The Parable of Filth

The streets here are paved with shit. Literally.

When I first arrived, it was sensory overload, and rising above it all, over all the other senses, was the smell, then the colors: drab and dusty ochre, burnt sienna.

The people here are colorless, without features, without any expressions at all. They walk from here to there without stopping. They never notice me. I try to read their body postures, but they have no distinction between them. I can't tell if they are men or women. They are all stooped and broken, that is all.

They wear burlap. The clothes are baggy. They cover their heads and hide in rough cloth shells.

They walk barefoot. Their feet are covered in round sores and wormholes from the shit they walk on all day, every day.

They sell their wares: brown clay pots and spoons. They sell what they call food. It doesn't look much different than the shit in the streets.

The sky never changes, and time stretches out until the very concept of time fades away.

I walk among them. They don't seem to mind me. They don't seem to notice me, or at least that is what they pretend.

But there are no mirrors here, so I can't even notice myself.

All I know is that this burlap chafes my skin, and I hate pulling these worms out of my feet. Still, I walk, despite the fact I am stooped and broken.

Nothing to See

Tory rolled her dump truck around the floor. Barbie sat in the back of the truck, her hair cut too short, bald in places. Barbie's hair would never grow back from several too many visits to Tory’s beauty parlor.

Tory stopped playing and looked up. “Mom, why can’t you open the blinds?”

“Because there’s nothing to see.”

Tory looked back down to the floor, to the stupid carpet. She was sick of this old carpet. She knew the designs by heart. They never changed. “But it’s so dark in here.”

“I’m sorry, honey.”

“Can Aunt Carrie and Chris come over to play?”

Mother looked up to the water stained ceiling and sucked in a shuddering breath. “Not today, honey. I’m so sorry.”

Mother looked towards the window as if looking directly through the blinds. She shook her head.

The little girl bit her lip and decided to play some more. She knew the answers would be final. They always were.

***

Dinnertime brought two servings of canned spam, cold from the can.

“Mom, can’t we have McDonald’s tonight?” Tory asked.


Mother didn’t even answer.

“We never go out anymore. I’m sick of this crap. I want McDonald’s!” Tory stood up and stomped her foot.

“I’m sorry, honey. Not tonight.”

“You always say ‘Not tonight.’”

Mother nodded her head. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“Mommy, I want to go outside.”

“Not now.”

Tory moved a lump of Spam around with her fork. She looked at the trail of greasy fat it left on the plate. “It’s like eating a slug.”

Mother smiled and took a bite of Spam. She quoted the old DVD of The Lion King they used to watch together when Tory was younger. “Slimey yet satisfying.”

Tory smiled, pretended she was Pumba lapping up grubs and sucked up the processed meat.

***

“Why don’t you open the blinds?” Tory asked.

“Because there’s nothing to see.”

“Can we go outside today, Mom?”

She knew the answer before hearing it.

“Not today, honey.”

But today would be different. Tory had a plan.

She sat on the floor, played with her dump truck and Barbie and waited.

Eventually, Mother went to the restroom.

Tory stood up. She tiptoed. She felt the floor beneath her might creak with every step. She walked as lightly as possible, not wanting to give herself away. Mother could come out of the bathroom at any time.

Tory crept to the window. She moved back the blinds and looked out.

There was nothing to see.

Nothing.

Chump Change

The washing machine launders me on a weekly rotation. This only costs a dollar-fifty. To be clean only requires six quarters. No more, no less. This is chump change.

Sometimes as I spin, I look out through the frosty, bubble-obscured glass. Sometimes, I see your face. Usually, it is just my own reflection.

I keep my phone in a waterproof case. It works most of the time, but I do need to upgrade more than most people, usually before my contracts expire. That is not chump change.

Sometimes people ask why I do this. I shrug my shoulders and check the settings on my oxygen tank. I take my mouth off of the mouthpiece as if I might speak, but I only spit into my facemask and rub my saliva around to prevent it from fogging up. I like to be able to see as I spin.

Once the manager came out and stopped the machine. He asked me what the hell I was doing. I told him. He asked why. I told him. The manager nodded sadly, told me it didn’t matter much to him as long as I was a paying customer, and asked that, from now on, I use a large quilt or something and wrap it around my oxygen tank to keep from banging up his machines. That didn’t seem like too much to ask. I agreed. I always wrap my tank in the same blanket. It has a Holly Hobbie pattern on it. It used to belong to my sister. This is fitting.

So I spin and I spin. I go nowhere, but at least I get to travel. And compared to airline tickets, compared to drugs, even compared to beer or malt liquor, this is chump change.

And as I spin, I think.

And the world spins on with or without me.

And with or without you, I spin on.

And that makes it worth every damn penny.

Not Bad for a Dying Man

“How are you doing?” the doctor asked.

“Not bad for a dying man,” I said.


“This is the strangest thing I’ve ever seen,” said the nurse.


I nodded. “Never seen this before?”


The doctor and nurse looked at each other and didn’t say a word. Neither of them looked at me.


I could decode an answer through their silence.


I looked down. My gown was off, the blankets were lowered, and I stared at my cleanly shaved chest. The mechanism was there: an antique watch, ticking. Folds of skin surrounded it as the second hand twirled round and round, tick-tick-tick. The minute hand moved, and I felt it to my core.


“Instead of a twelve, there’s a zero. I know what that means.”


“How can you be so sure?” the doctor asked. He did not look at me. He looked down at a tablet computer. His finger worked, taking notes. This was going to be a great case for him, the kind of thing that can make a doctor famous. Perhaps he could even give my condition, my illness, his name. He’d live on forever in medical text books and journals, thanks in no small part to my own novelty.


“I can be sure, because I know.”


“There’s a lot to be said for faith,” said the nurse. Her eyes were glassy with tears. She smiled but did not look happy. Her smile was genuine but it was just an empty gesture of kindness, a symbol of compassion. It still meant something to me.


“I feel it. I see it when I look in the mirror. I had a full head of hair this morning.” I patted a large and growing island of bare skin at the top of my skin. “These eyes had no wrinkles. How old do I look? Fifty? Sixty? Hell, I’m just barely thirty.”


“The aging is odd,” said the doctor.


“Is there anything about this that isn’t odd?” I placed my hand on the antique stop watch covering my heart. “Can’t you just get rid of the damn thing?”


The doctor shook his head. He walked over to the wall and turned on a light. “Look at your x-rays, son. See the watchband? It’s completely connected, tied completely in knots all around your aorta. See? If we remove the watch, you die. Simple as that. We‘ve got some great surgeons here, but no one‘s ever seen anything like this. There‘s no procedure. Hell, I bet your case manager‘s having a hell of a time with this one. You might want to contact your insurer to see if embedded watches are a covered diagnosis for hospital stays.”


I fingered the folds of skin surrounding the watch. I felt my ribs beneath it. They were curved around the metal frame. “But I can’t go home. I’m dying.”


“Maybe,” said the doctor. He looked down at his tablet. “I’m still researching. I’ve got some folks down at the medical library now. We will leave no stone unturned. We’re doing everything we can.”


“Which, in the end, is nothing.” I put my head back against my pillow and turned my head to the window. I watched a pair of pigeons fly by. The second hand continued to prance across the face of the watch, tick-tick-tick.


I felt a warm hand take mine. I looked over and saw the nurse was still smiling at me.


Maybe there was nothing they could do, nothing that anyone could do, but, in the end, that human touch was just enough.


“Thank you,” I said to the nurse, returning her smile.


Tick-tick-tick.

Callisto's Tears

The men carried her off in chains. The boy wept. A crushing loneliness descended upon him, and he called out “Callisto!” but she did not hear him, did not look back.

The men did not notice the boy. They had their hands full with his wild friend. She roared and fought and shed massive tufts of hair. After the men carried Callisto away, he used her fallen fur to wipe away tears. He inhaled her musty scent and sat on the ground.

Time passed, and the world grew dark. The shadows lengthened as the lights went out until the world was engulfed in bitter darkness. The boy threw stones into the blackness of the ocean. The water splashed without any sound.

He watched the stars overhead shift and move and circle. He watched the lights in the sky change shapes and colors. He listened to the hum of the elevators reaching to the skies. He thought about walking to the elevators, but they were locked, always locked. Besides, the men might see him. He did not want that. He held clusters of Callisto's shed hair in his tight-fisted grip, swept the hair up into a small nest on the beach, laid down, and tried to sleep. Sleep did not come easy, but it did come. It always did.

The night went by without dreams. There was nothing to dream about.

When the lights came on, the boy saw tracks in the sand. There were the footprints of men and larger footprints with claws. He looked up the beach and found it deserted. The wind blew. The tracks faded but did not disappear. He inhaled a breath of air, coughed from the sulfuric scent of dead ocean, and began to run. His feet sunk into the sand. He struggled with every footstep. Soon, he gasped for air and ignored a pain shooting up the side of his chest.

He closed his eyes sometimes and pretended he was riding her: his Callisto. Without her, he was forced to use his own two feet, his own legs, and they were sore and weak from disuse.

The massive elevator cast a shadow. In that shadow there was a chill.

Men in uniforms wandered around the base of the elevator. The boy looked down and noticed he was naked. He had never noticed this before, but seeing the clothed men made him conscious of his differences. He felt something he had not known before. A man might have called it shame, but the boy only knew it as sickness.

Callisto was tied to a pole. The men poked her with sticks. Her brown coat was stained dark by blood and filth. She roared and spat. The men laughed.

The boy dropped to his knees.

The men saw him and came running. They brought water and food, a food sweeter than any he had ever known. He ate and drank and rose up to his feet.

The men cared for the boy until he grew strong. They gave him work. He climbed up and down the elevator with his massive wrench and twisted nuts to keep everything in working order. It was a dull job but important. He found solace in his own sense of importance. He worked by day. He ate and drank with the other men at night. They entertained themselves in their way.

Years passed and the boy – now a man – poked a bear with a sharp stick. The eyes of that bear disturbed the man. He saw himself reflected as a younger, weaker version of himself. He wanted to poke out those eyes, but the stick always slipped.

Those large eyes were slick from Callisto’s tears.

Love in the Time of Leprosy ... and Telepathy

Face me, she said.

I turned to look at her.

She wasn’t looking at me. She was looking at the guy beside me.

I couldn’t blame her. He was much easier on the eyes. He wasn’t melting constantly or trailing viscera and gore or dropping body parts. Instead, he was blond-haired, blue-eyed, and, perhaps more importantly, still whole.

Wholesomeness is a quality I lack.

She saw me looking at her and turned around, pretended she had not said anything, but I heard her.

Face me, she had said. But she wasn’t talking to me. Maybe she wasn’t even talking at all.

Damn telepathy. It’s a real bitch sometimes. You’d think it would make things easier, a little more clear to hear other people’s thoughts, but sometimes other people’s thoughts are more confusing than your own. And then what? You’re left with someone else’s confusion, as if your own wasn’t enough.

So, I turned away. My arm fell and landed with a plop in a brown puddle beneath my feet. I didn’t look down at it. I didn’t reach down to pick it up with my other arm. That would be humiliating. Besides, what if my other arm fell off while reaching for my lost appendage? That would be a worse fate than any man could stand. So, I let it sit there and gather flies. I bled from the nub on my shoulder. I tried to smile at the others on our train.

I looked out the window. The sun was setting in rays of purple and orange. I grew itchy where my arm once was. I reached down to scratch. A new one was growing in its place. Only it wasn’t made of flesh. It was black and shiny, like a beetle’s carapace.

Reincarnation can be a bitch, too. It sometimes comes in fits and quibbles, not to be confused with shits and giggles.

I looked over at the blond-haired, blue-eyed dude. I noticed he no longer moved. The train bumped on the tracks. The man’s head bobbed back and forth a few times and then fell to the ground. It left a smear in the brown puddle on the floor as it rolled to a stop next to my lost arm.

Face me, she said.

She got her wish: The head, but not the man, stared up at her, and she smiled.

I felt her joy and it confused me until she leaned over and began to gnaw on the dead man’s body.

See? she said, See? I told you I’d eat you one day.

A single tear fell from the dead head’s eye. I knocked it with my shoe to turn it away. Even though I didn’t know him – he had not said a single word since I got on the train – I thought the guy was a humongous and egotistical prick, I didn’t want him to see this woman – if she could be called a woman – eating what was left of his former well-built and wholesome humanity. Besides, maybe he really was a good guy, and I was just jealous.

She didn’t like it that I turned old blue-eyes’s head away. The woman turned on me. She leaped across the train. I reached up and stuck my new shiny black appendage through her like a stake. She shuddered. Foul grey gruel fountained out of her gaping mouth. There was a sudden pop, and then she turned into a Pomeranian. I named her Fluffy and knew that one day – if we ever got off this damn train – we’d have a great time. I’d take her on long walks through the country on Sundays, and if I died, I wouldn’t have to worry about funeral expenses or anything. She would just eat me.

And that would be okay. At least I’d have her attention.

Somewhere Near The End

There you were. You were alone. The world had moved on, but you were still here.

You were still here.

The world was covered with ash. The laughter of children – your children – faded to nothing. All was still. All was quiet. The world left you behind.

Toys rusted and degraded. Households were soiled and rotten.

You remembered the softness of your wife’s hair, her smile, her laugh. These things were now silent and gone.

She was bones.

Your children were bones.

Those bones were buried long ago. Gone but not forgotten.

You are still flesh and blood. Your heart still beats in your chest. You hold life within you, but no real life.

All is still.

You walk outside. The moon and the stars still shine through the clouds. And the sky is always cloudy. The light above gives light but no warmth.

You walk.

You find an empty bar. You find a nearly empty bottle of whiskey. You suck it down. You light a found cigarette. The tobacco is stale but still burns. You inhale. You exhale. The air tastes no different, no more meaningful.

The world moved on without you.

You hear a rustling in the trees outside. You feel things watching you. Perhaps they’re people. Perhaps they’re ghosts. It doesn’t matter. Because all that mattered once is now gone away.

There are cans of food and dried beans. These are in your bag. You eat, but nothing has any taste.

You drink, but the burn of alcohol is just a momentary sting before all feeling fades.

You smoke, but the air is already filled with smoke and carcinogens.

The world is not what it once was. There were sounds, there was life, there was something like normality, but normality is nothing but a memory. And life is a bitch.

And you almost had an epiphany. But it was gone.

It was gone.

Somewhere, on the other side of the world, the ocean still crashes against sand. Somewhere, there is rain and ice eroding the mountains. Somewhere, there is a cycle that goes on and on and on, and it will go on once you are long gone.

You are already long gone.

And you were gone before you even arrived.

And there is your epiphany, but it doesn’t matter.

There is no one left to hear your scream.

When the Doors Opened Wide

The light at the end of the tunnel was not what you expected it to be. Instead of bright and warm and comforting, you felt it burn. It felt tight in your chest. You turned your face, your eyes, or you tried to, but you were not you any longer. You just were what you were, whatever that was.

No pulse. No breath. No skin.

You cried out and thought of so many things: sins, dreams, loves, lusts, wishes, desires, faces, names, places, sights, and screams. Their screams.

You did not want to be here. You wanted to be back there.

The house was falling in on itself. The wallpaper peeled. The moldy ceilings dripped when it rained and sometimes when it was just damp outside. Breezes chilled you there with the lack of insulation, with the cracks in the walls. It was no mansion, but it had been home. You had been free to be yourself there. You could be anyone, do anything. And you did.

You believed in nothing. You read your philosophy books. You once wanted to believe, but you decided you Kant. Not after what happened to you. Not after all that suffering. Not after what she did to you.

So, you made do. You did what you felt needed to be done. You did it to person after person.

You never wanted to suffer alone. So the world suffered with you. The world feared you, and this excited you.

Bodies upon bodies and news clippings in a soiled scrapbook.

You took Polaroids, too. You wanted to capture every single agonized face, every engorged strangled visage.

But no one saw your face when it was your turn. No one called your name. No one ever knew it was you, so it was all wasted.

There won’t even be a Wikipedia article on you.

The light at the end of the tunnel turned off and you fell back into your skin.

The light was just a fridge light. The tunnel had just been your vision fading out as the oxygen left your brain. But you came back. Just long enough to see yourself one last time.

The pain in your chest tightened. You clutched your shirt.

Milk spilled all around you, and you drooled. You wet yourself.

You looked up to the rotting ceiling, at the black spreading mold. In that mold you saw yourself staring back at yourself and you laughed. Or you tried to.

There was no breath left in your lungs.

Then the mold opened. It became a door. You felt yourself lifted up by cold hands. You looked around you, and there were many doors. Inside the doors there was only darkness and screams. You recognized their voices.

They were happy to see you again.

You wished you could say the same.

You look backwards but there is nowhere to go.

They call your name.

You scream.

The Way Back Home

The trail rounds a bend, and I spy a granite wall. Inside that wall there is a cave. Inside that cave lies darkness. I have returned. I smell her. I smell him. I smell them. They call to me with the wind through the trees. Their voices sound from the gurgle of a small creek coursing downhill over mossy stones. They call me home.

Leaves fall around me from the tall maples, oaks, and hickories. Across the stream, a dervish of pine straw sweeps through the shady dark trunks of a patch of slash pines.

I don’t belong here.

I look at my hands. I see my wedding band. I shake the watch I received as a gift from my eldest daughter on my too-skinny wrist. I remember my girls. I remember their hair, their smell, and their laughter. I inevitably remember they are gone. I note my fingernails and how clean they are. I turn my hands over and touch the bumpy line running up my arms. That line is ugly and purple and seems to grow larger every year. I remember a crimson river collecting as a cloudy delta in the ocean of my bathtub.

I don’t belong here.

But it started here. I think. I don’t know because it was all so long ago. It seems a nice enough place for it to end, all the same.

I hear birds sing a song and know the words. Some people might say they are not words, but those people would be wrong. There is meaning. That’s all words are in the end. Songs convey meaning. Music carries emotions. The forest has a song all its own. That song is nothing if not meaningful.

A shock of cold creeps up my leg. I look down. I see myself walk into the stream. My pants grow dark with creeping moisture. Chill bumps rise on my arm. A shiver slinks down my spine. Overhead, a trio of crows caws as they leap from branch to branch to branch. A flurry of leaves, nuts, and pinecones shower down in their wake.

I hear a rustle and see something dark and large – A bear? A deer? A mountain lion? A wolf? A troll? A dragon? – creep through a patch of underbrush. Twigs rattle in the wake. There’s a growl or a cry or a laugh; it is hard to tell the difference. I think I see fresh hoof prints outlined in mud. Worms wriggle up and fill the dark indentations like anemones.

I don’t belong here.

My daughter had been a little girl once. She sat on my knee. She held my hand and dragged me around everywhere as little girls are wont to do with their daddies. I let her carry me. I thought I was the parent. I thought I was in charge. I thought I was the protector. I thought I was keeping her safe and sound. I never dreamed she was the only thing keeping me from being lost. That’s what I am without her: lost. I need her hand in mine so I don’t slip away.

I trudge forward through the creek. I splash as I lose my footing. I slip on moss and algae. I scrape my hands. Loose moss sinks beneath my fingernails. My arms are slick and white with cold. My teeth chatter, but I hardly recognize this. I don’t feel the cold even though it eats at me and sends my pulse into a frenetic fury.

I come closer to the cliff I first saw when coming around the bend. The gurgle of water becomes a roar. I look up and see the waterfalls. They cascade down from above. Beneath the base of the falls, I can just make out the dark outline of the cave. The walls on either side of the opening appear soft and languorous, worn smooth by an eternity of erosion.

I don’t belong here.

I look back behind me and realize I am on a rise. This is a natural overlook. Below me, a river snakes through a valley. A city sits on the bank of that river. Cars drive on streets. Children play on playgrounds. Adults sit in offices or work construction. It is Halloween. Once the sun sets, the carved pumpkins will be alight with fire. Families will take to the streets with glow sticks and bags for candy. People will smile and visit and knock on each other’s doors. They might not knock on each other’s doors any other time during the year, but they will on that night. At least the children will. The adults will hang back and watch from the curb or sidewalk or simply stay at home while getting drunk and watching horror movies.

I always liked Halloween. But not this year. Not last year. Not the year before.

Every little girl, no matter the costume, looks just like my little girl. I find myself wondering if she might be underneath that wig? That make-up? That mask?

I belong here.

The cascading water slows and then stops. Lingering puddles in the rock drip. The birds stop their song. The crows land next to me. They stand silent and regard me with obsidian eyes.

A tree falls behind me, then another.

A dragon sweeps by blowing smoke and fire.

A troll rides on the dragon’s back. The troll picks its nose and laughs. It sings a song whose words are meaningless and untrue. I hate that troll.

The dragon knocks the cliff with a spiked tail. I’m not sure if the action was on accident or on purpose. I doubt that it matters. The impact of the beast against the cliff breaks the stone apart. Rocks fall around me. It grows dark. I am buried. Water seeps through cracks above me. I relent. The chill overtakes me until there is no chill, only numbness.

I touch the scars on my forearms. They vibrate and pulse. I dig in with my hands until I can feel myself. Pink light erupts from my torn skin and muscle. This blushing illumination lights my way. I dig and dig. My hands grow wet. I will keep digging until I find myself, until I find my way back home.

The Trees

Look at my arms. They are scaling and falling to pieces. Shards of bark fall like my autumn leaves, multicolored and fading. Look at the veins in my leaves. How brittle they are. Once these hands ran through your hair, and now I no longer have hands. I am incomplete.

Once we knew love. Once we knew each other. Once we touched and came together.

Now we are no longer what we were.

I look at you: A rotting stump. Crickets hide inside you and sing.

I stand still. The air is stagnant. I soak in the sun. I soak in the rain. I stand unmoving.

My arms are branches.

You don’t even have that luxury. You can no longer reach up to the sky. You are there, in the ground, rotting. Salamanders call you home.

Birds make their nests on my arms. I hold them tight and protect them from storms. I watch the young birds leap from their nests. Some take flight while others fall.

At my feet lie the bones of broken birds. They no longer sing. Yet, they still serve their purpose as food for ants and maggots. These things are necessary, too, no matter how unpleasant they might be.

You are necessary. You feed the earth. You feed termites.

I stand above and shelter you in my shade. I remember you as you were, as you used to be. When we touched and merged as figures of warm flesh and love. I remember the afterglow. I remember your green shoots and flowers.

I’m sorry I cut you down.

Sometimes.

But now I am old and the termites infest me. I feel them crawl past my bark and into the deepest of my many rings. Each ring is a year of life, and there are so many years. How many was it before I cut you down? I can’t remember. Not that it matters. You sit there and rot, and I will join you soon. I know this to be true. The sun will be hidden from me as the other trees surround us and hide us in their shade.

Kudzu moves in, and mistletoe steals the rain from my soul.

I am so thirsty. My roots are nibbled by moles and rabbits. My tangled wooden subterranean knots are now the home of a nasty family of gnomes.

The sky cries for me, but the tears offer no relief. I am drying from the inside.

I am just like you.

Once we were more than trees. You were more than a stump. You were everything.

Now I stand alone.

My last leaf has fallen, and the sound of termites crunching wood overwhelms my senses. I feel myself crack and break, little by little.

Lightning flashes, and I thank God for fire.

Unbirthing

My name is Jim. I’m not a Lord, and this isn’t an autobiography. I’m going to tell you the story as I heard it from someone I’d rather not name who heard it from someone else he decided it was better remain nameless (and, why yes, I am distancing myself from this as much as possible).

Recently, I’ve been reading stories. Two come to mind: “How We Keep It Fresh” by Christian Tebordo (Pank, 6.01/ January 2011) and “Afterglow” by Sandra Odell (Ideomancer, 9:3/September 2010). These stories, among others whose names I can’t remember, relate a desire to return to the womb. I heard there is a term for this. When you Google “unbirthing” you obtain disturbing links to odd furry fetishes I don’t understand (and don’t really want to know too much about – I say leave the bedroom in the bedroom), but still the fact that this is a modern fetish (which I assume belongs to more than one individual), and there is actual paraphernalia designed for the specific purpose of acting out this fantasy says something about modern culture. I think. Even popular music makes references to unbirthing: Beck sings about a girl leaping into a volcano in his song “Volcano” off the album Modern Guilt. Beck asks, “Was she trying to make it back/Back into the womb of the world?”

Is this a modern phenomenon? What is the interpretation? I’m not going to go all Jungian on you. I promise. That’d be dull. Besides, I’m not smart enough for that kind of thing, and neither is the person telling this story (or the nameless narrator, for that matter). I won’t look for mythic roots, proof of collective unconscious, or point out older texts referencing these kinds of things (not that I couldn’t do so, but I’m feeling too lazy today). You can do all that yourself. Google and Wikipedia are good starting points, but always verify with other sources, preferably in paper format inside the rotting walls of a library reeking of dust and neglect and other modern clichés.***

So why return to the womb? Why is this a fantasy and a fetish? Why is this event expressing itself in literature and music? Is it coincidence that this image haunts me? No, this is not an interpretation. What follows are simply my unenlightened observations.

A quick note on the positive traits of life in utero*:

• It’s quiet. All sounds are muffled. Sometimes mommies and daddies and others talk to pregnant bellies, and when they do, it’s always with a soothing, cooing tone. Sometimes people even read stories and play music, deluding themselves they will increase the child’s brain capacity, when in actuality they are only decreasing their own. **


• There’s no friction. Everything is well-lubricated and without sharp edges. If you trip and fall on your umbilical cord, you won’t get hurt. I guess you could get tied up in the cord and choke and die. I’ve heard of that happening, but thankfully, this is unusual.


• Mothers protect you in the womb. Sometimes they do this outside the womb, but when you are actually inside their body, they are even more protective. Perhaps it has something to do with you still being a part of them, physically, at that point in time? Whatever the reason, this is nice.


• When inside the womb there is blind optimism directed your way. Parents dream big for their child, buy footballs or art sets. Parents live out their own fantasies through their unborn. You haven’t disappointed anyone. Yet.


• It’s dark all the time. You can sleep whenever you want. This means lots of dreams, and in dreams you can be whatever you want to be. Even if you want to be a giraffe on the plains of the Serengeti, you can do that. Or you could be an alpaca tied up in a trailer park in Mississippi, or an inside sales representative, or a short order cook, or whatever. Endless possibilities. Personally, I’d dream of being an entry-level data entry clerk or maybe the back seat of a 1970 Chevy Nova . Dream big!


• Anyone who hits a pregnant belly is a jerk and can actually have attempted murder – or even murder – charges brought against them. Once you’re born, people can hit you all they want. As long as you live, it’s only assault.


• There are no temptations. There are no vices. You haven’t fallen. Not yet.

Negatives:

• You’re kind of trapped...


• There are no mountains to look at.


• You can only hear the ocean, not see it.


• Music is muffled and you probably only hear the beat and not the details of a melody.


• Voices are muffled and easily misunderstood.


• Range of movement is limited.


• There’s nowhere to jog, hike, or fish.


• You’re kind of trapped…

All the same, this is a cultural desire (and not just mine, whoever I am). The pros outweigh the cons. Besides, how often do you have days you simply don’t want to get out of bed? How much better would it be to be in a womb? It’s warmer, softer, quieter. Sure there’s no light for reading, but you still have time to dream. That’s worth something. Also, you are a blank slate. You are perfect.

Unlike me. I screwed up so many times. Too many times to count and disguised as many different people.

So, I went back. But there’s not much room in here, to tell the truth, and I really, really need to stretch. It kind of smells funny, too. It reeks of failure and other clichés.***

* …and a certain Nirvana album cover comes immediately to mind just like that!

** “"There are no studies on the effects of stimulation before birth on intelligence, creativity, or later development," says Janet DiPietro, a developmental psychologist who studies fetal development at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.” (http://www.babycenter.com/0_music-and-your-unborn-child_6547.bc -- Yes, I researched this online because I’m lazy. There’s no proof that if my mother played music to me or my father read to me in utero that I would be any less lazy. I’m also a hypocrite sometimes as you can see from my not following my own rules about using libraries to verify.)

*** Why does the verb “reek” often accompany so many clichés? Perhaps I’ll ask my friend to ask his nameless narrator. It might make for a good story.

How We Met

The Geek loped in circles after the chicken. His gangly arms and legs swung in clumsy arcs. Thick drool trailed from his chin. When he ran, translucent plumes of snot and saliva erupted from his face as he gasped and laughed. He would jump towards the chicken, the chicken would veer off at the last second, and he would grunt as he hit the dirty ground, sending up a cloud of dust.

The gathering audience laughed and cheered.

The chicken ran in circles while it clucked with terror.

Bawk. Bawk. Bawk.

The Geek smiled and followed the clucking chicken with his eyes which were large, glassy, shining, black, and empty. His pupils contracted into tiny condensed dots full of darkness. The crowd could see The Geek’s posture shift as he made slow calculations with whatever it was he kept contained inside his large, conical, and bald skull. The Geek crouched low and leaped. The chicken clucked. The Geek grabbed it tight and pulled it up towards his open mouth and revealed jagged, uneven teeth.

Bawk. Bawk. Wet crunch.

The Geek chomped the tiny skull and smiled. A thin trail of blood and spit coursed fresh rivulets down the thick layer of dirt and dust coating his filthy chin.

The crowd groaned because it was expected of them to be disgusted, but their eyes still smiled. They feigned horror and pulled out their wallets, hungry for the freak show to begin.

I saw it happen. I was there. I was eating fire. My mouth tasted like gasoline spiked with cheap vodka. My tongue burned. My inner cheeks burned. My eyes and lungs burned thanks to the harsh chemical fumes wafting off my torches. I saw you, and I felt everything. I noticed everything. Through the haze, I found something resembling clarity.

You know because you were there. I noticed you because you cried. You were the only one who cried, and right then, I knew I wanted to leave the freak show behind. I just wanted to drink your tears. I knew they would taste sweet. They would be cool and refreshing. They would wash the chemicals and fire from my mouth and leave me healed. I would be baptized in the purity of those tears and reborn as something better.

I approached you. You took my hand when I offered to help you up. I saw the faint hint of a smile borne from my own act of kindness and felt a real sense of purpose for the first time in my life. I could show you kindness, and through my kindness, help you forget, or at least forgive.

For you.

My heart. My love. My wife.

We left the freak show hand-in-hand.

Sometimes, in the years that followed, I would turn around. I would hear the applause, the jingle-jangle of loose change, the laughter from The Geek, the shout of The Barker, and I would consider returning. I would remember the taste of fossil fuels and alcohol and fire. Sometimes, I wanted to taste those poisons again. But always, your hand was there – and then other hands, smaller hands – and together, you and the family you gave me would pull me back so I could remember what really matters and understand.

My heart. My life.

The Geek smiles only because he doesn’t know what he’s doing.

You know. You care.

And now I do too.

A (Kind of) Fairy Tale

Sheila clutched a Swiss army knife in her hand. She extracted a small blade to carve an opening in the cardboard box surrounding her. This released a blinding stream of light that poured down like a phosphorescent waterfall. She closed her eyes and then opened them slowly, allowing them to adjust to the new light. It had been a long time since she had looked outside. A very long time.

She peeked through the new opening and saw that the world had not changed. It was still the same as it was before. The river coursing over the rocks had straightened a little. It no longer curved the same way. The white water had calmed somewhat, but other than that, the world was no different. The leaves were still green. The sky remained blue. The birds still sang.

Then the leaves fell and then winter came and snow collected on her new window. Translucent stalactites of ice dripped over her opening and distorted her view. She shivered, decided it would be better to hibernate, and fell fast sleep.

The world was her bed and it was soft and comforting. It made sense when nothing else did. She woke as the snows began to thaw, and she tried to remember why she was here, where she obtained the Swiss army knife in her hand, why she was in a box, but decided that these were worthless questions. She was here because she was here and that was all. This is no different for anyone else, no matter how strange or sensible or senseless they might happen to be. People aren’t all that different, though they often like to think they are special. She had had time to think and no longer clung to false notions. Maybe she wasn’t special, she decided, but at least she was free. She said, “Freedom is in the mind, not a physical state of being,” and she chanted this over and over and over until she almost believed it, but not really, because she was a protagonist, and this, by default, made her special. At least it made her special in her own self-contained universe. Without a character there can be no story, after all, and without a story there is simply nothing to tell.

Then the box dissolved with the raging rains of spring and she emerged during a storm. Lightning flashed, thunder rumbled, but then the winds swept the storm – and the dissolving remains of her box – away. As the clouds broke apart to reveal the sun, she outstretched her arms. Her joints popped. She ignored the pain and bloomed. Delicate and colorful petals flitted with a soft breeze. She was beautiful and fragile and, ultimately, meaningless.

The Sitcom

Ted fought against the metal mountain as he climbed. The thick cloths and leather straps wound around his hands and feet grew snagged and tattered and worn as the level ground – covered only by a thinning blanket of dead grass and glittering permafrost – fell away beneath him. As he climbed upwards, the smoldering heap of rusting steel smoked in places. Red lines stained crags and eddies. Ted was unsure if the stains marring the mountain were rusted iron or ancient blood. Both had been offered over the years to appease The Monster. Yet, The Monster was never appeased, not fully. The Monster looked down on what was left of the world with a toothy smirk. The Monster’s giant lips frothed with blood. Tremors rising from deep inside the core of the earth told Ted that The Monster hungered. Wings creaked overhead and blocked the pale light of a dying sun as The Monster stretched.

*

“Why must you do it?” his mother asked him. She ran around the kitchen. The spotlights overhead and the yellow flowers on her wallpaper kept her cheerful, kept her smiling. She whisked something in a bowl. Scrambled eggs maybe? The beginnings of a cake? Cookies?

Ted did not know. He stared down at his hands. They were caked with dried blood.

His mother tsked. “Ted, you tell me right now, what is it you want to prove?”

He looked up to his mother and saw her. Really saw her. She was beautiful, radiant. Light streaked out of her eyes and warmed the chill in his soul, but he still felt cold. His brother was gone. His mother tried to remain happy, wore a permanent smile, but even as young as Ted was he understood this was her front, an act. He knew she was lonely. Since The Censors invaded she had been forced to sleep in a tiny twin bed. She no longer knew the embrace of her husband. She no longer knew what it felt like to be kissed with the exception of chaste brushes of indifferent lips against her cheek. The Censors wanted her pure. The Censors did not care if that false purity killed her soul.

“Mom, I just killed my brother. Dad made me do it. He said it was in the damn script!” Ted tugged at his crew cut hair. “I need answers!”

The laugh track erupted into a joyful cacophony of canned emotion.

*

“Why do you climb, boy?” The Monster asked. He had no name. He was simply The Monster. That was enough.

Ted lay sprawled out on a small metal platform. His hands and feet pulsed and wept with blisters and blood. “Because I have to know.”

“What do you want to know? How do you know I have the answers? How do you know, if I do have the answers, I will give them to you? What makes you think I can be trusted?”

Ted laughed. “It’s not about trust. It’s about truth.”

*

His father never came home from work. No “Honey, I’m home!” or tumble over furniture, no canned applause for his clumsy, over-stylized entrance. Instead, the house grew silent.

Ted looked at the fourth wall. The cameras had stopped rolling. The studio audience had been left deserted. A tumbleweed from the western that was filming on the set next door rolled across the linoleum kitchen floor.

“Why do you do it?” his mother asked again, softer this time. She fell over and shivered.

Ted wanted to rush over to her, to hold her, to cry over her. Instead, he sat at the kitchen table and ate his cereal, trapped by an unforgiving and unyielding script. His mother died as she slept: alone.

*

Ted spoke between clenched teeth. “I just want you to answer one question, you sick bastard. Who are you?”

The Monster smiled. “I think you know.”

“Why do you do this?”

“Just to see if it works.”

A shock of lava and smoke erupted near Ted. Some of it splashed down against his outstretched arm and left instant whelps and burns. “Well? Did it work?”

Sheets of typed paper were crumpled into a ball before being tossed into a trashcan littered by empty beer cans.

“Nope.”

That Cold, Dark Womb of Stars

Davis stared up at the sky. Lying on his back, his shadowed form resembled a pincushion in the gloom of twilight. The fading light from the disappearing day reflected off glassy eyes. He reached up a bloody hand – he wondered how much of that blood was his own and how much had once belonged to others?—and grasped the protruding shaft of an arrow. He grimaced as he pulled it free.

He pulled out arrow after arrow. The notched heads tugged and ripped at flesh and fiber. He ignored the pain. He held his breath as he yanked out each arrow, gasping with pain with each gush of fresh blood. He knew no sorrow. Each revealed seeping wound brought him one step closer to something resembling freedom.

His open wounds bloomed upwards into roses of red. They unfurled above him and rained down blood-soaked tears. Their scent reminded him of love, of something not quite but almost forgotten: another time, another place, a much more comfortable bed, soft skin like rose petals.

He gasped and felt his heart shudder. It shook like a frightened bird unable to extend her wings because the cage was much too small. Those unfurled wings ached and grew stiff from lack of use until the bird found itself paralyzed. He sucked in a draught of air and tasted the roses blooming above him in the sky. Unlike the wings of the bird in his chest, the roses growing from his seeping red wounds could unfurl. There was no cage up in the sky above him. It was wide open.

The night grew dark and stars emerged. He watched the stars dance across the horizon and tried to remember the names of forgotten constellations and saw revelations: glimpses and hints of the now lost stories the images in the sky above him represented once upon a time for another race of man. He smiled and listened to the stars sing a song that only the dying get to hear – a small consolation to offset the fear.

The sky tugged him upwards, and he felt free. The sky was open. There were no cages, but there was a chill. Stars shined, increased in size, and then receded.

Davis blinked, found himself back in his body, and tears rolled down his cheek. His breathing resumed. A sudden awareness of pain shook him to his core, and he cried out. He prayed he might soon return to that cold, dark womb of stars. The shell of his body seemed much too constricting. His roses withered and joined the dust of the desert surrounding him. The wings of his heart cracked as they were bent back and broken. A medic called out his name.

Bubbles*

Jelly watched the shadow orbs bounce around the room. They transformed her perceptions, changing the soft lighting and filtering it into a pale glimmer. She helped her mother paint the room a soft pink last summer. The pink resembled maroon in the half-light.

It looks like blood, she thought to herself.

The orbs continued their clumsy dance. Her bedroom resembled a life-sized lava lamp. She knew she should be afraid, but she wasn't.

It had grown familiar long ago.

She turned up the Lady Gaga playing on her IPod, laid back, and smiled.

***

"Momma got run over by a reindeer," Jelly would reply to any idiot dumb enough to ask about her mother. In reality, she had succumbed to cancer. For Jelly, however, the why didn't matter so much. All that really mattered was the finality of it.

At times she had felt sorry for Momma, seeing her pain as her cells degraded and her body wasted away. At other times she did not care so much that Momma had hurt. At least Momma had been there. In pain or not, Momma survived and was willing to hold Jelly's hand while she described her pre-pubescent soap opera tragedies. Momma would nod and smile and stroke her hand.

Aunt Grace had said it had been for the best, but Aunt Grace was a poop-for-brains, as Daddy would say. Except Daddy usually said that other word.

***

It was the night after the funeral that the shadow orbs had first appeared. Jelly was terrified. She screamed into the night for her mother, having forgotten that Momma had passed on.

Her father came in place of her mother. Wiping the sleep from his eyes, he asked what was wrong.

Jelly told him, but as the words came out, even at her young age, she felt ridiculous. The orbs bobbled through her room, soaking up the light of her Princess Barbie night light. It was clear her father couldn't see the dark bubbles.

Jelly had called Daddy in a few nights after that before she accepted he never would see them. The orbs – whatever they were – were hers and hers alone. A vision she could share with no one.

Over the years, she discovered they seemed to like music, or at least when she listened to music. Even while wearing the ear buds from her pink IPod, when no living soul other than her could hear the songs streaming through the wires, the bubbles seemed to be in tune. They pulsated, varying between differing shades of grey and black, soaking up the light in different frequencies.

***

The therapist asked her about the bubbles. Jelly felt anger towards her father for betraying this secret. She would never talk about the orbs to her therapist, she decided. He creeped her out, and the only emotions she dared to share with the bespectacled weirdo were imagined. Her reality was her secret. Besides, her fantasies and daydreams were realistic enough. The therapist never questioned her honesty.

Whenever the bubbles came up during their sessions, Jelly shifted the discussion. She would talk about the confusion caused by her budding sexuality. She fabricated stories of pillow fights with girlfriends that went too far. Her therapist didn't seem to mind. In fact, he always forgot all about the bubbles. He would blush and dab the sweat away from his forehead.

***

Night after night she looked up to the ceiling, listening to music, awaiting their arrival.

They bounced and danced for her. They soaked up the light. They vibrated and hummed. Sometimes she imagined words and symbols. Jelly felt the bubbles communicate, but meaning eluded her.

Accustomed to their presence, she grew bold. Listening to a mix tape of gothic dance music her friend Shanna had given her – mostly a collection of remixed Cure and Evanescence songs – the orbs grew around her.

Eyes wide and with a feeling she could not describe, almost a hunger, she reached out her hand.

The orb enveloped her flesh and caressed it. The orbs closed in around her. Invisible fingers stroked through hair. Nonexistent legs wrapped around her. She sucked in a deep draught of air as her lungs tightened. Something held her tight in a bear hug. She held her breath as an orb descended over her head. Inside looking out, everything wavered. Her hair billowed around her head as if she were underwater.

The grip around her, holding her down, relented. The urge to breathe took hold, and she relaxed. She sucked in a breath of…

Suddenly, the bubbles were gone. She was on her hands and knees, coughing, gasping for air. She knew what a fish out of water must feel like.

She purged out a thick puddle of black goo. It bounced and jiggled on the floor like Jell-O spilled from a mold. She shivered. Her body convulsed. She rolled around and felt the texture of the carpet pressing against her bare skin.

"Jelly? You okay in there honey?" she heard her father call from the other side of the door. His voice was muffled by the wood and the distance between them.

She tried to reply that she was fine, but couldn't gasp in enough air to say anything.

She attempted to breathe in but the air felt too thick to enter her lungs. She thrashed and crawled on the floor. Using a dresser, she managed to pull herself upright.

Looking back at her in the mirror was someone she did not recognize.

"Jelly, babe, I'm coming in!"

Thud after thud sounded out as the door shook in its frame.

Jelly was only dimly aware of the rattling door. She was transfixed by her reflection. After the initial shock, she was able to see herself in that stranger's face. Her face had aged fifteen years since she last saw it.

Her hair hung sticky and wet around her. The face was covered with wrinkles. Deep frown lines marred her lower face. She was bruised and battered. A tourniquet was tied around her arm, and a half-plunged syringe stuck out of a vein. She looked into her eyes. They were lined by wrinkles. The pupils looking back at her were black holes on a bloodshot canvas. She was naked and withered. Loose skin hung from her skinny frame in places. Smallish breasts drooped over an exposed ribcage.

The door crashed open and a man she did not recognize entered. He was tall and lanky. Blond dreadlocks hung around a yellowed and acne-covered face. The man's build was nearly as withered as hers.

"Jelly? Baby? You okay?"

Jelly felt the man rush up and embrace her as she fell.

She saw the orbs again and smiled. Her eyes rolled back into her head and she felt her heartbeat shudder. Death embraced her with the stranger.

*Originally appeared in Sand: A Journal of Strange Tales, Issue #2, Fall/Winter 2008.

The Jogger & The End of Everything &

I. The Jogger

Leaving the red and heat-scorched road behind, he veered down the trail into the shadows of the forest, grateful for the respite from the sun’s relentless burn. Tall, slender pines swayed with a breeze. Cicadas sang. Off in the distance, he heard the ancient warning of the rattlesnake, but he ignored the primal fear rising on the periphery of his senses. The bulk of his focus placed on his pulsating heart and the steady beat of his feet hitting earth as he jogged. The wilderness was just a passing landscape: a fading entity less real than the internal thrum of blood pumping through veins.

The humidity pressed down upon him. His sweat-stained shirt stuck to his chest and back. He felt movement all around, but shrugged it off, assuming it was the flock of wild turkeys he knew frequented this forest. There was a rustle in the wild blackberry bushes lining the path, but he left it behind without giving it any thought.

The kudzu laughed as it entwined itself along the trunks and branches, an exotic import dominating a new home. Dragonflies gathered together, forming thick clouds which hummed with the beat of millions of lacy and translucent wings. The ghosts of empires long gone – hidden beneath centuries of ancient hard-wood forests which preceded the current pines – whispered riddles in languages lost and forgotten.

And he jogged, oblivious to it all.

The mystery surrounded him, shimmering like heat waves on asphalt. There are windows into other worlds and realities that all too often go unnoticed as we run past them at a relentless pace. He left his past to find a temporary present sparing no thoughts for the darkness ahead.


II. The End of Everything


“We are nearing the end,” she said. Her hair shimmered beneath the sun as it waved, wind-swept and disheveled. I had never seen her look more beautiful.

“The end of what?” I asked as I pushed the throttle forward. The boat sped up and I squinted despite my sunglasses because the sun was magnified and fractured by the ripples all around us.

“The end of everything.” She smiled at me, her teeth fell from her mouth, and her beauty melted. She aged and degraded from beauty queen to corpse to dust, and then she blew away.

The lake became primordial ooze, and it stunk. It stunk with the rot of life, the stench of reproduction, a hint of honeysuckle beneath it all. With the stench there was beauty, the promise of spring, the rebirth from the wreckage. Roses fertilized by manure.

The vision passed quickly like a summer storm and I saw her again. Smiling and beautiful, she rubbed a swelling and exposed belly pulsating with new life as she lounged on the padded seat next to me in her maternity bathing suit.

“Or is it the beginning?” I asked.

III.

Beneath open skies, flowers bloom and sway with a delicate breeze while casting shadows in silence.

Directions

I understand how the person I used to be shaped the person I am today. I see it now as I look at myself in a distant time. I’m awkward. My hair cut is terrible. I reek of cigarette smoke and other kinds of smoke. My breath stinks from cheap malt liquor. I hear the words coming out of my mouth and cringe at their crudity and sometimes downright idiocy, and I remember self-righteously believing that I was absolutely correct about all that crap and venom spewing off my wagging tongue at the time. Obviously, I was wrong. I know that now that I am looking at myself through the clarifying filter of time.

Is it wisdom that changed me? I would argue this, or would like to, but I know that it would be untrue. I am no wiser. I understand that now. The only truth I’ve learned since then is that I don’t know it all. I can never know it all. There is simply too much to know.

So, I sat down and asked him (myself) questions. He (I) was sullen. I remember this day and know I did not want to talk to a creepy old guy in a stained white polo shirt with long curly hair and a beard full of potato chip crumbs, not when Tansy was there with me, halfway drunk and emotionally vacant.

I had lusted after her then. I could not see the bloated burn-out of an alcoholic she would soon become. I could not know the regrets she would feel daily because of her misspent youth that I myself helped misspend. Could there have been something like love there? I like to think so sometimes, but I know better. My vision was limited then as it still is now. Maybe when I get back I should call her? See how she’s doing. Last I heard, she was three months sober. I clapped for her at that meeting, but it was my last meeting before figuring out time travel. Not that I could go back to the meetings now. I’m not exactly sober these days.

I called him (myself) over again, offered him (me) a pack of cigarettes – I knew his (my) weakness – and finally he (I) came over. I sat down on a fallen log on the stinking exposed bank of the riverside. It was fall and the river was at its lowest point thanks to the hydroelectric dam upriver. The air was full of the scent of falling leaves and rotting fish: a pleasant and nostalgic mix for me, even if the city folk back home would find it offensive. He (I) snatched the cigarettes from my hand and moved a couple feet away from me. He (I) lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, and exhaled. He (I) nodded his (my) thanks. I motioned for him (myself) to sit down. We had a lot to talk about.

I asked, “What do you plan on doing for the rest of your life?”

He (I) released a bitter laugh. “What the fuck do you mean? I don’t even know what I’m doing this afternoon, man.”

“Trust me. I know exactly what you mean. I still don’t know what I’m doing myself. We’ll never know, will we? Not unless we find direction.” I sighed. I placed my hands on my knees and pushed myself up to a standing position. I looked down on him (myself). “Remember this moment. It will happen again.”

He (I) shook his (my) head and tossed his (my) cigarette butt into the river. Together, we watched it wash away with the current until we could see it no longer.

I turned and found myself gone. Tansy walked over with a lit joint in her hands. “Who was that guy?”

I shook my head. “I have no idea.”

“What did he want?”

“Directions, I think.”

I thought of the cigarette rolling downriver. It would eventually wash up against a distant shore with the flame long extinguished never to be lit again. There was a sudden burning in my eyes, the threat of tears, and I turned away. I wasn’t sure where I would go, but I knew it was time to leave the riverside.

Indefinable

Her pain tore through her insides like a serrated blade, yet she smiled. She refused to cry out. She refused to be bowed down by that which she could not see. If it was unobservable, it could not possibly exist. To admit the pain was there, that it was real, would be to accept that unseen things were possible. It would mean the unseen could be real, even if unquantifiable or otherwise indefinable. This opened up too many possibilities she shuddered at internally. She remembered believing in ghosts and curses, but that was long ago, in a time much less rational than today.

Every test had been performed. Every sonogram and ultrasound came back clean. Various probes entered her through various orifices. There was no physically identifiable reason for the pain per her lab results and multiple examinations. They called it fibromyalgia. She accepted this diagnosis. It seemed to fit, but she held her doubts. She understood her doctors were simply classifying the unclassifiable. The doctors’ little checklists best matched up with this diagnosis based on questionnaires and spoken (if intangible and unseen) symptoms. The symptoms pointed towards a diagnosis, and the doctors prescribed treatment.

Yet, none of the therapies helped. None of the medicines worked, not even nerve blocks. The pain refused to retreat. It clung tight to her joints and abdomen like “white on rice” as her mother liked to say. Her sick days – once so plentiful – began shrinking away.

She wanted to know so much. She had so many questions. What was the pain? Where did it come from? Why was it here? And, most importantly of all, how could she make it go away? The doctors provided no answers. The medicines offered no solutions.

So she kept smiling as she lay in bed and stared at the ceiling fan. The blades twirled in cycles. She thought there might be meaning there, but could not fully decipher what it might represent. It could mean so many things. Her thoughts twirled with the fan.

The days grew long and the nights longer. The pain increased until it hurt her too much to move at all.

Her sick days disappeared. She stopped answering her phone.

She lay still. She refused to move. Movement only made things worse. So she remained motionless.

The fan spun above her in an endless loop.

She thought again that it might have meaning, but then decided that this, too, must be meaningless.

She lay still and grew stiff. Her smile remained as she turned to stone.

When the landlord eventually found her, he was moved to tears. He wanted to pay his respects. He wished he had thought of her sooner, but last time he saw her she smiled. He assumed she was okay.

To assuage his guilt and pay his respects, he put her on display in the playground in the center of the apartment complex. It seemed the only sensible thing to do. Now, she smiles throughout the day as children play. The kids twirl on a multicolored steel merry-go-round in cycles while tight clusters of their laughter crowd upwards towards an open blue sky. At night the stars cycle above her. Inside the statue, her ghost imagines it all means something, all these cycles, even if these hints at meaning sometimes grow confused and indefinable. Yet, she learns to accept these hints as something resembling meaning.

She smiles now, not to hide the pain, but because the pain is going away, replaced by mystery.

The Blank

A tick-tock mechaman wandered around the shining metal room trying to plug into anyone. The machine was drunk on data, greedy for more. He wandered over to me. His iron wheels screeched and scratched steel floors. He rolled in my direction with his lead thrust outward. Sparks flew from his vision processors. I knocked him away, but he pushed harder against me. I took his lead and jammed it into the punchbowl and laughed as acidic smoke poured upwards from his circuit board. I poured myself a glass of punch and sipped. I received a fading glimpse of a million stolen memories. None of them meant anything to me. None of them were mine. At least there were none I recognized.

I was a blank. There was nothing left.

The data junkies had already taken me. Or rather, I had already given myself to them. At least that is what TomTammy told me. She was my best and only friend. She was the only other organic. It didn’t matter that we did not share the same mold of flesh. She was short and squat and walked about on a multitude of jointed appendages. Her pitch black exoskeleton shone underneath recessed mercury bulbs. It was only because of her that I knew who I was. I saw my reflection on her back and in her compound eyes. I saw many sides of myself reflected in those eyes. I was tall and pale with long legs, long arms, and a sprout of coarse, wiry, salt-and-pepper hair sticking out upwards from my head. A splotchy beard marred my face. My loose flesh was pockmarked and scarred. I looked nothing like TomTammy, but this did not matter. In my way, I loved TomTammy, and based on how fully she saw me, I liked to think she loved me, too. We shared something special being organic. The rest of the ship, the other occupants of this isolated place, rusted around us.

TomTammy walked over and told me my story:

“Once there was just me and the mechas. Then there was you. Then I wasn’t alone. We spoke and told each other our stories. We spoke of our homes and where we were before we came here. You were from a place of light and land and water. You came here to find out more, to learn, to study. Like the mechas, you were addicted to data. You came to converse, to learn. Then you drank with the mechas. Then they plugged into you, and you fell. I sat back and watched and hid. They had tried to plug into me previously, but my shell held me safe. They grew drunk on you. They pushed their leads into every available opening. Once there were no available openings left, they made their own. They cut into your flesh until you were slick with blood. I drank some of this – I am sorry, but I was thirsty. Then you lay still for a very long time. I thought you were dead. I came over to drink the rest of you – I am sorry for this, but I was hungry. Then I noticed you still stirred, if just barely. Your chest moved to take breath, so I carried you back to my web and wrapped you in fibers and sat next to you, watching you, feeling you through my strings. You awoke, you spoke, and I knew you had forgotten me. You had forgotten where you were, where you came from. You had forgotten yourself.”

So, TomTammy rescued me and reminded me of myself, even if I was forgotten, and for that, I owed her my thanks. I did not remember any of her story but knew it was true. I trusted her. She was the only other organic. I had to trust someone. Without someone to trust, there is no life – or no life worth living anyway.

I took another sip of punch and felt inspired. “Are you still hungry?”

TomTammy pulled up on her tiny appendages and rubbed her mandibles. A viscous liquid dribbled from her dark, gaping mouth. Her compound eyes blinked and twinkled. “Come with me.”

I followed. We pushed hungry mechas out of our way and walked to her web.

“Just lie there.”

I did as she said and balanced on a network of strings. The lines clung to my skin. They seemed insignificant and fragile but held my weight. She wrapped me tight with more strings that emerged from her abdomen, and I felt hugged and loved. It was good to feel contact, to feel pressure from something outside myself holding me tight. It was like the embrace of a mother or a lover or both. She hummed a song out from her carapace as she worked.

Once I was wrapped tight, she looked at me. She ran her appendages through my wiry hair, gently taking out the many knots. I closed my eyes and enjoyed her touch. “Are you sure you want this? You give of yourself with willingness? I would never take that which isn’t given freely.”

I nodded my head. “I love you. I want to be a part of you forever.”

“I loved you, too.”

She dug her mandibles into my neck, and I smiled as she drank me away.