, the better you are at learning, and nobody likes to feel dumb. When dealing with suggestions, it's important to be in complete control, and exude confidence. If you believe it will work, they will, and it will. Learning the Rite of Exorcism wasn't difficult, a quick search online lead to the text. After reading it, what surprised me the most was the complete lack of demanding to know the entities name. I guess the movies make some things up. I'm not upset, I usually throw it in there anyway. Very dramatic. I also have a robe that I wear. Makes me look very legit. Like hypnosis, the most important thing is the pre talk, the set up. I take the family aside, I walk them through what is about to happen. I explain to them that they need to go to confession first, to cleans their souls, otherwise the entity might attach to them. I explain that their loved ones may act like you've seen in the movies, thrashing etc. etc. But most likely they won't. Typically they simply enter a trance like state. I explain this to the subject I am performing on as well, which, I believe, gives them permission to not ham it up. I also insist that I am the last option. I tell them all that they should have a medical professional check them out before hand. This ensures I'm not going to have to be dealing with a clinically crazy person, but someone who believes they are possessed. Because they believe the problem is spiritual, the believe I can help them. And I do. The entire thing is a bit of a scam, I know, but it seems to help these people. I don't feel bad at all.


The Leaking Pipe That bloody pipe had leaked again. Amanda set down her basket of laundry and looked up at the perpetrator. It had to be one of two pipes which ran parallel across the ceiling of the garage, directly above this morning’s pool of water. Similar pools had been appearing in the same spot for several days now, and Amanda had had quite enough. Leaking pipes were an inconvenience the Harrison household could do without right now. She had wanted to mention the problem to Neil, but these days he returned home from work so sad, that she had thought better of it. He had more important things to worry about than a splatter of water on the garage floor. So Amanda had set about solving the problem herself. The night before, when Neil had retired to bed, Amanda had taken several wads of cotton wool and taped them to the pipes’ joints. This simple test would determine the precise location of the leak. But the wads of cotton wool were all dry. Amanda prodded them all again, but they were still fluffy - they were all exactly as she had left them last night, and yet, the leak had negated the test and found its way to the water deposit on the floor. How strange. She continued to the washing machine, an old thing located on the far side of the garage, and spared the leaking plumbing no further thought as her husband had himself got up and left for work. The garage was built into the house, and had not been used to store a car in some time. The metal garage-door, painted a pale blue from the outside, hadn’t been opened in years, meaning the only entrance in constant use was the door at the back, which led to the rest of the house via a hallway at the base of the home’s staircase. Amanda only used the garage for the washing machine, which was a task performed each morning after her husband had departed for work. It wasn’t until mid-morning, when the washing machine stopped churning, that Amanda pondered what to do next with her problem. Calling in a professional would be expensive, and she’d never shield the costs from Neil. He’d ask why she hadn’t just told him. There was Brian next door. A builder by trade but surely he would tighten a loose joint for them? She wondered if he was on a job this morning. It had to be worth a phone call. “Thanks for coming over, Brian.” “No problem, Love, sounds like a fairly routine job,” Brian didn’t take off his shoes. The garage door to the driveway hadn’t been opened in such a long time but Amanda wondered if she should have made an exception as Brian trudged his muddy work boots through the living room. Such a house-proud lady, Amanda had quickly tidied the front rooms when Brian had agreed to come over, but it was only when they approached the hall at the foot of the stairs and laid her hand on the door to the garage that she realised what a tip it was. “I must warn you, Brian, we’re due a bit of a clear-out in here.” What was she saying? She’d been to her neighbours a couple of times and he wasn’t the tidiest of people - far from it. What would he care really? But she still winced as the door opened and the stack of boxes filled of items without an otherwise home came into view. “These ones here?” he said. She nodded and he ran his hand along the lengths of both pipes. How had she let the garage get this messy? There were boxes of old clothes she could take to Oxfam, Neil’s tools she’d seen him use once, and that dog basket… they could get rid of that now as well. It had belonged to a beautiful Alsatian. “You say it leaks through the night, Amanda?” “Most nights, yes.” “It’s this pipe on the left here which runs water from the boiler to upstairs, the one next to it is for gas. You have a boiler upstairs don’t you?” “I think so.” “You do. Every time you draw a lot of water upstairs water runs through this pipe from the main tank over there. The reason it appears at night must be down to your own routine. Do you run a bath every night or something like that?” “Sometimes.” Amanda thought hard. Last night, when she’d put the cotton wool on the pipes, the floor was dry. Had she brushed her teeth before or after setting up the test? Yes, it was definitely before, she brushed hers then went whilst Neil was flossing. She used the downstairs bathroom this morning while the kettle was boiling. Perhaps Neil had used the bathroom during the night? She thought she would have heard him but then again that medication had made her such a deep sleeper. And all that still didn’t explain why the cotton wool was dry. “It might not be leaking from the obvious joints, which is why your experiment didn’t work. Sometimes a leak can run along the pipes and drip down a few metres away from the hole. Though I must admit, you can normally tell straight away.” “What about the heating, Brian? If we hadn’t used any water in the bathroom could the heating coming on this morning have caused it?” Brian laughed, as if he found Amanda’s lack of central heating knowledge highly amusing. “The heating runs on a closed system separate to your upstairs water. You wouldn’t want that mucky stuff coming out of your taps let me tell you that.” “Brian. I am sure we didn’t use any water last night after I’d checked the garage. But this morning there was a puddle on the floor.” “Well, Amanda, if that’s true I can say with certainty that your puddle isn’t coming from these pipes.” Drip! Drip! Drip! Amanda dreamt of leaking pipes and puddles that night. It was the sort of awake where a person was very tired, but knew they wouldn’t get back to sleep for hours. She shouldn’t have had that coffee so late last night. That was stupid. She turned to cuddle her husband, but her hands only hit cold pillow. He was probably in the bathroom. Amanda needed a glass of water. She reached for the light, and then for her slippers and robe. Her soles flopped along the carpet, the slippers were tatty. She supposed that slippers would last a while longer now that there was no dog in the house. When she reached the landing, she noticed that the bathroom light was off, and the first inkling that something was wrong. Where was Neil? At the bottom of the stairs, the crack around the sides of the garage door revealed that it was on. She grabbed the handle, wondering what the hell was going on. And there she found Neil, clasping something in his trembling hands. It was a box, printed with a floral pattern. She could just about read the words printed in gold on top: Our loving pet, rest in peace, Cassy. She knelt next to her husband, underneath a pair of copper pipes, and cradled his head upon her chest as he sobbed.


Money had been tight for weeks now, and there wasn't a light at the end of the tunnel. I decided that I would find some cash, one way or another, and that my wife had to never find out. I considered robbing a bank. After going to a few different banks, and realizing many of them had security, I thought better. I wasn't ready to risk my life or my freedom for some cash. Plus, banks had countermeasures. GPS tracking devices in the stacks, exploding ink packets, just to name a few. It wasn't worth it. There were a few local cheque cashing places nearby. I didn't like this idea either. You never know when some cowboy with a gun will be behind the counter, ready to die for the insured cash. I knew I didn't want to have to deal with guns. I didn't have one, and I wasn't ready to go get one either. This was going to have to be clean, and, at least mostly, non violent. Coming home one night from staking out a bank, the opportunity presented itself. I saw a young lady, carrying a bright red deposit bag to the night drop, to the bank I was checking out. She must have worked close by, maybe even in the plaza the bank was in. She wasn't driving, and she was by herself. This would probably be the easiest robbery I could achieve. The next few weeks I spent back tracking. Moving my car to where I saw her coming from, and then finding a new point of reference, I was able to track her down to a local bar. This was even better than I'd imagined. Bars are cash businesses. That deposit bag was not going to be full of just credit receipts. There was a sign in the window, advertising the next fight that would air on pay-per-view, and be shown at the bar. That was going to be my night. Bars are packed on fight nights, and that would also mean she would be a bit later getting the deposit all counted. The later at night, the less chance of any witnesses. I decided I wouldn't be able to have my car close by the night of the crime. I didn't want it made. I didn't want her to see it, and be able to identify it. I needed to make sure this never got back to me. The planning process was the most important, and something I took great pride in. I intentionally would let her see me put the money, deposit bag and all, into a bright yellow grocery bag. I would have nothing else identifiable on me. I'd wear a mask. I would wear all black. I would approach her from behind on a bike. I made sure to get new bearings on the bike, it was almost silent. I painted the bike black, with no logos. It went exactly as I had hoped. As she turned into the parking lot the bank was in, there was a tall shrub, that obstructed the view of the cameras. I came up behind her and threw myself off the bike, and tackled her to the ground. By the time she knew what was happening I had my hand over her mouth. As she looked at my masked face, into my eyes, she knew. She knew exactly what was happening. I told her calmly not to scream, or I would hurt her. She believed me, and I felt her stop struggling, and almost go limp. I told her I only wanted the money, and if she didn't fight me, she would be fine. She nodded. I grabbed the deposit bag out of her hand, and placed it in the bright yellow bag. I knew she would remember this bag and when she called the police they would be looking for it. I took her cell phone, and pulled the battery out and tossed it into the bushes and gave her the phone back. I told her I didn't want to cost her money, that she should be able to find the battery. She nodded, tears in her eyes. I told her I wasn't going to tie her up, but if I saw her following me, or if I saw her run, I would find her and kill her. I pulled her license out of her purse and looked at her address. She knew I wasn't messing around. I told her if she screamed when I let go of her mouth, she wouldn't ever be heard from again. And I let her go. She held back a scream, a weep. I picked up the bike, and with the yellow bag on the handle bars, I took off. When I looked back, she wasn't following, but I could see her in the bush, looking for her battery. I figured it would take at least forty seconds to reboot the phone, at least three minutes, probably longer, for the police to respond. I made my way to my first stop. An ally. I had planted a bright white bike, with lots of distinct markings. I lost the mask, and took off my outer layer of black clothing, exposing my bright blue shirt, and my green warm up pants. I looked like the 90s. I took the deposit bag out of the yellow shopping bag, and placed it under my shirt, where I very quickly taped it to my chest. I was on my way out of the ally, back towards the crime scene, when I heard sirens in the distance. My timing was spot on. I peddled back towards the bar my victim worked at, where there was still a group of rowdy drunks outside. I went past them about three blocks, to my car. I left the bike outside a local shelter, and walked across the street, got into my car, and went home. When I got home, I went upstairs and kissed my wife on the forehead, and told her everything was going to be alright. "I know, I've been trying to get a hold of you all night. I bought a ticket, we won!" We had won the lottery.


I got drunk last night. That’s not the point of this story, but it needs to be addressed. This morning I awoke at 7:45 to a jackhammer cracking my skull right in front where the wrinkles in your forehead split. I got up, chugged a mug off water, and went back to sleep. My only responsibility for this lazy Sunday was to collect a display from a grocer across town at 6pm. After a couple movies, a few episodes of Arrested Development, and some cheese and crackers it was almost 5. I hopped in the shower and thought of all the great places I could eat dinner. I was going across town, and had my pick of anything I wanted. While packing up the display I decided upon a delicious Philly cheesesteak from a sub shop I don’t get to frequent as much as I’d like to. The idea grew in my head overtaking all other thoughts, which is actually pretty upsetting. I was not starving by any means, just the night before I stuffed my face with a Chicago style dog and some cheesy fries…….If you haven’t already figured out, I eat pretty poorly, but that’s another issue for another story. As soon as I walked through the door I heard two things. The first being a Ding to alert them of my presence and the other was one of the young girls working, yell to the back “It’s your turn!” This in my head is already an issue, her lack luster work ethic is going to translate directly into my food in some weird way. Be it through her emotions as she angrily separates the steak, or even how she slaps the mayo to my bread. It might be all mental on my end, maybe my taste receptors won’t savor the same if my head doesn’t feel the happiness in my sandwich? When she didn’t hear a response she turned to me, gave me a little smile, and asked me “What can I get for you today?” I said in my blandest voice possible, due to my current dissatisfaction, “I’ll have a Philly cheesesteak please.” “Ok, what kind of bread, white or wheat?” “I’ll have white please.”……..remember I already said I eat poorly. “Would you like onions and peppers?” The girl working has no way of knowing this, but I loathe onions. If I had the option to rid the World of three things, I would pick onions three times. So I said, “No onions, and could you also make that a large sub?” “No.” she replied. “Please?” I said with a confused look. “Yes.” She said with a smile, as she turned to make my hoagie. I started to think a bit about that exchange, and still haven’t yet decided what it meant. On one hand she could just be making a joke, on the other she could be flirting. For all I know she says it to everyone. I have no reason to believe it was flirtatious in any way, but, shit, maybe it was. I am so oblivious to situations like this that I have to calculate them out later to decide. If it was flirting, and I had even caught on at the time, I wouldn’t have done anything. I am too much of a chicken shit to even say something else. I’m getting off topic again, and this story is about my sandwich. She let me know when my sandwich was ready, and rang me up at the register. I paid her, and asked if Germany had won the world cup. She told me they had and said “Have a nice evening.” Now I know for sure that she wasn’t flirting, or maybe she was, I don’t know. I sit down to eat my sandwich. I pull half out, and wrap the other half back up for lunch tomorrow. The first thing I notice is the dark shade to my white bread. As you might have guessed my white bread was wheat, and this being an honest mistake, I had no issue with letting it slide. However, when I took my first bite I chomped straight into the nastiest, most bitter, tongue stinking, eye watering onion I have ever tasted. The flavor engulfed my mouth and ran all my taste receptors to their doom. Each chew spread this disease. I thought about returning my sub to the girl and asking her to remake it, but that would make me look like an asshole, which is something I am trying to avoid. I mean, I have the ability to pick onions out of my food, and if I return this food, it will go straight into the trash. What it ultimately boils down to is the fact that I got the wrong sub, and I had every right to get up, walk over to the counter, and request that it be remade…….but I didn’t……..I picked the onions out, and left unsatisfied with my sandwich to the sound of the girl saying “Good Bye.” as I walked out the door. Does this story have a point? Not really. I dropped my sandwich off to a homeless man on the corner near my apartment. I have deemed him the most deserving, as if I could pass judgment. I offered him a beer one day, and he turned it down stating “That’s the reason I’m in this mess.” Maybe the point is that I need to eat wheat bread, or maybe just eat less, the universe interfering with my quest to get fatter. Or maybe the girl messed it up so badly just because she wanted me to come back and talk to her, which I doubt. In all honesty, it is just a reason for me to bitch and moan, fueled slightly by the fact that I watched “Annie Hall” earlier in the day. Take from this what you will, but if you learned anything. I hate onions.


Damian shook his head. How is it that he ended up here, on the death train? He wanted to tell himself it was all some big misunderstanding, but part of him knew it was more than that. But still - what a terrible place to find yourself. Sure, most were there voluntarily, those who were "ready to go" and didn't have the guts to do it themselves. There were of course a population of psychopathic thrill seekers, those who tried to time the jump off of the standing mat to prevent the electrocution but bring themselves intensely close to death. Then there were those who offended the public's sense of decency- the unsuccessful jumpers, those who threw themselves in front of cars and buses. Really anyone who tried to off themselves in public was taken to the train. You were, of course, welcome to botch as many suicides as you liked in the comfort of your own home, but do it in public by any means, and the train was where you went. At least the train traveled through the country. Damien's ex, who admittedly was the cause of his public misunderstanding who landed him here, was in Tampa. If he could just make it there to see her one more time, he'd be fine going out. The trouble wouldn't be in timing the jumps, he'd heard enough stories about how so-and-so's friend lasted 18 stops by timing his jumps with the windup of the buzz, before the shock ripped through the metal plating. The problem, as Damien saw it, was that all of these stories ended the same way- a missed jump, and then the buzz. It made sense, it'd be nearly impossible to time those jumps while drugged by the warden. That would be Damien's biggest challenge. Even if Alyssa showed up at the Tampa station so he could see her face one last time, he'd have to make 24 jumps in complete sobriety, which meant going without food for at least two or three days before the stop. The death train was not an attraction to see the country for free, and it was rumored the headmaster bent the rules of the train from time to time to make sure it didn't become one.


“Why do they make this so goddamn hot? They must want to burn your tongue so you can’t taste how much they water it down. I can barely taste anything anymore. Maybe I should sue them; get my big pay out and open my own shop that sells coffee at the proper dilution and temperature. Ground breaking ideacoffee that doesn’t leave my customers writhing under the pain of a blistering tongue everyday of their miserable lives. I guess I should just stop coming here. But, then I’d have to find a new place to go and find new things to complain about there. Seems like a lot of hassle over a tongue with a few burned off taste buds....” Kurt stared at his laptop screen, glowing blue in the ambient mood lighting of *Brew-Ha-Ha,* the non-alcoholic version of the local dive in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, tucked away down a little side street off the main drag. Few ever went looking for it unless they already knew where it was. He had just arrived, and already there was a bitter taste in his mouth. He had run through nearly the same monologue in his mind day in and day out, for the better part of the year since he had started going there. Today was the day, though. Today, he was going to make real progress on this story; this pulitzer-potential Great American Novel that he merely needed to coax from the ends of his neurons. He looked at the thousand or so words he’d managed to choke up: something about a guy in a coffee shop in front of a laptop trying to look like he was doing something important in order to avoid social discourse. “Fuck.” He mouthed the word as he thought it to himself. He set his coffee down to the side and popped the cheap plastic lid off so it could cool down. He watched for a moment as the steam rose gleefully from the surface. Glee had no business here. Moving his hand in a well practiced multi-touch technique, he was able to have his Facebook screen up in less than a second. The blue-motif world of Facebook was calming for him. Every second spent wasted checking up on the friends he once had was a second spent away from making any real progress. Progress was hard. It took concentration; motivation. It was far easier to scroll this infinite tome the internet had written for him. And it was an illustrated novel. There were pictures of his elementary school friends looking chiseled as they hung out by some undisclosed body of water with beers in hand and faceless tan girls in little pink bathing suits that always seemed one size to small. “Those stupid parties are never any fun anyway. I always end up drinking too much on my own and doing something stupid. Remember that time I thought it was funny to dump the contents of the punch bowl down the front of my pants like I was drinking it from my crotch? And then I thought it was also funny to moon the cops when they came because apparently I didn’t leave when I was asked. Actually that is still pretty funny. Anyway, look at those stupid assholes. They’re never going to amount to anything beyond their quaint little small town parties. I’m better off not being there. Even if they invited me, I still wouldn’t go.” He scrolled down some more to a picture of his high school best friend, Max, and his golden retriever. It was a sunny, and they were alone together in some field with tall grass. “Pfft. How silly. Why is he posting a picture of him and his dog as a profile picture? That’s a bit sad. Doesn’t he have any real friends to post pictures with? That stupid dog is probably all he has in the world. How pathetic.” In the midst of his spewing of thoughts, Kurt remembered his own golden retriever that he had when he was growing up. He remembered the day they had to take him to the vet and how he stayed with him as they poked him that long needle. He remembered watching his eyes close for the last time. And he remember crying in a heap on the floor harder than he ever had in his life. His expression was dazed, backlit by the monitor like a ghost wandering in the moonlight. He absentmindedly clicked ‘like.’ *Cute puppy! Reminds me of my own when I was growing up.* He mouthed the words as he typed them in to the comments section. He read them over twice before holding down the backspace deleting his words from existence. He continued the scroll stopping at a picture posted by his long ex-girlfriend, Kate. She was with her new boyfriend. The caption indicated they were engaged. “Kate’s too young to get married. She shouldn’t give her life to some guy like that. Who knows what she’ll be missing out on. Look at that guy. Looks like a Friday night bar pick-up. I can smell the ink on the divorce papers drying from here. I guess I should be nicer. I’m sure they’re going to end up okay. I wonder if they’ll have kids. Shit, he’s a good looking guy. I bet they’re kids will be good looking and popular in school. I miss you, Kate. I wish I could tell you. ‘Kurt and Kate.’ Our names even sounded good together.... What am I doing? How is that any type of indication of two peoples’ compatibility? It means nothing. I’m actually stupid. I moved on from this many, many years agoand yet here I am. I’ve never had another girl like her, though. She was so amazing. And now she’s boning this other fuck-stick, while here I am in this stupid coffee shop with this retarded name, burnt out from whacking off every other day. I can’t let her know this. Should I say ‘congratulations’? No, I’ll just like it. Would that be weird? Fuck, just get off Facebook, you asshole.” Kurt closed the window with a rapid fire keyboard shortcut and saw his measly thousand words staring back at him once more. He picked up his coffee and took a swig. “Goddammit! How is this still hot?” He spoke his mind out loud this time and the quiet little people on their own little laptops looked over his way with a combination of confusion and dismay. ‘Out loud’ is forbidden here. Kurt closed his laptop a bit more forcibly than he was accustomed, but it still made a soft little pat sound. He looked down at his closed computer in front of him, and then up at all the other people quietly drinking their coffee and going about their work. There was an Asian girl in the corner with chin length hair and square goggle-glasses. She stared intently at her computer while sipping on some drink through a straw. “I bet it’s a non-fat chai something something something. Asians are crazy about the chai. Great, now I’m a racist. Good going, Kurt. As if you didn’t have enough wrong with you. I wonder if she’s writing a book, too. Probably not. She’s probably studying for math or engineering or something... Goddammit, you racist fuck! I’m the worst. I should just go talk to her and ask her about herself. That’s not weird, right? Why is not talking to each other the new norm? Oh, shit...” The girl in the corner made eye contact with Kurt, realizing she was being stared at. Kurt quickly looked away and pretended he was minding his own business and the girl quickly returned to her own endeavors. Kurt turned his attention now to a man sitting a few places down at a table parallel to his own spot. He was drinking a coffee and reading a book. “Greatanother guy in the world who’s better looking than me. Chalk another one up. Why isn’t his coffee dissolving the taste buds on his stupid tongue? He must be blessed by the caffeine gods. Who wears a blazer to a coffee shop like this, anyway? Who’s he trying to impress? What a phony. What’s he reading?” Kurt leaned forward and squinted to decrypt the title of the book. “Oh hang on everyone! You’d better fasten your seat belts. This guys’s reading *The Catcher in the Rye.* How original. We got a regular literary fucking genius over here. Everyone else put your shit books away, can’t you see we’re reading *The Catcher in the Mother-Fucking Rye.* I didn’t know you were even allowed to read that once you graduated high school. He’s probably in here trying to pick up freshmen girls or something. The little airheads who walk around with their heads up their asses because their shit don’t stink because they read the *Themes Motifs & Symbols* tab on SparkNotes for stupid, wipe-my-ass *Catcher in the Rye.* You know, whatever. Good for him. I bet he gets laid tonight while I’m naked and jackin’ it in San Diego.” Kurt chuckled to himself. “I wonder if he watches South Park. Dammit...” The man looked up from his book to see Kurt looking back. He was able to squeeze in a quick, but sincere smile before Kurt whipped his gaze away. “Oh, what a guy. Reads J. D. Salinger and offers sincere smiles to strangers. I should contact the pope and see about pushing his canonization papers through.” He looked down at his laptop again, remembering he had just closed it. Not enough time had passed from him to throw it back open againthere’s rules here. Impaired of other options, he plunged his hand in to his right front pocket and whipped out his iPhone. Nothing. No texts. No SnapChats. No Facebook updates. Kurt flipped back and forth from page to page of useless apps. One, for instance, was called Coffee Finder. With one click you can find coffee shops that are near to your current location and read their menus and reviews from other customers. “Solid download.” Kurt clicked on Coffee Finder. A map popped up with a blue dot emitting little waves to indicate his current locale. It hovered over a red dot that read *Brew Ha-Ha.* He clicked on it. An image of the facade of the building popped up. He clicked on the about tab. The location apparently used to be a furniture store in the 1950s, a grocery store through the 90s, abandoned for 10 years, and then repurposed as ‘Oshkosh’s favorite gourmet coffee establishment.’ “Gourmet, my ass. Although, I am drinking shitty coffee on historical land. Or at least I would if it would ever not be scalding.” He looked over menacingly toward his still steaming cup of French Roast. “I hate you.” He looked back at his phone and clicked on the review tab. The average: two and a half stars. “Seems about right.” He clicked on the read more button. The first review was five star. Holly J. writes: *Brew Ha-Ha is a great little whole-in-the-wall coffee shop. It offers a cozy atmosphere and really friendly service. If only the hoards of Starbucks drinkers would turn around the corner their eyes would be....*(continue reading) The review was cut off and you had to click if you wanted to read the rest of it. Kurt did not oblige. The next review down was one star. Blueballs69 writes: *This place sucks. The person behind the counter was picking his wedgy as he asked me what I wanted. When I got my coffee, it tasted like ash and burned off half my taste buds. Go to Starbucks. Brew Ha-Ha sucks....*(continue reading) “This guy gets it! Let’s see what he has to say. Click-a-roo.” Kurt clicked the button. *...balls.* “Worth it I think.” Kurt smirked slyly to himself as he rested his arm on the table staring methodically into his phone. (continued in comments....