DarkCrazy's Whisper World

War & Peace by Jason Wilson

The good colonel and I were traveling at a perfectly reasonable speed this weekend in our Dodge Dart. He leaned over to me and grabbed my nipple... you know, titty twister. Those that know me well, know that this is a sure fire way of getting me "all riled up" (as my mother used to call it). I responded by hitting the colonel in the forehead with a shoe... more specifically, mine. This was not the wisest of ideas, for the colonel was driving, but you see I had intentions of seeing him dead at that very moment. The car skidded into a ditch and we both got out and assessed the situation. My comrades, the situation was bleak. We both apologized and gave each other a dollar. We felt better about things after this.

As we were standing on the side of the road, a "weiner mobile" picked us up... you know, one of those Oscar Mayer hot dog shaped automobiles. As we climbed in, "Oscar" (I assumed this to be his name... he never told us, to the best of my recollection) spoke quickly about a million things and yet nothing. You know the type. They share pirate jokes in rapid fire succession and half of them don't even make sense. You get the feeling that these are being made up as he goes (speaking of which, a pirate walks into a bar... bartender serves him a drink and looks down at the pirate's groin area..."You know", says the bartender, "you've got a steering wheel on your crotch". "Aye", the pirate answers, "it drives me nuts".) as I concentrated on what "Oscar" was saying to me, it occured to me that there is no such thing as a 'free ride'. I would have to pay with my sanity, it would seem. However, things took an interesting turn.

"Oscar" began explaining the history of the corndog to the colonel and myself... apparently back in the 20's, the earliest versions of the corndog were prepared more like waffles than the hot-oil deep fried version we are aware of in our fancy modern times. "It is unknown if they were on sticks at this time, but we do know one thing", "Oscar" shared; "they were mighty delicious, even then!" He followed this with a mighty laugh... the colonel and I felt obligated to laugh with him. We feared for our safety at this moment, but we were deeply intrigued by his fantastic tales!

According to "oscar", these "corny-dogs" were perfected by vaudevillians Neil and Carl Fletcher of Dallas, Texas. They sold it at the State Fair in Texas in the 40's. Iquipped about how Iwould like to sell corndogs at the State Fair. This made "Oscar" angry. He let us out on the side of the road with many shouts. The colonel has still not forgiven me for my heinous sin... you see, apparently "Oscar" used to sell corn dogs at the State Fair and had been laid off. He was still very bitter, apparently. The colonel and I are not on speaking terms to this day.

death to those that oppose the laws of the opposable thumb

by Jason Wilson

once i sat and stared at an orangutang for 6 1/2 hours. the bastard grew weary of my daunting stares. he showed me his tookus and mocked me by flinging his poo at me. i was relentless however. i knew that if i quit staring, he would feel he had won the battle... and that just wouldn't do. i need to understand that i am better than a knuckledragging primate and losing to this devious animal was not an option. my self esteem simply could not withstand such a magnificent blow. i would crumble and die. i am not able to cope with such things in a rational way. i was born without arms, as you know, and this leads to severe issues with animals that have extra long arms.

why must they taunt me? why? i've done nothing to them.

i won this strategic battle of the wits, for the animal finally died... he had it coming. i saw planet of the apes and will never forgive them for screwing with the lincoln memorial.

do you understand? he offended my sense of human decency.

end transmission.

"Stop It"

by Jason Wilson

"You cant begin to understand the pain of being a man."

This is what he mumbled as he pulled a sausage out of his pocket, tasting it, teasing it, enjoying its fleshy innards.

"Will you commit?" he asked the half eaten sausage. He stared it down. It didn't respond...at first. But, for a moment, a mere moment, he could swear that he saw it twitch. Just when he thought it was his imagination, the sausage looked up at him. He stared back in pregnant anticipation. It said nothing. Silence. Then he heard the humming...quiet at first, but it slowly became louder than any sound he had ever heard. It was deafening. He clasped his hands tightly around his ears, screaming, trying to drown out the horrible sound of the sausage's humming. He knew that tune dammit! He knew it all too well and he knew the sausage knew that he knew it all too well.

"It mocks me," he whispered. "IT MOCKS ME!" he screamed, but no scream could bury the flurry of sounds erupting from that sausage. It stopped humming the tune and began to sing the awful words.

"...And if you threw a party...you invited everyone you knew...you would see, the biggest gift would be from me and the card inside would say..." BANG! Silence. He had to pull the trigger. There was no way he could go on with his life having heard what he had heard. It was far too much for any mortal ears to bear.

Far too much...

The end?

Sol-Zeta Five

Eric S. Brown and Gail Davis

On the outer limits of human occupied space, the research station Sol-Zeta Five continued its orbit around the binary star known as Cerebus XI. Inside its metal walls, officer Brendan Mclaughlin ran for his life. His heavy combat boots sent echoes through the empty corridors. His sweaty hands clutched an X-prototype heavy particle rifle with white knuckles but that didn’t matter. He knew it would be useless against her. He’d watched her murder the other two members of his squad with only a single glance from her fiery eyes. Gerad and Lucus had fallen to the floor, their bodies jerking and hissing as their blood boiled, cooking them from the inside out.

Perhaps if Dr. Hall, the resident genius, had still been alive he’d have managed to come up with a way to stop her or at least contain her. Unfortunately, Brendan knew he didn’t have time for his mere average brain to do so. He was barely managing to stay one step ahead of her.

She had made a point of killing the doctor first. He was the only person aboard who’d understood fully what had happened to Sarah. As if that hadn’t been reason enough, he was also her father. She had suffered enough years of neglect to turn the love of a daughter for her father into a bitter anger and cold dislike.

Dr. Hall had given himself over to his work long ago. It was said that force had existed since the beginning of matter and energy and the end to the void. It was even hinted that the force was the creator itself, entrapped in a new existence of its own making, forever locked away inside the burning hydrogen of the star. Finding the truth had become an obsession. Contacting the primordial force that resided within the Cerebus star cluster had consumed him and taken over his every waking moment. Perhaps if it hadn’t, if he had paid just a bit more attention to his daughter, he might still be alive.

Brendan had served three years active duty as a shock troop for the Terran Alliance before requesting to be assigned to this station. He had seen enough death to last him his whole lifetime and had hoped to get away from it all here among the stars. On this quiet civilian station, its sole purpose for existing being research, he’d thought he might have a chance at a peaceful life.

He remembered the day he had first come aboard eight months ago. He had met Sarah that day. Seven years old with a mess of unkempt pig tails on either side of her head. Her deep blue eyes had been full of wonder and her mind filled with questions about his travels and the things he had seen during his service. His heart had gone out to her and they had become fast friends. She was to him a symbol of his new life and the hope of a better one. Yet he didn’t delude himself into believing that friendship would save him now. Sarah was no longer just a little girl, cuter than one could imagine. She was the force of the star incarnate.

The Doctor had succeeded in his dream. Contact had been made two days before through garbled radio emissions from the star. They had swelled to a cacophony that overloaded the station’s communications system and the station had nearly been torn apart as the force moved its essence from the star and aboard it seeking freedom. It found a host in Sarah almost immediately and the terror began in earnest. Brendan was the last person left alive and he had no hope of contacting Earth Prime.

He skidded to a halt outside the station’s central power core. His last, desperate plan was a simple one that involved destroying the station and himself and Sarah along with it. He hoped the eruption of the fusion core would be enough to drive the thing back into its burning home inside Cerebus when its host perished, being vaporized along with everything else in a 120 klick radius.

He eyed the keypad lock on the core’s main door and fought to remember the access code. All thought stopped, his insides turning to ice when he heard a giggle behind him. He turned to see Sarah standing in the bend of the corridor, nearly hidden in the shadows of the dim red emergency lights.

Only her eyes stood out clearly in the darkness, twin pools of blue that crackled with the energy of the universe itself. She waved the arm of her teddy, “Bear-Bear”, at him in greeting with a hollow smile on her lips. Brendan whirled, leveling the rifle at her chest. A stream of charged ions streaked toward her from its barrel but the energy merely curled about her like a halo. The thing inside her absorbed it, unharmed.
She spoke, her voice like a chorus of angels singing. “Brendan, I want to go home.”

Brendan’s hand trembled as he dropped the rifle to the floor and typed the code into the lock. The core doors slid open as tears filled his eyes. He stood with his back to her, his shoulders squared.

“Brendan,” she pleaded, “Please don’t make me kill you, too. The void must return, Brendan. There can only be peace in the void. This anomaly called life must cease.”

Brendan ignored her and stepped forward, knowing his life would be over in the next few seconds. The petulant child wailed her fury. She ran toward him, raising the palm of her right hand. Energy bristled and shot from it, enveloping him as she howled.

Brendan felt his skin melt away from his bones and drift away as the station’s gravity failed. His fleshless corpse toppled to the floor and his last unspoken thoughts pleaded to God for mercy on them all.

Sarah stood over him as the station tore itself from orbit and flung forward into the void on a course for Earth Prime. Sarah laughed as tears streaked her cheeks. There was no better place to start making her new home than at her old one. The void would be reborn.

The Keep

Joseph V. Milford

Only 6:25 in the morning and already drunk. That time of morning when the dusk is indistinguishable from dawn-had I drank straight through? The dew on the grass and damp gravel answers my question as I stagger out of my car towards the public restroom at Castle Park, the most elaborate playground I have ever seen.

It is awesome to walk through fog three feet high like a sweltering sauna towards anything-drunk or not. It keeps my mood-this haze-I think of dry ice and epic heroes-I think I need to piss. Only gods walk through clouds to piss, I think.

Castle Park did not exist when I lived here before-its pinnacles beckon me now as the deep-groin phantom-pain sensation pushes me to the cinder-block building where the urinal awaits. I guess I waited too long to take this piss-it's a very recognizable feeling for a drunk-the weight and the relief. I think I've actually had close to orgasmic pisses, those pisses where you actually moan and wonder if anyone hears you. I've had piss sessions where angels appear.

It's hard to describe Castle Park. It is supposed to look like a castle-but no castles were probably so safe. I do find it ironic that children play on a likeness of a place from medieval times. It's a strange mix-slides instead of oubliettes, rope bridges instead of battlements, treated wood instead of rough-hewn lumber caked with mud and thatch, an obstacle course somehow entertaining with a fantasy motif-still the kids get their exercise, right? The irony of enticing kids with castles-do they even have a reference point anymore? Do they know the history? Can they imagine being gored by a Saracen atop a mud wall? They have a fake ship's prow here with a wolf's head on it-the local high school team is the Wolves-this is the first "wolf figurehead" I've ever seen. Vikings would have been proud. Environmentalists are proud that recycled tires, railroad ties, and other sundry recyclables came together to make this a community- approved kid-safe structure. Apparently, several schools and do-gooders have donated funds to the playground-plaques periodically litter the interior and exterior-"Billy Bob's Fingers and Wings," "Glynn Rose Academy," "Maynard Reece, 1945-2004," etc.

When we were young we were Viking children-in our minds. You learn a few things when young devoid of cell phones and video games: Greek myths, Vikings, wolves, Furies, Norse myths, Tolkien, LEGOS-well, it depends on the family, I guess-lack of a vicinity to electronic apparatus generally bred creativity in my upbringing. I learned early on about the importance of fantasy. You also made pirate hats and drank too much Kool-Aid-ensuring 40-year-old-Diabetes--you consumed sugar and books-it was a good childhood, as far as I remember it. We played "King Arthur" and chopped milkweed with sticks that we imagined were swords. The milkweed would bleed when damaged-this provided satisfaction. This construct, though, looks like the castle I wish I could have had as a kid. Who gets castles to play on? Now parents better than I ever had drive their kids to castles to play on? Every time I look at action figures in the toy aisle these days, I realize I was gypped. Then, as I unzip my pants and start fumbling for myself before I make a reservoir in my canvas trousers, I think that only those with an imagination still play with action figures. The rest develop incredible dexterity on a handpad of choice. Thumbs flailing figuring out secret codes to solving entire fantasy worlds. No one is losing a tiny plastic gun in a sandbox anymore. No one gets angry at a G.I. Joe's elbow anymore because it simply will not stay in place. Swivel and grit.

I lied-the most elaborate playground I'd ever seen was Vegas. I built a life on lying, until I heard a low rumble of truth-the breath of a behemoth, leviathan, sasquatch.

The cinder-block building housing the urinal-the drunk's shrine locked. What is it with cinder blocks? Always cream-colored? On the inside and outside-cream-colored cinder blocks. I was always denied in buildings made of cinder blocks-high school hallways of cinder blocks to infinity-that's my hell--I need to piss-the bathroom at the playground was, apparently, a bad choice for relief. Padlocked and cinder-blocked. This town where I never knew a prom, never had a car, now have no house or SUV-I've cinder-blocked myself into corners. In that neighborhood where children play on castles and are educated within the cinder-blocks. The padlock chinks against the door as I let it go and turn my back, pants undone.

I may as well piss on the trees. In the trees. Steam rises from my stream, and then I see some other steam. It is so paranormal-this breath lingering there. A cloud that, drunken, I can really cut with a knife, or a cliché'-I can't fathom it at all. I hold myself and the black snout materializes. More steam-it can't be. I start shaking myself, pee getting on my pants, inside and out-I zip up-momentarily looking down to make sure I do not zip meat into the traintrack. Then it dawns on me-there is a very large living thing only three or four feet in front of me, and I have no fucking idea what it is.

It is funny the things you think of when running full throttle in the opposite direction of a charging bear.

I stagger full throttle-I warble and wobble-I hope to have legs after all this is over.

Why am I drunk? I am thinking of girls' names. Girls I've slept with, dated, lived with; their names always tend to end with the letter "i" or with a strong long "e" sound. It makes sense now-I liked the ease of the first few syllables-the "Dor-" in "Dorie." Or the "Bran-" in "Brandy." But I also like the power of the last strong syllable-the long "e." I wish I could scream right now as more piss pours down my legs-this piss reminds me I came here to be mauled for cheap beer and a small bladder. I even like names like cinder-blocks-square, predictable. I name the bear "Kiley." Man, I am drunk as fuck, man. Shit-run, man-they always say, "Don't look back" in those movies they all die in. The Wolf figurehead with its gaping mouth taunting me atop the castle wall as I am chased by a monster. Drunk and running.

Instinctively, I charge into the playground somehow hoping that I can avoid this angry teeth, claws, maul. Luckily, the entrance is not blocked from the pisser to the sawdust layered castle yard.

Coming back to this town was enough to drive me into drinking. Well, drinking more frequently, anyway. I could see ghosts of myself everywhere-in the faces of others, in the empty parking lots where I once loved a restaurant, in the apartment complexes falling apart where I once drank malt liquor and felt a part of something-it's easy to be nostalgic about a place you leave and never return to. Try going back-try living side by side with yourself from 12 years before. Walk down the sidewalk and step over the place where the pothole once was that you stepped over everyday in your walk to work-it's not there anymore, and you don't consider this progress. I came back for a job-ironically, considering my current situation-being chased around a playground designed as a castle while drunk--I design video games. The current scenario, the protagonist running from a predator, is quite common in the games I design; however, usually the protagonist has a point spread-a possible chance of survival, a secret ability, a portal to jump into to escape, extra lives, a pause button, a save mechanism, a place online to find the cheatsheet-I only hope I've drank enough beer to feel less pain as I am minced-let's face it-a bear chasing you is quite sobering. What would I call this game? "Wolf Rec Department"? "Drunken Bear Bowling"? "Piss and Run"? "Grizzly Kong"?

Then I feel the sharp ice-fire feeling in my left ankle.

It would be poetic if I were injured in my Achilles heel, I guess. The beast doesn't get the tendon or the heel-swiping forward, the bear grazes the side of my foot, tearing through my cheap loafers. It feels warm and hurt-I take comfort in knowing that, if I were not so plastered, this injury would hurt worse. I speed up-adrenaline I think-towards the first fun playground fixture in my path.

I hit the rope bridge, and luckily it leads to a higher level of the playground, the first tier. The bridge is only about two or three feet off the ground, but it was designed in an enclosure of four-by-four stakes-the bear keeps tearing at me but, confused and frustrated by a straightforward approach to the rope bridge, she (and I suddenly realized that she is a she due to her teats dangling under her huge arms) starts attacking the side of the bridge, raising and falling in lumbering spurts, as I try to cross it to higher ground.

It occurs to me that this would be an incredibly funny fucking thing to see if I were not bleeding from my foot, covered in urine and some amount of shit, and in fear of my life. I guess if you are not me this is an incredibly fucking funny thing to see.

I make it to the first platform, panting. She is pacing, steam guffawing from her entire face-I was only three or four feet off of the ground-she roars-not that roar you hear in movies-or video games for that matter. She roars as if exhaling. She roars as if to say, "I am just catching my breath, but I am not done with you yet."

I should have never come back to this podunk town. Once, if you threw a rock, all you'd hit was a church-take your pick of denomination, but predominantly Baptist or Methodist. Now, when the stone bounces of the church, it hits the side of a liquor store. No great failures brought me back here, no great successes. A mediocre and moderate life allowed me to come back home with as much ease as it would allow me to leave home. This was the true horror, for me, I think. Caught somewhere between a liquor store and a church-needing both, needing neither. A bear there in the middle now applying the pressure. A gaggle of geese flies over honking, and the bear is still pacing.

Then, the most astonishing thing happens-the pacing bear begins to cross the rope bridge. It's too much for me-I am actually laughing until her quick progress becomes apparent to me. She is one of those amazing animals funny from afar, she is going to dance around the organ-grinder, she is going to be docile for years and then maim Siegfried and Roy, she will be on that amazing home videos show, and she is navigating the first level of this park and coming for me. This castle is made for access, not for protection. This castle is for giggles and working up appetites for hot dogs. This castle is not made for an epic struggle between man and beast. This is the murderer already in the house regardless of the alarm. I think of video games, board games, reality TV. Remember Chutes and Ladders?

I am limping up some wooden steps towards a higher platform at the mouth of a long slide-one of those spiraled slides like those novelty squiggly straws I had as a kid. Is it possible for me to lure the bear after me, go down the slide, and then run like hell to my car while the bear tries to figure out what's going on? Then it dawns on me as I shove my hand into my front pocket. I simultaneously notice a small silver mass in the sawdust below. Synchronicity, peripheral vision, a bear chasing me.

I have dropped my keys.

That damned keychain. Key to a small apartment. Key to a safety deposit box. Key to the office. A key I am unsure about but am afraid to throw away. Key to an old apartment. A plastic discount rectangle to the local grocery near my new place. A bottle opener. A software company keepsake. An empty keyring looped into the new keyring. My Iomega mini drive. The morning mist is clearing, and I can see the aqua-blue plastic hub on the key to my car staring at me like a half-open eye in the orange-ruddy woodchips. On one side of the playground waits my car-on the other lies my keys-the slide empties out by a set of monkey-bars about thirty feet from my keys. I see myself playing this out like testing a new video game-I see the scenario-the strategy-the obvious choice always gets you killed. I don't have the pause button now. No extra lives to try out this level.

I slide with the greatest feeling I've had in years-this is not, by any means, the slide of a child. This is the "fuck-it-all-to-hell" wild abandoned last slide of a drunken idiot being hunted. This is the greatest slide-ride of all time. This is giving in. This is "I am coming home, Kiley." This is guts in the sawdust. This is the morning news about a man mauled and inebriated. This is the elevator falling forty floors its cables snapped. This makes Six Flags, reality TV, venereal diseases, drinking and dying slowly, drinking and dying in a mangled car-wreck, dying of old age, and never sliding again all seem trivial. I am no longer between the liquor stores, the churches, the bears, the careers, the lost loves-I am sliding down towards sweet oblivion. I am sliding and whooping loudly through the tunnel.

The slide ends too quickly, and I land hard on my ass-bone. I am soaked from the residual dew that is in the slide, and sawdust clings to me as if I have been tarred and feathered. The bear has made it to the level at the mouth of the slide, and she notices me immediately. She roars again, and it seems to me that she is contemplating the slide-she is puzzled, but she is thinking about it-this is unreal-my ego says I must be cursed-only I would be hunted by a bear adept at obstacle courses. Then I hear a garbled bark. To my left, there near my keys, is a small bear cub.

I realize that I could have pissed anywhere, on any tree, at any place, at any time, anywhere on the planet, but I chose to piss here because of the dame castle motif.

It occurs to me that I am going to die because I never got a toy castle as a child. Am I drunk because of that? Shit. I am just here to flush out this bear. It is my destiny to save children from their castle. From a mother in nature. From the futures that this podunk town offers.

Every nature show I've ever scene has taught me not to interfere with a cub and its mother. The mother lets out a preternatural roar that I've not yet heard-she realizes my proximity to the cub. The cub calls back. She is lumbering down the steps; she is heading towards the rope ladder-she is moving faster that I thought possible. I have seen so many bad movies that I actually consider grabbing the cub and holding it hostage in order to walk to my car. I lunge for the keys, grab them, and start the quickest ascent up monkey bars I have ever accomplished in my life. The monkeybars are hexagonal-a shape predominant in nature, I remember from biology classes. This is my real castle, my real keep. A hollow geodome where I make my last stand.

The mother is now with the cub. She circles the youth and seems satisfied. She then looks to me, turns her head, lets out a terrible roar-in my mind, I see a scene from an Alec Baldwin and Anthony Hopkins film where they kill the token black guy because he does not keep the scent of blood out of the air. My foot bleeds through my shoe and drips down into the sawdust. I make those stupid promises of fear: I will never drink again God just let me out of this one God I know I don't pray much but I will be a better person if you don't let me feel this pain God I will call my grandmother God I will stop downloading porn God I will donate time at the soup kitchen for the less fortunate God…

She is walking towards me with the cub at her side. I check to make sure no appendage hangs through the inverted metallic net of my savior monkeybars. She walks under the monkeybars with no acknowledgement towards me. She walks into the woods with her cub. There are no footprints in the sawdust. There are no pawprints in the sawdust.

How long I will linger on these monkeybars I do not know. I am finally free again. Free from childhood. Free from adulthood.

I turn on my back and feel the arch of the monkeybars under me-an incredible chiropractor. It is overcast, but I still feel the sun. I am going to lie here for a while and think of castles. I am going to think of LEGOS. I am going to think of Kool-Aid. Of LEGO castles. I am going to think ATARI 5200 Missile Command. I am going to get down and swing in the swings soon. I am going to drive home after that, past the liquor stores and churches, the castles and bears, the chutes and ladders.

Then, I'll check on my foot, sit down, crack open a beer.

Then, I will call her and tear the cinder-blocks down.

Creatures of Habit

by Sean Gilbert

There are two kinds of drinkers in this world: Those who begin to wonder after a sufficiently dramatic drunken experience if they should stop drinking, and those who after the same experience resolve themselves to drink more. The way things are going for me these days, I choose the latter.

In fact, I'm finding with some concern that the trouble only occurs when I am between bars. Once safely inside, everything is fine. It's when I leave the bar that things go sour. Which illustrates to me a somewhat alarming concern that I have gotten so accustomed to drinking in bars that any time I step away from this routine I am stepping away from the pattern of my life.

People find it spiritually soothing to walk labyrinths, I've read. The simple act of tracing a line before them with their footfalls comforts them, helps them find the path in their own lives. For the same reason people draw comfort from retracing their own steps, repeating the same schedules and routines. We draw a pattern for ourselves, a labyrinth laid out by vice and necessity, a strictly constructed schedule of people, activities and events that define the very nature of our lives. And in most cases, so long as we continue to walk this path, we are safe.

So every time I find myself stepping away from my habits, I leave the world for a while. I have seen things I can only pretend to be fabricating in future re-tellings. I told you about the time I met the devil on River Street, but you probably thought I was spinning a yarn or devising some clever metaphor. Not only is that story true, it isn't even unique.

This next encounter occurred in a similar fashion, under nearly identical circumstances:

I was stumbling up Congress, wondering whether to head up to the Hyatt and catch a cab or slip into the Merc a while. I was that kind of drunk when you have enough sense to know you should hang it up and go home, but you're drunk enough to want to resist all reasonable urges. I passed 606, where I used to hang out until it closed several years ago without apology or replacement. The building had been empty ever since, a grey field dead zone in the heart of Savannah. Strange how that can happen.

I passed what used to be the courtyard, but was reduced to a vaguely recognizable empty lot outside the abandoned building. I only knew it to look at it in reference to its location. I knew this was where the courtyard used to be.

I crossed through the iron gate into the old courtyard, seized by a sudden nostalgia. It was dark, tucked away like a pocket of nowhere just adjacent to the busy street. This place shouldn't be here, I thought. I shouldn't be here.

As if to affirm this realization, something came barreling out of the abandoned cafe and was coming at me. My first thought was some crackhead vagrant or even a mugger, which are not difficult to stumble into if you're careless in your wanderings (which I clearly was at that moment).

As crazy as it sounds, I was actually somewhat relieved to see that it wasn't human. It looked like a man-sized mandrill, a big blue baboon running at me on two legs instead of that bridge between quadruped and human running you're accustomed to observing in apes. It held its arms from it like a scarecrow. It made a sound that was sort of a cross between a monkey call and a person trying to imitate a monkey call.

I was, of course, surprised, but I made no attempt to flee. You can't run from a thing like that. Your curiosity outweighs your survival instinct when confronted by moments such as these. I didn't scream, either, because it was all too surreal to provoke an obvious reaction. Instead I just said in a very incredulous tone: "What the hell?!"

At this the monkey-man paused, lowering its arms. It cocked its head like a dog does when it hears a cat meowing on the TV. Then, just because we'd come too far to stop now, it actually spoke. "Very good," it said with some amusement. "You don't scream, you don't run. You're not frightened of me at all, just surprised. Interesting."

"How long have you been here?" I asked it, still too stunned to exhibit emotion. Is this what happened when our world abandoned a place? Did it become the province of otherworldly things?

Its amusement faded, and it made a deep disturbing growling sound. It thrust its head toward me so quick that if it had wanted to bite my face off I'd have only known about it afterwards. Its snout brushed wet and warm against the lobe of my left ear. I wanted to pass out, but became keenly aware that if I did I would never wake up again.

"Curious isn't the same as courageous," it whispered gravely, "but it can get you killed just the same."

Then it withdrew again. I hoped it was smiling, because otherwise it was just bearing its sharp teeth at me. "But courage is hard to come by in this world. I'll not destroy it when I find it." Then it turned and walked slowly back into the shadows of the old building. "Don't come back here again."

"Wait," I said, shocked even at myself as I did, "what are you? Don't I get to know? As a reward for my bravery?"

It stopped and turned, but didn't approach me again. "No. You get to not get eaten as a reward for your bravery."

"Fair enough," I said softly, hurrying back to the iron threshold which I had arbitrarily decided this thing was unable to cross. I passed through the gate onto the street, and I did not look back the whole way to the Hyatt, as if I were on some Orphean ascent.

I actually stood there a while, like I was going to catch a cab and go home to bed, until I sobered enough to realize what had just happened. Then I knew I wasn't going to sleep at all, so abandoning the pretext of reason once more I went to the Merc for another drink.

A New Sleep

by Tom Hamilton

"No, it's all right, Anna." Pat's head said. "I know...I mean I realize you're still a young woman."

But she would not take her face out of her hands and continued to sob uncontrollably. The tears escaped from in between her svelte fingers and ran down her florescent pink nails, making them seem even brighter. The tiny drops of her sadness splashed daintily onto the cold tile hospital floor.

"Anna," he repeated, as his brain gave his arm the command to reach out to her. But that electrode never reached the intended muscle. Blockaded along that path by the sabotaged bridge of his severed spine. So the paw stayed put. Resting against his ribcage in a rapidly curling and nearly fetal position. A long slow moan escaped his wife's throat.

"No really..." He tried to begin again. "I understand. I mean... this...this..." He was groping for words. "It's no good."

"Pat." When she finally spoke, it sounded much more like a hiccup than a word. "I don't think you do understand, I mean not really...It isn't just the sex with him."

"Oh," he said as what she was telling him really penetrated his mind for the first time and the room swam. He could not see much of his drab surroundings from where he lay on his back in the hospital bed, and for that he was thankful. But from memory he knew that there was one narrow hall by the entrance. Next to a six by six block that held the toilet, shower and tub. This branched out into a wider opening which held two adjustable steel framed beds. One his warden, the second mercifully empty during his spouse's harrowing confession. A faded mural depicting a vase of bronze flowers hung on the opposite wall within his lone field of vision. A television, on the same type of steel frame which supported the beds, jutted out slightly above the lifeless painting and to the right. The volume on the tube was turned down, but Vanna White could be seen twisting a glowing letter B around while flashing a professional smile. Far below a statue of the Blessed Virgin sat on a tray table. She must have looked overwhelming in blue and gold to her congregation of sealed cups. Straws rising in the air at the foot of her gown like arms raised in worship. His helpless kind needed such gimmicks just to take a simple sip of juice.

A pitcher of water sat next to the icon. But he could not envision the coolness through the hard plastic container. If he could just catch a glimpse of the clear refreshing liquid, maybe the air wouldn't seem so hot.

"Pat." Her soft voice eased into his troubled thoughts. She had stopped crying now, and when she looked up her eyes were surprisingly free of redness. They did not appear bloodshot or affected by the strong tears in any way. Instead the left over liquid formed a luminous sheen which coated her brown irises. A color which should have seemed septic, but it was more like the swirl of a dark and delicious caramel. That stare was set inside her pale vanilla face, which was framed by the deep black licorice hued locks of her thick hair. Her soft serve skin was totally free of any blemishes. Her lips were the pink tone of a young strawberry. With just one strained lick of moistness. It was no revelation that she was beautiful. It was not as if he were looking at her for the first time. Still, it was impossible for him to believe she had been with another man.

"I don't know if it's him or all this but..." she began as she gestured around the depressing hospital room.

"Oh," Pat interrupted her before she could finish the thought she was voicing. But he felt no rage. Only frustration and helplessness.

"I mean, I've..." She struggled to continue. "When I'm with him I just feel free of it all."

"Well," Pat conceded. "I can understand how you'd want to be."

Then she did what he could not and leaned over to take his hand. He imagined that her white fingers would look somewhat red if they squeezed his tight enough. But he had no way to gauge this, since he could not see where their grip was joined from his back. He could not even feel her warmth through his expired limb.

"It's not you, Pat." She whispered as the tears welled up in her eyes again. "You... Why, you've been so good to me. It's just... It's just this...." She stared at the floor. "I mean I haven't been able to do it. Just looking at you like this. And to have them tell me that there's no chance you'll ever get any better."

"You don't have to explain," he said with his lip quivering, yet his voice stayed firm. Sheer misery seeped into his brain. As sure as if someone were standing over him, pouring it onto his head like hot, black, cornbread coffee from a scalding silver pot.

She let his hand go and slumped back onto the pumpkin hued imitation leather hospital chair. "Don't you even want to know who it is?" she asked from a drained, drooping and defeated posture.

"Well." He started to shake his head no. But not even those muscles would react in any kind of traditional way. So his head just shriveled into a pathetic shiver. "I don't even see how that's pertinent."

"Pertinent," Anna mocked and sat bolt upright in her chair.

"God damn you, Pat!" she said through a quiet and controlled rage.

"How can you be so logical at a moment like this? Don't you realize what it is that I'm telling you? Don't you ever want...?"

"Want to what, Anna?" He chopped the last part of her question off with a loud voice. "I can scream, you know!" She bit her nails in shame, and avoided his glance by looking to her right. And now the rage did come. He could feel it swelling up inside his chest like heat blowing up liquid glass. Bubbling, like a two dollar bottle of champaign with his sick purple and tan face drawn on as the cork. And he wished someone would stick a giant version of that twisting spring popper into his head. Until it twirled the noggin off from his neck. So that all the desperation he felt could come foaming out and find the ground. Like some filthy garbage wrecked rainbow, soaking into the concrete outside a dumpster after a hard rain had ceased.

"I can scream if that's what you want!" This voice was louder and she was startled and embarrassed by it. "What do you want me to say, Anna? How could you? Is that what you want me to ask? Hmm?" She fidgeted in her chair. "What kind of gall does it take for you to ask me anything? You want me to be a man? Hmm?"

His eyes bulged out like two marbles being squeezed through a soft cloth. His inanimate body could no longer be an outlet for his rage. So his head, which seemed to shrink a little bit more each day, had to bear the brunt of his fury. "I'm a man, yeah," he spat out finally with a deep breath of quieting sarcasm. Then, just as suddenly as it had come, the madness was gone and his brain just felt tired. His body would have gone limp if it hadn't already done so permanently.

Anna didn't answer. She only continued to chew at her attractive and well manicured nails. "I'm sorry, Pat," she said simply, while trying not to cry again. "It's not you, it's..." She paused as an ice colored tear ran silently down her cheek. "It's what's happened to us." She stopped and shook her head no, her brown eyes like a muddy river on an icy Spring day. "No, that's not fair." She was breathing in heaves. "It's what's happened to you."

He gave up on making sense out of it all, and just stared up at the ceiling. "You know Pat.." She began a bare and honest speech. "Everyday, as I start to drive over here, and I just...I can feel the dread before I even get here. And sometimes I just..." She stood up, like she couldn't bear to confess this final part and still stay in the room. "Sometimes I just..." When she stood, it was at a much better angle for his restricted vision, and their eyes met. "Sometimes I just...take a left."

He sighed so thoroughly that the sound turned into a painful whistle before it escaped into the air. "Is that what it was like, Anna, just like freedom?" he asked. "Is that why you did it?"

"Nah." She picked up her Louis Vuitton purse and draped it over her shoulder. "I did it to try and remember." Out of tears, she began to walk towards the door. "To try and remember what it was like before..." Instead of finishing her sentence, she waved her hand over the length of his body, indicating that she meant before his catastrophic injury.

"You know, Anna," he said. "I've changed my mind. I would like to know who it is?"

"I'm not coming back, Pat." She gave him the answer to a different question.

"Who is it, Anna?"

"Well Pat, I've changed my mind too." She paused at the hospital room door. "I don't want to tell you who it is anymore."

"Who is it, Anna?"

She smiled roughly and Pat almost thought she was going to snicker. Instead she said. "It's the pool man, Pat."

"Oh," Pat's head said. "The pool man." Then after thinking for a second or two he added: "Anna, we don't have a pool."

But she was already out the door. And even as he heard the weighted hinge swing lightly then shut tightly, he was sure that she could still hear him laughing all the way down the hall.

"Sean!" Pat shouted at his son. "Get down from there right now. That's too high."

"Look at me, daddy," Sean replied. The child was hanging upside down from the top wrung of the monkey bars. His sandy brown hair sucked straight down by gravity. Until it hung like spaghetti from a round serving spoon. "Look at me daddy, I can hang upside down just like you was."

"Sean." Pat got up from where he had been sitting on the park bench. Flakes of old faded brown paint clung to his Dockers. He walked towards the play set. "That's way too high for you to drop to the ground." He said. "Go ahead and climb back up."

The boy giggled and threw his weight. As quick as a small chimp, his fingers effortlessly caught one of the bars. He ambled back onto the top of the horizontal ladder. When Pat was satisfied that the lad was safe, he strolled over to the sandbox.

Once there he scooped up a shovel full of sand, (which was really more like a shovel full of kitty litter when you considered all the strays which had converted the play pen into a rest room) and playfully dropped a spade full of it onto his second son Kevin's Keds. The younger sibling howled and stole the mint green toy back off of his father. He then thrashed it violently to and fro, completely demolishing a city of Lego blocks. Pat walked back over to the bench. It was starting to show plenty of bare wood thanks to the paint flakes which were deserting it. He sat back down.

The first aching massage of Autumn tickled the trees. And the boys and he were sporting light jackets. Yet the Sun reflecting off of the surface of the old seat created enough warmth to insulate his body. While the cool air kept the breath in his chest. So, he was content to just watch the children play for a few more minutes. They still had plenty of time before they had to go and meet Anna.

The green was pretty much gone from the leaves these days. And the branches were trying on all different styles and shades of bronze. Although the temperature was cold, the beaming Sun still brought quite a few Summer stragglers out to the park. Young college gridiron types, with their NFL team logo sweats. Fired up from watching their favorite football stars on TV, then doing a dirt poor imitation of them on the fading kelly lawns. Young lovers strolling on the asphalt, rubber paths. Taking advantage of the romance created by the chill. All the better for snuggling. Middle aged joggers who weren't really joggers. Actually they were just fat guys fighting a losing battle with that spare Michelin which would settle around their waists like an angel food cake halo in the death of February. There were even a few vendors still around. Just the old Italian stalwarts mostly, and a couple of Mexicans. You probably couldn't buy an ice cream cone in these cold conditions. But you wouldn't be hard pressed to come up with a hot dog or a brat. He looked down at his Rolex. "Let's go boys." He shouted.

Kevin looked up without much interest from the sandbox.

Sean clambered down from the massive frame of fused pipes, ran over to his father and asked. "Daddy, will you do that flip like you did that one time off the monkey bars?"

"No, son. We've got to go and meet mommy."

"Please daddy." The boy begged. "It only takes one half of one half of a second." The child took his thumb and forefinger, then pressed them together. Indicating just how miniscule one half of one half of a second might be in actual size. Pat surveyed the playground. It was getting even colder out now, and a good percentage of the parents had either left or were preparing to take their kids home. There weren't too many people left around to see him make a fool out of himself.

"OK Sean," he said. "I'm going to do this idiotic trick just this once, OK! Then you're going to turn around and we're going to walk out of the park. With no sniveling, no crying and no complaining. And we're going to go and meet Mommy, right?"

"Yeah, uh huh, uh huh." The boy was shaking his head 'yes' throughout the lecture. Still, Pat knew this was a promise that his son could not possibly keep. Yet, he walked towards the monkey bars anyway. Eager to get this nonsense over with, make the kids laugh, then go and meet Anna outside of Nordstrum's.

He athletically leapt up from his flat feet and grabbed one of the rungs, which was located about halfway across the horizontal ladder bridge. Then he swung the lower part of his body upward, and angled his lean legs in between the narrow bars. His hands released their grip from the cold pipes, which left him hanging upside down by his knees. He could already hear Sean giggling. Pat glanced towards the sand box, albeit upside down, to check on Kevin who was gawking at his father with bewilderment and wonder.

"OK," Pat said. "Here we go."

But as he put his full weight onto the bar, in order to generate enough power to swing into the flip, something went terribly amiss. Without warning and while not making an audible sound, the tube from the crossbar by which his knees were hooked popped directly out of its failing weld. Before Pat knew he was in the air, he was on the ground. Which had to be a good twelve feet, from the Earth to the top of the play set. He landed at an obscene angle, more on his face then on his head, with such force that the backs of his ankles nearly slammed into his previously well styled and still expensive hair cut. He vaguely heard the sound of his elder son's scream. Like the muffle of a bell under water. He knew that something was seriously wrong immediately.

The pressure on his neck felt as if someone were winding down the weight of a tractor trailer onto his throat. His breath heaved in short, sharp rasping gasps. He felt as if he were trying to suck oxygen through a cocktail straw. Or a dying insect trying to preserve the last breaths of evaporating air, through the slits cut into the plastic top of a silver coffee can.

"Daddy! Daddy!" Sean quickly ran to where his father had fallen. Pat began to try and tell the child to run and get some help. But no words came from inside the wounded sneer that was now his mouth. A mixture of phlegm and foam ran down the side of his cheek. His mind gave his hand the order to wipe the spittle away. A command that the limb should have easily been able to carry out. And that's when it first hit him.

He could feel absolutely nothing from the neck on down.

Total numbness. You could have taken any surgical instrument from scalpel to saw to sledgehammer, and he would not be able to experience so much as a pinprick. His head was completely isolated. Surely as if it were laying in a basket at the bottom of a guillotine. The image of a bull being euthanized blinked into his panicking mind. The horns guided into the harsh, cold, steel slaughterhouse stall. The betrayed ears rubbing up against the leather holster. The contents of the throat retching onto the indifferent abattoir blade. This was the type of shock he now felt. Like a butcher knife quickly hacking off a piece of living steak, exposing the stunned bone to the unexpected and painful wind chill.

"Daddy! Daddy!" Sean cried again. Vaguely, Pat could hear the sound of a small child crying. Although it was weak and distant, like a bad cell phone connection. He realized that it was Kevin, who he assumed was still sitting in the sandbox, since he could not maneuver his body around to check on the child's position. Instinctively, he knew that the baby's diaper needed to be changed.

"Are you OK!?" Suddenly he heard a third voice. The gravity had pulled him down onto his side. Now he could see the source of the call. A young mother, who had been pushing a cherub cheeked toddler in a plush Eddie Bauer Stroller, was now standing over them.

"There's something wrong with my Daddy," Sean answered her through a heavy accent of sobs. The chubby young mom, who looked like the grown twin of the baby in the fancy wheeled seat, got a fairly critical look at Pat for the first time. "My God," she said flatly, and her pretty face went through a stone aged metamorphosis of disgust and terror.

Pat tried to focus on that face. Just to have something for a reference point. But the sky quickly dimmed. A black blanket without stars roved past the clouds to be tucked into the horizon. Until the only thing left that he could see was the blonde highlights in the woman's brown hair. Yet they faded like the sunlight. Danced like lightning in the stolen moon Heavens.

Pat's body began to writhe in spastic convulsions. The young mother gasped. Kevin continued to cry. Sean Screamed. It would be the last time, during the short duration of his remaining time on Earth, that Pat would ever be outside.

"What you're talking about isn't just unethical, Pat," Doctor Burke began. "It's practically murder."

"How can it be murder, Tom?" Pat addressed his childhood friend by his Christian name. "You wouldn't even be in the room."

"It's out of the question, Pat," Dr. Burke shot back. "I shouldn't even have to remind you about the oath all doctors must take. An oath to preserve life, not end it."

"Do you call this swill I'm laying in a life, Tom?"

"Not a very high quality of life, no."

"C'mon Tom, you're not going to hit me with that crap about an oath are you? Don't you remember that Doctor?" Pat's head continued. "You know the one who assisted people who wanted to die? He was a real Doctor. I'm sure he had to take some kind of an oath."

"Dr. Kevorkian is still in prison, Pat. And you're not even terminal as most of his patients were."

"Look," Pat reckoned. "You wouldn't even half to assist. All you'd have to do is just bring me the stuff."

But the Doctor just shook his head. "Cyanide? My God ,Pat, do you realize what kind of Pain you'd be in?"

Pat's eyes narrowed like two miserable snake slits and his pupils gleamed with terror. "More pain then I'm in now, Tom?" he said. "Do you have any id... I mean can you even begin to fathom what it's actually like to be me these days? I can't even feel the bedpan for God sakes."

Doctor Burke sighed and got up from his chair. The same cheap, plastic, pumpkin hued special Anna had told her seedy tale from the day before. Even after his friend rose, Pat continued to stare at the top of the cushion. His eyes pressed as far their limit would take them to his right. The sick burnt orange color of the seat made him realize that it was one of the boundaries of his tragically obstructed World. Along with the prosaic, plastic plants. The caged TV. The ignorant and intolerant nurses. The calculating Doctors, who drove home in their BMW's whether the patients lived, died, dried up or became paralyzed. The beeping, buzzing, wheezing, whirring hospital machines which still coughed and dripped out their cold mechanical antidotes, even when only the night lights were left, to bluntly cut through the many bad dreams as the clock passed three A.M. on the ward.

"Listen, Pat," Dr. Burke began. He had walked across the room, and was now looking out the window, studying the grounds below. Which of course, the bed ridden man could not see. If pressed, Pat did not even think he could tell someone what floor he was on, or how many stories it was to the ground. "It's only been six weeks since the accident. And you are right about one thing: I cannot possibly comprehend the Hell in which your mind is locked away in right now." Dr. Burke continued, as his eyes scanned the yards below. "Six weeks is just not enough time to encompass this type of shock."

"Uh huh." Pat grunted without much interest in the Doctor's speech. Which continued: "It's only natural that you would have fantasies of suicide. As a way to cope or escape. But if you can come to terms with your condition, you can still live a rewarding life. Many people have worked to overcome injuries very similar to your own." Pat just stared at the roof and said nothing as the Doctor persisted. "Who was that actor? You know the fellow who took the tumble off of the horse?"

"Christopher Reeve." Pat answered finally.

"Yes, Christopher Reeve." The Doctor was trying to pick up on any optimistic vibe. "They say he directed an entire movie from a wheel chair. Now that's the type of determination that you should be subscribing to, Pat."

"He's dead, Tom." Pat said in a voice which sounded almost as dead.

Doctor Burke sighed. But then he shrugged off the negativity and tried to launch a new point. "Besides, Pat, you're a Catholic. I believe that in the Catholic faith suicide would veto your right to enter Heaven."

Pat had thought about this. So the comment bucked his funk and finally initiated some reaction from him. "Veto?" He made fun of the Doctor's choice of words rather than tackling the subject head on. "Do you think it's a democracy up there, Tom? Do the Saints take a vote?"

"It's your faith, Pat," Dr. Burke countered. "You're going to have to die with these ramifications under your grim plan."

"Hades could not be any worse than this," Pat said darkly.

Doctor Burke sighed again. "Listen to me Pat," he said. "In a situation of this nature, the attitude of the person is paramount. Now I know this is easy for me to say. But I've seen patients who do choose to fight." Pat said nothing as the Doctor continued. "I've seen men and women come back from the edge. And I mean rally from terminal illnesses. With the kind of outlook you're choosing to employ - and make no mistake Pat, it is your choice - you won't last six months."

Pat almost conjured up a laugh. "Maybe you haven't been listening, Doc," he quipped. "I don't want to last six more minutes."

Instead of acknowledging that pessimistic comment, Dr. Burke posed a new angle. "What about Kevin and Sean?" he asked. "How would they be able to understand something as final and traumatic as their father's suicide? Even if they were lied to about it, to protect their innocence. They'd find out the truth eventually."

Pat scoffed. "You know what Sean showed his class at school the other day? You know for one of those 'show and tell' type deals?" It was a question that neither man really expected an answer to, and Dr. Burke didn't supply one. "He took one of those puppets you know... What do they call those fu... a muppet!" Pat continued on, in what was becoming a rant. "You know? Where you take your hand and you prop it up to create head movement. Like the toy has a working neck. Well Sean took this thing, you see, and he laid it flat on the teacher's desk, you know? So that the body was totally limp. Then he took his little hand, and he shoved it up through the neck so that... "

"I think you're being incredibly selfish, Pat." Dr. Burke interrupted the inane story. "Children have their own way of coping. They can only associate with the things they're familiar with."

"I'll never play baseball with my sons again, Tom," Pat pleaded. "OK, so I'm not a Major Leaguer. I'm just talking about messing around in the back yard. Knees in the dirt, using the garage for a backstop."

"Those boys need their father, Pat. If you can't think of yourself, think of them. They'll get used to your condition in time."

"Maybe, but I won't." Pat went to shake his head no, and did not even realize when his neck refused to do it. "I won't be a talking head for the rest of my life. Not this cabbage. I'm out."

"My God Pat, you've always been such a fighter. The toughest one. I can't believe you'd fold your tent so easily"

"Have you ever felt dread, Tom?"

"Of course."

"Well, I want you to just imagine the most dreadful minute of your entire life. Something that you just could not bear to do... OK, you got it." Dr. Burke refused to participate in Pat's one man survey and instead continued to look out the window. But Pat acted as if the Doctor had pinpointed the scenario in his mind anyway. "OK, now imagine that you felt like that, every waking moment of every second of your life. And you could not walk away from the dread because you were the dread. You! Your own mind was your captor. Not just a paralyzed body. But a paralyzed spirit. A mind which never quit. Like a pong ball of dread bouncing off the walls of your thoughts. Like a ..."

"What about Anna, Pat?" The Doctor tried to jar Pat out of his miserable lecture.

"She's having an affair," Pat said blankly.

Dr. Burke turned his attention from the window, to stare at Pat in shock.

"She's having an affair," Pat repeated. But just a little quieter.

The Doctor lost interest in the panorama outside. He walked back over to the chair, studying Pat's face the whole way.

"You're paranoid," he said as he sat back down, nervously straightening the charcoal tie on his smart gray suit. "What would make you think something like that?"

"She told me," Pat answered with the certainty of someone stamping ink onto a letter.

"My God, how could she tell you something like that? In your condition." Dr. Burke was sitting bolt upright in his chair, riveted by this new revelation.

"A better question might be: Why did she do it?" Pat dead panned.

"It's the shock," the Doc surmised. "She's had a nervous breakdown."

"Well, nervous breakdown or not..." Pat's voice trailed off into a sarcastic, petulant and almost inaudible laugh.

Dr. Burke sat, still stunned, until a new thought entered his mind. "My God, with whom?" he asked.

"The pool man," Pat said through a strained sneer.

"The pool man?" Dr. Burke repeated, confused. "You don't even have a pool, Pat."

Pat's sneer sparked into a snicker. "I guess that was just her way of saying that she didn't want to say." Pat's smile sputtered and was replaced by a sadness which had never really left his eyes anyway. Dr. Burke continued to stare into nothingness, trying to rationalize the sorry state of affairs.

"So, you'll do it then?" Pat asked him suddenly.

"Do what?" Dr. Burke was still lost in the fog of his own thoughts.

"Get me the stuff to kill myself." Pat disguised the heavy question within an innocent tone. Like someone asking for a Dr. Pepper. Doctor Burke came out of the trance and his forehead wrinkled with the force of his annoyed frown.

"Pat," he said in a reverential tone. "How long have you known me?" When Pat refused to answer, the Doctor answered for him. "Since the fourth grade?" Pat's eyes rolled around the room. Yet he still refused to reply. "Then you already know the answer to that question. Of course I won't do it. Furthermore, I'm going to tell your Doctors to put you on a suicide watch."

Pat spit a painful laugh. "What am I going to do?" He said. "Bite myself to death?"

"I don't know, Pat." Dr. Burke posed it to him as if Pat had not been joking. "But you can be sure I'll notify your Doctors to prevent you from doing anything rash. Or having someone else do it for you."

"Just tell them my Blue Cross/Blue Shield ran out," Pat wisecracked. "They'll kill me themselves."

As it turned out, though, it wasn't even really that difficult. And when Doctor Burke did notify his own physicians pertaining to Pat's suicidal condition as promised, well, it was like he had placed a 'HELP WANTED' sign on his old buddy's chest.

Enter Chuck, the affable African American male nurse who prowled the graveyard shift every other night.

"Hey Pat?" Chuck said. "I heard you was lookin' to off yourself. Is that right?"

Pat grinned. But then his tone turned deadly serious. "You know anyone who wants to make a quick fifty grand?"

Pat marveled at the way Chuck's sinewy biceps bulged as he dialed the phone number. Muscles which actually worked. What a strange concept that was to him these days. Chuck held the receiver up to Pat's ear. He instructed his accountant to draft up a check for Fifty Thousand Dollars.

"What the Hell for, Pat? You're not even out of the hospital yet, are you?" the voice on the other end of the line asked.

"I'm not really in the mood for questions today Randy. Just have one of the board members sign it, and send it over here right away."

The next day the check arrived. Packed in an 8 1/2 by 11 envelope which said 'FeDex' on the side of it. Then, and this was the part that Pat loved, one of the doctors, who was supposed to be participating in his suicide watch, readily signed for it. He did not ask Pat what was inside. He did not even offer to open it up. Which Pat thought was downright rude, himself being a quad and all. Pat did not even have to use his ready made excuse about a real estate deal.

The next Evening Chuck ripped open the colored cardboard container and fished around inside it. He stared at the check's dollar amount in awe. Before Pat said: "You can put anyone's name on there that you like, Chuck." Chuck just continued to stare at the valuable piece of paper. "If I were you, I'd try and disguise it somehow. Through some legitimate business or charity. If you know someone like that you can trust for a cut." Chuck didn't seem to be listening. Of course it had occurred to Pat that whom ever cashed that check would come under considerable scrutiny from authorities. They would be anxious to find out why someone had supplied a quadrapeligic with cyanide, mixed with just a dash of Cherry Coke for flavor, and complete with a convenient ready to suck straw. He didn't know if this threat had dawned on Chuck and Co. and he really didn't care. Subconsciously, he thought that maybe he wanted these idiots to get caught. They were going to murder him, after all. Perhaps that's why he'd given them a check instead of just dreaming up an excuse to have someone bring him over the cash. Either way, it wouldn't make much difference to him. He would be long gone by then.

"All right!" Chuck said finally, while still holding up the document. "My main man. Gonna be sorry to see you go, though." Pat blinked. "Somebody be bringin' you your juice soon," Chuck said through a hang man's smile.

"Well I'm sure it won't be Anita Bryant," Pat quipped, keeping in tone with his ill humor.

"Haa!" The muscular Chuck snickered before countering with a wisecrack of his own. "It's not just for breakfast anymore."

He walked out with the check and that was the last Pat ever saw of the sculpted Chuck. He wasn't worried that the big man wouldn't go through with it. With himself gone, that would just be one less person who knew about the grisly mission. No, soon one of Chuck's secret agents, who would probably be just some bumbling orderly, some weak drone barely beginning to grasp at the reality that he or she did not possess the charisma or the steady hand needed to practice medicine, so instead they would bring him the ticket he so desperately needed to punch. Then he would make the Reverend Jim Jones and the ghosts of Guyana puke green with envy. At least they had the chance to swig their poison swill. He was going to take his medicine like a real man: Through the straw.

Pat had never really contemplated the afterlife before now. He had always felt that he was still young enough, where he could avoid any theories on the subject. So much for that aloofness now. He'd been baptized and raised as a Catholic. Tom had been right about that much. But Anna and he hadn't really been practicing. He personally hadn't been to church in over a year, and honestly couldn't remember the last time he'd been to confession. It was not that he didn't believe in Jesus, Mary, or the Saints. It was more like he just didn't have any spare time for them. He was not pompous enough to imagine that he could ever enter into Heaven. "A camel has a better chance of passing through the eye of a needle then a rich man has of entering into the Kingdom." Wasn't that phrase in the Bible somewhere? He was sure he'd heard some similar line before. And he was rich. He'd always been wealthy. His father had owned three shopping centers for Christ's sakes. But would that really be enough to keep him from basking in Paradise? Maybe not. But if he were to be judged by his actions alone, he may hit a snag there too.

Pat had known this wacky, raving anarchist in College, Paul. God, he hadn't thought about that guy in years. Anyway, Paul contended that anyone who aspired to the acquisition of material possessions was a practicing Satanist. He said this concept was one of the cornerstones of the Black Bible. Under this assumption they may as well just reserve Pat a Suite overlooking the Styx River right now. All his married life Anna and he had strove to garner Worldly riches. The finest and most expensive cars, homes, properties, jewels, vacations, you name it. They had even been ruthless in their quest for the attainment of these luxuries, often stepping on the faces of their peers, demonstrating a brash form of one-up-man-ship. Wouldn't this gluttony be a worse sin than suicide? Would a human being's soul really be kicked off the bridge just for killing themselves? How and by whom would all this be determined? Would God have time to piously oversee each individual case? Or did these celestial beings operate under the same time and space continuum? Would there be some sort of trial or procedure in front of the Pearly Gates? With Saint Peter dressed in a snow white judge's robe, sitting on a sparkling marble bench which glimmered like salt as a lifetime of sins were projected for the benign jury like a slideshow. The accused
squirming like a schoolgirl who has to urinate seven minutes before the period bell, averting their glance from the rated NC-17 movie on the screen. Then Saint Thomas pulls a golden lever and flushes the floor, condemning the guilty to tumble down a circle slide to the abyss below. That whole scenario just seemed a might grandiose to him.

But the most important question was one which he had heard posed on the radio. By a Southern Evangelist while Pat had been driving through the State of Georgia: "Would a loving God really condemn his poor misbegotten subjects to eternal fire just for not manifesting his will on Earth?" You're God Damn right he would! That was the one undeniable fact that Pat was sure about.

Actually, it was difficult for Pat to envision the tar pits of Hell in any kind of literal sense. He wondered if he would be a speeding wraith, flying down to some fuzzy dream World? Or would it all seem as rich and clear as a typical trip to your local Wendy's hamburger chain? If you just looked at the stereotypes alone, they were outlandish, outrageous and larger than the life that had just ended.

Take the Devil himself. There you have a man, a fallen angel or a demon if you like. He holds a pitchfork, has red skin, horns on his head, a tail with a spade at the tip, and he lives at the center of the Earth. Plus, as a punishment to all wayfarers who may have strayed from God's pious path, or accidentally shattered the tablets of his precious commandments, he runs around tossing hot coals on people's asses and deep frying their privates. Wasn't it all kind of absurd? "The greatest deception that Lucifer ever perpetrated onto mankind was to make them believe that he does not exist." Those were not the exact words, but he was sure that he had heard that saying somewhere. Had he fallen under this clandestine misconception?

Ah, he'd heard all that Atheist bullshit. After death, there is nothing. Just an eternity of black emptiness. A permanent and peaceful unconscious sleep. This scenario was particularly appealing to him, although, unfortunately for his tormented psyche, he did not believe this could be true. He was forced to subscribe to the axiom that once the brain was suffocated and the heart arrested, yes, the body would surely give in to decay and rot. But the celestial energy which had enlightened that mind could never completely die. The individual human soul or spirit, the force which commandeered all thought, should have to whimsically rise or fall, depending on the righteousness or the wickedness demonstrated by the flesh capsule it was forced to abandon. Simply evaporating into a tranquil void just did not work as a plausible explanation the way he dreamt it.

Anyway, he'd find out soon enough. He'd read somewhere once that human beings who were suffering from suicidal depression often felt a titanic sense of relief when they decided on a definite mandate to end their own lives. No, not some half hearted, attention craving 'cry for help' with a hand full of pills in their mouth and the rest spilled beside the bed, but a thorough concrete plan. A blind date with the Grim Reaper. Where friends or family members would later recall, after the fact of course, that the symptoms of their bleak condition would lessen and their mood would substantially improve in their last days. Like the weight of a tractor trailer being lifted from their exhausted shoulders. Safe in the knowledge that all their sadness and misery would be exorcised in one agonizing ejaculation of the soul. Pried free from the body like milk suddenly punched from the tin by a rusty and revolting steel can opener. To hang in the air momentarily like smoke from an unfiltered cigarette, only to fly far away into the sky like a helium balloon some wee child had lost their tiny grip on.

Pat certainly felt that he fell into this category. He was intoxicated with relief. For the first time since the accident, he figured on getting a good night's sleep. He would have lain his head down, but of course, it was already down. So instead, he simply closed his eyes.

The coldness of the water was a shock to Pat's toes. The wind had been so warm as they'd rode out on the boat, the remarkable view of the Maui coastline taking their breath away.

While the churning turquoise waves rushed up to meet the runny mascara Sunrise, Pat mounted the ladder which was really not much more than a tangle of knotted ropes. Now he was entirely submerged in the salt water. The cumbersome and heavy 'Ocean Walk' helmet suddenly felt as light as soft music in the waltzing waves. The Sea water came right up to his chin and then stopped, halted by the air pressure just as the instructor had claimed.

There really was no way that he could look up with the clumsy apparatus weighing down his brain, but he sensed that Anna was right above him on the rope ladder. The Sunlight which had freckled the surface began to lose reception as they descended into the waxy blankets of the depths.

His bare feet met the coarse sand of the Sea bed. And once again he was shocked by the sharp sensation of the Ocean floor. It was as if millions of miniscule shavings of glass, copper and metal were stinging his heels. He stepped away from the rope ladder, his actions impeded by the thickness of the salt water. Like someone trying to escape from a predator in a dream, only to wake up in the tangled death grip of a king sized comforter.

They had placed some little stepping stones throughout the diving area. Along with some phony Native statues and other fake artifacts to entertain the tourists. But Pat could not be too upset by their wasted efforts, even as shards of the artificial began to wear through. There was too much natural beauty, that could not be mimicked, to offset their unnatural array. The lava red coral and green rocks which sprouted sharp barnacles. The walking crabs and scooting Sea snails who frequented the otherworldly plant life. Sights which could not be tainted by attempts to commercialize them.

Anna had stepped off the rope ladder now, and her long dark hair jutted out from underneath the border of the helmet. The strands swam in directions all their own like the dim purple tentacles of some stunning, living octopus. Before settling in the waves like the stillness before a photograph. She had a huge smile on her comely face, which was magnified all the more by the hard plastic visor. This made her head look as if it were on a thirteen inch television. The unintentional special effect made her teeth seem even brighter until they burned as white as a polar fire. Or the purest pearl pried from the mouth of some unsuspecting clam, victimized by any self respecting, tanned Lanai islander.

Pat suddenly caught a glance of quickness out of the corner of his eye. It startled him briefly before he realized that it was only one of the scuba divers giving him a thumbs up sign. He returned the gesture as practiced back on the dock. This indicated that he could breathe OK. Even though they had been assured that there were no sharks in the Bay, he still kept hearing the theme from 'Jaws' in his head. And he halfway expected to look over and see a Great White as big as a pickup truck at any moment. After Anna had also flashed the silent thumb message, the frog man headed for the surface. Which was really only about twelve or thirteen feet away, since they were being allowed a ridiculous berth in accordance with safety. But hey, they were amateurs and it was fun.

Anna was holding something in her hand. As she swam closer to him, Pat could see that it looked like a water bottle. He wondered why she would need a canteen since they were under the Ocean. Then she tilted the cylinder sideways and some tiny chunks of soaked bread squirted out. They hung in the Tropical aqua like popcorn in a radically slowed frame. It was such a stunted suspension for the deluged croutons that it would have been magic had they been standing in their customary oxygen.

Anna's gorgeous smile lit the deep, as she twirled in a slow circle, emptying the contents of the bottle, the heavy H20 gracing her with the control of a ballerina. Suddenly, during a great rush of color, Pat realized what it was she had been doing.

Hundreds of small fish surrounded her in a quickening dervish of Honolulu hues, devouring the torn food she had sprayed out for them. They looked as if they had been painted with the roasting spittle of a volcano. A Lava coating which had cooled down to many fresh shades unknown to the untrained eye: Bronze, coral, teal, mahogany, flamingo pink, zebra, tan and mint, purple and peach. All of these colors had eyes. They could duck, dart and pursue. They rose and circled Anna's lovely form like dollars in one of those game show wind machines. Pat stepped towards his new wife and tried to catch one. But the creatures swam away from him like they were on fast forward while Pat felt as if he were moving in slow motion. The tiny life forms had instantly endeared themselves to him. He admired their natural decoration and fluttering chutzpah. Anna's smile beamed at him through the clear murk. The fish celebrated her like animated confetti. Pat wanted to move closer to her. To be with her. But the heavy salt water would not let him move his arms and legs. It was as thick as syrup. But the water it was.... it was as… he tried to... thick as syrup... the water it was as thick as syrup... it was as... couldn't move... can't move... the water was as....

Well, Tom was right about another thing: The crap sure did hurt going down the old funnel. It didn't really taste all that bad when it first hit the tongue. Or even as it soaked into the taste buds. Certainly no worse than the worthless tonics and elephant sized pills the callous nurses had been cramming down his throat. In reality his lethal waiter was not an orderly. In fact he did not seem to be associated with the hospital at all. Evidently, Chuck had gone outside the building to find his delivery boy. Not bad thinking. Maybe the simpletons would get away with his money after all. But Pat still didn't think so. There would just be too many lose ends to cover. And he was still confident that the perpetrators would spend the rest of their lives, or at least many years, in prison.

The kid was very skinny. And he looked much too young to be completely bald on top. He walked in and glared at Pat with sagging eyes. His face did not do a very god job of masking a neurotic nature. A questioning look wrinkled his prematurely old forehead. He acted like he wasn't sure if he had the right room. Or if he was embarrassed to ask Pat if he was the man who wanted to kill himself. But before Pat could answer the speculation in the courier's eyes the kid said: "I think this is for you." Pat noticed for the first time that he was wearing rubber gloves.

The hit nerd propped a 32 oz. 'Wendy's Old Fashioned Hamburgers' thermos onto Pat's still chest. Then, with his covered hands shaking, he guided the straw in between the invalid's parched lips. Then without saying another word, he hastily walked out of the hospital room. Pat never saw him or anyone else again.

The concoction was not mixed with Cherry Coke as Pat had envisioned, but with some sort of ultra tart lemonade. Which made it nothing more then a minutely tweaked version of the Reverend Jones' Guyana 'Flavor Aid'. No wonder they had to hold the congregation at gunpoint in order to make them drink it. Oh, he had thought of some of the easier, less painful methods. Possibly some sort of lethal injection. Something to just quietly stop his heart. But that would be more like they were killing him, and he couldn't risk that. It would be more difficult to get the chicken shit bastards to do it. That would make them feel more like murderers rather then suicide assisting mercy killers. He didn't want any second thoughts or guilty consciences. He had to be absolutely positive that it got done. Whatever awaited him on the other side, bring it on. But it had to get done!

He took another sip from the straw to fill his mouth, and with a grimace like a twelve year old boy snorting a shot of bourbon, he swallowed the noxious liquid. Well, he didn't turn into a pumpkin yet. His stomach felt a little queasy, maybe. But he still felt halfway decent all things considered. So he knocked back a little more. He wasn't really situated properly to be drinking, because his head was not in the upright position, and this time the fatal formula went down the wrong pipe. This caused him to commence coughing, and that's when the burning began. The deep heating sensation spread like a brush fire until it felt like someone was holding a blowtorch to the inside of his esophagus. He had not been able to feel his chest for weeks. Now it felt like gasoline was filling up in his lungs. That's when the real pain began.

His throat welled out like one of those bullfrogs on the National Geographic. His eyes heated up like two hard eggs which were boiling inside the roasting pot that was now his skull. He felt as if they would jump from their sockets like two cue balls scratched off of the sick green table of his face. He could feel cataclysmic explosions throughout his body as the cyanide invaded and raided his every tissue. Tears ran from his eyes like bugs escaping from the insecticide. Phlegm erupted from the wretched volcano which had been his mouth. The dead yet dying muscles convulsed and the steel framed bed shook as if hit by a tropical wind. The poison which was killing him ironically reanimated the limbs, whose stillness had been the cause of his wish to perish.

His eyes lolled, like the digits on a broken speedometer that some crooked used car salesmen had tampered with. His hands inadvertently clawed at the sheets in an involuntary spasm. The intruding militants infiltrated his blood and reached the Capitol of his spastic existence, overthrowing his heart in a revolution of death. The thrashing ceased and his movements settled as his mind slipped into a new sleep. And one of his questions was answered immediately: It was a conscious sleep. He did have an acute awareness. He could not however, see himself.

He did not float above the crust he had shed like the folks on those 'Beyond and Back' TV shows. Yet whatever wind which might be left of him did feel ethereal: Disconnected from pain and discomfort. Like a radio which had been loudly blaring FM static had been suddenly switched off. Now he was floating in a great topless chasm. An omniscient blackness stretching in all distant directions. It was the rich, thick, darkness of a blind man. Had the Atheists been right? Could this be the ultimate nothingness?

The end of the mind? But how could the brain be eliminated if he still had thoughts? Yet, he was dead. This much he was sure of.

He did not see any bright light at the end of a tunnel. Which was a staple of the tales told by the survivors of death.

For a brief and vanishing instant he thought that he could see a long silver mast in the vast expanse. It rose gray and steely without a flag, proud in the darkness like a lightening rod. But before Pat could even get a clear focused fix on it, the image was gone. Had it been a tower?

He felt as if he were flying. Yet he could feel no wind.

Nor could he see anything around him. Still, he did not feel afraid. Suddenly, he began to notice a burst of color. At first he couldn't recognize the shade. Like it was a mixture unknown to him. Then there were more tones than one. Then, it was like he had blended in with the fray. Or no, he was riding on the colors.

He realized at that moment that he was mounted on a rainbow.

Well, it did not have the length and width of a full scale grand rainbow, one like you might see sparkling in the sky. Storm drenched motorists arching their necks to turn and glance back over their shoulders just to catch a glimpse of it. Nearly wrecking their cars from not paying attention to the road, while the rain still fell within the Sun out.

No, this was a much more compact version of that huge vision. What you might call a slice of rainbow. Pat was not sitting or standing on it. It was more like he was attached to it at a seventy five degree angle as the piece of a rainbow continued to hurtle towards an undisclosed location.

From the very outer rim of his right eye, a second blast of color made itself known to him. And he could see another man, who was standing on his own personal ration of rainbow. Although the man was not wearing any clothing, his genitalia could not be viewed. That isolated patch of his anatomy had been somehow scrambled like a digital image which had been touched up, so that it could be blocked out on some censored television program.

The man looked as if he held a great deal of fear and uncertainty behind his face, yet he acknowledged Pat with a friendly nod. But before Pat could return the greeting, another bright blast of color kept pace with their floats. This piece of rainbow carried a pale women who was very thin. She was also nude, but, like the man, her breasts were altered by the same form of editing until they resembled blurry disassembled particles instead of a part of her body. She was sitting on her rainbow with the same pride and posture a Victorian lady might have. As if she were mounted on a steed side saddle. Except that she had no saddle, and the colorful craft moved ahead in the place of a horse. She looked as white as a corpse with the funeral home make-up still on. Two runny turquoise eyes, which were much too bright for her dead skin, stared out from inside her sunken sockets. They glowed like shattered marbles on a laundered sheet. Or a feline's eyes hit with a flashlight in a room blacked out by poverty.

The pale, thin woman did not motion to him as the man had. Indeed it was as if she hadn't noticed him at all, and for that Pat was grateful. For he felt extremely uneasy in her presence and found himself hoping that she would somehow speed up, or that his float would slow down. Anything to disrupt their synchronized flight.

Suddenly, he was distracted again, this time by a much larger and much brighter light. This one did not creep up on him from behind as the others had, but sat dead ahead, glowing with the yellowish white hue of a star. It began to shine with the force of a quasar as they moved closer. Could this be the light which the survivors had spoken of? It continued to sparkle and then burn silver. More light spread across the groundless dome of the mystery firmament like an artificial Dawn. And this radiance revealed an infinite number of people or souls. All attached to the fragments of the rainbow. All hurtling towards the mysterious supernova. There must have been hundreds, no thousands, all vying to catch a glimpse of their illuminated destination.

As they made their approach, the star dimmed somewhat, until they could see that it was not a star at all, but a body of Earth. It hovered like some regal oasis, miraculously hanging in space, seemingly without assistance from the bleak blackness. As he and the others rode closer, Pat could begin to make out the landscape. He could see tall tropical palm trees, pregnant with ripe coconuts at the underbelly of their sharp branches. A shining mountain of pure silver separated a higher cliff from a lower plain. Plush kelly green grass, as thick as tufts of movie star hair, grew from the top of the hill. Moist purple vines climbed up the face of the divider wall. A Springtime array of huge original flowers in unannounced colors sprouted from the life giving stems. A shimmering waterfall, which came from nowhere, plummeted down from the higher plateau and thundered into a gleaming pool below. The waters boomed down with the force of the famous Niagara, only to temper impossibly and taper gently into the lagoon below. Where the waves looked to be alive and tiny flecks of gold darted to and fro like water bugs. The surface was gleaming and hypnotic and beckoned all who looked upon it with the promise of peace. At that singular moment, Pat felt an insufferable need. A gnawing hunger and fascinating desire far greater than any mortal pang he had experienced during his lifetime. A longing to be cleansed by the divine waves.

Their rainbow rides had slowed to a halt now, and Pat, along with the other souls, were just hovering in place. The miracle ships were anchored so thoroughly that Pat thought there must be cables somewhere holding them afloat. Yet he saw no such restraints nor did he hear the hum of an engine. They were simply suspended as if by magic.

They continued to stare in astonishment at the island paradise. Tall Alpine Sunflowers grew from the rich lawns. They were not limited to any traditional color and instead swirled like shades in a paint mixer. Mushrooms as huge as a dog's house and as black as leather popped up in every available corner. Psychedelic purple lilac trees swayed in a wind they themselves created, as to enhance their beauty by dancing.

Then, and before Pat's awestruck eyes, the lawns began to change. The solid Earth transformed into a cooling liquid. First, to an oak green, then to a calming robin's egg blue. And now Pat realized what the benign waters were trying to tell him: When someone dies, their soul must be purified. The grime of their sickening sins washed away like chimney soot. Every soul required a new baptism. A second immersion. And with this water. John the Baptist had known this. Even the homeless rummy who washed his face in the birdbath behind someone else's house knew it. The male prostitute who washed his hands in the black rimmed sink of some rancid, roadside, cruisey, homosexual restroom instinctively knew it. No, the body could not be redeemed. No deposit, No return. The flesh would have to be sacrificed to the waiting mice, worms and beetles. After all, those creatures were awaiting a sign from their own animalistic messiah or insect deity. But the soul did not have to be forfeit, it could be delivered by the loving liquid.

When Pat came back from the rooms of his mind, the entire island had begun to change. Now the serene trees and pastures were gone, replaced by a beauteous teal Ocean. Staring into these breakers stirred up haunting emotions, like fixating on the green irises of a striking young woman. The mountain and the waterfall had vanished. And all they could see before them was a swatch of luxurious emerald Sea.

Until suddenly, a mass began to collect itself below the surface. Pat and the others watched intently as the particles illuminated, momentarily taking on the now familiar colors of the rainbow before changing back to the original gray. Then the glow emerged from the jade waves. Water could even be seen dripping off of it. Slowly, it began to adopt the image of a man. Soon, it became apparent that it was a humanoid figure which had risen out from the island Sea. Translucent lights flickered upward like a neon sign throughout the body and carried the form into the black Heavens. As if to protest or somehow oppose the concept of gravity. Though, it was hard for Pat to tell how the laws of gravity applied here. Which way was up and so forth. Now the colorful brightness cooled, like lava beginning its slow transformation into rock. When these tones quieted, they were replaced by the most beautiful man whom Pat had ever seen. The man was very trim and fit, although not muscular. His wheat brown hair was cropped short, so that it barely came down to his neck.

Pat guessed the man's height at about six feet tall. His weight had to be in the neighborhood of around one hundred and ninety pounds. He was famously handsome with a genuine, earnest and honest face. Loving pale blue eyes searched the crowd without prejudice. He wore a matching sky blue pants and shirt. Or maybe his body really was made from the sky, Pat couldn't tell from his vantage point.

Then, with shoes as white as untainted snow, the man began to walk across the island Sea. But before the spectators could even be taken aback by this miracle, the man raised his right arm. A fierce purple beam shot out from his fingertips. The ray traveled out to Pat's left at the speed of light, only to connect softly with one of the multicolored crafts. On that hunk of rainbow sat a kindly looking, elderly man. A wide and healthy smile held on his face. And Pat realized that whatever wretched disease had ailed the man during his final days, it was now gone forever.

The beautiful man who was standing on the water smiled back at the old gentlemen, who in turn got up and strolled off of the raft and onto the purple beam which had now hardened into a solid path. As he did this, many other rays began to escape from the hands of the beautiful man. Bronze, coral, teal, mahogany, flamingo pink, white, black, tan, mint, peach. All connecting to the crafts of the rainbow riders. The elderly man reached the favorable figure presiding over the precious pool. He stepped off the path and disappeared into the Utopian sound. For one horrifying moment, Pat thought that he might be left out. That perhaps a vein of light would not search out his ship. But then, a particularly lovely shade of carnation pink came up to meet his raft. And he...

Suddenly, Pat sensed a sort of hubbub off to his left. He could also hear a humming sound. Like the voices of bees or some quiet modern engine. And that was when he first saw it. What he could only describe as a sickly yellow mass. It was lingering and churning in the dark air above a bevy of rainbow squatters. Pat glanced back at the beautiful man in the hope that he would recognize and dispose of this threat, whatever it was. But he simply floated there on the water. As now hundreds of privileged people hopped off of their wondrous trails and into the pious pool.

That's when the screaming started.

The yellow mass quickly descended from where it had been hanging. It fell sharply, like water being poured from an old oaken bucket. It converged upon a lady who looked like she could have been a housewife. Although she wasn't wearing any clothes, as none of the souls were, Pat could picture her in an apron. As she went to take a step onto her own personal lilac path, the batch engulfed her naked body. She looked like someone who had accidentally fallen into a tank of manure. The foul yellow poured from her ears, nose and mouth like vomit. Although this did nothing to alleviate her possession. Then she was gone, totally absorbed into the evil clot.

Pat switched his gaze back to the island Sea. But now the beautiful man was gone. The attack on the housewife had created a panic. The riders were now abandoning their celestial carts to sprint at full speed down the colorful escape routes. Many of the trails had lost their original bright colors, and had faded down like an old black and white snapshot taken at a motel during nature's recession of Autumn. People were leaping off these paths and into where the laundering lagoon had been replaced by the jade Sea. One short man was in such a tizzy that he jumped too soon, missing the island altogether, tumbling into a endless free fall through the bottomless limbo. Others plunged recklessly into the pool, making large and noisy splashes, like some fat jokester belly flopping off the back yard diving board. Others tried in vain to locate the beautiful man, or pinpoint the spot where he had been. Swimming for their very afterlives.

But by now, everywhere that Pat could see there was another venomous blob. Mutilating and then absorbing the damned. A dark haired and physically fit man tried to avert this fate, but fear and alarm caused him to take a fatal misstep. He would have plunged into infinite space as the short man had but, for a few seconds at least, the horrid assemblage seemed to be saving him.

It actually broke his fall, knocking him back on to the path, which by now had turned charred and black. But in the next instant, the carnage lunged again and completely devoured the man as sure as if he were overcome by a raging fire. He flailed violently against the lethal nothingness, and even freed himself for a brief heartbeat. That's when Pat noticed that the man's arm was missing and had been reattached to his cheekbone. Amputated, then melded terribly back together by the horror. Then the putrid blotch besieged the man again like a swarm of hornets, and Pat could see him no more.

Then Pat's worst fear was realized as the pale, thin woman with the turquoise eyes stood up. Her monstrous gaze searched out a young lady perhaps two floats away from hers. The girl was very pretty with long back hair and batting lashes. She sensed the malevolence in the pale, thin woman's stare and quickly began clambering down the runway which had joined her boat at a high and difficult angle. A climb which would have been tough to navigate under any circumstances. And Pat wondered what awful sins the girl must have committed to be judged so harshly. She had to turn completely around and lie on her stomach in order to plant her toe on the difficult absolution route. The pale, thin woman's face wrinkled and contorted, like a tear in a table cloth. Pat thought that she was going to scream. But no noise sounded from her haggard and chapped lips. Instead, a rancid river of foul turquoise sprayed from her throat and out into the blackness, where it hung like a cloud of pollution above the chimney of some corrupt and crooked factory before congealing and adeptly changing form. Until it took on the shape of a sharp saw blade. The obscene spinning wheel effortlessly cut the black maned girl in half, hitting her with such force that the upper portion of her body hurtled through space with the force of a shot put. Her two dismembered legs stood up for a fraction of a second as if they were just too shocked to fall. Then her bottom half folded and hit the trail with a meat rack thud before slowly peeling off the narrow walkway and falling into the blind forever.

Pat shut his eyes hard and took two desperate sucks off of his tongue. He could hear shouts of mayhem and misery coming from every direction. He was beginning to reach a wretched reckoning. Evidently the pale, thin woman was some sort of accuser. And if you were among the unfortunate...

For no reason at all, Pat opened his eyes. And when he did, they witnessed a miracle. Just as he had forgotten all hope, the beautiful man had reappeared above the island Sea. He was hugging a young man with waxen blonde hair. A tranquil countenance graced both their faces. There was a whole group of delivered worshippers standing in a circle in the waist deep water. They smiled from within the protection of the gold flecked pond. But that wasn't even the best part: The beautiful man was looking directly at Pat. Right into his eyes with all the light from every star in all universes and Pat had never known such a carefree release. Such a feeling of total and unconditional love. Not at any juncture, nor in any experience during his lifetime.

Then, another Hellish noise distracted him. The pale, thin woman had wrapped her legs around a black man. Her skin had turned the same Indian blue color as her eyes. She was retching the ravenous poison onto where the man's head used to be. What was left of his body dangled down as limp as a wet cloth.

Pat looked back at the beautiful man within the preserved flock. They were all smiling at him now, motioning for him to walk down the carnation pink path and join them. The trail joined his float at an easy angle, and it hadn't even turned down to the charred flint the other floors had been forced to adopt. He still had time to walk down and greet the others who had been spared.

The pale thin woman, the Accuser, could not enter into the waters, Pat sensed that. She may be the boss, out here in the darkness, but she could not face the beautiful man made from light within the waters.

But now Pat could hear a deafening flapping. Like the massive gate of a Thunderbird. The pale, thin woman had risen above the remains of the unfortunate black man. Why he was not absorbed like the doomed others Pat did not know. She was held aloft by a pair of huge membranous wings, which the blue substance had formed. The mass could be solid at times from what Pat could gather. Yet it always seemed to be moving like liquid on an unbalanced table. Pat saw the mysterious gruel up close for the first time. He could see cigarette butts, bottle tops and other loose pieces of garbage floating in the septic wings. Like pieces of trash embedded in an old asphalt parking lot. Pat would have gotten sick himself if he hadn't been so terrified. The pale, thin woman leered at him and hatched a carnival rigger's smile. Her teeth were black and yellow with blue stains, like someone who had just chewed up one of those pills which reveals cavities. Or the color of veins before the blood is exposed to the open oxygen. The abomination continued to sneer at Pat with a vicious accusation which he could not begin to comprehend. And Pat knew that this was his last chance. If he did not make a break for it now, he would be next on the hit parade.

The terror lost its grip on his heart for a quarter of a second. And his mind told his limbs that now would be a good time to dive for the ramp. And that's when it first occurred to him. Amidst all the excitement and wonder and horror it hadn't even crossed his mind until now. But he still could not move his arms and he still could not move his legs.

Devil on River Street
Sean Gilbert

Did I ever tell you about the time I met the devil on River Street? Not the devil, just a devil, which isn't so weird since I've met devils before. Except they looked like people, I think maybe some of them were people. It's hard to tell the difference anymore.

I was between bars at the moment. River Street is more or less a passage between bars at night, which kind of makes it a passage between worlds in a way, if you're into that kind of philosophical meandering. Down the crooked cobblestone I stumbled (due more to the off-kilter terrain than my skewed sense of balance), not sure of where to go next. Bar to bar, place to place, not sure what I'm looking for, but I never seem to find it. Always feels like I'm looking in the same place over and over again.

It's when you're in between things that weird stuff starts to happen. I don't mean physically, either, I mean when you've moved on from one thing and you haven't quite worked out what the next thing is going to be. Maybe that's because those are the times we're most likely to pay attention to what's happening around us.

I was just about to head up Factors Walk and try my luck in City Market when I heard the screams. Not frightened screams, exactly, just surprised. It was enough of a commotion that I knew something was going on up ahead. I sped up my pace to get a look. I'd like to describe what I saw when I got there with a greater sense of wonder, but I'm afraid I just don't have it in me. The scene was this, and I describe it exactly: The bricks that made up the street were scattered around a gaping hole, like something had burst out of it. Standing in the center of the hole was a nine foot tall ugly with headgear like a Texas longhorn steer and a long black cape. Its skin was black like nightfall, its eyes shone red. It was smoldering like it'd just been shot out of a cannon. It looked really pissed off. A small group of people had gathered to gawk at it, some of whom were distressed, others just plain curious. Some people just kept walking.

"Cower, mortals!" it bellowed, and its voice was loud and terrible enough to rattle all of the onlookers. "The day you have been taught to fear since the moment your feeble minds could grasp the concept of fear has come to pass: Aazeroth the Pitiless is among you once more!" People were generally bothered by this revelation, but more or less still confused. Not satisfied that they were sufficiently awed, the beast continued: "Keeper of the Seventh Circle, Lord of the Darkling Hordes, Master of the Stygian Wastes, Aazeroth ruled this worthless world when your kind had scarcely descended the trees. When you first came to know that you could fear something more than being devoured by your saurian betters, it was Aazeroth you learned to fear, and when you first began to grasp the art of spoken tongue, the name of Aazeroth was your first panicked utterance."

I had to laugh. This guy was better than cable. His eyes burned bright as a concert laser and he singled me out with them. The other onlookers quietly cleared a path between us, but they remained close at hand. Moving for the first time, he stepped up out of the hole and took a step toward me. "You dare to mock Aazeroth?" he demanded.

I shrugged. "You have to admit, you're a little showey."

He didn't accept that as an excuse, but he did smile as he took another step in my direction. "So which is it, mortal? Do you have no fear at all, or is it death you crave?"

"I just don't care."

"Aazeroth commands the nightmare tortures of the deepest abyss. You do not care whether you should spend an eternity in torment?" His eyes burned bright as stars, but his voice lacked resolve, I could hear it.

"Look around you," I told him. "Take a moment to reacquaint yourself with the world you've decided to come back to." As I said this he looked around, taking in all the changes the world had suffered in his absence. I think he was starting to get my point. "The world has gone to Hell already. At this rate, demons in the street aren't just redundant, they're ludicrous to the point of being comical. I mean, come on, look at yourself! In this world, if you want to be a devil that looks like a man, everybody's going to think you're just another asshole, but if you want to be anything at all and look like that, then you'll just be a novelty." He glanced around again as I spoke, noticing as I did that some of the onlookers were already beginning to disperse. "If that's how you want to play it, go ahead, but we've come a long way since the days where we needed to find something to worry about other than getting eaten by lizards. In your full splendor, you're a curiosity at best. In this world that'll get you a book deal and a reality show. But if you're trying to scare us, you're gonna have to do a lot better than this. Mankind doesn't need monsters anymore, we've become content to engineer our own suffering, and we've developed some facility for doing it. So welcome back, if this is really where you want to be, but I hope you're not here because you need us. We don't need you."

The light in his eyes dimmed to nearly nothing. "But…I am Aazeroth the Pitiless," he groaned.

"Well, we don't remember you," I told him, and seeing the emptiness inside him I actually felt bad for him. He wanted something we no longer had to give. "Sorry."

He looked around one last time, taking it all in, seeing I was right. He was big, I'll admit, but somewhere along the line the world had gotten bigger. And in doing so, it had outgrown him. No one was standing around anymore; no one noticed either one of us. His shoulders slumped, he stepped back into his hole.

"There are other worlds that still remember Aazeroth," he said boldly, like he had to explain himself to me. Then he sank into the hole until even the bricks closed up over it like he'd never been there at all. I walked over them and continued on down River Street. I was still looking for something, still in between things.

Guess I wasn't the only one, huh?

The Dream of a Normal Life
by Sean Gilbert

Have you ever had that dream where you're a secret agent or a superhero? I haven't. I don't. Not dream, of course, I do dream, just not about that kind of stuff. I dreamed just last night. I dreamt I was out on a date. Nothing fancy, just a date. Kinda sad, huh?

My life is complicated enough. I'm a television writer. It's a good life, good money, and plenty of excitement. There's always something going on, some drama, or some crisis. In the business, everything is an event. Take today: I'm meeting with my producer, Phil Hunter. It's our weekly lunch, where we discuss the script. It's not much of a discussion, really. He just tells me how he thinks we can "punch it up", which is producer talk for commercializing the story, and I just smile and stare into the eyes of his Elvis tie.

I used to actually try to talk to him, but I slowly began to realize that the conversation is always pretty much the same. Now I just basically ignore him. It usually goes better that way. He talks about market demographics and budgetary restrictions and I just stare at that tie. I hate that tie. He wears it every week to look hip for the writer. And the fact that he wears it strictly for my benefit makes the crime all the more unforgivable. Because I can tell by looking at him that he's not an Elvis man.

He's still talking, but I'm not even pretending to listen. I used to worry that he'd catch on. Now I wish he would, just to break the cycle, to prove that this is really happening.

So anyway I was thinking maybe we might be able to trim the first act by a couple of minutes free up a little air and we've got to end in a montage or a club scene maybe because the network's pushing that new band have you heard the single they're great but the tie-in has to be this week so we'll just re-work the end in post to fit it in and you know Karen has this wardrobe clause in her contract so we're doing the confrontation bit as a beach scene now…

It happens. I can't help it. I can but by God don't want to help it. Before he can say another word, I reach out and stab his soft manicured hand with my salad fork. He pauses, he actually shuts up as he looks down to inspect the wound. I'm not looking at the tie anymore, either. I'm staring him right in the face. I don't want to miss a second of what's coming next. I've earned it. I used to be afraid of this, the ways it would change the situation. The consequences I might have to face, but not anymore.

Phil looks down at the steady stream of crimson pouring from his hand into the ivory cuff of his hand-woven South American silkworm dress shirt (or whatever the hell it is that's the most expensive material imaginable for no good reason). He shows no pain, or anger, and his concern seems to be founded in curiosity, like he's trying to figure out where it came from. He's so oblivious to me he can't even conceive of the idea that I am the aggressor, that I could take an active role in anything. Ultimately dismissing it with a shrug, he waves his bloodied hand around as he continues talking, the fork still protruding from it.

So anyway, Karen has these six designer suits she wants to work in but I had to put my foot down I told her that was ridiculous who would change suits like five times at the beach there was just no way to work it in unless maybe we could do another montage or something like that…

Now I know what I'm really afraid of: That it won't change anything, no matter what I do. That nothing will change anything. Ever. I could be a producer if I wanted to; I did help create the show. Then I wouldn't have to deal with Phil's weekly speeches. I'm just afraid I'll end up in that Goddamn tie.

I can hear Phil finishing up, but it's only Elvis I see. It might as well be him talking.

Well that about does it, man. Great script. Thank you, thank very much.

No problem, King. Just doing my job.

One of Murphy's many laws states that whenever a problem necessitates many meetings, the meetings will inevitably outlive the problem. Murphy must have worked in the business. Of course, in any hierarchy it's necessary to give everyone the impression that their voice is being heard, their input considered. People must be made to feel that they matter, so a scenario must be fabricated to give them this perception. Weekly lunches are bad enough, but they lead to weekly meetings, where the above the line staff are gathered to decide the cheapest most efficient way of bringing my script to life.

Eventually, someone will ask me what I think. Under no circumstances do I ever tell them. No one really wants to know what you think, they just want the affirmation that you agree with them. I don't, usually. Maybe not ever. I just don't think like they do. Because I see things that they don't see.

As the sunlight from the window hits me it projects my shadow across the floor. You won't see it if you look. They don't see it, either. But it's there. Like another person, stretching out in front of me. I know, because I can see when I look at its dark face, I can make out the faint crimson glow of its eyes staring back at me. It's a monster, you see. It's been following me. You just never see it because it walks in my footsteps and hides in my shadow. Nobody ever sees it. I never see it, exactly. But it's there.

If you pay attention, you can't really hear it, but you can feel it. Those footsteps right behind you, the hot breath on the back of your neck, but then when you turn around, there's nothing there. Nothing but your shadow. Because you can't see it. You can never see it. Because it's dread. And no matter what you do, you can never face dread. It's always lurking right around the last corner, hiding behind the last door. It's always right behind you, just out of sight, just out of reach.

There are other ways to recognize it, to know it's there. You think the things you want to say, but it takes your words and reworks them so that by the time they come out of your mouth they mean something else. It takes the words you want to write and types them for you, until their meaning is lost. We never say what we mean. We never write what we feel. It's all lost in compromise and commerce.

We keep a small office in town away from the production lot. It's a nice way to feel grounded even though we all lost touch a long time ago. That's where creative meetings like this one are held, so we can feel real while we strip the soul out of everything we do. I sit by the window and watch the contractors across the street. They've been building, renovating or demolishing something over there for the last month. I watch them all the time, but I really don't know what they're doing. I just watch them, the simplicity of their routine, and I long for it. At the end of the day, they know what they've accomplished. I always more or less just feel like I've been treading water.

The meeting's wrapping up, so it's time for someone to ask me something. This time it's Alyssa, the line producer. "What do you think?" she asks me, and everyone pauses with anticipation.

I don't look at her. It's just the completion of a cycle. They can't go home until I answer this question, because they don't know any other way to stop the meeting. "I think…I should quit this job and go be a bricklayer," I muse, still staring across the street. They laugh. They always laugh. They always think I'm joking. It sounds like I'm joking. Sometimes I think I am, too.

Otherwise, why would I still be here?

The house is different tonight. It looks mostly the same, but the walls keep shifting. I went to the kitchen to get a glass of water and ended up in the bathroom. The scenery out the window keeps changing, too. I can't look at it; it gives me a headache. I need normalcy. Karen is sitting in front of the couch on the floor, so I plop down next to her.

"Tough day?" she asks.

I sigh. "I guess. No different from any other day."

"Any excitement?"

I have to shrug at that one. It presents a pretty interesting conundrum, though. When you can set your clock by the drama in your life, when it becomes part of the routine, hasn't the excitement become monotony? "You know the biz; never a dull moment."

She leans in close, showing a genuine interest. "If it's so exciting, why are you always so sad?"

That's a tough one. It would have been, anyway, a few years ago. Then it would have been tough because there was so much in life to choose from, so many different sources of joy and sorrow. Now it's because all my memories have run together and none of them seems more interesting or important than any other. That's what happens when you stop making new memories, you lose your frame of reference. It becomes impossible to appreciate past experiences, because they all start to seem like old movies you've seen. They stop being real after a while. It becomes impossible to understand why. "I'm not sad," I tell her. "I'm just tired, that's all."

"Tired. That's funny." She doesn't believe me, that's obvious, but that's because she doesn't get it.

"Why funny?"

"You're such a liar." She still doesn't understand what I mean.

"What are you talking about?" I demand of her.

She's interested now, but she still can't tell if I'm just making it up. I wonder if maybe I am. No, I'm not. This is how I feel. When you live the life I live, tired isn't a physical sensation. It's an emotion.

But she won't accept it. "You're not real there, you're not real here. You're always tired."

"I work a lot," I tell her, but now I am lying.

"No, you don't," she argues. "Not really. When you're out there, all you can think about is being here. When you're here, I don't know what it is you're thinking about."

"I'm just trying to get by." Isn't that all anybody's doing?

Karen looks put out, though. "You're always talking about excitement, but you're never excited about anything."

That's not true at all, but there's no reason to burden her with that. It wouldn't do any good here, anyway. "Maybe I just want to be a normal person."

"Maybe you should just try being yourself."

"Who's that? I don't even know." She's getting to me now, and she knows it. She's pushing too hard, too deep. I don't need this right now. I dismiss the whole issue. "I figure all anybody's entitled to is a chance to be in a few good stories, have a few decent adventures."

"You sound like an idiot."

That was nice. "Why are you ridin' me?"

"I care about you!" Her irritation is a reflection of mine, but you'll never win an argument with a reflection. The best you can hope for is a stalemate.

This is going nowhere, as usual. "Well, you're just a dream."

She looks hurt, but I can't deal with that. I get to my feet and walk away from her. No more of this. She's frustrated, too. I can hear it in her voice. "Well, I am the way you dream me." This last bit is pretty much a surrender, but in surrendering she also manages to win the argument.

I'm irritated but not angry and, relenting, I turn around to face her again. But she's gone. Again.

The house is different again. I don't know how, except that it's back to being empty. But it's always empty, except for me. I'm standing at the front door. I know she's right on the other side of it. I know she is. I reach for the knob. My hand falters, trembling, and pulls away. I'm afraid to touch it, like it will burn me if I do. I can't seem to open the door.

"Go ahead," I can hear her say. I hear it in my head. When I turn around, she's right behind me again, like she was never gone. I wonder, if she's here now, why I even need to open the door at all. "Open it," she commands me.

"I don't want to."

"Why not?"

I really don't know. "What's out there?"

"It's the place beyond all imagining."

"What's that?"

"I don't know. Open it."

She slowly approaches. "Whatever it is, it's not here," she assures me. "Open it."

"Why should I?"

"Open it."

"No."

She's so close I can smell her now, feel her soft breath on me. She is almost pressed up against me, but she isn't touching me at all. "Why not?" she asks.

I don't know. "I don't want to."

Now her body is pressed against mine, her lips so close to mine that I can taste the sweetness of her breath. Her voice is a whisper only I can hear. "What do you want?"

I reach out to embrace her, but my hands fear to touch her just as they feared to touch the doorknob. She doesn't move. "What do you want?"

Anxiously, nervously, I manage to touch the softness of her face, but nothing more. "Just tell me: What do you want?"

But I can do nothing.

The shrill klaxon of my alarm clock tears me away from her again, bringing me rudely to waking. My eyes open abruptly and I sit up to assess my bearings. I know I am in my house, the waking house of daylight hours, and through the window I can see the waking world, also. She's gone again. I give the snooze bar a good wrap to shut it up. Dammit. Can't even get to first base in a dream.

Another day already. I pick my pants up off the floor and slip them on. Head to the shower, shave, brush teeth, gel hair, put on deodorant, pick my pants up off the bathroom floor and put them back on (clean underwear, though; that's a must). Then I fumble through my closet for my cleanest dirty shirt. Actually, they're all clean and hanging neatly, but it sounds better to imagine I am rugged and ragged, like Kris Kristofferson. But I'm no highwayman. In the grown-up world, wearing the same slacks two days in a row is rebellion enough.

No coffee in the kitchen; that'll be waiting at the office. No breakfast, either. I never understood the idea of eating when you first get up. The idea kind of makes me sick. I cast a glance at the answering machine on my way to the door. Still holding at 67 messages. Guess who they're all from. Well, you wouldn't know, would you? They're all from my ex-girlfriend. We were together for two years until I got tired of fighting over everything and moved down here four years ago. So for the past four years she's been calling to fight with me over what went wrong in the first two.

It's not like we stopped seeing each other all at once. For a while, she'd come down here to see me on weekends. Just when I was sure I'd heard the last of her, there'd be a knock on the door, and there she was. It wasn't a surprise, it just seemed like another part of the game. I'd stumble in drunk on a Saturday night and wake up at three in the morning to a knock on the door. There she'd be, uninvited and unannounced. It didn't really bother me then; I'd just open the door and lead her to the bedroom, like nothing had ever changed. After a couple of days we'd be back where we started, until she'd storm off or I'd toss her out. Then a couple of months later she'd be back again.

She had an uncanny ability to show up when I was drunk. She could always smell weakness in me. Or maybe it was just that I was drunk so often. One time I was so drunk I left the door unlocked and passed out on the couch. When I woke up she was just standing over me expectantly, like she'd never been gone. It felt that way to me, too. I tell people she's crazy now, but when I got lonely enough I'd call her, too. I was never really the normal type myself. Her visits became more infrequent, until she finally resigned herself to calling regularly under the pretense of asking inane post-relationship questions ("do you have my Liz Phair CD?" or "did we ever settle that last phone bill?"), but her purpose was really to tear open old wounds and re-examine the failure of our relationship. About a year ago I got tired of the game, so I stopped listening to her, too.

Eventually, I stopped listening to everybody. About six months ago I just stopped answering the phone altogether and got a cel phone. It's been holding at 67 messages for a while. Either she's gotten tired of calling, or 67 is the machine's limit. I'm guessing the latter. They're probably really long messages.

Four years. Most people just break up and get on with their lives. But with us, it's like we're divorced parents fighting over custody of the child, and we're constantly fighting over which of us screwed it up more. Most people just grow up. Most people lead normal, boring lives without this kind of drama. But you know me: Never a dull moment.

Never a dull moment.

Another big meeting today. Today I meet with Karen, the star of the show. It's more than a discussion, we'll actually be "comparing notes". She's late. She's always late. You see, a star never waits for anybody. "Comparing notes" is Karen's way of saying she wants me to change the script. Everyone has a different code name for changing the script. No one ever says what they mean. The monster won't let them.

Like it or not, the monster speaks for all of us.

I look up from my shadow to see her enter the restaurant. The hostess graciously shows her to the table, and I rise to greet her. She is a star, after all. "Hey," she says casually. Then she gives me a brief, meaningless Hollywood hug.

"Hi," I say back, and sit down.

"I hope you haven't been waiting long," she says as she takes her seat.

"No, I just got here."

"Good."

It's a formality, of course. She's always late. This whole meeting is a formality. There's nothing to discuss. She's the star; she'll get her way.

First off I want to say that I love the script I think the arcs that we've developed for this storyline have been the best since season two…

Here we go again. This is basically the same meeting I had with Phil, except Karen never wears a tie. She leans more toward halter-tops, so I have to labor to maintain eye contact. Karen is a bit more perceptive than Phil, though, so this gives her the impression I'm listening.

I really think that the depth of the stories is really improving. Not that it was rough before, but we've been doing stuff lately that's just taking everything in a new direction…

I hate to admit it, but sometimes I really am.

It's incredible! I mean it, it's just pure genius…

There it is. She had to say that word: Genius. God how I hate being called that. No one even knows what it means. Every time anyone's ever called me that it's been for all the wrong reasons. All my worst stuff. My good stuff hasn't even been written yet.

I just have a few suggestions…

Karen's suggestions are always about Karen. The show is about Karen. Everything is about Karen. I guess I should be glad that her suggestions don't delve into a broader scope, but it would be nice to think that anyone legitimately cares about the overall story. It's not that I don't like Karen. I do. And it's not that I wouldn't love to have lunch with her, it's just that this isn't her. And she's not talking to me. This isn't lunch, it's a recurring nightmare I'm doomed to relive over and over again in my waking life.

Do you know what it's like to live a life that normal people dream about? What do you do when you dream of a normal life and live your own nightmare? I should say something.

I should say something.

What I want from this show is to portray women as powerful characters, role models…

This is not what I want. What do I want?

Karen seems to be increasingly attentive as she talks, like she's sincerely sizing up my reaction. I must be more distracted than usual, I've given something away. She's not talking at all now, she's put aside her current thought to engage me directly.

And then…something new: "What do you want?"

That's a really good question. I should say something.

"Are you even listening to me?"

What do I want?

She leans in close, taking the question seriously. She's looking right at me. "What do you want?"

I'm just staring at her blankly. I don't really know what to say. Then, I finally say: "I…I want to work construction." I didn't mean to say that. I didn't even know I was going to.

She smiles politely, but she doesn't laugh. "Why?"

"I don't know."

"Have you ever worked construction before?"

"No."

"Okay, then." She seems satisfied the matter is settled. I don't know how to respond, because I never had to think this far ahead before. "Considering for the moment that you keep your current career, I was thinking that…"

"I had a dream about you." I didn't really mean to say that either, but what the hell, I'm on a roll.

She gives me stern look, but doesn't dismiss me. "Is that right?"

So I tell her: "We were on River Street, walking down the cobblestone. We were both a little drunk, so we kept stumbling into each other. We tried to dance, but I kept stepping on your toes. We started to tango, and then I tried to spin you, but you were too dizzy." I feel like I'm telling her something that really happened, and I suddenly realize that it's because it's more real to me than my real life. "And all I ever really wanted to do was kiss you, but I didn't have the nerve."

She's quiet for a really long time, which for Karen is in itself a feat. She looks like she's in hourglass mode, trying to process new information. "Well…" she says slowly, trying to figure out what to say to file away what I just said and move on.

But I don't want to let her do that, so I just keep talking. "You know what?" I decide. "I really don't like this place. I can't wear jeans or a T-shirt here, the drinks are watered down and cost more than the food, which is always overcooked and the portions are too small, and the service is so fashionably rude I feel like I'm in a Bret Easton Ellis book. Don't you ever get tired of being here, in this perfectly fabricated cool world? Don't you ever just want to go somewhere real and get a hamburger or something?"

She won't admit it, but she does. She's trying to say something now, too, but all she can manage is a smile. So I'll keep talking a little while longer, and if I talk long enough, maybe I'll eventually have something to say. Either way, if I can just hold onto this moment, keep talking, I can stay ahead of the monster, just out of his reach. Because he might always be two steps behind, but that means I'm always two steps ahead of him, and if I can never confront him, then he can never catch me, either. We're locked in this moment forever, like Keats' figures on the Grecian urn. That means this moment is all we've got. If I can keep it a little longer, make the moment mine, then maybe tonight I won't be dreaming of a different today, but I'll be dreaming a better tomorrow, like a normal person.

War & Peace by Jason Wilson

death to those that oppose the laws of the opposable thumb

by Jason Wilson

"Stop It"

by Jason Wilson

Sol-Zeta Five

The Keep

Creatures of Habit

A New Sleep

Devil on River Street Sean Gilbert

The Dream of a Normal Life by Sean Gilbert

Devil on River Street
Sean Gilbert

The Dream of a Normal Life
by Sean Gilbert