Rodly Edwards - 1949-2010

Rodly Edwards passed away following a long battle Thursday April 1st, 2010, in his 61st year. Rodly will be sorely missed by his pre-deceased sister in-law Edward, his wife Carlos, his loving grandson Edward, and his two children, Rodly and Carlos.

From the stars flow the streams flows the blood of our youth, through the echoes of time which stand as bold sentiments; pillars for who you really were. You kept the ceiling from crashing down, and you were always there for us in spirit... you still are. R.I.P. Rodly.

Donations to the Rodly Center For Rodsearch are appreciated. Please do not send flowers. A brief service will be held at the Carward Family Funeral Home on 61st St., at the corner of Love and Injustice, at 19:49 PM. A smaller family service will be held at the Edwards home following at 20:10 PM.

Girls

Every day in every city there's somebody like this. You think of them as girls trapped in cages, locked away in cellars crying and dirty, scrubbed off with hoses before being matted with sweat and dirt by old men in small rooms. These girls go to school, and they are friends with your daughter, and they hang out and they never tell. These girls have friends and a life and they keep their secret because they so often love their pimps. They might even get hurt for their pimp, do drugs for their pimp, die for their pimp. During the day they fall asleep in class and the teachers are worried they might be having troubles at home, but nothing is really done. At night they're awake until 3 AM being fucked by men they met moments earlier, aroused from sleep by their fathers or their "boyfriends" for a money making opportunity.

Blakely Gordoner

Born to his mother, he grew from his yard. He learned to play sports and he met all the world. As his world grew, he entered school and took his seat in the adult section at church. He made friends and learned the word of God, and as school progressed he played sports in gym and on the field as well. The people from Blakely's church would come to cheer him on, and it was only when Blakely scored that they really let loose. They had the spirit of the Lord, not of the game, and they were there for the gains of their friend to show cheer and compassion.

So it was with great sadness that Blakely's family announced the passing of their dearest, nearest son, Blakely Gordoner, brother to Bardley Gordoner. He had passed in the night from a misconception, and for a moment he was more than a dream. It was that life for love that Blakely became, and his move from a dream into the real world was what set him apart. For an instant, Blakely was truly alive. A brief service was held at the Blakely's Great Memory Funeral Home, followed by a traditional burial service at the Blakely's Home Now Cemetery up on the East Blakely Ridge where the trail of trees continues long past town's end. A memorial service was later held with food and prayer at the Blakely's Good Church, and this was where his mother fell. When Blakely's mother fell, his father fell too, and with nothing left to tether onto, Bardley fell as well. Not even a dream; a memorial for no one. It was Blakely's last game, and he was buried near the center line, where so many other dreams are put to rest before they're ever really alive.

R.I.P. Blakely Gordoner - 1992-2010 ~ You were our shining star, the son of a sun. Now as the eclipse passes over, and the moon moves past the hillside, we wish you love and luck down the trail to wherever you may go. WE MISS YOU BLAKELY!

Catch Them Pedophiles

Okay, so your average female hits their peak physical attractiveness at about 17, right? And a guy hits his at roughly 40, so lucky guys. Knowing this, we can then assume that if a woman, regardless of her age, sits at a 17 degree angle, that will be the most attractive that woman can be. For men, this is a 40 degree angle. So like, adjust your chairs guys. Using this logic, it should be extremely obvious how this knowledge can be used to catch pedophiles. All you need to do is seat full grown men and woman at extremely low angles and wait to see who bites. Anyone who finds the bait more attractive while they're sitting at a 10 degree angle is a pedophile, simple as that.

No children get involved this way. Nobody gets hurt.

Small Time

Small time people such as hobos tend to age faster because they're forced into a crux of time where time itself is smaller, thus limiting their lives and making them age faster as they travel across the band of life at a quicker pace. During times of economic crisis, as people become poorer, more people are stuffed into small time, inflating it until it can no longer hold people (inflation), and thus it essentially explodes and flings them across the band of life as if it's a rubber band and makes them rich and wealthy again.

During these periods, pockets of Small Time Heroes appears, as people learn that there is more to wealth than money. These mentally wealthy people are still in Small Time, but they are in pockets of Large Time within Small Time, allowing them to pass influence in between pockets as if in between dimensions, thus passing on their mental wealth to others. This is how mental wealth will eventually proceed to become the dominant form of wealth, as various economic crises force people into Small Time and Small Time Heroes make them mentally wealthy. It is God's way of attempting to reform us. Pockets in time like change in your pocket.

The Girl Who Will Die Alone

Just looking at her, you can practically tell the future. She's going to die from a congenital heart defect at age 15 and her parents will be devastated. Years of bullying and ignoring will be put aside and her enemies and passers by will suddenly be her posthumous best friends. For two months she will be all anybody talks about and then she'll fade away and be forgotten by everyone. Her parents will die angry.

After Care.

Some people believe we have will over the afterlife. Others believe there's nothing we can do to change what happens when we die. The thing I don't understand is that almost all religious believers have this sort of semi-conscious belief that the afterlife is going to make sense. That it will follow a more human set of rules rather than a natural set of rules. After being born into this world where absolutely nothing makes sense and there's endless discovery and pain and misery and etc. etc... Why don't we learn from that? If we're going to be born into a new life, why is it suddenly so controlled? All these pictures of Heaven and Hell show controlled places run by beings, and the afterlife is more of a consequence than a continuation. I'd be a lot less surprised if the afterlife was some breath of ash we're sworn into after death. Some other reality where people have to figure everything out again and where things just plain make no sense without the infinite recurrance of thought, and where there is no absolute yes or no.

That Guy Who Died. He Isn't Dead Yet.

He isn't dead because nobody knows it's true. A member of our community who didn't connect with anyone, and who didn't have any friends, but he was always here and we just never noticed him. Cats5422 probably.

He would be reading on the swing set by the train tracks. It would be a fantasy novel--something from the religious library he'd pick up with both a medievil fantasy influence as well as a flair of religion. He'd wager a bet with himself that he couldn't walk the train tracks across the steep, steep hill that banks on either side of the small train bridge. It would be the bravest thing he could think to do. And no train would go by, and the tracks wouldn't rumble, but he'd fall off anyways and land in the autumn leaves of the underpass beneath. And nobody would find him and he'd be there beneath the high, high tracks. His legs would be broken, and he would cry so hard he couldn't even read his book. He'd still be holding the book. And he'd just be gone forever, because he'd never tell anyone about the swings by the train tracks. It would be his place for him alone.

A man at the library would look for the book, but the library would just have to tell him somebody had it out and that it was overdue. And his mother would make lemonade. She'd probably do it today, and then again tomorrow too. It was Cats5422's favourite. He liked to read while drinking lemonade, so his mother made some for him as often as she could. She still does. She has no idea where he is, and neither do we.

Hope Dash Love - Who I Am

I am who I say I am, if I is a concept in which the concept of I is allowed to take precedence. Given that I am a mind--or in this case I will refer to myself as a spirit--I am who I am given to be. I am bred of a certain concept, meant to lay my foundation. If this sounds complex, let me put it in simpler terms: Destiny is the cradle of the story teller's arc. There are two types of stories in the broadest sense: Those of character, and those of plot. If you view yourself as a concept in a story, then it cannot be that life is about people, but rather about the weaving story they tell. As we move through time, it is as if a twine follows behind us, wrapping itself around the Earth, netting a place and a plan which can be traversed within the clambering chains of memory. I am not a person to whom a life must unfold. I am a needle followed by the threads of story, pricking the Earth and laying down my life. And even if my story is forgotten, or invisible within the thick of the weave, the weave must be built around me, and so in some way my spirit will influence the sleeve over the arm of God.

I am a pricking pin in a sea of pricks and pinheads.

Interstellar Puking

“Goddamn it, I didn’t bring this barf bag to puke in.” Hollister sat back and drained his milk, a thin layer of white liquid nestling in between the cracks of his lips. He tapped his fingers against the side of his desk, stabbing the edge into the palm of his hand. Lindsay just kind of looked at him. She was a little confused. There was nothing in her face that resembled either admiration or disgust. Just a dizzying confusion that circled her black globular pupils, stretched so fucking far, trying to capture everything in Hollister’s study. It was oh, fifteen feet by fifteen feet, every wall lined with hardback books. God knows how he read in here. The dim orange glow from his ceiling lamp cast more questions than light.

“If you didn’t bring the barf bag to puke in, then why did you bring it at all?” Lindsay remarked, carrying the gold tip of her pen to her lips while staring at Hollister‘s milk moustache. Hollister admired her. She didn’t feel the need to dress up but she still looked good. Professional, or something close to it. A gentleman never asks a lady his age, and although Hollister was no gentleman, he still refrained from asking. If he had to guess, he’d put her around 28. If he was right, he’d drink another glass of milk. If he was wrong, he’d drink another glass of milk.

“I brought it,” he paused, “to allow myself to see more clearly.” Lindsay eyed the white lines running along Hollister’s lips.

“And how do you suppose you’ll do that? It’s one thing to barf in a barf bag. It’s like a spiritual trip, the inner you captured in a pile. They teach you in University that puking is a way to find the metaphors for who you really are. Where the chunks are the stars and planets of the You Cosmos. And if-” Hollister cut her off.

“That’s all inane bullshit. I don’t puke into a bag to count the constellations.” His voice was careful. He caressed every word as if it were Lindsay dropped in his naked lap. “I puke because I’m sick. The rest of the time I hope to God I’m not puking. So I keep my sick bag as a reminder of my faith. Either I’m barfing up Godlessness, or I’m thanking God that I’m not puking. Since I have no use for a portable bag of chunky philosophy, I get closer to God by reminding myself that he could make me puke, but he’s not. He’s letting me sit here in my study, where I am thankful to be able to cross my legs under my desk like a six year old girl… and drink my milk. Now, if you would leave me be,” Hollister concluded, looking back down at his desk and fumbling for a pen. He scribbled at the day calendar on his desk. He hoped it looked like he was working. It didn’t. He coughed.

“Good day to you, Hollister.” The leather farted underneath her as she stood up. “I’ll be seeing you.” She stepped back out into the bright sun-lit hallway, completely alien from Hollister’s study. “Men will never understand,” she whispered to herself, a bag crinkling at the bottom of her purse. “It’s the only way off this goddamn rock and they refuse to even see it. Hahahahaha! Haaaaaahahahahahahaha!”

The Solution To Child Pornography.

We have adults doing the work, when the people really affected by this are the kids. So, in conclusion, only child cops should be allowed to bust people for child porn. But then people would start taking photos of the child cops and it would seem erotic because people love a man in uniform.

A Tumbling Doll Of Roses And Blood

“This is where my sister is. And she was beautiful, and I loved her.” Melina pressed her hands together, her fair white skin glowing under the dappled spring sun. Her auburn hair fell over her shoulders like her sister’s had, and she was pale in all the same ways, from her frosted skin to the washed out blue of her sad eyes. Melina sat amongst the branches, hidden within the leaves and the vines running through the new tree. It had been pushed back from an hour a million years from now to some place in the present, made to grow from its home in the sky all the way into the ground. And deep within its heart, where Melina’s sister had been put to rest, the trees rings silently disappeared. They were the ripples from a pond receding into themselves, tumbling back into the clouds beneath the stars. As the hardwood fell into the ground, its branches slowly closing in, it hugged Melina’s sister so, so tight.

The tree had settled, fallen into the fields of roses surrounding the oceans of petals where the other sisters had been laid to rest. This was where all sisters went when all sisters died. And when the other sisters, still alive, came to visit sister’s past, the tree’s future came tumbling down and fell away into the ash of the Earth. Deep within the sands beneath the roses were the roots who could see blackness and interpret it as light. Melina stood on a branch as it rocked back and forth in the soft spring winds, looking out over the falling leaves and to the ocean of petals. The fallen blades twisted and turned through the islands of still breathing flowers, purple and pink and the deepest reds and blues. Melina wiped a tear from her sad blue eye and climbed down from the tree where her sister had been laid to rest. She stepped through the grasses, like green crystals, down into the valley where the sun passed by the tree. It laid shadows like lost siblings, passing over the daylight to slowly stroke the landscape. She had worn her forest coloured dress, two small straps over each shoulder. It fell and hugged against her small body. She was only twelve.

A boy watched from a patterned grove of flowers on the hill top, hidden by the branching stems of roses large and grey. His own sister had passed; the illness had taken her as it had taken Melina’s sister. His sister had no name and neither did he. He watched her from behind the curved petals of the smoke coloured flowers as she passed from the brook into the ocean. Up to her knees, the colour bled into her skin beneath the cutoff of her dress. He wanted to talk to her, but he didn’t have anything to say.

“And she was lovely, and she was wonderful,” Melina whispered, stepping backwards. She glanced up at the tree as it reached to hold the sun, no choice but to fall away. Like all the sisters who were gone; they were pieces of the past. She was beautiful, and she was wonderful, but she was gone, preserved by the receding echoes in the rings of the blood of the tree. The boy continued to watch her until she was a speck on the landscape, twirling and tumbling through roses with no thorns, reaching down with their veins towards the sister’s from before. There was no way home, not for him or for her. There was no future in this place, not for them or for anyone.

Cyclops The Cy-Cop.

There's a common myth, almost a legend, that being a half-cyclops, half-cop would be too easy for words. Eye tend to disagree. The look of the single eyed man is arresting, but with a single eye to perform arrests, single arrests are just too one-time. Cy-Cops, the bane of the police farce, have no choice but to wait for the real perverts and stranglers to slip up so they can perform Double Arrests. Twice the arrest with half the eyes means you get a regular amount of arrests, but it's the only way a Cy-Cop can operate. If a perilous and putrid poison were dumped on the police population, and its mutant crippling effect caused all cops to become one with the world--AKA: Turned into Cy-Cops, nobody would be able to arrest purse snatchers or battery-ists ever, for the sole reason that those kinds of crimes just don't qualify for a single arrest. While an entire population of Cy-Cops might make the police more narrow sighted in their search for perverts and body snatchers, it would ultimately make the world a more corrupt police. And even if it were only the upper echelon of law enforcement who were transformed into Cy-Cops, the FBEye has to be able to interrogate lower-level criminals to get to the drug runners and serial arsonists of the world.

There's just no place in the world for the selfish one-is-all nature of the one-eyed man.

The Dice Roll.

People don't become crazy or violent or socially outcast because of the way they're brought up or whatever. People's destinies are chosen by the infinite dice roll of dimensionality. Effectively, if there are infinite universes, every universe which contains you must be slightly different, except for the row of infinite universes where you are all the same. In some of those universes you're a scientist, or a story teller, or the savior of human kind, or dog kind, or some kind on some other planets. But in other universes, the dice roll forces you into a life of awkward social standing or worse. You're not a murderer for any other reason than because you have to be a murder in an infinite amount of universes contained within an infinite amount of universes. You can't avoid fate. In an infinite number of universes, an infinite number of people will try to blame an infinite number of things. In quadrillions of those universes, nothing will even be different save a single particle of air around them will be different at some point in time. In an infinite number of universes, nothing will change save time will go backwards. But it's all the dice roll.

A Short Word About Destiny.

Destiny so rarely smiles upon a person that if they're lucky enough for it to happen there's no recourse except to smile back. To flash their toothy grin no matter how much gum they think is going to show, or how yellow their teeth might be, or whether or not they think that gap in the front is going to look bad. It is. They look up and they smile and they thank their lucky stars, whichever they might be. Destiny is so precarious, teetering back and forth like careful footsteps across the banister. Any wrong movement, however subtle, could send a person falling to their death. That moment is so fleeting; a passing burst of light in the night sky. Maybe it's nothing, but it's so often chosen as a moment of rebirth. The human element makes nothing into something. Destiny makes people question their own feelings. Destiny forces us to look inside ourselves and wonder if we're really worth it. Destiny is the unexpected factor, often changing our plans without us noticing, and when it happens you can't be mad, because she's too beautiful to frown at. I'm so happy for everyone who is smiled upon by Destiny, because she is my daughter, and I love her, and she hasn't smiled at me in years.

Joy, The Most Beautiful Girl Who Ever Lived.

Her entire head was like a sinkhole. Not like the acred woods of blue-green leaves where the trees and the forest floor all look so similar anyone could lose their way, but like a sinkhole. A weird, blobby pit of unhappiness where people lost their footing and then fell forever into the ground. There was an uncertainty surrounding everything about the way she looked. Her eyes couldn't pick a single direction to focus, trapped under a heavy brow. Her nose sat like a pile of shit, dripping more shit, and it was just a matter of whether she decided to blow it out or suck it in. Worst of all, God forbid you let her open her mouth. The heavy sighs and annoying patterned breathing, often followed by things better left unheard. Like poo from lips, her slippery tongue dropped disgusting fecal bombs of audio stench. The only reason anyone gave her the time of day was because they were trapped. They gave her a single moment of their time and fell off the beaten trail of life, lost in her disgusting face forever. She was Joy, the most beautiful girl who ever lived.

Akira Kurosawa's Ran

I watched this half asleep today. My friend Matt woke me up from my 3 hour slumber and forced me into Kurosawa's world of turmoil, strife, and blood shedding blood. Here are a few things I learned from Ran:

1. Ran has 18 cars.

2. Hidetora's clan has a mixed bag.

3. It's not so much the adventure as it is the journey of a life time.

4. What happened to Hidetora's dog? The huge one? It was there when I checked for it.

5. Saburo can fuck off. He's ruining all kinds.

Every Single Night.

"It's 3 A. Fucking M. What the hell are you calling for? I'm trying to -"

"Jordan, help me! I can't stop puking and pooping at the same time! NoOoOo!"

I Love My Goddamn Sword

A steel extension, arbiter of both life and death. It is the last word of the child clinging to her father, and it is the father against the man who brought her to her knees. Excalibur Mach 4, his blade is as I am, fed the blood of memories and wrapped in tempered stars. A single being connected by the force of the Universe. The lives of cowards and bastards are closed like a blood soaked diary. Its pages draw whispers that hint at the compromise of the young and the infirm. The sperm of the night, ejaculating like liquid steam onto a crying woman's face. These are the demons that refuse to say no, and I, the swordsman, will knock them all down.

Block Head

Kim heaved and dropped down the old cement block. It landed with a loud oomph against the frazzled carpet of her cramped bedroom. It was large and grey with hairline fractures running through it that seemed to leak rubble dandruff; shooting stars of dust and stone as it settled into the carpet. The block was hollow in two places through its center, which made it easy to grasp and carry. It must have weighed over twenty pounds.

In the other far off corner of her room Kim’s bed laid unused. Instead, she rested with her legs pressed against her chest, right up beside her new friend the block. She made brief glances towards her television, her book shelf, her video games, her record collection. Things she might do later to distract herself, or wake herself up. But for the time being she was content resting beside the overgrown paperweight, and after a few moments she even went so far as to lay her head against it and nod off to sleep, her back shoved against the cold wall in the corner of her bedroom. The light slowly shut out as the sun passed underneath her, thin orange rays reaching up like fingers struggling to clasp the sill. The daylight had tried not to leave, but the Earth turned its back and forced it away.

She could still feel the slightest tinge of dampness in the stone. She had let it soak in the river, down under the trees in the valley by the empty lot where she had found it. It had just been lying there. There was a harsh contrast between the dry dirt landscape of the fenced lot and the lush grasses and swamp plants growing just beside the neck of the stream. There was an old hanging tree which bent over the width of the small passing in the river, its tendrils skipping across the cool water. And it was under this tree that Kim had sat and brushed and scrubbed the cement block. She even left it to soak in the water overnight. When she had come back in the morning, she pulled it out and dropped it into the tall grass where it was left to dry for another two days. The blades of grass had brushed against it as the winds had blown by, painting green swatches along the sides. Like bright emerald scratches to cover where the filth had been.

Moments before Kim had taken the block by its two hollow sections and dragged it to the neck of the stream, she had brought it down on her boyfriend Mark’s head. It hadn’t landed with an idle thump, but with the loud cracking and bursting of his skull and his brain. A shower of blood had exploded out the side of his retarded head, where his right temple had been, and chump change chunks of gore followed in spades. Small fragments of bone left tiny cuts on Kim’s cheeks as they blew back at her, and she had stood over his limp, twitching body and caught her breath. She could feel her pulse echoing through nearly every part of her young body. Her frail arms had brought the block down on Mark’s head, and she had made herself a murderer. The stone block had an explosion of black blood running up every side of it, so Kim had carried the block down to the river, and she had scrubbed it and made it clean again.

Kim woke up, trapped in the dark. She made brief glances towards where her book case might be, and her television, the video games hooked up to her television, and even her records collection--fairly substantial for a woman in her early twenties. She looked past all of them and towards the bed in the corner of her room, the sheets probably still bundled into a ball of loose fabrics, although it was impossible to tell in the dark. Her mattress would still be slightly off center from the frame. The frame would be slightly off center from the indentations in her rug where it had always been before, like the indentation in the grass where the block had been left to dry. An almost ghostly of image of Mark was trapped in the corner of her brain, like his body encased in the gravel by the old fence in the lot. She thought about the river and the passing of fluids, the tendrils in the water like hands running over her skin. She thought about his dry cracked lips coming against hers, like where the old lot met with the lush grasses and plants beside the river. She thought about his fist coming down on her face, creating a hairline fracture in her jaw that still ached when she chewed. It was a lot like the tiny lines running through her new friend the block. She thought about the green swatches, haphazard lines along the sides of the grey brick like her fingernails digging into Mark’s strong upper arms. She thought about scrubbing the cinderblock, and she thought about how she had sat in the shower and tried to make herself clean for minutes, and then hours, and then more. Kim’s head pounded in rhythm to a thousand ugly thoughts. Ugly like Mark. Ugly like an old grey brick.

Harold, The Dirty Man.

An open ocean of dead lights and hot coals rolled in behind Harold’s eyes. They were blank circles; not hollow like a shark's dim stare. It would be more accurate to compare them to trash bins. Two black holes swallowing every dirty thing you threw at them, and sometimes you'd miss and it would land noticably on his face. One of his nasty smiles or crooked eyebrows. In behind his bleak expression there was an idea so inspiring--so fuckin’ marvellous--that he felt two fingers snap in the back of his brain. They sent a flush of liquid concept through every frayed curve in his gray matter. It ran down his spine and tingled in the tips of his calloused fingers. His skin, like layered bark, rose in wave after wave of goose flesh. It crested along his arms and his legs and down his neck and even over his abdomen. It crawled into his belly button and made his stomach gurgle; something he took pleasure in. His mouth drooped and then perked up into a happy slant. He looked almost lopsided standing in his three button suit, a dress shirt tucked so goddamn far down his pants he could feel it tickling his knees. The idea flooded his body and touched him in all the ways he loved to be touched, making up for everything he was going to have to do.

“I’m going to kill my family. And I’m going to sew them together.”

A Swing Set Massacre!

Hey, Author’s Note: This is written poorly on purpose. Why? Because it’s the only way to suitably stylize a story like this. So excuse the writing. It’s of a poor quality because I say it is.

Professor Dick had long known of his child’s strange obsessions. Having raised the child alone since the boy was six, he knew the ins and outs of him fairly well. Professor Dick knew his favourite meal; spaghetti. He also knew his favourite hour of the day; 2 PM. The exact minute before Long Shot comes on, his son‘s favourite show. The boy liked blue, he wore shorts in the summer because shorts were just plain comfier, and his best friends were Matt and Sarah. Matt and Sarah called him Dick. His real name was Frank. Frank Dick, son of professor Orange Dick.

Professor Dick heard slamming on his front kitchen door. His automatic pill popper activated, shooting a rather large pill at him from the edge of a blade on the side of the machine, knocking it down his throat effortlessly.

“Thank you, Pill Popper.”

“It. Is. My. Duty. To. Medicate. You,” the machine slowly enunciated, a fast ticking operating like a mutter under its almost-breath. “We. Love. You.”

The man covered himself with a brown morning robe, patted his hair down, although it continued to stick straight up, and grabbed his half-full cold cup of coffee from the book case in the hallway. The book case full of books they’d probably never read, but they made the book case look nice and full. Professor Dick had often contemplated how well things really needed to be filled. If you needed to get into every crack and crevice, or if a conservative use of space would be nice as well. Not that anyone really gave a shit. The hallway was so skinny Professor Dick and his son could barely fit through it, and never at the same time. It was a virtual impossibility to even see the book case without bending over, turning to face it, and then looking at its many volumes and titles. Amongst them were shitty old classics mixed with paperback fiction that had seemed promising for thirty pages at a time. When it came to books, Professor Dick had dropped a lot of balls. Although one hard backed gold-trimmed novel stood out against the others, sometimes even gleaming under the hard glow of the florescent bulb.

The knock knock knocking at the kitchen door grew louder and more impatient, like a quickening heart beat.

“Fuck, I’m coming,” Professor Dick shouted, patting down his smooth black hair for a second time. A three day stubble had formed on his chin, wrapped around a constant grimace and tired eyes. Another knock. He felt a blood vessel burst in the corner of his eye. “I’M COMING.” Jesus Christ, fucking people.

No sooner had he turned the polished knob of his kitchen door, there were two children running about his kitchen ruining everything.

“Ugh, uh, Frank… wake up. Your friends are here.” Frank waited impatiently for his son, a keen ten year old boy, to hop down the staircase and into the kitchen. He could predict with near certainty the amount of banging footsteps he would hear. Six. Six because they had twelve steps, and children are always fucking skipping steps. Hauling ass up stairs, skipping steps. Hop bop popping down the steps, skipping fucking steps. Professor Dick wondered if his son’s footprints could at all be found on the second, fourth, sixth, eighth, tenth, or twelfth step of their staircase. If a team of forensic investigators came and they only searched those steps for evidence of Frank, they would conclude he had never been there.

“Nope,” they’d say. “I guess that little boy is lost.” Then they’d gather together in their crime unit van and drive off a fucking bridge onto a cliff, and then off that cliff into a ravine. Fucking crime scene investigators, man.

Professor Dick scratched himself. Thunk, thump, bump, bruise, hop, step, clammer, argh.

“Good morning,” Professor Dick spat through gritted teeth. “I hope you slept well, child of mine.”

“Eight hours, dad!” Frank said proudly, his hands at his hips. He was already dressed in his stupid ugly brown hoodie and his jeans and his ultra hip sneakers. The oven had something to say.

“Haaaaaaah,” it breathed, sending an out pouring of hot air into the room. Frank reacted like somebody had had a bad fart, covering his nose. “I hoooope yooouuu haaaaave aaaaa goooood daaaaayyyy, Frrraaaannnnkkkk…”

“Thank you, Oven,” Frank muttered. “I love you… Okay, bye dad!” And with that, Frank and two other ten year old tornados had gallivanted out the door to somewhere in some place. Professor Dick grimaced further, squinting at the daylight out through their kitchen window. The mosquito netting was broken again. Professor Dick squinted harder. He couldn’t really afford a break at the moment, even in something as insignificant as mosquito netting.

The mosquito netting slowly rolled off the exterior of his window and slid under a small crack at the base of the sill and into his house.

“I am the mosquito netting,” said the mosquito netting. “I am your newest and best great friend.”

“The fuck you are,” Professor Dick winced, grimacing again. “Get back on my fucking window.”

“I have a secret to tell you!” The Mosquito Netting rolled itself into a tight tube shape and hopped about the kitchen table. It knocked over a chair.

“Siiiiiiigh,” the oven sighed, leaking more hot air into the room. Professor Dick could feel a sweat forming between his angry, adult brow.

“There’s another friend I have, right outside this window. But he can’t move. He can’t get inside,” the mosquito netting moaned.

“Good,” Professor Dick squeezed the bridge of his nose and took in a deep breath. “Fucking good.”

“He is the crayon, and he has drawn the bad neighbour.” The mosquito netting began to slide up the wall, and it took rest in the corner where the ceiling met the kitchen cabinets. “Your neighbour is bad. You have got to kill him.”

“The fuck are you saying?”

“You have got to kill the bad neighbour. Your son made him. He is Longshot.”

“Longshot’s a fucking,” Professor Dick paused, “a fucking TV show.”

“Not since your wife died, Professor Dick,” the mosquito netting uttered.

“The fuck did you say about my wife?!”

“Oh come, we both know she’s dead. She died in that caaaar accident.” The automatic pill popper shot a pill straight across the room and into the back of Professor Dick’s head.

“Hell!” he shouted.

“We. Miscalculated. We. Are. Sorry.” The Pill Popper tried to excuse itself. “We. Love. You.”

“Yes, yes, Pill Popper. Out of my glorious sight!” Professor Dick felt like he was going to pop.

“When your wife died, so did Frank’s imagination. Longshot was in a car accident. He survived. Your son does not believe this is possible. He has since, using my friend the Crayon, drawn up an alternate world where the ghost of Longshot has continued on.”

“That sounds pretty fucking familiar,” Professor Dick said. “Ace, get me that crayon.”

“I cannot touch him. You must go get him.” Professor Dick left the mosquito netting to his business in the kitchen, and stepped out onto his side porch and into the yard. He hadn’t mowed the grass in two weeks, so any crayon that had been left out on the lawn wasn’t going to be immediately spotted.

If the mosquito netting talked to him, he must be near the window. Professor Dick, in his morning coat, got on his hands and knees and crawled through his yard, poking into the grass over and over.

“I’ve found you, you blue fucker,” Professor Dick whispered, eyeing the blue crayon. A spray of blood exploded from the side of the crayon and into Professor Dick’s eyes. “I see now. I must kill the bad neighbour. We’ll have a funeral for you later.” The mosquito netting came flitting out from under the crack in the window sill. Professor Dick assumed a horse stance.

“Come on Professor Dick, let’s cut this mother fucker up.”

“Yeah, fuck yeah,” shouted Professor Dick. “Let’s cut that mother fucker up.” The mosquito netting transformed into the biggest knife in the world, and Professor Dick used it to slice a huge hole in his forehead. “NOW I HAVE THREE EYES!” A third eye popped out from the hole in his forehead and looked straight up. “I can see the clouds. I can see the grass. When I see both at once, they merge together and become the green and the white in the blue and beyond. If I can get the sky and the Earth to merge, I can open a plateau across the Universe and summon the spirit of Fuck to murder my shitty son.”

Professor Dick hopped across his front yard and leapt through his neighbour’s window. A sleeping Mr. Long Shot was awoken from his Saturday’s slumber.

“Who dares disturb my Saturday’s slumber? I need my beauty sleep or else I won’t have enough energy for murder time!” He leapt out of bed and grabbed a knife… but it wasn’t big enough. Within seconds, the two grown men had engaged in a full on knife duel.

“I know my son created you,” shouted Professor Dick, “But I created him! So I reserve the rights to edit all future fan fiction! And you’re nothing but a fan fiction! A creature from his perverted ten year old mind! I’ll fuck you a new butt!”

The Bad Neighbour, Mr. Long Shot, jumped back and looked Professor Dick directly in the eyes. He couldn’t see into all three of them, so he looked into them one by one, in a triangle pattern. Professor Dick smirked. “You know,” Long Shot breathed, “I have no butt.”

Professor Dick side stepped a knife sweep. The mosquito netting knife spoke up, looking Orange Dick straight in his third eye. “Go for the throat, now! It’s a Long Shot, but it just. Might. Work!’

Professor Dick put all his weight on his forward foot and catapulted himself through the air. He threw his body forward, plunging the knife directly into Mr. Long Shot’s neck. A thin spray of black blood began to coat the room. Professor Dick shut his two God-given eyes, leaving only his third eye to view the damage. He was a one eyed monster.

“Heh, Mr. Long Shot. Heh. You were the Bad Neighbour, but now you have a butt.” Covered in blood, huffing, panting, Professor Dick stepped out the window from whence he had come. His feet were stuck with shards of glass, trails of blood footprints followed him up the road. “If I’m right, and I am, my son must be at Jupiter by now. I can walk there in ten minutes if I really try.”

And so he did.

At the park on Jupiter, the biggest park on campus, Professor Dick used his magical third eye to spot his son. Crayon drawing lines echoed around his vision, pointing him to his son’s location. Professor Dick wanted, with every bone in his body, to kill his son that instant. He used his mosquito netting knife to slit a crack down the center of a wooden swing. The second his son sat on it, it would break. Then he would die.

“Son!” Professor Dick shouted. “I need you to ride this swing!”

Frank Dick saw his father, covered in blood and with a gaping, strange third eye. He stared down at the knife in his father’s hands, and then at his father’s exposed ball sack and erect penis. “Sure!” Frank got on the swing. It didn’t break. Within moments, he was swinging through the air, forwards motion, backwards motion. Matt and Sarah had died somewhere after falling off a bridge and then a cliff. The oven had eaten their bodies and then driven to Saturn which had five moons.

Suddenly, the swing broke. Frank was in a forwards motion.

“Professor Dick, this is no good!” the mosquito netting shouted.

“I know, my beautiful knife! I know!” Flying through the air ass first, Frank landed directly on his tail bone. The trajectory and speed combined with the exact point of where Frank landed (on Jupiter) proceeded to open a massive, gaping wormhole. Satan appeared, and the Pill Popper machine too.

“Professor Dick, I am here to take your son to hell forever because you killed him wrong. Are you ready to deal with the consequences!” Satan laughed, and then he laughed again. This time heartier than the first.

“I am,” Professor Dick said. He fell to his knees in tears and watched Satan eat his son. Matt and Sarah were there, already burning in Hell. The five moons of Saturn had betrayed them. It was hot like in the oven.

“Balls!” Professor Dick shouted. “Balls!” His erection floundered.

“I. Love. You,” the Pill Popper shouted, and sprayed a sea of pills in Professor Dick’s general direction.

“It’s no use, Pill Popper. Nothing can bring my son back from Satan now that he’s dead and so are his friends. Not even my third eye which turned the universe into a single plateau. We’re all fucked now. We’re all so really fucked.”

“I. Love. You. The. Power…” the machine huffed and puffed, “Of. Love. Will. Save. You.” The Pill Popper cried.

“No, the power of love is dead.” Professor Dick stabbed his third eye with the knife, the plateau disintegrating underneath him. And there he was, alone, trapped outside Jupiter. It was so big. It was so very, very big. And the mosquito netting was so black that Professor Dick couldn’t see it any more. It was lost in the vastness of space.

“Balls,” Professor Dick shouted, but no one could hear him. He was in space. He saw a book case. It was so beautiful. Across from him, the book case was visible, every book obvious and ready to be read. Professor Dick tried to reach it. There was no possible way.

Edge Of Darkness

I went into Edge of Darkness completely blind. As far as I knew, the film was about Mel Gibson and something something something. The extent of my knowledge about the film was that there was a massive ass poster of it hanging outside the theatre. I was surprised. This was a great movie. It's not a film I'd watch again, but it was a great film. And will people be shitting out I Love Edge of Darkness t-shirts in five years? Probably not, but I don't give a shit. I enjoyed it while I was there. Every single part of it. When I go to the theatre, I consider it a commitment. I am committing a portion of my time to a film, and I am committed to its plot, its characters, and its style, no matter how shitty. If this film was a girlfriend, it'd be a better girlfriend than The Tooth Fairy. Like three times the girlfriend, and then four more times on top of those three times. With two more times on top of that.

Of course, as everyone knows, the real star of the show was Mel Gibson's hypnotizing forehead. I found myself sitting through large portions of the film just staring at the cracks and crevices in his broken skull, tracing it over and over again, invisible lines in the air. If the film was just about his forehead, I would've been more than impressed. But Mel Gibson had to go and give a really super good performance on top of that, as did everyone else. Some very tops pro shit as far as acting goes. Believable characters with interesting motivations. Occasional moments of weakness in the heart of the film's action, but I was far too entranced in the blood and the milk to care.

At its heart, Edge of Darkness is a film about who hates Massachusetts the most. The film blatantly shit talks the state over and over, and I've been more than convinced never to visit there. The movie follows Mel Gibson, a cop driven to the edge after his daughter is murdered. His pals at the office think it was some con trying to kill Gibson, but Gibson knows best. His irradiated and thoroughly fucked and dead daughter was being targeted by someone. Mel Gibson will shit on them. What follows is not your standard cop's revenge film. It doesn't exactly blur the lines or fly to all new heights, but it doesn't ride the easy train either. It's not a junk pile of cliches. It sidesteps them carefully, but barely. Just enough to make Edge of Darkness its own film. In between the alcoholic assassin, Bill Ferrell, and a harem of paranoid young adults, you're really never sure what's going on until the end. It kept me guessing, running over elements again and again in my schizophrenic head. Maybe I'm just dumb. I mean, it wasn't the most complicated plot in the world, but they did a great job of keeping it on track. There aren't a whole lot of loose ends. Instead, everything twists together like a wicker basket. And a really pretty cat sleeps in the wicker basket, on a big fluffy pillow. The cat's name is Mel Gibson.

The film is paced the same way it's shot. Steady. Despite the dozens of twists, turns, and absolutely butt fuckingly shocking murder scenes, it has a very careful and deliberate shooting style. It allows you to take in the film's environments, characters, and motivations. It strikes a careful balancing act between the grief of mortified Cop-Dad, and the conspiracy theory it builds up to. It's never really about one or the other. It delves into both, and on multiple occasions leaves you numb with what it has to say. And then you're shocked back into the story by a constantly increasing level of violence. This film does its best not to fuck around. There's no good guy/bad guy "I'm going to hold you up and explain my shit" shit. Instead, people shoot each other and use attack-milk. No hesitation. Just death. It's awesome. It's a breath of fresh air.

Ultimately, I think I got a lot more out of Edge of Darkness than most people will. I really enjoyed it. I love Mel Gibson and his crazy gingerale guzzling on screen persona. This film has the best use of on-screen movie-milk since Beyond Re-Animator, and it's things like that which make it so awesome to watch. The soundtrack slowly builds from a melancholy series of arrangements to a trumpeting war march. That's just one example of the way the film builds. It never gets ahead of itself, and it's never trapped in its past. It moves along like a chuga-chuga-choo-choo, and the audience moves with it. It's a thriller that thrilled me. It was action packed and it was sad, and instead of trying to jump between those two things, it merges them into one cohesive tight rope, and it walks it with grace. At first I was like "Fuck yeah," and then I was like "Fuck yeah," and then it kept going and I kept swearing, and it was just phenomenal.

There are occasional moments of overacting, and some strange little quips with the characters that kind of bothered me. There were some scenes that were just too over the top. They tried very hard to give the character's character in the way they dressed and acted. I mean, that's a good thing, but to get across that a character is an alcoholic, he doesn't have to have a drink on him at all times. This film is a gigantic open sea of awesome rainbow fish and sweet sharks. There's an occasional floundering trout, but forget them. They get swallowed by whales of enjoyment. I'm aware of what other people think about this movie. I wholeheartedly disagree.

You Know What The Worst Things In The World Are?

The thing is that there's only one surefire way to learn about the worst things on Earth. And that is to have them happen to you. The most terrible things, beyond serial killers and human trafficking--things so far beyond our comprehension we can't even fathom them--are bound to be kept under wraps. There is an immutable force that works like a wave of stars glittering in the air. Those bright lights are like open sores releasing adank stench. It is under your goddamn floorboards. It waves its magic, invisible hand and opens its dark and porous mouth, and it spews eggs which crunch beneath your shoes and you'll never even fucking know it. And from these eggs comes a spew of liquid barf that rises into the soles of the bad men's feet and clusters in their knees, giving them a spring to their step that always keeps them one step ahead of the good people like you. And who knows what form it takes? It might be a mural on a wall, and it won't even move. It'll just be painted on that wall, an idea, a form of some sort which ties it to where you are. And like a beacon, it will bring the bad things, or it will be the bad thing. In that mural is an endless concept. Not a blood-soaked star, but something that can't be given a physical breath. But if you try to imagine it as the worst thing imaginable, it's so much goddamn worse than that.

It is a bad thing. It is a cruel thing. It is a sick and violent thing. It loves to hurt people. It's not even sure what a person is, and it can't find out just by cutting you open or raping your babies. It has to do worse than that. It has to make you bleed into your own tears and tear off your skin layer by layer, microscopically if possible, and in the most unfathomably painful ways. This is the dark and immutable force that protects all assholes, for whatever reason you'll never know. And it's not even because you don't want to know, but you don't. It's because you can't know, because the force hasn't chosen you to know. It hasn't wafted up your nose or climbed through the pin prick holes in the hollows of your eyes. It's left you alone, or maybe reserved you as prey, if it's so human as to even allow for a concept like prey. If it isn't something worse than that.

It is true. It is always true. You are well and truly fucked.

The Cure For Dark Circles Under Your Eyes.

Those dark circles under your eyes are an answer to a question. The result of an inevitability. That we are down. That something is wrong. That we are tired and feeling low. What is it about those dark circles? It's the story they tell. The real question is if we want to tell that story, or if we want it to float away on a Dark Circle Boat in the Sea Of Tears from the coast of Broken Promises. It should be up to the individual if their story is for the world, or for themselves. Those bags are the creeping death of our personal lives, slowly trying to break out from the lids of our eyes. There is a compromise to this inevitability. A solution to the bags and the bloodshot eyes. I call them the three L's, or LLL.

Live, Love, and Laugh.

Life can break you, tear you apart, and then tell you to go die. It can. It's true. And those black bags are an indication of that for everyone in the world. Like bags of black sand slowly creeping up around us. There are holes to dig in that sand, filled with the buried treasures of our personal lives. These are dark promises, and they tell dark stories. Mean stories for mean people in mean places. A way for others to look at you and see that something is wrong. I repeat, LLL. Darkness isn't always invisibility. Sometimes it talks, and shows, and parades itself. Those dark circles, so immovable, are the greatest indicator of your discomfort. So LLL.

Live, Love, and Laugh.

These are the ingredients to every miracle. A pinch of Life. A stirring of Love. And a hearty helping of Laughter. Write that down.

Live, Love, and Laugh.

Everyone knows a girl named Ill, and she's beautiful, and we all love her. But she's so sick and odd, and she doesn't know why. Those dark eyes are not the reason, but they are how we know. And we shouldn't. That's for her. Take LLL and gift it your friend Ill--she'll appreciate it. Because what we share should be audible, not visual. The human condition is a visual medium. When we hide it, we master it. Don't fail Ill.

Live, Love, and Laugh.

The Big Ol' Marble

The weirdest thing about being dead, Emily thought, is that everyone gets a sleeping bag. And she was right. Heaven was in a strange ol’ place. It was like a big ol’ ball where everybody was trapped inside, and maybe something was out there, but nobody really cared too much to check. A marble in the sky, where the light shone through the glass, casting rays of light every which way like thin silver strings caught in a weave. Bright--but not too bright. And it was a big, big ball, where everyone had lots of space but there still was not enough. On the porch of her big ol’ house, Emily could see for miles, and it was all hers. Open fields of grass and glass cutting into the sky, twisting up in beautiful broken edges towards that other side of the world. That impossible continent. The curve of the Earth had never seemed so important until Emily found herself in Heaven, the size and scope of the world opened up to her at a passing glance into the air. The stars, so impossible to reach, had an endless scope, but it just was not the same. It was a big ol’ ball, but not forever-big. Emily’s watch counted down moments, not seconds; an endless supply. Moments, not places, were in endless supply. That insatiable hunger to see and do new things was just a little bit missing. Emily wondered if there might be other marbles, filled with farms and caverns and rays of light. And she wondered why, of all things, she got a sleeping bag. It wasn’t cold at night, or during the day either. It wasn’t even like she really slept, except for when she wanted to. It was just kind o’ weird.

Some days Fredrick would come visit her, but not as often as she’d like, although she wasn’t terribly vocal on the matter.

Emily had met with death when she was 17 year old. She had been hopeful and bright, kind of like the big ol‘ ball. And on a big bright day, she had been hit by the big bad drunk driver, who lived and went to jail and then suffocated because of a weird little rope. That rope had tied him up and tossed him down and he had been sent away. He was in the Badlands O’ Hell now. Emily hated him so much it made her face go red and her hands would just squeeze together like tight ol’ fists. But she still didn’t think it right he was down in the bad, bad place. Emily just hated seeing her parents so sad, and she thought that was just damn terrible that there was nothin’ she could do.

I am dead, Emily thought, careful to enunciate each and every syllable the way she had been taught. And that kind o’ bugs me. What a placid thought. Fredrick knocked on her long wooden door, the sound resounding against the multiple plate glass ceilings that made up her abode. A clear view up into the sky and to the other side o’ the big ol’ ball.

“Fredrick, come in.” Emily opened the door, motioning him into the living room. She shuffled her feet and tapped her toe against the plate glass floor. Fredrick had been 17 when he died too. In fact, everybody here had so far as they could tell. That’s why Emily wondered if maybe there were other balls. Mostly she knew, but sometimes she thought What if there are loopholes? What if the only way to get to Heaven is to die when you are 17? She shared this with Fredrick. Fredrick, who wore blue jeans and a ruffled shirt. He had found the strange shirt in his closet first thing when he got to Heaven, and even though he didn‘t like it, some days he wore it anyway. It had been given to him by God knows who. It just seemed right.

“It makes me look kinda gay,” he moaned, trying to pat down the ruffles.

“I do not think that matters. We are in Heaven, Fredrick. Think o‘ what that means.” Emily had covered her mouth to giggle. She’d been in Heaven for a while. Fredrick was her only friend. He was a little too short and a little too shy, just like her. Fredrick had died when his best friend Johnson had cut his heart out and then fed it to the piggies on a big ol’ farm back home. A farm with a white picket fence where the pigs played in the mud and the blood sat on top of that thickly layered sludge like paint on a canvas. It painted the picture o’ that little boy’s death. His friend had been arrested and he was still in jail. He never died the way that ol‘ drunk did. Fredrick’s dad was the one who figured it out--not even the police! He had gone over to Johnson’s house and punched Johnson in his mean ol’ face, and Johnson had cried like a baby and swore he didn’t do it.

He said “I swear I didn’t cut out his big ol’ heart. I swear,” but he had. Now he was in jail with a guy named Thompson. Thompson and Johnson were best friends, and they kissed and hugged when the other boys weren’t looking. Fredrick knew this, and that was why he never, ever wanted to be gay. Because he didn’t want to be like Johnson, who was a big ol’ meanie who cut people’s hearts out and sank their bodies in the river. Fredrick’s heart hole had filled with grody ol’ swamp water, and the fishies had swum through his veins and arteries and into his brain.

“I don’t think that only us 17 year olds get into Heaven, little miss Emily,” Fredrick had said, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his jeans, looking for something, anything, to fiddle with. “If that’s true, that means my mom’s in the Badlands o’ Hell, and I don’t wanna think about that.” His hand retreated from his pocket and pointed sternly at his head.

Think, Fredrick thought, and then corrected himself. That’s wrong. I’m in Heaven now. I think with my heart, not with my brain. He dropped his hand over his chest, but Emily didn’t notice.

“Well my dad cries himself to sleep every single night, because his one true love is gone to Heaven.”

“What about your mom?” Fredrick asked.

“She cries too when she finds the time. But neither o’ them find time to love one another. They love me so much because I am gone and they cannot have me. So their tears fill the rivers and they forget they have each other. They don’t so much as hug no more.” Emily sighed and stared down at the ground, past her check-check-checker flannel sweater, her orange pleated skirt, and her slip-on shoes. The ones with the nice little jewels that sparkled even in the shadow, if you could be so lucky as to find one.

“Tears filled the valley in the river of my heart,” Fredrick replied. “And when fish go in your brain, that’s when they learn a little something. They learn that they can’t learn. It’s an epiphany they’re bound not to have. All that when we‘re up here with all the time in the world to figure stuff out. Ain’t that just a little bit unfair? Ain‘t that weird?”

“I think it is weird bein’ dead,” Emily said. “I think that is weird enough.” She looked through the glass roof of her ceiling and onto the second floor, and through the glass paneled roof beyond even that. She could see the other side of the world, so full of life impossible to make out. Just a giant cluster of people, hustling and bustling in their own little ways, hidden by the immeasurable distance of the twisting, crossing paths and trails of the ball. The other side of the marble was like a glass roof too, with the light staring in through the crystal flower gardens, reaching past those people and coming like a summer’s warmth down upon Emily and Fredrick and everyone else so inclined to live nearby. It felt good to share.

That’s what it is like being dead. You have so much time to take everything in you just stop and breathe. And if you’re lucky, you’ll see the other side o’ the big ol’ marble is stoppin’ too, and they can’t see you neither. They just know what to do. A ray of life, passing through everyone. A lot of things have changed, but we bring some things with us from Earth. Ain’t no way around it, no matter how much you hated it. You’re stuck with it cause it’s who you are. Heaven is a chance to see things for real, even if it‘s too far away to really get a good look at. You just got to believe the people are out there, and hope they do good the way you do. Hope they brought that goodness with them from the big ol’ Earth.

“Well,” Fredrick said, throwing his teacup into a hole in the floor, God knows why, “I’d best be going. The night’s a comin’.”

“You know as well as I do, the night does not mean a thing.” Emily said. I just think it’s a sick ol’ joke, makin’ it night time but havin’ it shine so bright anyways.

“You may be right you pretty girl, but I gotta go. That’s what it is to be dead.”

“Fredrick,” Emily paused, “You’re a mighty good lookin’ boy yourself.” She winked at him, and he stepped out the door, across the property, and all the way home. Across the forest ridge and down the strange ol’ trail that twists too far, and all the way up across the glassy fields where shards of green, green grass glitter in the sun and under the moon. Underneath them, his dad sat up and paced around his bedroom, a path worn into the floor, and two parents cried on opposite sides of the same ol’ bed. They were man, man and lady, sitting on a marble beneath a marble in the sky.

Fredrick sat at home in his favourite ol’ chair. It didn’t creak or moan as he rocked. Instead, the soft motion nodded him off to sleep. And he thought to himself, Boy, that Emily sure is pretty. I wonder if she was so pretty back home on the Earth. I hope I love her the way I think I do.

Emily curled up in her sleeping bag and laid up on the couch. She had a blinder that didn’t work, but she wore it anyways out o‘ habit. She clutched the sides of the bag and allowed a sea of thoughts to race through her head. But in the ocean of commotion flying through her brain, one thought stood out, even though she may not have even noticed.

It sure is weird, this sleeping bag here. It’s not so lonely in this big ol’ bag. I wish mom and dad had sleeping bags too.