I don't know. Gross.

Once upon a time there was a little girl who was really an adult by any other culture's standards with a bad "Rachel" haircut and a bunch of band t-shirts with sweat stains on the pits. She thought she was beautiful in a secret kind of way because she was a fucking idiot and had yet to be crushed by the bloody gummy jaws of reality in the grown up world.

That little girl was me once.

It was late at night or early in the morning when I snuck into Brock's lab with the key I had stolen while he slept. The lab was dark and unfamiliar. I had only been there a couple times before, to visit him, to gain his trust, to bring him lunch or a coffee, to pick him up after work and bring him back to my place so he could boss me around in bed while I pretended I was somewhere else.

That little girl went to class every day and studied in all of her free time. She loved her boyfriend and her friends with all of her heart. She wore her hair in pigtails when she danced at the gym. She cried in the movie Garden State and in any movie where a short brunette girl cries. She really liked scrabble and didn't drink or smoke. She wanted to marry her boyfriend, my boyfriend, and live happily ever after.

I got to Brock's corner of the lab and crawled into the machine. There weren't any instructions or anything but I figured he wouldn't have made it dangerous and then strapped those poor little chimpanzees in. I taped the electrodes to my temples, closed my eyes, and let go of 2013, and disappeared from existence, or rather flooded everywhere into existence, falling backward, falling away.

I saw me longboarding through the quad in baggy capris and a Velvet Underground t-shirt. Halfway through the quad I jumped off my longboard and ran to hug a tall, handsome, half Asian man carrying a pile of books. He leaned down but didn't hug me back because his hands were full. 19 year old Barbara danced and laughed and tried to jump up to kiss him on the cheek. Not being tall enough, and not getting any sort of help on his end, she ended up kissing his shoulder. Then she longboarded away.

Mike continued walking in the opposite direction without looking back at 19 year old me.

I jogged into the quad and ran right up to him. He frowned at me from far away and stared at me hard as I got closer. I stopped in front of him. His brow furrowed and he hugged his books to his chest. His lips dropped open. He took a step back.

"Mike, it's me Barbara, well from the future."
"What is this?" he said. "Is this a joke?"
"No I swear. I'm Babs from year 2013."
"Babs?"
"I go  by Babs now."
"Gross."
"Kid, can we talk?"
"Don't call me kid, I'm older than-"
"Are you?"
"I don't know how this works."

We went quickly to the art building and entered an empty classroom. The classrooms were mostly on the basement level and the galleries were on the above ground level. This one had a bunch of long wooden paint splattered tables and smelled like old clay. I turned to face Mike as he adjusted his hoodie strings.

"I really came to warn 19 year old Barbara about you," I said.
"Why? Wait I don't believe any of this." Mike put his head in his hands. I gazed at his dark wavy falling over thick eyebrows. Under his eyes on his cheekbones were a sprinkle of freckles that I had missed. I paced hurriedly around the art room.
"You're going to break her heart into a million pieces. You're not that into her, but she's in love with you."
"I love her too."
"You what?" I stopped short, pivotted and looked back.
"I love her." Mike was staring at me intently with dark chocolate eyes.
"You never told her...me.... In three years you never said..." I breathed heavily.
"I never told her... you... that I did because I was so scared of losing her..."
"Well you push her away to the point that she has a nervous breakdown and doesn't eat for a week," I said pointedly.
"Hot." He walked toward me seriously.

I laughed in spite of myself. I didn't know what to do with this newfound information. I gazed at my college boyfriend. He was looking at me with sweetness and care in his eyes. How could I have never realized how much he liked me? I guess my low self esteem was getting in the way.

"Barbara..." He said, choking a little on the words. "I love you. I think you're wonderful and a genius writer and super weird and special and I do want to spend the rest of my life-"

I reached for his hand gently to comfort him. He grabbed my hand and pulled me into his chest. With his other hand he grabbed my cheek and kissed me deeply. My heart fluttered like it hadn't in five years. He lifted me up and I wrapped my legs around his waist. He sat me down on the wooden table, kissing me, and began undoing his belt. I maintained eye contact while I awkwardly yanked my pants off. Within seconds we were one, together again, in love, and feeling every emotion and tactile vibration in our bodies and minds. He kept kissing me while I came hard in a room where I had once done a presentation about pictures of goldfish, or maybe that hadn't happened yet. He kissed me really hard and passionately and I felt more wanted than I had ever felt in my life. I could feel myself losing grip on reality and I could feel the time space continuum getting really annoyed at me. I looked up into his eyes and ached to tell him something, to beg him to do something, I struggled to cry out to him, but nothing happened and I just kissed him.

I slowly dissolved from the past, fading from Mike's arms, and reappeared in the future, crying in Brock's basement.

Mike gasped and fell forward, losing his balance on the empty table. There was nothing but air in his hands. He coughed and put himself back together.

Outside the art room door, a little girl sat listening through the wall, with her knees pulled up to her chest. Next to her sat a longboard and a backpack. She wiped her tears with her Velvet Underground t-shirt, got up, and ran away.

Love Letters I'm sure got lost in the mail

From the Comic Book Store Clerk:

Hey, you. Let's stop fighting this. We both know how we feel about each other. We both have glasses and awkward cardigans. Let's just sweep these magic the gathering cards off this sticker clad counter and see where the night takes us.

PS. I'll make sure you're facing the Marvel rack.



From My Literature TA in College:

Dear Barbara,

I am writing to inform you, I am so utterly, completely  and hopelessly in love with you. I know we haven't spoken in four years, but alas, your thoughtful prose and clever use of wordplay slayed me eternally. I shall never be able to forget you. You are an amazing writer.



From My Therapist:

I like your personality.



From the guy I liked in college:

Hey, I'm so sorry for all the things I did and said. I clearly was totes in the wrong. I'm sorry I called you thunder thighs and left you at your doctor's appointment, driving off because I thought it was funny. It was funny, but in a mean hurtful way. I miss you so much. You are the most beautiful girl in the world and I know I don't deserve a second chance, but if you were altruistic enough to give me one, I would do everything I could to make you happy for the rest of your life. Also, you still have my Pixies hoodie. You can keep it.



From the guy I like now:

I was such a fucking idiot not to notice how special you are immediately  Let's have a picnic and do kisses in the rain to a Belle and Sebastian song and be in love forever, K?


From the last guy I intercoursed:

Yes, I left that t-shirt in your bedroom because I WANT you to smell it.


From the guy on the bus who looked like a bespectacled Michael Cera:

Yeah, I did just touch your leg with my leg. It wasn't exactly an accident.



From the barista at my coffee shop:

Hey kiddo, every day when you come in here to write, I try to get up the courage to tell you that you're gorgeous and interesting. I want to read everything you write and support you in your art. Here's a free latte.



From anyone:

You're really hilarious.



From my roommate's dog:

Ruff! Ruff! Ruff! Ruff! Ruff! Ruff! Ruff! Ruff! Ruff! Ruff!

Airplane Story

Leaning back in my seat, I pushed my finished comic book away and closed my eyes. It was so almost impossible to sleep in the middle seat. I could sleep like a baby if I could just lean against the window. And the girl in the window seat wasn't even taking advantage of the comfy freezing cold wall right next to her! She was reading some book about science. It's hard flying to LA because all the girls on the plane are all the prettiest girl in the universe, and then they all know how to read. Like, that's supposed to be my one thing, right? Ugh, if I can't rely on my witty personality then I'm gonna have to make friends by selling my armpit juices in a sweatshop. (That's what sweatshops are for, right?)

The flight isn't long but I have three coffees and a bottle of water. I'm writhing in bladder constriction pain. I don't want to get up to use the restroom because I hate the idea of disturbing the girl in the aisle seat. She is working on something for work with grown up work papers. It seems serious.

At the end of the flight, I still haven't urinated yet, and I'm getting ridiculously anxious, which is actually my natural state so I'm kinda comfortable in it. I'm in the back of the plane so when everyone stands up and is gathering their overhead baggage, it seems like it'll take 500 years for the line to move and me to get a chance to get off the plane. I hope up and down in my double hoodie comfy flying uniform and make a executive decision.

With a couple of excuse me's on my part and corresponding dirty looks, I weave through the one row behind me to get to the back of the plane. I let myself into the restroom and hover over the seat, careful not to touch what is probably just as clean as my home bathroom toilet. I pee for about ten gallons and it almost hurts it feels so good. The liquid and toxins and coffee dump out of me like a vibrant dark yellow-orange waterfall of Amazonian glory. As I finish, I wipe, you don't need to know the details. And then I stand up, and promptly and naturally hit my forehead on the sink, and slump to the ground unconsciously.

When I wake up, maybe minutes or days later, I forget where I am. Waking up from being knocked out is not the same as waking up from a good night's sleep, it's even more anxiety inducing. I shake off the tendrils of nightmares and wipe try to wipe away my the images of bloody men who have been skinned and wear their muscles on the outside. I look around and see the white, tiny room, a little bit bigger than a coffin, and I scream.

Outside the bathroom door I look out over the empty plane. I guess no one had noticed me, which is not a novel realization. I see my backpack and ukulele sitting in my empty row, and dizzily I become aware that we are moving.

The windows are white with clouds and I can see mountains miles and miles below us. I look around for a flight attendant or a passenger or anyone, but I don't see one. I'm a bit relieved; I'm not sure what I would say anyway. That kind of "I fucked up and I'm sorry and help I'm the worst" conversation is not a comfortable one. I sit back down in my seat in the back of the plane, resigned to just get off at the next stop, explain what happened, and hopefully get a flight back home from there. Yeah, it sucks, but what else can I do? Then I decide to move to the window seat.

After an undetermined period of time sleeping against the window, my growling stomach woke me up. I hadn't eaten yet that day, which wouldn't have been a problem because I was supposed to land before ten, but now I didn't even know what time it was. I put my hand over my abdomen and cringe. I wasn't enough of a grown up to pack snacks in my backpack. I looked out over the aisle and decided there must be some crew somewhere. I walked past row and row of empty seat, that seemed to go on for hundreds of meters. At the front of the plane, a woman was sitting in a little chair wearing a flight attendant uniform. She was playing a videogame on her DS but she jumped, startled when she saw me.

"Who are  you? How did you get on this plane?" She asked. She looked up and her face was white and thin with deep cavernous eyes.
"I'm so so sorry," I said. "I was on this plane earlier from LA to Portland and then I guess I passed out in the bathroom, not like in a gross way, well maybe in a gross way, but I woke up and the plane was moving..."
"That's impossible," she said.
"Well, it's improbable and weird," I corrected. Why did I need to correct her? She wouldn't give me a peanut bag if I was a snarky know it all. Keep that crap hidden!
"No, we haven't touched down in  years."

I shrugged, knowing she was wrong. "Do you have any snacks aboard?" I asked.
"Er, yes." She rifled in a cabinet and pulled out a tiny packet of green pebbles that looked like dried wasabi pees and tasted like nothing. They filled me up though. Airplane food keeps getting weirder, am I right?

"Thank you," I sat next to her and felt instantly nutirtionalized and full from my snack. "Do you know when we touch down again?" I asked.
"We stop in an hour in Glocomm."
"Huh... Is that a big airport? What state is that in? I'm just asking to see if I can get a flight back to Portland."
"State?"
"Yeah. Are we still on the west coast?"
"I don't know or remember the states of ancient America," she said apologetically. "I know we learned them in school but I guess I forgot some of that trivial knowledge."
"Fine."

I turned on the little tv on one of the seats in front of me. I scrolled through channels. It was all two and a half men, reality tv, reality tv, two and a half men, reality tv, weird creepy alien fake news show, reality tv. I flipped back to the alien fake news show and watched for a few minutes. It was just a green humanish extra terrestrial reporting fake news stories. It wasn't even funny. I frowned, sighed, and turned off the tv.

"So  where did you say you were coming from?" the flight attendant asked.
"LA."
"I don't know it."
"Los Angeles? City of Angels? The city that people mistakenly think is the capitol of California? The place where Buffy spinoff Angel is set?"
"No, sorry."

I turned the television back on. Something felt weird, like I was in a play but I had accidentally gotten the wrong script, so I was dressed as a pumpkin when everyone else was dressed as a mouse. I looked at the flight attendant abruptly. "What's the date?"

"December 14th," she said.
"Oh my god. I was passed out for a whole day? I was sure it was only an hour. I can't believe I missed a day!" I yelled.
"Year 2195," she added with a shrug.

I felt light headed and I asked her to repeat herself. Then I threw up. "I was passed out for 183 years." She thinks I am insane at this point. Sitting there with vomit all over me, starting to cry, and babbling, I do nothing to correct her. "Everyone I know and loved is dead."

The flight attendant brings me some Kleenex, some future Kleenex, and some sort of warm drink. I sit quietly in my seat and she watches me fearfully, like I might attack her, perhaps rightfully so. I buckle up when the sign tells me to and we begin our descent.

Out the window, the city of Gloccum is brown and war torn, smoking and overrun with screaming people in tattered rags. There are people everywhere, running through the streets and fighting, hitting each other with mallets. I don't know what I was expecting, white and silver buildings, floating cars, ipads for boyfriends. We lower into a violent burning decrepit town.

"Is it like this everywhere?" I ask.
"No, some places have more acid rain," the flight attendant offers.

The fasten seat belt sign blinks off. I get out of my seat and go to exit the plane. The attendant directs me to the emergency exit, where I go down stairs onto the runway. There is no fancy airport with a hundred starbuckses and bookstores. There are just planes, lined up on flat ground, and rats running around the feet of the angry mob of pedestrians. Cockroaches squirm and look up at me expectantly.

I hop down from the last step and a tiny golf cart pulls up to us. The flight attendant nods at me and two men hop out of the golf cart and place handcuffs on my wrists. They usher me into the cart with gentle soothing voices. I look out, crying and weak, wishing I had been brave enough to pee when I had had a chance.

UFO

I sat in the living room in my pajamas, late well into the afternoon. The couch conformed under my flannelled buttocks. My laptap grew hot against my thighs and I flicked through the television. Behind me, a light glowed outside the rain splattered window, and a spaceship landed in my backyard.

At first it was an unidentified flying object, but then I identified it, using contextual clues, and thus it became a flying object identified as a spaceship.

I muted the television; I didn't need to see a rerun of How I Met Your Mother more than this. I sat up on my knees on the couch, leaning over the back and looking outside. My messy unbrushed hair clumped in a thick scarf-like hood, getting in my mouth, smelling of old shampoos and coffee.

The spaceship was larger than my mom's car, but smaller than a sad mom's car (ie: suv.) It was white but it wasn't that clean. There were no discernible windows or doors. Four metal poles propped it up on our lawn, which would probably have to be refertilized after this. A circular hole opened in the spaceship, widening until it was about four feet in radius. A pair of black shoes attached to thin long legs swung out and a person fell to the ground.

I opened the backdoor- my parents called it the kid door because when we were little we were told to go in through that door so we wouldn't get outside dirt in the front hallway, but now we were allowed to go through any door because we were adults sort of and we played in dirt less.

A few neighbor ladies were looking over the edge of their fences into our yard. A couple dogs were barking. They thought it was weird I had a mental breakdown and had to move back in with my parents, the neighbor ladies, not the dogs. The dogs were cool.

Ignoring the nosy neighbors, I walked barefoot into our yard and helped the strange man to his feet. He was wearing black pants and a long sleeved black shirt. Maybe he was an artist. His skin was green, which I thought was kind of artsy. His hair was black and curly. As he leaned against my shoulder to get up, I noticed the curve of his arm muscles and his long, elegant, flat and compact torso. My cheeks grew warmer. The green man vomited violently at my feet.

"I'm so sorry," he said. "The landing still gets me a bit spacesick."

Oh, it's okay, I thought. Then I realized I hadn't said it out loud. I hadn't been talking a lot lately and my social skills were a little worse for the lack of use. "It's okay," I said. "I can imagine the ride must be jarring."

"Do you have any... I think you humans call it sprite?" he asked.
"Yeah... well something. Maybe it's fresca, but yeah."
"Oh, lovely."
"Uh-huh." I was aware of my annoying tiny black mustache hairs that were coming in.
"May I have some?"
"Yeah, sure."

My parents were away at work. I invited the alien in. I had accidentally locked the kid door behind me when I came out to check on him so I had to make him wait while I crawled in through the dining room window and then ran to the living room to let him in. He didn't seem annoyed or awkward with that at all.

He came in and sat on a chair at the table. I poured him a glass of fresca, made myself a coffee, and ten I sliced up a tomato and put it on a plate in between us. The alien politely helped himself to a slice of tomato and chewed thoughtfully.

"Thank you so much for the soft drink and the fruit slices." he said.
"Not a problem. My mom bought them."
"Ah."

I looked around. The television was still emanating silent storylines and bright colors of pretty people doing silly things.

"So, where are you from?" I asked.
"It's called Drozquaid. You probably haven't heard of it. It's just like 30 light years outside of Frehman."
"Oh, uh-huh."
"Yeah, you know Frehman?"
"No..."
"Hmm."
"So what brings you to Earth?" I asked.
"Earth?" He looked up, alarmed.
"Yeah," I said. "Why are you here?"
"This is Earth? Galaxy 12700? The Gestarian county?"
"Um... I think? Maybe?" I said.
"Oh god. What year is this?"
"2012."
"Human years... ugh... the conversion of human years is so difficult. You'd think you guys would use the same unit as the rest of the galaxy, but no, you gotta be special."
"Sorry."
"Not your fault."

The green man pulled a tiny notepad from a pocket I hadn't noticed in his sleek outfit. He began working out a math equation. His color faded to mint and he gasped to himself.

"What's up?" I asked.
"I've already said too much," he said. He was getting up. He threw his dishes in the sink, which really wasn't necessary. "I need to go. Something terrible is going to happen to the lifeforms on this planet and I can't be here..."
"What's going to happen?"
"Nothing major, it will only affect humans and most earth animals and plants."
"I'm a human."
"Yeah. No important species to existence will be affected."
"Can you take me with you?"

He looked at me, startled by the question. "Why?"
"I don't want to die... Can we take my family and go pick up some library books for the trip too?"
"No, I don't want to disrupt the history line of time and space. You better stay here."

I grumbled and rolled my eyes but pretended like I understood. The alien rain his long thin fingers through his black hair and smiled kindly at me. "Thanks so much for the snack."

I smiled back at him. He let himself out the backdoor and climbed back up into his space ship using a little white ladder that extended downwards. I didn't walk him to his ship, but watched from inside, on my sofa. I turned the volume back up on the tv and microwaved my coffee. He gave me one last look from the opening. His smooth skin tightened up into what looked like a frown. Then the space ship was closed again, a smooth white egg. The metal legs retracted back up into it and it floated for a moment in out back yard and then it was gone.

tunnel

The rocky pathway crackled under her shoes as she walked beneath the dying trees. The noises ran away to hide in little pockets of sleeping children and snuggle with lint and discarded feelings. A few cars rolled along nearby but out of sight roads. Their roar permeated her ears and sang the song of loneliness.

Every day when she walked home, she passed the tunnel, jutting out of the old rock cliff. It was dark, overgrown, leaking smelly liquid over it's lip like black drool. The tunnel had fallen asleep over the drain pipe, comfortable, and loving, and oozing spitty drool over it's lap.

She looked at her cell phone, which was blank. The walk back from the bus stop to her mom's house lengthened each day. Her legs stretched and tingled as the brisk air whisked through her jeans. She stopped and played with her hair. Living at home was convenient and cheap, but lonely. She rubbed her aching head. The fluorescent lights in her cubicle gave her migraines. The buzzing of the elevators hurt her temples.

She reached in her purse and reached around for her pipe. She desperately craved one of those montages where the protagonist gets high and plays on bumper cars and dances in a daisy field and runs around barefoot and kisses some tall boy with blue eyes.

The movies always show those montages with the girl being quirky and the guy saying things like, "I've never met anyone like you." And it's the best montage and you cry for the protagonists. But they never show the montage a month later when the guy is saying things like, "You're an adult, get out of the bumper cars. Put on some shoes. Learn how to pay a bill and wash your feet for goodness sakes."

In the beginning the audience is like "Oh, she doesn't brush her hair and she mediates in DMVs. She's so goddamn quirky." And the plot escalates and reaches a turning point, then they're like "She doesn't brush her hair and she falls asleep in DMVs. She needs an intervention."

And then the tall boy with blue eyes invariably leaves for someone who understands him better and has her life together and "is attractive because she knows who she is." Despite the fact that the protagonist's inability to understand people and her messy life etcetera had kinda been like super hot initially.

So the protagonist starts drinking and smoking more and she loses her job and she gets a dead end worse office job and she moves out of their apartment and moves back in with her mom. And there is no happy endings or any endings.

The tunnel calls out to her, a soft whisper at first, a gentle verbal inquiry that sounds like her name. She turns and looks at the jutting pipe. Her imagination must have been playing tricks on her. Tunnels couldn't talk. Unless maybe inside the tunnel there was an animal or a person or a baby or a cassette player with a an audio tape of her name. That's ridiculous. The tape player would have run out of batteries.

At home was her bed covered with stuffed animals and her childhood pajamas and boxes of unpacked belongings from their old apartment. There is the family cat sitting in the living room, curled in front of the fire. Her mom would be up in bed, but listening for the front door. There was a bottle of half drank wine in the fridge.

The tunnel whispered, a futile song into the wind. What was the point? There was nothing in the end, just a rock wall. There couldn't have possibly been anything, no light, no air, just darkness. And the beginning was a struggle, a climb, a crawl. The middle was unknown. The ending didn't exist.

Pool

It was prematurely dark when I locked my bike up underneath the thick trees. I let my helmet fall from my head and I snapped it around my messenger bag strap, hanging like an awkward flopping canteen or melon  Inside the public pool I flashed my membership card to the guy behind the counter, with an air of confidence I lacked credence to.

Inside the girls' locker room  I undressed in a stall. It was mostly kids my age, giggling and smiling. There were a few moms, attempting to carall the girls into their clothes or suits, whichever they were changing in to. My mom didn't need to come help me get dressed. I was a star, I thought as I struggled to tuck my newly acquired wiry pubic hair up under my black one piece suit.

I rinsed off in the shower and walked out into the pool room. The smell of chlorine sucked up into my nostrils, absorbed into my brain goo, and permeated the stress of reality, comforting me. Kids screamed and ran around me, their barefoot feet slapping against the wet concrete. The lifeguard whistle blew, high and shrieking through the echoing concrete room.

I stood at the edge of the deep end. I felt all eyes on me, even though they were probably none at all. I dove in what I thought was a graceful swan swoop into the cool slurping waters. Around me kids fought with foam noodles and splashed each other. I rolled my closed eyes at that frivolity and swam forward in smooth mechanical strokes.

The cool water rushed through my subconscious, washing away the stress of chess club drama and the boy in band class who made fun of me when my underwear showed above my sagging jeans. I felt at ease, like I was sleeping. I turned my head and took a breath, my lungs filling with cleansing energy.

Kids laughed around me, their screams diluted by the water blanketing my ears. I imagined they were all jealous of my strong swimming abilities, while they played with their friends. I wondered if everyone was in awe of me, too strong of a swimmer to play with others. They teased each other and pulled on each others' suits. They climbed on each others' shoulders and jumped back off into the water, belly flopping in clumsy loud crashes. And I just swam onward in a straight line.

And these kids would have fun and play and be friends and grow up to have families and homes and jobs with coworkers and girlfriends and puppies. And I had some moderate swimming skills. These little kids screaming cannon ball would get married and grow old and hold hands and play in the falling leaves in the fall. I would practice clarinet and read a lot and work on my technique.

Soon I was one with the water, invisible, made of blue chlorine saturated liquid. I swam back and forth in repeated laps, twirling when I got to the end and shoving off the walls with my feet. I wasn't tired. I was translucent and wet and everywhere. I swam faster and faster. Was the lifeguard impressed? Was he worried I would go too quickly and explode the pool? Was he jealous? Did he see me at all?

The sea monster winked at me and I waved back. They were envious. They were oblivious. They were laughing. I was water. They were screaming. I was solitarily everywhere. At the bottom of the pool was a tiny trap door, just big enough for me. I swam towards it. I hadn't been up to breathe in a while.

The kids were getting pizza after and going to the arcade. They were packing up their bags and heading out. It was time to close the pool. They wouldn't invite me. Maybe they were intimidated. Maybe they would be in a book club. Maybe they would join a commune. I opened the door and swam through into a tiny dark room, just bigger than my body. I closed the trap door above me and sat below in the darkness.

Bookshop

Sam had always felt comfortable in a bookshop ever since he was a little boy. He felt like he could hide in there. He loved the walls of stories closing in to create a maze of corridors that could obscure someone among the stacks. He coveted libraries with ceiling high shelves. When Sam was out in open spaces for too long, he felt anxious and desperate for those stacks. He craved the confining tightness of bookshelves with thick old books, heavy with cardstock, burdened with different voices calling out silently throughout the dimly lit yellowy arenas.

The used bookshop by his childhood home was a castle. The stacks stood like guards with their swords in a salute. The shelves tunneled in, as if trumpeters were about to announce the royalty. Sam imagined that the aisles between shelves were like red carpeted pathways leading to the throne, the raised platform of the cashier, who looked over the wooden pedestal from beneath white fine hair and dusty glasses. He himself was a used character from a used book, a storybook king who had already spun his yarn and know sat waiting for the other narratives to wrap it up so he could go to sleep.

Sam had taken Denise to a bookshop as part of their first date. They had gotten coffee and it was uncomfortable and awkward and sweaty, so it had gone pretty well. Sam felt out of place as he escorted Denise down the street, until he saw a bookshop. He suggested they walk through, and she found it charming. Sam found a few things he was looking for and Denise called him the next day to ask him for drinks.

The bookshop on fifth was particularly nice and dusty. Sam loved it and went there once a week, just to browse, on his way to work. The lady behind the counter said it would close soon and that made Sam nostalgic inexplicably. The bookshop on fifth was way older and emptier and less hipster funkified than the one he had taken Denise to. Denise had never come to the one on fifth. Maybe she had without him, with a girlfriend, with her mom when they went out to brunch, but never with him.

When Abigal (he made up a name for the girl behind the counter; it seemed to fit) told him the shop was closing, Sam decided to try to patronize it more, to help them out. Abigail said it was a lost cause. She smiled at him with chapped lips and pet her cat that jumped from the top shelf to her shawled shoulders without misstepping.

Sam asked if he could buy this book he was holding and she said he could just have it.

Denise hadn't bought anything that night of their first date. She was still in the middle of reading something and didn't want to get seduced by a new story and neglect the old one. New things attracted her. She loved figuring out puzzles and riddles. As soon as the plot of a book was obvious, she would speed read through the end so she could start something new, delve into a new world, start a new adventure, struggle to surprise herself.

Sam didn't surprise Denise. He was quiet and mild mannered. They watched television together and sat at coffee shops and worked or read the paper together. They didn't go on walks in the autumn leaves like he had always wanted to, and like she had always wanted to but never told him. They watched movies in the theater. They listened to live music at bars. They filled their ears and brains with everything except the others' words.

The book Sam bought was tiny and green. There was only a black outline of a man taking off one of his shoes on the cover, no title. Sam started reading it as he walked home. He could read while walking. He had a plethora of wonderful qualities.

Denise had curly brown hair and an impish nose and wore 1920's fashion with little bucket hats and pump heeled shoes. She had librarian glasses and spoke eloquently while holding herself with perfect posture. She had used to be a dancer, but she rarely danced anymore. Sam hadn't known. Sometimes when she was home alone, she would put on music and dance until she was sweaty and panting. And then she would button back up her shirts and resume her persona.

The book was full of nonsequittors and short stories that formed a bigger idea that was huge and empty simultaneously. The structure of the writing was so that Sam found it pretentious and then he got used to it and then he liked it. It was like a long narrative poem, a sonnet, a love letter to loneliness.

His shoes grew damp, saturated in the puddles. He wasn't watching where he was going and his pant legs soaked upwards. The streets grew darker, and he squinted, pulling the pages closer to his face, blocking out the world he walked through. The book sang to him, and it was pretty enough to drown out the screaming of the wind and the angry sobbing of the trees, bawling onto the pavement with recycled rain water as tears.

Abigail watched him walk out the door and then checked her watch. She pet her cat and began to count the register. It was time to close up the shop and Sam had been the only person she had spoken to all day. Soon she would forget how to use her vocal chords. Her voice grew smaller daily as it became covered in cobwebs of disuse.

Sam opened up the door to his apartment and poured himself a big cup of milk and a beer. Denise would have found this combination disgusting had she been there, but probably not vocalized it. Sam curled up on the couch, turned on the news, and sat there absorbed in his book, behind the shelves of rain that poured around him life safe bordering walls.

into the storm

I hunckered my gym duffle bag over my shoulders, probably looking like an idiot with my backpack and purse dangling from my tottering body. I let the doors close on me before I pressed a button. I saw her face staring blankly at me for one last second. Once shut I pressed the lobby button. I felt myself floating downwards at a rapid smooth pace.

Everything I had brought to work in four years was crammed onto my body. There had been a lot of things I left there that I probably shouldn't have, but I just felt so awkward with them watching me clean out my desk drawers that I rushed through it. Whilst I beavered away at my desk drawers, she had her arms folded across her chest, staring straight at me. My eyes stayed on the floor, not making eye contact.

"Are you ready?" She asked.
"Oh," I said. "R-right now?"
"Yes."
"So no going away cake for me then?"

She didn't smile.

The elevator walls squeezed inwards, applying pressure to the air vibrating around my body. The wood panels leaned in and the ceiling pressed down, heaving heavily under some dark weight on the top of the lift. Perhaps there had been a tubby monster on top. I don't know how I was able to feel the air squeezed in, wrapping hot sticky fingers around my neck, pursing dull dentisty music into my throbbing eardrums. The doors opened and I laughed out loud manically.

The lobby of my building felt unfamiliar even after four years of passing through it multiple times per day. The bright fluorescence lights shone fuzzily as if through a filter. Everything felt softer, sleepier. The whole meeting had taken five minutes and now it was done and I was down in the lobby. Lawyers and clients I knew rushed through the gold trimmed shining hallways. They barked into their cell phones and clacked their heals on the ground. The sound resonated through a muter in my mind. Everyone looked strange and slightly different than usual, as if they were all wearing masks that had been custom designed to look similar to their faces. I didn't say hi to anyone. Hallways and shops in the building seemed unrecognizable. I felt too lost and confused to be scared.

Outside was a frothing storm of tiny blue flowers. The winds lashed against the front doors of my building. The strong winds tore the petals from the trees outside down, shook them from their home, and hurtled them angrily against the clear pane of our front doors.

Balanced uneasily under pounds of luggage and kilograms of confusion, I opened the door. A gust of sharp breeze whisked in, and several stuffy people turned to look at me. Dozens of dime sized turqoise and blue flowers intermingled with pinkie sized perfectly oval dark green leaves. The fluttering spun around my head, causing me to sneeze. I stepped out and let the door close behind me.

I turned to the left and looked down an empty long winding ally. I didn't have anywhere to be. By which I do not mean I didn't have any plans or arrangements for today. I'm not saying I have a loosely booked week or some free nap time. I'm saying I didn't have any plans for my lifetime. I didn't have any reason to go in any direction because I had no where to go. I didn't have anywhere to be, physically, ever.

I let my heavy duffle bag and backpack fall from my shoulders onto the empty dirty side walk. I wouldn't need those things anymore. I didn't need anything. I lifted my arms up above my head, reaching my hands to the clouds. I closed my eyes and tilted my head back. I felt my hair swing loose from the braid, aided by the tumultrous breeze, and smack the back of my shoulders. My hair flew into my face and I laughed again. I careened my fingers, as if wiggling them in a putty. The violent storm lifted me up by my skirt, which quickly balooned into a parachute, and tugged me upwards.

I didn't scream as I soared up above the ground. I didn't even feel fear as I turned upside down and the blood rushed to my head. If I had no where to be on the earth, who's to say being up here in the sky was any worse or better? I tumbled through gales and clouds, giggling sadly in the freezing mist.

birthday

Adam sat in front of the television on the concrete floor. He tried to change the channel, but the same program was on every one. I stood behind him, leaning against the dark wall. My arms were folded across my chest and one of my legs was bent.

"...first actual baby born in four months," the broadcaster was saying. His teeth were white and huge. He smiled like his mouth was trying to get out of his skull.

As usual there were images of the bloody labor, the sweat drenched heaving mother, and crying doctors and nurses. The kid itself was a disgusting mess, covered in slimy goo from the vagina it just popped out of. Until the next one was born, this one would be worshiped and heralded as a savior. Its eyes were closed and it was screaming, which I might do too if the first sensation I knew in my existence had been dozens of cameras being pointed directly at me.

I had seen hundreds of these birthday celebration programs. They cancelled everything else, forcing us to watch the miracle of life whenever it happened. What followed on the television would be interviews with the friends, family, and anyone in that town who they could get. The president would give a speech about how we were turning around as a species, making a comeback, stronger than ever before, and the citizens would sing patriotic songs and believe that things could be better. The media would illuminate a hope, buried deep in many human beings, that maybe they could take back their planet and incite a new utopia of beauty and peaceful rule.

"This is crap," Adam said.
I put the bottom of my braid in my mouth and sighed. "It's gonna be on all day," I mumbled. "Just turn it off."

My quiet voice was almost swallowed by the sounds of chanting and singing from beyond our walls. Outside any actuals in town were drinking and celebrating. We stayed inside because the last time an actual baby was born, there were a plethora of exterminations of our kind. It wasn't called "killing" when an actual destroyed one of us. It was more like removing unwanted pests and problems. Sometimes it was like hunting. In some towns, it was hunting.

They were never even investigated or reported as murders; we weren't afforded any such rights to life. The actuals were ecstatically high on the energy from the birth, and I wanted to be happy for them but it's hard when they hate me with such uninhibited and inexplicable passion. I want to love them, but as the expression goes, I am only inhuman. They call me names at the grocery store and pull my hair as I walk to the factory for work. They grabbed at my meek brown burlap dresses that enveloped an athletic designed body. They call me soulless.

Adam turned the TV off and pulled out his book from the government issued desk drawer and handed it to me. "Read to me, please?"
I took the book from him, holding it's weathered spine in my hands. "Why don't you read?"
He shook his head, locks of perfect hair falling over his face. "Too hard."
"You have to keep practicing," I said. "Here, at home. Don't do anything like reading or drawing or writing in public ever."

We weren't supposed to have any emotions, so writing, reading, drawing, and any hobby for leisure or creative release was considered incongruous with our functions and therefore disturbing to anyone who saw. Even when other clones saw me reading they became upset by the image. Us displaying emotions is unsettling, like seeing a small child holding a gleaming sharp knife.

I watched Adam furrow his perfect brow and fumblingly flip pages in his book. His lips moved as his eyes squinted. All I wanted for him was a better life than mine.

We both jumped as there was a furtive rapid pounding on our door. I walked across the tiny dark room and placed my head against the doorway to listen. We weren't allowed windows in our apartments.

"Don't open it," Adam whispered. He had quietly crept up behind me. The lamp light fell on his perfectly constructed cheekbones.
"I don't hear anything," I whispered back, with my cheek against the wood. "I'm sure it's not an angry mob. They'd be a teensy bit louder."
"Could be a silent mob."
"What's that?" I asked
"Humans doing some sort of deceptive ruse."
"I have never heard an angry mob be this reserved and contained."
"How many angry mobs have you heard?"
"Um, five, I believe."
"I don't want you to open it."
"Just put your book away..."
"Because it is an angry mob, isn't it?"
"No. I don't know. Just in case."

Adam, the closest thing one of us could have to a brother, assumed a blank expression and a still spiritless pose. I put my hand on the doorknob, curled my fingers around the brass and turned.

together

Abby allowed her finger tips to caress the spines of the books. The bookshelves lined two of the four walls in the office, stretching from the floor to the ceiling. His desk sat along the third wall with the window, overlooking a garden. Piles of literature, mostly fiction, were stacked taller than she could reach, encasing thousands of hours of stories and adventures and escapes. She outstretched my arms and spun around in a circle singing in a high pitched offtune voice, "The hills are alive..."

"Sorry, baby," said Matt, sitting at his desk without looking up. "I just need to get this work done really quick."
"Don't be sorry," Abby said with a happy grin. "Why would you apologize, sweetheart?"

Matt typed for a minute. The bright computer glared into his eyes. His back was towards her. His strong shoulders were wrapped in a green t-shirt that Abby adored. He was hunched over his computer, which lit up his face and neck, sending a glowing glint off his glasses. The glasses framed the sparkling eyes that she had fantasized about for years before they had hooked up. She had idolized him for so long before he had ever noticed her. She had dreamed about him incessantly but she had never dreamed about the two of them together because even in her fantasies she lacked that kind of hubris. Now it was reality. Unable to contain her desire to be in his arms anymore, she gave an uncontrollable yelp and ran to him.

"You're so handsome," she said. She kissed the back of his head and hugged his shoulders.
"No, I know I'm not." He kept his back to her. She leaned into him, smelling his neck.

Abby tugged the fabric of her new dress, hoping Matt would comment on it. Her bare feet rocked back and forth on the clean carpet. She twirled around again, singing, "...with the sound of music..."

"I'm working on this new program where I design this character with two heads-" Matt started.
"That's awesome! Like two heads with separate personalities or...?" Abby jumped in abruptly and then trailed off, looking out the window. Her stomach growled and she put her hand over it. "Our robot baby is hungry."

Matt looked up at her for the first time since she'd come into the room. His eyebrows were down, narrowed over his forehead. His lips were tightly closed. His eyes were tired, but sparkled nevertheless. "Sorry, you go ahead," he said politely.
"What?" She grinned down at him. She arched her back downward and kissed his cheek.
"Go ahead and finish your thought, baby."
"Oh. Um. No, I wasn't trying to talk over you. I just thought you were done talking."
"Well, I wasn't. But you go ahead."
"Okay. Oh, I don't remember it anymore." Abby shrugged and gave a sharp laugh. Matt sighed again. Abby looked back over at him "So what's the thing you're working on?"

Matt frowned and looked back at his computer. He rubbed his eyelids beneath his glasses. He looked back at his computer and stared at the paragraph he'd been working on for the last hour. It was growing dark outside and he still had hours of work to do. He was swamped at work, and he barely got any sleep as is with Abby over every night. She had so much energy, an effervescent boundless overflow of emotions that had initially rendered her quirky and endearing, but now the hyper outbursts were the scraping of a knife against a plate that sat in his brain, unwashed and waiting for her to finally maybe think about doing a dish once in a while.

Obliviously, Abby playfully put a strand of her long messy hair in her mouth while absentmindedly picking books from the shelf. She never seemed to put them back in the right place. Through a muffled mouthful of her own hair, she sang to herself a whimsical song about kittens that she had made up. Matt cracked his neck. The shadows crowded in through the window, casting his once warmly lit office into cold empty darkness, a gloomy cave of suffocating fear.

Opening to the first page in a sci-fi horror novel, Abby spat the hair out of her mouth. "What do you want for dinner, Matt?"

"Jesus, baby! I'm trying to work!" Matt said loudly. He slammed his fist on the table and Abby jumped. Her eyes widened and her lips parted. He looked up at her, turning halfway in his swivel office chair. She took a step back. Her lip quivered. His voice quickly resumed the soft, gentle tone. "I'm sorry. I know I'm annoying. I know you hate it when I try to get work done. I'm so annoying."

"Matt, I never said that!" Her eyes bloated like an engorged drowning rat. She stepped towards him, reaching out, and he leaned back, away from her, looking down at his desk. Her hand fell to her side. The room seemed to be moving around them, as if they were on a very smoothly running train hurtling somewhere unknown in the darkness.

"Sorry, baby, I know you are disappointed and annoyed with me."
"Sweetie, no, I never said that!" Abby yelled. She waved her arms anxiously, desperately in a flourishing brandishing motion. Her voice escalated to a higher pitch and she could feel herself on the verge of tears inexplicably. She wasn't sure what was happening.
"Please stop yelling at me," he pleaded.
"Matt... I'm not yelling at you!" she screamed at top volume. "I never have! I never do!"
"Okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

Abby pounded her fist into her thigh, releasing a sharp pain that almost felt refreshing in her mind numbing rage induced trance. Her lips twitched and her chin wrinkled up like a pug. "Okay. I can tell you don't wanna hang out tonight. I'm just gonna leave you alone." She choked and tears poured down her cheeks and onto her chest as if running off in tiny gutters of insecurity.

"Fine. Leave me. I know you want to." Matt's eyes watered also, much quieter and more graceful than Abby's. Their mutual inner turmoil was a malicious monster that thirsted for these tears, licking it's lips expectantly.
"I'm not leaving you!" she screeched. She ground her fingernails hard into her palms. Her tears grew snotty and her voice cracked as she began to blubber like a gooey baby. Matt's neighbor's dog barked from the apartment next door. Matt winced.
He said, "It's okay. I know you don't want to be with me."

They weren't crying together. They wept separately, alone on two different islands identically floating in the same ocean.

"What? Are y-y-you breaking up with me?" Abby stammered. "Can we talk about this?"
"We are talking about this."
"Do you want t-t-to...?"
"This is all you, baby."
"Then please don't... don't break u-u-up..." she sobbed.

Abby shook violently and leaned against the wall with the door. She slid to the ground, unable to stand she was crying so hard. She bent her knees and pulled them inwards, tucked her head down and sobbed into her lap. Her skirt piled up around her waist. Snot ran through her long wavy hair, globbing it into a messy congealed nest. Tears soaked the weird dress she looked frumpy in but mistakenly thought made her look "adorkable." Chubby unshaven white thighs poked out from the dress, clapping against each other as she writhed. Her skirt rose up enough that her pink and turquoise little girl underwear flashed into view. Her sobs were loud and shrill like a child's. She cried so hard she started hicupping and rocking back and forth, struggling and gasping to breathe. Oxygen was tight and thick around her, strangling her snotty throat like a throbbing snake.

"Fine. Okay."
"Matt?"
"You win. We're staying together. Whatever you want."
"Please hold me?" Abby blubbered.

Matt sighed and walked away from his desk and knelt beside Abby on the floor. He put his arm around her trembling shoulders. His voice dropped to the gentle soothing tone. "You're okay. We're together. We're fine."
"Together?"
"Yes. Let's never talk about this again."
"Okay."

Long coffee line

The smells of roasted beans soaked into my hair and clothes like a moist fog in a swamp. I tapped my high heeled shoe on the linoleum floor, painted to look much classier than it was. My toes scraped across the floor, shiny and plastic like Mrs. Johnson my 10th grade English teacher.

I stared at the back of the head of the woman in front of me. She had gray hair up in a short bob. I could see a few inches of wrinkly neck rolling out behind her collar, like folds of dough for an unbaked hairy mole-freckled pie. She half turned, almost as though she felt me staring at her. We both looked down at our watches. I didn't have a watch so I looked at my ipod. My ipod looked back up at me with a snicker at my futile empty existence.

I had been on my ten minute break from work for twelve minutes now and I was still three people from the front of the line. The gentleman at the front of the line was getting four frappucinos which take the longest of anything to make. He watched them blend the coffee with a drooling grin while I crossed my arms and exhaled loudly.

After the frappucino glugger, the woman in front of me went up to order and asked about every question possible about the menu. Her voice was crackly like dead leaves covering the deck at my parent's house.

"What's the difference between a cappucino and a late?" she asked. "Well, what specifically is foam? Oh... Um... What's the difference between a cappucino and a late?"

I rolled my eyes. It's starbucks. How do you not know the menu yet? Like I'm the only one who's parents dropped her off at coffee shops as a child when they couldn't get a baby sitter?

Finally it was my turn at the front of the line. I made eye contact with the barista, who was a bit shorter than me. I spread my legs and centered my weight into my heals so I could stare her dead in the eyes. I said, "May I use your restroom?"

"Sure, the code to get into the door is 1234-"
"My cousin Kelly couldn't make it but he says how's your turnip field," I interrupted abruptly.
"Oh, it's you," said the barista, raising her eyebrows and curling one lip upward. Her voice dropped to a whisper, "The code is 2221."
"Thanks," I chirped.

I typed the code into the bathroom door handle and it beeped twice and then unlocked. I turned the handle and stepped inside, but instead of the mainstream starbucks bathroom I stepped through a trap door that had opened in the floor as a result of my code. The steps lead down into a dark cave. The door slammed shut above me.

Far away a glimmering light cast shadows across the cave wall and dimly lit the pathway. The walls were made of dirt and rock, with bits of roots and worms wriggling out of them. The ground was hard and solid. I folded my arms into each other, hugging my waist, shrinking between the narrow walls. Looking back, the stairs had already disappeared and there was an endless passageway that way as well. I smirked and headed towards the light.

Snakes and rats slithered and scampered respectively across the dirty earth. I took off my high heels and walked barefoot, feeling the cold solid reality beneath my feet. It felt so hard and sturdy. My toes wriggled appreciatively. "Thank you for the authenticity of existence!" yelped my toes. "Shut up, toes," I whispered back.

At the end of the long corridor was a coffin. Or maybe it was a wooden kayak that someone had hinged a lid onto. Regardless, the lid was ajar slightly, revealing a soft cushioning bedding of blankets, snuggling against each other invitingly. A lit lantern hung from the curved ceiling, casting shadows across the cave.

Beyond the coffin kayak, the cave sharpened into a cliff and overlooked a deep underground cavern below. It was so deep that I couldn't see the bottom.

"Hi," said a high pitched nasally voice.
I pivoted around and found myself face to face with a woman in business attire, wearing sensible shoes, her hair in a neat bun, manicured nails, shaved armpits, and normal classy glasses. Despite her cold expression, I could tell exactly who she was.

"Hey," I said. "You look terrible."
"I know," My grown up self responded.
"Are you okay?"
"Um.... I don't... I don't think so?"

As she stuttered this my grown up self's face began to flake in dry tufts. Some of her hair fell out. The shadows beneath her eyes deepened.

"Shit." I took a step toward her.
"No, this is... the way it should be..." Her smile was gentle and reassuring.

She stepped around me, seemingly losing weight and becoming more frail before my eyes. Her knees cracked as she stepped forward. Reflexively, I shoved my arm outward and she leaned on it. She was at least thirty pounds less than me. She used my arm to steady herself as she climbed into the kayak. She lay down in the nest of blankets and rested her head on the fluffy pillow.

"There's no going back if we do this," I said.
"Good."

She reached up and used the last of her strength to pull the lid over herself. She didn't wave or do anything dramatic. She simply slid the heavy wooden lid into place and she was gone from sight. I sighed and pushed. The coffin tumbled down off the cliff, below the ledge, and toppled down into the cavern. Gradually the dark wood faded into the blackness. The only sense I had that it had been there at all was a far away splash I heard from below. I imagined the kayak floating in a river miles below the earth surface, swinging along to the gentle rocking motion, and her looking up at the pitch darkness, with a relaxed sigh on her lips.

pocket dial

I sat, staring at the computer, vaguely perusing the news but not really reading it, and listening to the waterfall sound of my ambition and education cascading out of my ears. My boss walked by and I minimized the news. She crossed her arms and made a high pitched sound close to a rabbit's dream dying. Then she went back into her office.

The telephone rang and I answered it flatly. The words fell out of the receiver into my brain matter. "I'm trying to reach Attorney John Staton, but he's not answering," the caller said almost in an accusatory tone.

I stared at the screen, fiddling idly with my cursor. "...Want me to transfer you to his voicemail then?"

"No, he's not answering."

"Oh."

The flickering fluorescent lights bounced off the rotten eggshell colored walls, winking at my apathy, grinning at my displeasure. A clock ticked as I grew seconds and minutes older and the whir of the elevators washed away any natural sounds of happiness.

This monotony continued for several dead moments. I browsed the craigslist classifieds for a new job but nothing seemed exciting. When you first get depressed, you want to rid your life of the misery. But after a few months, there's a point in depression where you don't want to do anything at all. Does change involve any effort whatsoever? I just want to turn into a caterpillar. Is that cool?

The phone rang again and I answered it. "Good afternoon, name of job, how may I help you?" After a second the caller didn't say anything. I could hear rustling noises and a far away sounding voice. I rolled my eyes. It was a pocket dial. I was about to hang up, but then I heard a bird whistle somewhere in the background. I ground the receiver tighter against my ear and continued to listen. There was a jingle of change and a loud flap of fabric and even occasionally a beep. I found myself riveted to the pocket dial, unable to hang up on this mistake. It was obviously a cellphone, stuck inside someone's pocket, calling out to me for some reason, invitingly.

I poised the maroon office phone directly in front of my face and squinted at the receiver.

"Hello?" I called out. My voice echoed inside some stranger's pocket.

Headfirst, I crammed my head into the receiver of the phone, and then squeezed my shoulders together to get my arms in. Once my shoulders were clear I sorta dove into the phone, thrusting hard to get my hips through and escaped from my office into the unknown.

Inside the phone there was a curving tunnel just tall enough for me to stand and barely wide enough. I walked through the gloomy telephone cavern. A bat flew past my head and I ducked. I kept my arms and hands in front of me in a futile attempt to protect and guide myself in the poor low light. As I walked, I could feel the floors rumbling beneath me.

The tunnel reached an end, concluding in a jagged cliff overlooking a dark cave. I looked below and saw only darkness. I jumped from the ledge of the tunnel and fell into the soft fabric of the pocket.

The floors stopped their stupid rumbling and everything halted and remained still as I fell into the abyss.

My weight must have added some pressure when I landed. A hand reached into the pocket, felt around for a second, and then grabbed me by the back of my shirt and pulled me out. The daylight was glaringly bright after the dark tunnel. I wondered how long I had been in the darkness.

Outside I could hear birds chirping, cars honking, and women laughing in the distance. I could smell a mixture of soap, Indian food, and trees. With my dayjob I didn't get outdoors a lot in the daytime during the week. This felt like a special field trip except I wasn't going to let any jerks draw pictures of boobs on two sticky notes and subtly stick them to my back.

When my eyes finally adjusted I was looking into the eyes of a young man about my age. He was holding me up by my shirt with two fingers because I was pocket sized. His brows were raised over his glasses and his brown eyes looked at me with gentle curiosity and sparkle.

"Hello!" I chirped up at him, my voice an indiscernable squeak. As I laid claim to existence, I began to grow back towards my normal size. Within seconds I was too heavy for the pocket bearer to hold up with two pinched fingers and he dropped me. I grew back to my normal height, stood up, dusted off my skirt, and thanked whatever spiritual karmic bullshit had allowed my clothing to conformingly change sizes along with me.

"H-h-hey," the gentleman said, pushing his glasses up his nose. "Were you just in my pocket?"

"Yes. It was nice. You must have good cleaning habits."

"Oh, thank you."

"No, thank YOU."

He looked at me for a second, clearly unclear of my backstory, and he wasn't the only one. I chuckled at nothing and shifted my weight from foot to foot. The pocket dialer man shrugged and jammed his hands in his pockets. We both looked into each other's eyes at the same time and then immediately redirected our gaze to our feet.

"So, I guess I should get going," he said.

"Oh... okay," I replied.

"Unless you, um, wanted to..."

"Well, sure, I probably have no reason to go back to work at this point."

"Yeah."

He gestured in a direction and I nodded and ventured onward.

MSN Messenger Chat with 15 Year Old Me

Due to a rift in the space time continuum, I was able to log on through the internet to reach out ten years into the past to talk to myself as a teenager and attempt to give myself some advice and encouragement during the sulky high school years.

25 year old me: Hey, younger self,

Charmedfan224: Hey dude! Wassup?!

25 year old me: We don’t have a lot of time before the space time continuum returns to normal, so I gotta make this quick. I just wanted to say, hang in there. I know high school can be isolating and anxiety inducing, but it doesn’t feel that way forever, little Barbara.

Charmedfan224: I’m not little. I’m hella fat.

25 year old me: No, no you are not. And when you get to be older, you’ll wish that you appreciated that body while you had it, instead of constantly hating it.

Charmedfan224: Eww, gross, so you’re like fat!!

25 year old me: No. So, okay, what I’m trying to say is, I know you’re super depressed and all, but it’s going to work out okay. Everything that gave you panic attacks in high school won’t even matter to you as an adult.

Charmedfan224: You don’t get panic attacks anymore?

25 year old me: Um. Well.  

Charmedfan224: Yesterday, I had a panic attack in marching band practice, and I peed my pants, and I was sitting next to Steve, but I just told him I spilled soda so totally tricked him! Yay!

25 year old me: Smart thinking.

Charmedfan224: So, what’s Steve like as an old man?

25 year old me: I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since high school.

Charmedfan224: STEVE AND I BREAK UP?!? WHAT DID YOU DO?

25 year old me: Me? I… I didn’t do anything.

Charmedfan224: You need to tell me exactly specifically why he broke up with you so I can prevent it from happening!! Did I not touch up my black nail polish often enough? Were my combat boots not as clumpy as the other girls? Were the pink streaks in my hair too “cute pink” and not “punk pink” enough?

25 year old me: I don’t even remember.

Charmedfan224: How could you not remember losing the love of your life?!?! Are you like totally stupid or something?

25 year old me: Listen, little Barbara, you’re gonna fall in love so many times and get your heart broken a lot, and it’ll hurt a hell of a lot but afterwards Mom will take us out for shopping and ice cream.

Charmedfan224: Haha! You still hang out with Mom! That’s so embarrassing! Tell me at the very least you don’t let her walk next to you!

25 year old me: ….

Charmedfan224: Gross! You’re like a little baby! I bet everyone thinks you’re a little baby! Hahaha!

25 year old me: My therapist says I’m emotionally mature enough for my age. Never mind. I just… I just wanted to tell you that it all turns out okay.

Charmedfan224: Does it? Does Morrissey get our letter and get The Smiths back together?

25 year old me: No. I don’t know. I don’t really keep up with music trivia news so much anymore.

Charmedfan224: Oh, does your boyfriend not care about music?

25 year old me: I don’t have a boyfriend.

Charmedfan224: Why?

25 year old me: I’m just taking some time and working on me right now.

Charmedfan224: What does that mean?

25 year old me: I don’t know anymore.

Charmedfan224: Okay, so I have a chat room date with the girls from the Dawson’s Creek fan club in an hour, so if I want to have enough time to call Rebecca I better log off now. I just want to tell you… good luck with everything. I’m sorry your life sucks so much. Maybe there’s like a band camp for adults? Best of luck to you, old Barbara!

chocolate

(Dedicated to Ross Parsons.)

The television blared with shrill music as the group of top models floating around their oversaturated bright colored lives. They flung their beautiful hair around the camera and complained about the competition. Stephanie scrunched up her face, squinting at the screen. Whenever it said the age of the models, she was always surprised, not that she thought they were older or younger, just ageless beings. Their shiny lives glowed in the dark silence of the night. She took another bite of pizza and spilled a droplet of sauce on her bed.

She looked down at the tiny stain on the green sheet. Slowly resting her beer on the nightstand, she rose and ran her hands over the bed. Loosening the fitted sheet she tossed it unceremoniously into the laundry bin. She hugged her arms to herself and looked at the pile of dirty fabric. She hadn't done laundry since the accident. She hadn't done anything to the bedroom at all. It had been a month and now, due to her pizza clumsiness, she was obligated to wash away the last trace of Steve's smell.

Leaving the television on, Stephanie floated downstairs into the chocolate shop. In her pajamas and a pair of flip flops, she unlocked the door and surveyed the clean, quiet little room. She was no stranger to insomnia, but it was getting worse. She listened to nothing, to her quiet apartment upstairs. Now, no one woke up and noticed she was gone.

Nightly, she would haunt her chocolate shop, careful to keep the noise down as she worked, even though there was no one left to disturb.

While she chopped up cocoa beans, the cat crawled in through the crack in the window and rubbed itself against her calves. Stephanie smiled down at the black feline, and the sweetness of it stung. She poured ingredients into a pan and turned the stove on. A tiny tear ran down her cheek and fell onto her breast. Placing her palms on the tile, she leaned heavily against the counter. A low, fatigued moan escaped her chest and she looked down into the brewing pot.

Shining in the dark brown pool was a light reflection. Stephanie leaned close, furrowing her eyebrows at the glimmer. The reflection could have been a pattern of her hair shadows, or a weird light thing, but it looked exactly like him. The harder she stared, the more she was sure. He looked up at her, and just as he started to notice and realize that it was her, the chocolate started boiling and he disappeared, sucked under and drowned into the bubbles.

Knocking over a bottle of something and a can of coconut, Stephanie messed with the dials until the boiling subsided. The chocolate relaxed into a flat sheet, and he was nowhere in the shadows. She plunged her hands into the hot liquid and thrashed the pot off the stove. It clanged against the wall and fell to the floor. Screaming in rage, Stephanie slumped against the counter, collapsing down to the ground, and put her chocolate stained hands up to her face.

She stayed up crying and cleaning the shop all night. She knew that it was impossible. She hadn't seen him; she was overtired and upset and needed to refill her prescription. Light poured into the scoured and exfoliated kitchen. She opened the shop to let customers in. The reality of bright light and chattering tourists gently washed away her fevered hallucination.

Partway through the day a little boy about eleven years old entered wearing a red hockey jersey and a weird airplane pilot style hat. He ordered two cups of hot chocolate and politely sat at the counter.

Stephanie poured the two cups of hot cocoa into white ceramic mugs and there he was again, peering up at her from the brown chocolate, the reflection of her dead husband, smiling and waving straight at her in both mugs of cocoa.

"Whip cream please," said the boy.
"Wha-?" Stephanie said, turning around.
"Whip cream." The little boy looked over his shoulder at the door and smiled. Then he looked at his watch. Then he asked her what time it was. Then he looked at his watch again.

Stephanie hesitantly squirted a flower of whip cream onto one of the cups of brown liquid. But she couldn't force herself to do it twice, to cover Steve up and bury him again.

"Are you waiting for someone?" she said.
"Yep!" The little kid grinned.
"How about... I pour the second cup for your guest when they arrive so it's nice and hot for them?"
"Oh, um, okay. But they'll be here super soon so what if you're like too busy?"
Stephanie looked around at the near empty shop. "I'll be okay."
"I don't want her to wait."
"Oh. A her."
"Yep!"
"Listen, if I'm busy, grab me and I'll stop whatever I'm doing to pour a new cup, okay?"
"'Kay!"

The little boy turned back toward the door, propped his shoulders on the counter, and cupped his chin in his hands. He stared at the open doorway, waiting.

Stephanie leaned against the wall and clutched her mug of cocoa to her chest. She stared down at the beautiful reflection of her deceased husband. She could see the flop of his messy hair, his chiseled chin, his big happy smile. It was definitely him, not that it would have been anyone else. He waved gleefully up at her. She smiled and waved with one hand back down at him. For hours, she stayed like this, clutching the cup, ignoring cleaning and baking duties, selling items to customers without giving them her full attention or taking her hands off the mug.

All the while the little boy in the red jersey sat waiting and staring at the door. Tourists passed in and out of it but none a singular little girl.

When night came, the little boy wordlessly got up and left the shop. Stephanie closed up, without bothering to count the till or do anything administrative. She headed upstairs, cradling the mug of chocolate, singing to it Steve's favorite songs. She cooed and hummed and stroked the wight rim, sipping her dead husband into her lips and then kissing the cup.

After hours of pacing around her apartment murmuring into the mug, Stephanie set it down on the nightstand and grabbed her pajama pants. As soon as the bottom of the cup touched the wood, the reflection flickered and then disappeared. Stephanie leaped up and swirled the cup around, shone different lamps into it, gulped more of the cold chocolate down, but Steve didn't come back.

She knocked her cup to the floor and it shattered, spilling watery sludge into the carpet. Stephanie ran downstairs in her pajamas, barefoot. She threw open the door to her kitchen and scrambled to grasp her cooking supplies. She brewed cup after cup of cocoa, then stared deep into the brown puddle, devoid of life. She poured each cup out and frantically made more, letting out sharp throat screams as she worked.

Birds chirped outside her window and the darkness dulled to a grey. She heard the garbage trucks driving by and the thud of newspaper landing against her front door. Her eyes stung from lack of sleep. Exasperated she brewed one last cup and this time her happy reflection of a husband smirked at her as if to remind her that he'd never really go, that he'd never leave her alone here.

She opened up the shop and let customers come in, but stayed in her pajamas all day, and kept the mug close to her. The little boy came in again, this time in a black sweatshirt. He again claimed to be waiting for someone, and sat at the counter politely.

Stephanie nursed her mug the whole day, singing and humming quietly to her waving reflection of a husband. He was so cheerful, so sweet, happy and lovely in the warm milky chocolate.

At the end of the day, she closed up, letting the little boy out last. He walked off into the empty evening to nowhere at all.

Stephanie stayed up most of the night, sitting up in her bed and mumbling, whispering to Steve. Steve didn't say anything back but he laughed, which was still something from a dead guy. When she woke up, she couldn't remember falling asleep, but her lap was wet and brown from spilled cocoa.

Letting out a wail, she stormed downstairs and baked feverishly, without opening the shop all day. A few tourists peered in. The little boy knocked, and then sat outside, leaning against the shop on the sidewalk.

After an hour Stephanie let the little boy in. He sat at the counter and read a magazine while she worked.

No matter what she made, Steve wouldn't reappear. Stephanie sobbed and created chocolate delicacy after delicacy. Her trembling hands molded truffles. Her shaking arms kneaded dough. Finally, she found him again. He was in a puddle on the counter. She laughed and cried and kissed the chocolate sludge. He winked up at her and whispered something inaudible. Stephanie brought her hear close to the fudge, but she couldn't make it out.

The little boy got up to leave. Stephanie stayed awake all night talking to her chocolate husband.

The next morning she opened the shop and let in the customers. It was all tourists that day, no little boy. Her hands were shaking as she took their money. Her ears rang with sharp pain as they spoke. Everything was too bright, too much. Her heart beat faster. Her breath shortened. Her shoulders caved inwards in pain. Everything was so shrill and intense. She just wanted to be alone with him in the darkness.

"Stephanie," said a rich deep voice, smooth and soft midst the high pitched natter of tourists.
"Hmm?" She asked, turning to the chocolate puddle on the counter. It rippled with joy at her recognition.
"Can you hear me?" the soft, nurturing, gentle voice cooed.
"Yes, Steve."
"Kill them."
"What?" She moved her ear closer to the puddle.
"Kill them all."

Stephanie stood quietly in the shop. She was so still that the customers sometimes didn't notice her and just shoplifted in front of her. The tourists screeched loudly about riding on the duck shaped buses. It was so loud. Tears fell from her eyes. The room darkened as if a cloud passed over the shop.

The bell on the top of the door dinged as it swung open and a brunette girl about 12 years old walked in. She was wearing a pink t-shirt and jeans with her hair piled up in a messy bun. She looked around for a second, gently letting her fingers brush past boxes of candy. She approached the counter and leaned against it's glass case, careful not to touch the puddle of chocolate. She smiled at Stephanie, "I'm here to meet someone."

Stephanie closed her tear streaked eyes and giggled.

New Glasses

I sat at my desk pretending to be filing while secretly reading the news. I remember in school when reading the news felt like work and now I avoid work to do just exactly that. The art of pretending to file mostly involves minimizing the news-screen whenever my boss walks by and staring intently at a pile of random papers. I hope one day I can stare so hard they burst into flames. I think I'm getting there. When I touched the papers they felt a teensy bit warmer.

"Hey..." said a voice. I jumped, but it wasn't really a jump because I was sitting down. Basically, I flinched and my butt moved off the chair but not a lot. I swiveled around.

"Hi," I said.

The delivery guy smiled at me and I blushed. I'm not sure why. I wasn't attracted to him or embarrassed, which are my two normal emotions that elicit blushing. Regardless, I started blushing even more over the fact that I was blushing so hard and then looked down at my knees.

"Do you know where I can find a Barbara...?" he asked like it was a mythological creature he was hunting.
"That's me... You don't know my name? We've worked together three years."
"Oh, sorry, I thought you were Deborah."
"Um. No."
"Sorry, how rude of me. You're just so quiet."
"..."

"Package for you," he said. He handed me a small white bundle wrapped up. I signed for it and he tried to mutter something but I didn't look up at him. He stood in front of me for a few seconds and then left.

I ripped open the tape with vehement force and glee as I wrenched my new glasses from their delivery vehicle. I squealed softly to myself and unwrapped the large brown plastic frames. I took my contacts out and slid them over my ears. They covered most of my face, like big comfy space goggles. I felt so safe behind them, almost as though they were a mask concealing me from sight. They fit smooth and well, with almost a warm glowing touch on the bridge of my nose.

Rising from my desk, I decided to go stare at myself in the mirror for a while, and see how my new "look" worked. As I walked down the hall I saw a figure about my height, completely naked, with skin a dark reddish maroon color. The creature approached me in the hallway. He was carrying a stack of folders in his arms and frowning to himself. I halted short and stared at him. (Yes, I knew it was a him. He was naked. I'm not a pervert, but I have eyes.)

"Pardon me," said the naked red man, and walked right past me. I said nothing at all. I pivoted and watched him pass by. He disappeared into Cheryl's office. I expected to hear Cheryl scream or cry or be murdered. Instead, I heard her say, "Oh, thanks, Tom."

I slowly crept to her office doorway and peered in. Gasping, I stumbled backward, clutching the threshold for support. Sitting at Cheryl's desk was a emerald green woman with four breasts and big antler-like-horns coming out of her head. Her skin sparkled in a criss-crossing pattern of scales. She was speaking to the red naked man in Cheryl's voice. My mouth emitted a guttural moan and they both turned to look at me.

"You okay, Barb?" said the Cheryl/demon creature. I hate being called Barb... especially by demonlike bosses with horns and pointy vampire teeth.

I took off my glasses and rubbed my eyes. When I did so I looked up and Cheryl and Tom stood in front of me, in their normal clothes and skin, silently watching with raised eyebrows and curled lips.

"Yeah," I said. "Fine." I put my glasses back on and suddenly they were back to their green and red respective monstrous shapes. I took my glasses off again and they were in human form. I backed out of the office wordlessly.

"Weird girl," I heard demon Cheryl say.

I hurriedly stumbled down the hall and almost ran into Ivan. "Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry," I said.

He brushed off my apology and smiled warmly. I put my glasses on and looked up at him. He was a giant blue rabbit. I took my glasses off, same old Ivan. Glasses on: scary bunny-freak of nature. He tried to calm me down, but I was shaking and fending off tears. I pushed him away and thundered through the hallway, past cubicles, desks, conference rooms and coffee machines. Everyone in the office looked differently when I had my glasses on, but I seemed to be the only one who could see them thus. I rested them on my head and dug the heals of my hands into my eye sockets, struggling to wipe out the nightmare.

I rushed back to my cubicle and rifled through my garbage to find the packaging the glasses came in. It looked so normal, from the eye doctor, with my prescription, detailed instructions on how to clean and care for my lenses that I would ignore... I squinted at it, and then lowered my glasses from my forehead down onto my face.

Dark blood red letters were scrawled on the white package, forming the words, "See everything."

Keeping my head down, I avoided any eye contact with glowing yellow demon eyes or flopping tails or deformed genitalia. I passed by Natalie on my way who gave me a chirpy hello and I noticed her wings. I walked into the cool dark bathroom. It smelled like soap and some sort of cleaner. I could vaguely hear someone blasting classical instrumental music at their desk. I was alone in the bathroom. I rubbed my hands anxiously against each other and shifted my weight foot to foot. My armpits grew moist and saturated my work blouse. My nose pores itched. I fidgeted with the hem of my shirt, running my fingers along the sewn line. I raised my eyes slowly and looked up into the mirror.

Staring back at me was nothing.

Prologue

It was like waking up directly in the middle of a blackout. Not sure what had happened the night before, he knew it was something terrible before his vision even kicked in. The screaming subsided inside of his head but as he came to awareness, he vaguely understood that his inner thoughts hadn’t been the only screams that night.

His eyes were already open when he woke up. Trembling on the carpeted floor, he had been in the process of attempting to claw his way out of the room. The door was cut up and scraped. Bits of wood lay around his arms and legs.

He gasped and cringed back from the door. It seemed impossible. He looked down at his hands and was sure of it as they resumed their normal man shape. His nails were cracked. His knuckles bled. There was something under his fingernails, a dark gooey substance.

“No,” he whispered. His voice came out horse, a shattered glass window of a voice. He touched his chapped bleeding lips. They shook with terror, barely hiding the gleam of shrinking pointed teeth. Standing, his knees cracked and his muscles already ached from impending bruises. He was naked and covered in cuts and green and yellow marks of capillary damage, though not as much as he would have liked. What was left of his pajamas lay shredded on the floor.

He turned very slowly around his bedroom, his muscles moving with a robotic precision. The fog in his head evaporated gradually. His eyes became less sharp in the darkness. His hearing dulled.

Harry had always been so good with checking the schedule. He had calendars around his home, around his office, and programmed into any electrical device that would have let him. He was just trying to keep everyone safe. Something had gone wrong tonight. Tonight wasn’t on the schedule. It must have been some sort of anomaly like an eclipse.

Everything moved in slow motion as Harry realized what was happening. It probably took him less than a minute but it felt like decades. The grey light from the window fell into the room like a harsh mallet onto a baby’s head. Dawn approached with a subtle gentle light that was in so many ways more terrifying than the darkness.

Books were knocked off the shelves, pictures torn from the walls. A mound of stinky feces curled on the carpet. A vase lay broken with flowers scattering the floor.

He had changed in his bedroom.

Harry rushed to his bed, leaping over the mattress with the strength and agility that had yet to wear off. He couldn’t remember what had happened, but it seemed obvious. This had been what he had run from, planned for, strategized against for years. He had ultimately only been trying to avoid this one single moment.

Denise lay at his feet in a smooth puddle of blood.

Her eyes were open, staring up at him, wide and bright. Her mouth stretched open as if she had been ready to eat an apple, which she had loved so much. Her hands were raised, as if to protect herself, although that notion was almost laughable. To who would laugh at something this horrible was a riddle Harry feared the answer.

Kneeling at his work, he gently let his fingers fall to her neck. Harry sweetly moved the necklace he had given her out of the way and caressed her wave of blonde hair over her shoulder to feel her pulse.

With cold, calculating meticulously, he made the phone call to the police. Then he set the phone down. They wouldn’t be able to understand this, a corpse half devoured by a ravage beast. If he explained it to them, they wouldn’t believe him. They’d take him to a hospital, a building filled with innocent people, with his next victims.

He could run away, but this would happen again. No matter how careful he was, he would hurt someone. And even if he didn’t, he still was an aberration anyway. He had destroyed something beautiful and special, a human life. He was a monster. His existence was undeserved.

The police were still several miles away. Still naked, Harry sat in a chair, opposite his wife. A torrent of tears fell down his stern solid face. He wasn’t sure when he had started crying, he just became aware of it that he was.

He was a mistake. And the thing he hated most about himself was not realizing it sooner. The shotgun felt cold and real in his hands. He had never been a gun person, but this precaution seemed necessary when Denise had moved in. He wanted her to know that if she needed to, she had to do it. Why hadn’t she done it last night? Had she been to scared or too sentimental?

Wiping tears from his cheeks, Harry placed the end of the rifle in his mouth, while staring at the body of the last person who had loved him. He pulled the trigger and his naked body fell to the floor.