Grizzly Factory

The Adventures of Troy Mouse (in progress)

2010-09-04T15:57:00.000-07:00

Troy Mouse and The Deafening Roar

It was a dark and stormy night... and thus the tale unfolds. Or, rather, continues...

Troy Mouse slapped the mess of papers in front of him- a mess that littered the desk beyond any hope of immediate cleansing. This sort of mess would take time to clean. That and ambition; so naturally, the mess, as many messes that we may encounter of our own doing (or not) that interlopes with our lives, stayed unaddressed. When Troy Mouse lifted his hand, a small fruit fly lay squashed on his now late energy bill.

Troy Mouse rose from his desk, placed in the corner of the living room and made it no further than a muscle twitch in the intended direction of his kitchen when he was knocked to the floor by a deafening roar that was caused by heat and energy from a natural meteorological event that a band called Metallica once encouraged their fans to ‘ride’. The lightning that so bumptiously knocked Mr. Mouse over left before he could yell something rushed and semi-clever in his defense.

Outside, the firemen bustled about extinguishing the exterior of his single story home. Inside, the fire spread onto the desk and burned the mess of papers up, crawled along the ceiling and wall and made menacing threats to his favorite chair by singing the upholstery before that, too, was extinguished by the bustling firemen.

“You’re one lucky son-of-a-sailor, son.” Said Fire Chief Bleatty next to the smoldering house.

“Had that wall not-a been there,” he said to Troy Mouse, “and you were jest a workin’ on your desk out there in the open,” rambled Fire Chief Bleatty, “and that lightning chose to strike right there like it did,” said the long winded fire chief, “why, you’d be one in a million to be struck by lightning.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time...” said Troy Mouse, grimly.

“Well I’ll be...” started Fire Chief Bleatty before he was knocked to the ground by a deafening sound that was caused by heat and energy from a natural meteorological event that Troy Mouse had the uncanny ability to incidentally ‘ride’. The lightning that so bumptiously knocked Fire Chief Bleatty over left Mr. Mouse in a smoldering heap on the ground.

“...damned.” finished the stunned fire chief.

Troy Mouse and The Briefcase

After what was not his first visit to Mercy Hope Hospital for lightning strike, Troy Mouse was once again released to the amazement of all the staff who looked at him like some type of a heroic figure--invincible from death but not destruction as well as a sort of unique regular--like one of a coffee shop--jesting jovially about his reasons for frequent visits and making small talk about his job which truly intrigued them to the point of forgetting what, exactly, it was that he did.

He caught a cab to his partially charred bungalow. His lawn was in disarray from the fire engines rolling around on their tires and the firemen tromping around in their boots and the hoses being dragged like prize anacondas slain for money and bragging rights. The rest of his landscaping was in disarray from neglect.

Inside, Troy Mouse looked at his table, which was covered in black curled ashes and some remnants of papers no more than twenty percent uncharred. Disheartened by the fact that his bills were previously only to be remembered by their late discovery in the mess but were now too burned to ever be found again, Troy Mouse sighed. He brushed some ashes from the table and walked into his kitchen. Through the kitchen he reached a hallway, and traversing this he re-entered his living room and made his way to the stairs leading to his basement.

The basement, highly juxtaposed from the upstairs, was immaculately clean. This was what Troy Mouse considered to be his actual home and his office of sorts. He walked up to a bookshelf that would look suspicious if it wasn’t in such clean surroundings. Every book was evenly placed and uniformly bound in blue hardcovers. Troy Mouse looked around as if someone may have snuck in or perhaps a fireman crept downstairs to take a nap during the fire and may be awake now, compromising his secret. Satisfied that nobody was around, he pulled one particular book from the shelf.

Troy Mouse opened the book. Inside was a big red button. Using the book like the giant remote control that it was, he pointed it towards the stairs and pressed the button down. A panel slid away revealing a safe door in the stairwell. He walked over and entered a combination. The safe door opened. Inside was a briefcase, covered in black rubber. He looked at the briefcase and drew a finger across his eyebrows, forgetting about the ash and in turn making a stately unibrow. He took the briefcase by the handle and walked up the stairs after closing the safe door and pressing again the red button, moving the panel back, and replacing the remote control book.

III

Troy Mouse Gets Groceries

In a cold and dark room sat an open box of baking soda. The shoddy looking metal shelf that it sat on was nearly empty save for a jar of pickles and That Sandwich From Last Week. An unforgiving light turned on as a vacuum sound sucked out of the cold and dark room holding the baking soda and the pickles and That Sandwich From Last Week.

Troy Mouse peered inside of his refrigerator. He shuffled the baking soda around. Picked up the pickles, tightened the lid, tightened the lid, tightened the lid and then looked at the jar. He tried the other way and the lid said “Clock!”. He smelled the pickle juice, sloshed around the remaining pickles and resealed the jar, making a vague mental note on which way to twist when opening jars. He made a hesitant move towards That Sandwich From Last Week, one much like the last hesitant move he made towards it and much like the previous hesitant moves. They all ended the same and this was no different.

Troy Mouse shut the refrigerator and stood there for about seven seconds while something strong stirred and boiled up within him. Filled with a new sense of determination, he opened the refrigerator and grabbed That Sandwich From Last Week. He threw it in the garbage and grabbed his keys from the counter.

At the grocery store, Troy Mouse hit up the four aisles he always hit up. His hand basket had bread, jelly, two boxes of cereal, some bananas and milk. Satisfied with his plunder, he headed for the cash registers.

“Mr. Mouse!” said someone who spoke in a way that sounded like his voice was aimed directly at his hard palate.

“Hello Mr. Mouse!” Said the voice again. Troy Mouse didn’t move his head as he finished paying for his groceries. He looked out of the corner of his eye using his beefy peripheral vision and saw Fire Chief Bleatty a few people back in line to check out at the register he was just leaving. Troy Mouse gathered his change and pretended he didn’t hear a thing, already knowing what kind of a one-way brain numbing conversation he was about to be a part of.

“Mr. Mouse!” Said Fire Chief Bleatty.

Troy Mouse Gets A Phone Call

Troy Mouse returned to his partially charred bungalow and flicked on the lights. He stepped on the back of his right shoe with his left and slid his heel out. He kicked the shoe toward the wall. He did the same to the other shoe and kicked it in the same general direction. They came to rest at a distance from each other but still close enough to be recognized as a pair. Troy looked at them and thought about his parents. The shoes stay together for one purpose: his feet. If they didn’t have feet to go on would they need to stay together? If his parents didn’t have him as a child would they need to stay together?

Into the kitchen and onto the table went Troy Mouse’s two plastic grocery bags. He took each item out and laid them side by side on the table, crumpled up the two plastic bags and set them by all the other crumpled plastic bags under the sink. He was going to reuse them someday, you know.

The phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Hello is this Mr. Mouse.” Said a voice with consistent rhythm and inflection.

“Yes this is.”

“Good. I have arranged a room for us in Houston. Everyone will be there.”

“Who will be?”

“You do know what I’m talking about, Mr. Mouse.” Said the man.

“Yes I do. Who will be there?”

“Everyone. Everyone who matters will be there.”

“Uh-huh.” Said Troy Mouse, placing the bread on the top shelf, all the way to the right in the refrigerator.

“Arrange a ticket for the twenty-second of this month.”

“That’s in six days.”

“Seven. You don’t have to come. But I know you will.”

“Right, who is this again?”

“I will see you there Mr. Mouse.” Said the man.

Troy Mouse heard a click directly after the man finished his sentence. He was shelving his cereal. He closed the cabinet and looked at his phone. He left the rest of his groceries on the counter and headed downstairs to book his flight.

Troy Mouse Gets Another Phone Call

The basement stairs led directly into the den, with the bookshelf, two black leather couches on either side of a black coffee table on a red rug, a computer on a computer desk, a mini fridge and a flat screen television which was mounted on the wall with poor placement--there was no seating which faced it directly. People on the couches could enjoy a movie by keeping their necks craned at all times at no less than a sixty-degree angle.

Troy Mouse realized he had to micturate.

“Not on the rug, man!” He said out loud.

As he washed his hands he looked up in the mirror. He rarely looked at himself, not because he didn’t want to, but because vanity didn’t interest him all that much. He knew what he looked like for the most part and staring at himself in a mirror every time he had the chance was pointless, he thought.

He looked at himself for the duration of lathering his hands clean of the germs he had undoubtedly acquired by peeing. His big black square rimmed glasses drew lines across the side of his face and disappeared into his long brown hair which hadn’t been washed in, by his estimation, ‘at least five days or something.’ He kept his hair out of his way by means of a ponytail. He looked at the sparse hairs growing out of his lip. They were stark black and spaced apart. His father came from somewhere overseas, somewhere in Asia, he estimated, and Troy Mouse inherited only a slight skin tint and the inability to grow thick facial hair. The rest of his physical appearance, aside from chromosomal adamancies, came from his mother. She came from somewhere nearby, somewhere in America, he estimated. Her parents and their parents. And her parents’ parents were perhaps European immigrants.

For lack of remembering to eat, Troy Mouse was a skinny man of average height. His clothes were for the most part too big and lacked fashionable direction, unless he was dressed for a business meeting, like the one implied in the phone call he had just been a part of. He tried to dress nice for those and did alright with the cheap suits he found.

He flicked the light off in the bathroom and his pocket vibrated for the second time since arriving home. He fished out his phone and looked at the number. Again a number his phone did not recognize, but this time a different one. One with a local area code.

“Hello?”

“Hello, I am looking to speak with Mr. Troy Mouse if he is home.” Said a voice, which flickered vague recognition.

“This is.”

“Oh, hello Mr. Troy.” Said the voice. Troy Mouse’s eyes widened a little bit as he realized who it was right before the speaker revealed his name. “This is Fire Chief Bleatty.”

“I suspected as much.” Said Troy Mouse with a smothered tone of defeat.

“Uh huh. I’m jest a-callin’ you,” Said Fire Chief Bleatty, “because I saw you at the store there. I was walking up to the checkout to buy my groceries,” said the Fire Chief, “and I was jest standin’ in line waiting and then I thought I saw you!”

“Oh?” Said Troy Mouse.

“Yes I suspect that I did. Was that you there, in the grocery store checking out at the register I was waiting to check out at?”

“Well I was at the store today, it certainly might have been me.”

“How about that.” Said Fire Chief Bleatty. “That’s not why I’m calling, though.”

“It’s not?”

“No sir. I’m callin’ because I did some asking and some digging and it looks like, if the estimates are right, that you have been struck by lightning five times now? That’s what Mercy Hope says.”

“That’s correct. That last time when we were talking outside of my house was number five.”

“Uh huh.” The Fire Chief said. “Well I’m looking to offer you some fire advice since I’m a fire chief and it looks like you’re being followed around by the electricity bug.”

“How kind.” Said an unexcited Troy Mouse.

“Well you know, I ain’t no hero.” Said Fire Chief Bleatty magnanimously. “I’m jest a-doin’ my job.”

Troy Mouse said nothing.

“Well if you’re ever in a storm again the first thing you’re gonna wanna do is have a fire extinguisher at hand. And not only that bu-” A silence overtook Fire Chief Bleatty’s voice before Troy Mouse even realized it was gone. Troy looked at his phone and saw that the call had ended. Dismissing it as an extremely conveniently dropped call, Troy Mouse turned his phone off and put it back in his pocket.

Somewhere between Troy Mouse and the Fire Chief, a telephone pole was smoking and a few sparks were floating peacefully to the ground after a natural meteorological event caused by heat and energy that seemed to be stalking Troy Mouse had struck it with what Troy Mouse wrote off as God-sent relief. The severed telephone line led back to Fire Chief Bleatty’s mouth where he continued to talk for seven minutes straight into the dead air until he said:

“Mr. Mouse? Did you catch that last bit?”

The Fire Chief did not get a response so he tried again.
“Mr. Mouse!” Said Fire Chief Bleatty.

Troy Mouse Receives A Package and Some Voicemails

Noon yawned its way into the shut eyelids of Troy Mouse. He squeezed them tighter to keep the afternoon out, but the afternoon insisted, even through the drawn blinds. He rolled over and pulled the covers with him as his right arm followed suit. He was securely hidden from the common responsibilities that may be connected with daylight since his income did not depend on punching a clock until it reached forty hours. Once properly snuggled inside of his blanket and once again in the dark, Troy Mouse was free from the other remaining responsibility most humans feel when it’s light out, and that is to rise from bed. He gave out a contented sigh. Outside was the sound of singing birds in the distance, which he equated to a lullaby.

And then the doorbell rang. Troy Mouse groaned and said: “Go away!” barely loud enough for anyone in the hallway to hear, let alone the one ringing the doorbell. He scrunched in a little ball and suddenly shot straight. He remembered what was set to arrive in the mail today.

Troy Mouse drew the chain away from the door, and then released the deadbolt. He unlocked the handle as well and opened the door wearing his pajama pants and his robe, open, with no shirt on under. As he opened the door he heard the birds again, and looked straight up before acknowledging the man at the door. He didn’t see anything. He looked straight ahead, peering over the side of the man wearing a uniform, holding a box. There on the street marched a small troupe of flautists, apparently practicing, or perhaps putting on their own parade. Troy Mouse, tired and sloppy, looked like he was nearing death to the package deliveryman as he leaned out of his front door, appearing that at any moment he might fall over. The bemused Troy Mouse snapped out of it with a shake of his head.

“Ouh. Uh.” Troy Mouse cleared his throat. “Hi.”

“This is, uhh, are you Troy Mouse?” Said the deliveryman.

“Yes.”

“Delivery for you, sir.”

“Okay thank you” Said Troy Mouse with consistent tone and infliction.

“Sign please.”

Inside, Troy Mouse had already opened and put his package away in a safe place. In his safe, to be exact. He was up in his room dressing for the day in which he had no particular plans when he found his cell phone in the pocket of his pants. It was still off. He flipped it open and hit the red ‘end’ button.

He watched the cell phone come to life. It groggily groped around for service until service was acquired. After a handful of seconds all of the ‘social connectivity’ he missed made its way to his phone in the form of two voice mails and zero text messages.

The first said: “Hello, this message is for Troy Mouse. We regret to inform you that you have been flagged as a flight risk due to the numerous incidences of lightning strike you have experienced. We, however, cannot prove that you purposely cause lightning to strike you and must agree to allow you to fly only if there is a fire marshal present on the flight. We’re sorry for any inconvenience that this may cause, Mr. Mouse. Please contact us within one day before the flight is scheduled to depart if you are able to get a fire marshal on this flight with you. Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Mouse.

The second said: “Hello, Mr. Mouse. This is Fire Chief Bleatty calling you back because it looks like we got cut off. I tried calling earlier, after we got cut off there, but it appears that a phone line was knocked out somehow somewhere and they had to reroute the phone lines, so I had to wait until they worked again to call you. And now they work, so Hello Mr. Mouse! Uhh I suppose you’re asleep now, seeing as it’s a lot later than it was before, and it sounds like your phone is off, so maybe you’re asleep. I guess I’m only calling now to share a little bit of good news from my end of the world. Sometime after we got cut off I found out that one of our finest has resigned. This is sad news, you see, because he’s really good at his job and we all really like him a lot here at the fire station. But there is a silver lining to this cloud, Troy, er Mr. Mouse. Upon his resignation, effective tomorrow, I will be getting his position! Mr. Mouse, say hello to Fire Marshal Bleatty.

VII

Troy Mouse Admits Defeat

-or-

Troy Mouse And The Cordial Invitation

Resigned, defeated and worn was Troy Mouse in his failing attempts to avoid Fire Chief Bleatty--Fire Marshal Bleatty, that is, as he lay in a gelatinous heap on his black leather sofa in his basement. He looked suspiciously close to slithering off of his couch right on to his red rug that really tied the room together. However, Troy Mouse felt strongly that raspberry jam did not belong on that rug and in turn, no depressed human pretending to be raspberry jam belonged on it either.

But, as a man whose income relied solely on his own character, integrity and ability to overcome adversity, Troy Mouse was not deterred for long. He had rather high grade headphones which could keep out any amount of one sided chatter and if his income depended on Fire Marshal Bleatty flying with him to Texas, he would try to make it happen.

Troy Mouse picked up the phone and dialed.

“Fire Chi--Fire Chie--Excuse me. Fire Chief. Marsh--. Fire--Um sorry just one moment.” The receiver pressed against Troy Mouse’s ear heard a faint muffled voice saying ‘Marshal. Marshal. Fire Marshal.’ or something to that effect.

“Fire Marshal Bleatty speaking!”

“Hi Mr. Bleatty, this is Troy.”

“Troy Mouse?”

“Yes.”

“Perfect!” Said the title-challenged Fire Marshal.

“Perfect?”

“Yes, Mr. Mouse. You see, I was just about to call you myself!”

“You were?”

“I was.”

There was a pause.

“More fire tips?” Grinned Troy Mouse.

“Ha!” Laughed Fire Marshal Bleatty. “No, no. Not after last time, what with the line going out and me talking to nothing there for a while. Thinking you were on the other line taking notes for fires and that.”

“I have a proposition for you.”

“And I have a proposition for you, Mr. Mouse.”

“Uh oh.”

“Now, don’t worry. It’s my job to invite people to this. It’s our Annual Booya next week, and I’d like a friendly familiar face there, you know, so I don’t have to feel so awkward at my work event.”

“Annual what?”

“The Annual Booya.”

“Booya?” Winced Troy Mouse. He truly had no idea what Fire Marshal Bleatty was talking about, but he felt the word ‘booya’ belonged somewhere very far away from the English language.

“Yes, the Booya.”

“Mr. Bleatty. You realize that we don’t actually know each other very well.”

“Well...”

“At all.”

“Yes, well, I do see where you’re coming from there, with that.

“Right. So with that in mind, I am cordially inviting you to come to Texas with me.”

“Texas?”

“In four days.”

“In four days.” Repeated Fire Marshal Bleatty.

I Am Not A Poet

2010-05-28T06:40:00.000-07:00

I Am Not A Poet

I am not a poet when I type
A garble of rhyme schemes
In a structure that might
Suggest that maybe

I wish to be

But sometimes I just write
Accidental poetry
And incidentally
It may seem that

I wish to be

But I assure you
I do not aspire for that.
And perhaps poetry is something
That wishes aspire me.

Home

I was standing alone with my arms outstretched
that night, dew on the capital lawn. The ghosts
of my past hanging loosely to my fingertips-
trailing just far enough behind

But never gone.

A spire in the distance stabbed high above
the tree line. A silhouette in the night. My future
riding on the tip of my nose- pointing
to the same sky from which these pallid eyes hide.

Myopic in the dim city lights.

Yet that night I felt something that shook me
wide across boundaries
that I never before dared touch
And blindly I grabbed.

I'm ready, I said. I'm ready
To come home.
And I knew what that meant
during that suspended breath.

And as I stretched my arms just a fraction wider
I realized the flaw in my intent.
I can't be taken home
If I never learned what Home meant.

Leisure

I know Highway 12
Like the back of this tired hand
That grips this decrepit wheel
As I sway between
The yellow
and white lines.

As time slips away
and leisure is cadged:
Between these lines I sway.

Where poetry is a safe place
From these minutes strafed
By busyness and haste:

I stay.

For just a moment to sway
Across this black terrain
Mere inches away
And hundreds of miles a day.

Cottonwood

As I stood bare feet
The grass up to my knees
I rolled up my sleeves
And pushed my pant legs down.

The sparse cottonwood swirled
And danced as it took
The way of the wind's whim
Toward the woods and the brook.

And all of these little clouds
Meant something to me:
Representing one sin each
Leaving my conscious free.

So small.
So innocent.
Some forgotten.
Some aged.

But suddenly in thousands
They plagued, making turbid
The clear blue sky
Until it became pallid and white.

Then the wind behind me
Blew harder than a whim
And by force they pushed
Blanching the sky as a scrim.

And finally when a lifetime
Of white before me passed
I chased a lagging cottonwood
To see where it would come to rest.

Through bramble and brush it led and
Over cattail and creek I splashed.
When finally in a clearing
I reached the end of my quest.

There an endless sea
Of cottonwood had massed
And out in the distance:
A man wading through the mess.

He spoke to me and said:
It seems your carelessness
Has found its way to my hamlet!
And if you'd like the chance
To rid yourself of these solecisms
I'd gladly take this burden
But you can keep them too,
I guess.

So I dug in my pockets
And reached in the collar
Behind me neck
Looking for any more
That the wind might have missed.

But the sea held them all.

So I smiled

Gave my thanks

And left.

You Have Not. Sorry.

2010-05-20T21:02:00.001-07:00

---For David Benjamin Piery---

The child woke up under the radar to the ping! ping! ping! telling them whether the submarine was close to anything. The child recognized the rhythm; they were the only object within several hundred feet.

He yawned, stretched his tiny bony frame and clawed at his back. Mussed his hair. He got up and ambled into the crew cabin. It was empty.

The child was the son of the captain of a submarine named Lima. It was the only of its class, built in Russia. The purpose was officially unknown but it was ostensibly in use for research on new technology or perhaps special mission support. It is assumed that Lima was unarmed, and it was. On this trip, Lima was used for something else entirely, and this is the account of David, the adopted aforementioned son of Captain Piery, who was not Russian at all, but a portly Italian man.

Guys? called out David. He wandered through the kitchen. Empty. He wandered through any common area the men might be. Nothing. Guys?! David called out again.

David was a child unknown for being notoriously overlooked. In his elementary school every student was to receive the Student of The Week award one time throughout the school year, regardless of merit. David never received this ‘honor’, to no fault of his own. In fact, just two days prior to David waking up alone, he was found wandering around Lima, and a member of the 32 man crew ran up to Captain Piery to tell of the strange boy spotted in this submarine that had been underwater for two weeks. Captain Piery knocked his hat back and his blood pressure jumped considerably as he was escorted to the boy. This is my son, he said in a sigh of relief, just now remembering that he was indeed on the submarine for this mission. The crewman said I didn’t know you had a son.

The reason for David’s presence on the submarine was not actually known to Captain Piery. In fact, something about this whole mission seemed fishy. They didn’t actually know where they were going or for what. Orders from Above.

David walked into the boiler room. There was a note in a plastic Ziploc taped to a pipe. The note was written in gigantic scrawl with what appeared to be a quill and ink. The note said:

Dear Russia: Everyone on this ship has been found holy and was taken in the rapture. If you are reading this, you have not. Sorry.

-God

Rats! Overlooked again! David put the note, which was half true, in his pocket and manned the navigation controls. He attempted to surface the beast and was doing alright. He didn’t know how to land it, though, and he didn’t know where he was. He wanted to look through the periscope to see if God was anywhere nearby. But it was too dark under water.

David cracked eggs into a pan. I will make the best out of this, he thought, and breakfast was the best thing that he knew. He had the makings of pancakes set out and he was just about to get started on that when he heard a voice down by the boiler room. Hey David, it said. David. C’mere. So he did.

He looked in and there was another note. This one said:

Hey David, I was just kidding about the rapture thing. I just wanted to see what you would do. Glad to see you are making the best out of being a leftover of rapture. I mean I knew you would, but I wanted to see you make the best of it. Otherwise you wouldn’t have. You know? You know. Anyway, I’m sending everyone back.

-God

And everyone appeared back as soon as he finished reading. The letters were gone, though. As soon as he was spotted walking out of the boiler room one of the crewmen said Oh my God! A boy was stowing away in the boiler room!

The Home Run King

2010-05-16T20:59:00.001-07:00

I remember the last time I saw my dad. I remember the last thing he said to me:

Yep.

My brother played for the Zephyrs.

Z-E-P-H-Y-R-S, we’re the Zephyrs and we’re the best!

This was when the scores didn’t matter because the game was filled with the desire to have fun, not to absolute oneself in the adult inebriant of victory.

I stood by my dad watching from the chain link fence to the left side of home plate. We didn’t talk much and we never did but we loved each other. The makings of a father-son relationship that lost custody had put asunder. Awkwardly we reached for normalcy. Because that’s the way it should be.

Ryan was up to bat. It was nearing the end of the game. Nearing the time that I would go live with my mom for a weekend; my father regained custody of us just a few years earlier. This was won in adult conversations with my mother, not in court. The pitch drew near as my brother lugged the bat slothfully across the plate. Connection. The ball flew low and hit the grass as soon as it appeared. Right field bobbled it around on the ground and finally scooped it up to throw it to first. Too late, and Ryan was already on his way towards second. The ball fell underthrown and rolled past the first baseman. By the time he picked it up and threw it to second Ryan was almost to third. The boys from his dugout where on their feet jumping and yelling. My fingers clenched through the large holes in the chain link fence and my eyes looked up at my dad and back to my brother. Third base coach was wind milling his arm and pointing towards home and Ryan didn’t hesitate a second as he tore around the base. The second baseman stopped himself from throwing to third. He turned and threw the ball hard towards the catcher but it was once again too late. Ryan slid to home with time to spare and was mobbed by a team of screaming young boys. He was picked up and carried back to the dugout, everyone shouted his new moniker tumultuously: The Home Run King!

Mom pulled up and I couldn’t wait to tell her about Ryan’s triumph over a feat that many kids never can boast. We stood around in a circle talking about it- my brother and I bouncing details back and fourth. Having both perspectives made the story just as exhilarating to relive until it was time to go. I told my dad that I would see him Monday and he just smiled wearily and said:

Yep.

The car drove out of town. I didn’t know that I was about to leave a life that I knew well for so many years. But it wasn’t my choice. It left me. Left me to live forever changed in a life that’s the same, just missing one piece.

Mermaid

2010-05-16T20:58:00.001-07:00

She drove seventy miles already and had about thirty left to go. The car purred softly as she turned cruise control off and pressed down on the accelerator. A billboard on the side of the road said:

get the rest you need at the

SLEEP INN

exit 46

And that is the exit she was driving to. With every mile she thought of another piece of the town she had long since left. One piece was prominent and it was the purpose of her return.

Janice. said the young woman. My name’s Janice and sign language is my first language. My brother is deaf, so my parents taught me from birth.

That’s wonderful. said the mother. This happening to Cherie was unexpected, of course. Thank you so much for your help.

Gotta pay for school somehow. smiled the young woman.

She remembered devoting much of her time that year teaching sign language to that worried mother. The mother was raising a deaf child by herself. She often thought she should be doing this for free. She put the money in a jar under a picture of an old building built for young matriculating persons. Saving to become a part of that photographs esoterica. The mother eventually learned well enough to communicate with her baby but would still have to learn more.

She pulled off onto exit 46 and took a right. She didn’t know where to start but she did have a last name. She thought that she would start tomorrow. She pulled up to the Sleep Inn and killed the engine. She sat with her hands on the wheel.

After she put everything away in her room she got back in her car and went somewhere that she was never old enough to patronize while she lived there. Now she was old enough by more than ten years. Poseidon’s was a makeshift beach club in a southern landlocked town. It had a pool and a mermaid who always swam around looking pretty. It started off as a joke a few years prior but turned into a staple; an attraction to the place.

She sat down at the window facing the pool. There was money taped all over the window and she turned to the guy next to her.

What’s the money all about? said the woman.

Tips. replied the man gruffly. For the mermaid. Watch. He slapped a one dollar bill on the window with some tape. The mermaid held up a sign that said:

Thank You!

What’s this girls deal? said the woman.

Who, Cherie? She’s deaf. She does this mermaid gig every night to make money. It’s a good job for someone who can’t, you know, talk.

The woman swallowed and looked out the window. She reached in her purse, fished out a business card and wrote: I want to send you to school. on the back. She taped it to the window and the mermaid held up a sign that said:

Thank You!

The Man Who Could Get Any Job

2010-05-16T20:57:00.000-07:00

I know a man who could get any job. He was visiting me in Coopersville, and just to prove it, he got a job within thirty seconds at a firm. He had never even been in the state before.

I, on the other hand, cannot get a job anywhere. On many occasions I would ask my father for a job at his store. Papa, isn't there an extra spot at the register? No, he would say. Sweeping the floors? No. Papa, what about parking attendant? and Papa thought and said Congratulations, son, you're hired! It was my first job and I was twenty-three.

Papa had to make a special uniform for me because I was the first ever parking attendant at his hardware store, and in fact, any hardware store. When two weeks were up Papa came to me and said Son, there's not a spot for you on payroll. So I got a little wooden sign that said TIPS in white paint nailed to a wooden bucket that Papa had me wear around my neck. Papa collected the tips every few hours and at the end of the week gave me a stipend. My first paycheck was $17.56.

The man who could get any job moved down to Coopersville to work at the firm. Finally, I asked him what it was that got him all these jobs without even trying. What’s your secret? He just stroked his mustache with his thumb and index finger slowly and evenly, in deep thought. I don't know, he concluded. I asked him what he thought of Coopersville and spied him licking the corner of his mustache. Coopersville? I always thought it was Coppersville! Hahaha! And he laughed and laughed and walked out of the room. I stood bemused and then it dawned on me.

Papa, Papa! I said breathlessly when I finally found him in his chauffeur uniform from 1986 that he still likes to "wear casually". This means around the house. I know why I can't get a job, I get it! I said in a fit of excitement. He looked at me and wiggled his pencil thin mustache resting on his wise upper lip and said, Why's that, son? I pointed right at him and said That!

Zoom in on this mans face. My father, my Papa, in his chauffeur uniform, until your vision rests exclusively on his upper lip. The bristles protrude proudly and dance out of his glistening lip, which then smiles and shows only slightly his upper teeth. Still zoomed in, his mouth says I’ve been wondering how long it would take, son. I’m sorry I didn't tell you earlier but you’re simply unable to do this on your own. It's okay, son, I’ve been keeping the other 63% of the tips that you’ve made for this occasion. We have enough to get you fixed right up.

Wish me luck.

Recent Cognitions

2010-04-13T19:58:00.001-07:00

Cemetery

How fitting it was to see
The fallen trees, decaying
In the woods near the cemetery,
And a quarter mile down the trail
To the place where I knew
That everything
Must
Return
to You.

Trap

I crawl
Sniff
And sneak
Tightly against this wall

Searching for something:

Food.
Life.

But it's already set:

Wait for it...

This room feels safe.
Comfort in the lack of change.

(Wait for it)

I inch forward

(Wait for it)

One foot on
And the other
Soon to follow

Wait for it...
Wait for it...
(Wait for it)

Snap

Tarnish

I have no idea
What I do
To you
When I rest
In the complacency
Of action and
Desire.

You become the
cigarette
stain
On my fingers
As I
Suck
The nicotine
Right.
Out.
I get what I need
and then
I flick your
Dreggy
Being.
And trampled
Underfoot
You find your end.

I never knew.
I just drew, drug and strew.

Tendon

A tendon
Stretched

Until it's torn
And split open
Under the pressure of
Becoming more
Than someone
Aspiring.
Writhing.

Oh, The weakness
Of strong desire!

Diner

2010-03-20T10:20:00.000-07:00

I was at an all night diner last Tuesday. Legally, and I say this because of the insisted accuracy of the report, it was actually Wednesday. Barely. Wednesday started, for me, when I woke up around eleven in the morning.

I was sitting a table away from the door. I always sit there. I come to this diner probably twice a week and I always get the same thing. I sit there and I drink some bad coffee and eat some delicious food, which is worse for me than the coffee tastes. I had a song in my head:

I was at an all night diner

The sign said “Triple X”

But they were talking about root beer

I’m just sitting down

Thinking about nothing

Looking at the thin air

Breathing up the oxygen

And that really was me. Sometimes I hear songs and I feel like I want to personify them. I want to be the guy they’re singing about. I think that to an extent, at least once, everyone has that. I had a girlfriend who wanted to be the personification of every Bright Eyes song she listened to. Things ended badly with us. Bravo.

A waitress walked up and said Hi, how are you tonight? and I said Good, and you? She said Is there anything I can get you to drink tonight? with her pen ready on her little pad. Typical. Not dogging on her, but everyone here is so cordial, yet I’m not sure they actually care. I guess I’d rather have it that way than someone not caring and showing it.

I’ll have the usual, I say, which is what I always say. I made the mistake of wanting to be a regular to a new waitress. She looked at me and cocked her hand back away from the paper. A short stack, coffee, a side of bacon and that should be it. The usual, I said. She wrote it down and said The usual.

I was eating my pancakes, singing along to songs in my head, sipping on my orange juice and enjoying my night to myself when I heard some guy across the room from me, maybe a few tables back, talking loudly about these oranges he had out on his table. They’re from Arizona, he said. Brought them all the way back with me. I picked them with my own hands, he said. Freshest oranges in the state. Can’t get em’ this fresh at the store, he said, no sir. He was very proud of these oranges. I was wondering if he was going to eat them or not. Show and tell at an all night diner, eh? This world is home to the strangest people. He was going on about the oranges right up until the point where I was almost ready for my check and then he took out this tiny mason jar. It was full of sand. Straight from Sawyer, Michigan, he said. The waitress that was helping him had lost interest in his escapades after about two minutes. He had been going on about his oranges for about ten minutes before he broke out this jar of sand. I felt bad for her.

This sand sings when you walk on it, he said. You can’t get that here, no sir. Excuse me, he said, no ma’am. No offense, I know you’re a lady, ma’am, I just say ‘no sir’ a lot. It’s an expression. This sand… here, touch some, he said and he opened the jar, it’s very fine. That’s why it sings, he said. She touched the sand and said it was real nice and maybe she’d take a vacation there sometime. He said she should and tried sealing up the jar. I was watching him. He started threading it wrong and then dropped the lid on accident. He bent over to get it and then he spilled some sand on the table. S---, he said. The waitress left to get him something to sweep up the sand with. He sealed up the jar and put it down on the table and looked at the little pile of sand that came all the way from Sawyer, Michigan.

I sat back against the booth and that’s when a woman in the rear of the diner started screaming. She screamed loud and everyone jumped. I looked back and there was a man standing over her as she cowered in the booth. He had a gun. It was pointing right at her. He was using it to get a purse from her.

I work at a place that has a cash till. Sometimes, I think about what I would do if someone ever tried to rob me. I know what I’m supposed to do. Hand the money over and call the cops. But I always think that I would stand up for my boss. He works hard for that money in the till. Sometimes I think I would take the till out for the robber and then throw it hard at his face and jump over the counter or something. And then what? I don’t know. Step on his neck and hope the cops come quick. I only think about how I’d disable him, not how I’d keep him until the cops could show up. Either way, I would never just hand it over. I would be brave.

The orange guy, the one who wouldn’t stop talking looked at me and I looked at him. I slid out of my booth and started running towards the door. Lucky I was sitting close to it. I was moving too fast, though and I tripped on my own scrambling feet. I slid to a halt just a foot in front of the door. I rolled over on my back and I saw that orange guy had the same idea. Don’t save the day, just save yourself. He stepped over me and I watched him run away. I propped myself up on my hands and then I got knocked over again- someone else had run right into me. I heard glass breaking and then a gun firing. I blacked out.

When I came to I was propped up in my booth. There in front of me was a fresh pancake, two strips of bacon and some more coffee. Across from me was a cop. I looked at him and he could tell I was scared and confused. I asked him what happened. Don’t worry, he said, we got him. When I propped myself up the thief, the guy with the gun, ran right into me. Apparently he didn’t see me. He fell headlong into the door, shattering the glass and discharging his weapon. The cop asked me some questions and I ate my food even though I felt a little like throwing up. I answered everything that I could and then he stood up and said, thanks for the help, bud, you sure know how to catch a baddie, winked at me and walked over to one of his cop friends. I looked back over to where the orange guy was sitting and I saw his waitress sweeping that little pile of sand into a cup. She looked over at me when she turned around with the cup of sand. Just in case he comes back.

The Last Time

2010-03-01T20:53:00.000-08:00

Do you remember the last time you cried? Someone asked me this the other day and I thought about it for a little while but quite honestly came up with a blank. I’m not a tough guy. That’s not it. I just could not remember the last time I cried. That time I dislocated my knee doesn’t count. That singular tear was the equivalent of drooling at the dentist while your flaccid mouth is all anesthetized up. The liquid expulsion is involuntary. Well alright, that and it really hurt. But I’m talking about crying emotionally. I’m not a broken man of stone, either; I have emotions. I just don’t cry. And you know what? I’d like to. I want to cry.

If she asked me that again I could answer with much more accuracy. I do remember, I do! It was this morning. I was lying in my bed and I didn’t know it at the time, but I was dreaming.

There was a powder blue envelope and it said From Dad on it. I opened it and I knew it was for my mom. It contained a magazine and it had something to do with a romantic getaway. I thumbed through it and there were some handwritten notes in it and I got really excited to hand this off to my mom. I love my mom. I really do. She’s a single woman right now and I want to see her get married almost more than I want to see myself get married. She loves me so much and she deserves a good man to love her. She just deserves it. You see, my parents aren’t together. That’s fine. I don’t disagree with this. It happened when I was very young and I think my mom was behind most of the decision making there.

I took the envelope to my mom and waited around for her to read it, so I could see her reaction. She opened it up and started talking to me about the stuff inside. I had this feeling she thought that it was from me. Perhaps she hadn’t seen the handwritten signature on front- From Dad. No, no, she said. We can’t go on vacation together. I wanted to tell her that it was from Dad, that it was him wanting to go on vacation with her! But just like the dreams where you need to run far and fast and you find yourself unable to take a mere step, I simply couldn’t tell her. I was muted, dumbfounded.

I walked into the front door of our house. My brother was there. He didn’t look very good. He was looking old, weathered. You could tell he was still young but he looked aged. His face seemed to be becoming leathery. It looked like he had a healed and shallow scar on his face. I asked him how he was doing. Honestly, he said, not too good right now. Kaden, our nephew, had been dropped and hit his head. I knew this in the dream. He suffered brain damage from the fall and now, Ryan explained, he was very lethargic yet very happy all the time. Kaden was never like that before. He was loud, and overall a disobedient child of sorts, but we all loved him anyway. He was just a kid. Now he would never be loud again and he would never disobey. Ryan really did look broken up over this.

I started to explain what happened with the letter from Dad and how Mom didn’t get it- that it was from him. He didn’t seem to know what I was talking about as I was telling him about it but I got cut off from finishing everything I was saying when I noticed my mom walking up to the house with my dad. He looked older than the last time I saw him. He was wearing khakis. I’ve only ever seen him in jeans. He had that on and a button up shirt, which is his style, but in lighter colors. His hair was becoming littered with grays and seemed to fray out. It was still long. He had that facial hair still, but more than his usual mustache. It was more of a handlebar mustache with some extra on his chin. I looked at the two of them walking together and suddenly became overjoyed and I started laughing. My brother tried asking what I was laughing at. I couldn’t explain, I could only laugh, and what was so funny was that I was trying to convince my mom that dad had sent her this letter, but once I saw him I remembered that he’s been dead since I was twelve. I was standing there in front of my brother laughing so hard at my folly and it turned right into crying. I was crying because I saw my dad again, finally. I was hugging my brother, caught in-between sobbing and laughing. I just couldn’t pick one.

It looked just like him, but years older. It’s been over ten years now. When he died, I thought maybe, just maybe someone that dressed just like him and looked similar came into our slightly remote home in Black River Falls and walked into my dad and stepmoms room and shot himself right there on the bed, through the right temple. I thought that maybe it had been a big mistake and I’d see my dad again, someday. I cried back then. I remember that. Seeing him in that dream was that reunion I had been waiting for- laughter and tears. Joy and sadness. Then I woke up right before my alarm was set to go off. My face was dry. I wasn’t crying at all. Not even close.

They say that if you die in a dream you’ll die in real life. I never believed that. I know there’s a connection between the physical body and the dream state. You can injure yourself in a dream and wake up sore. But I didn’t wake up crying. If I had my say in the matter, though, I would have.

Fort

2010-01-24T22:39:00.000-08:00

---For David Benjamin Piery---

“Honey!” Said Mrs. Jones from the top of the stairs. She used to be a jovial sort with jade green eyes and always wore a matching jade green jacket. Her jellying chins jutted out from below her jaw and her jet black hair jogged down and framed her face. The thick mascara on her eyelashes gave them an appearance of jagging something, perhaps the air. Perhaps her eyelashes were javelins. Her joints were getting stiff and she was always jonseing for something- a new life or maybe just a new car to jounce and jaunt through countryside roads on. Joy was leaking out of her face and you could tell if you looked at photographs from the past decade. The jubilation that was fading fast, judging by the jumble of stress wrinkles that had jumped up on and junked her complexion, was almost gone. The jury is still out on this, though, for she juxtaposes herself in moments of jocosity. She was no jackleg, mind you, just ‘losing it’. This journey to ‘losing it’ all started, she said in a jangling voice, when she got married. Her least favorite letter, she told her workout partner Jill whilst jiggling in a jazzercising class, was the letter ‘J’. Because that’s the first letter of my damned last name, she said from her janky jalopy of a body, now that I’m married. This life is a damned jail cell, she said to Jill who appeared to be suffering from jaundice. After class she clambered into her Jeep and drove home to her ‘jerry-built’ house that her husband built to prepare Jenni-o turkey and jello to Janet Jackson songs while her husband Jerry munched on turkey jerky. Jesus, she would say, some people are so annoying! That would be me right now, I jest, I jest. I will jettison this act starting now.

“Honey!” Mrs. Jones said a little louder. Her first name was Sally. She bent over the stairs a little bit for this second attempt.

“What?” Carried up a voice in response.

“What are you boys doing down there?”

“Hangin’ out.”

Hangin’ out, Sally said to herself. She sighed and turned away and headed back to the kitchen. An orange light spilled in through a small rectangular window that was built to stare out of while plodding around the kitchen. It was just the right height- you only had to look ahead. Sally opened a cupboard and took out a mug. The outside said ‘World’s Greatest Lover…’ and the bottom on the inside said ‘…Sometimes”. The white porcelain cup warmed up instantly as she poured some aging coffee onto the punch line resting on the bottom of the cup. She sat down in the dining room at the corner of the table and wrapped her small hands around the small mug. After the tingling sensation went away she picked up the phone.

“Jill?”

After a solid hour of building and crawling, the two were finally worn down enough to stop for a second of rest. Sweating and breathing a slight heavier than normal, they exited the labyrinth that they created and climbed up on the only functional pieces of furniture left in the basement.They sat on the two chairs looking out over a mass assembly of blankets, couches, chairs, pool sticks and whatever usable item imaginable for the completed purpose.

“Water?”

“Yes.”

The two rose and headed up the stairs, making for the kitchen.

Sally twirled the cup in a circle slowly on the dining room table with a finger on her free hand. A phone was smushed between her hair, ear, cheek and her left hand.

“They’re downstairs again.” She sighed.

“No, it’s not a problem, they just always make a mess, you know? And I like to keep a clean house.” Sally said into the phone sandwich.

“I just don’t like having to keep after them like this, you know? They should know by now.”

“Boys will be boys.” Said a voice through the phone.

“And they are boys.”

“Can you send mine home before it gets too late? He needs to be up in the morning. I can’t have him getting all razzed up and staying up until God knows when after I fall asleep.” Said the voice.

Two children came tearing into the dining room, yelling indiscriminately.

“Is that who I think it is?” Asked the voice through the phone, speaking up to catch Sallys ear.

In the kitchen two fathers and two sons were drinking water. The sons, who made it to the kitchen first, finished their water and bolted out of the kitchen as quickly as they came.

“Brett, getting laid off was the best idea you’ve ever had.” Said Jerry.

“It wasn’t my idea, man, but I agree. Freedom never felt so… so government funded.”

“Lucky man, lucky man.” Said Jerry.

“Well,” Said Brett in a high toned reply. “not really. I got paid more when I was actually working but the, uh, paid time off and what have you is pretty nice.”

“That’s what I meant. You’re lucky for that.” Said Jerry, making for the basement.

“We’re going to have to put this all back.” Said Brett once they got to the bottom.

“This is the family room.” Said Jerry, knowing what Brett was getting at. “And she’s never down here. So as far as the rest of us are concerned, it’s not her room. It’s everybody else's. She says it’s like you’re part of the family so it’s part your room too, Brett. You, me, the kids, everyone that comes down here. Not her, though, she just likes to mope around the kitchen these days and talk on the phone with her jazzbo friend Jill.”

“She just needs something to do. That’s what Jill tells me.”

“Yeah? She has that class.” Said Jerry.

“I mean you should take her out sometime for once. I guess Sally complains about how you don’t do that anymore. I don’t know, I’m just going off of what Jill says.”

“That won’t make her stop overreacting about stuff like the basement being a fort.” Said Jerry.

“Yeah, Jerry, but you know Sally.” Said Brett.

“Uh huh. She’s a fistful, alright.”

“Mmhm.” Said Brett.

“Well I suppose the kids won’t wanna do it.” Started Jerry after a pause.

“You couldn’t expect them to put this all back anyway.”

“Mmhm.”

“They’ll be happy if we leave it up.” Said Jerry.

“Mmhm.” Said Brett.

“Jerry needs to shape up, Jill. You know what I mean. He can’t keep acting like this.” Said Sally.

“He acts like a child, Jill.” Said Sally as two sets of feet tromped into the room loudly and stopped. Sally looked up.

“Mom can we go play in the fort?” Said Will, nine years old and two feet in front of his best friend, Marc. Marc was Brett’s son. Brett and Jerry were best friends, too. Like father like son.

“The fort?” Said Sally, leaning forward.

“Yeah…Marc and me wanna go play in it. Can we mom?”

“When did you guys make a fort?” Said Sally, neglecting the phone that was making Charlie Brown noises at her.

“Dad n’ Brett made it.” Said Will.

“And we wanna go play in it.” Chipped in Marc.

“What in the name of Christ Jesus of Nazareth?” Said Sally and she set the phone down on the table. The phone sounded like it was saying ‘wah wah wah waa-waa.’

Sally stormed down the stairs and looked at everything her and Jills husbands had done to the family room. Brett and Jerry looked over at her. Brett gave a sideways glance to Jerry, a sort of ‘I told you so’ look.

“What did you do to this room?” Sally barked.

“I, uh, is this a trick question?” Asked Jerry in return, giving a sideways grin to Brett. Brett hit Jerry in the side.

“It’s a fort.” Said Jerry.

“You’re grown men. You’re forty-three. You don’t need to be tearing apart my family room and turning it into a fort.” Said Sally, heatedly.

“Sally, you’re a grown woman. You can settle down about this.” Said Jerry, coolly.

“You will be staying with Brett tonight.”

“Sally.” Said Jerry.

“I mean it!” Screamed Sally.

“Let’s talk about this upstairs.” Said Jerry. Sally expressed an ambiguous level of odium when she gave out a loud ‘Ugh’ and headed up the stairs with quick and heavy feet. Jerry followed and so did Brett. Will and Marc waited for them to disappear up the stairs and shot straight into the gigantic fort.

With Marc fighting off sleep in the backseat, Brett and Jerry drove away from the Joneses residence.

“I’ll bring you back in the morning. You know I don’t have anything better to do.” Said Brett. “Jill is making me wake up early to go job hunting, so you’ll be my first and probably most important stop of the day.”

“Can you believe it?” Said Jerry. “Unbelievable. I just can’t believe it.”

“Give her time to cool down and you guys will be fine.” Said Brett. “Just fine.”

“Unbelievable.” Said Sally into the phone. “Men. You just can’t change em’, can you, Jill? How do you put up with Brett?” The voice on the other end of the phone said something but Sally wasn’t really listening.

“Unbelievable.” Said Jerry in the car. “Women. You just can’t change em’, can you, Brett? How do you put up with Jill?” Brett said something from the drivers seat but Jerry wasn’t really listening.

Crooked Lust

2010-01-22T22:29:00.001-08:00

---Based on "Crooked Lust" by Bowerbirds---

I keep reading these short stories where nothing happens. This last one I read- it’s about this couple. They move into town, the woman eventually leaves and the guy keeps waiting outside for his mail. After he gets this letter he leaves too. The end. It’s from the perspective of the postman.

I do everything I’m supposed to do. I write 1,000 words a day. You’re supposed to do that, right? I do it. But nothing happens in these stories. I read some short stories of another guy from the late 1,800’s and nothing happens in his short stories either. Okay, in a few something happens, but not all of them. There are movies like that too.

I’m young and I work very hard. I work hard enough. I have known you for the whole time and we’re on a first name basis. I sit there on the last page and sometimes I read the last paragraph a few times but I swear, nothing happened.

Will you please tell me if I become a hack?

I was born a ghost- an apparition. Filled with holes and contradiction. And I fear I’m the only one. I know what you’re thinking. And you’re wrong. I don’t think he’s a hack- the one who wrote about the postman. He’s not. If I said he was I would quite literally be ex-communicated. I’m not protecting myself- I’m just telling you.

Half of the time I’m joking. Half of the time everyone’s joking. The other half of the time you’re supposed to think I’m joking. But I’m not and I get away with it, don’t I? I do. And sometimes I feel guilty. So I wake early, watch the leaves quake, and the first light braise the trees. I hide myself in a secret place.

Five hundred pages. Nothing happens. I mean, the plot line runs for three inches. But it’s not true when I say nothing happens. Everything happens. All three inches of it. Do you know what I’m saying? I’d try to write one of my own but I can’t right now. Everything has been pushing against itself-pressing itself into a big mountain. It doesn’t stop, either, and I don’t know how to sort it out. Or stop it.

I’m a sycophant. A wheedler. A beguiler by trade- blanching the faces of those I prey upon. But I’m not preying on anyone. I just do it. When I think about it I see myself from the outside. And right now I’m outside. Here I know my heart, I know it’s careless.

And I need you to be honest. Please tell me if I become a hack.

I want to climb to the top of the mountain, maybe plant a flag. Just to say I’ve been there. It’s built out of me from bottom to top but I feel like the top is foreign- tranquil. Up there nothing happens. I swear nothing happens.

I rise and fall every day- I imagine my body looping around and around as the month passes. Supine. Alarm. Rise. Work. Prostrate. Sleep. And you are always there. You stop to talk to me, and I think you know better, but darling, you seem like you’re fearless. And maybe you’re my perfect fix.

I keep coming back to the stories. I find the movies. Not the comedies, not the romance flicks. Those don’t do it. Too much happens. I keep coming back to the stories where nothing happens. I need to keep this mountain together and I don’t even know how I built it. It just rose up. I spot the fissures but they’re only fissures. Not very deep. Everybody’s mountain has them. Some try to patch them up. Some try to ignore them.

But I am only worried about one thing. Please, please tell me…

It always starts the same, and believe me, it will end the same. That’s just how it goes. I don’t plan it. I write so I don’t have to think about it. Then I realize that I am thinking about it. I’m writing about it. Then I feel it. I hear it. It resonates everywhere. My conscious is an avalanche. Majestic, bewildering. And wholly careless, crooked lust, crooked lust. My conscious is an avalanche…

It is majestic, too. Crumbling without a way to stop it. Maybe I’m shedding something. Maybe I need this. Maybe I need to fall apart so I can hold myself together. And all the while I am the animal on the side of the mountain, watching the mass speed towards me. It’s made of the tiniest, most harmless bits. And I made it. I don’t know how. It just looms over me. I began mistake the shadow of the mountain for the natural shade of daylight.

I can’t make sense of them if nothing happens. I never read them twice and I never think about them too long but I always want to know. I have a list of things to do every day. Silence imprecations. Avoid paroxysms. Stretch. But the one thing that should be on my list isn’t on my list. And I feel it now. My conscious is an avalanche…

My body loops and loops. I breathe and eat to keep it going. I worry, God I worry. And we all do. Everyone says we need to worry less, tossing it out there like a bone to the poor emaciated dog. I am not that dog. We all are. We all worry. Even if we tell other people to worry less. I know the truth.

So I am not out of line if I ask you to be honest.

I live with the tides. I live in reverence. But do I live these days? I think about it and know the days are endless, endless. You used sound happy, but darling, you seem like you’re anxious. My conscious is an avalanche. Aware of the deadly flakes. A mountain made of crooked lust. My conscious is an avalanche…

Gus

2010-01-16T10:46:00.000-08:00

His name was Guster Salazar the Third. If there was a roman numeral for "the last" he would also tack that onto the end of his name. Guster Salazar the Third and Last. It had a veracious ring to it.

Here's the thing: through a series of widespread misfortune and dumb luck, Guster became the last man on earth. Before this happened, his friends just called him Gus. Some people thought it was a generic nickname that just stuck with him, but it wasn't.

Before the problems of overcrowding in Japan, disease and hunger in Africa, constant violent bickering in the Middle East and hate everywhere fixed themselves, Gus worked in the power plant in his small hometown. He lived there all his life. He saw nothing wrong with driving seven minutes to get to his last "class of 2019" reunion. The power plant was hydroelectric: it ran on the water that busily pushed itself through the dam right next to the plant. He enjoyed his job and he knew how to run the place, literally. If someone was sick on his days off he would be glad to come in and work doing something different for a day. When everyone was gone he decided to make the power plant his home. He could keep the power running for himself as long as the water still ran, and the water didn't look like it was going to bail out on him like everyone else did.

He had a lot of time on his hands. He only had to worry about himself these days, but back when there was a lot of people around he preferred to worry about them. One of his biggest fears was that he was going to be seen as an egotistical person. He decided he would rather be an egoist at twenty-two; he had read The Fountainhead. Now he was faced with a large dilemma: seeing as he was the last man on earth his egoism was now egotism. But it was different now. He could be an egotist and an egoist at the same time and not be a dick. Plus nobody was around to be jealous of his immense self-interest. Sadly, nobody was around to see how good he looked, either. I mean it. He really shaped up after everyone disappeared. And who says black and brown don’t match? His black hair looked good on his brown skin. He didn’t tell himself that he looked good, though. That would be too bigheaded of him. His dying thoughts were spent worrying about whether or not he was really what he was afraid of becoming this whole time. It was a very distressful dying breath that he sighed, still caught in a battle of thoughts. If he wouldn't have died in such a hurry he would have had time to realize that if he was indeed an egotist- it was on accident, and he could not be blamed. But I couldn't tell him this, because I was not there to do that. And neither were you. In fact, neither of us exist right now. Only Gus.

Well. Sir Caesar "the Flash" existed to Gus. The Flash was Gus' pet cat, sometimes affectionately known as El Gato. The Flash was mainly green and black. Gus loved that combination of colors. The Flash was made out of cardboard, construction paper, felt, googly eyes- the kind that have the black disc inside of them that moved around- strings and other random material he found all stuck together by property of a guy named Elmer. The Flash was very two-dimensional. Gus had a real pet cat years ago. He got the cat in a parking lot.

"Psst!" said a dark man with a sparse black mustache. "You there!" He half whispered intently. Gus turned his head slightly to the left and glanced at the man talking at him. He was standing between two cars, slightly bent over. The passenger door of the car to the man’s left was open. "Eh! C'mere!" he said. He beckoned with a finger slightly. Gus stood looking at the man, his hands still on his cart with four items in it: peanut butter, milk, bread and some cheap 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner. "Looook" said the man as he reached into his car stealthily and retrieved a small mewling kitten, too cute to not love instantly, unless, of course, you weren't a "cat person". Gus didn't consider himself to be a "cat person" because he considered himself to be fully human. Nothing about him was very cat-like and he didn't understand why people chose to allow the label of "cat person" fall upon their heads. But Gus really did enjoy cats- a lot. Half zombified he walked straight over to the man he was previously raising an eyebrow at. He took the kitten into his hands. It shook and moved around. "Rrg-g-g-g-roww?” it asked.

"My name's Gus, little fella." Gus said to the cat, his face maybe five inches away from the little animal, and ten inches from its normal place above his body. "You selling these little guys?" He asked the man standing in front of him with a dark red button up shirt that appeared to be made of thick cheap cotton.

"Yes." said the man in his fast paced accent. "Ninety dollars for this one". He smiled.

"Ninety?!" Demanded Gus.

"Yes. Ninety dollars."

"Well...why? It's just a cat, man" Said Gus. And then he thought to himself: no, it's not a cat man. That's just silly. I wonder what a cat man would..

"No. It's not just a cat." interrupted the man. His jet-black hair was thick and sort of a medium short length, combed over to one side. A lock of it fell in front of his face as the man leaned forward to give his explanation. His eyes darted from side to side. "It's a gato!" Whispered the man excitedly.

There was a pause.

"What?" asked Gus. His eyebrow found its way back to the place it had been before he walked over. His head tipped to one side, favoring the side of his brain that was trying to figure this man out.

"A gato! See, this is no ordinary cat you can buy here in America. This one is imported. Born in Mayheeko!" Said the man. Of course, he meant Mexico by that. Gus laughed. He produced some twenties and a ten and handed them to the man.

"You're lucky I have so much cash with me today. I don't think a cat's worth that much money but how can I not? This thing is adorable. Look at it." said Gus as he extended his arms with the little animal cradled in his hands. He took it back a few seconds later. He was beaming like a child. "Your reason for it being so expensive made my day. That's the other reason I bought it." He put the little cat down in his cart by his bag. The cat pounced at it. Gus started pushing and the cat moved all of its legs out and looked a little scared as it tried to maintain balance. Later, Gus gave it the name Sir Caesar "the Flash" Gato because he thought it was funny and the cat could not object, plus it always made him smile when he told other people what it was. He got to tell them the story of how he got the cat- they'd always demand why it had such a strange name. Now he only had his cardboard arts and crafts day rendition of his cat. He took it with him whenever he went to a different room and propped it up against something. It was much bigger than the real one and didn't move quite as much, plus it was uninterested in jingly toys, much to Gus' perpetual disappointment.

"Umhnnnm" said Gus' throat. He was talking to his second-generation cat, like he always did. Except what he really said was: "I just don't make coffee like they used to, Flash."

He said it all in his brain. Saying things in his brain was a lot easier than actually voicing them, plus he didn't have to feel as crazed by loneliness as he actually was. This was how he always communicated now. He brained all sorts of things to all sorts of inanimate objects. His mouth would still stir a little and some sounds would come out when he was braining things.

The Flash looked at him, his black disc pupils resting at the bottom of this plastic bubble eyes. "Well don't look at me!" it brained back to Gus. Gus heard it, as he always did.

Gus had a very impressive musical collection. He drove to the closest big towns and raided the music stores. At first he collected all sorts of music he liked. Then he went on to music other people used to enjoy, even if he didn't particularly enjoy it himself. He converted one of the offices into a music room when he ran out of space in his "living room". Next to his music room was his other music room with actual instruments. He found a drum set that was so expensive one could have expected it might have a pot of gold in the bass drum. The drum company knew that would mess with the sound so they decided to make it expensive in other ways. Gus didn't understand what was so great about it, but he liked beating it up with wooden sticks. He had a variety of guitars and a few basses. He also raided the Mac store to get a mini studio set up for himself to record. He threw listening parties with The Flash. At one particular listening party he toasted: "No band in all the history of mankind has ever been so concordantly loved by the earths populous!"

"And no paralyzed cat has ever been the fastest in the world, either!" Said The Flash with a stoic leer.

Gus had become very fit due to his solitary confinement. He wasn't too big on health for most of his life but now he decided he should be healthy and fit if he was ever to become a-sexual somehow. Some animals and plants were a-sexual and they were quite healthy. Humanity was depending on him to find a way to let itself continue past his death! Somehow, he thought, being healthy and fit would result in mankind beyond his singularity. He ran, weight trained and sometimes swam but he still used the facilities elevators. He thought his transmogrification stratagem was a stretch but he had to take measures somehow. Being lazy wasn't his idea of progress.

Panting, he walked into his living room, head down, and hands in fists on his hips. "How was the run?" He looked up and saw The Flash right where he left him.

"Have you ever...you know...thought that maybe there's someone out there somewhere? I mean I don't understand how I could really be the only one left here."

No answer from The Flash.

"Come on. It's just that sometimes I feel like I'm being watched...not by you. And if there is someone out there...I wish they'd just come say 'hi' or something."

“Mom, did Eve go to Hell?”

“I don’t know, baby.” His Mother was short and losing the figure of her youth. Gus was ten.

“I wonder who was the first. I wonder when Hell started and how long Satan had to be alone for. And how bad it was to be the only person there. All alone in Hell with just Satan to keep you company.”

“That boy has a lot of time to think, huh?” Said Gus’ dad from behind his paper on the chair that he literally never seemed to leave, except for work.

“Hey Guster, wanna see what’s on?” He asked with a gesture of his left hand- lifting it with his eyebrows, presenting the remote.

Somewhere along the line he decided that he didn’t believe in God. Now everyone was gone and he didn’t know what to think. Everyone who made him hate organized religion was gone, and if there was a God, getting rid of them was a pretty nice thing to do. But it was just him now. Alone. He reached for the remote. Static.

Gus, caught in quizzical thought, exited the room to head off to the river to bathe. Down the hallway, left at the “T” and straight to the elevator. He raised his hand to call the elevator, and right as his hand hovered over the button, a light above the elevator doors lit up and said 'bing!’

He raised his head to watch the doors mechanically sunder and saw a man standing directly in the middle of the elevator.

Gus cocked his head to the side- his face a look of turbid bemusement. The man standing in front of him lifted his arm parallel with the ground. The muscles in the hand attached to his arm simultaneously contracted in a muscular prolix. The trigger of the gun attached to his hand squeezed as intended and his eyelids followed suit, but by reflex.

Gus lay on the ground gasping for air, his mind and heart racing in tune with each other, and then, as if they had coordinated it in a protest to the pain and their flummoxed state, they stopped.

Spooks

2010-01-11T23:53:00.000-08:00

Hello, my name is Steve Winwood. If you Google my name you’re going to think that I’m some semi-famous guy. Well I’m not. I had no idea who the Steve Winwood was until someone said, what, like the Steve Winwood? And I said who?

This isn’t about how I share a name with someone who I’m ‘in the Wiki know’ about. This is about how my house has spooks. Now, I know what you’re thinking, and that’s not the case, I assure you. I can walk around in the dark anywhere and I’ll be fine. Just not up on the second floor of my house, where the spooks work. Their job is to make me feel uneasy and like I should probably run everywhere I go when I’m upstairs. They do a very good job of this, of course. I feel like every time I reach to flip on the light switch there will be something staring me down when I snap my head around to survey the room I just walked in to. If I walk by a bed I’m sure that some decrepit skeleton hand will shoot out and grab my ankle.

(Never mind that skeletons can’t be strong enough to do any damage to me. One stomp on an infirm skeleton wrist should be enough to cripple it past the point of inflicting physical harm.)

And you may have guessed that the times I am the most spooked by the spooks is at night. This is true. But I maintain: I am not scared of the dark. I’m scared of the spooks. Sometimes the upstairs is still scary in the daytime but it’s not quite as bad. The fact that it’s still scary in the daytime is how I know that it’s spooks and not just the dark.

I used to wonder why ghost hunters hunted with the lights off. If you were to see a ghost, wouldn’t it be easier for you to see them with the lights on? Human eyes were not created with night vision. Then I figured it out. Ghosts use the elements. They’re phantasms, nay, phantoms (!) that have become attuned to the dark because of it’s spooky advantages. What can they do to you physically? Honestly, not much. Not the ghosts that reside upstairs, at least. They could creak a door, maybe, or make me chilly, but that’s not much to have a heart attack over. Nothing to scream myself into acute apoplexy over. So once the haunting community came to terms with this I think they agreed that the proper time to haunt is the night. When things are dark- uncertain- likely harbor a forgotten and discarded artifact to trip you. In the daytime things aren’t nearly as scary. Ever seen a vacuum cleaner look like a short woman with a horridly bent nose? I have. It was at night. Then I saw the vacuum cleaner ten hours later. It was a vacuum.

Ghosts don’t have to be seen; they are felt instead. That’s why the whole upstairs is spooky. I know it’s not one oversized spook that covers the whole upstairs and spills into every nook and cranny of ever room- how preposterous! Those spooks are just everywhere up there. I can feel it. Ghosts are scariest when they wait just outside of your vision- right outside a door or right behind your head when you curl up facing the wall at night.

And, once again, I promise you that I am not afraid of the dark.

The ghost’s spooking jurisdiction ends somewhere near the bottom of the stairs. I feel the tight grip of their spooky hands releasing whatever it is in my chest and throat that makes me feel so uneasy when I’m up there. Let’s just say it’s the human’s spook nerve. When clinched properly it can affect your whole body. It can make you shake; it can make you double over, even. It can make you say the silliest things. Men: it can make you sound like a woman. Woman: it can make your man come running to you in childlike fear. It can make you gulp right after it makes your throat the Mojave Desert. This spook nerve- the one that invokes the powerful emotion of fear- can make you lie and it can make you hurt people when you’re normally as docile as a little Yorkshire Terrier and it can turn you into a scared little rabbit that can’t do anything but run in a helter-skelter pell-mell scramble for the hills or whatever you may be running to for refuge. However you may handle yourself when this nerve is grabbed or pinched and prodded varies with the day, it seems. Sometimes I make my trip down the stairs a quick one, bouncing down each step as fast as I can go without risking a fall and sometimes I walk slowly, defying each and every spook that may be trying to make sure I pee my pants on my way out.

One particular day I was feeling defiant. That day was the day that I actually encountered my first spook. I’m talking visual contact and all.

It was daytime, a perfect time to defy spooks. I started my slow descent down the stairs, not feeling very spooked at all by this trip. Halfway down the stairs I heard something and I stopped. It sounded faintly like someone blubbering on about something through broken sobs- something like this: boo… ablubbadoo-hoo… aboooooo... hoo... hoooo. All with long “o” sounds, of course. Very melodramatic and melancholic.

Galvanized by the inexplicable human notion that everything mysterious needs to be investigated, I turned around. I crept up the stairs as quietly as I could, making sure I would not lose the sound that I was in the process of tracking down. I got to the top of the stairs and craned my head down the hallway to the right- nothing. Nothing in sight, that is. The sound was still there, though, somewhere near the other end of the hall. I walked slowly, stopping sharply at the sound of any creak in the floor. It took me probably five minutes to traverse the length of the hallway. I looked in on the two rooms that I passed on my journey, but seeing as none of them contained The Sound I continued forward, slowly, slowly. Now the hallway presented me with three choices: straight into the walk-in closet attached to one of the guest bedrooms, a right which led to the aforementioned bedroom or a left which led to the bathroom, which was also connected to the first room on the left as you walk the hallway from the stairs. My upstairs is a maze, come to think of it. I know it like the back of my hand, assuming the back of my hand is spooky and implying that I only look at it when I need to. I took a left, following my ears.

It was coming from behind the shower curtain, louder than ever. Someone, or something, was definitely crying in my bathtub. I grabbed the edge of the curtain and yanked it clear to my left and gasped, fell backwards and ripped the curtain off of the railing as I watched a ghostly figure gasp, fall backwards into the wall, sobbing, and make the shower head drip lightly as a spook may do to spook the intended spook-ee. Needless to say, I was spooked. For a few seconds. Then I realized that I still heard this sobbing.

“Gh…ghost?” I said into the air, pulling the detached shower curtain over me like a blanket. A security blanket, to be exact. Don’t tell anyone, but I still have my baby blanket. It’s purple and it is the target of jealousy for many a woman wishing to snuggle with me. I’m loyal to my blankie.

“Go away!” Blubbered the ghost from inside the wall, somewhere just beyond the reaches of my human eyes.

“Is something…is there something I can help you with?” I asked the wall, still feeling a little bewildered at the whole incident.

“Go eat something you’re allergic to! Or, better yet, go find me something to eat that I’m allergic to.” Came the ghost’s curt reply, and then after a dramatic and timely pause he continued in a dragged out bleat: “Oh wait. I’m a ghost.”

“What is going on?!” I asked myself out loud.

“What is going on with you?” Shot back the ghost.

“I wasn’t…”

“How come you’re not scared of me ever?” Whinnied the ghost.

“Um.”

“Every time I’m stuck out here on day shift you’re never scared when you’re up here. Don’t think that I don’t notice. You don’t even pretend to be scared. You could at least give me that! And the others- oh, they notice too!”

And then we were silent for what was probably seven whole seconds. Seven severely interminable seconds. And then I spoke up.

“I, um, you know that I have no idea what’s going on right now, don’t you?”

“I’m haunting you. Wooooo-ooohh” Said the most halfhearted ghost I could have ever imagined.

“Look, ghost,” I said a little uneasily. “I’m scared right now. I tore the shower curtain off.”

“That’s only because you saw me. Showing yourself is a last resort when you’re a ghost trying to scare people, and anyway, I wasn’t trying to scare you. I was on break.”

“On break? From what?”

“From spooking, what else? I’m a ghost. It’s not like I was taking a break from an intense cribbage tournament.”

“I guess.” I said, which, by the way, is something you can say to anything. Seriously. Try it out sometime. (Correct response: Alright…I guess.)

“What do you mean by shifts?” I asked.

“Shifts?” Said the ghost. “Oh. Shifts. Yes. This is the graveyard shift. All the other ghosts are asleep right now.”

“Ghosts sleep?”

“Well, yes, but only because being up all day every day is extremely boring. Especially since you don’t come up here all that often. We just stay awake in shifts. We keep the most ghosts on spooking duty when it’s dark outside.” Explained the wall.

“Ah.”

“Yeah. And they won’t let me work the night shifts with them because they say they already have enough ghosts to cover the shift. Like there can be too many!” Whined the ghost. “The more the scarier, right? That’s how the saying goes!”

“Oh, come on, ghost. You’re scary!” I solaced the poor thing.

“Yeah? Then what was that stunt on the stairs all about? You never slowly walk down the stairs at night!”

“Yeah…well…I twisted my ankle the other day and now I have to be careful on stairs.” I fibbed like a child. It was obvious that I was lying; the ghost resumed its ululations of self-pity.

“I’m the worst ghost ever!” It wailed.

“Ah butter biscuits.” I said under my breath.

“What...did you say?” Asked the sobbing ghost.

“I, uh, said …butter biscuits.” I said feeling embarrassed at my stupid replacement words. I usually just say something random with alliteration that’s likely to make me smile after making a mistake. One time, a few years ago, I said “Aw JonBenét Ramsey!” and my co-worker looked at me kinda funny and I go “Too soon?” even though it was more than ten years after the fact. He didn’t find the same humor I did in it and it probably made the foot-in-mouth situation that I was trying to navigate out of worse so from then on I decided to just say harmless things like “butter biscuits!” and “snake socks!” and “parrot pushups!” and so on.

“B…butter biscuits?” The ghost blubbered back.

“Butter biscuits.” I sighed in reply.

And then the sobbing ghost did something you see children do when they find out that their immunization shot or their first haircut or first rollercoaster isn’t all that scary or doesn’t even hurt. The crying segued right into laughing. Hysterical laughing, choking on breaths and sniffling and I’m sure even a sore ghostly abdomen to boot. Then I started laughing a little bit too.

“Shh…shh!” The ghost said as it calmed down. “You’ll wake the others!” It warned me.

“Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad idea…” I said as a light bulb in my head flickered on.

“No, that would be a terrible idea!” Said the ghost with a plea somewhere in the tone of its not-so-spooky voice.

“Look,” I said, pulling the shower curtain to the side revealing a growing dark spot on my pants.

“Something smells like piss and asparagus.” Said the ghost from behind the wall.

“I know.” I whispered.

“You just pissed your pants.” Stated the ghost, nonplussed.

“I’m going to get up, run out of here and down the stairs. I’m going to drop my phone in the hallway and run back up to get it about a minute after I get down. Wake your ghost friends up.”

I felt cold burst through me right after I said that and I could already feel the whole upstairs getting spookier as I got up and ran as fast as I could down the hallway and tore down the stairs. I stood in the living room, panting a little bit. I walked into the kitchen, turned the faucet on cold and filled up a glass of water. It’s not often that someone will sacrifice their pride for another, but the feeling I had coursing through my veins for what I was about to do as I drank that water was one more rewarding than any I felt in literally years. I set down the glass, put on my game face and crept towards the stairs. I poked my head in the doorway leading to the stairs, mounted the small landing at the bottom of the stairs, and bolted.

Brutus

2010-01-08T17:04:00.000-08:00

There was a beast that lived in my grandparent’s basement, just past the bottom of the stairs in that big mysterious room closed off by a large dark green curtain, that come to think of it, was probably just a bed sheet. It was a gigantic rat that fed primarily on peanut butter. Sometimes cheese, but mainly peanut butter. I imagined this rat to be human enough to walk around on its hind legs. It would be hunched over as it dragged its oversized frame around the basement room it had been given. It wore a mahogany colored robe, to keep warm. Its eyes were undoubtedly green and gave off a dim light.

When I was eight the basement of my grandparents house was a fort. It had a pool table, which was great for sneaking around and crawling under. The basement was spacious for a few kids who had yet to reach a decade in age. It was our play-place whenever our mom brought us over so she could visit her parents. You could get to the basement from the living room. Down one half flight of stairs, where a few rooms existed, then down another half flight. At the bottom of this flight was always the green curtain that we were constantly warned to stay away from. We never dared to question our grandpa- why he kept a giant rat in his basement and if it was so dangerous, how did the curtain keep it at bay? We entered our imaginary fortress the same way every time, by taking the stairs on the far right side and sliding into the room, always staying away from the rat’s domain.

As I grew older I feared the rat less and less but never tried to peer past the curtain. I never felt the urge to look past it as I got older. The room never existed in my childhood explorations so it never existed as I became a teen.

Imaginations are powerful things, and children are the magical wizards they imagine themselves to be any given Tuesday afternoon, and the next day they really are in a struggle for their lives as they escape one of their siblings who has turned into a swamp creature. But as the months pass by every child loses its powers. Imaginations fade. You come to realize that your hand really isn't a gun and you really didn't just shoot your brother with it, and on top of that you realize that getting shot would really suck and you have absolutely no desire to really shoot your brother. Schoolwork becomes real, and so does that cute girl you see between third and fourth hour every day on your way to your locker.

You've grown up. Being a kid was fun, but the days of make believe are over. Right?

"Mom. Come on- can't I just stay at home this time? I've been there billions of times and there's nothing to do there. It's so boring."

"You're coming with me and that's final!" Everything moms say are final. Don't ask them why 'that's final' because you'll never get an answer. "Because I said so. That's why."

Every time it’s the same seemingly involuntary act: I sigh and drag my feet around, suddenly feeling the need to walk aimlessly around the living room half as fast as I normally walk. My favorite windbreaker is waiting for me on a chair where I threw it sometime after I last came home. It's blue, white and orange. I got it on sale. Thinking about it now, I understand why it was on sale. It's ugly. But it made me feel cool when I first put it on and made my mom buy it and now I have an unspoken attachment to it- like the ratty pair of shoes that you refuse to throw away.

We have a mini van. It's a gray Astro van, and for a van I think it's pretty awesome. It endured many trips of us kids bouncing around before we were finally buckled down, and now it endures trips of three teens staring intently at nothing through its windows.

In the corner of the basement a variety of bean bags and blankets await our arrival. A few chairs, too, but none of us really liked the chairs that much. Bean bags fit us much better; slouching was becoming the new posture of choice.

"Ukhh" said the back of Ryan's throat. "I don't know why mom still makes us come here. This sucks."

"Yeah. But we'd be sitting at home doing nothing if she didn't take us with." I said in a lazy response.

My brother used to get mistaken as my twin. We really don't look a whole lot alike. Our hair colors aren't even close to being the same. It’s my sister and I that look alike- the blonde hair- the blue eyes. We used to joke that he was the adopted child, when really it was Jacqi and me that bore the least resemblance to our parents. Ryan has brown hair and eyes that he insists are “hazel”. I tell him that they’re brown because he’s a boy and boys shouldn’t worry themselves with whether their eyes are “hazel” or not. He persists. I never understood why people thought we were twins. I guess we just act alike.

"Apparently she thinks we still play down here?" stated our sister. She was the oldest of the three of us. She knew we were far too old to still play games and communicate across the room with walkie talkies, and if she knew something was true we were liable to believe her. She had over a year of living on me and a little over two on my brother.

"Come on guys," I chuckled "who wants to be the sea monster this time?"

"Ha. Not it."

"You can say you're not it," Smiled my sister "but we can make you be the sea monster again if we want!"

"You guys suck. And you always have." Ryan had that grin on that he's been making since he was four years old stealing moms coffee from the table top as she got ready for work in the morning. I don't know how it didn't burn his mouth but he always drank it all. And fast.

"Well... we could go free Garatron from his dungeon." joked Jacqi. She said it like a joke but it was more of a challenge. None of us believed in the thing that came to be named Garatron (Gargoyle+Rat+Tron [we, as all kids in our generation, had a robot fixation]. This name struck the proper fear into the unknown creature that lived behind the curtain), but none of us jumped to the challenge that came up at least once every time we came over.

"Still not it." He didn't sound excited. The joke was probably getting old to him.

"You guys. Have you realized that we have never even so much as peeked behind that curtain? That's just silly. We all know there's nothing back there. Grandpa probably just has a bunch of old crap he doesn't want us to break back there." I always felt like mine was a voice of reason.

"Alright. It's settled. You get to go back there and tell us what you see." Jacqi was always first in command. Whatever she said generally had to happen. When Ryan or me said something she had the power to deny it.

Well fine. I wasn't afraid. But I wasn't getting up either.

"Puhftt.." My diaphragm popped my stomach up for a split second as the corner of my mouth pointed towards my eye which was half squinting as I looked back and fourth between the people I had spent most of my life with. They were calling my bluff and I knew it. "fine!" I stood up abruptly; my face still holding that grin assuring myself that I thought this was ridiculous.

"Go on!" Ryan smiled as he lazily extended his arm and flicked his hand in the direction of the forbidden room.

"Yeah." I let my head fall back slightly as I turned to head in the direction of the room. I marched the same way as I did when I found out I had to come here earlier today.

Jacqi started to laugh. Quietly for a second or two then more obviously. Ryan joined in. I had only walked about five steps. Without moving my feet I turned around and smiled. They both shot up to follow me as I picked up my pace and headed straight for the ugly green curtain.

We stood there in a “V” pointing at the room, me at the tip. I stood staring at it. I had dared to do this before a few times on a few of the many trips we had been forced to make. This was about to be a trip I had only dared to think about up until this point. I reached out to grab the side of the curtain. . .

Inside there were a lot of boxes stacked against the walls. I saw the mousetraps scattered around with peanut butter. Apparently, if the mousetraps didn't kill it the years of partially hydrogenated vegetable oils were going to do the trick. However, if they hadn't by now the chances were slim. The rat beast must have been smarter than that by now. We slowly walked around the room through the mazes of old crap our grandpa clearly didn't want us to break. I'm sure he's never going to use any of it, though.

A noise came from somewhere behind me. My heart skipped a beat as I spun around just in time to see my brother trying to set a fishing pole back in its place. "I thought you were Garatron," I said with the quiver in my voice of a nervous laugh.

"No. That...That's Garatron.." My sister said as she pointed behind some boxes, her mouth partially dropped open. Ryan and I looked over from where we were poking around. I was closest to her and the first to show up and peer behind the box. I saw nothing. Ryan came up and stood looking over my shoulder.

"There! There's his tail!" he exclaimed and pointed to an edge of one of the boxes.

"Um," I said, a little confused at the floor space of nothing I was looking at. "Guys..?"

"He's coming after us!" Jacqi said as she fled the room.

I looked at my brother and smiled. I looked back and there he was. Exactly as I imagined him. With a grin I was half my age again- seven, eight, and nine with my brother and sister. "Get the walkie talkies!" I commanded as I took off with Ryan after our sister. We ran back to the bean bag area and found the walkie talkies laying around. The batteries were dead. We probably hadn't touched those walkie talkies in two years. "I'll go get some batteries," I said in a serious voice and I took off for the stairs. I stopped at the curtain and jerked it across the entry way. "I think he's still in there guys!" I called out as I pounded up the stairs.

I calmly took a right as I got to the top of the stairs, entering the living room. I walked into the kitchen, breathing a little heavier than normal. Mom looked over as I opened a drawer with random household items that didn't really have a place anywhere else. The junk drawer also served as the battery drawer. I tested two nine volts with my tongue. It quivered a little bit as a light shock shot across the two contact points from the first one. "Dith un's gud," I said with my tongue out, ready to test the second one. "Bla. That one too." I shook my head a little. I hated testing nine volt batteries but this was a serious matter. "Bye mom!" I said in a slightly raised volume as I turned and quickly headed back to the stairs.

"And a hearty 'Hi' to you too!" said my grandpa as he leaned back and looked for me around the corner of the kitchen. We made brief eye contact as I smiled and waved. The stairs thudded under my heavy steps as I ran back down to aid my brother and sister in the struggle we were about to embark in against Garatron.

"Watch out! He's right there!" warned my sister.

"Aw basketballs!!" I said as I stopped abruptly on the last step.

"I have a plan. Wait one second." She appeared back by the stairs a few seconds later holding a pillow. "I'm gonna throw this at him and when I do..make a break for it!"

I nodded, two batteries clutched in my right hand as I bent my legs, ready to spring forward. She threw the pillow. It bounced off of a box from behind the curtain.

"Got him! Quick!!" she said urgently.

I jumped from the final stair and we ran back to the other side of the basement where Ryan was waiting for us, ready to devise a plan.

"Alright. What do we know about this thing? What can we use against it?" Asked Ryan, looking to us for council.

"I think it's sick of peanut butter by now. If we're going to lure it, we're going to have to use something else" I said, glancing between the two other faces in our huddle.

"Peanut butter and pickles."

"Jacqi? Peanut butter and pickles? How will that help?" Our mom got us hooked on peanut butter and pickle sandwiches early on in our lives. I looked a little miffed at such a ridiculous plan..there wasn't any time to waste! I continued: "Ryan, got any ideas?"

"Hold on!" She insisted. "This is a good idea. Garatron is familiar with peanut butter. You can't get sick of something if you've never had anything else to compare it with.. so the peanut butter will lure it in. The pickles, something new, will give him even more reason to go after it."

"Alright good point. I got the batteries, though, so who's next to go up? Whoever does it has to somehow get past Garatron..twice."

"I'll go." Said Ryan. He was always brave. Never too energetic, but rarely afraid to do something that took some guts.

"Alright, we need to make a distraction." I said, breaking my position in the huddle to look around the room for something to use.

"Here's what we'll do.." Said Jacqi, pulling us in with serious comportment. "I’ll get close to him and distract him by talking. I’ll keep moving back into the room every time he gets closer. He's not fast so I won't be in too much danger. You guys will sneak around the pool table, and when it's safe, Ryan, you go up and get the sandwich. Cut it into four pieces. Lee, you go into the room and find an empty box. A big one. Get back to the corner and set the box up on its side and hide behind it, behind the closed side. And take this walkie talkie. Ryan- you'd better make it quick!!"

And we were off. I didn't think about what I was supposed to be doing hiding behind this box in the corner of Garatrons den and I started to get a little nervous when I heard my brother come back down the stairs and receive further directions from my sister.

"Alright quick.. find Lee and put a piece right in front of the box." I heard the walkie talkie by my side static and then I heard my sisters voice more loudly: "When we say 'now', jump up and capture Garatron in the box." Then the static preceded my sisters voice again in a distant and faint volume from across the room: "Lay the other three pieces in a trail leading to the fourth. He'll take the bait, promise."

"Lee..Lee, did you hear that?" Ryan fervently whispered.

"Yes. And I think I'd feel safer if you guys would just give me a harpoon gun instead of this box"

And then there was silence. I heard the grotesque smacking of ratty masticating grow nearer until it was almost directly on the other side of me.

"NOW! NOW LEE! NOWNOWNOWNOW!" It was a sort of unisonous tumult from my siblings, both in audible shouting and staticky telephonic transmissions: an electrified galvanization for a call to action. I jumped straight up, holding the box in front of me. Garatron fell backwards because, as I later learned, his head was actually in the box and all I really had to do was tip the box forward to capture him. Unfortunately I was feeling rather valiant, hence the jump to my feet with the box. Garatron soon regained his bearings and I swear I saw those green eyes glow! He began snipping at my feet, snarling and drooling everywhere in the process. I looked up, fearful and impuissant. My brother and sister stood on, apparently unaware of the struggle that was happening between my feet and this beast. Garatron lunged forward for my seemingly palatable ankles and I saw my window of opportunity. I jumped backwards and brought the box down upon the giant rat at the same time. How the whole things fit under the box, I will never know. The box shook from its attempts for liberation so I pounced on top of the box, securing the rat betwixt the floor and the box. Panting, I called out to my brother and sister:

"Got him!" I announced with a triumphant grin while kneeling on the box, but no sooner than my grin spread it quickly faded. I heard our secret code beeping through the walkie talkie, three short staccato beeps followed by one long one. It meant one thing: adults. Ryan was feverishly pounding out the warning signal as he looked up at our mother, who was standing right behind the two of them with a smile on her face.

"Are you guys ready to go yet? or should I leave you be for a while longer? It looks like you're actually having fun down here!"

"No mom, we're good..we were just..we saw a..." Jacqi stalled for a quick excuse.

"I donno, I'm ready to go whenever" Said Ryan as he sheepishly hid the walkie talkie behind his back.

"Don't tell grandpa?" I said with a pleading smile that could win any mom over in an instant.

"Don't worry kids, I won't. Anyway, someone's gotta be around to keep Brutus at bay."

"Brutus?" We all kind of said under our breaths at the same time.

"Well whatever you call him. That's what we called him. You ready?"

I climbed down off of the box I was still perched on, feeling invigorated but doing my best to not show it as we all walked out of our grandpas house, bidding our farewells and for the first time in years not feeling dread when he said, as he always did: "You kids should come back over sometime!"

Green Giant INC

2010-01-07T19:50:00.000-08:00

Last Saturday I pulled into a rest area. I had been driving for two hours straight. I arched my back and crossed my arms behind my head, stretching. I looked to my left as I my mouth gaped for air, yawning. An enormous green statue stood proudly with his hands planted in fists on his hips- big smile spread across his face. I thought back four years, to when I was nineteen. I was a strapping young lad, freshly out of the ranks of matriculated others formerly like myself. I needed a job. Craigslist said that the Green Giant food company was hiring in various positions. After rigorous aptitude testing and a much shorter application I got a call back, and was asked to show up for an interview. I showed up, three minutes early. They said I was so uncharacteristically under-qualified that there is no chance I could ever work in the factory. I felt a little punk'd for showing up but they continued with the conversation..they said a spot as the Jolly Green Giant just opened. After a half an hour of questions they finally came to a conclusion: Your skin is not green enough. I asked: Do I still get paid?

Four days later I was dressed in a green leafy toga. I worked for a week and a half before being fired for continued neglect to recycle, which was indeed a very green duty, and company policy on top of that. But for that week and a half... I felt massive. My professional title included the word "giant". If there was a top of the job world, I was on it. Or at least at my personal summit.

Day one I got a tour of the factory. I met all sorts of affable folk of sundry color and dialect. Diversity was promoted, and because of that I thought I should be getting a promotion posthaste, being green and the only of my kind. I brought this up two days before I got fired. Didn't go over too well. I surmise it led to the demise of my job. That and the recycling thing.

Days two through six I toured schools; an easy first week on the job, they said. I mainly stood around in the corner of the lunch rooms looking rather bumptious and being treated rather rudely. Nothing could slake the students need to make me feel piqued. Fusillades of pejoratives from flocculates of roisterous muckers. Iterations of my effeminacy. By day six I was lassitude and saturnine. The interminable numbers of scapegraces were getting to me. It was not different in any of the schools. Their coteries all became one in the denigration of a green man in tights. At a few of the schools I had to declaim vegetable facts to some of the agriculture classes in addition to my lunchroom duties. Day five came to a close and I thought about my salary number, five digits, yes, and that was enough for me. Day six I tripped one of the children, feeling rather petulant over the whole situation. That..well I suppose that put a coal in the furnace. That and the recycling thing and the jejune request for a raise.

Days seven and eight were days off. I received these days without makeup, tights or togas. It was refreshing. I visited the YMCA, which was encouraged by my bosses since they said the jolly green giant should appear to be toned, not corpulent, or in my case, emaciated.

I am not that thin, for the record.

I watched a few episodes of Freaks and Geeks. I made bacon in my one piece raiment of Hanes briefs, crumpled it up in some chicken Ramen and felt like a true bachelor. By day eight, which was a Monday, I was feeling very bored. When I Googled Oprah I knew things were getting out of hand. I almost called my mom but instead I decided I would call into work to see how things were at the office. By the first ring I changed my intention of calling.

"Green Giant incorporated," said a robot. "If you know your parties extension, please dial it now. If you would like t..."

Four beeps at my fingers command.

"Green Giant, this is Tony" said a hurried but jocose and throaty voice in its fifties.

"Tony. Hello. This is Jerry Atricks calling about your latest lab results from your compulsory heart checkup."

Silence. I was breathing a little abnormally trying to stifle a laugh.

"You might as well call your heart Ringo Starr because that thing is beating li.."

"Jacob."

I choked on my word as he cut me off. 'Like' became 'likuhhh'.

"I will see you tomorrow." Apparently he had caller ID.

The next day marked the final stretch of days at my job, days nine through eleven. Day nine they had me watching a few training videos. All very boring, all made at least fifteen years ago, all with terrible actors. The final one was on the importance of diversity. Tony came in to wheel the TV away and asked me if I had any questions.

"As the only green person in the company..."

Day ten all they wanted me to do was watch the juggle of faxes being passed around the office. The idea was that if things slowed down for the green giant with appearances I could help around the office. Tony came up to me sometime after lunch and pointed at a few papers, explaining what they were. I pointed out a duplicate.

"Ah yes. That happens sometimes. Just recycle it."

I crumpled it in a ball and in perfect overhead form, shot the paper ball into Tony’s waste basket, with a flawless rebound off of his mini basketball hoop backboard which was ten feet away. Tony shot daggers at me with his eyes and walked away.

Day eleven was gloomy to begin with. It was drizzly and I was feeling lazy and tired. I parked in Tony's spot because all of the open spaces were on the other side of the lot. He got to park close every day! I think he could use a good walk now and again as it is. I thought of it as a favor to the both of us. But he didn't. He called me into his office for a "meeting". On my way to his office everyone sent knowing presages in their glances. And do I even need to tell you how it went? They may as well have put me in a kiln. I was fired. Should have seen the auguries from a mile away. I had to turn in my toga and my green clogs and everything. But they let me keep the tights.

The Good Witch of Sinclair

2010-01-02T15:09:00.000-08:00

"AHhahaha!!" Rose a deep, raucous and rancorous cackle from the first floor, far back and far left room of a large community house. The house is called, due to lack of a more creative name, Witch House. The running joke goes something like this: witch one- "Where are you headed after school?" witch two- "The house." witch one- "Which house?" witch two- "Witch House!"

Cackle.

Nobody lives at the house formally, however some may end up staying the night after a lengthy witching party paired with pizza and gossip. The house, on the outskirts of a small town by the name of Sinclair, Ohio, is abandoned, so meeting there is illegal, which is indeed perfect for their recreations of choice: potion crafting and spell casting.

The whole house resounded with intermittent cackles as the fourteen and fifteen year old girls added various ingredients to their witchy potions, mainly herbs and spices from their parents’ pantries. These ingredients went into pots full of warm water- rather, cauldrons. Every one of them has their own personal wooden mixing spoon, which has been uniformly branded in the schools shop classroom by an honorary warlock, Jerome, who is the boyfriend of one of the witches. From one particular room on the first floor, the room farthest back and farthest left, the pungent smell of vinegar emanates throughout the halls. Hellga (with a purposeful and verbal emphasis on 'hell') is creating a very special spell this time. This is no love potion; no, it is much more complex to create. The effects, if the potion is conjured properly, are impossible to reverse.

"HahaHA!!" Rose a light, euphonious and amicable laugh from the second floor, far back and far right room of the very same house that Hellga was conjuring up her special potion in.

"Why do all of these potions include tadpoles?" Tadpoles were easy to acquire in the right season- a river with a pool of general stagnancy in a small natural inlet of sorts was just a short walk away. "Forget it. No tadpoles this time." She decided.

"I wonder if these potions actually do anything." Said Glinda out loud. She was talking to herself. As a common courtesy, new witches were left to practice potions and spell casting in the privacy of their own room. Error was okay; it was a part of the learning process. The more advanced witches let others come in and watch 'how things were done' but Glinda was nowhere near that point. She had just joined the coterie last week.

Glinda grabbed a packet of Kool-Aid out of her purse and poured the contents into her stew of warm water, garlic powder (not garlic salt; garlic powder. Garlic salt would RUIN it), three dandelion heads and two slices of untoasted whole wheat bread. The bread was then to be cooked like a grilled cheese with mayonnaise instead of cheese betwixt the slices and then consumed with a vial of enchanted chocolate milk. Glinda, of course, had no plans to follow through on such preposterous plans and if she did the Kool-Aid would have cancelled out the effectiveness of the potion anyway. Convinced that she could do anything a potion might ostensibly accomplish, she opened her window and dumped the potion onto the ground, two floors down.

(It was one of many variations on a love potion)

The next day at school Glinda was gliding through the hallways, holding her unicorn and rainbow themed trapper keeper close to her chest with both arms crossed over it. This trapper keeper was special- she had owned it for three years now and a lot of memories were stuffed into the zip pockets, some hidden away under the hole that gave access to a new secret compartment under the unicorn and rainbow scene. Old notes were bit apart by the metal rings and any surface was etched all over in back in pen and marker- all of this amid a tumult of homework. In fact- there was a math assignment to turn in two hours from now...where exactly was that?

I could have sworn I slid it right on top of the rest of my papers in here! she thought to herself. She began fishing for papers at random, pulling one out as she navigated the familiar hallways, stuffing it back in and fishing for another.

"AHA!" Glinda said as she thrust her hand holding the paper straight into the air. "Got you!" She said, and just as she returned her gaze to the hallway in front of her it met the bewildered eyes of someone she had known for most of her life, thanks to the even longer standing relationship of their fathers. Glinda's trapper keeper slid across the floor and her math assignment floated peacefully to the ground to take its place among the rest of the papers that fell out of the trapper keeper from the collision and the ensuing bounce and slide across the floor that threw open the already unzipped trapper keeper.

"Rachel!" Said Glinda, still a little shook up from her literal run in.

"It's Hellga." Replied clinched teeth complete with an icy glare. "You know we're supposed to address each other by our chosen names when there isn't an outsider around."

"Right…well you know I'm still new to this whole witch thing. I think you should pick a nicer name, though." Replied a white simper complete with a warm countenance.

"A nicer name?! We're witches!" Hellga retorted in a raised voice. "What's nice about being a witch?!"

"Well I'm a good witch...that’s a nice thing, isn't it?"

"Any real witch wouldn't be a 'good' witch." She gesticulated sardonically. "You don't know anything. All you do in your stupid room is make kool-aid! I don't know why you even come hang out with us..." She gave a haughty mien and in a mocking undertone made her parting salutations: "...Glinda." And off she went. Glinda picked up her papers that were strewn about all by herself and continued on her way.

I'm not even a witch! She thought to herself.

And that, my friends, is how she is a good witch.

Later that evening back at Witch House (which house?) Hellga was at it again, perfecting her potion. This was the third and final version that she was to brew up. The first two, she perceived, were good enough as they were to do the trick, but she had to be sure. She didn't want any half effectiveness for this potion: that would leave the victim in obvious need of help. If the potion worked properly the victim would not be able to ask for help in any way that any other human would understand nor would they be able to do anything about it even if they could ask for help!

Steam and odors of repugnance rose from her cauldron- a large pot usually used for her families spaghetti night- as she mixed the last and most important ingredient into the potion with her branded wooden mixing spoon. The target of the potion was actually in the house! she thought with a crooked smile of misplaced antipathy. This feeling, which she had never stopped to think about, had morphed and grew into something completely bigger than it needed to be. In actuality, Hellga should have only been angry with herself. It was not her friend that had done the disowning; she had done it to herself! She had been friends with her now sworn enemy since they were little babies goo-gooing about poop and sucking their thumbs if they ever lost their pacifier. It all came crashing down one and a half years ago when they entered middle school. The school was a combination of two smaller elementary schools, so naturally people picked up new friends in the halls or at class. Hellga, whose name was still only Rachel at the time, was intimidated by the new faces and shrunk from them. Her best friend flourished at the new faces and became friends with many, many new people. Rachel recognized this and took it personally.

With the potion carefully held in her left hand she exited her room. She watched the liquid level of the concoction sway between the edges of the cup, reaching high every three or four steps but never quite high enough to spill over. With the confidence gained in herself to not spill, she continued her short stepped gait and looked up just in time to catch the bewildered eyes of someone directly in front of her that she had known for years. They met in a slow but direct frontal body collision and the potion held in front of Hellga was lost mostly on her shirt and a bit on both of their shoes.

"RACHEL!" Shrieked Hellga as she gave off a frightening miasma.

"It's Glinda." Replied an ingratiating smile.

"I don’t care what you think your name is! I hate that name! It's from that stupid Wizard of frickin' Oz movie- which has nothing to do with real witchcraft!! And what's worst of all is I hate MY name now because it's also YOUR name!”

"Oh come on, now, you don’t hate it! Remember when you used to like that they were the same? We'd try to convince people that we were twins, but it never worked." Said Glinda, unfazed by Hellga's ardor. "I guess we never thought that people would figure out that parents are only cruel enough to name twins in alliteration and dress them the same until they are old enough to know better. They couldn't get away with naming twin girls 'Rachel and Rachel'." She laughed a little at her wandering thoughts and looked back at Hellga.

After a pause Glinda lifted up a bottle, which had fallen to the ground. "Kool-aid?"

Hellga forced a smile. "I think I could go for some." She said, reaching for the bottle. "Look…I think I know what I need to do. Let me go back into my room and make a basic elixir to share with you.” Hellga slunk back into her room and started making what she had no doubt in her mind was the most powerful potion she had ever managed to concoct.

They met in a basement room, which was the only room (besides their personal witching rooms) that was likely to be empty.

"So what did you make for us anyway?" Asked Glinda, a little excited and a little nervous because she had never really tried a potion and although she was skeptical of their effectiveness she never really knew for sure that nothing would happen.

"It's a basic love potion. Not like...a philter that everyone is trying to make and give boys at school, so don't worry about that.”

“I would just use a Mickey Finn if I ever wanted to make a philter.” Glinda grinned. Hellga looked confused. “Maybe I need to work on my witch jokes…” Glinda sheepishly concluded.

“I realize that I have been terrible to you for no reason,” Said Hellga after a pause. “and it's time we make this right. Let's drink this together and see what happens…"

If only she had believed that she had been terrible and wanted to make this right!

Glinda took the potion in hand and without second thought or a whiff of the pungent mixture and gulped it down as fast as she could. Hellga smiled and drank down what was actually a vitality elixir with food color to look the same as the potion she gave Glinda. With her eyes on Glinda the whole time, Hellga waited for something to happen- a change to begin. Glinda stood smiling back, not sure what to say or if she was supposed to wait for a minute for the potion to set in.

"H...how do you feel?" Hellga hesitated.

"The same as before." Glinda smiled.

Hellga's eyes shifted towards the ground and her eyebrows and lips suggested that she was working something out in her head.

"But I think that's because you never lost your place in my heart, Rachel. I always have and always will consider you one of my closest friends- even if you hate me." Said Glinda, catching on to these idiosyncrasies that she used to be able to pick out in split seconds and know the exact meanings of.

Hellga looked up and her mouth tightened slightly as she involuntarily began grinding her teeth.

"It's not working..." She muttered at first. After a pause of confusion from Glinda and a pause from Hellga while retracing the making of her potion- what it could be that is stymieing the progress of her diabolical plan she iterated: "IT'S NOT WORKING!"

She shouted this time, infuriated because she knew everything was perfect, even in making it so quickly.

"What... what are you talking about?" Stammered Glinda, afraid for the first time that a potion might actually have some effectiveness.

"You'd better be barking in about seven seconds!" Hellga shrieked in response. She was standing, her arms were locked straight down at her sides and her hands were making tight fists.

Glinda swallowed a giant lump in her throat. Her mouth was dry.

This potion was indeed a dud, much to Hellga's growing concern. This potion was meant to transmogrify the victim into a cocker spaniel. The potion description did not say 'transmogrify', though. It said 'transform'. Transmogrify, however, is the proper term for witchy potions crafted by these middle school girls.

"TURN INTO A FREAKING COCKER SPANIEL ALREADY!!" Hellga finally shouted in Glinda's face, revealing the intent of the drink.

The right corner of Glinda's mouth bumped up, forming a half smile. Her diaphragm made her stomach look like it was getting jumpy because she was letting a few involuntary laughs out under her breath.

Embarrassed, Hellga threw her own glass that formerly contained the food dyed vitality potion onto the ground, shattering it.

"Witchcraft is so stupid!! It never works!" Hellga said in a long avoided admission to herself. “I quit...” She said under her breath. “and I’m sorry.”

Glinda wrapped her arms around the post that Hellga had made of herself since the potions failure.

"How could I ever be mad at you?!" Said Glinda to her post.

"How long were you going to be a witch for?" Said Hellga, quietly.

"As long as it would take."

I Think It Was Me

2009-12-31T01:02:00.000-08:00

Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. I am sitting on a plastic woven lawn chair that I got because it reminds me of my childhood. At hand: a sweaty Arnie Palmer that I got because it reminds me of iced tea and lemonade. Nearby, semi trucks are slowly climbing a mountain with their hazards on. Opposite of them are trucks with their hazards on trying not to careen off of the side of the mountain on their descent. I am watching the sun hide behind these mountains. The final rays are moribund as the water twinkles their goodbyes.

I came here to be a struggling writer.

I have been here for two weeks and in the local businesses of this town I have become somewhat of a regular. I talk to the people I meet. They talk to me. They all are so eager to hear about my story! Affability, ostensibly. Tips, verily. I tell them all about it, and about how it is not progressing very well. Writers block, ostensibly. Facade, verily. (Shh)

Here in Coeur d’Alene, it seems that oysters find themselves in the mouths of people instead of the mouths of shells. Too bad for them! I have become part of this aqueous epidemic; a fan of oyster shots. One Arnie Palmer and one oyster shot, Veronica! Coming right up, she says! There are a lot of bar and grill combinations along the main drag here, and I started coming to this one due to the strange allure the place gave off. I'll blame it on the green awning.

"It's about an old woman." I say, placing my arms forward and leaning in towards her edge of the table. "She's been looking for the perfect man her whole life, you know. Never settling. So she's been single for years."

"How old is she in the story?" Asks Veronica. I can tell I already have her hooked. I'm sure she had Love Actually waiting for her back at home on her DVD player.

"I imagine I will make her be about eighty five and still mobile without the aid of a walker or anything. So she's always walking around her Brooklyn neighborhood still dressed up like a flapper, looking for that perfect man to come sweep her off her creaky old feet. Her friends tell her over their quilting parties that she should stop ‘dressing like that’ so she can attract a normal man her age because 'they may be old, but they aren't stuck in the past.' She refuses to heed their advice. All of these friends of hers are married, mind you."

"Aww that's cute." She sympathized with a dolorous puppy eyed expression. "I want to know how it ends! Do you know yet?"

"Yes, I do, Veronica." I said with a warm smile. "I know how it ends…but how to put it together with the right emotion...that's the hard part. But I shouldn't keep you from your work too long. Maybe you'd like to hear the rest of the story after your shift tonight?"

"That would be lovely. I was only planning on spending the night in my place cuddled up with ice cream and P.S. I love you. This sounds almost as good." She said playfully.

"Well how about this. I'll come over, we'll watch your movie and then I'll tell you the rest of my story. You can decide which is better."

"That sounds wonderful," she said with a smile. "here's my number. Give me a call at eleven." She said as she scribbled on a small napkin.

"Looking forward to it!" I smiled. I got a date. Score!

P.s., I hate that movie. But a date's a date.

The next afternoon I was on my daily walk around the dock that circled out around a piece of Lake Coeur d'Alene and back to a building where rich people spend their vacations. For the record: Florida is not where America goes to die. That is, if they want to die a happy and peaceful death. Those who want a happy and peaceful death stay at home and the smart ones go to Coeur d'Alene. Such a beautiful place! If one led a difficult life and only found solace in doing nothing but being bitter they probably moved to Florida to escape anyone who loved them and to hang out with other people much like themselves at bingo halls, one hundred and thirty three of them all equally as bitter and angry at that lady with nine bingo sheets who won again and wondering who it was that she knew who could somehow stack the bingo sheets. Dab dab dab. Everyone who moves to Florida is looking for death by an alligator or maybe a wildfire. Florida is so filled with bitter people that it sets itself on fire! Can you believe that? And if that doesn't get them then they're sure to be juiced by a hurricane or maybe an invincible youth looking for a drunk time. You can find those anywhere and everywhere, though.

Anyway, the dock. If I'm on time I usually run into a seventy-two year old man walking his golden retriever. The man’s name is Henry. I only know his first name. The dog’s name is Larry, which I tell him was a funny name for a dog. He tells me “Larry is a fine name for an animal.” Generation gaps, I suppose. Henry and Larry look nothing alike.

"Fancy seeing you here!" I called from about twenty or thirty feet away as we approached each other.

"What's that?" He said. Henry's hearing is slowly failing. His mind is sharp but the rest of him is aging infirmly.

"Fancy seeing you here." I smiled cordially as we shook hands.

"This has got to be the sixth time, it seems!" His eyes returned the smile as his voice confirmed the affability of his comportment. “Always good to get a break from writing now and again, eh?”

"I need these walks. They help clear my mind. You know. Writing is... well... it’s an escape. Sometimes."

"How long has your mind been stopped up for, anyway?" His retriever Larry sat, looking like he was just as ready to listen as his owner.

"I think my writers block hit its all time high when I started thinking about how I really have no experience with what I'm writing about. Usually I have no problem with that, but this time it really hit me. So I came here to clear my mind. It's nice to escape the city, the interminable rush of cars and howls of sirens, not that this place is free from it, but I somehow felt that the mountains would lock away everything I'm trying to get away from. And I feel that they're doing a good job of keeping all that out, except for this writers block. Probably snuck along in with my socks or something." We chuckled for a little bit, exchanging some more clever banter mostly credited to his jocosity, when suddenly he chipped in some advice on how to end my story:

"Kill him." I know I looked confused. My head turned a little bit and one of my eyebrows sank while the other rose a little bit to compensate. "Kill him." He continued. "Really. First, he's just a character. And second... well here's the thing: everybody learns lessons either at the expense of themselves or at the expense of someone else. That's the beauty of stories. You can create any type of lesson in any way you want. And death? That's a pretty serious lesson element, if you ask me. In your story he's just, what, a fisherman? No offense to the guy or his profession, but find a way to kill him. I'm sure you can do it. Resurrect Moby Dick to eat him or have his boat hit an iceberg and give him have a dinner party with some guests of the Titanic. The literary world will forge on, I promise. Hell, how many people did Shakespeare kill? And people love him. Granted some people don't know why they love him and probably haven't read more than two of his stories once each. Either way, you get my drift."

"Huh." I said. Not sure if he knew it, but he blew my mind a little bit. I wasn't expecting advice on how to write. I wasn't even writing!

"Hebrews 13:5" He said with a wink as he walked off. It took me a while to realize that was from the bible. I don't even read the bible. Haven't looked it up yet. Maybe it's something about why it’s a bad thing that I’m not a Christian.

Anyhow, it was at that point that I thought that maybe I should take this struggling writer thing seriously and actually start writing something. I had told him that my story was about a single father that is, like Henry remembered, a full time fisherman. He loves his two children like crazy and has decided that they will not live the life he lived- in a poor family without much food to eat, everybody in old clothes or hand-me-downs and no vacations in recent memory. Well this guy works. A lot. So much that he's pretty much never at home. He provides a full refrigerator which he never cooks from, gives them plenty of money to shop with and takes them on vacations, but during a trip to Hawaii he realizes that he feels a little alienated from their lives and worse, that he doesn't even really know who his kids are when he buys them ice cream, which they hate. He was clueless until they told him after he brought it back to the hotel. This is where my said roadblock kicked in. I told Henry when I bumped into him a few times back that I didn't know where to take the story and I think he just finished it for me. Now all I have to do is start it.

I love jazz. I always have and I'm sure I always will. I even know how to dance to it, and let me tell you what- learning that should be proof enough that I love the stuff. I am a small but awkward guy. My arms are too long for my under average frame. My feet hit things. But I learned. Coeur d'Alene has a jazz club, and I didn't even know about it until a week ago! How did I survive?!

"Arnie Palmer, Mac." I called out from what I have claimed as my 'usual' bar stool.

"It's Jason, buddy, and I think I've told you that every time I serve you here. Don't you ever want anything to drink?"

"I am getting something to drink."
I probably said it too sternly. I didn't mean it, but I think it sounded like I snapped. He looked a bit miffed. Oops... It happens.

With my Arnie Palmer in hand, feeling the cold sweat of a precipitable glass, I swiveled my stool around and leaned with my back against the bar, Arnie to my left and an old crazy looking man to my right.

"What're you drinkin' there, partner?" The decrepit old man asked as he turned towards me.

"Ice tea and lemonade. Way better than sweet tea."

"Ah yeah, a Benedict Arnold? Arnold Benedict? Is that what they call em'?" The old man looked up towards the bartender. "Hey Jacob! Get this guy another Benedict Arnold! On me!"

Blushing, I corrected him. "Benedict Arnold is the name of that traitor...the name's synonymous with being a traitor. The iced tea and lemonade drink is called an Arnie Palmer, and I guess I don't know exactly why." Jason came up with a stern glare and a glass that was almost colder than his demeanor, which clearly expostulated us sitting next to each other. "And his name's Jason...not Jacob...or Mac..." I trailed off in a failing attempt to appease him. I wasn't even that thirsty and now I had two of them to drink. Great. Where did this guy come from, anyway?

"I'm from Washington." He said as if he was reading my mind. I jumped slightly and he noticed. "It's really not that bad of a place, the people there are nice, mostly. Bad experience?"

"No, no. I was just... thinking... about something... and you startled me. No big deal."

"Well sorry about that, just trying to make conversation. Where're you from?"

My mouth said "Indiana.", my head said 'hell' and my heart said 'home'. Everybody despises where they grew up to some degree, especially if they spend their whole life there. But in the midst of the rancor of anybodies home state or city they're still likely to long to go back sometime. Many realize once they get there everybody they know is gone, somewhere else or working at the golf course and since they aren't much for golfing they might as well skip the trip back home and just call mom and pop instead.

"And what brings you here?" He asked, and without waiting for a response: "I came here to paint. I'm a painter. I love to paint. Some say it's the fumes" he rambled with a croaked cackle "but I paint outside usually so that's not the case, partner, I promise."

"I'm here to write a story. Rather, to finish writing a story. I have writers block, see, and the beauty of this place...well…” I recited the same lie again. “I'm hoping it'll just help sort the story out."

"Well I'll be!" Declaimed the old man. "I'm here on a similar sort of business. I don't have painters block, or whatever you may want to call it. I'm here to paint a tragedy, and I figure the best way to do that is to fully understand the absence of tragedy. Pure beauty. So here I am!" He smiled and stretched his arms out. "See what I'm going for? You can't fully understand something until you fully see the other side. Can't understand how something's good until you see how a lack of it's bad.”

I stopped to think, once again hit by an unexpected train of mental notion; first how to finish a story that I secretly didn't even start and second...this? I took a big gulp of my Arnie Palmer and turned to him.

"I'm not even writing anything." I confessed. The words just spilled out. The cork blew off and I couldn't even catch myself before I was done. "I just wanted to hang out here and pretend to write. If I just came here on vacation or whatever I'd be like the rest of the people here on vacation, just a lot poorer and not much of an excuse to be so poor. But writers, well, they're poor, aren't they?" He just looked at me, not condemning me in the look he gave me, just asking me to keep talking. So I did. "I got a date out of it! I think I made a friend with a nice old man on the dock out there!" I said as I pointed in the general direction of the lake. "I've told maybe five different stories that I'm not actually writing to five different people. You were about to be six…but..." I trailed off as I swallowed the last half of my Arnie Palmer in about three seconds, slammed it down and grabbed the second.

The old man looked at me as if I was possibly crazier than himself. I felt my face reflect my timidness as I clutched my glass so hard it was bound to either shoot straight up in the air or just break in my hand completely.

"I need to go paint." He said after an interminable silence. He immediately got up, not bothering to pay for the Arnie Palmer he ordered on my behalf and walked directly out of the establishment.

I turned with my back to the bar once more and slouched hard, breathing out as I did. My back pressed uncomfortably against the bar just above its mid point, directly on my spine. I looked up at the band, noticing them for the first time that night. The frontman was playing a blue and black sunburst hollowbody guitar and stepped away from the mic, nodding over at the guy stroking a big 3/4 upright bass. Taking his cue for the spotlight he started hitting notes at random. Bow. Ba da dada be beep! A rhythmless and soulless bee dadadadaa...da...dada...dowww. I think he felt that the more at random he played his notes the less people would have any idea of what he was trying to do and therefore would bow to his music prowess. I was not impressed. There was the compulsory applause. I'm assuming 23% of the people clapping did it because they knew there was a solo and were tricked into thinking it was good. Another 7%, myself being one of the number, not fooled, clapped as if to say "Good job for giving it a shot. At least you gave it a shot!" The other 70% was clueless; they continued talking as they heard the clapping around them and absentmindedly joined in, or looked up bemused as they began clapping to join the table next to them and looked around for something to be clapping at. I paid for my drinks and left.

The next morning I woke up late but I was still in time to meet Henry on the deck. I had to call his name out a few times quite loudly to get him to look up at me. He never walks with his head down but today he must have been looking at something in the lake.

"There's quite the buzz going on over there on the lawn!" Exclaimed Henry as we met, pointing behind him, where I was headed and accordingly, where he was leaving.

"Why? What's going on?" I asked, peeking over his shoulder, trying to see what exactly it was that was drawing the small crowd.

"Some guy has been up all night painting. Just painting. He finished a big painting all in one night. It's really eerie, too. I couldn't stand to look at it for too long..." He sounded a slight disturbed and I gave an absentminded "Huh" in reply and told him I was going to go check it out.

I didn't have to work too hard to get in good view of the painting. A few people noticed me edging in and seemed to move out the way unhesitatingly as soon as they saw me, but it seemed to be less of a moving out of the way and more of a getting away…

The painting was of two people on the dock of Lake Coeur d'Alene. The background of the painting was impeccable. The lake, the mountains...all in such perfect detail...and he painted this at night? I saw him sleeping on the ground at the foot of the painting as I got closer to it- the same crazed old man from the jazz club. I immediately recognized the person on the right side of the painting, standing as straight as his decrepit body would allow, a red leash in hand that fed directly to the collar of a beautiful golden retriever. The reason Henry was so disturbed at his likeness being in this painting? He was talking to a ghost. The ghost looked very alive, though. None of that zombie-face decay stuff happening...the ghostly figure seemed to be in perfect health, just very pale. There was a turbid opaqueness to his body and a thin veil of blue smoke seemed to trail behind his person. A big smile was painted on his face, partially open. His hands were extended forward as if he was using them to explain something. I couldn't help but notice the susurrus voices around me as I read the title of the painting which was on a piece of scrap paper: "The Phantasm of Coeur d'Alene".

I took one closer look at the ghost in front of Henry, and, friends and neighbors, I think it was me.

Here I Am

2009-12-29T21:01:00.001-08:00

Red lights dance
   across the barren planes
A steady stream of galvanization;
   a disarray of action
In triads they call to one another:
   "Here I am!”

And together they are alone
   singing in silence

Eye For A Tooth

2009-12-26T07:26:00.001-08:00

My mouth wells with saliva and I promise you there's no taste to it that's out of the ordinary but my tongue tells me it has an acidic quality. My stomach is worried. My knees are the least of my worries but if the only thing keeping my bone from touching the cement that I am kneeling on is denim and skin there's a level of discomfort there adding to this barrage of sensory intake.

Jason hits me on the temple with his fist. The cement really isn't that cold. It's warm. Something is obstructing my vision now on my left eyeball. It came when I fell over because my hands were too bound to catch myself. I sniffle and remember what it is on the floor and where it came from. And now it's in my eye.

I laugh. Vantires. I used to call vampires "vantires". My mom told me this, years after I learned how to pronounce the noun properly. And Jason kicks me in the part on the back where Charlotte has a tattoo. He yells at me to Shut Up and I have to cough anyway. When I cough the blood from my nose ripples and a few flecks jump in the puddle.

I pretend the blood that my face is in is my mom's chili. It's a comfort food of sorts. Nobody makes it like her, I promise you. Chili isn't my comfort food. Mom's chili is my comfort food. I know, that's weird- imagining you're laying in chili. No, I did not steal a taste, but I think imagining helped. Because when Jason reminds me that it's an Eye For An Eye, I smile. He can't see it and that's good, because he would have done a lot more than kick me in the back again.

I put tattoos in place of everywhere that Jason kicks me. Charlotte’s tattoo rests on the small of my back. Tribal that nobody understands sprawls across my shoulders. Out of all my friend’s tattoos that I can remember I have enough to fill the kicks until they start overlapping and start coming too frequently. He yells at me and then he kicks me. Eye For An Eye! he reminds me. I didn’t take his eye. I took his car.

Jason asks me if I would like to explain myself yet and I don’t say anything because I already explained myself. And there’s nothing more to say. He was very kind to me. Very benevolent. The weather changed that while I was behind the wheel. It’s not my fault the Upper Midwest likes to get snowed on. Friendships ice over. He turned out to be one of those “fair weather” friends, if you get my snowdrift. I promised him I would figure something out for him. Of course that promise was not fulfilled.

I don’t think about all of this in too much detail because my body reminds me of what happens when my stomach is worried and my tongue thinks my saliva tastes acidic. I vomit. Jason tells me to not get it on his shoes. Eye For An Eye, yeah? Eye For A Tooth. I am not getting repaid in the same way. Everyone has to one up on their revenge. I think that this is a little ridiculous, me on the floor of his garage bleeding and vomiting everywhere. Jason iterates: not on his shoes. If Jason wanted to go all mad on the Eye For An Eye idea then he would experience misfortune that would affect me directly in a largely negative fashion. But you can’t plan that, you know? So why should you plan revenge?

Of course the only plan was to inflict physical pain. The actual act of revenge itself was very hectic and disorganized. I don’t know what he wishes to gain by nearly breaking a rib with his shoes. It’s bruised.

I tell Jason that I wouldn’t vomit on his shoes. I say that’s not what a friend would do. This is all very difficult to say. Physically. Nothing to do with pride. He thinks I’m messing around with him. Trying to be a hero, or something, except I’m the only one in the room that can be reasoned with and we both know this. Oh, We Used To Be Friends, Jason assures me from somewhere else in the garage. I think about that song. I hear him rummage. He must have grabbed something hard because this is where I black out.

Christmas Candle

2009-12-25T21:27:00.000-08:00

-Take this exit

-Hungry?

-No, I want to show you something.

The car exits, takes a right and follows the directions given from the passenger seat.

-There. Stop at that house there. Up on the right.

-The blue one?

-No, the one after that with the green shutters.

-Do you have a friend here? What are we doing here?

-I used to live here.

The air is warm and edging on the stifling thickness of humidity known to make the nights breath palpable and the days interminable hours lazy. The car squeaks as it makes its arrival sonically known to a dog on the opposite side of the block, which immediately barks.

-When was the last time you were there?

-Before we moved in ‘94.

-Do you remember much?

-I know, haha, but that’s how work parties are.

-How are things with you and that other cook?

-With me and Tev? Fine, I guess. She talked at me and I listened.

-Jenni babe? Are you almost done in there?

-Jenni’s home?

-Yes, she got in last night.

The house started to buzz with voices as the door swung open in uneven increments. Immediate family- brothers, sisters and thus sons and daughters of the deed holders walked into the house that some still lived in and some had since moved out of. A few babies came with, the true noisemakers, and even a friend or two throughout the day.

-Get the pumpkin pie out of the fridge and preheat the oven for the frozen apple pie, would ya?

-Hold on mom.

-Just don’t forget!

-Okay.

-Don’t use that tone with me!

-I’m not. God.

-You’re so dramatic, Seth.

-Shut up, Jenni.

-Seth!

The Wisconsin winter of 1994 was not memorable in any particular way, which means it was absolutely beautiful. Not too harsh and enough snow to be content. True connoisseurs of words may go as far as to try to invoke poetic connotations attached to that winter with words like pulchritude. Those brave enough would have been right enough- that winter was truly beautiful.

-The baby is crying again.

-Pick her up!

-She’s crying harder now.

-Oh give her here. Grandma’s got you.

-Showoff.

-She just loves her Gramma, don’t you? Yes you do. Yes you do!

-I’m glad you don’t talk to me like that anymore, mom.

-Did you get those pies yet?

-Um.

Soon the house was the target scent of candle makers trying to capture the essence of Christmas. Walking into the kitchen was one candle- the living room another. The fresh cut Fraser fir would hit your nostrils before it hit your eyes.

-Are you staying for dinner, too, Josh?

-No I can go home.

-It’s okay, Josh. You know I want to feed you!

-Are you sure?

-Am I sure. Ha! Jenni, make another spot at the table.

-Thanks mom.

-Of course, son.

-Mom, you’re going to scare Josh away.

-No I’m not. He just called me mom.

-Don’t encourage her, man.

They ate in general peace- no outbursts and everyone passed the greens when they were asked. The long nights of winter robbed the day from gracing the idyllic scene past five, and that robber was at the door of a house with green shutters. Houses with chimneys apparently felt that the holidays were a time for blazing fireplaces. That was, of course, until bedtime on the 24^th.

-Well that was nice. What say we save dessert for after church?

-But dad, it’s all already out! The pie will get cold.

-Alright just a piece for everyone who wants one. But we have to be quick—everyone needs to be ready in fifteen minutes. Can we do that?

-Get one for me too!

-Get one for yourself.

-Seth!

-Fine. Uhhk.

-Didn’t I tell him that he was dramatic, mom?

-Jenni, don’t start.

-Well he is.

-Jenni, please.

After church eggnog was served—holiday-nog for the adults. Some of the younger kids still had yet to figure out what the difference was. The adults insisted that there was no difference, but the children were swatted away from any attempts to steal a sip. It was a tradition—eggnog and holiday-nog after church.

-What do you kids think? Presents now or presents in the morning?

-Oh Kyle, do you even need to ask that anymore?

-Of course, dear, what if they had a change in heart?

-Well kids you can open one from us now and the rest will have to wait until the morning! Besides, Santa still has to come, doesn’t he?

-Okay, you first Izzy.

-Mom don’t call me that! It makes me sound like a girl.

-Well I think it’s cute.

-Exactly.

-Here ya go, Israel, let’s see what’s in this one.

-Thanks daddy.

Soon, all of the children were tucked in and the good night kisses accompanied with warnings of what would happen if they tried to get up and catch Santa putting gifts under the tree. The threat of no presents at all was always enough for most of the children.

-Guess who I found in the bathroom closet?

-Uh oh. Who was it?

-Kathy! I think she was hiding out trying to catch Santa.

-She’s so cute!

-Remember when you found out about Santa?

-You mean found out about you? Web of lies, guys, real nice.

-Oh Jenni. You didn’t seem that devastated.

-I know, I know. Just messing around with you guys.

-Do you think we should tell them one of these years?

-They’ll figure it out when they figure it out, mom.

That night none of the adults set an alarm clock; two loud ones were already stirring on the second floor, wiping the drool from the corner of their respective mouths, caught in a battle to sleep in all the excitement pent up for the morning.

The car idles as the two travelers sit in silence, looking at the house. Presently, a child runs out of the front door with a big black dog. They both stop and look at the car.

-Yeah.

A pause.

-Nothing much happened.

-Oh?

-Best Christmas that I have ever had.