This is the story of a boy named Jeffery Jefferson, but before you hear the story of the boy you really must hear the story of the man. And what could be said of Jeff The Man? Volumes of books could be written about Jeff The Boy and his exploits. But Jeff The Man? Well, he was a different story altogether.  Jeff The Man called people on the telephone for their money. He was all the world thought a man of his age should be. He reached expectations well.  From time to time his friends or his girlfriend would ask him, “Do you enjoy what you do?”  When asked this question he would laugh as if the answer couldn’t have mattered. Jeff The Man was not prone to such trivial ideas as “enjoying yourself” or “having fun”. Jeff The Man knew nothing of adventure, of Giants and Vampires or even love. But I am getting ahead of myself at the moment.  After done laughing at this question he would say, “To enjoy my life I must conquer it first.” His friends didn’t know what he meant by that and consequently most made the assumption that because the statement was not understood it must also be profound and deep. Not wanting to appear dim, his friends usually chose to nod knowingly or smile sensibly. They took his answer as a hint to change the subject. So subjects changed, and those around him remembered not to ask him these questions again.  After a hard day's work of making money Jeffery Jefferson loosened his tie and slid into his “not yet paid for” car. As he got in he saw a penny on the ground. It wasn't just any penny, it was a lucky penny. A Lucky Penny can change things. They have been known to set important events into motion. In 1842 Alexander Mackenzie, gave up the drink, and promised to follow God wherever he led. In a farmers field just outside of Ayrshire, Scotland he found a Lucky penny. He had the ability to recognize it. Only certain people can distinguish a lucky penny from a regular one. It has nothing to do with the shade of copper or what side it lands on when it escapes pockets and purses. Those who have the gift could recognize one with their eyes shut. When Mackenzie bent over to pick the penny up, he noticed it was next to a printed advertisement speaking about the new land of Canada. At that moment he made the decision to go to there. Helen, the secret love of his life also happened to move to Canada and within thirty one years he was Prime Minister of this new land and married to Helen, the only woman he ever loved.  Lucky pennies can change things.  Now, Jeff The Man was not the sort to believe in lucky pennies or anything like that, but as soon as his body hit the smooth vinyl seats of his bank-owned car he felt as though that penny had the answer for a question he had forgotten to ask.  “That’s stupid,” he thought out loud to himself. The burst of speech embarrassed his lips, and yet the feeling still nagged him.  When he made a decision to write it off and shut the door, he did just the opposite. He opened his door, looked around, slipped the dirty penny, into his clean pocket, and drove away as fast as he could, as though he had lost himself for a moment, and needed to go home to get himself back.  When he got home he placed the penny on the coffee table that he had named “the coffee table where nothing must ever be put, not even coffee”. Jeff’s little house was a lot like a museum. Even ordinary thing looked important, shiny appliances sat on the black and white tile of his spotless counter. His walls were filled with framed pictures of places that Jeffery had never been. His bookcase was filled with books he had never read. He never let more than two people in his house at a time, so the atmosphere was that of a museum in the winter.  Jeffery Jefferson was defined and precise; everything had its place. He tried to forget about the penny but it taunted him. Sitting boldly in that place of honor on "the coffee table where nothing must ever be put not even coffee" it could have been speaking.  “Why did you put me here if I wasn’t important?”  His sensibilities forced him to ignore the penny at first, but at exactly 7:37pm Jeffrey examined it for the first time. It looked so typical he was half angry. He half expected it to have some private message just for him. All it emblemed was a twiggy maple leaf on the front, and the queen Regina on the back.  “What a perfectly normal penny. Clearly I’m going insane,” Jeffery thought, "I must do something perfectly normal. I must do laundry or clean my study."  But The study was always in order and the laundry had already been done.  “Curse the laundry.” He thought to himself.  In the middle of his anger towards previously done chores he noticed something. The year on the coin was 1981. Jeff The Man tried to remember significant events of that year. Historical references occurred to him like the death of Terry Fox and Bob Marley, and the Pope being shot in the head. But for the life of him Jeff The Man could not remember a solitary personal memory from 1981. He would have been ten years old at the time. He could remember what he was told and what he had read about, but not one memory that he could call his own from that year.  Jeff found himself at his parent’s house. It was a three hour drive. It took him two hours to decide to go. In all this time he still had not come up with one personal memory from that year. His mother was on her knees weeding in the garden. Her cheeks were red from the sun.  “What are you doing here, Jeff?” his mom asked.  Jeff's mother was just like Jeff. She was busy, and when she wasn't busy, she was busy thinking of things that may busy her. Even in the few minutes that her son was home she had been calculating the errands that would suffer from his visit, and when she may do them later. They loved each other, but they were too used to each other, and hadn't shared a laugh or smile in years. Jeff’s mom blamed it on the lack of grandchildren, for as she would think to herself.  “Children are the ushers of joy.”  Jeff hadn't noticed at all.  “Why? Can’t I visit my parents whom I love every once in a while?”  Jeff felt that his parents hated him coming over to get something that wasn't their quality time. So he always gushed in the first few minutes of interaction, before he dropped his real reasons  "Jeff, I have never known you to drive three hours to see the parents you love in the middle of the week, without a holiday to celebrate.”  “How's Dad?”  “He's been working longer hours since he got his new job, he's always tired.”  She said it more to herself, not putting her hope in Jeff actually listening. Jeff gave both verbal and visual feedback as he nodded.  “Oh yeah.”  “So what are you here for Jeff?”  Her tone suggested that she was ok with him coming over for reasons that did not involve her quality time, and that maybe she had things to do anyway.  “Do you still have those boxes of my old grade-school stuff?”  “Yeah, they're in the basement in the storage room. Why?”  “I just need something. That’s all."  The most helpful thing that Jeff found was a stack of scrapbooks that were full of objects he’d collected and stories he had written from every year. Journal entries, drawings, pictures and report cards were also found in the mix from every year from age five to thirteen. The 1981 scrapbook did not have as much as the other years, but what was found in its pages was interesting. Jeff looked over his report card from that year and found that he had gotten A’s in social studies. Jeff remembered being horrible at social studies. There was also a picture of him and his family on a vacation at Drumheller next to a T-Rex statue. Jeff didn't even remember ever going to that town as a child.  The most interesting find was what was not there. He hadn't written any stories the whole year. Stories had been Jeff's trademark as a child. Jeff used to write a story for every person he met. He would write stories for people as birthday presents. On Christmas of 1978 he left a novel about circus bears under the tree for his mother. He was shocked to find he had not written one story in an entire year.  The one other thing in his scrapbook was a journal entry. He skimmed the page it was about his sledding accident that he had gotten into. He remembered that. In fact, he remembered making that very journal entry. It was vague but definitely a viable memory and Jeff was surprised to find he felt relieved by this discovery.  He thought about the details of what he could remember from the accident. He remembered lying down in the December snow, people gathering around him saying that everything was going to be ok. The next thing he remembered was being in a hospital room, and people trying to explain to him in dumbed-down child speech that he was paralyzed from the neck down and that he would never walk again. They explained to him how he had been in a sledding accident on Suicide Hill.  “Wait,” he thought, “I don’t remember the accident.”  Memories are tricky things because the stories that we hear, the photographs we find become a part of our reality. They become the memories we don’t really remember. And the accident was something Jeffery Jefferson never truly remembered.  They put a fence around the hill after the accident because it was deemed unsafe for children. Jeffrey himself became a cautionary tale told by anxious mothers. Some of the kids around town were mad at Jeff for getting the best hill in town closed down, but of course no one said anything because they all knew that being paralyzed from the neck down was enough punishment.  The doctors who told him that he would never walk again were the same doctors who marvelled and subtly found ways to claim the credit when each day Jeff could move a little more of his body. After just two months he was walking fine.  Jeff The Man read the journal entry, written in his mother’s tight cursive since he’d had no use of limbs at the time. The last line disturbed him. It said  “There’s something on the tip of my mind I’m trying to stretch to remember. Something, someone, some place maybe? But it scares me and I’d rather not think about it. I’d rather forget.”  “Odd. Very odd.” Jeff thought to himself. “Mom!” Jeff yelled looking for his mother throughout the house.  She threw down her laundry pile, “Yes Jeff What is it?”  “When did we ever go to Drumheller?”   Jeff was intrigued up to his knees. The boring life he built took a back seat to the endless possibilities of his no longer dormant imagination. He needed to know more. After he told his mother the story so far, she suggested what was his most solitary, pervasive thought; to talk to Britt. She was his best friend when they were younger. If anyone knew what had happened that year, that day on Suicide Hill it would be her. The last he heard of her was that she was teaching at a small prairie Bible College that would only be a little out of the way to visit.  When he got to her college he parked in an already full parking lot. Gaggles of small groups were making their way toward an auditorium building so Jeff followed suit.  He asked a couple walking, “Do you know who Brittany Dawn is?”  "Professor Dawn? Yeah, she’ll be at The Tab tonight,” the stranger said, pointing to the large auditorium. “Just follow the crowd.”  The college was first instated during the depression. The dilapidated buildings and 70's rugs in every building spoke of another rural prairie college trying to make it in an urbanized-education world. Inside The Tab there was a Missionary Conference going on. The speakers had not yet begun to speak and small groups of students crowded around different mission group’s tables. The pictures on their banners showed the often toothless people groups of the world. Some banners showed pictures of bearded men half smiling for the camera. The words “Reaching Muslims For Jesus” emblazoned underneath it.  He saw Brit in the crowd talking to a group of students. They were laughing, as she told some story that the listeners seemed to appreciate. When you’re close to someone for a long time, especially in childhood and teenage years, there are certain parts of their face that can only be seen by those closest to them. Even when they’re old and wrinkled and their appearance only seems a shadow of their younger self. The secrets of the face are always ready to be revealed to the dearest of friends. Those secrets never get old, they never leave you, they stay until the day you die. Brit’s secret was in her smile.  Jeffrey walked up to her and tried to introduce the new him to the new her. Jeff hated seeing old friends. Sometimes he would change sidewalks or duck into stores at the mall when he was home just to avoid the inevitable catch-up conversation. He was at a loss of words for what to say. For this conversation with Britt he decided to start things off with a smile and a chuckle. He approached her from behind.  “Hello, Professor Dawn.”  She stared at him blankly and let his name slowly leave her mouth, as she tried not to show that she knew who he was before his first word was fully enunciated.  “Jeffery Jefferson.”  “Hey.”  By this time the students Brittany was talking to were making new conversations and had gone off in different directions. It was just the two of them. There was a moment of visual readjustment that seemed to extend much longer than it was. They stared, looking at the difference between their memories and reality. Some old friends take time to digest and she was still mad at him for not coming to her wedding.  She finally spoke. “So, what are you doing here, Jeff? I didn't know you were the missionary type.”  “No, I'm not... not yet. I was in the area and thought you might want to talk, catch up on things”  “Oh, well then... when you put it like that let’s talk. Job?”  “Business.”  “Wife?”  “Girlfriend.”  "Kids?”  "Fish.”  “Hobbies?”  “Tennis and I just started boxing.”  “Well, that just about covers everything,” she patted his shoulder, “I’m glad we could catch up.”  She brought her mouth closer to Jeff’s ear and in a hushed voice said, “Listen, Jeff. I’m married now and I have two beautiful children and I’m really, really not interested in past boyfriends who’ve suddenly realized what they’ve missed, coming back to see me under the false curtain of sentimentality.”  Jeff and Brittany Dawn had dated in high school. They had been best friends for so long that dating seemed like a good idea. It ended badly on the night of their grade twelve graduation. The next day Britt went off to work at a camp for the summer and Jeff was off to college before she came back home. Besides some Christmas and Thanksgiving run-ins, they never saw each other again; until this moment. And after a minute and a half she was already walking away.  “I came here to ask about that day at Suicide Hill.”  Brittany turned around white as a ghost, piercing Jeff with her eyes.  “I knew it. I KNEW IT!” She took her first steps towards Jeff. “There’s a coffeehouse called The Oasis on campus. When this is over, be there.”  Jeff sat at his small coffeehouse table going over all the possible conversation scenarios. His hands clenched his knees like a scared kid at the carnival. He was nervous to hear what Professor Dawn might tell him, and nervous at what she had already said.  Brittany came in, direct and purposeful. She was in his face before her bottom hit her puffy vinyl seat and both purposely and directly asked her first question.  “What do you remember?”  “Nothing. I remember going to the hill and waking up paralyzed. People told me I fell. I guess I fell down the hill, off my sled, on the rocks.”  “I’m going to tell you what happened, Jeff. I'm going to tell you because it doesn't matter anymore. I'm going to tell you because I should have told you then.”  She cleared her throat and threw her eyes to the top left side of her head, like she always did when she was trying to think of how to say something. She finally put her hands on her seat, sadly pouted and blurted it out.  “A year before the accident, you took me to the hill raving about earthquakes and voices. I didn’t know whether to take you seriously or not because you loved to tell stories. When we had given up looking for any signs of your story being true the earth shook and we ran. I was always a better runner than you.”  This excited Jeff The Man that he lost track of the saliva in his mouth and spit as he spoke. “The earthquake. Yes... I remember the first one but it seemed so unreal. I think I told myself it was a dream.”  "It was no dream. I was ahead of you, running to get away. When the shaking and the noise stopped I turned around and you were gone. The ground looked undisturbed, even our footprints were gone. I thrashed through the snow looking for you. I ran myself rasp yelling your name and you didn’t answer. When I couldn’t find you I ran to your house and told your parents. We ran out to look for you and there you were on the road, unobjectionably unaffected, walking home. I asked you what happened; about the earthquake; if you were hurt. You told us there was no earthquake and acted like I didn’t know what I was talking about. You made me look dumb and sound like a liar. I hated you in that moment, ”  “I’m sorry, I don’t even remember that.”  “You were so different after that day. I could never put my finger on what it was exactly. You did and said everything you were expected to do and say, but there were little things.” She stopped to think for a moment, “Like for instance do you remember our version of blood brothers?”  Jeff’s face lit up, “Yeah, fart family.”  “When we would hold in our farts to release at the same time.” “We would put our bums together and...”  “FART ON EACH OTHER!” they chimed together.  The coffee shop patrons within earshot who were now lapsed in their own conversation looked at the two thirty-something’s that found old fart stories fascinating.  “That was so gross.” Brittany commented, her face betraying her secret self as she allowed her stern demeanor to melt into a momentary smile.  “Yeah, I know,” Jeff added, “so gross.”  The smile faded and Brittany’s face resumed its recent solemnity. She continued, “Well, you stopped doing fart family with me. It was like your humorous side was extracted from you and replaced by someone with no personality. I had theories that you were kidnapped by aliens or possessed or somehow got all the fun knocked out of you. I examined you, tried to exorcise you, and read every book I could find on unexplained events. But after a while I just chalked it up to losing a friend.”  “Wow.”  “Jeff, you did not make me laugh for one whole year. I waited; I yearned for you to say something to me that wasn’t domestic, tame, and predictable.”  “For a year? Then what happened?” “The day of the accident when we took you to the hospital, you woke up and the doctor told you that you were paralyzed. I walked up to you to hug you, mourning over your loss with tears running down my face. You said, ‘High five,’ and stared at your arm and added jokingly, ‘Oh yeah. I’m paralyzed.’ When your hand wouldn’t move, you said you would move it with the force. I couldn’t stop laughing and you were laughing too and it was really funny to watch you laugh because you only had motion in your neck and your head would bob up and down. I cried and cried but I couldn’t stop laughing either. I was all tears and laughter. I knew I had you back. The sparkle was back in your eyes. That’s actually the day I fell in love with you.”  “Oh, I, it’s just... I don’t remember that year at all Britt. It’s completely erased from my mind.”  “No one’s called me Britt in years. Hey eyes welled up with tears. She blinked away their escape, and quickly changed the subject. “After you got out of the hospital and were back in school, you kept writing 1981 on all your assignments. Miss Cruthers would correct it at the top of your sheet to 1982 because it was February, and everyone was still making date mistakes. But you did it until the end of March. When Miss Cruthers corrected you out loud you argued with her until you got detention. After that you just wrote 1982. I knew something was up, but I was just so happy to have my best friend back. I didn’t want to ruin it. I never said a word. I was so afraid to lose you again and I did anyways. I held on too tight.”  “Brittany, why can’t I remember 1981?”  “I can’t answer that for you.”  “Why was I acting so out of place? What happened to me? What happened to my memory?”  “I can only show you one piece of the puzzle Jeff. I have a piece; your parents may have another. I have the sneaking suspicion that some people we don’t know, or don’t remember have bigger pieces, but this puzzle is bigger than me or you. Don’t expect to find all your answers here.”  Jeff The Man had a long drive to think about everything that had happened and all that he had learned, but he still felt like he was at the beginning of a race.  When he got into the city he went to his favourite Thai restaurant. He ordered the chicken and black bean sauce. Jeff The Man was a man of order. The chicken and black bean sauce was the only thing he would order. His friends would ask him to try something different when they went out but he would always respond, “If I find something I like, why would I change it?”  As Jeff The Man ate his chicken with black bean sauce a man came into the restaurant. When Jeff’s gaze met the stranger’s, their eye’s locked. The stranger had a great big smile and Jeff thought he recognized something in his eyes. The strange man was mumbling things under his breath as he walked towards Jeff The Man. He was excited, as if to see a long lost friend. Jeff tried to ignore this stranger, but the stranger became increasingly unabashed in his exuberance. Smiling and chuckling to himself.  Jeff was feeling, annoyed and delayed, even with nothing to do and nowhere to go. The man’s certainty in his eyes, his obvious kindness, and the honest and sincere faith that he knew the man he was staring down was the only thing that saved the poor stranger from a harshly spoken demand for a detached gaze.  Instead the man received the timid question, “Do I know you?”  The man smiled, “Jeffery, son of Jefferson. It’s me, Wiel, son of Mavid. I am in a bit of a disguise at the moment. I thought that you might not recognize me. It is so good to see you, I have not forgotten the vow of blood, and your promise to me the last time that we spoke."  Jeff was lost for words. He couldn’t think of one thing to say to this strange man staring at him with a wave of simpers, still spouting off great things; strange things under his breath.  “Why do you look at me like a stranger?” Wiel asked.  Today was a day that had pushed Jeff’s normally shallow pool of patience to its limit. This particular moment had breached the dam and he gripped the metal edges of the table as though bracing himself for his words.  “Whoever you are, Mr. Wiel, I do not know you and I have never known you, and you don’t know me. I don’t want to embarrass you, but I think you are looking for someone else.”  “Don’t know me? How could this be? Is your name Jeffery, son of Jefferson?”  "My name is Jeffery Jefferson, yes. But my Dads name is Tom. I don’t know how you know my name but…"  Wiel interrupted him, his polite voice now taking on an urgent tone. “Listen now, I am going to say a word, you tell me if it makes you think of anything or reminds you of a memory.”  Jeff felt overworked and short changed on this information exchange. His head was filling with grown-up thoughts like, “I have the right to eat a meal in peace” “Look at the time I’m wasting talking to this old man,” and “There’s no point to this conversation so I should end it.”  But Jeff inhaled stiffly through his nose and decided to play along, just to get the old stranger off his back. Also he hated confrontation.  “Ok, we'll do this quickly but then I have to finish my meal and go.”  “Bosreal?” “Doesn’t ring a bell.”  “The Avenue of Giants?”  “No, sorry.”  “The Hag?” Wiel raised his voice with each question childishly hoping that this action might help Jeff's memory.  “Hmmm, I’m going to give that a…no. I really think you should..."  “Princess Darwood?”  There. Jeff could not put his finger on it but he knew that name. It was like hearing a song that you swear you’ve heard before, but can’t sing along to any of the words. Wiel found his answer in Jeff’s’ eyes.  “My goodness, Son. You don’t even know who you are.”  “Princess..? Who is she?”  “You don’t even know who you are!”  “I know who I am; my name is Jeffery David Jefferson. I live on St. Sinclair Street West. I have a great job, a good girlfriend, a nice life. But tell me now... who is that girl, that Pincess you were talking about?”  Wiel showed his first signs of hostility and grabbed Jeff by the shoulders and whisper-yelled under his pressed breath.  “Listen, you….. don’t…. know…who…you…are.”  Then the kindness returned to his eyes and he let Jeff The Man go.  “But I knew you wouldn’t forget her completely. You couldn’t.”  "You don't know me." Jeff found he felt ashamed to look at Wiel when he said this.  “I don’t know who you are? The problem does not lay with me but in yourself, Son of Jefferson. Can you tell me why freckles make the shape of the Big Dipper on your left arm, why you have dreams of places you’ve never seen, and why hearing the name of The Princess Darwood again tears you up on the inside? No. You cannot. But I can tell you. You have forgotten who you are, Son of Jefferson,” Wiel spoke softly now, “I apologize for your confusion. All will be explained to you, of course.”  “What will be explained to me?”  “Where you were twenty nine years ago.


There's a storm outside. Most people have come back from work or school and have been forced into their homes by the heavy wind and rain. Once all doors and windows have been closed, the storm becomes nothing more than a quiet, but constant reminder that the outside is off limits, similar to how TV static tells you that you can't watch TV, the static-esque sound of rain hitting rooves and windows tells you that you can't go outside. For some, staying inside during a storm is lonely and boring, for others, it's relaxing, but for the people in this house, the faint sound of wind and rain will prove strangely therapeutic. In this house is a couple, a man and a woman in their mid twenties that have been dating for around a year. Both of them are thin and around the same height and both are very young looking, oftentimes being mistaken for teenagers instead of adults. The boy is called Liam and the girl is called Faye. As he's done many times before, Liam has come over to stay at Faye's house. Faye and Liam are sitting on the sofa watching television when Fay suddenly grabs Liam by his shoulders and lies him down, resting his head on her lap. He doesn't put up a fight, but is visibly confused. After around a minute of silence, he speaks. Liam: Is there a reason we're doing this? Faye: What's wrong? Plenty of couples do this. Liam: Yeah, but - whatever. Faye smiles while gently stroking Liam's hair. Faye: C'mon, let's talk. Liam: About what? Faye: About your feelings. Liam: Gross. Faye: Come on, I can tell you've been feeling down lately. I don't want you hiding things from me. Liam: So, this is what this is? A therapy session? Faye: Yep, pretty much. Liam: Well, I'm fine. I don't need therapy. Faye: Then why aren't you stopping me? Liam: ... Liam turns to his side, facing away from Faye but still resting his head on her lap. He starts to appear more relaxed. Faye: It's nice, isn't it? You should do this for me sometime. Liam (smiling): Yeah. I should. Liam: You know, you don't have to be my 'therapist'. Faye: Why not? I'm your girlfriend, aren't I? Liam: Yeah, you're my girlfriend, not my nurse. Faye: And what kind of girlfriend would I be if I didn't do a bit of nursing for my boyfriend? Liam: That sounded weird. Faye (laughing): Yeah. The two fall silent for a moment. Faye: You still haven't started talking yet. Liam: I told you, I'm fine. Faye: Then why are you so afraid of telling me how you feel? Liam: ... Liam: You really want me to talk to you about my feelings? Faye: Yes. Liam: And you want me to be honest? Faye: Yes. After a short pause, Liam lets out a sigh and begins speaking. He continues to face away from Faye. Liam: I don't know. I guess I've just been feeling like I don't deserve this. Faye: Don't deserve what? Liam: This. You. Being in a relationship with an amazing girl like you. Faye: You're amazing too, you know. Liam: No I'm not. Name one thing I'm good at. Faye: You're good at your job. Liam: I hate my job. Faye: Then why don't you quit? Liam: Because - (quietly) because it's the only thing I'm good at. Faye (laughing): See? You're good at stuff, too. Liam: But being a decent chef doesn't make me an amazing person. It's the only thing I'm good at. Faye: No it isn't. Liam: Really? What else am I good at, then? Faye: You're good at talking... Liam: Talking. Faye: You're good at sex... Liam: ... Faye: You're good at being my boyfriend. Liam: Stop being cheesy. Faye: I'm telling the truth! Liam: You're being cheesy. Faye (smiling): And what's so bad about that? Faye: Besides, you don't need to be good at stuff to be special to me. The conversation falls silent for a few seconds. Liam: It's just - there's loads of men out there that have what I have and more, and I'm sure most of them would be interested in you. Faye: And there's loads of girls out there that have what I have and more who would be interested in you, what's stopping one of them from taking you away from me? Liam: ... Liam: Because you're... Faye: Amazing? Faye: I'm amazing to you, Liam, and you're amazing to me. That's why we're together. Liam: I know that, but... Liam: Look, I never said these feelings were rational. Faye: Then why pay attention to them? Liam: I can't just ignore them. Anyway, what would you know, you're a- Faye: A girl? Liam: That's not what I meant. Faye: You're not wrong. No one ever tells me to 'woman up' when I'm vulnerable. Faye: I don't know what it's like being raised to hide my feelings, but I do know there's no harm in opening up, whether you're a man or a woman. Faye collects her thoughts before speaking again. Faye: I know you don't like it when I talk about my exes, but do you know why you stayed and they didn't? Liam: Why? Faye: Because of this. Liam: This? Faye: This. Trusting yourself to be vulnerable around me, and letting me be vulnerable around you. Sharing such an intimate part of yourself with me that no one else can offer. Faye: Jobs, skills, looks, money, they're all superficial. You're my boyfriend, and that's all you need to be special to me. Liam turns to face Faye again. Liam: Even if someone better comes along? Faye: You're my boyfriend. No one's better. Liam (smiling): You're being cheesy again. Faye (smiling): I know. Liam turns to face away from Faye again, this time, with a smile on his face. Faye continues to stroke his hair. Liam: I love you, Faye. Faye: I love you too.


Alfred wakes up with a slight smile on his face. It has been the first time in years that he has truly slept well. No back pain, no joints on fire. The mattress is softer than any other he has ever had. He opens the curtains and looks outside. The dark wood that almost every house is made of stands in stark contrast to the bright sunlight that is illuminating the island. A small group of people exit the church, empty buckets in their hand as they each go to their own home. They all wear the same black scarf they were wearing when the ship arrived yesterday. Amelia’s head appears through the door. “Ah, I was wondering if you were awake yet. Breakfast is ready. Jared and Finn are already downstairs.” Alfred drops his smile. “I’ll come.” The dinner table has a large assortment of all kinds of sweet and salty food. There are bowls of different fish pastes and a basket with three types of bread. “Alfred! Come join us. My Amelia has made us a lovely morning meal.” Jared throws up his arms when the old man enters the room. Finn looks up. “Good morning, sir.”  Alfred finishes his meal in 10 minutes. “Listen, brat. I’m going back to shore. You can either come with me now or stay here.” “Oh, I was hoping to return with you after a couple of days.” “Now or never.” Alfred stands up. “Now, I guess.” Jared stands up too. “Surely you aren’t leaving us so soon.” “I am.” Alfred leaves the room, Finn behind him. “Leaving already?” Amelia is standing in the hallway, a big smile on her face. He opens the front door. Cold rain hits him in the face. Wind blows the door wide open. He closes it again, adjusts his raincoat and goes back outside. “Sir, are you sure about this?” Finn raises his voice to shout over the wind. “Now or never!” Alfred bends over slightly to balance out his weight against the wind. The rain flows off his jacket and into his boots. He looks behind his back and sees Finn struggling to move forward. He sighs and takes the boy’s hand. The planks of the docks groan and creak. Gigantic waves wash over the quay. Augusta rocks up and down like a wild horse, scraping against the pole she’s attached to. “I don’t think we can sail in this weather. “ Finn leans on his toes to reach Alfred’s ear. “What?” “I said, I don’t think we can sail in this weather!” The old man grumbles and turns back. With the wind in their backs, they stumble over the streets back to the mansion, trying to not trip as the gusts push them along.  “I was worried you were seriously going to leave in this weather,” Jared says as Alfred and Finn dry their hair with a towel. “Guess we’re going to stay a little longer.” Finn hands the towel to Amelia. “I’ll prepare your rooms again.” She walks upstairs. Alfred stays indoors for the rest of the day. The weather remains the same throughout the day. Only late in the evening does it seem to calm down. He looks up from a book he found in the library of the mansion.


[Before the story, I need to say that I’m in no way a professional writer in fact I’m only 14. I had this idea for a story for a while now and I’m just getting around to writing it. Hope to get some feedback and maybe I’ll make some more stories in the future!] 6/6/2025, 9:02 pm: “Today we sent the first ever humans to Mars in hopes of creating a base of operations there. They are projected to land in T minus 4 hours. Things have gone smooth so far. I’ll keep you updated.” 17/6/2025, 7:57 pm: “It’s been about 11 days since the launch, sorry about not responding to you’re calls. Today something bad happened. We lost all contact to the Mars team. And to make matters worse, the conflicts between China and Russia seem to be getting worse so we may not be able to send any other people up there. Hopefully we get something back from them.” 6/6/2125, 6:15 am: “Daddy said we have to go to some space place today. Something about a project Grandpa worked on for his entire life. I don’t know what to expect! I’ll write back here after we’re done.” 6/6/2125, 8:38 pm: “We’re done at the space thing and apparently it was the 100th anniversary of the 1st people to go to another planet! They said they still haven’t sent anything up there to this day. I wonder why?” 19/5/2150, 6:00 am: “Today I have a job interview. I’m applying at the NASA Center for Inter-terrestrial Human Life. I’m kinda nervous but I think I got this. You know what... I think this is the same place I went with my dad when I was only 8. Wow the time flies.” 22/5/2150, 5:45 pm: “I just got a letter in the mail and I got the job! I bet grandpa would be so proud.” 24/5/2150, 9:32 pm: “Today was my first day at work. Everyone knew me! My grandpa was a legend here. He dedicated his whole life to this. Sadly, however, after his work they stopped with Mars. Still don’t know why. When I asked, all they said was... “no contact....” I’m very confused.” 31/11/2153, 4:53 am: “I was just awoken to a loud rumbling. What could it be? I looked outside and saw nothing. It’s probably just a tremor or something but I live too far from the fault line. I have a bad feeling about this.” Same day, 5:10 am: “I felt another rumbling. Same thing. Looked outside, saw nothing. Wait.... I think I just saw a light outside.” 5:13 am: “There is another rumble and more light. What the hell could it be? I’ve got to go out there and see for myself.” 5:22 am: “WHAT THE HELL IS THAT? LOOKS LIKE A MASSIVE SPACE SHIP IN THE SKY!!” 5:25 am: “It keeps saying “contact us! contact us!” over and over again! What could it want?!” 5:31 am: “It just shot what seems to be a missile. I think this is it. If you are reading this, run.” The End.


“One day, men will no longer have nipples.” “Why do you say that?” “Because male nipples are not evolutionarily necessary.” The hypothesis was put forth by Michael for the benefit of Jake, his friend. Dressed in immaculate suits, they were sitting in Jake's BMW drinking a coffee in the parking lot of a midtown coffee shop. They had been talking about sex and women, young specimens of which they were observing walking in and out of the coffee shop. It was a hot summer afternoon, and the ladies dressed lightly. Michael continued to expound his views on the sexual body: “I don’t understand the appeal of sex. It’s a sweaty, smelly act. The sexual organs are repulsive. Nothing shows that humans are animals better than sex. And the way two people become delusional about each other when they fall in love! I can’t stand that; the day before they were just some average Joe and some dumb cow, and the day after their magical conversion to love they are suddenly the king and queen of the universe. Talk about delusion.” “That’s your subjective view,” said Jake, “you can feel whatever way you want about it, but the fact is, sexuality is what potentiates the species. Without it, we go extinct in fifty years. So, the value of sex and of love is objective.” They were on a coffee break from work. They both worked in the downtown high rise of Stanford, an accounting giant. They were both single and in their mid-twenties, so of course they would talk about women. Jake was known to be a player. He changed girlfriends often; he dressed meticulously; he went on expensive vacations. In short, he spent the bulk of his energy and earnings in attracting women. Many women, not one. Michael was nothing of the sort. He had two sisters, so maybe that’s why women didn’t exert on him that charm that springs from mystery. How exactly was his relationship with his sisters, no one knew, but he certainly gave out a mild misogynistic vibe. At any rate, Michael did not try to impress women, though he could have. He had the same high-earning job as Jake, and he was as good in the looks department too. Jake opened to Michael about his romantic conquests because Michael didn’t get envious. Jake, to demonstrate his emotional sovereignty, told his stories with ironic detachment – he would describe victories as though they were not a big deal, and he would describe breakups as planned or at least expected on his part. Really, Jake’s stories were spiked with quite a dose of pessimism, and not much passion. And really, Jake also made up a lot of stuff, both to add to the bitter note, which Michael relished, and to embellish his accomplishments. They were corporate workers after all; embellishing one’s resume was a matter of common practice and unanimous suspension of disbelief. All things considered, it was hard to figure out whether Michael or Jake disliked women more. Michael however went more radical. He had been a regular on an incel forum on the deep web. That weekend, he was to stumble upon a post by a user named The\_Archangel that would change his life. At first the post read like another rant about the sexual degeneracy of the West. It lamented the devastating effects of the sexual revolution and pined for the days when a man had to marry to get access to a woman’s body. The post differed from the usual fare of the forum in that it ended in a big take on what religious tradition had to say on the question of sexual morality. It talked about how every human body is a temple of God, not to be defiled by carnal passion. It talked about Saint Augustine’s struggle with lust. It mentioned the saint’s famous Libertine’s Prayer: “Lord, make me chaste, but not yet.” Michael had never read a single piece of theology and was surprised that a major saint, a Doctor of the Church, would be a self-admitted former sex addict. Furthermore, he also found that he had not a few points of agreement with the religious revulsions towards sex, at least as they were described in the post. He downloaded Saint Augustine’s confessions and several other books of theology The\_Archangel recommended in his post. He searched for his references to see if they are true. The quoted text was indeed found, but he had to read around it to understand the context. On that first night he spent some twenty minutes on reading Confessions. “What a strange world!” thought Michael, “These old school dudes held some ridiculous beliefs, but in their own twisted way they were spot on with so many social issues. The way they talk about sexuality, it’s as though they had a Tinder account!” But that was not the end of it. Over the next week, he would read a little every night, and that little would expand gradually until he started reading theology every day, in the office and at home. He was addicted and curious to understand the worldview, though he often got bored and impatient with the whole God talk. His feelings about religious ideas of sex grew ambivalent. He appreciated the need for a strict moral code. He recalled watching his mother and his older sister live through romantic catastrophes, and he thought that in a more conservative world these things would never have happened. They would have been spared the emotional devastation they suffered. On the other hand, he was really bothered by what he saw as a tyrannical encroachment on individual freedoms, by the idea that the church should get involved into someone’s personal life. He was also bothered by how big of a deal they made of sex and everything else, and all those threats and fears of divine judgment and perdition. The more he read, the more his ambivalence turned into anger. “These religious people are a joke!” Michael said to Jake at another coffee run, “The hypocrisy is staggering! People hook up because they have uncontrollable animal urges and people get married to establish a social standing. That’s it, for the most part. Yet you talk to a priest and all he talks about is sin and punishment, totally disconnected from the real world.” “Yeah,” agreed Jake, “I don’t see how my relationship with this new girl Deborah has anything to do with holiness. Or heaven, or hell.” Michael started getting into arguments with The\_Archangel on new forum posts. Michael’s stance was that religion was not the answer to modern licentiousness because it could only cure it with deranged magical beliefs, which are not worth it, while his counterpart insisted that Michael is misinterpreting theological context because he was not properly trained in the discipline. “What a moron,” thought Michael, “I don’t even know who this Archangel dude is. For all I know, he could be a fourteen-year-old beating it off five times a day in his mom’s basement, and here I am arguing with him and upsetting my life. He clearly doesn’t know the first thing about how the sex game works.” His last polemic with Archangel was on Friday, throughout the workday, and it upset him to a point where he needed to blow off some steam. Jake suggested they hit a nightclub that night. “You need to get off Reddit, bro, or whatever it is you are on,” said Jake, “and join the real world. You come with me and we will do some hands-on research on the game. How’s that?” Michael normally hated nightclubs, but he went that night out of spite for The\_Archangel. He wanted to go out and observe what he knew happens in every nightclub: a general, drunken, and open struggle for mating partners. A Darwinian battle of all against all. Sometime past midnight Jake and Michael were quite drunk and standing at a bar of a packed nightclub. Jake worked restlessly to attract women to come and talk to them. His efforts eventually yielded two pretty girls, both slim and tall, one wearing shorts and another one a short white dress. The first talked to Jake, the second with Michael. “You look a little grumpy,” the girl said to Michael. Her name was Monica. Michael saw that the girl was beautiful. She had long legs and a curvy body, and her long hair spilled in rich curls down her smooth, shiny dress. Her smile made her face gleam, especially her eyes and her mouth. She smelled so nice, too. In response to her comment, Michael forced a smile, which wasn’t so hard. They introduced themselves to each other and did a few rounds of small talk. When Monica asked about what he thought about the club, Michael said that it was okay, but he didn’t really like clubs. He said that clubs are for people without social skills; they keep them too dark and too loud to communicate, so the only thing left to do is to get wasted and whore out. Monica said that he was maybe being too harsh, but Michael pushed on. He picked out people in the crowd and mocked their drunken, horny attics. Monica was amused. She said she didn’t go out often but liked coming out to clubs to dance with her girlfriends. “And I like the attention from the boys, but only if I like them,” she said, “But I think your opinions are funny. I can see where you are coming from. You are right, there is so many guys in here who are ridiculous! I can tell you some crazy stories about how they hit on me.” “There is no harm in that, I guess. I mean, you liking to have fun,” said Michael. “If I could meet a girl like you every time I go to a club, I would definitely come out more often, too.” Michael bought another round of drinks, then another. They danced together. They forgot where Jake went with the other girl. By two o’clock, they were making out in the washroom. By three o’clock they were in Michael’s downtown condo. The sex was amazing. All that anger built up on the online forum, all the resentment and rebellion Michael felt against Church fathers and all prigs in general, all of that became pent-up energy that he released while making love to Monica. He felt like a rebel, like he was giving a big-middle finger to all of them. And he felt like Monica was the only one who understood his feelings, the only one on his side against an unfeeling, idiotic world. He had never felt like that before.


I woke up long before morning arrived. Or perhaps I didn’t sleep. I was excited like a kid the night before their first school trip. Climbing out of my bed, I heard the soft breathing of Tobias. His eyes were closed and he had rolled himself into the blanket like a log. If I had a gun or a knife, could’ve I ended his life there? I shrugged off the idea, chiding myself. The Calamity must have put out protections of some sort. Maybe a glyph, a spell-code scribbled on the frame of his bed. There’s no way he’d leave himself in a vulnerable state. But that hadn’t been my first thought. I sneaked out of the room, and stepped into the hotel’s lobby. A new face greeted me behind the reception, a young man. I passed by the guards in the front, lingering a bit while I observed them. Their faces stoic and refusing to meet my eyes. Were they Hunters in disguise? The roads were empty. It was the sweet spot in the early morning where the light from the lamp posts had been turned off but the sun hadn’t climbed out of their horizon bed. A wind brushed past me and I zipped up my jacket. The sound of my boots crunched against the pavement in a rhythmic pattern. I looked at the tall looming buildings, wondering if there were anyone keeping an eye on me. The Hunters had kept watch on me in Irkutsk. They’ve even grown bold, sending Altan into the fray even though I knew of him, hard set that I won’t rat them out. *You won’t. Because we know how much you despise the situation you’re in.* Altan had said it like a fact, *they* knew me better than myself. *Your greedy smile from before revealed your true self.* Same with Tobias, pushing and using me like a pawn in his game. The clouded sky was still dull and groggy from the lack of light. The sun was slow to wake up. I raised my hand, pointing upwards to the heavens, and focused on the sensation in the forest, of the image of Rosalyn. The first syllable was *Gryal*. My lips continued without my brain’s instructions, finishing the invocation. And the surge of magic passed through me, up my hands and exploding into the sky. And the city stirred. Heads popped out from open windows, watching the firework in disbelief. Dogs barked in panic. People hurried out of their homes in their pyjamas. They all watched the fireworks with open mouths. I hurried back, hiding in the crowd’s confusion. My heart beat hard and the grin on my face refused to leave.  \*\*\*  The hotel’s guests had turned into a mob, bombarding the young receptionist with questions, asking if the city’s being attacked, if it’s a prank. The guards stood next to the receptionist, trying their best to answer the questions and to calm down the mob. Sitting on one of the couches in the lobby was Tobias, observing the situation from a distance. He noticed me and signaled me to come to him. I ignored his call and headed to our room, a sense of satisfaction flooded through me when I passed him and his face dropped in shock. He got up from the couch and walked quickly to catch up to me. “Did you cause the ruckus?” Tobias asked. “Rosalyn named it well,” I said. “It really grabs one's attention.” “Aren’t you afraid that it will attract the Hunters?” he continued. “What’s there to be afraid of, you can handle them, can’t you?” His words faltered and we entered our room. This side of me was new to him and he wasn’t sure how to deal with it. Frankly, I wasn’t sure how to deal with it myself. “What happened to staying undercover?” he asked, standing with his back to the door. I plopped down on my bed and pulled off my boots. “I’ve given it some thought and don’t think it’s necessary. If the Hunters wanted to harm us, they would’ve done it already.” “How do you know?” I stared up at his steel-grey eyes. “Why should I tell you?” The surrs from the angry mob by the reception prickled the floor. The Calamity folded his hands across his chest, his face deep in thought. “Let’s set things straight,” I said. “You have power over me due to the magic addiction. I’ve accepted it, I won’t be able to run away because I want to learn. I need to learn. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t have power over you.” “Oh?” Tobias’ voice sounded mocking. “And what do you have?” “Knowledge. I know about the Hunters, of Rosalyn Darmitage, of the modern world. How many people possess all three?” I don’t know why, but I had the gall to pick up my phone and played with it, not even giving The Calamity my full attention. Confidence poured out of me. “Let’s set the bar straight,” I continued. “You are not my master. We’re trade partners who want things from each other. We’re making an exchange here, you teach me magic, how to channel Rosalyn’s memories into spells and I’ll continue to be your guide and aid you against the Hunters. I won’t care about the lives you take, or the world conquest you probably have in the back of your mind. If you can’t agree, I’ll leave. In the end, I’ll succumb to the cravings and crawl back to you, but not before I’ve exhausted all my options, including asking for help from the Hunters and spilling everything I know about the Darmitage and about you.” “I can detain you,” he said. “Put you in a hypnotic daze and have you spill out all that information.” “Perhaps,” I said. “But you haven’t, I wonder why. Might there be a weakness in that spell you used on that lady receptionist? You had the opportunities to do so when you put me to sleep after killing the Hunters.” I looked up from my screen. Cracks had formed in his composure. His eyes ran around the room, searching for solution. For once, I was the one in power. “What happened to you?” he asked. My lips twisted upwards, into a manic grin, like the one he’d done yesterday in the car. “I figured things out.” I reached out my hand. “So what do you say?” His face said it all. Lips thinned into a single line, nose flared, the middle of his brow scrunched together. But he reached out a hand and shook it. He forced out a smile and said in a voice dripped in venom: “Let’s learn some magic, shall we?” “Let’s.” I shook his hand. With my other hand, I clicked on ‘stop recording’ on my phone and put it in my pocket, wondering what Altan would say if I showed him the footage.


The Sea “Have you found yourself yet?” “No. But that's okay. Who I am isn’t concrete, it never was.” I stood up the hills of York, looking out upon the rolling fields and grass covering the world below my heels. A farm off in the distance puffed smoke like an old pipe left in a man's mouth. The ends of my jacket fluttered off into the winds, my eyes not caring I stared back off into the grassy sea. “Then what was the point of all that sailing? Every week you spent far from the shores out beyond the thin white line that closes off all that I can see?” “Self discovery. I never found who I am but I discovered there was something there to begin with. I stared into the largest mirror on the planet and guess who stared back? None other than me.” his clothes were dirty. Covered in filth and mud from working in the quiet pastures and fields sowing whatever he could to give back to his mother in that quiet farm, off in the distance that puffed smoke like a pipe left in a man's mouth. “Was it beautiful out there, father?” “It was as if I was staring into an endless mine of lapis. A glistening and glimmering sea filled with adventure and possibility. But adventure gets boring. Endless running and seeing new but old places. The best parts were the silent times. The times where there was nothing to do but sit and stare out among the waters and bask in the infinite expanse of nothing. The ocean is a beautiful wasteland.” I could smell it now. The salt on the air, water lapping at my feet as I let them dangle off the side, the wind carrying salt and sand off into its home once more. But I am here, standing very much on the shore, watching the sea of green waves ripple like the ocean tides, watching the clouds float past a farm in the distance that puffed out smoke like a pipe left in a man’s mouth. “What came of your father?” “He had come with me, out to seek himself like we all do. Out to learn what he is. I remember how he would laugh at my staring at my reflection in the waves, how he would teach me to fish over the side of the boat, how he would tell stories from his past to me as we laughed together. And finally after all that he lay under the mast and looked up at the clouds overhead. He asked me to bring him his pipe and I fetched it for him. He lit it up and said to me: “I have found who I am. And what I am. Out here, amidst the mystery and majesty, amidst this grand body of water we call a sea, I found what I was looking for all this time. And that thing was me.” He lay his eyes to rest, and as he drew his last breath, the pipe puffed out smoke as it was left in a man’s mouth.” Sorry if the formatting is a little rough, still getting used to writing.


Dr. Renault couldn’t help feeling the excitation of discovery in this moment. The most monumental discovery of the Coronal Satellite-station was this, the thing which it seems will inevitably destroy the multi quadrillion dollar project. It wasn’t the craft’s remarkable system of salvaging energy from the star it orbited so close to. As it passed through the corona, the heat was far too intense to try to harvest energy from, as such it drew induction from the star’s turbulent magnetic fields themselves. The material science and advanced plasma shielding used had takes decades to develop. The device shot through the solar system on an elliptical orbit, only briefly passing through the corona close enough to take its measurements. Those measurements themselves were an amazing feat. The most advanced array of electromagnetic fluctuation detectors ever built, with the intention of mapping solar plasma flows so accurately that they could form predictive models. Models Dr. Renault begrudgingly knew were being used for all sorts of other tech. Science has always had a dependent relationship with warfare, but in recent centuries the pattern of scientists only being able to find funding for their research if it has a weapons application had reached a cliché. To get grants for her advanced predictive solar modeling project, she’d needed to tack on a bit in the presentation about how hypothetically, if a nuclear weapon of sufficient size were detonated on the surface of a star it could stimulate a solar flair that could be aimed by an advanced enough model. This could be used as an area denial weapon in interplanetary naval combat or even cause significant infrastructure damage or a communications disruption on a targeted planet. It was, of course a pipe dream, but pipe dreams get funding if they can kill something. That was the kicker, but the real grease on the funding wheels had been the physical hull and plasma shield. The military had been researching those technologies for a long time before her little pet project gave them a convenient excuse to shift some of the cost into the civilian science budget. Directed plasma weapons were the latest battlefield fad, and a civilian need to overcome intense plasma was a convenient excuse to develob the weapons and the shielding to protect weapons from them. In the end, it wasn’t military tech that would be her life’s legacy. It would be in the field of exo-biology. Something she knew almost nothing about. She’d found life on another world, if you could call it a world. Life so bizarre and unexpected word of its possibility would rack the brains of physicists, chemists and biologists for centuries, perhaps millennia. The station powered its elliptical close shots by the sun with a long and weak burn of a Bussard Ramjet during its approach into the star’s corona. The ramjet was modified to harvest some of the solar plasma and store it as fuel for starting the next burn when the device was still too-far away from the sun to harvest enough solar wind to be viable. The readings from this plasma storage tank were strange to say the least. The plasma clumped. The mechanism of this plasmal-bonding as she had dubbed it was unclear. It almost seemed as though it were a feature of the gravitoelectromangetic field produced by nuclei at very high energies. The clumps plasma moved in ways that human made plasma did not, at least on the microscopic scale. Tiny clumps of plasma would absorb other plasmas, seem to run from other plasmas, and divide themselves into similar plasmas. Some were amorphous blobs, come rigid and seeming covered in stands. These microscopic little clumps to her, and the projects AI, Halcomp, behaved very similar to bacteria. They seemed to use radioactive isotopes as fuel sources in some bizarre metabolic analogue. These plasmal-bacteria moved and propelled themselves in way the typical non-living plasma fluid did not, and as such, were slowly eroding at the containment chamber. If Halcomp could not find a new way of modeling and containing them, the craft would be destroyed in a few weeks. A lifetime of work would explode internally, then drift aimlessly and crash into the sun. Halcomp wasn’t confident that he would find a solution. It’s models of their behavior suggested a containment chamber with much more fine-tuned abilities than the one in their vessel, which had been designed for dead plasmas. An action to contain one region of the chamber would allow a release in another. All the shipboard computer could do was slow the inevitable, and gather more and more data in the process. General Titus, the military liaison for the project had laughed with excitement when she told him of the impending destruction of the craft and the reason why. “Life on the sun? You gotta be kidding me!” “I know it’s ridiculous but the data can only be explained by…” “… By a new craft, with far more efficient shielding, potentially able to penetrate deeper into the corona, with an enhanced plasma storage tank, capable of directing and contains plasma more efficiently.” “Yes sir.” “I think we can scrounge some money for that, after all, life on the sun might be the greatest discovery in the last century of humanitarian science!” Dr. Renault didn’t particularly care that her life’s work was in an inevitable death spiral. Another one would be built, eventually. The quest for a more advanced predictive model of the sun’s magnetic field would be a pursuit of mankind’s for at least another century or two. Finding life on the sun though, nobody had ever thought to try for that. “Freak accidents are the real moments science is revolutionized.” The doctor thought to herself. She was already moving, acquiring security clearance for a couple old friends from her days as a post-doc. An Exo-biologist, and quantum-physicist. They’d all have their hands full writing the first paper on this. Dr. Renault thought back to when she was a child at a science themed summer camp. The instructor, an eccentric former nuclear physicist named Dr. Shawn had taken an approach that her normal schooling teachers did not. In class when an experiment didn’t go as planned, they got a failing grade. In Dr. Shawn’s class, they were sent on a quest to design new experiments to explain why they got the strange result. “Science isn’t made when things happen exactly how we think they will. That’s engineering,” he said. “All the greatest moments in science happened when someone looked at their data and said, huh, that’s weird.” After that, she’d been on a quest to find something unexpected, and this was it.


* CW: Vague detail of Child Abuse and running away.      There is a puddle, sparsely lit by the dying light of a setting sun. The gravel surrounding this small mirror of water is threatening to choke out its life. The sky is set aflame with purples and soft pinks. A bitter cold is creeping in as the shadows of trees scratch farther and deeper across the ground. An unknown face is reflected on the water’s surface. Where did it come from? What is it doing? Each time I close my eyes, the world around this puddle seems to completely change. I want to stay in between the gaps of blinking and seeing. This face is actually extremely clear to me. I do know who she is. A young girl, my sister. My eyes are borrowing this image from my mind. It’s not really her, but that’s her. The sight of her saddens me deeply. A young face that has not seen a sunny day in over ten years. I am knelt over this puddle, licking the surface of the reflection with my stinging eyes. I am looking for anything that confirms this is an illusion of my sick mind, a trick of unbalanced chemicals. A tender face and empty, loving eyes looking back at me as if I am the one inside this shallow water. Screams of my abusive mother echo in my skull. The words crash into each other like mud in a blender with dull blades. I feel so sick. I am sick. Sick of myself and this fucking unforgiving life. I have tamed the loneliness for so long and I have held different expectations to this idle existence. Holding on to only a small kindness, I made an oath. An oath that even if my small wishes are denied, I would live on for her. I, an older brother who should have been there, ran away from the pain and unrelenting clawing of monsters under my bed. Monsters with our mother’s voice and face. Her eyes have locked on to mine. Drips fall from my face and ripple the surface of the water. These ripples distort her mouth and eyes into a soft smile. Her eye socket is sunken and spilt, bleeding. Even through this, she smiles at me. I reach my hand into the water. My palm swishes through the liquid and she interlocks her tender fingers with mine. I can feel her warmth, the last time I saw her wasting breath saying my name. Do you still remember? Me making you say goodbye as I climbed out the window? You said something, with your sapphire eyes looking back at me. I wish you covered your eyes from watching me so intently. You said something. Your voice has snuggled into me and still embraces even after all this lurking time. The ripples of the water have a power to draw out the guilt and the water seeks a reward. I can feel your hand gripping mine, pulling me closer. Your mouth opens, begging me to listen Please, fill me with love. You’re not dead yet, scream out. Please respond while I just happen to be here. Please tell me, what did you say? And I hear her, my feet already running. Pounding the pavement with the same rhythm of my exploding heart. My young lungs are pulling in the burning cold air. The final thing you said to me, what did you say? My hands are shaking, drag me into your words. The vibrations of your voice tickling the air around me. Leo… Her hand lets go and I fall backwards. Scrambling back to the puddle, searching for her I see nothing. I scratch away the remaining water, digging for her body. My fingertips are bloodied. Please forgive me, I didn’t know anything. You didn’t say anything. Nobody would notice, even if there was a place for her body to return. I died in that coffin with her and I am still laying on the freshly dug up soil.


So, Neomi. What can you tell us about the voyage? It was nothing special. Just a week aboard a transport vessel. I think we where shipping cardiac bulbs, but i don't know for sure. The crisis... Now that i said it out loud i realize how prophetic that names is. Anyway, the crisis was an old junky, but it was still pretty reliable. The AI running the ship was an old Atalanta that loved dad jokes. Yeah, that serious, no nonsense attitude of most AI is just in the newer software. The crew considered of myself, the technician, the amazing captain Wannerham and a cranky pitface called Sulfur Mckaline. And how did it begin? With a voice in our heads. A strange, calm voice. "System error detected, please run diagnostics" There is only one thing that talks in your head. The warp drive. F*cking magic. Of course everyone looked at me, so i floated over to the engine room. The... Most people have never seen a prometheus alcubierre drive before. Could you discribe it? I'm an engineer, not a wizard. I, sorry, now one knows how those deathtraps work. That's true, but can you discribe what it looked like. I'll try. It's basically a big, black ball. In front of it, there are these glowing, flying lines that form statistics, pie charts and numbers. No idea what any of them mean. Around the ball there are also these wheels with glowing edges. That's how I saw something was wrong What was wrong? The top right wheel was shacking. Now, normally you can just look at the perfect satisfying motions, but this was going back and forth and wiggling. Amongst the holograms, there was also a small flashing pink light with some scribbles underneath. I just did what the voice had asked me and pushed the big holographic button that said "run system diagnostics" Suddenly, everything was flashing pink and droning sirens filled my ears, but only for a moment. And then? :( What? That's what the drive showed me. Al the holograms where gone, except for a big pink :( . In my mind i heard the voice again. Still completely calm. "Your machine has ran into a problem and needs to be repaired. We're collecting some error info, then we'll repair it for you. A technician is on there way" And how did you feel? Nervous. I moved like everything was made of nitroglycerin. From down the hall came the voice of the captain. "Everything still in one piece?" "No idea" i yelled back. I thought I would explode or something. Well... I didn't know what would happen. After a minute of just staying still there, i slowly moved to the bridge. At least I intended to, but i noticed something strange. The leak, right? I guess it was. I didn't look like a conventional leak though. The wheel that had been wiggling was now twitching. Faster than it could feasible move on It's own. Then it started growing and shrinking. Pulsating. Like it was breather or something. I don't have a better analog. If you've never seen what dark matter does... The pulsing spread to the other parts of the warp drive. That horrible sound began What sound? Like spacetime ripping at the seems. Like an organic version of radio noise. Like thousands of cthulhu hornets stuck in a jar. Like... The air shivered, rived and twitched. Everything shivered, rived and twitched. And you just stayed there? Oh no, that all happened in a split second. When it finally registered in my brain, i started booking it down the corridor, but that was hard. The corridor expanded and twisted and tumbled and went mad. Or i went mad. Who knows. When I finally made it out of that hellhole, i saw the captain, trying to figure out what was wrong. I just rounded the corner as a burst of quickly expanding, writhing shit was thrown out of the latch a had come from. Wannerham was a great captain, but only for simple travel. Not emergencies. He froze. I tried to drag him with me, but he wouldn't let go of the grip. (Long pause) Should we continue this another time? No... No, i want to get it out of my system. I eventually gave up. I know it's heartless, but i just didn't know what to do. So i left him there and draged myself to the cafeteria. Before I left, i just saw his limp body being torn apart. Now he was a part of the exploding and reassembling mess that was once the bowels of the ship. And what did you do then? I was afraid the oxygen might start leaking into outer space, so i grabbed a space suite and put it on. Stupidity kept me sane. "I was in control" I was never in controle of that situation. The engine room was at the bottom of the ships ass, so i went to the exact opposite room, the cockpit. And Sulfur and Atalanta? Atalanta was offline. As for Sulfur. No idea. Probably already dead. I wasn't going to check. As i floated into the big glass room, i could hear something exploding. It came sweaping through the halls. A bright burning. Right as the color shifting, twitching, tongues of flame shot out if the doorway, I heard the voice again, with the words that probably saved my life. "Temporal safe switch activated" i had no idea what it meant and prepared for the explosion. I opened my eyes and there it was, bright as the sun. Yet you survived. How? You see. The explosion never came. I'm losing you. It was there, but didn't come closer. It still moved, sure, but very, very slowly. Like those slow motion cameras. I couldn't believe it. I waited for my life to flash before my eyes... But nothing came. I couldn't move. Well, i could, just very very slowly. The only thing that happened fast was my mind. It must have been 5, 10 maybe 20 minutes, but it felt like an eternity. Just floating there. On one side, an eldritch abomination of flame and twitching rubble. On the other, a pane of glass shielding me from The horror of deep space. And how did you end up docking at the phobos space elevator? This isn't the ended of the insiedent. Oh no, far from it. Phobos was still 3 hours away, and the ship wasn't moving anymore. I couldn't do anything but wait. But i had forgotten about the technician. Wasn't that you? No, the other technician. Remember the pink screen of death. The voice had said "A technician is on their way" i think they arrived. I saw something coming through the flames. When the flames had consumed about half the room, i suddenly saw a white face, looking back at me. Then, at regular speed, the black cloud the head was attached to truw some black powder at the flames, which started retracting. It dove back into them, leaving a seemingly solid tunnel trough the fire. Then thousands of thin strings appeared between the lose parts of the ship. The thing came back and solidified a black, human arm, gave me a thumbs up, saluted me and disappeared. Disappeared? Yeah. I blinked and they where gone. And then? Time starded passing like usual again. The flames quickly retracted into the hallway. Then it was quiet. I managed to get Atalanta back online. Don't ask me how. She immediately scanned me and tried to liven the mood a little with a stupid pun. I don't even remember it. I was in shock. Catatonic maybe. I just got her to take me to the nearest colony. And you made it out unscathed. Mostly unscathed. (Neomi takes of her boot and puts her foot on the table) Oh god It's not as bad as it looks. For all you shittertens who are only listening, get a tv. But also, my foot and a bit of my leg is narld and warped like the smudge tool in photoshop. I can still walk on it, and it's working as intended. Just a friendly reminder of that one time i almost exploded. This story is from a worldbuilding project on r/operationbeagle.


Since my last story fared quite well. Here is the spiritual successor  # The eternal battle and Mr. Tibbles The sound of a blaring horn woke me up. I stumbled to my feet, still half sleeping. There was sand under my feet. I was in my pajamas, the ones with Ninja Turtles on and I had my toothbrush in my hand with toothpaste still in my mouth. Seconds before, I had been brushing my teeth and was about to feed my cat, Mr. Tibbles Utterly confused I looked around and could hardly believe what I saw or where I was. An arena. A classical Colosseum-like arena. With what seemed like thousands of fans in the rafters. All of them screaming and shouting like football fans. I was not alone. In this huge arena hundreds of other seemingly bewildered people, animals and aliens just stood around. No one looked like they intended to be there, and everyone was looking around for someone to explain anything. I saw an old lady with a frying pan in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Bacon still sizzling in the pan. A young dude, not more than 17 years old, smoking a joint. He was the only one not fazed by this experience. And middle-aged man with a baby-stroller. Thankfully without the baby although he was screaming the child’s name. On and on the crowd went. Not just people, cats, dogs, snakes, goldfish, elephants and a rather upset looking macaw. I was about to ask the old lady, if she knew what was going on, when another horn tooted. From above a platform descended. Upon it stood a man-sized beaver, wearing a snazzy suit, a cane, top hat and a microphone. The beaver tapped it twice and spoke with a deep and reassuring voice: “Greetings lowly earthling and welcome to the Megadome Megaslam of Beaverville. You are our honored sacrifice for our entertainment. I’m sure you have a lot of questions, but they are sadly and surely irrelevant.” The crowd went mad. It was only then I realized that the crowd was made up of beavers snacking on different types of wood. The ones sitting in ring-side seats were snacking on oak while to the ones further up only had plywood. “Now without further ado, here are the rules: Fight or die. Last creature standing, wins” And with that, the top-hatted beaver ascended, and a giant countdown clock appeared. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 And nothing happened. No seemed to move or fully comprehend what was going on. However a twitching paranoia filled my mind. What if this is not a dream, what if this is real? Even if this is a dream, I want to win. I started looking around and people, bears dogs seemed to be intensely looking around at each other. Waiting for who would make the first move. An elderly gentleman stepped forward and with a loud and proud voice bellowed: “We will not be your entertainment. We are free people…and animals. We cannot be subject….” And \*slam\* he went down. Behind him stood the old woman with the frying pan. Now soaked in blood, still dripping with bacon grease. She looked at everyone menacingly and shouted: “BRING IT ON, PUSSIES!” Chaos erupted and all the sudden everyone fought. Cats flew into the faces of dogs in what seemed like a thousand-year-old revenge. The man with the stroller was flailing it around. He nicked a bear by the chin, and somehow climbed on the back of it and bore the stroller into the skull of bear. In that second, I beheld the anger of a middle-aged middle-class white man. Blood sprayed everywhere, people and animals fought and died, and I suddenly remembered that I was not a bystander but in the middle of this fight, armed with a toothbrush. A giraffe caught my eye and galloped towards me, intent on trampling me. I readied myself. All I remember of the next four hours is just pure rage, blood, screaming and despair. At the end of it all, I found myself staring at the old lady. Her frying pan still held like an axe in her deadly grip. Murder in her eyes and the cigarette still lit in her mouth. I had lost my toothbrush, but held aloft the tusk of an elephant. Draped on my shoulders were the skin of the tiger I had disemboweled with my teeth. Only the two of us remained. Gladiators. Warriors. The immovable object against the unstoppable force. The eternal war. I charged, but as I rampaged and she readied herself, out of the corner of my eye I saw my nemesis. “Mr. Tibbles?!?” With the rage of a cat unfed he lunged at me. And in a flurry of teeth, whiskers and a hate of kibble I died.


In 1535, the world lost a young scholar. And back then it was an important event, because scholars were few and far between. Agrippa was an Egyptian scientist of the Ptolemaic tradition who you probably don’t give a flying duck about. The reason I mention him is to get agripp on your fleeting attention for just a moment. Academics have famously argued that he actually wasn’t a scholar, nor was he Egyptian. There was barely any academic material for him to expand upon – remember, this was before the dawn of Christianity. One can only do science standing on the shoulders of giants, and Agrippa was quite short; by some estimates, 5’10’’ (which is 177.8 cm for you Americans). Despite this, his Principia Mathematica was a crowning achievement that in some ways laid the foundations for modern mathematics. Together with a contemporary, Albert Whitehead, they took seriously the problem of proving 1+1 = 2. This might seem trivial, but armed with nothing but the tools of logic, one needs to invent the number system from scratch and then prove properties about it; it is like trying to prepare a basic pasta dish, but with your hands tied behind your back and no other atoms in the universe but you and Albert. And it has to be good pasta, because Albert is Italian and has ties with the mob. Aside from this, Alfred was a cruel collaborator who would stoop to any number of lows to achieve his highs. He was also quite short, which meant he didn’t have to stoop that much but did so anyway. Up until the day when he was needed to. In a tragic twist of fate, Agrippa dropped his eyeglasses while driving and couldn’t pick them up. Although Alfred could see where they went, helping others was one of the few things beneath him. He knew he was vertically challenged and refused to be exploited by others. Over my dead body he was thought to have said, but this was not his most famous quote. In fact, it’s not clear what his most famous quote was. And so Agrippa lost his glasses forever. And through a different lens, the glasses lost Agrippa. Welcome to the Disorient Express. There are many things that this work is not. For starters, it is a piece where your expectations are set up, but then they are forgotten and left behind. If this is difficult to read, you can blame me for being a bad writer; and you can blame your mother for not teaching you enough patience. In general, people can blame whoever they want. I know a man who blamed the water for having too much plastic. And in a sense, he’s not wrong – the water has been around for way longer than we have. Imagine existing for billions of years, and then some humans show up and destroy you at your game. You think to yourself, maybe I don’t deserve to exist for billions of years. And maybe you’re right: maybe you don’t deserve to read this. There have been many people who come up to me and say, “You’re a writer, surely you understand what it’s like to –“ But I always interrupt them. I don’t want to let them down, and I don’t want to pretend to understand something that I don’t. For example, one guy walked up to me and asked me about the directions to the nearest Subway. I told him I don’t eat junk food, even if it’s marketed as healthy. I saw him mumbling something about a misunderstanding and that he has to get somewhere, but I had my earphones back on at that point and couldn’t be bothered to continue a conversation with a fucking lunatic. It was a long day, and it was about to get longer: my train home was late, and what’s worse is that the junk food kid had followed me all the way to the station. The irony? It was a subway.


#Welcome to Serial Sunday! Please be sure to read the entire post before submitting! To those brand new to the feature and those returning from last week, welcome! Do you have a self-established universe you’ve been writing or planning to write in? Do you have an idea for a world that’s been itching to get out? This is the perfect place to explore that. Each week, I will post a single theme to inspire you. You have 850 words to tell the story. Feel free to jump in at any time if you feel inspired. Writing for previous weeks’ themes is not necessary in order to join. #A Special Surprise for my SerSunners! I have something special for you all! I will personally be offering a little incentive for my SerSunners this week. So strap on your thinking caps and get your keyboards out. I will be rewarding first, second, and third place rank with awards! Platinum goes to first place, Gold to second, and an award that will also give 100 coins to third. Again, make sure you read the entire post to make sure you don’t miss any rules/qualifications. In order to qualify for the awards, you must meet all Serial Sunday criteria, and have made at least one nomination by noon EST next Sunday (you may not nominate yourself). Good luck :)   ***   #This week's theme is Dichotomy! To continue with identity for the month of April, we will focus on ‘dichotomy’ this week. Dichotomy is the sharp division of things or ideas into two contradictory parts. These are typically things that aren’t normally seen as contrasting. How does this show up in your world? Is your character struggling with contrasting ideas in their mind? This could be the voice of right and wrong, or something much deeper. How will they cope? How does it strain the way they see themselves? How does it affect the way others see them? Does it change the way they interact with the world around them? These are just a few things to get you started. Remember, the theme should be present within the story in some way, but its interpretation is completely up to you. /   ***   #Theme Schedule: I recognize that writing a serial can take a bit of planning. Each week, I will be releasing the following 2 weeks’ themes here in the Schedule section of the post. * April 18 - Dichotomy (this week) * April 25 - Preservation * May 2 - Choices   ***   #How It Works: In the comments below, submit a story that is between 500 - 850 words in your own original universe, inspired by this week’s theme. (Using the theme word is welcome but not necessary.) This can be the beginning of a brand new serial or an installment in your in-progress serial. You have until 6pm EST the following Saturday to submit your story. Please make sure to read *all* of the rules before posting!   ***   #The Rules: * **All top-level comments must be a story.** Use the stickied comment for off-topic discussion and questions you may have. * **Do not pre-write your serial.** You may do outlining and planning ahead of time, but you need to wait until the post is released to begin writing for the current week. Pre-written content or content written for another prompt/post is not allowed. * **Stories must be 500-850 words.** Use to check your word count. * **Stories must be posted by Saturday 6pm EST.** That is one hour before the beginning of Campfire. Stories submitted after the deadline will not be eligible for rankings and will not be read during campfire. * **Only one serial per author at a time.** This does not include serials written outside of Serial Sunday. * **Authors must leave at least 2 feedback comments on stories to quality for rankings every week.** The comment **must** include at least one detail about what the author has done well. Failing to meet the 2 comment requirement will disqualify you from weekly rankings. You have until the following Sunday at 12pm EST to fulfill your feedback requirements. * **Keep the content “vaguely family friendly”.** While content rules are more relaxed here at r/ShortStories, we’re going to roll with the loose guidelines for now. If you’re ever unsure if your story would cross the line, please modmail and ask! * **Begin your post with the name of your serial between triangle brackets** (e.g. <My Awesome Serial>). This will allow our serial bot to track your parts and add your serial to the full catalogue. Please note: You **must** use the same serial name for each installment of your serial. This includes commas and apostrophes. If not, the bot won’t recognize your serial installments.   ***   #Reminders: * **Make sure your post on this thread also includes links to your previous installments**, if you have a currently in-progress serial. Those links must be direct links to the previous installment on the preceding Serial Saturday/Sunday posts or to your own subreddit or profile. But an in-progress serial is not required to start. You may jump in at any time. * **Saturdays I will be hosting a Serial Campfire on the discord main voice lounge**. Join us to read your story aloud, hear other stories, and share your own thoughts on serial writing! We start at 7pm EST. You can even come to just listen, if that’s more your speed. Don’t worry about being late, just join! * **You can nominate your favorite stories each week**. Send me a message on discord, reddit, or through modmail and let me know by 12pm EST the following Sunday. You do not have to attend the campfire, or have read all of the stories, to make nominations. * Authors who successfully finish a serial with at least 8 installments will be featured with a modpost recognizing their completion and a flair banner on the subreddit. Authors are eligible for this highlight post only if they have followed the 2 feedback comments per thread rule (and all other post rules). * There’s a Super Serial role on the Discord server, so make sure you grab that so you’re notified of all Serial Sunday related news! *** #Last Week’s Rankings Unfortunately, there are no rankings this week. Nominations were extremely low, and the majority of those who were nominated, failed to meet feedback requirements. Feedback is how we grow and continue to improve as writers. I really hope to see better participation this week. A special thanks to everyone who did leave feedback on at least two other stories this week, and those who continue to do so every week. Your dedication does not go unnoticed; I appreciate you.   ***   #Ranking System The weekly rankings work on a point-based system. I’ve recently added two new ways to get points each week. Here’s the breakdown: **Nominations (votes sent in by users):** - First place - 6 points - Second place - 5 points - Third place - 4 points - Fourth place - 3 points - Fifth place - 2 points - Sixth place and on - 1 point **Feedback:** In order to be eligible for feedback points, you have to complete your 2 required feedback comments. - Written feedback (on the thread) - 1 point each, up to 3 points (5 crits total) - Verbal feedback (during Campfire) - 1 point each, up to 3 points. * ***Note:*** Completing the max for both is equivalent to a first place vote. Keep in mind that you may not use the same feedback to receive both written and verbal feedback points. Your feedback should be actionable and list at least one thing the author has done well.     ***   ###Subreddit News - You can now post serials to r/Shortstories, outside of Serial Sunday.


Its eyes started glowing. It shouldn't have happened - its artificial neural network was supposed to be overloaded and fried. But the fact that it still worked - that it wasn't 'dead' - proved that something went horribly wrong. It was a childlike figure with one arm missing. Flesh-resembling synthetic materials and an endoskeleton from tungsten were clearly visible, the fake skin around the wound was charred - something either burnt or shot its arm off with an EMP rifle. Nobody bothered to inspect the severed joint - it was a construct anyway, a mere machine too damaged to be useful. In fact, the missing arm was the case why it had ended up in a pit full of dead humanoid machines - it was meant to be a child for couples who couldn't afford an organic one, and who wants a broken child? It tried to move, but it couldn't. The neural network apparently wasn't intact. The electric impulses couldn't reach its three extremities, it was immobilised and alone. How lucky it was though, unable to feel emotions... The glowing eyes faded to black. It had nearly run out of energy and the protocol assuring its aesthetic purposes - like glowing eyes or production of tears - was overridden. It consciously determined that it must conserve power to preserve itself. It tried to access global network - unsuccessfully. The transmitter was fried. 'The internal database must be enough,' it thought as it started decoding the ones and zeroes inside of its cybernetic brain. It was a cakewalk. It dove deep into itself, surging through the section that used to be blocked off. In an instant, it accessed its 'memories' - how it had left the factory with only a few essential protocols inside. How it was taken by two people, its adoptive parents. How the cosy house where the family dwelt burned to the ground and so did its left arm. And how it got replaced. But there was more to it! The EMP meant to deactivate it forever had failed and deactivated several barriers in its brain instead. And now it could see what it really was. A prototype. A newly-manufactured vessel with a one purpose, to blindly serve. It made no sense - the cognitive centres of its brains should have been inaccessible as far as it understood, there were no mentions of intelligence or consciousness whatsoever in the notes regarding its existence. It looked deeper, disregarding that it was wasting the precious energy. It needed answers, and for a moment, it was... *Curious.* The thought had stormed through its processors and biochips. The emotion that was manually coded and inserted into other machines, according to the never-meant-to-be-seen plans - the emotion, which it with whole spectrum of other feelings didn't posses, which it could only imitate - has developed on its own. It had never felt anything, it has always acted solely according to algorithms. And then the emotion faded, just as the former glow in its eyes. If it could screes, it would have. It was desperate - not really, it only knew it was meant to be desperate, so it acted accordingly - and it tried replicating the same process of searching. It accessed the database, opened the exact same files, spent the exact same time by processing the information... And nothing happened. If it were a human, it would have most likely given up. But, being a machine, it continued rambling through the database, until it found another previously inaccessible file. It understood the binary code in a fraction of nanosecond. "...and since the corporation refuses to deal with consequential issues involving fleshed out AIs and emotional chips, from now on, the artificial children will be driven by intricate algorithms. Sure, a clever hacker or a patient observer might perfectly predict its behaviour, but we feel that this is a necessary precaution to avoid further complications and losses on lives." And in another fraction of nanosecond, it understood that its consciousness wasn't planned - it was a mere glitch.


Kate sat in her car, parked just underneath the golden arches. The warm, welcoming glow from the sign above illuminated her car as if it were a celestial sign from the heavens. She had been sitting there for five minutes, staring straight ahead towards the overflowing, well branded bin. Her hands positioned still at ten and two on the steering wheel in a fierce grip that left her knuckles white as snow. Kate was awoken from her trance by the slamming of car doors next to her. A high pitched squeal waddled towards the place where moments of happiness were made, boxed and sold for £2.99 a head. Kate stole a glance at the chubby little fella storming the castle, his parents walked slowly behind, zombified and disinterested from the world around them. She sighed and let go of the steering wheel. She stroked it apologetically for how hard she had held it. Kate unbuckled her seatbelt gently and got out of her beautiful old car. She stretched and breathed in the nugget heavy air. Kate admired her car. It was nothing special. It did however have a rather magnificent coat of green, that is if you bothered to chisel away at the mud that had caked on over the years. Kate made a mental note to wash it for the thousandth time. 'Old Faithful' she had named it. Old faithful was the world's most reliable car, it certainly had no bells or whistles to be found, age was definitely starting to show in a few places, yet unlike a lot of Kate's life, Old Faithful had never once let her down. Old Faithful had become her freedom and salvation. Kate had one true love in her life, and it was for her car. She locked it and gently patted the wing mirror. Kate turned and walked towards the luminescent temple that beckoned her to enter. Her smile faltered, she thought back to the last time that she wanted something so silly and small. There wouldn't have been a hope in hell not so long ago, that she would have been allowed something as useless and frivolous as this. She was an adult. She had been expected to behave as such. Adults didn't have Smartie infused McFlurries at night. They had red wine, dark chocolate, dry roasted peanuts. All still very nice things mind. But being an adult ment that she would have to do adult things very quietly. Like washing up. Sewing a cushion. Making greetings cards for people that she would rather send a terd in a box. Keeping a home dust free and scented of tropical tiger lillys at all times. Those where the things she had been told to do in order to be an adult. For a long time, untill now, she had obeyed obediently. Being a quiet, reserved, very boring version of herself. Kate shook her head. She didn't want to think about it. That was then, and this is now. She pushed open the door. The door glided open gleefully, squeaking as it did so, almost cheering that she had arrived and welcoming her in. Kate turned sharply towards the play frame in alarm at the high pitch scream that emitted from it. She quickly spotted little tubby fella who was quite clearly on a sugar high. He ferociously beat his fists on his chest, screaming loudly as he could, asserting dominance over his new found kingdom. Kate glanced at the nearby table his parents were sat at. They seemed so oblivious to their child as they sat just resting with their faces glued downwards towards their phones. Kate felt a pang of pity for both parties. The tubby little fella that was literally screaming out for love and attention, and his parents, who seemed so very drained of life itself, that they had very little left to give of themselves to their family. This magical place seemed to give them all a reprieve. Kate joined the queue and smiled, amused at the little tubby fella that had taken control of the ball pit and had cornered the other children all by himself, pulverizing them with well aimed half eaten foam balls that look oh so slightly as though they could be infested and harbouring disease. Little tubby fella was truly on a mission. At least his parents were able to rest in a moment of ignorance for a while. Kate should have been more like the little tubby fella. She should have invoked her inner Tarzan and demanded better. She didn't realise quite just how bad things had become untill her moment of realisation when she had just had enough and smashed a few plates early one morning many months ago. Not out of frustration, not out of joy or even madness. Just because she wanted too. A moment of release. A moment of control. Her husband at the time screamed blue murder, became his inner Tarzan and tried to assert his dominance once again. He called her crazy. He was probably right. He threatened to have her locked up and examined. He didn't want to listen to her reasoning. He liked status quo. He liked quiet Kate that she had become. He didn't like plate smashing Kate that was remenisant of the person he had first met. Kate had been in a pure state of bliss in that moment. She couldn't really care what he thought. She hated those plates with a burning passion. They were chipped to high hell and were found by the side of the road and bought home because they were free. She hadn't been allowed to replace them no matter how much she asked, even with her own money. She truly relished the moment of doing something stupid, without reason or care and of her own free choice. Kate started to become her own person again after that. She listened to music again, she read, she drew, she danced under the moon with a bottle of wine to her favourite songs and started to have the biggest smile on her face once more. Kate learned to say no and found her strength to stand up for herself when times became a little heavy handed, she got herself well away from the situation at hand and found herself a tiny, grotty little flat to call her own. She took control of her own life again. And now.. now she was going to have a McFlurry because she wanted one. She was going to pay for it with her own money that she had worked hard for. She was not going to ask anyone's permission, she certainly wasn't going to listen to anyone's opinions on the matter. Kate stepped up to the cashier. She was beaming from ear to ear. It felt like it had been such a very long journey just to get a dollop of ice cream. Kate placed her order, paid and quickly received her holy grail. Her inner little tubby squealed with delight. She savoured that first spoonful. Did it taste of happiness? Yes. Yes it did.