Reprise

~ fading into the ash of sunset, left with dull memories of what may or may not have been... always knew how this was going to end, hand on my heart and you nowhere to be found.

Did the Fire Make a Difference?

Daniel pressed the “delete” key for what felt like the hundredth time. In reality, it was more like 16, but when a copious amount of effort is invested in writing a story with no true resolution, each stroke wiping it away was akin to tearing off bandages stuck to sore flesh.

There was no way around it: he was wasting time now. His head gently landed on his desk before he dozed off. His dreams opened doors, but those doors closed the moment his keyboard reappeared in front of his face and he regained control of his consciousness. (If only there was a way to keep those doors open...)

Fast forwarding a year later =========>

Experimentation was inevitable for a college art student. Daniel's major wasn't art, but he intently hung around bohemian undergrads in hopes that it would expand his mind.

The largest step in his “expansion” was the long-feared but anticipated journey into psychedelic drugs. It worked for all of the greatest artists and musicians, so why not him?

After psychologically tiptoeing beyond his paranoia (a process which took several weeks), Daniel finally did his first hit. The “Spirit Molecule” twisted his mind into a new state. Within this state, he wrote a short story. His blog post spread like wildfire, and it wasn't more than a week before he started getting pursued by publishers.

His story garnered unending acclaim and popularity, spawning everything from t-shirts to internet memes and even a parody sketch on Saturday Night Live. It was rare that the short-form written word inspired such celebration in the digital age, but Daniel had broken down a new barrier with his unique flavor of rhetoric.

So what was the content of this pop-culture phenomenon?

It was a 478-word description of a coloring book page featuring a fireman saving a cat from a burning tree.

________________________________

Audience, please enlighten me

Because I'm probing for the secret

But there seems to be no key

Will I ever learn to find it?

No answer will satisfy

Because “true” success is all fake

And all the brilliant writers die

In mediocrity's cruel wake

Pink

There was a lot on the mind of Garrison Knight as he stood at the Lexington Market platform, waiting for the next train.

Always on the move, Garrison didn't often get any time to himself to think.  But today, the 9:06 Light Rail was five minutes late, so Garrison Knight thought about his entire life.

The pink hue of the hair ribbon was what caught Garrison's eye first.  Its floppy ends bobbed in time with the assent of the six-year-old girl, nodding her head in mirth at some funny joke that had slipped out of the puckered mouth of her teddy bear.  Her left hand held her mother's hand tightly.

Garrison had once had a daughter.  Well, he still had a daughter, for all he knew, though she hadn't wanted to see him for many years.  He had used to buy her hair ribbons for her birthday - a gift that became a father-daughter tradition.

That was before his job at the steel plant had forced a solo move to Sparrows Point.  "You're a shoo-in for promotion to line boss," Mr. Bellows had said.  Mr. Bellows had lied, as usual, but Garrison had found other sins to occupy his time.

Garrison's stomach muttered.  He had overslept and missed his morning meal.  Garrison ran a tight schedule, and making the morning train had meant listening to his stomach's running commentary.

The pink ribbon continued its airy dance.  Garrison had planned to keep up the annual tradition of hair-ribbon-buying well past the age at which hair ribbons stopped being cool.  A gesture of affection between father and daughter could not be defined by the laws of fashion.  But, last he had heard, his daughter was going to school in Oregon and Garrison didn't remember her address.  He didn't remember a lot of things these days, save for the mundane details pertaining to schedule.

A childish cry broke his concentration.  The ribbon had escaped from its nesting place and was spiraling towards the train tracks.  A single tear escaped the little girl's eye, but her mother held her back.

The ribbon alit, perilously, in the very center of the tracks.  Garrison looked at his watch, but it seemed to have stopped a long time ago, frozen at 7:48 a.m.  And then he broke his schedule.

On the train tracks, enveloped in a concrete canyon, Garrison could barely hear the shocked murmur of the confused crowd.  He bent down and grasped the ribbon.

The canyon shook.  People screamed.  A bright light shone directly into his eyes.  He couldn't see the ribbon any more.  Black.

Later on, a blurb in the next day paper would remark on the death of a homeless man at one of the stations of the Baltimore Light Rail.  The man had no identification and investigators couldn't understand what had prompted him to suddenly leap into the path of the oncoming train, instead choosing to classify the death a suicide.

The Birthday Party

“Hey, Catie. Happy 13th Birthday!”

“Your parents are getting divorced!”

What? That’s a weird way to say thank you, he thought to himself. His parents just dropped him off at the party. Everything was fine. Kids these days are so misinformed.

“Uh, no they are not.”

“Not what I heard.”

He was getting tired of his small town and its smaller problems that make room for big boredom and bigger rumors.

“Whatever. Can I put my coat somewhere?”

“Sure. Oh and you gotta try the cake!”

One nice thing about kids, they can change a difficult subject on a dime. Adults should take a page from this playbook more often.

“Yum, this cake is delicious. I love chocolate raspberry.”

“Me too! Hey maybe you’ll get two cakes now on your birthday.”

Damnit, why’d she have to come back to this. His parents were not getting divorced. Only yellers and fighters split up! The closest they’d ever come to fighting was when his father closed the soda bottles too tightly so they were hard to open. That doesn’t dissolve a marriage. It’s typical effect is a preservation of carbonation.

“I’ll have one cake, for my one house, and my one life.”

At that moment his fork slipped and knocked his slice of cake onto the floor.

A dram with a young minister

The young minister sat alone at the bar.  His long, thin fingers trembled as he reached for his glass of malt.  A middle-aged man entered the room and took the seat to his right.

'I knew you were telling the truth, at least you were saying what you thought was true.'

'Inspector…'

'Call me Len.'

The young minister didn’t finish his statement and there was an anxious silence as he stared with catatonic eyes at his drink.

'It’s a shame when men of the cloth fall into this shite,' Len corrected his words immediately, '...stuff.  It's all too common these days.  In the end we’re only human.'

'That’s what makes this whole thing so devastating for me – we’re human.  Inspector,' the young minister corrected his words immediately, 'Len.  This isn’t supposed to happen.'  His eyes remained fixed on his drink.  'To be human is to be something profound…'

'I only know what I know.  Do you know what percentage women have been victims of rape in this country in the past decade?'

'More than fifteen per cent...'

'Aye, it’s awful.  When I first started with the police, the first rape case I took kept me up for days.  I had to take a statement from the victim.  She was about the same age as Ms Flynn.  She couldn’t look me in the eye and she couldn’t stop shaking.  Why they had a bloke interview a rape victim, I don’t know.  And the man was her fucking father.'

The young minister remained silent.

'It’s an awful mess, but you learn to live with it.  In the last fifteen years I had two fellow officers go down for this.  These were men I knew and trusted, but they were still men. … Listen, Alan, James did what he did and it isn’t right, but you’ll have to move on some day.  Not today, but at some point you’re going to have to move past it if you want to keep on living.'

'James was my mentor.  I didn’t think he could do such a thing.'

'Alan, you’ve only been a minister here for six months.  Things are moving so fast for you, a talented young minister.  You’re still that – a young minister.  Eventually this idealism will wear off. … What are you thinking?'

'I’m distraught, to be honest.  My heart’s broken for Izzie Flynn, my heart’s broken for James’ wife and kids, my heart’s broken for my congregation, my heart’s broken for the Kirk.  My heart’s broken for James.  My heart’s broken even for me.  I believed him.  I gave him the opportunity to confess so many times and I remained on his side because I believed him when he looked into my eyes and told me, “Alan, I couldn’t do such a thing.”  Well maybe he couldn’t do it, but he did, if that makes sense.  I feel deeply betrayed by one of the few people in this world I absolutely trust.'  The young minister corrected his words immediately.  'Trusted.'

The Assyrian battering ram

     No rest for the weary. This siege had taken everything out of Benjamin. The Assyrians had come with their iron, their battering rams, their massive army that had been labeled undefeatable. Well, he had been praying constantly and had been burdened heavily by this hopelessness; this dark cloud over the heads of his people. He went to the grinding stone and started to unsheathe his sword. But then he decided to go get something to eat instead. He went to the tents, where the food would be. He walked around looking for any sign of stew or meat anywhere. Not finding any, he decided to talk to his friend Enoch to see if he had any bread or wine. While he walked, he thought about Sennacherib and his army and the way that the Assyrians terrorized everyone who wasn’t already in their empire. It was sickening to see their greed. But it was pointless to think such things. It was impossible to stop their relentless war machine.

     He reached Enoch and asked him if he had anything to eat. He told him no and disappointed, Benjamin decided to go to bed. He silently prayed for his city, for the impossible odds that they faced. Silently and quickly he drifted off to sleep.

     He woke up with a start. It was early, but he could already hear that the entire city was in a panic. Without putting on his full armor, he ran out of his bunk house and went to the wall. An immense crowd had gathered at the top of the wall, and all of them were pointing and shouting at a scene in the enemy camp. Only when he reached the top of the wall did he see and (more prominently) hear what the spectacle was. What he heard from the massive camp was complete silence. What he saw from it was nothing. No driving war machine, no busy soldiers preparing for a bloody battle. The only soldiers he saw were lying prostrate on the ground. They appeared to be motionless—dead. Had there been a guerilla attack that he hadn’t been informed of? Had their been disease in the enemy lines? All these questions and more were posed in Benjamin’s head when he heard the news: “The Lord has delivered us!” He heard one archer say. “The Angel of the Lord has stricken our enemies in the night!” Said another young infantryman. Praise be to God, for he had delivered them out of their most dire circumstance. He had risen up against the enemy and triumphed. There would be much celebrating in the city tonight; drinking, eating, being merry. They would praise and worship God tonight. They would erect altars and burn offerings. This victory was the Lord’s, and he would be praised for it. Benjamin uttered a silent prayer of thanksgiving. “The Lord is indeed with us.” And then, he realized that he had eaten nothing in over a day’s time. He would find Enoch and they would share in some bread and wine, and they would celebrate together.

The Human Experience

I attempt here to tell a story of lovely Jude. I will try to tell the facts alone.

Jude’s Mother and Father are the nicest people. So nice. They raise their only boy to be a sensation. His instructors are Brahms, Bach, and Galileo. Jude is the beloved, and he knows it.

When he is twelve he asks why God made the animals. Mother says he created the animals to show his creativity and his love. Jude asks how love was embodied in the centipede. Mother says that we know God is loving because he cares even for creepy critters like centipedes. Jude asks how God could love the animals, but make them kill each other. (Jude, Mother and Father are all vegans.) Mother says that in the beginning all the animals were calm and friendly to one another. She adds, “God made all the animals equal. They all had their special skills, and they could all talk. That’s why Eve wasn’t surprised when the serpent spoke to her.”

“You see,” she continues, “It was man’s sin that did it. That’s what made the animals go mute.” Jude never forgots this.

On Jude’s twentieth birthday he asks his first girlfriend to marry him. She blushes, then declines. Jude is sad. He walks the streets wondering how this world could be so simultaneously alive and dead.

Jude is a beautiful creature. His long black locks highlight his sky blue eyes. He takes care of his body and his resume. Mother and Father teach him to never underestimate the power of a manicured smile.

At age twenty-nine Jude falls in love again. He loves everything about the girl: her puffy cheeks, her rainbow colored socks, her affection for dolphins. The quirks all add up to the very definition of love. She left him.

Jude takes a walk.

He walks by a pond. School is out for some happy ducklings. Jude stands there. They’re so cute. They come up to him. They do not fear him at all. An old, mean memory returns to him. His first girlfriend loved meat and hated Jude’s resistance to omnivorism. She wanted him to suffer for his faith.

Pinkies, she explains, are what ugly baby rats are called. They are blind, naked pink things with four legs. Often they are fed to snakes. When a pinky is dropped into the cage of an already satiated snake, the pinky, alone and cold, cuddles up to the serpent. The snake lets pinky warm itself against her smooth skin. Pinky sleeps with its enemy. It bonds to her, as it should to its mother. A day or two or three later, when the snake decides she’s ready to engorge herself once more, she consumes pinky whole.

The littlest duckling quacks. Jude weeps badly. He moans aloud. He breaks its little neck. He breaks all their little necks.

That’s the story. That’s all of it. I was Jude’s second girlfriend.

There is too much pain in the world.

Strange Climate

     Lowell was very tired. He had eight hours left and that meant another five or six trips. For years the blue collar workforce had been divided evenly. Those with excess credits could buy ships equipped to shrink eight hours into four. Lowell and the rest were lucky to fit their eight in a twenty hour day. Administration's greatest achievement had been dividing the middle class in order to weaken it. Lower had been successfully eliminated they said, successfully redefined to be a part of the middle. 

     Another desirable and expensive invention would steer his ship for him. Though the weakening hands in front of him were all he had at this pay grade. It wasn't his fault or even the mechanic responsible for his ship when the strut retainer failed. Shit happens. Lowell's spent claws slipped and the yoke shook violently as his ship plunged helplessly into the pull of a foreign mass. He should've quit then and strapped in for the ride but a swift strike from the wheel saw to it he would go quietly all the way to the surface. 

     The administration discontinued the term planet decades ago when definitions ranged from the traditional natural mass orbiting a star to a space station with at least 65 zip codes. This caused frequent problems for shippers like Lowell who were often given instructions vague enough to strand them a thousand miles from their actual destination. Lowell was an old pro though so he was sure this was not the correct target. 

     He awoke of thirst eleven hours after being knocked unconscious before tumbling to the dark golden body. It's belt was so thick the stars were no longer visible and he too was undoubtably obscured from sight of the shipping lanes. Angry to find out how long he'd been out he wondered why he couldn't have stayed asleep just one hour more. In fifty minutes his oxygen would be spent and had he stayed asleep he would have passed peacefully. Now he felt compelled to attempt survival, a burden he knew all too well coming from the south wing of station eight. 

     He'd heard stories of shippers stranded for years on rocks with suitable atmosphere though none of them were catalogued. It was to the point where any civilized Naut could only trust an artificially produced climate. In forty minutes Lowell would have little choice but to try his luck in this untested atmosphere. Another helpful gadget could identify atmospheric makeup outside the ship but who could afford the monthly payments? 

     Lowell recorded a transmission to be repeated over the radio waves as long as his battery could sustain it: "My name is Lowell Dillon, a human aboard Gen5. I've run aground some mass at approximately 4.1256.0008. You're listening to the words of a dead man so listen carefully. The administration is 95 percent alien. They cannot charge you for knowing but you must discover a plan to reclaim control of our race as I have failed to do so myself. Please remember me as part of the resistance."

     

Jason's Revenge

The call was Pro Right 46 Counter, but all Jason needed to know was the direction (left) and the snap count (2). The defense ran an even front, which meant no one lined up over center, so Jason and the middle linebacker had seen a lot of each other all game. 

“Green 93! Set, hut! Hut!”

Jason burst out of his stance toward #48. The linebacker got a good read on the play, but took a deep angle, meaning running back Matt Davis had a wide open field. And then Matt came into Jason’s view, making a nice move on the outside.

Jason followed, but with less urgency; there was little he could do now to influence the play. Either way, he’d need to get down the field to call the hud–

The ground leaped downward. The world was sideways. Grass was coming through his facemask. Jason’s ears were ringing. 

Jason’s first reaction was to find the punk’s number. He got up and whirled his head around: #33. Outside linebacker, maybe. Not even a starter. Jason hated cheap shots. Worse still were cheap shots by two-bit players when they’re just pissed that they’re down by 20. Jason seethed; the idiot had knocked his chinstrap loose, so he had to run to the sideline. He called in the backup, and whipped his helmet off. Furiously working to fix his hardware, Jason had only one goal for the rest of the game: hit that bastard as hard as humanly possible.

There were virtually no chances to exact his revenge. #33 wasn’t in the game the whole time, and when he was, he was nowhere near Jason’s blocking assignment. He wouldn’t stoop so low as to hit him after the play. That would make him just as much of a jerk as the other guy. No, it had to be legal, and it had to be jaw-dropping. 

As Matt raced down the sideline late in the 4th, with the safety trying in vain to catch him, an idea exploded into Jason’s mind. The tight end who lined up on the field goal unit across from #33 had just gone down with an ankle injury. Jason sprinted to the sidelines to get Coach to sub him in. Coach said ok.

Jason settled into his stance, frozen until the snap. #33 looked in at the ball, imperceptive to the daggers being stared at him. ‘Good,’ thought Jason, ‘He’ll never see it coming either.’

Suddenly, the defense rushed to block the kick. Jason stepped inside to get a hand on the inside rusher and prepared to launch himself at his target. Only his target just stood there lazily, as if he had better things to do than play football, or was daydreaming about the cheerleaders. 

‘That little punk!’

During the obligatory post-game “handshake” line, the sum total of Jason’s revenge was that he lowered his hand when #33 passed by and didn't say “good game”.

It was not satisfying in the least.