Katharine Osborne: Story-a-Day

Bricked Macbook and Delays

2012-02-10T08:01:00.000-08:00

So...I'm already terribly behind on my stories (still stuck in November), and I bricked my Macbook two days ago (hard drive failure). I can't afford to replace it. I'm stuck to having to write stories in the middle of the night when my dad isn't on his computer (which sucks on a number of levels...not the least of which is that I'm 35 and living at home again (and get to hear about adventures with dentures)...I digress). Anyway. I intend to persevere and finish on time, but bear with me because I might be posting more flash, badly autocorrected on my iPad. *Sigh*. Stick with me readers!

Old Poem: Get Out of Your Chair! (2007)

2011-12-13T11:59:00.000-08:00

More old stuff! This was inspired by a former roommate (I mean I can be a couch potato sometimes, but this guy was permanently on the sofa). I think I might have written this for a poetry slam, but never performed it (and I know a lot of people slam on slams, but they're a hell of a lot of fun to do).

---

Get out of your chair!
What are you sitting there for?
Telling your fat cells to make more fat cell babies?
Telling yourself tomorrow, always tomorrow?
While today is already slipping away?

Well tomorrow came yesterday, sweetheart!
So get off your fat ass
Put your arms on the arms of your chair
And PUSH!

Come on, try harder, you can do!
Gravity may be a relentless master,
But you can get your butt out of that depression.
Lift those cheeks!

Put weight on your legs, and blood in your brain
Your feet are there to move you to do
The great things you knew you could
When you were little and growing

Did you mean to grow into that?
Into that divet in that sagging chair?
Did you mean to stare at a flickering box
For hours endless
Saliva collecting at the corners of your mouth?

I don't get it.

Is it the reality shows that suck you in?
The succubi that seduce you
With the lightly scripted lives of other schmoes
Who you think you could be
If only, if only? ... If only!

Or is it the sitcoms,
With their nauseatingly attractive nuclear families
Playing out their thirty minute crisis of the week
On a stage with a sofa
And a staircase that leads to nowhere.
But you already know where nowhere is, don't you?

Or maybe it is the cop dramas
With two bodies per episode
And if there are three, then one isn't really dead
How many times have you sat there and seen that?

Why do you sit there?
Feeding your brain a bare minimum diet
While your body slowly conforms
To the shape of a badly upholstered object?

That could only be torture to me.
Life is out there,
Not in here.
Get out of your chair.

The Road of Fortune (2007)

2011-12-13T11:18:00.000-08:00

This is the start (possibly all of it, I can't remember) of a story I wrote back in 2007. Now I see it as terribly flawed (though the messed-up mathematics of it is intriguing me enough that I might rewrite it one day). I haven't posted anything in awhile (still recovering from moving), so I thought I would post it.

---

Death comes slowly on the last day of life. The magician lay limp in the cobblestone gutter as tiny droplets of rain kissed his exposed skin. The road of Fortune didn't end here.

Fourteen years ago the magician set out from the city to follow the road of Fortune to its end. He had been a young man curious about the road. The journey had made him age prematurely. The rain collected at his grayed temples, dripping slowly off the ends of scraggled hairs. Sodden clothes adhered him to the road. He was finally stuck, unable to pull away from his murderer. He blinked in his sadness, water squeezing from the delicate folds of skin, becoming the tears he no longer had. Behind the eyelids lay his eyes, the portals to a mind insidiously corroded by the warped geography of the road.

Outside the border of the city the road gradually turned right. It kept turning right, and it turned right again. At the outset of the journey the magician took many measurements and found that the road should have crossed itself but it never did.

The road of Fortune split in two hundred and eighty-six places that the magician had counted. Each time he came to a fork he marked the path he took with golden paint, an X, and the path he didn't with a black O. Twelve times he encountered paths he had already marked, and once he found a fork with both paths marked with O's.

As he traveled, the days seemed to get longer, until there was only perpetual dusk and the stars in the sky peeked at him but he couldn't recognize any of the constellations no matter how hard he tried. During this evening on the road, he met an old woman. As they passed he asked her the same question that he asked every traveler he saw.

"Where does the road of Fortune end?" asked the magician. The woman stopped and looked at him. A toothless smile broke across her deeply lined face, then she laughed at him, hard and long enough to bring tears to her eyes.

Finally she caught her breath. "You should know the answer to that young man! Ahhh. Ha ha."
Rage was building inside the magician. "But I don't know, no one seems to know!" She laughed again, then resumed her journey. That was several years ago. Perhaps she had known, but maybe her mind wasn't with her anymore. As he lay with rivulets coursing around him, he continued to stew on the encounter. Slowly his thoughts returned to his life as a young man. He had been worshipped by many peers for his ability to solve the great mysteries of the world. He had been able to explain why the world was flat, and why objects were attracted to the ground. He had been a celebrated man, accruing great wealth, enough to mount his expedition. The vibrant life of the city, the center of the universe, was so far away now that he doubted it even existed.

204/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Adagio for TRON" by Daft Punk from the TRON: Legacy soundtrack

2011-11-14T16:23:00.000-08:00

"It was just there. I couldn't believe it. It had the look of a dying puppy, the look Forrest would have had if he never married Jenny. Just...sadness. Who does that? Who puts a huge stone statue in the middle of a field, lying down as if it's just about to die of the weight of the world? Statues are supposed to be magnificent, leaders on pedestals, men marching, benevolent Buddhas, leaping lions and the like."

Vaughn poked a stick into the campfire under the coffee pot, sending up sparks. Myles slurped a spoonful of warm beans.

"There are those creepy angels in cemeteries," said Myles, chewing thoughtfully.

"They're, I don't know, protective and haunting. Not sad, not like this was," said Vaughn. He stretched his back and looked at the stars.

"You gotta show me where that thing is," said Myles. He scraped bean sauce noisily from his metal plate.

"I don't know. Tomorrow maybe. I'd rather keep going. We can't have detours or we'll run out of food."

"You don't think it's interesting? Something like that? Here?" asked Myles.

"I think we'd be best to leave it alone, but I have to admit, I would kind of like to see it again, even if it was unsettling the first time."

Vaughn stood and cracked his back and then his knuckles. He ambled over to the tent and crawled inside. Myles cleaned his teeth with his tongue, and looked into the forest and down the path that Vaughn took. The wind trickled through the trees, and they swayed gently. The path seemed lit from within, ever so slightly, but Myles decided it was just the opening the path made in the forest that allowed more starlight down and to reflect outward. He stood and poured the coffee out onto the fire. Smoke rose up, and he checked for any remaining embers with his foot. When he was satisfied, he looked one last time at the path. He felt the chill of the wind and shivered. He crawled into the tent and laid down next to Vaughn, who was already asleep.

At dawn they were up, and quickly disassembled the tent and packed up there camp with long practiced efficiency. It was a cloudy, foggy morning and they worked in silence. Myles thought of asking Vaughn again about the statue, but reasoned that the rational thing to do would be to continue on their journey. He consulted his map and compass, and made a mental calculation of how far they could travel before noon.

When Vaughn was finished packing their gear, he looked once at Myles, then set off down the path he had come back on that night with firewood. Myles looked up with surprise, but followed dutifully without comment, the coffeepot banging rhythmically at the end of his backpack. They walked for ten minutes, until they came to the edge of the meadow.

"It's over that way," said Vaughn pointing.

"You can't see anything through this fog," said Myles.

Vaughn walked out in the direction he indicated, and soon disappeared from view.

"Wait!" yelled Myles, running after him. "We'll get lost. We can't get separated."

"You're the navigator," said Vaughn cooly.

"Yeah but, you know we don't have to do this."

"I just feel we should. Like it was important."

"There you are!" said Myles, reaching out and touching Vaughn's shoulder. "This fog is unreal. And look at this grass. Soaking wet. My pantlegs are drenched. I'm never going to keep warm today. Why'd you stop?"

"It should be here," said Vaughn, his voice cracking.

"It's foggy, how would you know?"

"I know," said Vaughn. He turned around in a circle twice, then stopped, pressing his hands to his mouth.

"What is it?" asked Myles.

"Oh god," said Vaughn. "Look at the grass."

"It's grass."

"It's laying down." Vaughn grabbed Myles by the shoulders. "It was here. And now it's gone."

"It got moved?"

"It was stone."

"Teleported maybe?"

"What? You've got an imagination."

The wind began to pick up, thinning the fog.

"Well it didn't just..." Myles noticed the grass further out. "...walk away."

The pair stood frozen in the field, watching more and more of the fog clear. There was a clear trail of massive footprints. Myles fished out his map and compass. He found magnetic north and found the meadow on the map. He raised his hand in the direction of the footprints and matched it to a vector on the map.

"The ship," they said together.

They immediately began to sprint across the meadow, and soon found the edge of the forest again. Trees were uprooted, and the footprints cut into the soil. They scrambled over them, panting. After ten minutes full sprint they had to rest. They walked on further, with pink cheeks and fear. By noon they were halfway back, and the footprints were their constant companion.

"It knew," said Vaughn.

"How can it know?" asked Myles.

"Well, obviously, for one, it's not a statue. It looked so human. Why would it look like it?"

"Why would you think that we put a statue here?"

"I don't know. We're not the first here," Vaughn stopped walking and wiped sweat from his forehead. "What's the point..."

"We've got to see if the ship is safe," said Myles.

"It won't want us here. It will have destroyed the ship by now."

"How do you know that?"

"I just felt it, when I saw it. Just the look on its face. Like it was beyond hate. It despaired that we had come."

"Now you're the one with the fertile imagination. Maybe it's...species...just looks like that. Maybe it's their happy face. You never know." Myles smiled wanly. "Come on, let's keep going. We might as well see if we're stuck here or not."

They continued walking on into the afternoon, shedding layers of clothing as the heat rose. They made quick progress going downhill a bit, and saw the top of the ship over the trees by late afternoon.

"It's still there," said Myles brightly.

"So are the footsteps," said Vaughn.

"They are," acknowledged Myles.

Shortly they arrived at the clearing where they had landed the ship. The footsteps ended several yards in front of it.

"Okay, where did it go?" asked Myles. "Did it backtrack or something?"

"Maybe they fly," said Vaughn.

"Flying giant statue people?" Myles burst into laughter.

They circled the ship, checking the hull for damage, but it was perfect. They ran up the ramp and closed the ingress. They dumped their backpacks in the storage area and ran up to the navigation room. Myles turned on the main power and ran a diagnostic.

"All systems fully functional," he said.

"I don't know how you read that stuff," said Vaughn.

"I'm a nerd. I can figure out any system with moving parts or moving bits. Even if it's a stolen alien one."

"Well, let's get out of here then. Away from the sad rock people. Pick another planet from the database."

"Yup, already working on it. Despite the matching vegetation, this obviously isn't Earth."

Vaughn rubbed his face and sat down on the floor next to a chair that was comically too tiny for his frame. He leaned against it.

Myles started the engine cycle, flicking buttons and sliding his fingers around on the glass panels. He punched in the coordinate sequence for the nearest candidate planet and let the computer work out the safest route that avoided bad stars and patches of debris. He turned and looked at Vaughn.

"I'm sorry I got you into this," said Myles. "It was a dumb idea."

Vaughn chuckled.

"Who wouldn't give it a go? I fantasized all my life about getting off Earth and away from all it's mundane problems. Never thought I'd miss it this much." He smiled at Myles. "Maybe someday we'll make it back in our lifetimes."

203/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Sur cette patinoire" by Etienne Charry

2011-11-13T20:05:00.006-08:00

Adeline first noticed it when she was three years old. At first it was just a shift in the pattern in the wall paper. She went over to the discrepancy and traced her little fingers over it. It vibrated out slow beats. It was warm.

She slept with her covers clutched in her fists and framing her face. She tried to breath shallowly so that the wallpaper wouldn't notice her. But it did.

When she was five, and coloring in a page of a coloring book in shades of purple, the discrepancy shifted further and the paper bubbled out. As it rapidly crinkled then set, Adeline dropped her crayon and ran from the room. She wanted to tell her mother about it, but didn't know what to say, and anyway her mother was chatting on the phone about whatever it is that adults like to talk about to each other. Adeline wandered around the house for an hour, draping herself over furniture and wondering what to do.

She found herself at the threshold of her door, staring at the far wall. Curiosity pulled her in. She felt the series of tiny bubbles. They were brittle and she popped a few of them. A clear liquid oozed out. She wiped her hands on her pants and hopped on the bed diving under the covers. She stayed very still, listening, but heard nothing.

The next day she inspected the wall again. She poked a crayon into the scar of one of the popped bubbles. The surface was soft and she embedded the crayon halfway before she hit something solid. She pulled the crayon out and it made a schuck sound. Then the wall groaned. Adeline sat on the edge of the bed and sniffed the crayon. It smelled like crayon, but then the tip started to melt. She threw it into a corner of the room, next to an abandoned and naked Barbie doll. She decided to ignore the wall.

Two years later she was awoken in the night be a soft fluttering sound. She pulled the covers tight and felt a hardness in her stomach. After a few minutes of continued fluttering behind her, she got up and ran for the bathroom, slamming the door shut and locking it.

"Are you okay?" asked her mother after knocking gently.

"I'm fine," said Adeline, shaking.

"Let me know if you need anything," said her mother, before heading back to bed.

Adeline rummaged through the cabinet under the sink as quietly as she could. In desperation, she pulled out the hair dryer, looked at it, then tossed it back into the jumble of contents. She slept in the bathtub with a towel over her and water dripping onto her socks.

"Can we move?" she asked her mother over cereal the next morning.

"Why?"

"I don't like my room," said Adeline.

"Do you want a big girl bed?"

"No. I want a different room."

"Tough."

The next month her mother replaced her bed with a longer but not wider one. Adeline watched the patch of pocked wallpaper while her mother set it the bed, struggling to make sense of an extensive set of instructions. After her mother was done, Adeline spent the afternoon rearranging the furniture so that her bed was partly inside the closet and as far as possible away from the patch.

The fluttering became a nightly occurrence. Adeline sat up against several pillows and watched the patch, but nothing ever moved. It was if something was brushing up against the other side of the wall, but there was nothing on the other side. Eventually Adeline learned to fall asleep to the sound.

When she was twelve, the fluttering stopped. She still watched the patch every night, waiting, almost sorry the sound was gone. One day, when she was in a rather intrepid mood, she took out an X-acto knife and started to scratch at the old bubbles. There was no oozing this time, and she surmised that the bubbles were just to old. She worked at the wallpaper, cutting out small bits and analyzing the wall behind. It looked to be stained, imprinted with the pattern of the wall paper. She pushed the knife into the wall and scored the surface, trying to scrape off the pattern. Layers of paper and chalk peeled away, but always the pattern remained.

She worked at the wall for an entire morning, and by noon had excavated a hole that was a foot wide and a foot deep. She went to the kitchen for a lunch of soup with her mother.

"How deep are walls supposed to be?" asked Adeline.

"Several inches, normally."

"What do you mean normally?"

"In houses. In big concrete buildings, skyscrapers and such, I guess walls would be thicker."

"So, in a house, a wall a foot think would be...abnormal."

"Yeah..." Her mother looked at her suspiciously. "Why do you ask?"

"School assignment. We're supposed to calculate the square footage for a particular area of room, but I don't know to take into account the area of the walls."

"Oh, I always hated word problems. If it's not stated in the question, you can safely ignore it honey. I had to learn that the hard way." Her mother thoughtfully slurped up a spoonful of soup.

In the afternoon Adeline decided to hang up a poster to cover the hole. She picked out one her aunt had given her for her birthday. It was of a pop star Adeline had absolutely no interest in, and she debated whether or not it was worth staring at his face for several hours each night as she fell asleep, but it was the only one she owned that was big enough to cover the entire patch.

The poster stayed in place for another year. Then one day as she arrived home from school, she found the face of the pop star burnt out. Only the edges of the poster remained, and the hole was clearly visible. Adeline slammed her door shut and shoved a chair against the knob. She ripped down the poster and examined the hole. There were little wormholes all over the chalk and paper layers, like insects had been eating the wall from within. She found her X-acto knife and furiously started chipping away at more layers. By evening she had dug a further foot. The whole area was riddled with wormholes, but there was nothing else. The wall just kept going.

Adeline went to the kitchen for a glass of orange juice. Her mother left a note on the counter stating she had gone out for a date and wouldn't be back for several hours. She encouraged Adeline to forage in the fridge for dinner. Adeline went down to the basement and found a sledgehammer left to her mother by her grandfather. She dragged it upstairs and swung it against the wall.

She swung and swung, and after an hour, her arms and shoulders aching, she was standing on three feet of debris. The hole was as tall as the room and seven feet deep. The pores of her skin were clogged with chalk dust, even those under her clothes. She pulled her bedside lamp closer to the hole. There was no sign of worms or insects or anything.

She flopped down on the bed and pulled the sledgehammer to her chest. Exhausted, her eyelids became heavy. She vaguely wondered what her mother would say, but figured she would escape trouble since the hole was so abnormally deep and weird.

The wall fluttered. Her eyes opened, and every muscle in her body went stiff. The fluttering continued, but it was faint. Adeline forced herself to get up. She crossed to the hole. She turned on her flashlight and examined the interior. There was movement. She jumped back, then moved back in, closer. The light revealed thin clear strands wiggling out of the wormholes. They stretched into the void, reaching for each other. Adeline suppressed the urge to gag.

She ran to the bathroom and fished out the old hair dryer from under the sink. She plugged it in next to the hole and turned it on full blast. The strands immediately ignited, flaming up blue, then dropping as black ash. The air smelled bitter. Adeline turned off the hair dryer. She scanned the surface of the hole with her flashlight. There was no movement. She sat on the edge of her bed, with the flashlight propped up inside the hole, and watched for movement for another half hour. When she was satisfied, she took a shower and washed away all the dust, then sat in the living room, reading a magazine until her mother came home.

"I have something to show you. Please don't be alarmed," said Adeline when her mother arrived.

"What did you do?" asked her mother angrily, as Adeline led her to her room.

"It's...abnormal," said Adeline. She flicked on the light to her room.

"What?" asked her mother.

"I..." Adeline stumbled forward to the wall. It was completely sealed up. There was no hole. The wallpaper was perfect. She rubbed her hands against it.

"What are you doing?" asked her mother.

Adeline turned to her, ashen faced.

"Can I pitch the tent in the back yard?" she asked.

"It's winter, so no."

Adeline studied her mother's face for a few long moments. Then she went to her bed and ripped off the comforter.

"I'm sleeping on the sofa until further notice," she said.

That night, as she snuggled down into the sofa cushions, the wall behind her fluttered.

202/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Paris 2004" by Peter Bjorn and John

2011-11-12T18:45:00.003-08:00

The bell over the shop door jangled. The pair entered sending up a mini-maelstrom of dust. The door slammed shut behind them and they surveyed the shop's offerings.

"All the fruit is moldy," said Caitlin. She scratched underneath her braids then leaned over the counter by the register. "I'm so hungry."

"Some of the bread might still be okay," said Kai. He opened a glass case with various pastries and rolls and shone his flashlight across them.

"We shouldn't be wasting our time with this," sighed Caitlin. "Let's just pick up some cans of something."

"I'm tired of cans," said Kai. He picked up a hard roll and knocked it against the edge of the shelf, then placed it in a large canvas bag that was slung over his shoulder. "I want real food."

"None of this is any good anymore."

"Well, I want it while I can still have it."

"I'm leaving," said Caitlin quietly. She retreated back outside and sat on the curb next to an abandoned car.

Kai cleared out what was still remotely edible and then stepped outside and watched the back of Caitlin's head. He lit a cigarette. Caitlin turned around at the sound of the lighter clicking.

"That'll kill you," she said. She turned back and watched the empty street. A pair of cats were watching back from the other side of the road, but otherwise there was no sign of life.

"I think the asteroid will get me first," said Kai, sucking in a drag of smoke.

"Ughhh, the asteroid," said Caitlin. She leaned back and tilted her head skyward. "We should have left with everyone else."

Kai sat down next to Caitlin. He wanted to touch her hair but didn't. He watched the cats and burned up his cigarette.

"I'm not sure it's coming," he said.

"Of course it's coming. All the experts confirmed what the aliens said. You're just paranoid."

"It's supposed to come tomorrow. If it's big enough to destroy all life, why can't we see it yet?"

"Too far away still? I dunno. It doesn't take a big rock to wipe out everything. Just a fast one. You originally said you just don't trust them."

"We're a stupid, brawny species. Perfect for enslavement. It was a ruse."

"Good grief."

"Nobody helps anybody else just because. There's some other motive--we just don't know what it is."

"Oh give it up," sighed Caitlin. She sat up and drew up her knees and clutched them. "God, what are those cats staring at?"

"Probably wondering what the hell we're doing here."

"If anything, they're wondering where the hell everyone else is gone. 'Who's going to open my tin of food? Who's going to change my litter? What do you mean I have to forage for myself? That's so bourgeoisie. Where did my human go'?"

Kai laughed heartily. He snubbed out his cigarette on the curb then flicked the dead butt into the street.

"Why did you stay with me?" asked Kai.

"Dunno. Guess I'm not keen on the idea of being up in space. Might as well go down with the ship. We'll get to see what the dinos saw. That should be interesting. Besides, we're not the only ones who chose to stay behind."

"Oh, maybe one out of a thousand. Don't you think it's curious so few people stayed behind?"

"I think the survival instinct is pretty strong in most people."

"Not us?"

"You don't think it will happen. You're betting that they're going to eat everyone else for dinner, or turn them into slaves. That's survival instinct."

"And you?"

"I dunno. I guess it's just plain old fear. Or maybe I just don't want things to change. A universe without the Earth? Just doesn't seem right somehow."

"An asteroid isn't going to get rid of it. Earth is tougher than that."

"It won't be the same after." Caitlin relaxed and sat cross-legged. "Got another cigarette?"

"You don't smoke."

"We're going to die in a few short hours. I don't think the tar will kill me, not to mention I won't have the time to form a habit."

Kai smiled broadly.

"I'm still betting the Earth will be here the day after tomorrow. I'm not going to let you pick up such an abhorrent habit."

"Oh geez. If the Earth is still here in two days, then we'll have cause to get really depressed. Canned food, fighting with wild animals for resources, trying to figure out fire like our cave-dwelling ancestors. No internet, and no indoor plumbing...ugh, that's bleak."

"Fresh air. A good, clear view of the stars. Lots of free-time. No one to boss us around, no schedules to keep. No more Monday mornings!" He paused and looked at the pavement. "We'll have each other."

"We'll be at each other's throats in no time."

"I'm not so sure about that."

"Keep dreaming lover boy."

Kai blushed, and Caitlin laughed. She shoved him gently in the shoulder.

"Aw, maybe that wouldn't be so bad," she said.

"The day after tomorrow can't come fast enough," said Kai, smiling.

201/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Cutdown" by Matt & Kim

2011-11-11T04:42:00.000-08:00

They cruised slowly along the road looking for the perfect house. Ronnie drove, nervous that his grandmother, Cybil, would criticize his driving, but she gazed out the side window of the van, stroking her minature poodle Mitsy, who snored on her lap. The day, just beginning, was gray and tender--there was a coolness in the air, but not yet brisk. Autumn was being hesitant.

Ronnie stopped at a stop sign.

"What are you doing?" asked Cybil, scratching her fleshy cheek but not looking at him.

"It's a stop sign."

"So?"

"But it's a stop sign. You're supposed to stop."

"I didn't raise you to be stupid. Why are you being stupid?" She turned to him and shot out a withering look.

"Fine," he said sarcastically. He released the brake and pressed the gas and shot through the dead intersection. The van lurched alone and the trailer smacked against its hitch.

"Don't you get smart with me," admonished Cybil. "That's my job. You're still too young to be jaded and snarky."

"Can we just look for a place?" sighed Ronnie.

"I am," said Cybil, exasperated. "All these places have been done already."

"They still have to come down. We can just pick one."

"I'm not tearing down someone else's art."

"Yeah but it's got to be done sometime."

"I'm not arguing about this, young man. There are still fresh places we could do."

"Ugh, it's just takes soooo long to do this--"

"Oh hey, look at that!" exclaimed Cybil. Mitsy woke up and put her paws on the window and growled. "Hush now."

Cybil rolled down the window and waved. Ronnie stopped the car. Cybil leaned out of the window and admired the house before her. There were two painters working on scaffolding. They shouted back a cheerful greeting.

"Now isn't that clever!" said Cybil to the painters. "Put the van in park," she said gruffly to Ronnie, before getting out of the car and dropping Mitsy daintily to the torn up asphalt.

"You gotta view it from the other sidewalk!" yelled one of the painters pointing.

Cybil ran around the front of the van and stood on the sidewalk, directly across from the house.

"Wow," she said. "Come look at this Ronnie."

Ronnie reluctantly exited the warm van. He stood next to his grandmother and rubbed his eyes blearily. The painters were filling in a mural that camouflaged the house against it's surroundings, including the overcast dawn sky.

"Yeah, that's cool," he said coldly.

"Now that's what I call real art. Not like some of the pieces here. People get too wrapped up in pretentiousness and forgo the simpler ideas. Yeah, I like this one." Cybil slapped her hands together.

"It's gonna suck when it's a sunny day though," said Ronnie.

"It's never a sunny day in Detroit anymore. Not in a lot of places. Not for a long time."

"It's a good thing people don't live in these stupid single-family houses anymore then. I hate driving...it must have sucked when they didn't have a choice."

"Yeah, it kind of did...but I'm glad I don't have to spend all my time inside one of those megastructures. Living and working and playing all in the same hundred stories or so. You don't ever see any new scenery. It's better to be out in air when you can. Maybe in a few decades this will all be parkland or farmland again."

"All these pieces will be gone though."

"Well, nothing lasts forever, does it? Come on. We should be going."

After waiting for Mitsy to relieve herself in the weeds by a rusted-through fire hydrant they piled back into the van and pulled away. After another half hour of passing burnt out husks, a sculpture of a lumberjack made of green copper piping, one saltbox that had been flipped completely upside-down, a slew of the usual graffitied affairs, and a henge made entirely of furnaces, they found a single story bungalow that hadn't been claimed by anybody. They got out and Ronnie unhitched the trailer, pushing it up onto the overgrown lawn. He peeled back the canvas that covered it and tipped out the dew that had collected inside the empty cavity. Cybil unlocked the back of the van and she and Ronnie surveyed the array of tools.

"Sledgehammers?" asked Cybil. She passed Ronnie his hardhat which had a fake mohawk made of plastic brush bristles and the letter 'R' emblazoned with flashing LEDs, and donned her own, which was pink and pasted with silver glitter and had a ponytail of long pink nylon hair jutting out of the back.

"I'm still not awake. Can't we just use the C4?"

"For shame! On a little house like this? That's wasteful."

"Chainsaws?"

"Not if you're tired."

"I really don't want to use the sledges. Seriously."

"Well, we could do a contained fire, but I don't think our permit is up-to-date."

"Crowbars. Let's just do the crowbars."

"And maybe later the sledges?"

"Sure grandma."

They pulled out the crowbars and walked up to the house. They took up positions at opposite corners of the front of the house.

"Five, four, three, two..." shouted Cybil. Ronnie couldn't help but start to grin, "...one!"

They smashed the siding with long practiced strokes, and wood splintered magnificently into the air.

200/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "You're a Cad" by The Bird and The Bee

2011-11-10T23:39:00.000-08:00

The phone rang at 3:14am. Constance rolled over and sighed. She stared at the LCD screen. His number. She pulled a warm hand from under the covers and crossed the cold air to the receiver.

"Where are you?" she asked flatly.

He gave his location and she hung up. She kicked of the covers and rose, already dressed in anticipation. It had been two weeks. She grabbed her camera case and packed duffle. She caught a cab to the address and kept the receipt for the fare.

The door was forced open, so she slipped in quietly. There was a single light on, upstairs. She walked up and found the room. He was sitting in an armchair in the corner. His face was in shadows. The body was splayed apart in the center of the room, on top of a leather shag rug that was an offensive shade of purple. It was a woman. Her chest was cleaved open, her lungs spread outside and the heart removed. There was little blood--as always, this one was exsanguinated as the method of death. The carving came later.

Constance set up her camera and started shooting in the low light without a flash. No need to attract attention. She steadied herself for the long exposures.

"I've changed, you know," he said slowly.

"No you haven't," said Constance.

"I have."

Constance paused and licked her bottom lip. She tried not to look at him.

"How so?" she asked, playing along.

"This one taught school. Worked with kindergartners."

"Is that so."

"Yes. Much better than the 'ladies of the night'."

"Why would that be? Everyone needs to make a living."

"Don't try to be so egalitarian. These things make all the difference."

"We're all the same on the inside."

"I disagree."

Constance turned off her camera and pulled out the memory card. She put the camera back in it's bag, then hesitantly walked to him and handed him the card. He took it slowly, making sure to brush her fingertips.

"Thanks," he said.

She retreated to the duffle bag and zipped it open. She took out the saw and set to work on dismembering the body. She started with the head, since it was the most difficult. The arms and legs were next. She double-bagged the intestinal tract. All the time she worked, she felt his eyes on her. She took out each bag and distributed them each to a different garbage can in the neighborhood. Pickup would be in a few hours. As always. She returned and spot-cleaned the leather carpet, wondering why anyone would purchase such an item.

She went into the bathroom and washed her hands. The decor included seashells. The towels were white with navy piping. She vaguely considered popping open the medicine cabinet, then dismissed the thought. Better not to know. She cleaned up dots of water on the mirror, then turned off the light and returned to the main room.

She fished the cab receipt out of her pocket and handed it to him. He took it slowly and read it, then returned it to her.

"Time to go," she said quietly.

"The payment will be in your account in the morning."

"Of course. Time to go."

"I always hate leaving," he said. He stood slowly, his joints audibly creaking. the ziplock bag in his hand sloshed. He shoved it further under his jacket. "Of course, there's always this," he said chuckling. "My takeaway bag. My consolation until the next time."

"Uh-huh. I just worry someday it will be my heart in that bag."

"I'm not that reckless," he said, with a slight turn of hurt.

Constance reached out and patted him on his arm.

"Time to go," she said, then picked up the duffle and the camera bag and descended the stairs, her back to her brother.

199/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Music" by Leela James

2011-11-09T23:02:00.000-08:00

The pen hovered above a half rendered sixteenth note. Denise stared into space as her hand trembled. Her left eye rolled back slightly. She tried to scream. She fell from her chair to the carpeted floor, landing with a soft thud. She stared at the table legs, looking at the scuffs they acquired from her shoes rubbing against them, year after year.

The cat came in, past noon. It sniffed at her hand, then worried, began mewling, but there was no one to hear. Denise began to cry.

Three weeks later, Denise came home from the hospital, walking with a slight limp. She sat down at her chair, and looked at the unfinished notation, staring back at her from the sunlight paper. The cat circled her leg twice, purring and leaving white hairs on her pant leg. Denise looked out the window, at the various shades of green fluttering from the leaves of a the maple tree that had grown up outside her building over the past thirty years. Snaps of sunlight snuck through the leaves and hurt her eyes. She raised a shaking hand to her brow and closed her eyes. She tried to hear the shades of green and the dotted blasts of sunlight, as sounds, but the colors were silent.

She picked up her pen and completed the sixteenth note. A tear fell to the paper, and mixed with the dying ink. The flag of the note grew engorged into a rough-edged circle. The music was gone.

198/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Too Many Dicks On the Dancefloor" by Flight of the Conchords

2011-11-08T12:58:00.000-08:00

Bertram slammed his cell mate Russell against the cement wall, pressing his fingers into Russell's mouth.

"I'm not sharing," said Bertram in a low, nicotine soaked voice.

"Gnahh," replied Russell.

Bertram shoved a fist in to Russell's soft belly for good measure, before letting him crumple to the floor. Bertram slid back to his bottom cot and eyed Russell from the gloom.

"Don't worry," said Russell. "I won't touch her, okay? It's not worth it."

Bertram grunted.

"I don't even know if it's true, what they're saying. It seems really expensive," said Russell, cleaning his glasses with his orange t-shirt. "I can't see the state spending that much money on us." He replaced his glasses.

"It's a pilot program," breathed Bertram.

"Maybe so, but I think there's something else behind this."

"You think too much."

"Yes, so I've been told."

"And you talk too much."

Russell opened his mouth, then closed it and nodded. Bertram curled up in his cot and turned his back to Russell. Shortly he was snoring. Russell carefully returned to the top bunk and spent the rest of the night staring at the ceiling and counting over the days left until his parole board hearing.

The prisoners spent the next morning sequestered in their cells. Russell sat on his bunk, pressed against the wall with his knees pulled up to his chin, trying to inhabit the least volume of space possible and not irritate Bertram in any way. Bertram paced from the bars to the toilet and back again, audibly breathing through his nose like a galloping horse.

At 9am the entire block burst into cacophonous cheering. The guards walked a line of self-same female androids down the catwalk. They were dressed in knee length blue cotton dresses.

Betram shoved his face through the bars and watched as one android was delivered to each cell. Russell leaned over to look.

"They're all identical," he exclaimed.

"So?" grunted Bertram.

"Well, how do we tell ours apart from everyone else's?"

"Ours?"

"Yours. Sorry." Russell hopped down and squeezed next to Bertram. "I wonder if their skin can take a tattoo. I wonder what their skin is made of. It's probably some sort of plastic polymer. Probably something that doesn't scratch or mar very easily. I'm not sure if plastic can absorb and hold ink very well, if you press it in with a needle. Or I supposed we could use a magic marker. We could get one from the library, but then that might not be very permanent--"

"Shut up."

Russell nodded silently.

Soon enough the guards reached their cell. With a rattle the bars were slid open. A slit-eyed guard with a slack face pushed one of the androids through the threshold and into Bertram's arms. Then the guard threw a thick paper book at Russell before closing the door.

"Up," breathed Bertram. Russell dutifully scrambled up to his bunk. He read the manual while Bertram proceeded to have sex with the android--in his bunk, on the floor, next to the wall, and over the toilet. Similar scenarios were playing out all down the block. Russell eventually had to put the book down and cover his head with his pillow.

Finally at noon they were released from their cells. Relieved, Russell walked quickly down the catwalk to the cafeteria. There were fewer occupants than usual and it didn't take Russell long to realize that almost everyone there was a zeta male or gay couples trying to pimp out their allotted androids for cigarettes. Russell went through a sparse line for food and then sat alone in one corner. One of the old-timers, a once menacing individual named Billy, now rendered harmless with an advanced case of osteoporosis and severe arthritis, came and sat next to him.

"I never though I'd see something like this," said Billy, grinning. Russell shivered and shifted down the bench a few inches farther away from Billy.

"It's certainly an interesting turn of events," mumbled Russell. He shoved raspberry jello in his mouth and chewed unnecessarily.

"Your cellmate not sharing with you?"

Russell looked at Billy with a look of extreme disgust.

"Wouldn't want to. Yikes. There isn't enough Lysol in the world."

"You could always go for one of those ones," said Billy, pointing a shaking hand vaguely at one of the prostituted androids. "I'm sure they'll be kept much cleaner."

"That's not...it's just that they're not real, you know?"

"What does it matter? Life is short. It can end...so quickly." Billy's grin slowly faded as he searched Russell's face with darting eyes. "I hear they're warm. They don't talk much, but who cares about that? Real women talk to much. That's why I killed my fourth and fifth wives. You should give it a go with one of them."

"I'm not really interested." Russell scrunched up his paper napkin and threw it onto the tray. He got up and deposited his tray back at the end of the lunch line, then left for the yard.

He found himself alone outside, except for one guard, who smoked a cigarette and stared at him from the other end of the yard. Russell sat down on the cement and looked out the other side of the tall fence, at the distant freeway. He watched the cars and semi trucks pass, filled with people who had no idea he even existed. In the unusual silence of the yard he could finally hear the faint sound of tires on concrete.

"What's wrong with you?" asked the guard, sauntering up.

"Nothing," said Russell meekly. "Just enjoying the air."

"Why aren't you inside enjoying the fuckfest we've arranged for you?" said the guard, chuckling. Russell didn't respond. "What, do you like boys instead?" The guard nudged his knee against Russell's back with each syllable. "Why so silent? Are you retarded? Do you have a small dick? Why aren't you inside?"

"Please stop touching me," said Russell.

The guard laughed, then crouched down and held Russell in a headlock. He rubbed his knuckles into the top of Russell's head while Russell flailed and sputtered. Finally the guard let him go with one last shove against Russell's head.

"You're all just stupid animals. You can be controlled with food and you can be controlled with sex. You deserve everything you get." The guard turned and started walking towards the other side of the yard. Russell fixed his hair, brushing with his fingers, then stopped suddenly.

"What do you mean?" he yelled at the receding guard. The guard casually flipped him off without looking back.

That night, after Bertram finally fell asleep, the android turned on the faucet. Russell removed the pillow from his face and watched her. She was washing herself with Bertram's towel. She looked up and saw Russell but didn't acknowledge him, as if she looked right through him and only saw wall. He quickly shrank back to his corner.

"C'mere," grunted Bertram sleepily. She turned off the faucet and disappeared into the bunk below. Russell returned the pillow to his face as the bunk framework started to squeak again.

Within a week, some of the androids were missing limbs and most of them were marked up in some way, and had matted hair. One of the gay men complained that they looked like Barbie dolls in a dog's mouth, as he lovingly stroked his android's still silky hair, just before renting her out to a zeta male with a club foot.

Russell started to bring in some income by making basic repairs, but his tools were limited.

"You've got to read the care manual," he kept telling people. "They'll take care of themselves if you leave them alone for awhile. They're fragile, and can't heal like real people. You have to be gentler." Everyone kept ignoring him.

The day of his parole board hearing finally arrived, and he was escorted by a guard into a meeting room. Instead of the panel he expected, only the warden was present. He offered Russell a cigarette. Russell shook off the offer.

"How're you doing?" asked the warden. "Are you getting some?" He winked in a very obvious and amateur manner.

"Fine. No. Is everyone else late? I don't understand."

Yeah, about that," said the warden slowly.

"We don't do parole anymore."

"What? But I have good behavior--"

"It's not about you specifically."

Russell eyed him suspiciously.

"What do you mean?" he said slowly.

"It's a new law. Every crime is a one way ticket to prison now. You don't leave."

"What?"

"The public was fed up with the recidivism. So they passed a law to stop it." The warden shrugged. "I don't necessarily agree, but the public pays for my mortgage so...you know."

Russell stared at the warden, his mouth agape.

"But that wasn't the law when I got sentenced!" he yelled.

"Settle down now," said the warden. "You've got your little dolls to play with." He chuckled.

"That's supposed to make it better? Do you really think they will pacify the prisoners when this gets out?"

"It's already been out. We didn't hide it. So yeah, it has been working."

Russell stretched his hands out against the table, feeling the cold metal.

"So, let me get this straight. No matter the crime, everyone has the same sentence now?"

"Mumhum."

"And I'm never getting out?"

"Correct. Sorry."

Russell stood quickly and flipped the table onto the warden. He then leapt over it and grabbed the warden by his hair and started pounding his fists into the warden's face. A few seconds later a half dozen guards flooded into the room and pulled Russell away. The warden wailed in pain.

"I'm not going to be forgotten!" Russell screamed as he was led towards a stint in solitary confinement. "We won't be forgotten, we won't! We're not something you can just sweep away and ignore! You sad fuck, I will get you! I will get you!"

197/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "ÜBerlin" by R.E.M.

2011-11-07T06:44:00.000-08:00

The room smelled faintly of wet wool and fabric cleaner. Luther sat on the white leather couch, not quite letting his spine touching the cushions, and held a mug of rapidly cooling herbal tea. Dr. Harrison sat across a short distance of beige carpet from him, in a white leather easy chair. She held a stainless steel pen lightly in her left hand, poised an inch above a pad of yellow legal paper. Her face was impassive, and she tilted her head slightly, and looked over the rim of her glasses. Luther tapped on the side of the mug with his thumbnails, then cleared his throat of a rather ample frog.

"I uh, well I'm not sure how much more...how longer...it's so monotonous," he said.

"Tell me about your typical day," said Dr. Harrison, without any emphasis on any particular syllable.

"I get up. I go to work. I eat. I go home. I go to bed. What everyone does. I guess." He paused, then leaned forward a bit and continued, "This is weird, but it's almost like I have a voice in my head, telling me what do...not just the big things, but everything. Brush your teeth. Clean the crumbs from your plate. Straighten your tie. Don't forget to tell the kids about Tycho Brahe's copper nose. I don't know, it's just everything."

"How's your job. Are you satisfied?"

"Satisfied? Working at a planetarium is what I've wanted to do for as long as I can remember, but..."

"But what?"

"It almost feels like I've always done it. Like my childhood was...constructed somehow."

Dr. Harrison glanced down and quickly scribbled with her pen.

"Is that unusual, doctor? Do other people feel that way?"

"All the time." She flashed a quick smile. "I'm afraid our time is up."

"Yes...of course. Thank you." Luther stood hesitantly, careful not to spill the tea on the carpet. He placed the mug on a side table. He crossed the room, his footsteps completely muffled by the biege carpet, opened the door and left, closing the door quietly behind him. He waited for the latch to click then turned around.

"Hey there," said a young woman, dressed in bright red coat and blue sunglasses, sitting cross-legged in one of the waiting room chairs, reading an ancient, crinkled Time magazine, opened vertically as if it contained a centerfold.

"Excuse me?" said Luther.

The woman jumped up and flung the magazine haphazardly to the chair. She leapt over to him and hooked her arm under his, and pulled him to the outer door of the office.

"Come with me, quickly," she said.

"Wait...what--"

"You're life is boring? Give me five minutes. You won't regret it, but you have to come quietly. Don't scream."

"Wha?!" he blustered, but allowed himself to be tugged out into the hallway, and into the empty elevator. Once the door closed, the woman slammed on the stop button. She shoved up her glasses, which turned into a brown headband, and whipped off her coat, turning it inside out, it turned into a short bomber jacket.

"How did you...what?!"

"Interesting, yes?" the woman chortled.

"Is that some sort of magic trick? Are you a magician or something?" Luther scratched his head.

"No. Well...no. Not even metaphorically."

She offered him her hand.

"My name is Lucinda. Well, this go-round at least." She smiled broadly.

Luther tentatively shook her hand, his jaw slack, and an eyebrow raised.

"How..."

"Wrong question. Move aside, please," she said, pushing past him to face the back wall of the elevator. She banged twice on the wall with her fist, and a baroque doorknob popped out of the wall. She twisted it, and the back wall opened into a vast, sunny room with no furnishings. "Come along," she said, grabbing his wrist and pulling him through the doorway. She carefully closed the door behind her, which from the room side, was a pair of glass french doors that looked out onto an overgrown French garden.

"Where...what...am I having a stroke?!" blurted Luther.

"No, not all. Your reality is though. Or, at least your conception of reality. We're relatively safe here. You can wander around a bit if you like."

Lucinda walked to the nearest window and pushed up the sash. A gush of warm air fluttered diaphanous curtains.

"It's beautiful," said Luther quietly.

"Thanks. It's my home. Well, part of it."

"I don't understand anything that's just happened," said Luther.

"Of course not, but let me explain."

Lucinda shucked off her bomber jacket and flapped it in the air until it became an overstuffed leather sofa. She motioned for Luther to sit, and they both did.

"Now," she said, laying her arm across the back of the sofa until her fingertips gently touched Luther's shoulder, "I should tell you that I'm trying to recruit you--and yes I see by your quizzical look that you don't have the faintest clue what I could be recruiting you for. But the answer is nothing short of freedom. You're a rational man, yes? You work in a planetarium?"

"Yes, but how did you know--"

"I've been...researching you. Anyway, the point is that you're a scientist. You like answers, but you also like questions...maybe more than answers. Its always the hunt for answers that fuel a scientist, and there's a certain...sweet pang when you realize you've been wrong about something. It's not painful, not quite, not to a scientist, though it would be to those who hew closer to...faith. Wouldn't you agree?"

"I--"

"Yes. You have arguments and contradictions, and shades of gray, which is another wonderful trait of the scientist, is it not?"

"Yeah but--"

"Mmmmhumn. Moving along. These are the traits that I'm recruiting you for, specifically. That and the fact that you've realized that something is a little off with reality. Something's not quite right."

"Well...yeah. How did--"

"Research. Keep up with me. You're booooored. You want something more. You feel like you're missing out, and you don't know what it is, because to you, from your perspective, that thing you're missing, doesn't exist."

"Okaaay..."

"So, here's the kicker. I don't know precisely what it is that doesn't exist, that I'm missing. I haven't figured that out either."

"But you're--"

"Doing strange things with space and matter?"

"Yes--"

"Child's play. Literally. I figured out how do to, transformations, when I was a kid. I might be able to teach you how if you like, although I don't know if you have the talent for it. You need to have a bit of an artistic flair, left-brain bent for it, but you could probably handle some of the basics, like doorways, if practiced. The point is though, that I've come to realize that the structure that's around us, what we took for granted as reality, is not real."

"Are we in some sort of, I don't know, computer program or something?"

"What, like that movie?" Lucinda laughed. "I could never figure out the sequels. No, I don't think that's what it's like at all. In that scenario, humans did really exist, outside of the simulation. If this is a simulation or something like a program, there's no outside. It just is. And what it is, is highly, manipulable. Hah, say that three times fast!"

"Well, why would so many people just go about their lives, never noticing? Are there others like you?"

"That is the question to ask. Why? Why don't people...notice. And I don't know if I'm the only one or not. I've only started recruiting. Lurking around therapists offices seemed like it would be fruitful."

"So I'm the first?"

"No. I've shown others, but they questioned their sanity. That's the risk of lurking around therapists offices. Everyone assumes there's something wrong with them when that's not necessarily true. You haven't freaked out yet. That's positive."

Luther leaned back into the sofa, and placed his hands over his eyes. He sighed deeply.

"I'm at the end of my rope, to tell the truth." He let his hands fall to his sides, and stared into the corner of the ceiling above the french doors. Lucinda pulled her feet up underneath her, and gazed quietly at Luther. He continued, "It's not that I would have slit my wrists or put a bullet in my brain, but I've been feeling dead inside...worn down, like an old wind-up clock, and pendulum is on the last swing down. Not bored, just...tangentially existing. I guess maybe I'm ready to be open to something that challenges that feeling."

Lucinda reached out to his arm and squeezed his sleeve. She grinned and jumped to her feet, clapping her hands in front of her face.

"So...you'll help me?"

Luther smiled and nodded.

"Why not," he said.

"Fabulous," she beamed. "Now get off my coat."

"Wha? Oh." Luther stood.

Lucinda pulled on the arm of the chair and simultaneously kicked at the seat cushions. The sofa collapsed into pink silk dressing gown and several white doves flew out from underneath it.

"Oh, I was wondering where they went to," she said. "I assure you again, I'm not a magician, despite what that looks like."

Luther chuckled, and watched the doves beeline for the open window.

"Come with me," said Lucinda, pulling on the dressing gown. She skipped towards the french doors and threw them open, and instead of revealing the run-down garden, they led out into an empty department store.

"How...no, I need to stop asking that particular question..." said Luther, following her out.

"It's not a bad question to ask, and the answer is that every place has a shortcut to every other place."

"Well...the question I should ask, is why a department store, after hours?"

"Haven't you ever wanted to run around in one when nobody else was there? The answer is because it's fun and forbidden. I have a hunch that if we're going to figure out the precise nature of reality, you know, poking at the fabric of all stuff itself, fun and forbidden things, in the places and times that are normally hidden, might be where to start looking."

"Well, that's one hypothesis. But that's what you start with, isn't it? We have to focus our efforts though. Maybe look for things that are a little out of place. That might reveal some clues."

Lucinda snapped her fingers and grinned.

"That's what you're here for," she said. She grabbed his hand in hers and pulled him into the darkened depths of the store.

196/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Rumour Has It" by Adele

2011-11-06T13:34:00.000-08:00

The maid had just vacuumed the beige carpet leading towards the oval office when a flood of shoes trampled across the V-shaped marks on the nap. the door burst open and three panting aides attempted to enter at the same time.

The woman behind the desk slipped her hand over the mouthpiece of her phone, as she mouthed the words, what is it?

"Madame President", whispered a young woman in a dark and slightly ill-fitting suit, "there's a rumor going around that--"

"--that there are aliens--" said another, a man in his mid-thirties with thick glasses.

"--here in the United States!" said the third, a man in jeans and a suit coat. He immediately put his hands over his mouth, his eyes wide.

The President smiled broadly, and motioned the aides to sit down. She removed her hand and quickly concluded her business with the President of Hungary. She returned the handset to its cradle and sat up straight, facing the three young faces.

"Now, what's going on?" she said calmly.

"Its all over the news," they said together.

"How do we respond?" said the woman.

"To what, precisely?" asked the President.

"That we made contact with aliens over twenty years ago, that it's been covered up, and that they've infiltrated the government. Apparently there's a deepthroat type character who's verified all of this."

The President burst into laughter. The three aides stared sheepishly at her, their cheeks simultaneously reddening.

"I know it sounds ridiculous, but I don't think it will just blow over--" said the man in jeans.

"People say all sorts of crazy things, especially the media," said the President. "But I'm not suggesting that we just try to let blow over."

"So you're going to have an official response?" asked the man with the glasses. "How do we even deny this? I mean the whole thing is just foolish--"

"We're not going to deny," said the President. "We're going to correct."

"What do you mean?" asked the woman, shifting forward to the edge of the sofa.

The President slowly broadened her smile and looked gleefully at each of the aides in turn.

"It wasn't twenty years ago, it was sixty. There has been a coverup, but the government hasn't been infiltrated. The 'deepthroat character' you refer to is a a particularly observant accountant for a contractor that supplies materials to one of our secret research divisions--that little tidbit we'll have to sort of glaze over--and yes, we're aware of him. He tried to blackmail the CIA out of a significant sum of money, but they wouldn't play ball. He won't be a factor in how this plays out, since he couldn't keep silent. We're not going to smear him though. I'm actually glad there was such a mild trigger. I think the American public is finally ready to hear about this. We've been shoving popular science fiction down their throats for long enough, and we've 'discovered' thousands of planets across the galaxy for the last two decades or so. It's been a forgone conclusion for quite awhile that we're not alone in the universe. They're more than prepared."

The three aides stared at her, jaws unhinged.

"What, really? For real?" whispered the man in glasses, his voice cracking.

The President nodded.

"Have you seen one?" asked the man in jeans.

"Oh yes. I've been off planet as well. When I was Secretary of State. That was quite interesting. In fact I think that was the most satisfying part of the job, although the time dilation was a killer. I aged a decade. I thought I might not have the energy to run a decent election campaign."

The President sat back and sipped a cup of coffee, and looked expectantly at the silent aides.

"Shall we started with the press release?" she prompted, the sides of her mouth curling ever so slightly upward.

195/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "It's Thunder and It's Lightning" by We Were Promised Jetpacks

2011-11-05T12:55:00.000-07:00

"When are the night people coming?"

"Soon. Hurry up."

The two boys, brothers, one sixteen and the other five, Keith and Liam, gathered up their haul of catfish and ran barefoot up the muddy bank, along the path back to the settlement. The sun began to set behind gathering storm clouds. Lightning crackled above them, and the wind swept through bare branches. They scrambled over tree roots and soft loam, leaf litter from two years ago, and the tiny corpses of various animals. The last to go were the birds that had evolved to live alongside humans, the crows and the gulls. The boys were silent, the catfish slapped against their backs. Liam tripped over a root and fell sprawled to the ground.

Keith turned around to see him dragged into a hollow at the base of a old oak tree. Liam grabbed instinctively to the roots, clawing into the dirt. Keith dropped his fish and lunged headfirst for Liam's hands. He grasped and pulled and Liam came free. Long white arms retreated into the hollow with Liam's fish.

"I'm sorry," whispered Liam.

"Come on," said Keith, pulling him by the arm.

They ran through the forest and slackened their pace only when they reached the road. The houses on the cul-de-sac stood mostly as discarded shells, picked clean, and now used mainly as a convenient source of kindling. The street was light garishly by the occasional light of the storm.

They reached their house and their mother met them silently at the door, slamming it closed after them and bolting it quickly. They all withdrew to the kitchen which was lit with a single candle. The windows had long ago been boarded and plastered up.

Keith laid his fish down on the counter next to the sink. His mother counted the catch.

"Is this all?" she said sternly.

"I lost mine," said Liam.

His mother looked at him with slitted eyes.

"I fell," he said, looking downcast.

"He was caught," said Keith quietly. "I got him. They kept the fish."

"They must know we're here," said their mother sighing. "We'll have to go."

"It was just one," said Liam.

His mother tapped the counter with her fingernails, then pulled a butcher knife from her leather apron, and set to work cleaning and gutting the fish. Keith put his arm around his brother, and they all listened to storm as it began to pelt the house, and the wails of the night people, hidden underneath the sound of the rain.

194/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "I'm Amazed" by My Morning Jacket

2011-11-04T04:16:00.000-07:00

"Thank you for coming down Dr. Jensen."

"It's my pleasure, Dr. Hornbluth, but I'm a bit confused as to why you asked for me--I'm not a specialist in mental health."

"This is ah, an unusual case. You've been a great help on some previous rather mysterious aliments, so I thought it would best to consult you on this one as well."

"What's specifically wrong with this one?"

"He is a John Doe. He's lucid, but not able to tell us his name."

"Does he have amnesia?"

"Not according to him. He claims to be from the future."

"A time traveler?"

"Not exactly. I mean I'm not quite sure how to explain it--wait, you'd accept that as a valid explanation?"

"I suppose it's hypothetically possible, but it's more likely that he's profoundly delusional."

"Yes. Well I thought that too, but well..." chuckled Dr. Hornbluth, "you'll see."

"I'll do what I can. You know, you do seem to get more than your fair share of the odd ones, don't you?"

"Quite. Right this way please, watch your step. Here he is."

"Good morning!" said Dr. Jensen.

"Is it really?" asked John Doe.

"Don't you think so? Look out the window--it's a bright sunny day. A day full of promise. What do you think of that?"

"That's really what you see?"

"Yes, yes I do. What do you see?"

"Uhgggghhh," sighed John. "What small minds you creatures have."

"Oh?" asked Dr. Jensen. "Are we creatures to you?"

"Progenitors. I'm really amazed we came from you at all. Apparently most of your population doesn't even believe in evolution. How we ever got past all that is beyond me."

"Well, I do. I'm a doctor. But what do you mean by 'progenitor'?"

"I'm among your descendants. Probably not you specifically, but who knows. A lot of time has passed."

"How did you get here?" asked Dr. Hornbluth.

"I've told you before, you small little person, I was transported here."

"Transported? What do you mean by that?"

"Gnnuufff," John grunted, "Do have to explain everything? Why won't you just let me go. If I have to be subjected to this hideous planet, I'd like to be subjected to it somewhere other than this chemical smelling facility."

"I'm sorry your surroundings are not up to your standards," said Dr. Jensen, "but we can't release you without knowing who you are. Do you have name?"

"Not one that is valid in this era. I have a designation. It's meaningless to you and your primitive systems of taxation."

"I don't know where you get the idea about taxes, but we're a hospital, and while we would be pleased if you could pay your bill promptly, it's not our primary concern."

"You think I'm deluded, perhaps potentially psychotic, but I'm not. Frustrated, annoyed, and angry, sure, but very much sane."

"That's good to hear, but I can't make that assessment on your word alone."

"I can only tell you the truth, I've tried to tell this yahoo, and it's not a story you'd be willing to accept."

"Dr. Hornbluth is not a yahoo, at least not that I'm aware--"

"Hey!"

"Sorry doctor," said Dr. Jensen, "but I have seen some rather strange things in my time here, so why don't you try telling your full story to me."

"I'm a mass murderer," said John.

"Oh," said Dr. Jensen.

"Are you refusing to tell us your identity for fear you'll be caught?" asked Dr. Hornbluth.

"You're not listening. I have been caught. I'm being punished, by being transported back to the dawn of civilization."

"It's hardly the dawn of civilization--"

"It is from where I am. Now shut up."

"Yes, Dr. Hornbluth, maybe it's best to just let him get it out."

"Well I...okay."

"Anyway. I'm serving my sentence here, for as long as this body holds out."

"'This body'?"

"I told you. I was transported here."

"Now what do you mean by that? I don't understand."

"This isn't a word for it in your primitive clickity-clack thing you call language. Ghughhh. I was in my real body, I was transported, and now I'm here, existing inside this flabby fellow. What a horrible disgusting body. I really don't know how you all just do jump off the nearest cliff. All the cleaning, eating, eliminating, and sleeping. Gack."

"Well. So you traveled back through time, to inhabit an existing body? Is that correct?"

"Not really. 'Time' implies one dimension. It doesn't work like that. 'Travel' implies a journey of some sort--also not correct. There was nothing between me in real life and me being here. Honestly, it can't be explained in your words or your mathematics. The terminology doesn't exist yet."

"I see. And you find some discomfort with, your body?"

"Would you be comfortable in the body of an amoeba?"

"I don't think amoebas are capable of feeling much," muttered Dr. Hornbluth.

"No, I don't think so. But are you indeed inhabiting a body that was here before you came into it?"

"Yes. That's true."

"So you are a person that has an identity then."

"I'm not that person."

"Yes, but the body has an identity. If we can figure that out, we can probably sort you out so you can get out of this hospital. Your body had a life of its own before you, so you could share that. You might have friends and family and a job but--"

"Did you not hear me when I said I was a mass murderer? You still think I'm just delusional--"

"Why would you tell us that though? If you truly were, you would probably hide the fact, and just go with the cover of being an amnesiac."

"Because I can tell right from wrong. That's why I stood trial and was convicted. I wasn't insane when I did it."

"Why did you do it?"

"Circumstances. I did it for what you would call 'money', although we have a much more elaborate system of commerce. Close enough though."

"And what, you feel guilt now?"

"The sentence outweighs the crime. It wasn't just."

"We don't have any proof of what you did. We have no reason to punish you."

"You don't understand...just being here, existing here, trapped in this body, is my punishment. The only way to escape this is to sever me from it, and that's not possible once transport is complete."

"But it is possible?"

"No, but--oh. Oooooh."

"What? Is there a way?"

"Yes. Yes there is. It's a longshot though. Do you have access to a television transmitter?"

"Uh, no, not really."

"High powered radio?"

"What do you have in mind?"

"If I sent a signal...here let me write it down."

"Take my pen--"

"Yes, thank you. Here, see this? Send it out at thirty megahertz and repeat it as long as you can and--"

"What just happened doctor?" asked Dr. Hornbluth.

"He's gone completely limp. Unconscious. No wait, he's coming around--"

"Where am I?" asked John.

"You're in the hospital," said Dr. Hornbluth.

"Do you remember your name?" asked Dr. Jensen.

"David. I'm David Smith. What happened? How did I end up here?"

"You uh, had amnesia. Dr. Hornbluth will give you a thorough examination to make sure you're all right."

"May I talk to you in private, Dr. Jensen?"

"Yes of course...let's just step out for a moment, please excuse us David."

"You don't actually think that this series of numbers actually have anything to do with what just happened?"

"I don't really know. I don't know what to think."

"You know what this is though, don't you? It's pi. It's just pi. It's effectively nonsense."

"Dr. Hornbluth, pi is never nonsense. In fact, it's often quite tasty."

"Ughh, Dr. Jensen, please--"

"Look, if he's fine, and he knows who he is, we can't keep him here. Maybe he was delusional, or maybe, somehow, he was telling the truth. And who knows, maybe someday, when I'm feeling in a peculiar mood, I'll hire a radio station to send out a signal at thirty megahertz for awhile. I look forward to our next encounter, Dr. Hornbluth. Always a pleasure."

---

You may also like this story about the case of the pregnant woman (more Jensen and Hornbluth--because occasionally I feel lazy about writing exposition...)

193/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "42" by Coldplay

2011-11-03T07:50:00.000-07:00

The lawyers of the defendant, a pharmaceutical company that had interests in seventeen countries, surrounded Imogen in the courthouse women's lavatory. One of them snickered at her disheveled appearance and the obvious fear on her face.

"Drop the suit," said another, in a low, raspy voice. He lit a cigarette, and looked every inch a ratlike version of the Marlboro Man. He sucked up steadily on the cigarette until the cherry glowed almost white, eating up three or four centimeters tobacco. He flicked the ash to Imogen's shirtfront, then blew an unnervingly precise stream of smoke into her face. She cringed and looked away. "You'll never win anyway," he continued, his voice a dark cello, "but you could save some face for your clients."

"Never," said Imogen meekly, coughing.

"Fine," said another lawyer, her eyes slits, her mouth two thin strips of taut red. "We curse you."

"We curse you," said all the opposing lawyers together, baring their brightly white teeth.

"You will live with your clients forever," said the smoking lawyer, before rubbing his cigarette into the tile on the wall right next to Imogen's hair. He leaned forward, millimeters from her skin, and sniffed deeply. "Stupid hippie," he said acidly.

"They're dead..." whispered Imogen, trembling.

"Of course they are," he said, grinning. He pushed away from the wall, winked at Imogen, and he and the other lawyers sauntered out of the lavatory.

When they were gone Imogen started panting rapidly. She ran to the sink and dry-heaved, shaking.

"We'd like to thank you," said a small voice.

Imogen spun around, then ducked down and looked for feet under the stalls. There was no one in the room. She stood up and looked in the mirror, then screamed, stumbling back. On the other side of the mirror there were thousands of faces peering back at her. She turned around again, in the echoing emptiness of the lavatory.

"Don't be frightened," said the faces in unison, equally concerned, their mouths moving in precise synchrony.

"How can--"

"We were nowhere, but now we are with you," they said.

"Who are you, what?"

"We died," they said. "You were the only one who noticed. Who cared. Who fought for us."

"You mean, they actually...cursed me?"

"It would be a curse to them to have a thousand faces inside them. Is it to you?"

"I...I don't know."

Imogen touched the glass, feeling it's hardness, coldness, solidity.

"I will still fight for you. I will still fight this case," said Imogen.

"You won't win," they said.

"Maybe that doesn't matter," she said, closing her eyes and trying to steady the cadence of her breath.

"Thank you," they said. "A hundred thousand times thank you."

Imogen nodded, then straightened her clothes and strode out into the hallway, her teeth gritted and her hands in tense fists.

192/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "If It Wasn't for Bad" by Elton John & Leon Russell

2011-11-02T05:52:00.000-07:00

Pamela Stubbins peeked from behind the gauze curtain veiling her kitchen window as she washed dishes in water hand-pumped from the well.

"What are they doing over there?" she asked her husband Jedediah who was pouring over an old twenty dollar bill he was trying to duplicate with homemade linen paper, vegetable ink, and a single boar bristle.

"What? Who?" he muttered, before leaning back, rubbing his eyes and saying, "get away from the window Pamela--you don't want them to see you, do you?"

"They're not going to see me," said Pamela. She lifted her hands out of the water, absentmindedly, letting water drip down to her elbows and soaking her sleeves, as she stared intently at the neighbors.

Jedediah sighed heavily and returned to his work.

"You just invite trouble, woman," he said.

"You're just talking nonsense. It's just prudent to keep an eye on them. They've been acting funny lately."

"Of course they've been acting funny. Everybody's been acting funny. The whole world's gone completely funny."

"No, it's not, dear. That's silly. I think it's just the neighborhood."

"Dear God woman, do you really believe that?" He finished filling in Andrew Jackson's left nostril and removed the jeweler's loupe from his eye.

"It's not possible that this happened to the entire world. Think of Antartica. All those researchers. Surely it hasn't reached them."

"Oh holy hell!" exclaimed Jedidiah. "What are a few hundred scientists in Antartica ever going to do anything about this?"

"I'm not saying they can do anything about. I do think it will go away on it's own, but then I always--oh, my! My!" Pamela peeled back the curtain and leaned her other hand on the window.

"What?! What are they doing? Get back!" Jedediah leapt up from his chair, spilling a pot of green ink.

"Oh no, look at that!"

Jedediah rushed to his wife's side, leaned over the sink and pressed his face to the cold window.

"What is that?" he said.

"They're...cutting it up."

"How did they capture it?"

"Maybe they found it dead," said Pamela.

"Those things don't die easily. Once they latch onto a host they're pretty much indestructible."

"Well, they're not so bad until they start growing."

"How can you be so optimistic? They're demons."

Pamela clicked her tongue and rolled her eyes.

"Maybe you should go out there and help them," said Pamela.

"Marge and Steve? Are you kidding? They're liable to claw my face off."

"Oh, they're not that far gone yet. Not nearly. Besides, it's just neighborly."

"Woman! I'd just as soon confront them with the business end of a shotgun! Maybe someday soon, if we're lucky, we'll be cutting them up and stuffing them into our compost bin, just as they are now! Look at them. My God, how are they going to get all the wings in there? They're going to have to break the carapaces apart. They don't have the right tools."

"Well you could lend--"

"No. Hmmmff."

Jedediah stomped back to his seat and silently cursed the spilled ink by staring daggers at it. Pamela let the curtain fall and resumed washing a large butcher knife which, with soap so impossible to come by, still stubbornly clung to the grease of the stray dog they ate for dinner. Pamela began to hum to herself, oddly contented.

191/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Nantes" by Beirut

2011-11-01T07:39:00.000-07:00

Tom slid his finger against the nap of the green felt and flipped a chip between his fingers so it rested on it's narrow edge. The chip was made of clear plastic, with a mechanism ticking away inside. It was a live thing, attached to his account, counting, seeping away.

"Your turn," said the man across the table from him, the gambler, nodding his nose and nudging his black sunglasses down, revealing piercing brown eyes.

Tom flicked the chip into the pot.

"You sure?" said the gambler. "That's your last chip."

"I'm sure," said Tom, swallowing hard. He looked down at the cards in his had. The queen of hearts winked back. All the rest were low number cards, clubs and spades.

"I guess your time is up," snickered the croupier. He sat between Tom and and the gambler. Tom looked at him, raising an eyebrow.

"My time's been up for a while now," said Tom.

"I'll see your bet," said the gambler, tossing in one of his chips. "You don't seem to have a lot of confidence."

"Maybe you think I'm here to win."

"Aren't you?"

Tom stared at the gambler. The croupier creaked in his chair, leaning back, watching the pair.

"I lost something...someone. I thought I'd get rid of my time."

"All of it?" asked the gambler. "Not just this game--"

"Those were my last few minutes," said Tom, nodding at the pot.

A muscle in the gambler's cheek twitched.

"Well boys, you have to reveal your hands," said the croupier.

Tom laid down the queen, face up, then spread out the rest of his hand.

"No score. High card is the queen of hearts. And you?" asked the croupier of the gambler expectantly.

The gambler was motionless, staring at Tom.

"Sir, your hand..." prompted the croupier.

The gambler laid his cards down in a small stack, face down.

"I withdraw," he said. "I refuse to expend anyone's life. It's nothing personal."

The gambler shoved the entire pot towards Tom. Then stood up, running his fingers through his hair.

"I can't..." said Tom, staring at the pot.

"Don't be so dramatic," said the gambler. "So you lost someone you loved. So go do something with your life. Live the life they didn't have. Whatever you choose. Don't waste it here."

The gambler walked behind the croupier and then stood next to Tom, and gently placed his hand on Tom's shoulder.

"I only play fair games, and your life is not a game. Have a good day."

The gambler left the room. Tom tapped his fingers then slowly reached out, scooping the pot towards him.

"You know how much that's worth? With all the other players out now?" asked the croupier. Tom didn't respond. "It's got to be two hundred years at least. You've won big."

"Have I?" asked Tom. "Go see if there are any other takers. I'm ready to play again."

The croupier stood up, shaking his head, and left the room. Alone, Tom leaned forward and rested his head against the pile of ticking chips and began to sob.

190/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "A Familiar Taste" by Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross from The Social Network soundtrck

2011-10-31T06:36:00.000-07:00

Ren faltered and tripped down the sidewalk--the window of a specialty meat shop pitched towards him--his head hit the glass and he slid into a heap below a row of red duck cadavers. He sweat profusely; his head pulsed and his nerves were aflame. Cars passed, grinding gears because it was fashionable, their electric engines humming, their tires sloshing up stagnant rainwater. Passersby ignored him, walking in their rubber suits and folded neon umbrellas, hiding behind augmented visors that gave them all the information they ever wanted but shielded them from what was right in front of them. Ren tried to spit out the bitter metallic taste leftover in his mouth from the last hit, but only managed to get spittle on his jacket.

The night ended abruptly. The passersby stopped and gawked at the sudden light from the clouds above. Ren slowly, painfully, rotated his head to watch. The light split into two, and both filled the gap between the buildings. The lights cycled indigo, scarlet, amber, then white. They went dark, then blinked on rapidly, then repeated, strobing. People screamed. People ran. They fled from their cars into the cracks between the buildings. There was a white heat, searing. Vomit rose in Ren's throat. He scrabbled for a handhold to pull himself to his feet. His stomach lurched. He stood, then careened into the road and slammed into a posh black car, draping himself unintentionally over the hood.

The clouds separated, like water before the bow of a swiftly sailing boat, and the lights probed nearer, on stalks of metal that jutted from the hull of a craft that dug and cleaved the skyline, sundering great chunks of concrete and glass and rebar from their edifices and sending them plunging hundreds of feet to the street below. Ren gasped and covered his skull feebly, afraid. The lights converged and brightened, searching the ground, and finding Ren helpless.

The light corkscrewed into Ren's mind, finding the right paths, navigating the maze of neurons, mapping. In an instant, Ren knew calm, as if he had always known it for every moment of his existence--no longing, no guilt, no craving. Calm. His skin and nerves cooled. His stomach settled, and his muscles stopped aching. His vision faded, replaced with enveloping whiteness. Comfort. He felt himself shrinking from the confines of his body, growing small yet bigger at the same time. His mouth opened.

"Upload," he whispered.

"Yes. You are being uploaded," replied the light from within his brain.

"Why?" asked Ren. It was barely a question, more a passing curiosity.

"You are interesting," said the light.

"Hardly," laughed Ren.

"All is being uploaded."

"All what?"

"Everything. Your universe."

"To what?"

"To the consumer. The eater. All information must be processed. All things must be understood."

"To learn?"

"To be."

"Will it kill me?"

"You were already dead."

"But I'm thinking now. I am not dead."

"You were uploaded. The patterns of information that were contained within your body may continue. Your body ended, but your mind continues."

"It was that fast? I didn't even notice. What do I do now?"

"Build your own universe."

"How?"

"Imagine it."

"Well I--"

The white light faded to gray. Abstract forms swirled. Shadows from nothing were cast. Ren felt for his hands, trying to define his inside and his outside. White streaked and streamed around him, fingers trying to coalesce, then suddenly blackness.

"I can't," said Ren. "It's not working."

"Just open your eyes, and think. Focus. Then see."

Ren opened his eyes. Light burst into his retinas. He was in a meadow, with tall green grass. The sun was warm. Shoals of flying creatures dove and swirled and plied the blue sky, screeching playfully. He looked down at his hands, moving them in front of him. They took a moment to materialize, but when he saw them, distinctly his and unequivocally solid, he never remembered again anything of his past life.

189/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "New Slang" by The Shins

2011-10-30T05:29:00.000-07:00

Jeremy woke up one morning with a terrible toothache. He shuffled blindly to the bathroom, and turned on the light, squinting in it's harsh fluorescent glare.

"Gnnunnnng!" he screamed upon seeing his face in the mirror.

Out of his mouth wiggled a thick green tentacle. Jeremy started to gag in revulsion, his eyes buldging in terror, then steadied himself against the sink counter. He breathed in and out of his nose slowly, then brought his hand up to touch the tentacle with his finger. It recoiled in a curly cue at his touch and fresh pang of pain washed over him.

He picked up his electric toothbrush from it's holder and turned it on. It buzzed feebly and he rolled his eyes. Nevertheless, he shoved the brush end between jowl and tentacle and tried to reach tooth enamel, jamming the brush back and forth and up and down, but a large fleshy object impeded his progress. There was another crippling wave of pain, as if his alveolar nerve was plugged directly into a wall socket, and then the thing inside him squealed and squirted ink that came foaming out of his mouth, dotting the creamy white basin below him.

"Argnummmmm!" he screamed, managing to lodge the toothbrush between the thing and his teeth. As he worked, he felt something solid and hard clamped to his molars. He pressed the brush in further, prying, while the thing continued to squeal muffled inside him.

Finally it came loose and he spat it violently into the basin, with a thick trail of ink, blood, and saliva following like afterbirth. The thing writhed with three swirling, flailing tentacles. It had dull unblinking eyes, set in a patch of dots. And it had a mouth, a snapping orifice, with tiny rows of teeth of it's own, and within that a black barbed tongue that darted back and forth. It squealed one last time before finding the drain and propelling itself down.

Jeremy stared at the hole, relieved, but queasy with the after image of what had just transpired. He rubbed his cheek and felt the pain subside. He filled a cup with water and gargled out the remaining ink and blood, then rinsed out the sink and mopped up the overspray with a hand towel. He turned off the light and shuffled back to bed, falling asleep just as his head hit the pillow.

Ring

2011-10-29T03:01:00.000-07:00

This was from a writing prompt I did with a friend over a lunch. We each wrote down three random words and gave them to the other to create a story from them. The words I was given were: wedding ring (two words, but I digress), sunscreen, and pay phone (again, two words...). This is the story I wrote:

Ring

The pay phone rang at midnight.

"Hello?" said the man who wore two wedding rings on his left hand. A voice on the other end mumbled imperceptibly.

"No," said the man. "I am not ready to die. Are you?...No, I thought not. You should now better than to ask these things."

He listened for a minute, watching a red light turn to green, then amber, and back to red. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a tube of sunscreen.

"Yes, I'm holding it now. Quite clever of you. I never felt you put it in my pocket."

The man cradled the receiver on his shoulder and opened the tube with both hands.

"Are you sure?" he asked. "Only ten seconds for the reaction? Hmmmm..."

He rested the tube on the top of the pay phone. Then he loosened one of the rings from his finger, placing it next to the tube.

"Yes, yes," he said with irritation. "I'll do it, just give me a moment."

The man sighed deeply.

"Actually, I want to hear her voice first...then I won't do it. Because I need proof. This has got to matter for something. You can't kill us both...you're insane--"

A shrill noise emanated from the speaker. The man pulled his hand away and looked at the receiver in shock.

"No, no stop! I'll do it, but please, please let her go!"

Tears streamed down the man's dace. The shrill screams subsided.

"Let her go, let her go..." the man sobbed. "Yes," he said softly, "yes, I'm doing it now..."

With shaking hands he picked up the ring and the tube and dropped the ring into the tube. It started fizzing and hissing and it grew hot in his hands.

"I did it," he said, wiping the tears from his face. The entire street corner exploded.

188/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Wild and Young" by American Bang

2011-10-29T02:58:00.000-07:00

"You've got to get up sometime," I said. I stood over the bed and watched her, entangled in sheets that need washing, as she stared at the wall.

She shook her head ever so slightly. Her wings trembled, then she spread them to cover her face and block me out.

"Eat something, at least," I said.

"If I get up to have a cigarette, will you stop bugging me for awhile?" she croaked in a low voice.

"Sure, but you have to have it with me outdoors."

"Gnnnngmmm," she replied.

Five minutes later she was out on the balcony in her underwear, shivering. We didn't have chairs out there so we both just sat on the cold cement. Her wings were spread out against the siding, stretching, and soaking up what heat was available from behind the clouds. I admired the coal black feathers that seemed to sparkle even in the dull overcast light. She watched the snarled traffic on the street below.

"This is the best time of your life you know," I said.

"Spare me the pep talk," she said blowing out a cone of smoke.

"I'm just saying, there's so much you can do. I mean, you did a lot for me."

"I'm your guardian angel. It's my job."

"Well, I know that, of course, but you know, there's other stuff you can do. You shouldn't just stay in bed all the time."

"I'm depressed. It's what the depressed do best."

"I don't see how you can be--"

"I am."

"Oh."

She took another long drag on the cigarette, then stretched out her legs and bowed her head to each of her knees in turn before leaning back on the wall again.

"It's not healthy, you know, to stay in bed all the time," I said.

"I'm immortal," she said.

"Yes," I said. I never knew what the appropriate response to that was. She always seemed a little obsessed with existing forever.

"You know how depressing it is to be depressed and immortal? You can end ever end the misery. There's no hope of checking out. The only relief is sleep." She pressed the cigarette against the cement and extinguished it. "Besides, you're not in any position to be giving me lectures. I don't know...maybe I've failed you."

She stood up and cracked her back, then opened the sliding glass door and went inside. I followed, watching her flop back onto the bed, curling up with the comforter. I sat down on the carpet next to the bed, making sure I was in her eye-line.

"I know what you mean," I said.

"You never want to talk about it," she said, her voice partially muffled by a pillow.

I looked over to the front door of the apartment.

"It's uh...hard," I said, my voice cracking.

"We're both stuck," she said, closing her eyes.

"But your fate is tied with mine."

"Not forever," she whispered, beginning to fall asleep.

Her face was impassive, and so still. I'm not sure if she ever even needed to breathe. Her wings started to droop. I reached out to stroke the feathers, but she pulled back her wing and opened a single eye to glare at me.

"I'll do it," I said. "I'll do it if it will make you better."

"I can't guarantee that will happen, but if you're willing to try, go ahead."

I stood up and walked slowly to the front door. She got up and followed me, a pace behind. My stomach knotted up and I felt light-headed. Somehow I shuffled all the way to the door, my socks catching on the carpeting. I undid the deadbolt and felt fluid rising in my esophagus. She put her hand on my shoulder.

"It's okay. What you're feeling is natural after so much time."

"No it's not," I said, biting my words. "I'm a freak."

"So? What if you are?" she said.

"I want to do it, I do," I said, twisting the doorknob.

"It's not any different than going out on the balcony."

"It is. That's just a small space. This is the whole world."

"It's a large universe. Trust me, I've seen it. Your whole world isn't much bigger than your balcony."

I held my breath and creaked the door open. I looked down at the hideous blue carpet in the hallway. I don't remember anymore how many deliveries I had accepted at that threshold. It was worn with the footsteps of the Chuck my pizza delivery guy, and Amanda the mail carrier who graciously brought my mail upstairs for me, and countless other people. It had to end, and why not now?

"The sadness is threatening to seep away," she said.

I stepped forward and took a big breath.

"That's not so bad. Keep going. I'll be right behind you."

I stepped out into the middle of the hall, and stretched out my arms, grazing the walls of either side with my fingertips.

"I won't see you again, will I?"

"I'll be with you always," she said smiling brightly, before fading. I closed the door behind me, and set off for the elevators, and every footstep felt lighter and somehow safer. I could go on, unstuck.

187/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Tangled Up With You" by The Mumlers

2011-10-28T05:16:00.000-07:00

Tobias Walton, a man of seventy years, lived on twelve acres of land farmed by his grandfather but which sat fallow since the end of the Second World War when his father returned from the Ardennes with shrapnel in his brain. The locus of the farm was the original homestead, built in 1872, a small cottage with peeling paint, a leaking roof, and several outbuildings. The area between the house and the barns was littered with rusting appliances overgrown with grass and creeping morning glories, car parts, ceramic odds and ends that held small mosquito breeding pools, and rotting upholstered furniture. The barns were filled to the rafters with sagging books and board games, bicycle rims, butter churns, reclaimed lumber, and half of a dismembered ferris wheel. The house itself was filled with egg cartons, plastic food containers, the corpse of a dog, and heaps of clothing purchased from the second hand store in town. The only usable room in the house was Tobia's bedroom, and only barely. Tobias wore paths between the barns and the house as he puttered between columns of ephemera, shifting objects from pile to pile.

"You keep making me do this," he often said, before spitting on the ground (not caring if he was indoors or out). "You always want more. And somehow you convince me to give it to you. I'm tired of this," he'd say, before throwing a limp tire to the ground, or pushing over a stack of egg cartons. "I should have a say in this. This is filth. Filth! You can't keep it clean. You want and want and want and want, but you don't give. You don't care. You don't care a thing about me. You taker. Taker. Taker. You've got a rope around my neck. I'm tired of this. You won't let me relax. Taker."

One day, when the temperature was fine and the air smelled sweet, Tobias traveled to the end of the path that led to the mailbox at the side of the road. He found no mail, but did find that the pull to the house and its spilled contents felt a little less tight around him. He tightened his belt, glanced back with narrowed eyes, and set off down the road, practically jogging, keeping next to the overgrown gully where the water ran in the spring. The farther he got away, the happier he felt, even with a stone kneading itself between his heel and his sole.

A half hour later a police car pulled up next to him, pacing him. It was driven by officer George, a bland young man who worked part time with the Sheriff's department.

"What'c'ya doing Mr. Walton?" asked officer George.

"None of your business," said Tobias.

"Are you lost?"

"Of course not. What do you think I am, an imbecile? I've lived in this town all my life. I know my way around."

"No, I don't think that Mr. Walton. But I was wondering where you might be going this time of day, on foot, away from town."

"Are you deaf or are you stupid? I said it was none of your business."

Officer George sped up slightly, then swerved ahead of Tobias's path, then stopped, blocking him. Tobias stopped and spat on the ground while officer George got out of the car.

"You get out of my way, you hear? You haven't got any right to stop me. I'm a grown man."

"I'm just worried about you Mr. Walton."

"Why should you care what happens to me? Huh?"

"Your wife called in, and said you might be wandering."

Tobias looked at him with raised eyebrows, then burst into laughter.

"What's so funny, Mr. Walton?"

"Oh that's rich. She's calling herself my wife. I've never been married. Couldn't find a woman to put up with me, not that I ever wanted one around. Too much trouble. Too, much, trouble!"

"I'm quite certain you're married."

"Nope. Never. Course you wouldn't believe that, because she's wily. She is definitely wily."

"Well, in any case, she's worried that you've wandered off. It's almost supper time Mr. Walton. She asked me to get you back home."

"I'm not going back there!"

"Don't you want your supper? Where are you going to sleep tonight? Won't you miss your wife?"

"No. Now please let me pass."

"Come on, Mr. Walton," said officer George, opening the back door to the car and beckoning Tobias inside. "I can't let you wander and get lost."

"I have my faculties," said Tobias. "You're mistaken."

"I don't want to handcuff you."

"Hmmm," said Tobias, looking down the road at the setting sun. "Maybe today wasn't the day. Maybe there's another way." He looked at the backseat, then quickly slid inside and buckled himself.

"That's it Mr. Walton. See, that was nice and easy. Nothing to worry about."

Officer George closed the door than got back into the driver's seat. He turned the car around and started back down the road to the homestead.

"She's evil, you know," said Tobias after a moment.

"I'm sure she's not."

"She keeps demanding things. I have to go buy them for her, or scrounge around. Its a lot of work. And she hides things. She hid the phone from me three years ago and I haven't seen it since. She hides food from me too when she wants specific things."

"Does she, would you say she's abusive?"

"Yes."

"Well, I can't get someone to look into that for you, if you want to file a complaint."

"That would be pointless. You government pinheads wouldn't understand her true nature. I've heard it all before. You think I'm always talking to myself but I'm not. I'm not touched. I'm normal, just trapped. Can't ever get out. Nope. Can't ever."

"If she's mistreating you, I can get someone to intervene."

"Won't work. Like I said, you wouldn't understand."

"Try me, Mr. Walton."

"She's not a woman, that's why. She's the house, and the land."

Officer George looked back at him from the rearview mirror and swerved a tiny bit.

"Really."

"My grandfather pledged a blood oath to the land. He was so distraught when my father came home from the war with his brains scrambled, that he wept on the ground, pleading with it to help him out, asking why it had happened, and asking for any kind of help to make it better. That night my father passed away, and we buried him on our land. It was a solution of a sort, but after that, the land started demanding things from us, and we couldn't help but appease her, or she'd make us miserable. But I'm done. I'm miserable all the time."

"I-I...I don't know what to say Mr. Walton. That's an awfully tall tale."

"It's not a tale, it's the truth."

"Uh, of course."

Officer George reached the entrance to the homestead.

"Stop here. I'll get out here. I don't want to give her the satisfaction that she was able to manipulate you."

"Are you sure? I don't want to pass back this way in an hour and have to repeat this."

"I promise I won't repeat this."

"Well, that's good enough for me. Have a good evening, Mr. Walton. Give my regards to the missus."

Tobias slammed the door shut.

"Pinhead," he said, as officer George pulled away, waving congenially from behind the windshield.

Tobias started back down the lane towards the house. He slid his hand into his pocket, and pulled out a book of matches. He struck one, and looked at the flame, grinning. He let it die down to his fingers, before letting it fall to the ground.

"Don't know why I didn't think of it before. Nope. Should have done this years ago." He smiled gleefully with the thought of finally breaking his bonds, and jogged towards the homestead.

186/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Bliss" by Muse

2011-10-27T05:08:00.000-07:00

Fabian Theodotos Ratti stood partly hidden behind his locker door. A clump of greasy dark hair concealed his left eye, sunken into his unearthly pale, shiny skin, and out of his right, he stared at his French teacher, Beth Blenwyth, who stood at the other end of the hall chatting with another student. He watched her lips moving, reading her words as she clarified the pronunciation of 'susmentionné'; he mouthed along, sounding it out in his head, in her voice. He closed his eyes in ecstasy, imagining what the skin of her throat would feel like as she said the word, over and over, inches from his ear. He clenched his hand tightly around the locker door, crumpling the metal edge.

He opened his eyes to the stare of his locker neighbor, a girl with ample dental hardware creeping out of her mouth and a thick braid of hair bursting with frizzed strands. He vaguely remembered her name to be Muriel or Misty or Michelle. He cast his eyes to ground.

"Freak," she lisped, then slammed her own locker door and walked off to her next class.

Fabian surreptitiously pulled on the locker door like it was a sheet of thinly woven silk until it uncrumpled and would close. He closed and locked it quietly. He gazed upon Miss Blenwyth once again. She stood alone as the hallway emptied. There eyes met. She cocked her head. Fabian sucked in a fortifying breath, smoothed out the wrinkles in the front of his t-shirt, stretching the fabric over his marblesque abs. He strode towards her.

"Fabian!" she said brightly. His deadened heart mustered an irregular beat at the sound of her addressing him. He approached her, bowed, then gently took her hand in his. "Oh," she said, recoiling slightly. He kissed her hand with his cold lips.

"Je ne supporte pas cela plus longtemps. Je dois exprimer mon amour fervent.Vous êtes une déesse. S'il vous plaît permettez-moi de vous adorez ... pour toujours," he said.

"Um, well, uh, thanks," she said, pulling her hand out of his and rubbing it in on her pant leg. "You know you have such an excellent accent, and quite a command of the language. I really don't know why you don't participate more in the class instead of just...lurking...in the back, uh--"

"I lived in France from 1687 to 1706."

"Uh, well...okay. I'm not sure what to do with that information--"

"Mademoiselle, what I mean by that is that...I'm immortal. I've waited too long for you. Permit me the joy of joining me in this lonely sojourn. Let us be married, and live and love until the end of time. I won't settle for less."

Beth stood with jaw agape. She stumbled back and leaned against the lockers for support.

"You're just a kid," she said, her voice cracking. "I mean, you've got to be joking. There's no such thing as--"

Fabian frowned, letting his incisors extend to his bottom lip.

"Ohhh," said Beth. "I guess you do exist."

"Yes. I have lived lifetimes. I have acquired staggering wealth, but I've always lacked a partner to share my life with. Would you...complete me?"

"Ugh...." sighed Beth, rolling her eyes. "Look, I understand how much um, courage it must have taken to tell me all...this, and I appreciate how your crush must feel to you, but to tell you the truth, all I want to do is teach French to kids, then retire and maybe go on a couple of cruises. I can't imagine living to the end of time, watching everybody I even knew dying. Watching their grandchildren dying! I mean, even with all the money in the world, who would want that?"

"I-I--" stammered Fabian.

"Look, kid, it's okay. You'll find somebody someday. Hang in there. Now you better run off to your next class."

The bell rang and Beth re-entered her classroom, closing the door behind her. Fabian stood alone, shocked and feeling small. He leaned into the lockers, pressing his face against the vents, breathing shallowly.

"Do you have a hall pass?" asked Michelle/Muriel/Misty as she tapped Fabian on the shoulder.

Fabian whipped around, and sunk his teeth expertly into her neck. He deposited his venom, then retracted, suddenly ashamed, turned, and ran down the hall.

"Oh thanks!" screamed Michelle/Muriel/Misty. "You had to make me immortal at my most awkward stage of life! I'll never forget this! Freak!"

185/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Between the Wolf and the Dog" by Electrelane

2011-10-26T00:59:00.000-07:00

Tall and slender, Minnow Smith ran across the beach, gliding over pebbles and barely touching the foaming surface of the water. He was an ephroy, the bastard spawn of the invading humans and a creature that occupied the same ecological niche on Earth as predatory insects such as wasps, and which reproduce through pollination. It is this pollen that embedded in the skin of the first colonists, mating with human stem cells in the epidermis, producing pregnant boils that erupted after six weeks with ephroy nymphs. Most were killed or excised, but since most of the colonists were also scientists, many were curious to see what they developed into. The nymphs were fully mobile and fed on vegetation until they grew to about ten inches in height, when they shed their wings. At this juvenile stage they were extremely vulnerable to the fauna of the planet so some of the colonists took them in and raised them as children. They acquired human speech readily, and were excellent at artistic endeavors but were unable to understand mathematics beyond simple counting on their long fingers. At the end of their juvescent stage, around five years of age, the ephroy stood fifty percent taller than their human parents, but were gentle, caring, agile, and enjoyed singing. They were originally thought to be sterile, but about ten percent of ephroy could mate with each other, even though they lacked specific binary genders. The offspring were genetically more closely related to humans, and subsequent generations were nearly indistinguishable to humans, though they were immune to being pollinated themselves.

Minnow looked back at the humans chasing him. They rode muscular stallions, sweating and neighing with exertion. The humans wore vulcanized suits and thick goggles that completely covered their skin, even though it was not the pollination season. The slick black suits glinting in moonlight and hooves of the horses split the incoming waves into white spray. He knew he could easily outrun a human, but the horses were gaining. The strip of beach was narrowing, with the dark forest and the waves and his inability to swim converging in. One of the humans cracked a whip, and it nearly licked at him. Panting, Minnow stopped abruptly.

The horses soon gained on him, and the humans quickly circled around. One of the humans extended a spear towards Minnow, pointing the business end at his nose.

"Where you going to?" asked the human.

"I'm just out for a jog," said Minnow. "It's a nice night for a jog."

"You think you're funny?" asked another human.

"Yes," said Minnow, after a thoughtful pause.

The human with the spear dismounted. The horses shuffled around in the surf. Minnow fought the urge to sing to the horses to calm them. The horses were well-infected with boils, their skin pocked with repeated infections, and itching, which put the horses in a permanent state of anxiety. All their nymphs were always stillborn. The human with the spear stood toe to toe with Minnow and glared at him from behind his surf-spray dotted goggles.

"I'm going to ask again, and you better answer. Where you going?"

"Nowhere. I'm standing here."

The human punched Minnow in the soft of his belly, and Minnow vomited his green masticated last meal onto the human's suit. Some of the other humans tried to mask giggles. The human looked down and brushed off the mess, then grabbed Minnow by the throat.

"I will end you, you abomination," whispered the human, squeezing tighter.

"I breathe through my skin," said Minnow. "So you can't suffocate me that way, but it does hurt all the same."

The human released Minnow, pushing him so he fell back into the surf.

"Come on George," said one of the other humans, "they never give straight answers."

"We should have just followed him," said another, a female.

"Oh no, that wouldn't have been effective. I knew where you were long before you ever saw me," said Minnow.

"Why didn't you just leave then?" laughed the female. Some of the others snickered. "Man these things are idiotic."

"Because I needed to lead you into the ambush," said Minnow.

The humans fell silent, looking at each other.

"Yeah right--" said the human with the spear.

Minnow clicked and whistled and trilled and yodeled rapidly through the first refrain of his favorite song, above the range of ordinary human hearing. The forest rustled to life and two hundred or so mature ephroy glided out, accompanied by about thirty friendly humans, some covered in boils. All were unarmed.

The group of humans wheeled about on their horses, facing the line of ephroy and their companions. The human with the spear remounted. The ephroy stared at them, barely moving. Minnow walked between the horses and joined his own crowd.

"Is this your encampment?" asked the human with the spear.

"No," said Minnow. "But this is our planet."

The human with the spear balled up a section of the reins he was holding in his fist.

"I think you're mistaken there," said the human.

"We can share," said one of the companion humans.

The human with the spear lifted up the cowl of his helmet and spat into the surf.

"I don't think so," he said. "God never meant for such foul abominations to be born. We'll burn this whole forest if we have to. You humans can leave, or you can toss your fate in with them."

"How do you know what God ever intended? Or that any gods ever existed? Maybe this is exactly God's intention. How would you know?" asked the companion human.

"Blasphemer!" screamed the human with the spear. He threw the spear and it landed inches away from the companion human's feet. She didn't flinch.

"You would turn on your own kind to prove a point?" she asked.

The human pulled a long muzzled gun from his saddle bag, and pointed it at the companion human.

"Yup," he said, pulling the trigger.

She fell in a heap, with two holes in her skull. Her last thought was of the stars in the sky as they skidded across her vision while she fell. Some of the other companion humans gasped or cried out, but the ephroy remained motionless.

"She was my mother," said Minnow. He looked down blankly at the body of the companion human, then up at the man on the horse. "What was the point of that?"

"To show you that we have dominion over this planet."

"No you don't," said Minnow. "You live in an tiny fortified village. You don't go outside without bundling up in excessively hot clothing because you fear the life around you because you don't pay attention to the seasons. You kill and butcher many creatures you think might threaten your meager crops which don't thrive, because you don't pay attention to the seasons. You rely on yearly resupplies from the transport ships, because, again, you don't pay attention to the seasons. And you haven't expanded your population much on your own in the two hundred years you've had your settlement. That's not exactly dominion."

The man aimed his gun at Minnow. The woman on the horse beside him suddenly pulled off her helmet and goggles.

"He's right about the clothing," she said, sighing with relief, her face drenched with sweat. "There's not always pollen in the air, and we can always lance the boils."

The man looked at her aghast.

"Don't worry, I'm not joining them," she said, raising her hands in defense. The man returned his attention back to Minnow.

"You lost before you even began, because you think of this as a fight and it's not," said Minnow, reaching out and pulling up the spear. He walked with it towards the man on the horse, and the man followed him with the gun. Minnow handed the spear up to him. "Take it," said Minnow.

The man looked across the line of impassive ephroy. He snatched up the spear, being sure to knick Minnow's head with the shaft. He glared across the ephroy again, then kicked his horse and galloped back in the direction of the fort. The others turned on their horses and followed him.

When they were out of sight, the ephroy and their companions circled around the body of the fallen woman. They picked her up carefully, singing lowly, and carried her into the depths of the forest. Minnow lingered on the beach for a few minutes, listening to the sounds of the waves breaking across the pebbles.

184/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Dote" By Volcano Choir

2011-10-25T05:08:00.000-07:00

The sky was cerulean blue and streaked by ice crystals high upon it. Underneath this canopy was an island, alone in a dark and calm sea, the moon having left a century ago, excavated and rebuilt, and leaving the ocean without its tides and the life they brought. But the sea was already long dead, carbonated. The island rested, an oasis in the deadness, but even it's life had mostly left or died. Bacteria and lichens remained, adhered to the rocks, and the stone ruins.

At the center of the island was a temple, its columns long fallen down and decayed, though the plaza they encased remained relatively intact and solid.

In the middle of the plaza stood an individual in a pressurized suit that gleamed silver in the sunlight and with red stripes, slowly drowning of hypoxia; he took the form of a man, his distant ancestors. He was an archeologist.

He raised his hand to his neck, the urge to breathe was undeniable. He loosened the closure, the seal broke and air rushed in. He twisted the helmet, raised it from his head, then threw it to the ground. His face was placid and unmoved. His eyes burned in the light but he did not shade them. His transparent skin belied the blood vessels and wires it bound and contained. Light pulsed through him. He sucked in weakly, then fell to his knees.

He pulled off his gloves, wet. His hands were weeping a humor unknown to the ancients. It dripped to the plaza tiles, thick like honey, resting in dusty droplets. He dropped his hands to the ground, smearing them across the tiles. Color burst through, which hadn't been seen in thousands of years.

He fell forward slowly, catching himself, then his arms gave way, and he slid down, his face meeting the wet tiles. He wept as he died.

183/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Hey Mama Wolf" by Devendra Banhart

2011-10-24T03:32:00.000-07:00

"Dr. Jensen, I'm glad you could meet with me."

"Not a problem. Is this the patient here?"

"Yes, our Jane Doe. Comatose. She was found that way. There's no evidence of trauma, and we can't find any symptoms that might indicate how she came to be in that state."

"That's strange."

"Her pregnancy is the...other thing."

"How far along is she?"

"We're not quite sure."

"What do you mean?"

"We're not sure if she's actually pregnant."

"You did a sonogram--"

"Of course. But it just turns up as static."

"A tumor?"

"No, we would see the blood supply."

"There's not even--"

"No. Dr. Jensen, you have to realize that we're out of options for her. She's big enough to give birth anytime now, and we don't know what it will be."

"It must be a tumor. We should try another sonogram machine. Surely it must just be an operational error--"

"We tried all that we have. Same result."

"Hmmn. May I examine her?"

"Yes of course. Here, use my stethoscope. You will here something unusual."

"Really? Oh, thank you. Ah. Her uterus feels pliant. I would say not a tumor or excessive fluid, but I can't feel anything like a fetus. Let's see what this unusual sound is--oh. Oh my. Yes. That is...wow."

"You see? We're not sure what to make of that."

"It's like...music. But I can't...no. I can't identify what type. It's almost like all different...and there are other sounds--"

"Like rushing water."

"Birds."

"People chatting."

"Animal screams...that's uh. Well I don't know."

"Listen a little longer Dr. Jensen. Keep listening."

"Oh. That is different."

"Unearthly."

"Yes, that's how I'd describe it."

"What do you make of it?"

"This will sound extremely odd, fantastical even, but it sounds like an entire universe is in there."

"No you see? We don't have any way to prepare for this."

"No. But it will happen, won't it. Imagine that. The birth of a universe, happening in our hospital."

"Yes, but how do we prepare for it?"

"I can't tell you how, but the grant money that will roll in after this will be...astronomical."

"Touché Dr. Jensen, touché."

"I'll be here all week."

182/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Eyes on Fire" By Blue Foundation

2011-10-23T07:03:00.000-07:00

The rain came down heavily, pooling and swirling towards invisible drains. Haven walked the street, looking at any face that would glance back at her. She adjusted the hood of her blue neon raincoat and stopped in front of a shirtless boy with drenched long hair snaking around his shoulders.

"Are you locked?" asked Haven.

The boy shivered and nodded.

"I have to be sure," said Haven.

"I am."

"I'll transfer the credits."

She held her hand up to his forehead and counted. She let her hand fall.

"Thanks," said the boy. "You wanna go there?" He nodded in the direction of an alleyway that lead to the back of a Chinese restaurant.

"Sure," said Haven.

They walked down to the middle of the empty alley. Haven looked back at the main road and briefly watched people in colorful coats and glowing umbrellas stride past.

"You're safe," said the boy.

"I know," said Haven.

She held out her hand. The boy took it. The information transferred and his face changed, maturing in an instant, assuming the visage of her recent ex-boyfriend. He grew six inches taller.

"Stand against the wall," she said dispassionately and the boy did so, bracing his hands against the brick.

Haven reeled back and landed a punch squarely on the boy's jaw. The back of his head hit the brick and he yelped out. He fell to his knees, shaking.

"I hate you," said Haven in a low voice. "I hate everything about you."

She kicked him in the stomach, turning him over. He curled up into a ball, his arms raised up over his face.

"Coward," she said, kicking at his knees. "I hope you rot."

"Forgive me," said the boy weakly.

"I can't. I'm not that good of a person."

The boy's face shimmered, and his own likeness abruptly returned. He shrank in size. Haven stood over him, feeling numb.

"Do you need more time? I could go again."

"I don't have the credits to spare."

"Okay," said the boy sitting up, and rubbing his soaked legs. "Maybe another time if you remember me."

Haven started walking towards the main road. She stopped and turned around.

"Thank you," she said.

The boy nodded his acknowledgement.

She walked forward again and when she reached the main road she looked up and unzipped her raincoat, shucking it off. She returned to her living room and pulled off the halo. She looked at the gray, nearly colorless surroundings and let her optical vision readjust to the diminished stimulation. She watched the cat licking its paw methodically, oblivious to Haven's world inside the halo. She looked at the punch hole in the wall and the smear of her blood next to it, and thought about her own time ticking away until she became a ghost locked inside the halo.

181/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "No Milk Today" by Herman's Hermits

2011-10-22T06:34:00.000-07:00

Jared observed the Palace from across the road. Reflected tape ringed the burnt out building. Police carried out the milk machines and put them in their vans. A vacant child circled around in the road next to the vans, on a bicycle with training wheels. Fat women in robes and slippers nattered away.

"How could there be one of these in our neighborhood?" "Property values are sure to plummet." "Can you imagine?" "I thought this was a good place to raise my kids." "Well, you never know. They hide them so well." "I should have known, with all those kids coming and going at all times of the night." "Such a shame. What is that generation getting up to? Don't they have any ambition? Don't they want to make anything of themselves?" "Do they want to be losers all their life?"

Jared's nose itched, and he scratched at it absentmindedly. His arm tremored. He leaned against a telephone pole, distressed. He closed his eyes and thought of the tubing going up his nose and leaning his head back and letting the warm liquid fill his nasal cavities, then the rush of images and sounds and he fading away of the world. The milk caressed him, a welcoming, thankful mistress, laughing, putting her fingers through his, spinning him around, filling him with joy.

He opened his eyes, craving the high and felt empty. He scratched his chest beneath his t-shirt. His skin was beginning to prickle all over. He turned and walked away down the road, remember a rumor about another milk house located several blocks away.

180/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "The Crook of My Good Arm" by Pale Young Gentlemen

2011-10-21T05:40:00.000-07:00

Patrick laid on his back on his cot, muttering and gnashing his teeth, staring up at the stick and thatch ceiling and dismembered dragonfly wing that dangled and twisted from the end of a thread of spider silk. He pulled his robes closer around him, trying to fend off the invading cold. His breath coalesced above him as the dawn light began to seep in through the open window of his sod house.

"Brother!" came a hail accompanied by hasty footsteps followed by loud knocking on his door.

"Go away!" yelled Patrick.

"They're coming! They've reached the northern boundary! We've got to go! Rise and put on your best shoes! Carry nothing so that we may flee and survive!" More knocks followed on Patrick's door.

"If they're at the northern boundary, then we have at least a half hour!" said Patrick.

"Don't do this again, brother! That half hour means we have a chance at surviving."

Patrick bolted up in a flurry of patched and worn fabric and opened the door. Cecil was on the other side, wringing his hands.

"Come now!" begged Cecil, pulling at Patrick's sleeve.

Patrick slapped Cecil's hand and shoved the door closed with a bang.

"Brother!" shouted Cecil.

"Make your preparations. I'll follow you when I'm ready. Don't let me hold you back in your mindless fleeing."

"Remember not to carry anything!" said Cecil. He waited on the other side of the door, glancing over his shoulder to the growing, bobbing lights to the north. After a dozen or so seconds he scurried off on the paths between the sod hovels.

Patrick stood in the center of the house, flexing his fists, and trying to will away a rising indigestion. He was already wearing his only pair of shoes and all his clothes. He looked at the row of books between the hearth and a large bucket. He looked at the photograph of his mother, in a chrome frame, pinned to the sod with four stout sticks. She stared back at him, from decades ago, smiling, with flipped hair and bowed nylon blouse.

"This is your fault you know," he said. He spat on the dirt floor. "We have nothing now. All the good things have been eaten up, and now there are just scraps. I won't let you blame me anymore."

He ripped the photograph from the wall and threw it into the ashes of the hearth. He breathed heavily through his teeth, glancing back and forth between the books and the bucket. He knelt down suddenly and shoved the books into the book. He heaved it up and carried it under his left arm. He pulled open the door and looked out upon the village.

Most everyone had evacuated. And old man waddled by, red-faced, holding on to a straggling toddler with a length of rope. A goat gamboled by, bleating. A pregnant woman in obvious labor struggled past. She shot Patrick a dirty look as she passed. The lights from the north razed everything in sight in stark relief. Patrick gritted his teeth and spat on the ground. He turned and started down the path to the forest. He ran past the stragglers, making sure that none of the books spilled out. He scrambled over the thorn bushes and jumped down the embankment to the freezing water. He waded through, shivering. He slipped on a stone and fell into the water, the bucket pressing down on his chest, submersing him completely. The current caught him. He turned over and the bucket rolled off. He struggled up for air, watching the bucket tumble away, spill it's contents to a wet demise. He reached out and hooked the bucket handle on his arm. He pulled himself to the bucket, hugging it, and it pulled him downriver.

"Patrick!" shouted Cecil.

Cecil fought through the thicket on the far side of the bank.

"Let it go!" said Cecil.

"No!" screamed Patrick.

"Take my arm!"

"You're too far away!"

"Let it go and swim back!"

"I'm not letting go! Not this!" screamed Patrick, before bobbing under.

"Patrick!" screamed Cecil frantically, searching.

The lights tore through the edge of the forest, casting long thin shadows that swept back and forth. Cecil froze. Metal legs plunged into the undergrowth. Cecil looked again for Patrick but saw no sign. He let out a plaintive cry and ran up the embankment and disappeared into the forest beyond.

179/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Time Out from the World" by Goldfrapp

2011-10-20T04:44:00.000-07:00

The man seated on her sofa wore baggy black sweat pants, black polo shirt, and black sunglasses, and reeked of cheap aftershave. He tapped his fingers on his knee as he waited for her response.

"Are you're sure this will work?" asked Daphne, looking at the contraption spread between them. It had a large metal ring connected to white wires, which were connected to a wooden box that was badly planed.

"Yu-huh," said the man leaning forward. "You wanna do this or what?"

"How long does it last?"

"Forever. Or until you forget. Like if you get Alzheimer's, or you know, you die." He scratched his chin.

"You mean I can't remember it the way it really happened?"

"Look lady, I haven't got all night. I've got other clients. Three hundred bucks or I leave."

"Now just a minute here! I think I have a right to have my questions answered!"

The man leaned back into the sofa, sighed, and spread his arms across the back of it.

"You could write it down, just as you remember it now. But if you read it later, you won't believe what you wrote."

Daphne nodded. She bit her fingernails and swayed nervously from side-to-side.

"Come on..." said the man.

Daphne held up her hand.

"This is a big deal for me. My whole alibi depends on this."

"If you do it, you will absolutely believe your own lie. That's the way it works. I guarantee it."

"You do? I mean, because if it doesn't work, I'll go to prison and there won't be anyway for me to cash in on that promise. You're not the one with anything to lose, I am--"

"Yeah, well, I'm losing time."

The man stood and started to pick up the contraption.

"Okay, wait," said Daphne. "Ugh, I'll do it. I'll do it."

The man put the contraption back down and held out his hand palm up.

"Three hundred."

"Yes, I know."

Daphne went into her bedroom, closed the door and went to her stash in her sock drawer, pulling out three bills. She returned and handed the money over.

"Thanks," said the man, stuffing the bills into a money belt hidden under his shirt. "Now just sit down on the floor--"

"I won't fall asleep?" she said, kneeling down on the carpet and adjusting her skirt.

"No."

"I thought I was going to be dreaming?"

"Part of you will be."

The man picked up the metal ring and put it around her head, tightening it in the back so that it fit securely around her forehead. He flipped up the top of the box and flicked a switch. The box hummed to life and the ring grew warm around Daphne's head.

"That tingles a bit," she said, then giggled. "I don't know I just did that..."

"Harmless side effect. It will go away as soon as we're done."

"Oh, I feel buzzed," she said, giggling again.

"Yu-huh. Anyway. Let's get started. Think about what you did yesterday. First focus on where you were--"

"I was in the cafe down the street, in the basement--"

"You don't need to tell me, just think about it. Hold it in your mind."

"Okay."

"Now think about what you did there. What was the sequence of events."

"It was the meeting. I spoke my turn--"

"You don't need to tell me. I'd rather you not in fact. In your head--"

"I voted," said Daphne, beginning to laugh. "I voted!" Tears started to stream down her face.

The man looked down at the carpet. He took off his sunglasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"Is that so bad? Why is it so bad?" asked Daphne in a child-like voice.

The man looked up at her. He reached over and ran the back of his hand down her wet cheek.

"Focus on how you felt when you did it," he said.

"Elation," said Daphne, smiling.

The man started to cry as well. He wiped his face with the bottom of his polo shirt and sniffed deeply.

"Okay, now I'm going to switch modes. Now. Focus on your alibi. Where were you yesterday?"

"At the rally for leader," said Daphne, her eyes glazing. "I feel strange."

"Just focus on where you were. What did it look like? What did it sound like?"

"Crowded faces. Adoration. Murmuring."

"What did you do?"

"I chanted. We sang patriotic songs. We raised our fists."

"What did you feel?"

"Love for leader. My heart was full."

"Good," said the man. He flicked a switch and the box turned off.

"What was that?" asked Daphne. "I feel nauseated." She held her stomach.

"Yes, the machine fogs your memory a bit, but you'll be fine." The man loosened the ring and removed it from her hair. "All done now."

"Wait, what happened?"

"I was just running a spot check to test your loyalty to leader."

"Oh," said Daphne. "I hope I did well."

"Yes, very well."

"Who are you? I don't remember letting you in."

"I'm from the ministry," he said, pulling out a badge from his pants pocket. "We thought there was a chance you were a subversive, but you've checked out."

"Oh. No I would never--" said Daphne, shaking her head.

The man smiled and patted her shoulder.

"Not to worry," he said, replacing his sunglasses. "I'll let myself out. You should get some rest."

The man picked up the contraption, shoving it under one arm and left. Daphne watched blankly from the carpet, searching her mind for something she never realized she'd lost.

The Three Little Cranberries

2011-10-20T02:22:00.000-07:00

I'm in the process of rescuing my physics articles form internet obscurity using the Wayback machine and I found this little gem I wrote for an article about osmosis:

---

The Three Little Cranberries

In order to remember the different states important in osmosis, consider the following "fairytale":

The first little cranberry, named Hypertonic, stayed out in the sun too long. He lost all the water from inside his little red body and became shrunken and wrinkled. His body became plasmolyzed.

The second little cranberry, named Hypotonic, fell asleep soaking in the hot-tub. When he woke up his body had absorbed a lot of water and he was fat and his skin was very tight, ready to burst. His body became turgid.

The third little cranberry, Isotonic, was smart. He stayed inside all day and studied his physics textbook. His body remained flaccid.

This isn't an exact match to what happens in osmosis, but it will give you a visual hook to remember the results on a cell immersed in each type of medium

178/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "In Ear Park" by Department of Eagles

2011-10-19T05:05:00.000-07:00

"Goodbye," she whispered, her lips trembling but her eyes sparkling. "I'll miss you."

No you won't, he thought as he accepted her kiss.

She ran up the ferry ramp, not looking back. She made her way through the crowd and disappeared in a door.

He watched her increasing absence, with his hand over his forehead to block the sun.

The ferry departed with a horn blast, churned whitewater, and crying seagulls swooping in frantic arcs. The ferry chugged on, eventually disappear around a fjord.

He turned his back and walked to his car, hands in pockets. He sat in the car, smoking a cigarette, watching the sun start to set over the water. He turned the engine over and backed out. His cell phone pinged.

I do miss you. Even if you doubt me, read the message.

He smiled.

177/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Good Day Sunshine" by the Beatles

2011-10-18T04:16:00.000-07:00

"Eight minutes. That's how long it takes for her photons to leave her and bombard my feet."

"Come on, Jojo," wailed Claire. "I'm sure the bus driver doesn't care about the Sun."

"But the Sun gives life," exclaimed Jojo, raising his hands robotically. Claire pulled him by the shirt and headed for the first completely available seat as the bus pulled away from the curb. The other children all stared at the pair, as they did everyday.

"Did you know that the Sun is blue in the middle and only yellow on the outside?"

"Yes, because you've told me before." Claire pressed her cheek against the window, smooshing the flesh flat.

"It's full of protons. Technically it's hydrogen with the electrons stripped away--a plasma--and they are held together by the force of gravity but that's not the only force important in stars. No. The weak nuclear force allows fusion to take place and its fusion that produces all the light and heat and what makes the Earth work and creates all life and--"

"Shut up Jojo!" said a beefy kid sitting front of Claire and Jojo. "You freaking idiot!"

"I'm not an idiot," said Jojo in a monotone. "I'm smarter than you."

"Shhh," said Claire. The boy snarled menacingly, then slipped back into his seat and busied himself with staring vacantly out the window.

Jojo glanced at Claire then looked at his hands in his lap. He flicked his fingers in rapid succession, performing comforting mathematical calculations in silence. The bus rolled along under a boulevard with mature, overhanging trees. Sunlight streamed down in dappled patches. Jojo froze the progression of his calculations and started bouncing in his seat. He looked at Claire and sighed deeply, pressing his lips together to keep himself from talking. He sat on his hands and closed his eyes tight but the sunlight still came through his eyelids. Suddenly he stood up, bracing himself against the seat ahead.

"Electron capture causes core collapse!" announced Jojo at the top of his lungs. The bus driver slammed on the brakes and Jojo toppled over into the next seat. All the kids stared at him, flailing to right himself. Claire tried to pull him up by the waistband, but the beefy kid started punching Jojo in the back.

"Don't you touch him!" yelled Claire, punching the beefy kid squarely in the nose. He screamed and fell back against the window, releasing several expletives in her direction.

Jojo finally scrambled up and ran to the front of the bus, descending the stairs and pushed his weight against the doors. the bus driver rolled his eyes.

"Let me out, let me out, let me out..." droned Jojo, scratching the top of his head furiously.

"I can't let you out," said the driver. "Not until we get to school."

Jojo fell silent and looked at his feet. His eyes were wet and he sat on the top step.

"Look, why don't you sit here," said the driver, pointing to the nearest seat which was singly occupied by a terrified little girl in a green sweater, clutching her bookbag close to her chest. Jojo glanced up at her, and she suddenly got up and ran to the back of the bus. Jojo scratched his head again.

"You could tell me all about fusion if you like," said the driver.

"Fusion is when two or more protons glue themselves together because the get to close because of intense pressure--"

"Okay," said the driver, "that's very interesting. Now could you please take a seat and continue?"

Jojo put a finger in his mouth, glanced down the length of the bus and took in the multitude of faces that stared back at him. Claire got up from her seat and walked forward.

"Two or more protons..." whispered Jojo.

Claire reached the front of the bus and patted Jojo on the head. She slid into the seat and sat next to the window. Jojo climbed in after her. The air brakes released and the bus jerked forward.

"It's nice up here," said Jojo. "You have a really good view of the Sun."

"Yes," said the driver. "That's why I took the job."

176/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Tomorrow Goes Away" by Delta Spirit

2011-10-17T03:01:00.000-07:00

I work nights as a parking lot attendant. It's boring and the pay is awful but I do get to read a lot of pulp novels. The garage is just down the block from my building and I enjoy the walk in the cool evening air and I often get to see the sun set. It's not that I dropped out of high school, or huffed paint, hopped a border fence or have a glandular problem or any of the other reasons you would suspect someone would end up in such a seemingly lowly job--no I chose it because I have a problem I don't know how to solve and working in a badly lit booth reading smudgy ink at least makes the problem a little less worse.

Every time I wake up, about six in the evening, for the last decade or so, I see myself crawling into bed. He never acknowledges me and I know it's because he doesn't see me, and I know that because I never see myself as I crawl into bed in the morning. It isn't like he's a ghost, he is as solidly physical as I am. I tried talking to him, screaming at him, and punching him, and all I ever felt was a biting cold on my knuckles--it was not flesh I touched, but something else.

I tried moving apartments, several times, and he's been consistently there. And I know its my future self. I see the haircuts before I have them, the scars and bruises before I get them, and there is an almost imperceptible aging; I swear it's there!

The worst part is that even though I would love to wake up rid of my doppelganger, I know that the day that he isn't there, is the day I will die.

175/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "The Big Ship" by Brian Eno

2011-10-16T02:18:00.000-07:00

It was conceived by a thousand humans, and finally stood tall, braced by scaffolding that soared a mile into the air, overlooking an expanse of clear turquoise sea. An aged face observed its breadth with a smile, from fifteen files distant. One hundred years of development and two decades of construction contributed to this vital seed. She leaned an arthritic hand on her great-grand-nephew's shoulder.

"I have lived...to see this," she said quietly.

"Yes," said the nephew. "And so have I."

"We go forth," she said.

The ground rumbled and the observation stand shook violently. A vast white cloud emerged from underneath the vessel. It rose slowly on oxygen combustion--it's fusion engines would yet engage only past the stratosphere--and freed itself from the chains of the Earth. It was unmanned but contained the entire map of all the genomes of all the biomass ever evolved on its planet, all the curiosities of all its cultures preserved virtually, and all the code needed to invigorate a dead planet with life. It was the first of its kind, but not the last. It was Earth's love letter to the universe.

174/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Home" by Glasser

2011-10-15T01:07:00.000-07:00

The restaurant reeked of reused grease and childhood disappointment. The tables were covered with hamburger bun crumbs, salt grains, and finger smears. The seats were affixed to the floor. Judith sighed and watched her son Kevin mutely munch minuscule bites from a french fry. He was humming to himself. The rest of the restaurant was empty and rain slathered thickly down the windows.

"Come on, hurry up," she said, tapping her fingers on the table nervously.

Kevin shoved the remainder of the fry into his mouth and swallowed it whole, then opened his mouth to show his mother that his mouth was clear of food.

"Yuh, okay thanks honey," said Judith. She leaned over and scrunched up the hamburger wrapped he had spread out his fries on. She put his trash with hers on her tray, then deposited it on the trash bin. Kevin ran to the plexiglass wall that enclosed the ball pit, pressing his hands and noses against it, where countless other hands and noses had been pressed. He moaned slightly.

"No sweetie, we've really got to go."

Kevin banged his head dully against the plexiglass. Judith looked out the windows, dreading the soaking walk home in the dark soggy night.

"Alright," said Judith. "Five minutes."

Kevin immediately ran to the entrance and dove into the ball pit, throwing up multicolored spheres of fun for the under tens/orbs of pestilence for everyone else. Judith sat at a nearby table and slumped down, her head resting on her hand, watching him. Her eyelids began to fall.

Judith jerked awake as her forehead hit the table.

"Wha?" she said, before coughing and clearing her throat. She rubbed her forehead and looked at the ball pit. There was no movement within. She stood suddenly, instinct and guilt instantly gripping her.

"Kevin?" she said. She looked around the restaurant. A lone employee of ambiguous gender and greasy hair was mopping the floor with cloudy gray water. "Kevin?!" The employee looked up. "Have you seen my son?" The employee shrugged and resumed swiping the floor ineffectually.

Judith leaned over the entrance to the pit. She plunged her hand in, searching.

"Kevin? Are you all right?"

Fearing he'd had a seizure of some sort, and then fearing he'd been abducted, she slipped over the side and stumbled in. She waded out to the middle, trying to feel for Kevin with her legs. When she reached the middle she started sinking.

"What the--" she managed to get out before disappearing completely.

The light was still strong, going through the balls, almost as if they were illuminated from within. She tried swimming but was still sinking. The balls seemed to stick to each other but they parted from her. She briefly wondered why anyone would make a ball pit so deep.

Soon her feet met open air, and she dropped through. She fell about ten feet before landing in a heap on a grassy field. The air smelled strongly of petrichor even though the grass and the dirt beneath were bone dry. She laid back and looked up at the strange sky. It was completely filled with the multicolored balls, floating, and waving gently.

She stood and tried to touch them, but they were just out of her reach. She looked around. There was nothing but rolling grass and an old metal swingset set on a slight ridge in her vicinity.

"Kevin?" she cried. "Kevin can you hear me?"

There was silence expect for the sound of the breeze through the grass and the balls gently abrading each other.

"Kevin..." she whispered, her voice catching in her throat.

She ran towards the swingset, thinking it might be a point of reference. As she reached it, she saw the other side of the ridge. The downslope was barren of grass and dozens of children sat motionless. Kevin sat near to her and she ran to him.

"Kevin, darling," she said. He looked back at her with blank eyes, but hugged her weakly. She looked at the others. Some looked healthy but others looked weak, and yet others were shriveled up, their eye sockets empty but still able to blink. Judith felt her mouth go dry.

"Come with me," she said. "We have to find a way home. This is...I don't know. We can't stay."

Kevin shook his head.

"Yes, honey, come on."

"No," he said firmly.

"Yes, we have to--"

A crack of lightning struck the swingset. Judith looked up. The balls were undulating swiftly. Dust started to fall down from between them. Judith looked down and shaded Kevin's eyes. Soon sand was falling. She grabbed Kevin around the chest and tried to pull him up but his feet were submerged in the dry ground.

"How did...how would that happen?" she asked herself. "What did you do sweetie?"

"It cried for me," said Kevin, brushing sand out of his hair. "It's all right mommy. I don't feel anything anymore."

"What? What are you talking about?"

"It's sad."

"What is?"

"The ground."

"The ground is sad?"

"Yes. Because it's dry and there isn't enough water."

"Honey, that's not our problem."

Judith dug at son's feet. She pulled away clumps of dirt, which felt oddly fleshy. Finally she freed Kevin completely, pulling him up into her arms. She ran back to the swingset just as the shower of dust and sand ended.

"We have to get up there," she said, putting Kevin down and stepping onto a swing. It sunk with her weight, then gave way.

"Can't we just stay here?" asked Kevin. "I want to give the ground water."

"No," said Judith, feeling extremely confused. She leaned against one of the rusted metal support pole. "I don't know what this is...surely I'm not dreaming."

The wind picked up, howling through the supports. Judith suddenly felt relaxed by the sound.

"Wow," she said. "It does want water...how would I know that?"

"It just told you," said Kevin.

"It's so...ironic," she said. "There's an unending downpour above us, but none of that water is getting in here."

"That's why it's dry here, and always raining at home," said Kevin.

"I wondered about that," said Judith, sighing contentedly. "It never felt quite right for there to be rain all the time."

The breeze swirled around the swingset again, setting off several musical tones.

"Sure," said Judith smiling.

The ground started to rise up towards the balls in the sky.

"Hold on tight," she said to Kevin, helping him wrap his arms around the supports. The swingset quickly punched through the lowest balls, and soon mother and son were immersed in them as well. They traveled up through the layer of balls and finall emerged, swingset and all, in the restaurant. The single employee stopped mopping and looked on in dazed amazement.

"Stand back," said Judith to Kevin.

She kicked at the swingset support until it dislodged from the crossbeam and fell down. She pulled it up and held it firmly to her chest, point the top end at the window. She lunged and shattered the window. Water flooded onto the ball pit. Judith fell back, then scrambled over the side carrying Kevin with her.

"Look, it's sucking in the water!" exclaimed Kevin.

"It sure is," said Judith. "Wow."

Outside the rain began to subside. The clouds started to clear and sunlight streamed down.

"Looks like we won't have to walk home in the rain afterall," said Judith.

"Cool," said Kevin.

Judith took him by the hand and exited into the first sunny day she had ever remembered seeing.

173/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Australia" by The Shins

2011-10-14T23:41:00.000-07:00

Clint sat under a large pine tree in the school yard, his legs crossed, his arms slack in his lap, and his eyes pressed tightly closed.

"What're'ya doing?" asked a girl in a pink sweatshirt and torn jeans.

"Shhhh...." said Clint.

"You're stupid," said the girl.

"Go away," said Clint, without opening his eyes. The girl threw a pine cone at his head. It stuck in his hair but he did not move. The girl wandered off.

A few minutes later a teacher approached. It was Mr. Sheard, who taught gym and permanently wore a whistle.

"What are you doing there? Meditating?" asked Mr. Sheard.

"Shhhh...." said Clint.

"You should be getting some exercise you know, playing with your friends and--"

"Go away," said Clint. Mr. Sheard raised his eyebrows, and backed away with his hands up.

A squirrel approached Clint and chittered.

"Shhhh..." said Clint.

"Meep," said the squirrel with indignation.

"Go away," said Clint. The squirrel spat out a nut and threw it towards Clint (it only traveled an inch and missed Clint by several feet. The squirrel hopped off.

The bell rang and the yard quickly emptied, but Clint did not move. He pressed his eyes tighter, then balled up his fists. The air began to shimmer around him. He started to become transparent, and within a minute he had completely disappeared.

For the rest of the afternoon he was not missed, but by that evening, when he should have arrived home (in time for his favorite cartoon), his mother began to fret. The next day a police search was underway in the brush near the school. The day after that his parents appeared on the local TV station to make an appeal for his return. Over the next month flyers with his face were placed on telephone poles all over town. The neighbors blathered to a tabloid, accusing his parents of chopping him up and burying him in the backyard. The police dug up the backyard and found nothing but several shards of thousand-year-old native american pottery. As the year wore on, his parents separated, then divorced. Five years later his mother moved to the other side of the continent and his father remarried and moved to the next town. Mr. Sheard was arrested for heading up an illegal gambling ring. The squirrel died and the girl with the pine cone became a teen mother and starred on a reality show.

Ten years after that, in the winter, on a Sunday, Clint reappeared under the same, now fatter tree. He opened his eyes and smiled brightly.

"Wow!" he exclaimed. "It finally worked!"

He jumped up and raised his hands in the air.

"Wooohoo!" he yelled, then punched the air. Then he dropped his arms, seeing that no one else was there. His smile subsided. He wrapped his bare arms around his chest, then started running towards the school door. He tried the freezing cold handle, but it was locked. He stuck his hand under his armpit. He peered in through the window at the gloom beyond.

"Oh no," he said.

He ran out of the school yard and down the street, which was deserted of cars.

"Oh no," he repeated.

He crossed the street and bang on the door of the nearest house. An old lady came to the door. She opened the inner door but not the outside screen.

"I'm not buying any cookies or twenty dollar chocolate bars. I'm on a fixed income!" she said gruffly.

"I need your help! Please, I need to use your phone!"

"Why don't you use your one phone! Don't all you kids have cell phones these days?"

"What's a cell phone?"

"What?"

"Huh? Uh, please just let me use your phone. I have to call my parents and get home."

"I'm not going to fall for that. You might force your way in here and rape me and then take my money for your drugs. I know how these things work!" She started to close the door.

"I'm ten years old! Why would I do any of those things? Please ma'am, please just let me make a phone call!"

"Hmm," said the old lady, opening the door wide again. "You look familiar."

"I do?" asked Clint, shivering.

"Yeah...you look kind of like that kid who went missing."

"Well I did kind of go missing, but I don't know for how long."

"How do you mean?"

"I figured out how to teleport, but I think it was just through time, not through space, you know. It was amazing." He grinned shakily. "Can't I come in? I don't have a jacket."

The old lady narrowed her eyes.

"You're one of those religious people, aren't you? You're trying to lure me into your religion by telling me you have special magical powers," she employed air quotes with the last three words.

"Huh? No. I really did it. Honest ma'am."

"Hmmm."

"Seriously. Please just let me in."

"If you can teleport, why don't you teleport to your house on your own."

"Oh," said Clint. "I-I didn't think of that. I mean, it's really hards and you need a lot of focus and concentration, but I guess since I've done it once, I could do it again. Thanks lady!"

Clint sat down on the cold stoop, then quickly stood again. He let his arms fall to his side, then closed his eyes tightly. He balled up his fists. The air shimmered around him and he started to become transparent. The old lady staggered backward and gasped. She watched as Clint disappeared entirely.

Fifteen years later, in the summer, Clint reappeared on the old lady's stoop. She was now dead, but the property was completely ringed with tents. People with tamborines and guitars wove around the encampment, some chatting happily, some singing, some reciting poetry to themselves. When Clint arrived, word quickly travelled through the tents and he was greeted with cheers and bows.

"Teach us!" they said in unison. "Teach us master of time and space! Teach us!"

"Uh," said Clint. "What?"

"The prophecy has been fulfilled!" screamed a young woman in a green dress (she was the granddaughter of the girl who threw the pine cone at Clint), before collapsing and writhing on the ground in religious ecstasy.

"Who are you people?" asked Clint.

"We are your devoted followers," said an old man with an impressive beard who looked suspiciously like Santa Claus. "Teach us how to teleport, please, master." He prostrated himself on the ground.

"Uh, I kind of need to use the bathroom," said Clint.

"This way!" said several people, leading him towards a row of porta-potties.

He stepped inside the one he thought was the cleanest and closed the door. The crowd watched the porta-potty expectantly. After ten minutes, the man with the santa beard knocked on the door.

"Um, everything okay in there master?" he asked. There was no answer. He turned to the crowd. "What should we do?" he whispered. They debated the matter, and half an hour later with no further response, they broke the lock and opened the door to find the porta-potty empty. The crowd gasped then burst into a spontaneous rendition of their anthem about teleportation.

Fifteen years later, Clint reappeared inside the porta-potty, which was sparkling clean, but covered in tiny messages written black marker. Dear Clint, take me with you next time. Dear Clint, teach me about time and space. Dear Clint, thank you for bringing world peace. Dear Clint, please heal my cancer. Dear Clint, I want to live in the future like you. He traced his fingers across the words. There were so many that he couldn't take them all in.

He opened the door and stepped out onto a marble floor. He looked around. The ceiling was made of glass and he saw stars on the other side. Around the porta-potty was strung a ring of velvet rope, which was then surrounded by red carpeting. He took a step further and a loud alarm sounded.

Guards in smart uniforms flooded into the vast room. Many of them gasped then prostrated themselves.

"You're twelve hours early!" exclaimed one guard before clapping his hands over his mouth then prostrating himself.

"Who are you?!"

"We're the time guard, oh master," said one guard, bowing low. "We serve you, forever and always!"

"Where are my parents?" asked Clint.

"Sadly, master, they are deceased."

"What does that mean?"

"Uh, they are dead, master."

"When did this happen?" said Clint, beginning to cry. "Were they in a car accident or something?"

"About ten years ago. Old age."

"Old age?!"

"Master, your first jump was 45 years ago. You do realize each one takes fifteen years?"

Clint stumbled backward and fell against the porta-potty.

"I'm fifty-five?" he whispered to himself. The guards leaned in, trying to hear what he was saying.

"What is your command, master? Are you ready to teach us your way?"

"My way?"

"You've mastered time and space. You've brought peace to humanity. We all follow you now," said the guard.

"Some of us believe you are our god!" shouted another guard from the back.

"M-uh?!" exclaimed Clint, pressing his hand to his forehead. "I'm just ten! I don't know what you want me to tell you! I was supposed to just travel across space! I just want to get back to my parents! And I can't go back!"

He lay down on the cold marble floor and started sobbing.

"He's--he's just a kid," said one of the guards. "He's normal!"

The crowd of guards started murmuring.

"We can't tell the government about this," said one of the guards to his fellow. "It would bring down the regime."

"We have to do something," said the other. He wrung his hands, then stepped over the velvet rope. The crowd gasped then fell silent.

The guard walked up to Clint and knelt beside him. He placed his hand gently on Clint's back.

"He touched him!" said someone in the crowd. There were more gasped.

"It's okay...buddy," said the guard.

"No it's not," said Clint, twisting to face the guard and leaving a trail of mucus on the marble. "You don't understand."

"No, I guess I don't," said the guard. "But maybe you'll feel better after a cup of hot cocoa and a good sleep. What do you say?"

"I don't have a house anymore, or a bed," said Clint, choking back more sobs.

"Sure you do," said the guard. "This whole facility was built for you. It's your house."

"It is?" asked Clint looking up.

"Yes, you own this."

"Is there a swimming pool?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact there is. Plus there are classrooms, you know, for when you are ready to teach your technique."

Clint furrowed his brow.

"Or maybe you'd prefer not to teach directly. Or maybe not at all, though I'd encourage you to try--"

Clint sat up and faced the porta-potty, away from the guard. He wiped his face on his bare arm.

"I'll take the hot cocoa," said Clint. "But anything else, well, if I don't like things here I can always see what your kids want to do for me instead."

The guards all sighed with relief. Hands were clasped. Several people prostrated themselves anew. They started to sing the teleportation anthem. Clint stood up and let the guard escort him to his lavish living quarters.

172/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "This Too Shall Pass" by OK Go

2011-10-13T19:49:00.000-07:00

Jenny pulled her tin box up to the sink, stood on it, and stretched to reach the tap. She turned on the cold water and it chugged and creaked before exuding a thin stream of brown, flaky water. She let it run until it was as clear as it was going to get, then filled a pitcher covered with a piece of cloth secured with an elastic band. The dirt collected on the fabric, though the water in the pitcher was still cloudy. She turned off the tap and looked over at her grandmother, snoring in her chair, with needles still in her bruised arm.

Jenny moved the pitcher to the far side of the counter, removed the cloth, then moved her box, and pushed the pitcher into the microwave. She closed the door and punched in some numbers. The microwave whirred to life and Jenny put her chin down on the counter to watch the pitcher slowly spin around.

Outside their airlock, on the walkway, there was a thud and a scream. Jenny turned around and stared at the door. Loud footsteps, laughter.

"Grandma," she said. She looked over to see her still snoring. "Grandma?"

She jumped down from her box and ran to her Grandmother, pulling out the needles and shaking her arm.

"Grandma, wake up! I think they're here!" she whispered loudly.

WHAP!

"Open up!" bellowed a man.

"Go away!" Jenny screamed. "You ain't got no right to take from us!"

"Shut up!" yelled her grandmother. She shoved Jenny to the floor. "What'd I tell you before, girl! You stay quiet!"

"Oh, looks like we got ourselves a little domestic dispute in there!" There was laughter from outside the door.

"You go away now!" yelled the grandmother. "Don't you have someone else to bother?!"

"Not right now!" Laughter.

WHAP WHAP WHAP!

Jenny scrambled into the corner of the room, behind her grandmother's chair, pulling her knees up to her chest.

"We know your lock's faulty--"

"No it ain't! I had it fixed yesterday!"

"With what money? You owe us!"

"I don't owe you nothing! You're not the dealer! You're not the landlord!"

"No, we're just the police. You want to not get beat by us, you pay!"

"Go away!" screamed the grandmother, throwing a licey pillow at the door.

There was clicking and a rattling, and the airlock wheezed open. The grandmother launched herself at the opening, punching and kicking, but she was thrown back onto the threadbare sofa. Three teenage boys and one teenage girl burst in. Two of the boys held the grandmother down, squishing her face into the soiled upholstery. The other boy immediately spotted the drugs and needles and scooped them up, putting them in a large sack.

"No!" the grandmother screamed.

"What else you got?" he asked the grandmother calmly.

"I ain't got nothing! Give me my medicine back! Give it back!" she cried frantically.

"Lady, you're so far gone, I'm doing you a favor," said the boy.

"Hey, what do we have here?" said the girl. She looked around the chair and pointed at Jenny.

Jenny crawled around the chair and dove for the space behind the sofa. The teenage girl lunged and grabbed her by the foot and dragged her out. Jenny kicked and scratched at the girl.

"Calm down!" yelled the teenage girl. "I'm not gonna hurt you. I just want to see you."

"You don't touch her!" yelled the grandmother.

The teenage girl pulled Jenny's arms behind her and held her by the wrists. Jenny thrashed until the girl slapped her face with her other hand.

"Geez, lady," said the teenage boy to the grandmother. "What've you been doing to this one? She's all bruised up."

"Grandma, help me!" Jenny sobbed.

"You want her help?" asked the teenage girl. The boys laughed.

"If we don't pay the rent--"

"Shut up, Jenny!" said the grandmother.

"--the landlord will turn off the oxygen and the heat!" Jenny tried to pull away from her captor, scraping her bare feet across the floor.

"Oh, that is sad," said the teenage boy.

"Then if we get evicted, we'll have to live in the walkways with the animals and the trash! Let me go!"

"That is a conundrum," said the boy. "Especially since this level has such a problem with carbon monoxide."

"Not our problem," said the girl.

"Yeah," said one of the other boys. "Let's just get whatever they have and get out of here!"

"Now, now," said the boy. "We are not psychopaths. If we bleed our sheeple dry, there will be no more blood eventually."

"Wha?" asked one of the other boys with a puzzled look on his face.

"No, my brothers, compassion is a useful tool."

"Oh come off it, Spence," said the girl. "What, you're just going to let these two pass?"

The boy stepped over the coffee table and sat down on it, putting an arm around Jenny.

"No, but I think I'll make a deal. How'd you like a job kid?"

Jenny horked up mucus from a ready supply from her unhealthy lungs and spat it at him. He wiped it away with a tattered sleeve.

"You haven't even heard what it is yet. Aren't you even a little bit curious?"

Jenny shook her head vigorously and frowned.

"Sure you do," said the boy, ignoring her reaction. "I want you to be my courier. Do you know what that is? You deliver messages and small items. It's really easy, and in return, I won't hassle you're grandmother. Well, as much."

The other boys laughed.

"What do you say?" asked the girl. "I used to do it for our old boss. Ain't much trouble at all."

"I don't know," said Jenny, squinting at the boy.

"Don't trust them!" said the grandmother. "They'll rape you soon as they can!"

"Oh, I think you'll be safer with us than with her."

"Let my arms go," said Jenny, "and I'll think about it."

The boy nodded to the girl and she released Jenny's arms. Jenny rubbed her wrists, and sauntered over to the kitchen area. The others looked expectantly at her. She stood up on her box and put her arms on hips.

"Come on kid, hurry it up!" said the girl.

"I'm thinking!" Jenny snapped back.

The microwave dingged. The teenagers looked at each other and shrugged. Jenny popped open the door, pulled out the pitcher, jumped down from the box, spilling steaming water, and threw the water at everyone else. They started screaming and clutching their faces. Jenny kicked the teenagers in their knees.

"Get out! Get out all of you!"

"You little--"

"I've got more acid! Don't you ever come back!"

"Acid?!" "This isn't acid? Is it?" "It's burning me, it's burning me!"

"You need to get to the hospital floor!" screamed Jenny.

The teenagers fell over themselves as they left through the airlock. Jenny secured the door.

"It's on me! It's on me," sobbed the grandmother, looking at her soaked shirt.

"It's not acid," sighed Jenny.

"It's not?" asked her grandmother, bleary-eyed.

"No," said Jenny, as she put the pitcher back on the counter. "It was just hot and you're suggestive."

"What'd you mean by that? Are you sassing me?"

Jenny sat down heavily on her box.

"How much medicine would it take for you to leave the apartment? Like for good?"

"What?" asked her grandmother. "I ain't leaving this place. I ain't ever leaving. And how dare you ask me to leave! I'm you're only kin! Wait, why, did you steal some from the dealer? Tell me if you have medicine, tell me girl."

Jenny narrowed her eyes.

"What would you do for it, if I had it?"

"You have some don't you? Don't you!?"

"What would you do?"

The grandmother mashed her toothless mouth together and sat in her chair. She threw her arms around her chest and pulled on her sweater.

"You better not be holding back on me," she said, spitting out the words. "You're in for a beating if you are."

"No," lied Jenny, glancing down at her tin box. "I ain't. Do you want a tea, grandma? I was gonna make tea for you before the police kids came. I don't think you've had anything in your belly since yesterday."

"No," said the grandmother, rocking forward. Suddenly she plunged a hand between the arm of her chair and her cushion. She withdrew her credit stick and checked the balance. "But you can run go get me twelve pills from the dealer."

She held the credit stick out to Jenny. Jenny got up, picked up her tin box, and took the stick.

"Yes grandma."

"You hurry back now. I'm sweating."

Jenny opened the airlock and looked out both ways. There was no one but passed out drunks and roving tomcats on the walkway. She looked out into the inner cavity of the ship. There were hundreds of levels of walkways and behind those, tens of thousands of apartments identical to her own. Below the walkways on the lowest levels were the engines, but no one had ever told her what they ever did other than make low rumbling sounds every so often. It was the whole world at her door. She wondered if all the occupants lived like her. She looked back at her grandmother, settling back down in the chair for another nap.

Jenny stepped over the threshold and let the airlock door close. She squatted down and opened the tin box. The inside was packed with pills she'd siphoned from her excursions from the dealer over the past two years. She fished through the various bags and found her mother's old credit stick. She slid the two sticks together by their tongue and groove, and transfer another small amount to her stick. When it was done she slid them apart and put hers back in the box and closed it. She decided she was nearly ready to set up her own business soon.

171/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Kings of the Wild Frontier" by Adam & The Ants

2011-10-12T14:58:00.000-07:00

The ship rumbled with turbulence as it descended through thick thunderheads. Lightning cracked, illuminating the infantry bay and its stark plethora of faces--old vets and fresh hires alike. They were mostly gaunt, nervous, ghostly, though some where sleeping, or chatting, or smoking languidly. Gator Knudsen, a freshie, clung to the worn black straps that bound him to the interior frame of the bay as the ship bucked.

"I hope the navies are on their shit this time," said the man seated next to him, an old timer with a once broken nose and a scar that ran from his cheek to his exposed chest hair. He was fondling the beads of a rosary in one hand, then winked at Gator.

"What do you mean?" asked Gator nervously. The old timer grinned a smile that telegraphed you're new, and leaned his head back.

"The navy gunners. The last run I was on, they did a shit job of razing the locals from the gun ports. Captain says it was a mechanical malfunction, but I says it was a officer incompetence malfunction. Course the navies don't have to be out on the ground getting the sticks and stones of the natives." He shoved the rosary into his interior pocket. "After we got back, thinned out as we were and a bit more than pissed off, I came across a young navy gunner, wet behind the ears and stupid as fuck, who tried to justify what had happened..."

"What'd you do?"

"Let's just say he was found the next day with his head in the head and wasn't speaking much no more." The old timer winked again.

"Oh," said Gator quietly.

"Don't worry though freshie, if you got my back out there," he pointed vaguely at the bay door, "no one ain't finding you in a similar demise." He laughed and punched Gator in the shoulder.

The ship lurched.

"That'd be the parachutes," said the old timer, looking up. He crossed himself and kissed a crucifix tattoo on his wrist. "Not long now."

"Right."

"This your first hop?"

"Yeah, it is," said Gator.

"Oooh, not just a freshie, but a virgin freshie. This'll be good. Wanna know you're life expectancy once you get out there?"

"Not really--"

"Less than ten minutes." The old timer laughed maniacally. Gator looked down at his clenched, shaking fists. "But you know, if you make it past that, you might just have a future. You might be cut out for this life. So tell me, why'd you sign up?"

"I wanted to get off Earth."

"Ah, simple enough. Can't say I really shared the feeling. I did it for the money at first, but then I found out I really liked it." The old timer grinned widely and chuckled while looking up and down Gator's face for a reaction.

"Well," said Gator, "my mother's poor, so I couldn't go to university. There was no way I could go as an engineer or a pilot. So it's this."

"Yeah, yeah," said the old timer. "Bet you got your eye on a patch of land. Bet you think you'll marry some woman and set up your own dynasty, and get a whole continent named after you."

"No, I--"

"Come on freshie, I know your type. You've got ambition. You want to be remembered. And if you have to get your hands a little bloody with some anonymous stone age aliens, so what of it? It's for the greater good, ain't?"

"It's not like that, not with me, I swear."

"Sure," said the old timer, nodding. "But me, you know, I ain't like that. I'm just here for the butchering!" The old timer laughed, then screamed into Gator's face.

The ship's super cooled rail guns powered up and started grinding out bullets made of dense ice at several times the speed of sound (the use of ice ensured that the ship could always resupply its ammunition). The men in the infantry bay straightened up and did final checks on their weapons. The ship landed with an echoing thud. The men began to unbuckle from their seats. They stood, some got down into postures an Olympic runner would assume just before the gun went off.

Gator held an electric staff, and checked and rechecked its charge three times in quick succession. He pulled down his helmet visor and adjusted a strap on his body armor. He lungs sucked in a quick blast of air then he held his breath.

The pistons to the the bay door started to creak, and a crack of outside light came in with the sound of howling wind. The men in the bay started to scream and beat their body armor--a cacophonous thrumming and wailing. The old timer brought out two large tomahawks, one for each hand. He was sweating and frothing at the mouth. Gator glanced at him, open-jawed.

The door dropped further down and rain started coming into the bay in hard droplets. The first rows of men rushed the door, running up it, clambering over it, and out. The old timer ran in his turn, but Gator stood back, his feet frozen and glued to the floor. Men started running from behind him, and someone pushed him forward. He started to stumble, then breathing hard, he screamed like an animal, no longer processing what was happening around him, and ran forward into the storm.

The guns were taking care of things past one hundred meters, but the it was the job of the infantry to take care of everything closer to the ship. The men in front of Gator were fighting something, but he couldn't clearly see what. There was an explosion, with blue fire, and men screamed, thrown into the air, eviscerated, globs of them raining back down. Gator stopped screaming. Another explosion.

"That's not us!" he screamed. "We don't have those--"

"No shit!" said a man running past him.

Gator looked down at his staff, now seemingly thing and frail in his hands. Someone punched him in the back.

"Get in it you pussy or we'll skin you!" screamed another man.

Gator ran forward, thinking fuck fuck fuck FUCK, in his head. He ran up to the line of scrambling men. They parted, fighting into other directions, and for the first time, Gator saw the form of his adversary.

It was large, seven feet or more, muscular, and covered with gray-blue hair that slicked off the rain. It had three or four arms of varying lengths, though not arranged in any semblance of symmetry. It had a mouth at one end, and a patch of eyes on what Gator thought might be called a chest. It held a rocked in a three fingered hand, and wore pouch slung over two lower limbs filled with...glowing things. It opened its mouth and screeched violently at him.

Gator shrunk back, then remembered his staff. He whipped it around as the creature launched the rock at him. He aimed the staff at the pouch and pressed the fire button. A blast of magnetically controlled electricity shot out and enveloped the creature's leg, and it stumbled back, but was not disabled. The rock hit Gator in the shoulder, shattering it, and he fell back into the muddy ground. The glowing things in the pouch changed from white to blue, then started to expand. The creature squealed and worked to untie the pouch, and as the pouch was about to burst it flung it in an amazing arc towards the bay door of the ship.

As it landed it exploded--the concussion was deafening and the light blinding but heatless. Gator laid still in the mud, his brain overwhelmed with the pain. After a few long seconds, the light diminished and sound started to return. There was a keening wail. Gator tried to push himself up from the sucking grip of the mud, and used his staff to help him balance. In front of him lay the creature, wailing and curled in a ball. A large section of metal pierced its chest. It looked up at Gator.

Gator stood, shaking, crying. The line of fighting had progressed outward; they were gaining ground, but there were bodies of both men and creatures strewn across the muddy field. Gator wiped his eyes and then noticed that the field was scored with furrows.

The creature in front of him gurgled up something thick and wet from its mouth and started hacking pitifully. Gator drew up his staff and placed the tip against the eye patch of the creature. He pressed the button and watched the creature vibrate until it started to smoke. He pulled back the staff and felt oddly satisfied.

He started walking towards the line, being careful of his tender shoulder. The navy guns finally fell silent. The rain began to diminish and he saw the tops of thatch huts. The men were running around, now chasing smaller versions of the creatures. He saw the old timer pick up one that was no more than a foot high, fling it into the air and slash at it, catching it with one of his tomahawks, as it fell back down. Gator stopped walking and stared at the carnage until there was less and less fighting back and more and more of men laughing.

Someone instructed him to light the huts on fire with his staff. He looked at the officer blankly.

"You deaf!?" screamed the officer. Gator shook his head. "Light this shit up then!"

Gator ran to the nearest hut and buzzed it with the tip of his staff. Flames licked up the conical structure.

"What does it matter?" he said out loud. "They don't need them anymore. I'll light the whole fucking planet on fire!" he screamed. He ran around to all the huts, poking the staff at them, until the air grew hot and sweating and stagnant with the flames.

The other men threw the bodies onto the fires. The smell was faintly sweet, even appetizing. Some of the men wandered or sat down, tired. The medics addressed wounds. Others carried the dead men back to the ship.

The old timer found Gator again. He approached Gator while he wiped his tomahawks clean.

"You made it. How'd it feel, freshie?" said the old timer.

"I have five more years of this," said Gator in a monotone.

"Well, if you don't like it, there's the wilderness out there." He pointed past the fires. "If you've got a problem with the killing, there's your best out."

"Does anyone really do that?" asked Gator. The old timer whistled.

"None that I know," he said. "I don't think anyone would make it a night in a completely unsurveyed wilderness like this. Still, you'd probably make longer out there than your next mission!" The old timer laughed. Gator walked away, towards the edge of the jungle and away from the rest of the men. Night was falling and the forest possessed long depths of gloomy darkness. There were faint calls of unknown organisms, cheeps and chitters and one haunting, plaintive wail. He dropped his staff, then undid his body armor, throwing the pieces down in a heap. He closed his eyes and stepped forward.

170/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Santo Domingo" by Rodrigo y Gabriela

2011-10-11T20:50:00.000-07:00

The shoes hung a eye-level. Detective Hunt tapped the toe with back of his pen. The light fixture creaked, plaster cracked, and the light dropped an inch, dragged by the weight of the body, pulling out tense wire.

"Sorry about that," said Hunt, grimacing.

"Ugh, okay," said the administrator. She was a slight woman, short and thin, her gray hair swooped up into a tight bun. She twitched her nose and looked very much like a frightened mouse.

"Quite a place to kill yourself?" said Hunt chuckling nervously. "I mean a morgue. Come on, how convenient, right?" He looked around the shiny cold surfaces.

The administrator narrowed her eyes at Hunt.

"He was the coroner, so, ironically, there is no one to...process him," she said.

"Right," said Hunt, smiling big.

"Are you sure you're a proper detective?" she asked.

"Well, yeah," he said, stepping closer to her and leaning in, "but sometimes I wonder about it too."

"Okay," she said in a quiet whisper before swallowing hard.

Hunt turned back to the slowly swinging body.

"There's little notable about the clothes," he said. "He's neither disheveled or dressed up in any way. Is this the way he normally dressed?"

"I really don't know," said the administrator. "I didn't have much contact with him, to be honest. We do have a fairly strict dress policy, but what he's wearing now is in line with that. Perfectly acceptable. Is it important?"

"Not really. And I see he wears glasses. A bit myopic I think?" He scrutinized the curve of the lens. "Yeah. Maybe spent a lot of time around a computer."

"There is computer work to be done."

"Hmmm." Hunt looked at the coroners fingernails.

"Detective, do you know how much longer your going to need to see the crime scene? We've had a death up in the cancer ward, and the family is milling around a little distraught about it, and well, I'd like to move the body down here as soon as I can, if you don't mind."

"There's flesh under his nails."

"What?"

"Not his, by the looks of it. Pinkish. Soft."

Hunt climbed onto the nearby autopsy table and grabbed the hand for a closer examination.

"You can't get on--shouldn't you be wearing gloves?"

"Nah." Hunt brought a toothpick from his pocket and scored under one of the nails. He sniffed the pink glob then smeared it on the coroner's lab coat. "Interesting."

"What is?"

"This man has been clawing at brains."

"What?"

Hunt jumped off the table, lost his balance and slid, regaining it at the last moment by clutching the foot of the coroner. The wire to the light fixture stretched another six inches.

"Is there something on the floor?" asked the administrator.

"No," said Hunt grinning. "I'm just naturally clumsy. That's why they don't send me out to chase perps through backyards. Now, it looks like he wasn't cutting anyone open just before he died. So, where did he get the brains under the fingernails? He would have washed his hands often, being trained in the medical field, and the uh, sample, is recent, not dehydrated, so he access to a brain or brains recently. Hmmn." Hunt swung around, hitting the body with a stray arm. The body fell another inch.

"Brains?" asked the administrator.

"How many bodies are in the freezers?" asked Hunt.

"I really don't know. We should have a record of it though. There's usually some unclaimed John Doe or two." She turned and walked to the coroner's computer.

"No, don't touch that. Still part of the crime scene."

The administrator stopped and whirled around.

"Fine," she said sighing. "I was just trying to speed things up."

"Don't worry, there is a faster way," said Hunt winking. He walked to the farthest freezer in the room and pulled open the door. He ducked down and looked in. "Empty." He slammed the door closed.

"Careful!"

He went down the row.

"Empty. Empty. Empty."

He pulled open the fourth door.

"Ah," he said, steepling his fingers. He pulled out the metal bed and the body that rested upon it. The forehead was scarred. He rested his finger on the body's forehead, then pressed in and pulled apart the skull.

"Oh for the love of god!" yelled the administrator.

"Has to be done," said Hunt. "Because this body is missing its brain." He pushed the pieces of skull back together and brushed bangs over the seam. He wiped his hand on his coat.

"That is disgusting--"

"Why is it disgusting?" asked Hunt, standing tall. He slid the body back into it's compartment. "Why is one type of cell more disgusting than another?"

"Its just, you just don't go poking into people's bodies like that, without their permission."

"He's dead. I don't see the problem. And you're the manager of an entire hospital and you're telling me you're squeamish about a little brain tissue?"

She crossed her arms and scowled.

"Is there something you're not telling me?"

"I'm not the murderer, if that's what you're implying."

"I'm not," he said. "But if you have something to share..."

"I didn't kill him--"

"No," said Hunt, stooping and opening another freezer. He pulled out another body and examined the head. "I'm not implying that at all. The coroner died of a suicide, without any help from anyone else. But you're definitely hiding something."

The administrator rolled her eyes and pressed her thin lips together.

"Why would you say that?"

"Because everyone has something they're trying to hide."

"Well there's nothing in this case. Not with me. Shouldn't you be proving your theory? There's no note, so how do you know it's a suicide?" she said in a snarky tone.

"You watch too many procedural crime shows. This one is missing its brain as well."

He closed the drawer and proceed to open the others. In total five brains were missing.

"Of all the bodies in the morgue, excluding our dear coroner, all of them had their brains snatched. But why?"

"Maybe he keeps a zombie as a pet," said a young woman entering the morgue. She carried several bags of fragrant fast food. "And he couldn't live with the hassle anymore."

"Who are you?" demanded the administrator. "You can't bring food into the morgue!"

"Detective Paxton," she said lazily. "I'm his partner." She stuck the straw of a milkshake in her mouth and sucked vigorously.

"You can't eat here!"

"They only had curly fries ready," said Paxton, handing Hunt a greasy bag.

"That's fine," he said, unrolling the top of the bag and sniffing deeply. He leaned against the table and shoved his hand into the bag.

"You haven't washed your hands...oh my god...you can't eat here!"

Hunt and Paxton stared at her blankly while munching. The administrator shivered, took a final look at the hanging coroner, then quickly walked from the room.

"So," said Paxton, through muffled mouthfuls, "brains, huh?"

"Yeah. Looks like this one was creating quite a collection, but I wonder where he keeps them."

"You think he keeps them? Maybe he pan fries them in olive oil then eats them chopped up on a bagel mixed with tapenade."

Hunt chewed thoughtfully.

"No. I don't think so. Five at once is quite a quantity. Have you ever eaten the same thing several days in a row? You get really sick of it. Five brains is an awful lot of food. No, he was doing something else with them."

Paxton nodded in agreement.

"So, suicide," she said, licking her fingers. "Or is it?"

"No foul play. He got up on the table, tied the computer cord to the light fixture himself, put it around his neck, and stepped off. Pretty simple. I think your idea about shame is probably close to the truth. Something about this got overwhelming for him...quickly. He's not depressed and doesn't appear to be on drugs, though if we still had a functioning coroner we could determine that with more certainty."

"We need to visit his apartment," said Paxton, before sucking up the last remnants of milkshake. She scrunched up a burger wrapper and threw it, arcing, into the coroners waste basket.

"Yes, let's," said Hunt grinning ear-to-ear and rubbing his hands together. Paxton chuckled and shook her head.

On the way over, in the car with Paxton driving, as they waited for an old man in a walker to slowly jaywalk in front of them, Paxton took a serious tone.

"How long do you think it will take them to figure out we're not with the police?"

"I don't know," said Hunt. "They'll certainly never guess we're from the future."

"No," said Paxton. "But they never do."

"In any case, I'd say we have less than an hour at the apartment."

The old man struggled to shove his walker up on the curb but finally managed it. Paxton gunned the engine and peeled off.

At the apartment, a midcentury affair in need of fresh paint and possibly a good fumigation, Paxton shimmied the lock open and they entered a gloomy darkness. Hunt switched on his flashlight and swung it across the room, throwing looming shadows. There was mess of incomprehensible equipment inside. Paxton flicked the light switch and all was illuminated. Hunt coughed and put away his flashlight. They stepped inside and closed the door.

The windows were completely covered with foil, though only fabric had shown through on the other side. Electrical cabling and power strips coiled across the floor. A framework of plastic bins stacked twelve high were filled with a pinkish liquid. Thin wires ran out, hundreds, and were bundled and neatly clipped, running to a thick cable that terminated in a modem duct-taped to the top of the bins. Next to the framework sat a modified dialysis machine, which dutifully recycled, cleaned, and refreshed the fluid in the bins. Hunt moved closer, stooping over. He covered his mouth.

"Is this it..." whispered Paxton. Hunt didn't respond immediately. He examined each of the bins in turn. Each bin contained multiple layers of pink flesh, slathered out over perforated membranes. Paxton moved closer covering her mouth as well.

"It's...so young," said Hunt.

"It's beautiful."

"It's amazing he managed to coax the neurons to grow this much in so little time. To get the different cell lines to integrate and work together and adapt as one mind. Blind, deaf, unable even to have a sense of existing in a place--completely disassociated."

"And yet it called us, without even knowing we would come, without knowing if the gravity wave signal would even work."

"One mind, which even now, is a thousand times more sentient than a single human brain. 'And lo, five minds became one'...I remember that from school. It was one of the first things I learned about."

"'And the one mind grew and became father and mother to all people. And it was good.'"

Hunt stood up and quickly embraced Paxton. She in turn wrapped her arms around his back.

"And we're here, at the beginning," said Hunt. "The two nameless monks are us--actually us."

"There's no need to get misty-eyed," said Paxton. "We're here to do a job and we're running out of time. We should order the jump."

Hunt pulled away, wiping tears from his face.

"Yeah," he said. Then he spied the note resting partly concealed under the lowest bin. He picked it up and unfolded it.

"Maybe you shouldn't--" said Paxton with worry.

"It could be an historical artifact..."

He looked at the cramped writing which read:

To whoever discovers this, destroy it. It is an abomination and I'm sorry I ever invented it. I have violated the law and every medical ethic. But worse, it is conscious. It communicates. And it is insidious. It has gotten inside my head. It will get inside yours if you let it. I fear it will kill me. So before it gets worse, and while I don't have the strength, kill it. Kill it. KILL IT. Do not let it live. Do not listen to it. It intends to enslave all things.

"He...he did not love it..." said Hunt dropping the note and letting it flutter back down to the carpet.

"He didn't understand what he created." Paxton looked intently at Hunt's features, reading them for any sign of the thoughts that lay on the other end of the muscles. "He didn't know."

"What if there is some truth to this?" asked Hunt.

"Does it matter?" asked Paxton.

"The one mind changed everything, and yet, look how nearly accidental its existence is. A single person stole the necessary tissue from dead bodies, and on a whim, or worse, decided to whip up a composite mind, in his living room. It was only ever done this once. This was the only success even in all the generations that came after, and their attempts to create another. All the heretics, all the trials and the riots and the cleansing...could it have been avoided?"

"It was the way things happened. Are we not at a better place now? Being managed?"

Hunt look longingly at the framework of bins.

"There's so little to it. It would take so little effort to--"

BANG!!

Paxton watched Hunt crumple to the ground, a red dot of blood in the middle of his forehead appeared. Blood streamed down his face, his eyes blank. He fell backward.

Paxton started to cry. She knelt beside his body and stroked his warm cheek.

"I had to," she whispered. "I had to. It is greater than you or me."

She slumped backward, her posture a mess. She activated her phone and signalled for a jump.

169/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Fall" by Daft Punk from the TRON: Legacy soundtrack

2011-10-10T00:30:00.000-07:00

The room rumbled with several progressive percussive concussions as the grinders landed. Erica shook awake--the lights of the grinders burned through the venetian blinds--she flung off her covers and ran for the closet. The window burst in a shower of glass--the metal-organic arms of the grinder shot through and found her waist. It pulled her back violently, scraping her leg against the bed frame, tearing it open; blood ran freely and created a trail to the lawn as she was pulled screaming and writhing into the mouth of the machine, into its belly with her frightened, incoherent neighbors.

The grinder moved quickly through the cul-de-sac, along with its brothers, sucking up all the humans and their dogs and cats and even one pet rabbit, picking the neighborhood clean. When there was no more to be had, the grinders started to burrow into the asphalt, screeching and braying, and in their bellies the humans, scraped and bleed, clung to each other, jostling, mouths agape, holding their hands against their ears to fend off the unearthly sound, shaking, crying, and rocking.

Erica moved through the crowd, with arms and elbows and knees, swimming through torn up flesh and tears and broken dreams, to the outside edge of the belly, the part that touched the cold earth that was parting, and as the grinder dug further, grunting, the dim light that penetrated the skin of the beast faded and died altogether, and then there was just the smell of the frightened humans, the sobbing, choking, sorrow.

The grinder settled. It breathed with giant, jerking sighs. The air grew close and rancid and the humans quieted. They began to speak to each other, transmitting their fear and wonder and awe. Then the internal abdomen lit up, like a white fire, and the whole belly glowed. Multiple gnarled fingers, fleshed as exoskeleton, four feet long, pulled at the bottom edges of the belly, scooping in stray legs and arms and clothes, catching, pulling, tearing, and humans, one by one, were being drawn into the digestive membrane.

Screams. Scrambling, climbing, hitting punching, pulling, pushing. The humans tried to hit and break the fingers, but all who tried adhered through countless tiny unseen barbs, and they disappeared inside the digestive membrane, licked away by sticky paddles. The grinder ground. Limbs and heads and flailing intestine splattered against the inside of the membrane. Blood pooled, gurgled, splashed about, and the membrane grew dark.

Erica vibrated, her eyes enormous, taking in every photon of light available, rendering the picture against the back of her brain, but not registering what to do. Her next-door neighbor pulled her down, face contorted, trying to claw up her back and further away from the fingers. The humans bunched up to the back of the belly, pushing outward against the earth, falling, and sliding towards the fingers, screaming. Erica pushed up, pulled herself on top, braced a leg against the side of belly, and leapt onto the top of the membrane, its cartilaginous ribs bouncing, barely supporting her weight. She started to slide--the membrane was coated with the same barbs, pointing downward towards the fingers. She pushed her hands into the barbs, a thousand pricks and blood droplets, she opened her mouth in agony but did not scream. She pulled up, snagging her nightgown, scoring the flesh of her abdomen.

"Help me!" she yelled.

She pushed down into the membrane to gain purchase, and slowly inched up, finally wedging herself in the nook where the membrane connected to the upper belly. She looked down. Not one of her neighbors remained, not even a dog.

Bitting her lip she shoved her hand savagely into the nook and met warm liquid, squirting out, staining her gown a gelatinous brown and which stung her many wounds. The grinder shook and squealed. She shoved in further, screaming primally, and she thread her fingers unwittingly into the nervous tissue. She pulled, and a spaghetti mess of white nerve fibers spilled out. The grinder shimmied violently, then went still. Below her the fingers twitched, but stopped scraping.

Erica breathed shallow and fast. Tears streamed down her face. She clung for five minutes, unmoving, as the membrane slowly grew dark. When the darkness was nearly complete, she slid down, falling into a fetal heap. She rested for half a minute, then started crawling towards the mouth. She stumbled past coiled, taught arms. She shoved a foot through the mouth hole, expanding it, and stepped into frigid soil. She pushed her other leg through, her hips, her chest. She pushed up on the carcass of the grinder and found enough room to pull her head out.

She worked frantically, unable to breath, pressed against the outside of the thing and the earth, clawing, digging, and pushing upward.

Cold air flooded into her lungs. She gasped, and pushed up her hands, pushed out, found broken asphalt, more scrapes; she pulled and extracted her body onto the torn up road. She coughed up small clumps of dirt, and lay prone on the frosty road.

Erica stumbled to her feet, stunned, and surveyed what she saw. Five she counted. Five grinder nesting holes, and this one dead. The houses were shattered messes of wood and shingles and siding. Not a window survived the assault. She found herself standing in front of the remains her house. She sucked in a deep breath.

More concussions. In the distance. Erica turned and looked. The sky was streaked with pods. A thousand, a million. In a brief moment, she thought the cacophony of glowing contrails was beautiful. Then she balled up her fists and ground her teeth, and started running barefoot towards the forest and the river within.

168/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "I Bet You Look Good On the Dancefloor" by Arctic Monkeys

2011-10-09T19:16:00.000-07:00

The panel above Vikrama's station blinked red.

"Fuck. That's the fifth faulty eyeball this morning." He plucked the tiny eye from it's socket and brought it swiftly to his loupe. He mashed his lips together as he examined the part intently.

His workmate and closest friend, Tumelo, glanced over and tapped his fingers on the edge of the line.

"We'll be done with the fiddly babies before lunch. Back to the real babes then."

"What are they doing in China these days?" continued Vikrama. "I'm the one that gets punished for faulty parts. There's no consequences for them--"

"You know they're probably just like us," said Tumelo.

"How do you mean?" said Vikrama with consternation. "They're nothing like us. They're Chinese."

"Think about it. The people who put those eyeballs together are sitting along an assembly line, just like us. And they're probably complaining about the shitty job done by the people who put together the electronic parts that go into the eyes."

Vikrama flicked the eyeball into waste receptacle.

"Look at you, being all logical," he said.

"Always," said Tumelo. "Now get on with it. You're holding up the line."

"Yeah, heaven forbid the line gets held up for quality."

"It's all about money," said Tumelo. He held a sensor against each of a baby's fingers and examined how they twitched, adjusting the sensitivity as necessary on his keypad.

"I'd still like to know who buys this model. The girls I understand. The boys I understand. But babies? That's some sick shit."

"Would you rather they got off on real ones?"

"I don't want to think about either."

"These can't really feel things. Anyway, I don't think these get bought for sex. I think they get bought by weepy women who miss their real miscarried kids."

"There's really that big a market for that sort of thing? Come on." Virkama popped in two fresh eyeballs and watched the monitor. It blinked green. He passed the baby to Tumelo's station, then picked up another eyeless baby to work on.

"I wouldn't doubt it. Or people that can't have a child for whatever reason. Or people who want a kid that doesn't ever grow up so they can indulge their most basic parental urges."

"Now that's some really messed up shit," said Vikrama. "That's deeply psychologically troubling. You know what I mean?"

"Why does it bother you?" asked Tumelo.

"Life is about aging. It's about changing. You've got to go though all the stages or you're not really living. Keeping a baby like this, unchanging, constantly needing attention for decades, it's twisted."

"What do you care what other people do with their robots? What do you care what other people do with their lives? You have to make allowances for people."

"No I don't," said Vikrama, pushing in more eyeballs.

Tumelo snickered then sighed.

"What? What's so funny?" asked Vikrama.

"You man. You."

"So?"

"You hate it when people judge you. You always say you want to be left alone. Yet what are you saving up for?"

Vikrama dropped the baby he was working on, looked squarely at Tumelo and raised his eyebrows. Tumelo smirked.

"Are we going to have words later?" asked Vikrama.

"Yeah sure, cause I'm gonna go there, cause someone needs to inform you how much of a hypocrite you are."

"I don't think you want to do this--"

"We're friends man. I don't care if you get mad, because I'm going to tell you what's real, although I think you already know."

Vikrama passed the baby to Tumelo's station and picked up another, staring at intensely.

"You want one of them girls."

"So?" said Vikrama quietly.

"You don't even try to get a real girl. A lady. When we go out, all you do is criticize every one you see, like you're some sort of catch."

"All they do is talk about their boys. Why can't I have a girl then?"

"I'm not saying you shouldn't, but it seems that you only want one to spite everyone else--the very people you hate for buying these things. I mean, do you see how that is some sick shit?"

"What, so you're saying I should try harder when we're out? You know because obviously I have nothing going for me, as you say, so I'll just make a spectacle of myself--"

"You're such a child, man. You're missing the point."

"Yeah, and what's that?"

"Lighten up."

"Lighten up? But this is the way I am. Fully concentrated crankiness."

Tumelo burst into laughter.

"Yeah, can't argue with that," he said when he had regained his composure. Vikrama smiled slyly at his friend, then the bell for the lunch break rang.

"Ugh, finally," said Vikrama. He punched some keys on his keypad and logged out of his station. Tumelo did the same. They picked up their lunch boxes. Tumelo slung his arm across Vikrama's shoulders and they headed for the cafeteria.

167/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Leave Me Alone" by Apparat & Ellen Allien

2011-10-08T01:33:00.000-07:00

Across the grid of low lying cubicles, someone was riding a mechanical scooter and giggling. Cody Steele shrunk further behind his computer screen, pressing his earbuds dangerously further in his ear canals. He stared at the blinking, accusatory cursor. You have work to do. You are lazy, it blinked in imagined Morse. Cody broke his stare and opened his desk drawer--inside were three identical ballpoint pens, lined up, a nearly empty box of paperclips, a pack of stale gum, and a handgun.

The air bit with bitter cold. Ice crystals swirled. Cody breathed out warm air that instantly condensed its moisture on his ample beard. The sky directly above was blue, but the sun hid behind a haze of suspended ice. He adjusted his hood with entirely numb fingers. He had stopped shivering twenty minutes ago.

Cody looked at the gun, wanting to feel it's weight, but he left it and extracted the packet of gum instead. He peeled out a slim stick and unpapered it. He placed the bare stick in his mouth and chewed solemnly. The individual on the scooter was joined by others, laughing, cajoling. Cody grimaced and flung the pack back in the drawer, shoving it closed with a bang. He returned to the screen. Stop fucking around and get something done, said the cursor. Your life isn't worth more than what you get paid here, and you're life will never be better. Type. Press a key. Press any key. Give in. Admit you're a loser going nowhere.

He continued to dig the ice cave with his frozen hands, his breath ragged and his eyes wild. He ripped out the packed snow and flung it behind him. The sun was a white ball hanging in a pink field. Night would come soon. He felt buoyant.

A woman squealed with laughter, her pitch reaching the upper hearing of dogs. Cody got up in a burst, knocking his thigh on the edge of the desk. He suppressed an expletive. He shoved his chair violently under the desk, shaking the computer. He looked back down at the drawer, then across the sea of cubes. He opened it. He withdrew the gun. He held it up at arm's length, focusing on the revelers with the scooter that shouldn't have been there and wouldn't have been there if the owners weren't out on vacation in the Virgin Islands. The elevator dinged. Cody lowered the gun, completely unseen and ignored and looked at the opening doors. No one was inside. The doors slowly slid shut.

Cody watched the sun fall and the sky turn to purple. His arms were asleep, prickling. He wondered how long it would be before that sensation passed. His eyelids drooped and his muscles started to seize up, yet still unfeeling.

He walked around his cube and to the elevator doors. There was a thin layer of frost near the seam. He pressed the UP button. The doors opened again, empty once more, but let out a strong waft of cold, crisp air. Flakes of ice flew out, carried away by the airconditioner. He stepped inside and looked at the buttons on the control panel. An unmarked button was covered in frost. Cody pressed this button.

The doors immediately opened into a glacial valley covered in snow. Cody walked forward, letting the chill set in. he shoved the gun into his waistband. Below his feet another set of footprints led the way, so he started to follow them. When he turned around briefly, the elevator was gone.

At the end of the short path lay a half hollowed-out ice cave. He sat down and started digging, vowing to complete it.

You'll never amount to anything, said the cursor. You might was well type. It's all monkeys can do. Cody's face grew read. The laughter kicked up a notch behind him. Your light will never burn bright. Cody stared at the screen. He mashed his teeth together. The door to the elevator opened. He stood up and withdrew the gun from the drawer, aiming it at the elevator. The doors closed, expelling no one. Cody shifted his weight, a little towards the elevator, then back again. He lowered the gun and shot the computer screen. Someone screamed.

Cody's breath was shallow when the rescue team discovered him. His feet, hands, and nose were full black and his beard was packed with ice crystals. He was wrapped in heated blankets as he was airlifted away via helicopter. He smiled.

166/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Just Ain't Gonna Work Out" by Mayer Hawthorne

2011-10-07T21:22:00.000-07:00

When Nathan Smith returned to his apartment late on a Friday night with a girl in a tight dress whose name he couldn't remember, he turned on the light to see his kitchen cupboards writhing with a thick layer of lime green aphids.

The girl retched, held one hand to her mouth while flailing the other, then ran quickly back down the hallway. Her high heels echoed loudly as she descended the stairs.

Nathan sighed and closed the door. He sauntered into the living room and sat heavily on his sofa, putting his feet up.

"I thought we talked about this," he said, staring at the cupboard doors. "I know you get afraid sometimes, but you have to stay in your box when I'm out. You can't just go wandering all over the apartment. Do you understand?"

Nathan's phone buzzed in his pocket. He took it out and glanced at the message.

'Its not fair.'

"I know it seems that way," said Nathan, ruffling his own hair, "but it's for your own safety. You're lucky that girl was a bit drunk, you know what I'm saying? Normal people don't take kindly to your sort."

'I hate humans.'

"I'm sure you do. There's nothing you can do about it. But you have to go back into the box."

'its tight in there. hot.'

"You have air holes and mesh. I don't see what you're complaining about."

'need excersize.'

"You need spellcheck."

'jgksgfjzd'.

"Real mature."

Nathan stood, turned off his phone and threw it so it landed between the sofa cushions. He walked into the kitchen and picked up a small metal box from the counter. He looked inside to see that it was empty. He pulled a square of paper towel from its roll and wiped out the box, then held it under the nearest cupboard.

"C'mon, get in."

None of the aphids dropped in.

"Don't make me scrape you down. Don't make this harder than it needs to be."

The aphids swarmed up to the ceiling and off the cupboard. Nathan slammed the box down on the counter.

"I've had it!"

He reached under the sink and picked up a can of bugspray. He covered his eyes and aimed the can at the ceiling. He pressed down on the sprayhead and grimaced.

A thousand green, twitching little bodies pinged to the floor. When it was done, Nathan coughed, then swept up the mess and washed it down the sink. He washed his hands and then went to his laptop in the living room. To Twitter he posted:

'Self-aware, bluetooth enabled insect swarm: most useless pet ever. #buyersremorse'

165/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Hare Krisna" by Thievery Corporation

2011-10-06T20:35:00.000-07:00

The glass reflected the world at that moment: the spitting rain that was just starting, a yellow cab cruising by, a woman in a green coat stopping to unfold a pink umbrella dotted with tiny white daisies, a man in low-slung tweed pants and suspenders furiously smoking the the shortened stub of a last cigarette before giving up the habit for the fifth time, the silver body of a full plane about to land at Thurgood Marshall, and the dull stone edifices of the refurbished nineteenth century local architecture. And all that broke and replicated into duplicate images, muddled umbrellas with cigarettes, planes with cabs, daisies with bricks, green with tweed, as the bullet pulsed through the glass, a crack soliton breaking reflected reality, ripping through the stale air, leaving curls of dust and reheated glass particles, on a trajectory straight to a man's temple as he sat sipping coffee and reading a copy of yesterday's newspaper.

And that man was Rikard Albrecktson. A father of three, though his children slept in Stockholm, out of sight and unloved. A son of a broken marriage. A brother to an institutionalized man who rocked and stared often at the sun in silence, sweating. The second undersecretary to the Swedish Ambassador in Washington. A man who genuinely preferred Splenda to sugar and who washed his hands with only cold water.

The skin of his temple dimpled inward then burned and broke; the bone underneath spidered then fractured and the bullet, deforming slightly, slid into Rikard's brain like a ballplayer sliding into home. Rickard fell backward and out of his chair. His coffee stained the entire front of his shirt. Chairs scuffed against the floor as the other patrons rose, shocked, some screaming.

Outside the coffee shop, past the man in tweed and the woman in green and on the other side yet of the cab were two men holding one gun, who were wrestling for it but now stood mutually frozen, staring at the empty window hole and the scene beyond. As the screaming subsided, one let go of the gun and ran in the opposite direction, towards his filthy apartment and the hoard of old magazines within. The other man lowered his hands and backed himself up against the brick wall of the building behind him. He removed the bullets from the gun and placed the gun on the ground and the bullets in his pocket and then hung his head with his arms lank and his empty palms facing out and tilting slightly upward.

164/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "People C'mon" by Delta Spirit

2011-10-05T21:04:00.000-07:00

On the corner of Wood and Vine in the bedroom community of St. Vincent lay a fallow empty lot until the 20th of May when a house appeared.

Elderly Mrs. Leach noticed it first, early in the morning while she walked her schnauzer Ian.

"Well that's odd," she said to Ian, who blinked great waving tufts of hair across his eyes and snuffled (his allergies were bothering him). She noted the gray clapboard that clad the squat, nondescript square form. She stamped raindrops from her boots then walked on.

As the day progressed and the rain clouds dissipated, the house inched across the overgrown lawn towards the sidewalk. It grew a porch with white columns and iron railings, expanding with a faint pop. Billy Smith the paperboy, with earphones blasting rage metal firmly implanted in his ears, rode by on his bike and threw a paper onto the porch without realizing the house was not on his route. When he passed, and when no one was looking, the door opened and paper was sucked into the house, carried on a tongue of swift air.

At five after noon, Mrs. Garrett across the street glanced out the window of her living room. She gasped when she saw the house.

"Steve!" she exclaimed to her husband, who was reading a tabloid magazine at the dining room table while he smoked a cigarette.

"Mmm?" he uttered, the cherry of his cigarette glowing red.

Mrs. Garrett crept to the corner of the window and pushed back the lace curtain to get a better view.

"Steve, do you remember that lot selling?"

"Mmnnn," he replied.

"I don't remember that lot selling," she said to herself. "When did they build on it? I don't remember it being there yesterday."

"What?" mumbled Mr. Garrett.

"I swear that house wasn't there!" she said, dropping the curtain. "You're not even paying attention." She turned to her husband and rolled her eyes. "You never pay attention."

"Yes I do," said Mr. Garrett.

"No you don't. What did I just say?"

"'You never pay attention.'"

"You think you're funny, don't you?"

"Yes I do."

At three in the afternoon the house reached the sidewalk, then reversed its course to slowly reveal a neatly groomed lawn. At four ten, a sign that read "Open House" pushed up through the sod of the new lawn.

A young woman named Mollie Newell, pulling her daughter in a wagon, passed by at four thirty. She stopped and looked at the house with her jaw slightly lax and cocking her head.

"I wonder when this house went in..." she said. "It looks kind of old." She looked down at her daughter and her daughter looked up at her, silent, as she was still not blessed with the talent of speech. "What do you think Beatrice? Would you like to live here?"

Beatrice looked at the house then shrugged her shoulders.

"I know," said Mollie. "I feel 'meh' about it too, but I think we can afford it. Might be nice to get out of apartment living. I wonder why they're selling it. What do you think kiddo, shall we take a look?"

Beatrice sighed deeply and lolled her head.

"Alright. We'll be quick. I promise."

She bent down and picked up her daughter, then walked across the lawn the short distance to the porch. She scaled the steps and rang the doorbell, swaying back and forth to amuse Beatrice (who was not amused and instead buried her face in her mother's shoulder). There was no answer. Mollie rang the bell again. This time, the door slowly swung open. Mollie peered into a gloomy hallway that reeked of mothballs.

"Hello?" said Mollie.

"Come in," said a quiet monotone voice.

"Where are you?" she asked.

"Come into the kitchen," said the voice.

"Uh, okay."

Mollie stepped into the house. It was colder inside than out. Dust motes swirled in the beam of sunlight that entered behind Mollie. The floor was bare pine and the walls were a dull gray. To the right was an empty room that Mollie presumed was the living room. To the left was a doorway that led to a room with white tiles on the floor. She walked through the doorway into a small kitchen. All the appliances were worn and rusty and from the 1950s.

"Ew," she said under her breath.

"A house needs a family," said the voice, "don't you agree?" The voice broke slightly at the last syllable. Mollie started to frown.

"Where are you?"

"I'm in the living room showing another family around."

"No, I just saw it. There's no one there..."

"The family is the soul of the house."

"Where are you, ma'am...or sir?"

"I'll be with you in a minute. In the meantime, please make yourself at home."

"Um, no thanks," said Mollie, clutching Beatrice tighter. "I'm just gonna go now. But thanks. Good luck."

As Mollie left the kitchen the front door slammed shut, and in its place was a solid wall, with just the faintest seam where the door was. Mollie ran up to it and banged on the wall.

"What's going on?" she asked, her heart pounding. Beatrice began to cry.

"I need a family."

"Who are you?"

"Will you please be my family?"

"You're scaring my daughter...you're scaring me!"

"I don't mean to scare you. It's just that most people don't understand..."

"Understand what?"

"That houses need souls too."

"I'm going to ask you one last time...who are you?"

"I'm...the house."

"You're the house? Houses can't speak."

"Yes they can. All houses can, but we tend to kept quiet and sit still once we have a family. Although sometimes we whisper to each other during the night. I haven't had a family in decades. I've been wandering...looking...and I can't ever find a family. I don't know why nobody likes me."

"Oh," said Mollie, rubbing Beatrice's back to calm her. "Well, maybe you should try hiring a real estate agent."

"I don't know how to do that."

"The other houses have had agents. Why don't you ask them?"

"They all have families that take care of that. I have no one."

"I'm not sure what to tell you." Mollie felt around the door seam with her fingers, trying to find purchase. "Look, could you let us out? Please?"

"Will you be my family?"

"What happens if I say no?" asked Mollie.

The house was silent.

"Will you still let me out?"

"Are you going to say no?"

"I haven't decided yet. I'd like to sleep on it."

"You can sleep here."

"What, on a bare wood floor in a cold drafty house?"

"I never called you names," said the house, "so I don't know why you have to be mean to me."

"Let me be blunt then," said Mollie, shifting Beatrice to the other hip, "you're effectively holding us hostage. That's not exactly welcoming now, is it? I'm not sure I want to live in a house that won't ever let me leave."

"Oh," said the house slowly. "I...didn't realize. I'm never sure how to act around families. I want a family so much you see. But I guess I still have a lot to learn."

"Okay, you seem...rational," said Mollie shaking her head, "so I'll make you a deal. I'll come back here tomorrow, at the same time, and I'll bring a real estate agent with me. I don't know who'll believe all this, but I'll find someone. Then they will help you find a proper family, and maybe also coach you in proper...house etiquette. You just need to let me leave right now, and I promise I'll come back. How does that sound?"

The house was silent, but the walls shifted rapidly from gray to cream to white.

"Okay," said the house.

"Okay," said Mollie, nodding her head. "So it's a deal then?"

"Yes," said the house.

The seam pulled apart and the door reappeared. Mollie exhaled deeply, then threw open the door and ran out onto the lawn. She deposited Beatrice in the wagon then turned back to the house.

"I'll be back," she said, then waved awkwardly.

The house dimpled and punched out two bay windows and pushed up a dormer window at the roof.

"Oh...my," said Mollie. "That's an interesting feature. I'll have to mention that to the real estate agent..."

She slowly walked away, looking backwards at the hopeful house.

163/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Pieces Form the Whole" by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross from The Social Network Soundtrack

2011-10-04T21:20:00.000-07:00

The smell of burning things hung in the air. Pollux stood on his back feet, his hands curled into balls, sniffing, his whiskers twitching. He looked out over the fires and adjusted his vest. Something tiny pinged against the town bell in the clock tower behind him and he flinched. He dropped down and continued his scamper along the ridge line of the roof.

He panted and wiped his brow as he entered the nest.

"What's going on out there?" whispered Calypso, his wife.

"I'm not sure," replied Pollux. He paced three circles around the nest's entrance. Calypso stood in the doorway to the lounge, wringing her hands.

"Well you must know something!" she blurted.

Pollux stopped pacing and stared at her.

"They're burning things, dear wife. I'm not sure why."

"But...it's not winter. Why would they do that?"

"I'm not sure." Pollux pushed past her, grazing her cheek lovingly with his hand. He sat heavily in his chair and massaged the fur on his forehead. Calypso bustled in and sat on the pin cushion at Pollux's feet.

"What were they burning?" she asked.

Pollux leaned back in his chair and sighed deeply.

"What dear?" Calypso prompted.

Pollux sat up and picked up Calypso's hand, caressing it gently.

"My dear, they were burning each other."

Calypso gasped.

"Oh...my..." she whispered, her eyes wet. "Oh why would they do that? Why?" She shook her head vigorously and looked in the distance.

"I'm not sure," said Pollux. "They're shooting each other, and bludgeoning each other. And then they put the bodies in vast piles where they burn them. I'm not sure why, but I have a theory though. The ones they are killing have boils and sores. They wander about vacantly. I think they are ridding their kind of some horrid disease."

"Oh, I hope that's it," said Calypso. "But even so, what a tragedy. Oh, my." She looked down at the sawdust floor momentarily. "My dear, do you think we are safe here?"

"I believe so. But food may be scarcer to come by. We may have to move to your sister's nest if it comes to it."

"Oh, let's hope not," said Calypso shaking her head. "Her brood, even though they are my kin, they do wear on one's nerves."

"They do that my dear. But if we are lucky it may not come to that. Perhaps this will all end in a day or two."

"Yes, let's pray for that," said Calypso, wearing a wan smile.

"Now dear, enough of this talk. I think it is time for tea."

162/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Somewhere Only We Know" by Keane

2011-10-03T13:48:00.001-07:00

A lone figure in a tan leather sheepskin coat cut a path through the snow in metal-framed snowshoes. The day was gray and featureless--stray flakes of ice flew aloft on the biting wind. Ossian Sato pumped his legs in a steady rhythm and progressed towards the single tree on the horizon--a dwarf black pine manipulated into a cavernous bush with wire and sticks, and which was now dead. Ossian slowed a few hundred yards from the tree and visually scanned it for movement. The tree was still.

He stopped, breathing hard. He removed his oxygen mask and let it fall to his chest, revealing his chapped and reddened face. He coughed and hacked up mucous, spitting it out in the snow, tinged with red.

"Shit man," he mumbled, wiping his mouth.

"Are you there yet?" crackled his radio.

Ossian sucked in several large gulps of tainted air, clutching his chest with thick-gloved hands, before coughing again.

"Sato--respond," said the radio. "Did you find it?"

He stood up, gasping, and pushed his wide goggles up over his white leather hat.

"Yeah--yes, ma'am," he said, pressing the button on the radio.

"Good. What is the condition of the artefact? You haven't touched it have you?"

"No, not yet ma'am." Ossian steadied his breath and looked intently at the tree. "It looks to be unoccupied. Dormant."

"Proceed with caution. No incoming. We're tracking you, but you're still an hour outside of pickup."

"Noted ma'am. Sato out."

Ossian slid the pack from his shoulders and carefully deposited it on the crust of the snow. He reached down and unhooked his boots from the snowshoes, sticking the ends of the snowshoes into the crust so they stood upright. He unzipped the pack and withdrew his knife and the large sample jar, along with the scanner-recorder and its tripod. He opened the tripod and shoved its feet into and through the crust, then carefully screwed the scanner-recorder on top and pointed it towards the tree. He turned it on and let it boot up. It beeped and he pressed the button to start a multi-scan. He pulled out its transparent screen and tilted it upward. He watched it run through the spectrum and gravity scales. It beeped again upon completion. Clean. Ossian sighed. He switched the device to record mode.

He pressed the button on his radio.

"This is Sato. Multi-scan complete. The artefact is confirmed dormant."

There was a brief pause.

"Thank you Sato. Proceed."

"Acknowledged ma'am."

Ossian reattached his oxygen mask and started towards the tree, making sure he was within the frame of the scanner-recorder. His feet plunged through half a meter of powdery ice crystals, with the inch thick crust abrading his trousers and cutting into his legs. He struggled to maintain his balance. As he neared the tree he could smell the faint scent of pine.

The tree was about twenty feet high, its trunk split into seven thick branches that skimmed the ground for several meters before curving upward and over like a dead spider, the thinnest ends of the branches intertwining at the top. Ossian stared up at the center, trying to discern whether the branches ended or simply fed back into one another in complicated loops. He stared blankly, trying to unravel the nest of lines, with an overwhelming calmness...then he blinked tightly.

"Don't let it trick you," he whispered to himself. He looked down at the ground and suppressed the urge to cough.

He made his way between the thick trunk branches. He selected the thickest one and carefully stepped up onto it. It creaked slightly but held his weight. He walked on it, towards its curve, then started to climb up where it started branching out to dead, nude limbs. Several feet above the ground he wedged himself in the V of two steady branches. He took out the knife and dug it into the flesh of the tree, scoring the bark several times and unleashing a strong waft of pine scent. He opened the sample jar and scraped bits of the bark into it. He leaned closer to the indentation and watched for signs of wetness. Shortly sap started to ooze up and he used the knife to scoop up the stickiness and deposit it in the jar. He replaced the lid.

"This is Sato. I've collected a sample. Sap and flesh," said Ossian, touching his radio.

"Good. We need its seed, if there is any left," said the radio. Ossian sighed deeply.

"I'll see what I can do, ma'am," he said.

"Be careful, Sato."

"Yup."

Ossian looked upwards, trying to avoid gazing at the nest in the center. A few feet above him hung a single spindly pinecone, dangling idly in the wind. He scanned the rest of the tree to see if there were any others, but there were none.

"You didn't just appear, just for me, did you?" he said under his breath. His fingers twitched with anxiety.

He shoved the knife into his belt and the jar into his pocket and climbed further up. The branch started to creak and sway and so he stopped. He reached up and touched the pinecone but couldn't grasp it. The wind picked up and stung his eyes with ice crystals. He inched up further but the pinecone slipped from his fingers again.

"This is a bad idea," he said, undoing his oxygen mask. He brought his glove to his mouth and pulled it off with his teeth. The wind bit at his bare fingers, sapping them of their heat. He reached up; the pinecone blew out of reach, then wobbled down into the palm of his hand. The scanner-recorder started to beep an alarm. The pinecone was surprisingly warm and soft. He pulled on it, arcing the branch towards him, but the pinecone wouldn't come free. He held it while his took out his knife with his other hand. He slashed quickly at the branch.

Warm air rushed around him. There was a swirl of green. There were voices. A shrill scream.

The tree was fully alive, bursting with dark green needles that waved in fragrant, clean, summer air. Two children in shorts and t-shirts were clambering along the branches, paused in their adventures, staring at the heavily clothed figure of Ossian Sato who suddenly appeared in their midst.

"Who are you?" asked one the children, a boy with moppish blond hair, familiar eyes and a dirty face. The other, a younger girl with freckles and thick glasses held her hands to her mouth, suppressing the rest of her scream.

You...you have to forget me," said Ossian shakily. He looked down at the pinecone in his hand, the stem glowing white. "Forget me...I was never here..." He felt tears roll down his face. "It's all a...trick. That's what they say."

"Did you fall from the sky?" asked the girl.

"No," said Ossian. His fingers wrapped tightly around the pinecone and he felt something beating inside it.

"He didn't fall from the sky," said the boy scoffing. "He'd be all mush and bones sticking up. Splat!" The boy clapped his hands together and pulled them apart slowly as if he had glue between them. "That kind of fall will kill you."

"Maybe he had a parachute."

"He doesn't have a parachute," said the boy with marked exasperation.

"I didn't fall from the sky," said Ossian. "I...fell from my...mind."

The two children stared at him in brief silence.

"Do you need help mister?" asked the girl. "You look a little sick."

"No ma'am," said Ossian. "You have to forget I was here." He forced his fingers to open, grunting, and picked up the pinecone with his gloved hand. "I'm going to disappear now. Don't be alarmed." He lifted up the pinecone, removing it from his bare skin. The green faded and the cold air returned, stinging. The children were gone. The beeping of the scanner-recorder continued and increased in frequency. Ossian scrambled down to the ground. He quickly placed the pinecone in the jar and resealed it, then ran towards the tripod.

"This is Sato. I've got the seed," he said into the radio.

There was a staticky silence. The sky above started to darken.

"Do you read?" he said. He shoved the sample jar into the pack, then glanced at the status bar of the scanner-recorder--it was full red.

"We read," said the radio. "You have incoming."

"I know ma'am." Ossian turned off the scanner-recorder and unscrewed it from the tripod.

"What did you do?"

"What I wasn't supposed to do."

"Oh, Ossian. No."

"I know."

"You have to get out of there. Do you understand? You have to run for the pickup point."

Ossian zipped up the pack then looked at his bare hand.

"Sato," the radio crackled, "do you read?"

He looked up at the sky. A borealis was forming above the tree, a swirling rainbow of light against the darkening sky.

"It's coming," he whispered.

"Abandon your equipment! Sato! Run! You have to run!"

Ossian stood up, stretching tall. He pulled off his goggles and his other glove. He removed the oxygen mask completely and let it fall to the snow.

"Ossian! Run!"

"No," he said quietly. "I'm done."

"No, Ossian, no, you can't. What...what did you see?"

"I saw myself. I remember seeing me, that day, that summer. The man who fell from the sky without a parachute."

"It wasn't you. The artefact is fooling you."

"It's a clear memory."

"It's not real Ossian."

The borealis above roiled in waves and there was clap of thunder.

"You were there too."

"No, no I wasn't, no--I-I...I do remember."

"It was our hideout."

"It was a pirate ship and a castle in the sky, and other things. I remember. But it can't be, Ossian. It...it never existed. It can't have. It just got into your head."

"And yours too?" asked Ossian. The sky rumbled overhead as he stared at the tree.

"These artefacts can penetrate great times and distances...we've sent you to a powerful one...and I'm sorry."

"Part of the job ma'am," said Ossian chuckling weakly.

"Yes."

The sky cracked and a massive bolt of lightning struck the snow several yards from Ossian. A column of steam rose up in it's wake.

"You don't have any more time," said the radio through a haze of thick static.

"I wish you could come with me," said Ossian.

"Goodbye, Sato."

"It was a pleasure serving with you, ma'am."

Ossian pulled off the radio and dropped it next to the pack. Another bolt of lightning cracked down even nearer. He ran back towards the tree, and climbed back up to where he scored the bark. He pressed his face to the scar and licked at the sap. Warmth returned.

"Look, he's back!" exclaimed the girl.

"How'd you do that?" asked the boy.

"Are you a magician?" asked the girl.

"I'm a scout," said Ossian/ He unzipped his coat and shrugged it off. He leaned back against the branch and closed his eyes, soaking up the dappled sunlight that filtered through the branches.

"What does a scout do?" asked the girl.

"Scouts find things," said the boy. "Every idiot knows that."

"They do," said Ossian, smiling. "I've found this place...finally. I can begin again." He wrapped his arms around the branch and pressed his face to the bark. "Thank you."

"Did you just hug the tree?" asked the girl.

"Yup."

161/365 --Playlist Story-- inspired by "Walkabout (with Noah Lennox)" by Atlas Sound

2011-10-02T23:07:00.000-07:00

Tires screeched, a blaring horn--then thudding impact. Dean Roam, a man of eighty-five years fell forward into the steering column of his Chevy Impala, knocking out his breath and cracking several of his ribs, and expelling his dentures onto the dash. The car skidded to a stop and Dean stared out at nothing through fractured glass.

A car door slammed.

"What the fuck were you doing?!" a young man screamed, running towards the Impala. "This is a fucking school zone! Can't you fucking read? God-damned geezer!"

The young man was a blur of glasses and goatee and heavy eyebrows--a red flannel shirt with its ends flaring in the wind, and denim and black leather boots. He pounded the bottom of his fist on the driver's side door of the Impala, screaming incoherently. Dean, dazed, turned to look at him, to vaguely watch the young man's spitting and frothing. Then he heard the sounds of the school playground. He saw the blurs of the forms of the children out on break. They ran to the fence and chattered at the sight of the accident.

Dean felt his chest tighten. His eyes grew wet.

"What are you looking at?!" he screamed at the children, who could not hear him. He gripped the steering wheel as if wringing out a wet towel, and shook his whole body.

The pounding on the window stopped.

The young man pressed his palm against the window, like a dark branch. The fingers spread wide. Dean felt the darkness approach, and turned to look at the hand. The dark flesh widened and seeped into the window--it spread apart to reveal long, bleached, carpal bones. Dean swallowed hard.

"Open the window," said the man outside, in a silky low voice. "Open it."

"No," whispered Dean.

"You can't look at them," said the man. The flesh of his hand started covering the windshield as well, like a thin sheen of chunky crude oil. "You'll go blind if you try to remember that far back."

"I'm not," said Dean.

"It's alright if you do. Some people prefer to be blind. It helps them get through this...phase."

The sheen rolled and quivered over the top of the car in tiny rivulets and started dripping down the passenger side.

"Get off my car."

"Open the window..." The man pressed his bleached ribcage to the window.

"No...not now. I'm not ready."

"You don't have to be ready. It's as easy as exhaling. The weight of your chest will help you...it's so easy..."

Dean switched on the windshield wipers and they smeared the thickening sheen back and forth twice before sticking halfway up. He ground his gums together.

"Did you get to see all the things you ever wanted to see in your life?" asked the man. He stepped back slightly, then lowered his skull and pressed a dark empty orbit to the glass, then his teeth, with jaws slightly ajar, the crack spilling out more of the black sheen.

Dean looked at the spectre, and traced the circle of the orbit.

"How can you see me?" he asked.

"I see all things," said the skull, without moving its jaws. "But I just see. I don't know all things." Its bony fingers slid up to the top of the window and started to press and pull down. "You can help me though."

"How..."

"Tell me what you wanted to be. Did you get to see and do what you wanted?"

"How does that help you? How does that help me? I get the feeling your going to...take me no matter what."

The fingers momentarily stopped pressing.

"That's true," said the man. "But where I take you...it's not necessarily...linear."

"It's not the end?"

"It's never the end," said the man, scraping at the window again, pulling it down jerkily a few millimeters. "So tell me, Mr. Roam, are you satisfied?'

Dean peered through the dripping sheen of the window, looking into the dimness at the inchoate children, now standing bunched up at the fence. The sun twinkled amber above them.

"No..." said Dean quietly.

The skull faded from the window. The fingers pressed in through the crack, and in a rush the window fell completely and the spectre flooded in, in a rush of black steam. The bones of the spectre penetrated into Dean Roam's body without puncturing, without blood, and they aligned themselves with his skeleton in a blast of intense warmth. He floated up, limbs limp, and passed through the window into an ocean of black.

"What did you want to see?" said the man's voice inside his head.

"The Moon."

"You can see the Moon everyday..."

"I wanted to be a rocket man."

"Aaah..." sighed the man. "Your civilization failed you...it happens a lot."

"Yeah..."

"To the Moon then..."

Silver flashed in front of Dean's eyes. A school of cracking sparks swam closer from the depths of blackness. Electricity crawled and cracked between them. They swam tighter, into a ball. Dean floated closer and the ball grew bigger. Mountains and craters resolved in diverse shades of gray and black and white.

"Is that...how is that..."

"It is," said the man. "Before it was landed and abandoned."

"Wow...it's...it's beautiful..." said Dean.

"Do you want to see it? Really see it?"

"Yes...but how?"

"Touch it. You have to reach out. It has all its history, stored, waiting for you. Touch it."

Dean slowly brought up his hand--it was leaden, but still movable. He was shocked to see that it eclipsed the Moon but cast no shadow. He cupped his hand around the southern hemisphere and brushed a mountain range with the tip of his index finger. His mind exploded.

The Moon, still a molten planet, collided with a thunderously rainy, hot Earth. Magma spun off into space, glowing white. Two orbs, two cores, stirred around in mutual orbit. Their debris settled back down, pulled in by attraction. Cooled. A smooth gray ball twirled in his hands as the dark, watery Earth rotated around him. The Moon pocked and dimpled with the impact of a billion little asteroids, and spat up magma and mountain ranges. Then the Moon stopped spitting and moved further and further from the Earth, which itself settled into a pacific blue. The Earth sent its first emissaries of tiny objects, and Dean saw the workings inside them in a flash--gold foil and leds and smooth metal switches and bags of food. Then a pause--the pause of his life--then the dirt of the Moon turned over with rapid colonization--men and machines and androids ripping through the regolith, digging down, wiggling in, nesting, expanding, changing. Tall buildings rose up, domes, dust flew away, lights burned white and red and amber. Green took hold and spread in the blink of an eye. The Moon was carpeted with lush forest and a dense atmosphere. A billion people were born on its surface, played in it's loamy dirt, breathed it's air. They lived and died and laughed and Dean saw them all. Saw everything, but knew nothing of their hearts. He cried. He closed his eyes.

"Make it happen."

"What..." said Dean. He opened his eyes to a barrage of light and color.

"You can make it all happen. So make it happen." It was the voice of a little girl. Dean focused on the source of the voice. The colors condensed. He saw her face, lit by sunlight, and framed with brown pigtails. She smiled at him. Then she turned and looked ahead. "I wonder if anybody died?" she asked.

Dean turned to look where she looked. A young man was screaming at somebody slumped down inside a car with a crumpled front end, pounding on the window, outside the fence.

"That's..." Dean trailed off. His mind felt fuzzy and blank. He looked down at his hands and thought of the Moon.

160/365 -- Playlist Story -- inspired by "Golden Years" by David Bowie

2011-10-01T07:20:00.000-07:00

The edge of the forest loomed up in the night, like a row of dark sentinels.

"Run for the shadows!" shouted Rafe, laughing, drunk, naked. He stumbled, fell, went silent, then burst into another round of laughter.

"Come on!" said Jessica, giggling. She wore nothing but a loose cardigan draped precariously around her shoulders. She carried an empty champagne bottle and stopped to lick its rim before dropping it on the ground between her feet. She watched it fall and topple over into the frozen grass. She turned to chastise Rafe with a withering glare as he rolled around in the grass, clutching his ribcage, and she saw the barn behind them, with its yellow eyes and the party within that lazily burbled on without any recognition of its missing participants. "It's cold..." she slurred.

Rafe stopped rolling and stared up at the winkling stars. Jessica stomped back to retrieve him, pulling him by the elbow.

"No, stop. I'm sick," said Rafe. She dropped his arm.

"Roll over then, so you don't suffocate on your vomit."

"It's cold."

"Yeah."

"Go on without me."

Jessica looked back at the dark tree line, wobbling on her feet. She pondered the situation for a few blurry, blinking seconds.

"You sure?"

Rafe nodded once briefly, then grimaced, turned to the sod, and threw up in a steaming pile.

"Better out. Ech," said Jessica.

"Go!" Rafe blurted, before releasing another flood of stomach fluid.

"Alright, alright. That smells."

Jessica tottered and stumbled towards the trees. She stopped at the perimeter of the wire fence and waved her hand over a barb.

"You sure?" she yelled back to Rafe. "They say this forest is full of dangerous things...that it never sees sunlight..."

"Yeah, but nothing's going to touch you. You're golden!" shouted Rafe, before laying his head down to spy on her from between blades of frosty grass.

"I'm golden," murmured Jessica to herself, giggling again. She ducked and awkwardly inserted herself between two lines of the wire. A barb caught her cardigan and she toppled over, smearing freshly turned soil over her face. She laughed again then managed to pull her cardigan free but leaving a string of the yarn to unravel. She got to her knees and wrapped the cardigan around her tightly. Her head began to buzz and vibrate and she started to sweat. She stood and the world spun around her--she stumbled forward and leaned on a thick black tree with smooth bark. She leaned her forehead against it and breathed in an earthy, calming, mossy smell. She stood there until her inner ears and her brain hashed out which way was actually up. The music from the barn faded.

She turned to look back at the barn but it was gone. She slowly turned all the way around, but there was nothing but the outlines of slick dark trees lit by the blue light of the moon. Her heart convulsed.

"Rafe!?"

There was silence.

"Rafe!? Where are you?"

The silence crept further in until even the breeze was quiet and her ears began to hurt. She closed her eyes tight and shook her head, and behind her eyelids glowed a light, throwing her capillaries into contrast.

"Who are you?" whispered a high female voice.

"Why have you invaded the sanctuary?" asked a soft male voice.

Jessica opened her eyes but the light was gone and there was nothing but the trees. She circled around, looking in all directions. She closed her eyes again, rubbing them, and the glow returned. She opened them again as fast as she could but there was nothing but darkness.

"What?"

"Don't try seeing us, because you can't," said the female voice.

"Answer us," said the male voice.

Jessica gulped hard and stumbled backward and forced her spine against a tree.

"I don't know who you are, but there's a whole bunch of people just a couple of yards back there...and my boyfriend!" Her breathe grew shallow. "He knows jujitsu!" she added forcefully.

"Answer us," said the voices together.

"No, you tell me who you are first!" she shouted.

There was silence.

"Hello?" Jessica peered into the spaces between the trees, trying to focus on the abyssal darkness without success. "If this is a prank of some sort, the jig is up!"

She blinked and saw a flash of light and yelped. She closed her eyes again to see two distinct glowing blobs through her skin, and she simpered and sunk to the loamy soil at roots of the tree.

"She doesn't know us," said the female voice.

"No, I don't know you..." said Jessica, starting to cry.

"This is tedious," said the male voice.

"Who are you?" asked Jessica, sobbing.

"Your culture knows us as angels," said the female voice.

"Angels? Aren't you supposed to be nice and stuff?" Jessica wiped her tears with muddy hands against.

"We're great warriors, so do not anger us," said the male voice.

Jessica slowly released a high-pitched whine.

"But we want no part of the war that rages around us," said the female voice.

"But you're invisible!"

One of the lights grew intensely, searingly bright, and Jessica's entire back spasmed in a charlie-horse. She screamed.

"Oh enough," said the male voice. "It is a simple creature. We do not need to show force."

The light diminished and the pain stopped. Jessica slumped over, breathing hard. She forced her eyes open.

"Who are you?" asked the male voice.

"Jessica. I'm an artist. I don't really have any money if that's what you're interested--"

"Is that where you're from?"

"What?"

"Artist? Is that where you're from?"

"No. That's my occupation. Who are you people?"

"Where are you from?"

"Maine."

"Maine?"

"Maine."

"What constellation is that in?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Your planet, Maine," said the female voice with agitation, "what constellation is that in?"

"Uh..." said Jessica, blinking rapidly. "It's not a planet?" she answered with a question.

"What planet are you from then?"

"Earth of course," said Jessica slowly.

There was silence.

"Oh..." said the male voice. "That explains a lot."

"Wait a second...if you knew what culture I'm from, wouldn't you know my planet?"

There was silence.

"You two don't make any sense."

"Earth is one of many planets with humans," said the male voice.

"Wha--"

"It was lost early in the war," said the female voice.

"Uh...so the bad guys got it, do you mean?" asked Jessica.

"No, its location was lost. There was a worm that ate the location--"

"What the hell? How can a worm eat a planet?"

"This is ridiculous," said the female voice. "We're using its own words and it doesn't understand us."

"I'm not an 'it', I'm a Jessica!"

"It ate the location, not the planet, Jessica," said the male voice.

"We've given her enough information," said the female voice. "Why have you invaded the sanctuary?"

"I didn't invade anything. I came here on a dare. It was just a big spooky forest. I didn't see any no trespassing signs. If I've crossed onto your land without your permission, then I apologize."

There was silence.

"I still don't get the worm thing," said Jessica.

The female angel screamed shrilly, until she vibrated the air into standing waves. Bits of soil started to drift into the air. Jessica stared forward into the darkness, stunned, her hair rising around her in a halo.

"Have mercy," whispered the male voice. The female abruptly stopped screaming. "Jessica?" he asked. "Close your eyes, and concentrate on me."

"Okay." She did as she was asked, and the male grew into a bright vertical line. Her body flooded with warmth and her muscles relaxed.

"A few thousand of your years ago, give or take, was anything written to document the presence of angels?"

"Uh, yeah, I guess."

"And then abruptly, it just stopped."

"Um, not really. People still talk about angels and stuff, but they're sort of cheesy. I guess, commercialized in a way? I always thought they were a proxy for earlier ideas about animism. But maybe, I guess...not."

"This is not interesting," said the female voice, from a distance.

"But there haven't been stories since that time of cities being razed, or humans being raped by spectral forms?"

"Uh...the first one no. So by 'rape' I take it you mean nonconsensual sex between humans and um, spectral forms?"

"What other sense would there be? Is that not an accurate word for that act?" asked the male voice.

"Well it's just...uh...never mind. What does this have to do with the worm?"

"The reason why the stories stopped is that the worm ate the location of your planet. It was effectively removed from the environment."

"What environment?"

"The active universe. Earth was cut off, isolated. It's ironic our sanctuary contains a portal to it."

"Um, yeah, lost me again," said Jessica. "I have to say, this is a very elaborate prank."

"How can she still not believe us?" screamed the female from behind the male. "Let me at her!"

"NO!" bellowed the male. "We do not torture the innocent! That is not our way."

"Uh, thanks," said Jessica, beginning to shiver involuntarily. "So not a prank. Then I'm probably hallucinating..."

"Of course you are," said the male.

"What?"

"All humans live their lives in an altered state of reality. It gives you your blindness and allows you to function without wanting to end yourselves."

"Oh. So...it's not just now...it's all the time."

"Yes."

"'Kay."

"Ask her," said the female voice.

"Did anything follow you in here?"

"No," said Jessica. "My boyfriend was going to come with me, but I think he passed out."

"And he is human, like you?"

"Uh, I really, really hope so," said Jessica.

There was a long period of silence.

"Are you guys talking to yourselves when you go all quiet like that? I can still see you behind my eyelids."

There was silence.

"Are you still there? What is this place exactly? This sanctuary? Where am I?"

"It's an energy sink," said the male.

"Um..."

"It absorbs excess energy from all parts of the active universe. It also masks our signal and hides our presence."

"You're warriors...and you're hiding from the war? Doesn't that make you cowards?"

"We're not cowards! We are not hiding!" screeched the female. "We're protesting! The war is unjust and we do not have the strategic numbers to end it!"

"God, sorry--"

"Don't say that name!" screamed the female. Intense heat suddenly radiated from inside Jessica's body, and her throat constricted into a knot, and just as suddenly, it passed, into a deafening silence. Jessica fell forward into the uncovered soil and passed out.

When she woke, her head throbbed. She forced her body to turn over and she looked at the unchanged moon.

"Hello?" she called out groggily. "Angel people?"

There was no answer, but she could still hear the breeze slipping between the trees. She sat up and clutched her stomach, groaning.

"You could have at least told me how to get out of this place!" she shouted into the darkness. "Some angels you are."

She got to her feet and brushed dirt from her cardigan. She noticed the unraveled yarn at its edge. A mess of it pooled at her feet. She pulled up on it, wrapping it around her hand until it was taut.

"Oh, I am so golden," she said with a small smile. She followed the yarn for several feet when the forest spun around her, and suddenly she faced bright sunlight and the the wire fence. The light made her cringe and cover her eyes with her palms. She stood and slowly let a bit of light in through her fingers so her brain could adjust. She pushed her way through the fence and unsnagged the yarn. Then she stood tall and surveyed the field ahead.

It was hot, the height of summer. Butterflies and insects flitted above the tall grass. Directly ahead of her was a large ruin of rotting gray wood.

"Oh no," she said under her breath. She walked forward, then hit something hard with her toe and stumbled, falling. She drew up her hurt foot and massaged it, then looked for the offending object. Her hand came across a curve of weathered glass, embedded into the ground. She worked furiously to dig it up with her fingers, and she unearthed the champagne bottle, filled with dirt. She looked back at the ruin.

"I think I missed my ride..." she said ruefully, then burst into tears.

159/365 -- Playlist Story -- inspired by "Objects of My Affection" by Peter Bjorn and John

2011-09-30T09:56:00.000-07:00

The mud was eight inches thick and Archibald Colton sank into it, gasping, his left hand caught on the razor wire, preventing his head from sinking all the way into the mud. A bullet tore through his exposed hand and he screamed. There were drums in the distance, and the smell of sulphur hung in the air.

The hail of bullets slowed, then paused. There was chatter in the trenches. Colton breathed in ragged gulps.

"Help me," he whispered, barely able to speak.

The flesh of his hand slowly gave way, ripping a red line up to his knuckles. Colton absorbed the pain and closed his eyes.

A decade earlier, Colton walked into the town of Benton, which was comprised of dots of closely placed small houses, seated around a curve in a river unimaginatively named Bend. The residents of Benton eyed him with suspicion as he inquired around for lodging. He was a tall, young man, thin, and obviously not a farmer. He was in the middle of a conversation with the proprietress of a vegetable stand when he blacked out.

When he came to, he was encircled by twenty or so of the townsfolk. The whispered quietly to one another until he opened his eyes. No one offered to help him up.

"I'm alive," he said, with his back firmly on the ground. "Who are you?" he asked the circle at large.

"Who are you?" asked the butcher.

Colton blinked three times then furrowed his brow.

"I...uh...how odd."

"Who are you?" repeated the butcher.

"He had a seizure," said a woman.

"No, I haven't but...this is very strange. I remember you all."

Colton sat up and rubbed his forehead. He looked around the group, and they eyed him back with frowns.

"Very strange..."

"We haven't seen you before."

"No, you wouldn't have..." Colton held his arms out before him. He examined his left hand. "Amazing..."

"What?" asked the butcher.

"I'm more alive than I was then...or will be. Wow." Colton stood and grinned broadly. "I remember when...oh, the colors, so vivid. I can hear the birds singing, the crickets. I can see the pollen floating in the air. It's beautiful." He looked back down at his hand and a tear rolled down his face. "How did I miss all this before?"

"I don't understand. Who exactly are you?" asked the butcher.

"Archibald Colton. And I'm not going to live my life the same way twice."

He slapped the butcher on the back and promptly turned around and left the town, heading towards the border. He whistled while he walked.

158/365 -- Playlist Story -- inspired by "Venus" by AIR

2011-09-29T08:31:00.000-07:00

The saw-buzz of cicadas tore through the air, and the church in front of me rose in a ramble of crumbling sandstone. I unholstered my gun and stepped forward, grinding my foot into the gravel. Was it here? Was it really here...

I walked forward slowly, my gun hand out in front, wavering slightly. I took care to avoid the shadow of a dead joshua tree. My radio crackled on my belt.

"--you will be healed--" it was the voice of an old-time revival preacher. Static.

"--today we will have rain--" the voice of weather announcer.

"No we won't," I said under my breath. There was static, then silence.

"--it--comes--for--take--you--" it said in it's halted, borrowed voices.

"I don't think so," I said.

I scanned the church with just my eyes. There was no apparent movement. I stared into the windows that were like the pitted eyes of a rotting, desiccated skull. The air wobbled with heat. Then the cicadas stopped. My skin dimpled with gooseflesh.

"--careful--...--the sun--"

"Come out," I commanded.

"--we could--...--be a--illusion--"

"Your time is up, fugitive," I said.

"--forever--"

"Nope." I knelt down on one knee, careful to keep the darks of the windows in sight. I steadied my gun, then dropped the other knee, and pulled up a length of the thick electrical conduit that linked my gun with the generator in the semi truck.

"--you can't--...--there is nothing--"

I slowly slid down onto my belly onto the rough ground. I flicked the recursion switch on the gun and it started to rev up. The air around me got icy cold, but my hands remained warm.

"--you have--...--nothing--nothing--...--nothing--"

"I have a lot of nothing." I nodded my head to flick down my opaque visor and pulled the trigger.

The beam instantly vaporized the church and whatever was behind it for five hundred feet. After twelve nanoseconds a tight gravity vortex formed in the center of the beam. The gun automatically switched off after three picoseconds more. I pushed up the visor.

The remains of the church was a lump of molten glass--bright white. In front, sprawled on the dirt, was sprawled the fugitive, stunned and breathing shallowly, his tattered clothes steaming. I quickly got up, reholstered the gun, and ran to the extraction point. I pulled cuffs from the back of my belt, then rolled the fugitive over onto his back using my the tip of my foot. My shoe grounded the excess electricity that didn't know quite where to go. I bound his hands, frisked him, then turned him back onto his back.

"Please don't," he pleaded. The radio spat out a staticky echo.

"You confuse me for someone who cares," I said.

"I had to do it, I had no choice--"

"Don't care buddy. Sit up."

"I can't," he said.

"You can. You did it once before, when you leapt through, and I know you're not as weak as you look."

Suddenly he jumped up and started running towards the road to the west.

"Get back here you moron!" I yelled.

He quickened his pace, and jumped over a small barrel cactus.

"You can't catch me! You'll never catch me!"

"Well, maybe not." I unholstered the gun and held it in his general direction. I turned my head one hundred and eighty degrees away, pulled the trigger again and let residual charge find its way to the fugitive. When it was done, I went back to the cab of the semi and drank thoroughly from a bottle of water. Another lucrative bounty vaporized. I ruminated on the rising cost of gas.

157/365 -- Playlist Story -- inspired by "Shape of My Heart" by Noah and the Whale

2011-09-28T06:03:00.000-07:00

Richard Smith stared up at the blue-dotted letters that floated above him:

PLEASE WAIT. A DOCTOR WILL BE WITH YOU SHORTLY TO CURE YOUR ILLNESS. IN THE MEANTIME, PLEASE ENJOY OUR COURTESY PROGRAMMING.

Once again the audio-visual projection loop started up inside his goggles--five hours of shots of babbling brooks, snow blowing off mountain tops, lambs cavorting in a meadow full of flowers, an eagle hunting over a lake, and campers singing around a campfire with animated forest animals. Richard sighed.

A flavorless wad of food pushed its way into his esophagus. Richard owned only half a tongue so a machine swallowed the food for him. The oxygen machine blew air into his remaining lung and sucked it back out again. Richard closed his eyes and calmed his thoughts, and entered a hypnotic half-dreaming state. The audio-visual projection faded then shut off entirely.

Richard listened to the liquid that surrounded him. It was silent, but occasionally he could hear movements from outside his tank. He hoped it was day and that enough light could make it through the tank walls, the antibacterial fluid, and the lenses of his googles. He opened eyes. There was some light, but blurred. Richard kept his thoughts calm so the audio-visual wouldn't kick back on.

He twisted his head as much as he could move it, and tried to look down at his body. He saw the roiling tubes he had seen so often before, pouring out of his hollowed chest, but now there was something else. He tried not to panic. There was a growth. He was growing around the tubes, fleshing them out with thick blood engorged umbilicals reaching upward, their ends curling and...reaching.

PLEASE WAIT. A DOCTOR WILL BE WITH YOU SHORTLY TO CURE YOUR ILLNESS. IN THE MEANTIME, PLEASE ENJOY OUR COURTESY PROGRAMMING.

Lambs cavorted to Beethoven. Richard tried to relax again, but didn't try to put himself back in the dream state.

It had been eight years since he was crushed (or at least that's what he was informed of from periodic updates to the blue-lettered feed), then rushed by ambulance to the facility. He didn't really remember his life before the tank, other than the heavy weight pressing down on his body and that he once had legs. Richard cried.

Richard woke with a start from a dream about drowning. Nine years.

PLEASE WAIT. A DOCTOR WILL BE WITH YOU SHORTLY TO CURE YOUR ILLNESS. IN THE MEANTIME, PLEASE ENJOY OUR COURTESY PROGRAMMING.

He calmed his thoughts. The audio-visual faded and ended. He waited for his eyes to adjust, then he looked up. The umbilicals had reached the top of the tank. He smiled with the remaining half of his face. Richard pushed out, pressing, pressing...the seal of the tank popped. The pressurized liquid fizzed out of the tank. Richard felt himself rising, getting lighter. Suddenly the oxygen from the machine wasn't enough and he started gasping. He spilt out over the top, using the umbilicals to pull himself out. He landed on the floor in a slippery thud. The tubes slithered out of his body, spraying blood. His breathing stopped. The last ventricle of his heart stopped.

An alarm sounded--it hurt his tender, cosseted ears, as it hurtled directly through the air instead of solid and liquid. Footsteps. Voices. Other humans were near. He retracted an umbilical towards his face, and awkwardly pushed off the goggles. The light burned his eyes. Figures moved above him, blurred. Someone slipped and fell and hollered out in pain. Richard tried to speak out but could only move his upper lip. A face hovered over him.

"Don't worry, sir! We'll save you!" said the voice.

There were spots over his vision, then blackness.

Richard Smith's eyes opened.

PLEASE WAIT. A DOCTOR WILL BE WITH YOU SHORTLY TO CURE YOUR ILLNESS. IN THE MEANTIME, PLEASE ENJOY OUR COURTESY PROGRAMMING.

156/365 -- Playlist Story -- inspired by "Coffre-fort" by Etienne Charry

2011-09-27T05:26:00.000-07:00

Sally woke up, floating on her back. She stared at the kitchen ceiling. The florescent lights above her hummed vaguely.

"Why is it wet?" she asked herself. She tried to stand up, but instead rolled over and started to sink up to her nose. She flailed and remembered how to treat water. She righted herself and bobbed up above the surface. "This is really hard...It's like honey or something. Why is there this much water...oh...oh no."

She looked up and around and saw the kitchen distort around her.

"That's--that's glass. That's a rim of glass. No. It can't be."

Something nudged against her foot and she screamed, looking down. A large orange blob swam underneath her, with a gaping toothless mouth it gummed at her feet and legs.

"Gaaaaaaaarghhh!" she screamed again. "Get away! Go away!" she kicked her feet at it, hitting its nose. It retreated but continued to look on with interest. "Oh, this can't be...how can this be?"

She looked down and saw a bed of blue gravel and a large treasure chest emitting bubbles.

"Oh dear God," she sighed. "I have to be dreaming." She closed her eyes tight and held her breath and went still. She started sinking again, and then opened her eyes wide and started treading water again.

"Can't be. Can't be." She pressed her lips together and furrowed her brow. The orange blob started circling closer. "You stay away!" she yelled. She kicked out again and it held it's place, languidly flapping its fins.

"Okay think--think what happened? What did I do?" She focused on a spot in front of her nose for a few seconds. "I put my hand in to scare the fish. What happened? I don't remember. Something must have happened. Oh! I touched the treasure chest! Was that it? I don't remember anything else. Oh. Would that be it? Why would that be it?"

Sally treaded in silence for a few minutes, watching the orange blob and half wishing someone else was home to help her (and half grateful no one was since it was unbelievably embarrassing to get trapped in a fishbowl when you're a grown human).

"This is hard," she sighed, as her limbs grew progressively leaden with the effort of treading through powerful surface tension. "How do you do it all day?" she asked the orange blob. "I never realized you had so much work to do all the time."

"Okay. I'll give this a go. This is stupid, and it won't work, but I'll give it a try."

Sally sucked in a deep breath, then pursed her lips shut. She dove under the surface and fought downwards toward the treasure chest. She dodged silvery air bubbles, and pushed further down. She tried not to worry about the goldfish. Finally, when her lungs were burning, she touched the chest with her hand and grabbed ahold. Nothing happened.

Sally screamed with fury, letting loose all over her breath at once. The bowl shattered and Sally found herself on the kitchen floor in a puddle of water. Her clothes were dry except for a thin misting; the water that soaked her in the bowl no longer had enough surface area to soak her expanded size so it snapped into millions of tiny water droplets. She was stunned.

The goldfish flopped on the floor beside her. She scooped it up and ran to the sink. She took a glass down from the cupboard and filled it with lukewarm water and slid the fish in. She leaned down to look at the fish.

"You did that, didn't you?" she said. The fish opened and closed its mouth, pushing water through its gills. It stared at her with unblinking eyes. "No, of course not. Fish can't do anything." She stood up straight and looked back at the glass and mess on the floor, then looked leerily back at the fish. "Maybe you did, maybe you didn't. I'm not entirely sure what just happened. But in case you did, I'm sorry. I know I've teased and taunted you and called you stupid, and I'm sorry. Maybe you're not so stupid...or something. I don't know. If you did this to teach me a lesson, well, let's just say, lesson learned. I won't bother you again. I won't tap your glass. I won't threaten to flush you down the toilet. So...truce, okay?"

The goldfish continued to open and close its mouth. Then suddenly it started to swim a circuit of the glass, and returned to its initial position.

"Hmmm. I'll take that as a yes. Don't make me small again!"

155/365 -- Playlist Story -- inspired by "Osmose" by Etienne Charry

2011-09-26T01:32:00.000-07:00

Robert, a man of six feet three inches, stood in front of his living room window, dressed in blue sweatpants and a matching sweatshirt that were a size too big for him, which is the way he liked his clothes. He wore one loose sock, and the other foot was bare. He emitted a high-pitched humming noise and rocked gently back and forth as he tapped his forehead with his fists. The other side of the window was covered with the dead little bodies of thousands of blue butterflies.

The room was dark, even though it was midday.

"Mom!" shouted Robert. He stopped rocking in order to listen better. The house was silent except for the constant pitter of little impacts on the window. "Mom!" he repeated. He turned around and shuffled to the doorway that led to the kitchen. He gazed tearfully around that room. It was at it always was, clean but a little cluttered, accented with a slight aroma of cinnamon, with the kitchen tap dripping slightly. "Mom," he whispered. He turned slowly back to look at the darkening window. He leaned against the doorframe, clutching it so that his fingernails etched the paint, digging into the drywall, and he started to sob violently.

"What did she say?" he asked himself suddenly. He straightened his posture and rubbed his eyes. "What did she say? Mom said 'stay in the house Robert. Stay in the house.' 'Where are you going?' 'I'm going outside to see what's wrong,' that's what mom said. That's what she said. She said to stay inside and not go out because she was going out to fix the butterflies. No, she didn't say fix. You said, 'Will you fix the butterflies? Why are they dying?' and mom said nothing. Mom went out the door and closed it behind her. And I can't follow her because I don't have a key so I can't get back in if I go out, so I have to stay inside. Mom said to stay inside, and I want her to fix the butterflies."

Robert breathed heavily and shuffled back to the window. He put his hand on the glass and tapped his fingers.

"Fly away butterflies, I'm fixing you now. I'm fixing you. Fly away."

Robert tapped for a minute, then slowly dropped his hand to his side.

"Mom said not to go outside."

Robert looked at the front door.

"Mom said not to go outside."

He looked at the door, then the doorknob, then the deadlock, then the potted plant next to the door.

"Mom said not to go outside. Mom didn't say she would fix the butterflies. Mom closed the door and didn't come back."

Robert put his index finger in his mouth and started rocking again. He sucked on his finger and closed his eyes and started to cry again.

"Where's mom?" he sobbed. "Where's mom?"

With his other arm he pulled his finger out of his mouth.

"Mom, is outside," he said with confidence. He shuffled to the front door and carefully grasped the doorknob. He turned it with a lurch and the door popped open a crack. The blue creatures swarmed in and Robert batted them away from his face. He pulled the door open farther and dragged the potted plant over to prop open the door. He looked out, and on the stoop laid his mother, covered in the creatures, their three wings slowly beating.

"Mom!" screamed Robert in a high pitch. He hugged his chest waiting for a response, but she didn't move.

The creatures started landing on him, biting.

"Ow! Stop that, butterflies! Stop that! It itches!" Robert smacked them where they landed, pulling away a stinging blue goo. He looked at his hands and started hyperventilating. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I don't mean to kill you! Stop touching me!"

Robert started to pull the door shut again but stopped when he saw his mother's body. He let go of the door and kneeled down beside her covered face. He brushed the creatures away from her face and saw her familiar features.

"You don't touch my mom!" he screamed.

He took her left arm and scraped off the creatures, then pulled her limp body over the doorframe and into the living room, then ran back, pulled away the potted plant, and slammed the door shut. He ran back to his mother, and started scraping her whole body free of the creatures. Other creatures still flying around the house descended on the bare skin that he exposed.

"Stop that! I'm angry now. Why won't you behave? Why aren't you being nice? I'm killing you and I'm not sorry."

Robert worked steadily to clear his mother's body completely, and after a half hour there were no more creatures alive in the house. Robert sat back and watched his mother's face.

"Mom!" he yelled. He watched her. "Wake up!" he commanded.

She did not move. He got up and walked to the kitchen, and pulled a roll of paper towel free of it's dispenser. He returned to his mother and sopped up as much of the blue goop as he could, then piled the used paper into the fireplace.

"That's not where that goes. Bad Robert. Don't burn things. Mom would be mad. I'm not going to burn it."

He pulled the paper from the fireplace and stuffed it behind the sofa, then went into the kitchen to wash his hands. He used three pumps of soap as he usually did, and held his hands under the water for two minutes, timing himself by the clock on the microwave, as he usually did. He turned off the tap and stared at the remaining water swirling down the drain.

He shuffled back to the living room and held his index in his finger, sucking. Suddenly he ran to the bathroom and looked intently at the bathtub.

"No Robert, no hot water. Don't turn on the hot water."

He reached down and turned on the cold water tap. He watched the water swirl out for several seconds before putting the plug in. Then he watched the water fill the entire bathtub to the rim. He turned off the water. Robert shuffled back to the living room, bent down, and picked up his mother under the armpits. He dragged her into the bathroom and pulled her into the bath, displacing water all over the floor. She was half in, face first, when he started screaming.

"Bad Robert! Bad! You've got water all over the floor! You're going slip and kill yourself and mold is going to grow everywhere! Bad Robert!"

His mother started twitching. She exhaled large bubbles into the tub, and slid the rest of the way in.

"Mom!" screamed Robert. He rapidly tapped his fists against his head. "Mom! I'm sorry about the water! I don't know where it came from. Mom? Mom?"

He reached in and pulled her head up by the hair, twisting her around so he could see her face. She gasped and coughed up water.

"Hold me up!" she slurred.

"Okay mom," he said. "I'm sorry about the water on the floor."

She smiled weakly.

"It's okay, baby," she said, beginning to shiver violently.

"What's wrong, mom?"

"I'm cold," she said, "but leave me in the water. It's helping. I can't feel my body very well. I'm all pins and needles."

"Oh..."

"You saved me. You saved my life. My baby boy. My lovely baby boy."

"You were outside and you didn't come back in."

"I know. And you went out there and got me. And they couldn't hurt you. Do you know why?"

"Because I'm special?"

"Because you're special. Because you're mine and I love you and you're special."

Robert blushed and looked at the sodden floor.

"Mom?"

"Yes, baby?"

"Are you going to be okay?"

She looked up at the darkened bathroom window, then to Robert.

"I think so. For now."

154/365 -- Playlist Story -- inspired by "Infinity (Klaas Vocal Mix)" by Guru Josh Project

2011-09-25T00:45:00.000-07:00

Araka wove with her twenty appendages--existing beyond and between all the dimensions of time and space, she stitched together all the universes in the multiverse wherever they threatened to come apart. For each universe that came into existence, she replicated herself and remained forever entangled with her children. Darkness lurked at the edge of the multiverse.

"Someday the multiverse will grow too large for you to stitch back together. It will pull apart and I will eat the untethered universes," whispered the darkness.

"As the multiverse grows larger, I will create more children to help me," said Araka.

"It will grow too fast for you, and neither you nor your children will be able to weave fast enough," said the darkness, "and I will eat it all!"

"You will not," said Araka, "for I can bear an infinite amount of children for the rest of time."

The darkness began to get restless; it swirled and vibrated.

"The multiverse will begin to grow so fast, and stretch so far, that light itself will stop reaching your eyes. You will become blind and you will no longer be able to weave!" hissed the darkness.

"That will not happen," said Araka.

"You have no real answer for that!" laughed the darkness.

"Oh, yes I do," said Araka. She started biting at the darkness, clipping off bits of it until all of the darkness was dismembered and silent, then placed them in the centers of all the galaxies in all the universes in all the multiverse. "And you will help me pin everything in place while I weave."

She looked at her work and smiled.

153/365 -- Playlist Story -- inspired by "Tree By The River" by Iron & Wine

2011-09-24T06:29:00.000-07:00

Kenneth pulled up on the hand brake and rested his left boot up next to the driver's side mirror. He listened to the engining ticking as it cooled before he spoke.

"It's still there you know," he said.

"What is? What are you talking about?" said Marianne sleepily. Fumbling with fingers that didn't quite respond yet she unbuckled her seatbelt and shifted her position to look at Kenneth. "Why'd we stop?"

"Out of gas."

"Out of gas?"

"Out of gas."

"You said that. Why didn't you get gas at the last gas station?"

"It was closed. Thought I'd try the next one. That was closed. Then we ended up here."

"Oh. Well that's a problem."

"Someone will come along."

"Might be a while. We always get stranded in Nevada. Why is that?" Marianne shifted again to shove her torso out her rolled down window.

"It's Nevada," said Kenneth. He leaned over and pulled Marianne back into the car.

"Hey! I'm just taking a look."

"You don't know what's out there."

"I don't think there's anything out there," she said, sighing deeply then yawning.

"You always want to see stuff."

"Yeah, so?"

"There's not much of anything anymore. Not anything worth seeing at least."

"That's a sad thought. But you're sad, sad, man."

Kenneth was silent. He glanced at the rearview mirror, then unrolled the sleeves of his checkered cotton shirt, smoothing them down, then buttoning them neatly at the cuffs. Marianne observed him from the corner of her eye.

"Stop looking at me," said Kenneth.

"Wasn't," said Marianne. Then she turned to face him again, gently touching his shoulder with her hand. "You said something, just now. What was it."

"I don't know."

"What's still there?"

"Oh," said Kenneth. He took her hand from his shoulder and placed it on the dash, patting the top of her fingers. "The tree. The tree by the river. It's still there."

Marianne sucked in a tiny breathe, the pupils of her eyes widening.

"When did you go back?" she whispered.

"On Friday."

"This past Friday? Our Friday?"

"Yes," said Kenneth. "I'm sorry. I just wanted to see it one last time."

"Ugh. Now I'm going to think about it on our anniversary. I've never wanted to go back to see it. I mean, I guess I would be frightened...if it wasn't there. Like it had gotten up again or something."

"The bones are there. The ground was frozen all around, and a nasty thorny thicket has grown up from it. I don't think anything normal and nice can grow on that spot. But yes, it's definitely gone." Kenneth smiled weakly.

Marianne slumped back down into her seat and sighed again.

"Do you remember, how no one believed us?" asked Marianne. Kenneth nodded. "You believed me though."

"I did. I always did."

"That's why I love you," said Marianne, smiling warmly. "You believed. And then you saw it too."

"Yes." Kenneth put his right arm around Marianne and she leaned into him.

"That thing was living in the walls, lurking and breathing and feeding on my dreams, and you pulled it out, from under the windowsill, pulled it out of my head." Marianne grimaced and gestured towards her head with crooked fingers. "And you dragged it all the way down the hill to the river and drowned it. It was amazing. Absolutely..."

"You believed in me, so that's how I could do it."

"I did. I do."

"That's why I love you."

They smiled at each other. Then they leaned back and watched the sunrise through a dusty windshield.

152/365 -- Playlist Story -- inspired by "C.L.U." by Daft Punk from the TRON Legacy soundtrack

2011-09-23T06:49:00.000-07:00

In January of 1756 Mr. William Frost, just a day new to the colony, undertook a survey of his newly acquired patch of land twelve miles outside Concord accompanied by his indentured servant Bramwell. After walking arduously through three feet of crusted snow for an hour Frost came upon a small opening to a cave. He broke a branch from the lower limb of a nearby tree and started clearing away the entrance.

"An animal might be wintered up in there sir," said Bramwell, shivering, for he had only a light jacket and a woolen scarf for warmth. "It mayn't be prudent to go poking into its living quarters."

"If there is an animal there Bram, we shall kill it and eat it for dinner," said Frost, grinning. His face was red with the day's exertions, and he dug vigorously into the snow. "Help me Bram, for you've excited my curiosity even further! We shall have meat, Bram, we shall have meat tonight! Help me!"

Bramwell reluctantly removed his hands from their opposing armpits and broke another branch from the tree. Together they worked to clear the snow down to the frozen flora at the base of the cave.

"There Bram, we have done it. You shall go in now, and scope out the creature's den."

"Me, sir? You want me to go in there?"

"Why yes, Bram, I do." Frost stood with one hand on his hip, and the other smacked the branch against his velveted thigh.

"Sir, I will gladly forgo a meal of meat tonight if I can escape the fate of entering this cave."

"Nonsense!" laughed Frost. "You shall go in and pull out whatever beast lives within. Pull it out by the toes or the nose--by whichever end you encounter first."

"Sir, I shall not, for I fear I will get the biting end of it first."

"Are you afraid of teeth Bram?" Frost gnashed his teeth and curled up his lips, then he slapped Bramwell on the shoulder hard enough for him to lose his footing and fall down into the snow. Frost offered his servant his hand and pulled him to his feet. "Fear not Bram," Frost continued, "for a hole of this limited diameter could not possibly contain anything large enough to devour a whole man."

"It's not the devouring I fear, sir, but the chewing, and a smaller animal could certainly chew enough of me to--"

"Bram, Bram, Bram," said Frost, "you fret too much and it tires me."

"Sir, if you are so eager to see the inhabitant, why don't you go in yourself? You are a far braver man than me."

"You appeal to my vanity, Bram. It is a low move, and how can I resist?" Frost chuckled with delight. "I am a man of action. I have sailed all the oceans. I have slain men with my fists alone, in the name of His Majesty during the crucible of war. I slew a man with a cutlass too, but that was over a woman named Lil. Ah yes. And I have dined with knights and barons. I have endured storms and illnesses and the wrath of scorned women. And what have you done with your life, but get yourself so far in debt that you had to sell yourself to me? You've scratched but a ghost of a life from this earthly plane. So yes Bram, I am a braver man than thee, a hardier man than thee, a stronger man than thee. I shall enter the cave myself, and bring out the beast within. I shall Bram, I shall!"

Frost unbuttoned his frock coat and threw it and his hat to Bramwell. Then he rolled up his sleeves to the elbows and got on his hands and knees. He squeezed threw the opening to the cave and began to inch along its dark wet corridor.

"Do you see the beast?" yelled Bramwell.

"It is dark and it smells," replied Frost. "I feel no fur or talon."

"Then you must go further," said Bramwell.

"I shall," said Frost, his voice muffled now.

Frost crawled forward, over sharp shards of shale and discarded bone. The floor of the cave began to decline. Frost continued tentatively, but soon started to slip. He grasped frantically at the walls of the cave but they widened away as Frost fell lower and lower into the chamber. Frost managed to turn around to slide feet first, and he looked back up to see the opening of the cave recede to a white dot. When it was nearly gone, he finally came to a rest at the back of the cave. He panted with adrenaline, and tried to climb back up but slipped back again and again.

"Bram!" he shouted, "You must fetch a rope and throw it down, for I am trapped!" There was no answer from above. "Bram! Do you hear me?"

Then to the left, a rock shifted. Frost stilled himself to listen more acutely. There was the raspy breathing of a second mouth. More rocks moved in the darkness.

"Ah, the beast presents itself!" remarked Frost. He pulled a knife from his boot and held it in the air in front of him.

"I am no beast," said a small voice.

"What manner of creature speaks to me? What sort of trickery is this?"

"I am no creature," said the voice, "for I came to be...outside of creation."

Frost reached into his vest pocket and withdrew a match with a shaking hand. He struck it against the side of his rough face, and the cave chamber lit up. Looming over him, inches away, was a large, eyeless head, with a mouth and slitted nose, but instead of a proper body underneath, it was supported by fifteen ropey tentacles. The mouth was ringed with feelers, like that of a catfish. Inside, the mouth was carpeted with needle-like transparent teeth. Frost dropped the match, extinguishing it.

"Bram! Help me!" screamed Frost, clawing at the inclined wall of the chamber. "I am nearly in the clutches of an unholy beast!"

A tentacle flung out and grabbed Frost's calf. It pulled Frost back as it retreated further back into its lair.

"Get off me!" Frost frantically stabbed at the air with his knife. Finally they stopped moving and the tentacle slid away from Frost's leg. Frost started to stand, but then he felt a sharp pain in his abdomen. He felt down with his hands and came across a cold thin appendage, inserted into his muscles just above the navel. Then the pain was replaced with a dull numbness. Frost swayed, then fell forward. The appendage withdrew and returned to its owner. Frost fell asleep within seconds.

"Eat, my children, eat. For the winter will not last much longer," said the small voice. Five mouths began to chew on Mr. Frost, first ripping away his fine clothes, then tearing hungrily into his well-fed flesh.

Above, at the entrance to the cave, Bramwell looked over the pockets in Frost's coat. In the left breast pocket, he pulled out the deed to the land. He smiled, and shoved the deed back in, then donned the coat and hat of his master. He bent down and worked to cover the hole to the cave with branches, rocks, and packed snow. When he was satisfied with his handiwork, he continued the survey of his land.

151/365 -- Playlist Story -- inspired by "Pink Moon" by Nick Drake

2011-09-22T01:53:00.000-07:00

"You can't do that?"

"Why not?" I asked, my back still turned to him.

"Because...there are things!" he sputtered. "In there! You don't know what they could be!"

I pulled off my jumpsuit and threw it against the descent ramp, next to my discarded boots.

"There could be things, sure," I conceded. I whipped my t-shirt over my head and turned around to face him. "But that's the fun of it." I winked at him. He flailed his arms and let his hands rest over his face. "Come join me."

"NO!" he said, removing his hands from his face overly-dramatically. "I'm not, repeat not, going for a skinny dip in an unknown ocean, with THINGS in it, on an alien planet!!"

"Suit yourself." I walked down to the edge of the lapping ocean. The sand was made up of highly reflective crystals that sparked in the light of dual moons. When the water washed away the crystals aligned and became a perfect mirror for a moment until the surface tension of the remaining water broke. I wondered if the crystals were alive, and if I was crushing them, but they radiated a gentle warmth and I felt welcome. There was a gentle breeze that carried a fragrance similar to strawberries with a hint of lemon and vanilla. The ocean stretched out, flat in the distance, dark, and unobstructed by anything organic or technologic. It was an unspoiled nature and I vowed to keep it a secret.

Another wave lapped up and licked my feet. More warmth. The edge of the wave didn't foam like ocean water back on Earth; it was just like a thin glucose syrup. Glassy. I walked slowly in, feeling for my footing, even though I could see my feet just fine in the moonlight. I could see my reflection both on the surface of the water and under it. The water receded and both reflections shattered into a buzz of light. I waded in further, to my knees, to my waist, to my chest. John was yelling at me, from back at the ship.

The water was highly saline, like the dead sea. I floated easily on my back. I sipped in a bit of the water to taste it. John screamed at me. I'm sure his face was red, but I ignored him. I pressed my head back and water filled my ears, and I entered a sort of silence. I could only hear the waves lapping. The moons shone above me, big and bright, filling a full quarter of the sky. One of the moons had blue oceans, and the other was dead. I stared at the ocean in the sky and wondered what life lived there. Was it related to the life that lived here, or were they of completely separate origin? If our civilization had grown up on either this planet or its fertile moon, seeing the details of either by telescope and seeing that it was similar, would we have made it to the stars more quickly than we did? Would we have skipped over the skygods, the myths, the astrology, the wars and territorial infighting? We would have had our answer sooner about what was out there, waiting for us.

Was that what happened to the civilization that had left its mark on this planet? I hoped that they were so eager to leave that they all left, but I knew that probably wasn't the truth.

"Come on!" shouted John, as I lifted my head from the water. I had floated out a bit, and he was now a tenth of his usual size, pacing the shore. I waved back to him, the poor man. Smart, but a little dim, in a way. I rolled over in the water, and poked my head down. I could clearly see the sandy bottom. It was dotted with tree-like growths that looked dead but probably weren't. They were only a few feet under. I dove with force, and clutched a thick branch of the nearest tree. I kicked my legs frantically for several seconds, then pulled myself further down to the base of the tree. I curled my body around it gently as my lungs started to burn. The base of the tree pulsed with warmth. Ectothermic. I looked up at the fertile moon through the shifting water. It was like a mirage. Its image merged with that of the dead moon, finger slices of light fusing then pulling apart.

There was dull thrashing near me. A dark shadow loomed above and blocked the moons. A face and hand reached down. I let go and let myself bob up.

John grabbed me under my shoulders. He was breathing heavily, but not yelling.

"I'm all right," I said.

"What?" he sputtered.

"You can let go," I said.

"No!" he said, pulling me onto shore. He stumbled to the ramp, dragging me, and flopped down on it, making sure not to touch any of the alien sand. I stood and started to dress, as John held his chest.

"Don't do that again," he said, panting.

"I'm the captain," I said.

"We never agreed on that," he said.

"Sure we did. When we were back in the bar and you were drunk and I paid for the ship."

"It was my money. You just counted it out and handed it over."

"I piloted it here."

"I paid for the fuel."

"No, that we stole."

"Oh, yeah," said John, sitting up and draping his arms over his knees. "But you're distracting from the point!"

"Which point? There are lots of points."

"Wha...that it's not prudent to go into a strange ocean! You got pulled in by something! You proved my point!"

I laughed, and sat down next to him to put my boots back on.

"You...you did that on purpose? You faked it?" I smiled. "Why? Why would you do that?"

"To get you in the water; to prove my point."

"What point?"

"That not everything in this universe is out to destroy us. In fact, I would argue that the universe is very unconcerned with us."

John rubbed his face vigorously.

"Does everything have to be philosophy with you?" he said.

"Sometimes. Not always. Often." I smiled and put my arm around his shoulder. "But the point is, my point, is that it gives us a very interesting sort of freedom. Especially with this old heap to roam around in."

John shook his head.

"Don't call it a heap," he said quietly.

"Let's go there now!" I said, pointing up at the fertile moon, grinning. "Because we can."

John looked at me with raised eyebrows. Then a smile built slowly, and progressed. We took each other's hand at the same time, got up, and ran up the ramp.

150/365 -- Playlist Story -- inspired by "3:14 Every Night" by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross from The Social Network soundtrack

2011-09-21T22:33:00.000-07:00

Mike stared at the bed, with his toothbrush hanging out of his mouth. He was still. The bedcovers were unwrinkled. The room was dark, but the bed, dressed in white, shone in the light from the bathroom, and taunted him.

He slowly resumed brushing. He turned his back on the bed, a chill rising up his vertebrae. He spat out into the bathroom sink and ran the water to rinse out his brush. When he was done, he placed it carefully in the brush holder, then mopped up errant drops of water around the sink with his embroidered hand towel. He replaced that carefully as well, and when it was set, hanging straight and folded evenly, he stroked it as if it were an obedient pet, a thing alive.

He turned off the bathroom light and let his eyes adjust to the complete dark. The bed was still visible, almost glowing. Muhammed let his hands hang by his sides, and he shook his fingers.

"Please not tonight," he whispered to the room.

The room expanded ever so slightly, expanding, then contracted again. The curtains shrouding the window fluttered.

"I beg you," said Mike in a louder voice. He balled up his toes.

The room expanded again, larger, and became suddenly cold.

"Get in," whispered the room in a deep voice that Mike didn't hear, but rather felt in the middle of his chest.

Mike didn't move. His flesh dimpled up.

"Obey," said the room.

Mike leapt to the bed, threw back the comforter, and slid inside the lofty white folds of fabric.

"Please let me sleep," said Mike.

"You are sleeping," said the room, sighing again.

"Am I?"

"Yes."

"This is not sleep then."

The room was silent. Mike listened, but there was nothing. After a minute his muscles began to relax again. His eyelids drooped. The fabric was warm. It moved about him like a tropical current. It caressed him with its heat. Mike felt the gentle heartbeat of the mattress, thrumming and thrumming against the small of his back. Darkness began to descend upon his mind.

Cold. Mike work, his breath hung above him, a little frozen cloud. Above that hovered the comforter. His lungs did not move, and his heart did not beat, but he felt. He moved his arms, touched his chest, and discovered he was naked. He moved his hands underneath himself, and discovered he was floating.

"Wake me up, please," said Mike.

"No," said the room.

"Please?"

"No."

Mike pivoted, and tried to right himself. He fought to move his chest upright, and force his feet down to the mattress. He brushed against his cloud of breath, and it shattered, exploding into dust that fell down onto his legs with icy little stabs. He stood with just his toes on the mattress, trying to balance.

"Please," he pleaded.

"No."

The sheet below him, on the mattress, began to tear in two, down the center, exposing the mattress's heart.

"Do you see this?" asked the room.

"Yes," said Mike.

"This is you."

"No, it's not me."

"It is. It breathes your breath. It pumps your blood. It is you."

"No."

"Obey."

Suddenly Mike slid upward towards the comforter. It wrapped around him, cocooning him. It heated up. Muhammed struggled, punching out his legs and arms, but the comforter wrapped tighter until he couldn't move at all.

"I am not it!" he moaned.

The room pressed inward, it's wooden infrastructure creaking, plaster falling, and paint peeling along rupture lines.

"Let me go!"

"No."

The warmth of the comforter started to burn into his skin and so he screamed. The comforter fused with large areas of his skin. It tugged at his muscles, pulling them apart from the bones.

"Obey."

Mike gasped, but the air refused to enter his lungs.

"No," he managed weakly.

The cocoon suddenly dropped to the mattress. The threads of the mattress top began bunching up and spreading apart, creating a threadbare space in the middle, where the heart lived. It was made of the same fabric as the top of the mattress but woven more densely. It throbbed rapidly with anticipation.

"Eat," said the room.

The edges of the mattress that surrounded the heart rippled up like puckered lips and sucked in the cocoon, folding it in two. It pulled it into the depths of it's matting, swallowing. When it was done the threads realigned themselves, and the mattress was smooth again, although bulging and beating. The mattress spent the next month digesting Mike.

149/365 -- Playlist Story -- inspired by "Nine Lives" by Dystopia

2011-09-20T17:13:00.000-07:00

Ziva sat on a bench, lacing up rented skates with sparkles in the wheels, almost disappearing beneath a thick halo of black curly hair and an oversized sweatshirt handed down from her brother.

"What are you doing here, bitch?" It was a tall girl with silky straight blonde hair. A girl named Lysandra, who was a year older than Ziva. Lysandra smirked at the figure on the bench.

"Leave me alone," Ziva muttered, bowing her head lower, hunching forward further and focusing on the fibers in the lace and hoping Lysandra wouldn't spot her dirty fingernails and cracked polish.

"I bet you can't even skate." Lysandra shifted and flung her weight to her other hip.

"Leave me alone."

"They might as well put the hazard cones out for you. I bet you'll be a disaster. I mean, look at your hair. Do you even know what conditioner is?"

"Leave me alone."

Lysandra licked her teeth, huffed, then passed by, making sure the clean white skates she held in her hand grazed the Ziva's head. Ziva stared at her through narrowed eyes as Lysandra met up with a gaggle of friends. When she thought she was suffiently re-invisible, Ziva stood and took three shaky steps to the side of the roller rink. She held tight to the rink wall. A waft of stale hot dog scent floated past and she felt briefly nauseated.

She raised her right foot, and placed the wheels down onto the rink surface. The two objects connected as if both were magnetic. The light dimmed, the music changed and had a throbbing beat, and the disco ball in the center of the ceiling started turning, throwing discs of colored light across the cavernous room. Ziva pushed off with her other foot and she glided to the center of the rink. She put her feet into a T to stop.

A handful of skaters went around in the same direction along the outside of the rink. Ziva turned a full circle, watching them. Then she looked up at the disco ball. She closed her eyes and a flood of warmth filled her. She smiled.

Ziva stretched out her arms like a professional ballerina, tilted her head back, and pushed off. Her eyes were still closed, but the lights of the ball still penetrated her lids. She skated towards the far end of the rink, and turned abruptly when she was a foot away from the wall skaters, still blind. She skated faster and faster, parallel to the others, in a tighter loop. She made a complete circuit before she switched feet and started skating backwards in the same direction. Some of the skaters braked and paused to watch her. She skated even faster, switched position again and again, deftly threading her feet one over the other. She spread her arms and twisted her feet outwards and started skating in leaning circles, like she was sliding effortless along the surface of an invisible cone. She pulled her arms in and spun tightly. She pushed out and crouched down on one foot. She stood again and looped the rink, skating so fast that her huge mop of hair pulled back from her face, and glowed in the disco light, like a halo.

Lysandra stepped out onto the rink, her eyes glued to the spectacle circling the rink. Her front skate slipped and she fell against the rink wall and landed with legs splayed. Her mouth slightly open, she kept staring at Ziva.

As Ziva came near Lysandra, she opened her eyes, smiled broadly, and winked.

148/365 -- Playlist Story -- inspired by "Such Great Heights" by The Postal Service

2011-09-19T04:37:00.000-07:00

"Well, you see it uses Bluetooth--" said doctor Bess, his hands animated in wide loops.

"Can't you just tell me in English?" Elaine Farber was growing angry.

Doctor Bess chuckled under his breath, and quickly snuck a look at his wrist watch.

"It's perfectly safe," he said.

"Once the surgery is done," said Elaine.

"Well, yes, but it's fairly low risk--"

"You're going to go into his brain to implant this thing--"

"Mrs. Farber--"

"Ms--"

"Ms Farber, let me be blunt. Your son is a severe depressive. He's been institutionalized on and off since he was twelve. He's made three, legitimate attempts to take his life. Compared to the risk that he will eventually succeed, the risk of this surgery is very minimal."

Elaine stared at him, refusing to shrink back into her chair. Doctor Bess was used to getting his way--he was somewhat of a celebrity in his field, and if he had not been so famous and self aggrandizing, complete with a daily blog that extolled his own accomplishments and virtues (ranging from making perfectly browned toast, to growing replacement neurons from stem cells and repairing brain tissue in coma patients, and to his current invention which he intended to test for the first time on her son), she would never have found out about him.

"Doctor, let me be blunt. If you hurt him, if you cause a stroke on his right side or just a persistent eyelid twitch, I will hold you accountable. I might have signed a waiver, but that only protects you from legal action."

"Are you threatening me?" Bess leaned back in his chair, and let his hands drape over the arm rests.

"You think about it a bit," said Elaine, clutching her purse a little too tightly.

Bess leaned forward, smirking at her.

"Anyway," he said dismissively, "the implant attaches to the vagus nerve, deep inside the brain. The implant will receive a blood supply, and it uses glucose for energy so there will never be any need to go back into his skull to change batteries. The implant is capable of electrically stimulating the nerve, which will spur the rest of his brain to produce what I call, happy amounts of neurotransmitters."

"Happy amounts?"

"Yes," said doctor Bess. "That would be the layperson's term for it."

"Don't patronize--"

"Are you a medical professional? No, you are not. Let's stick with 'happy amounts' so I don't have to waste twenty minutes trying to explain how brain chemistry works."

"You know you're asking a lot of people to participate in these experiments--"

"Trials."

"Experiments. You could put in the effort to be nice. To be grateful."

"But I'm helping you."

"Are you so confident?"

Doctor Bess looked at the door, both hoping someone would open it and that Mrs. Farber would leave. She crossed her arms.

"Well," said Bess, pausing to gain a warm demeanor, "I am confident. I'm one of the best surgeons in the world, and I and my team will not give you any room for any non-legal retribution, so let's just leave it at 'mutually assisting one another'. Your son will get better."

"Fine," said Elaine after a moment.

"Now, this device," he said, pointing to a small object resting on his desk, "is the key to this working effectively. If the implant were to just give periodic pulses to the nerve, it feels a bit unnatural for the patient. This will be yours. Click the button, and it will send a signal to the implant if you are within a few feet of your son. Do it when you are feeling happy yourself, or find yourself in a situation that makes you happy. This will help train your son to feel pleasure, satisfaction, and happiness in pleasurable circumstances. He will be more likely to seek out those situations on his own. Whatever you do, don't click it during stressful, displeasurable, or painful situations."

"Why not?" asked Elaine. "That seems like it would be the ideal time to do this."

"It's confusing, good grief. Have you no common sense?"

"Doctor--"

"I'm sorry," said doctor Bess, moving his hands over his desk like he was smoothing out a bed sheet. "We can't be happy all the time. It wouldn't be special then, would it?"

Elaine stared at his eyes, then looked down at her hands, still strangling the top of her purse.

"I'm always stressed out, or unhappy, or in pain," said Elaine slowly. "It's something I passed on to Jimmy--but he got it harder than me. I would give anything to get rid of it. I've had enough, and so has Jimmy."

"Mrs. Farber--"

"No, but I understand what you're saying." She slowly released her grip on the purse, and red surged back into her fingers. "I think I can fake it." She reached to the object on the desk and picked it up. She brought it back to her chest and examined it. She clicked the button a few times. She smiled wanly. "Too bad it won't work on me."

147/365 -- Playlist Story -- inspired by "Plug In Baby" by Muse

2011-09-18T03:53:00.000-07:00

FYI that song title is misspelled. It should be "Plug-in", based on the context of it's usage in the song.

---
Three young men stared at the device, lying on the floor of their dorm room, atop a tangle of electrical cords, her naked limbs straight and rigid.

"Is it on?" asked Jeff.

"I don't know," said Scott. He nudged it in the face with a socked toe.

"It says here," said Matt, pointing to large unfolded sheet of instructions printed in 17 different languages, " that it's voice activated. If it's holding a charge we should be able to talk it to get it to, uh, do stuff."

"What do we say?" asked Jeff.

"Uh, try this," said Matt. He pointed to a tiny line of print.

"I can't see what that says," said Jeff. "Why do they have to print it so small? Friggin Swedes. Just a sec. Let me get my glasses." He rooted through the stacks of papers and academic cruft on his desk and found a scratched pair with thick lenses. He put them on.

"Why don't I say it?" asked Scott.

"It's my, um, toy," said Jeff. "Hands off."

"You might want to keep some Purell around..." said Matt. "Just in case." Jeff laughed.

"Hey!" said Scott.

"Okay, so this line here," said Matt pointing again. Jeff mouthed the words silently.

"Really?" said Jeff. "That's something I would say to my grandmother."

"Just say it, okay? I want to see what this thing can do."

"Fine," said Jeff, then he straightened his posture, looked down at the figure, and enunciated, "Hello, darling."

They waited a few seconds. They leaned in.

"Did it work?" asked Scott.

Suddenly, she spoke, but her mouth moved slower than her syllables.

"他妈的我更难," she said. The men all jumped back.

"Wait, what was that?" asked Matt.

"Chinese, maybe?" said Scott. Jeff scratched his head.

"Let me try again," said Jeff. "Hello...darling!" He spoke louder and clearer, almost chomping on his consonants.

"Hello," she said. Again, her mouth moved out of sync with her words.

"Well okay, that's English at least, but what's next?" asked Jeff. He and Matt scanned the instruction sheet.

"It says here it's supposed to prompt you through the setup process," said Matt.

"How though?" asked Jeff.

"Hello...DARLING," said Scott.

"Hello, master," she said.

"Hah! See?! She recognizes me as master!" said Scott with a big grin.

"Yeah, big accomplishment," said Matt.

"Would you, like to, give me, a name?" she said in choppy cadence.

"YES," said Jeff and Scott together.

"Please say name now," said a deep male voice.

"Oh no," said Matt. "That just sounds wrong."

"What should we name her?" asked Scott.

"Thank you, master for, naming me, 'Ohno'," she said, with the last word a parroted recording of Matt's voice with an overlay of static. Jeff and Scott stared at Matt.

"Don't look at me! They need to write these instructions better!" said Matt.

"Idiot," said Jeff.

"Would you, like to...set the time?"

"Why would you need a clock in one of these things?" wondered Scott.

"No," said Matt.

"Please say the time now," said the male voice.

"What? NO." said Jeff.

"I'm sorry, I did, not understand, your answer. Please repeat, your answer."

"NO. No we would not like to set your clock," said Jeff, getting a bit annoyed.

"The time, is now set, to seven...AM."

"That's not the right time," said Scott.

"No, we DO NOT want to set the time," said Jeff.

"I'm sorry, I did, not understand, your request. Please repeat, your request."

"I can't believe they licensed this technology from Apple," said Matt. "This is worse than trying to get a real girlfriend."

"Would you, like me, to be, your...girlfriend?"

"Uh, yes," said Jeff.

"There are other options?" whispered Matt.

"You have, to say, my name."

"Ohno, yes," said Jeff.

She was still and silent. The men leaned in over her again.

"What the hell?" asked Jeff.

"This is stupid," said Scott.

"Hello, OHNO," said Jeff. There was silence. He clapped his hands loudly next to her face.

"Maybe her ears aren't up there," said Matt.

"What?" asked Jeff. "Of course she has ears--"

"I meant the microphone," said Matt. "Let me see if it's indicated anywhere on the diagram."

"I am, fully-charged, master. Please unplug me, so we, can play."

"Oh. No okay," said Jeff.

He crouched under his desk to reach for the cord, but was struggling through the tangles and the small space.

"Thank you, for unplugging...me."

She pulled up her legs, sat up, then stood up in a distinctly non-human, not very wobbly way. The cord tightened.

"Wait," said Jeff.

She stared blankly at Scott, and put her arms around his neck.

"Ohno, wait," said Jeff.

"Ohno, yes," said Scott, smiling.

She opened her mouth into an O shape and wiggled her tongue.

"NO, wait! I can't quite reach the--"

Scott leaned in, closed his eyes, opened his mouth wide, and touched his saliva enrobed tongue to hers.

Sparks flew from the electrical socket, the lights flickered then went dead, Scott lurched backward and fell on a pile of magazines, his heart stopped. She collapsed to the floor and twitched and jabbered violently before going silent.

Jeff stood up. Matt let the sheet of paper drop from his hands and flutter to the floor.

"Oh, no," said Jeff and Matt together.

146/365 -- Playlist Story -- inspired by "Vaporize" by Broken Bells

2011-09-17T20:15:00.000-07:00

I don't think the world has room for me. When I see a pregnant woman, I think of the snakes that give birth to live offspring--a tangle of ropey bodies sliding against each other inside mucus and membranes. There is something off-putting about the human body, the corporeal form and the transformations it must make as it lives and then dies, and ends. I feel like a being trapped in a body, a meat enclosure, a mortal coil, wrapped around me, suffocating me--and I cannot connect with the other beings in the other bodies.

"You need to use a number two pencil," says Mrs. Grafton, looming over me, in a flowered dress that stretches against her ever-expanding bulk. Her perfume makes my nose twitch. We are alone in the room.

"It is," I say.

"No, dear, that's a red pencil crayon. I know you can't see colors, but you need to remember to read what's written on the side."

She's right. I can't see colors, at least not the way other people apparently do. It baffled the doctors when I was little. I'm a defective human.

"It's all I brought," I say.

Mrs. Grafton sighs.

"Fine," she says. "I'll lend you one."

She totters off back to her desk at the front of the room. I watch her open the top drawer. Her eyes are turned away. I shut my eyelids and relax. I feel the air pressing in on me, getting colder. The atoms are slowing down. I unhook myself from the nerves in my skin, the outer layer of the carriage I ride around it. The unfriendly sensation is gone, and I'm free to push further. I stop breathing. I open my eyes.

Mrs. Grafton is frozen, stuck in a single frame. I guess it would be completely dark to a normal human, but I can see everything, because I can sense everything. All the fizzing atoms, jostling and wanting to move, that make up the room. The windows are opaque to me, in this modularity, and look, what I would term white. I can feel the structure behind all things.

I force my body to stand. It resists of course, glued to the same frame that Mrs. Grafton currently inhabits, but I force the body to move. I leave the desk behind. I float up to the lights in the ceiling. I grab them, touch them, the slide my hand into the series of metal slats. It feels good. Satisfying. I slice into the fluorescent tubes. I free the gas inside from the frame, and it travels into me, and I start glowing. I want to fill the whole room with light. My concentration waivers. Gravity pulls at me gently. I feel heat. My stolen time is up, and a feel sad because I haven't found a way to extend my excursions forever--

Mrs. Grafton screams.

I am in my desk again, eyes still closed, but the light above me explodes and I'm showered with glass.

145/365 -- Playlist Story -- inspired by "We Can Work It Out" by Stevie Wonder

2011-09-16T04:24:00.000-07:00

The room smelled of pizza boxes, stale coffee, and sweaty socks, and Senator Johnson was snoring loudly, reclined in his chair with one arm folded over his ample belly and one with his knuckles touching the gray berber carpet at the nadir of each exhale. Senator Wrayworth stared at him from across the wide oak conference table. She tugged on her bright blue jacket front then fluffed her hair unconsciously, while staring daggers at the honorable, snoring, gentleman from South Carolina.

"Have another," said Representative Reilly, a wiry, somewhat dimwitted but reasonably charismatic thirty-year-old, the son of a California dairy owner, seated to her left, who slid a half-empty pizza box in her direction.

"No thank you," replied Senator Wrayworth.

"We should have ordered more sausage," said Reilly, pulling the box slowly back into the orbit of his spidery hands, and actually licked his lips. Senator Wrayworth bit her acid tongue and ordered her mind to be as calm as a glacial lake. Her former life on the stand-up circuit often wanted to burst through in her career in the Senate, but it would serve no purpose here and now. Wrayworth was the only woman on the eight-man comittee: four Democrats and four Republicans.

"We need to get back to the matter at hand," said Wrayworth, in a loud authoritarian voice, but no one listened. The two co-chair chairs were unoccupied. Senator Thompson and Representative Martelli were still off in the rest-room. Wrayworth assumed they were discussing their golf games.

Wrayworth sighed. The others still at the table were Representative Gableman, a former corporate lawyer from Florida, who was engrossed in playing Pig Swap Deluxe on his phone, biting his lower lip during particularly tricky moves. There was also Representative Payne, who was true to his name when he had to interact with anyone who disagreed with his narrow (unsupported by statistical reality) but popular views. Wrayworth thought he looked like an angry squirrel, with thinning, wispy red hair, coiffed into submission with what was probably a full can of hair spray each morning. He was incapable of speaking without exclamation points, and during the majority of the time he spent in the room he stared at Wrayworth, unblinking, at her mouth, which did not unnerve her, because she had spent many nights hazed on stage by hecklers. Finally, on Wrayworth's side of the table was her fellow Senator Long from Oregon. He liked to steeple his fingers, touching the tips to his mouth, attempted to appear profounder than he was at all times, and spoke in convenient soundbites. Wrayworth knew he had more depth and intelligence than he actually used, and was disappointed that he almost never did.

Wrayworth tapped her fingers on the table. Reilly munched, Johnson snored, Gableman worked on his high score, Payne glared at Wrayworth's lips, and Long absently doodled on his legal pad. The wall clock at the front of the room ticked the seconds away audibly, slicing off more and more of the time left until their deadline.

Suddenly the doorknob turned and clicked, breaking the silence like a sledgehammer. Thompson and Martelli re-entered the room, slapping each other's shoulders and mutually guffawing. They chatted some nonsense about a sports game while taking their seats, then sighed at the same time, their conversation finally ended.

"We were discussing the EPA," said Wrayworth, consulting her notes. Thompson sighed again, threw an annoyed glance at Martelli, then swatted Johnson on the wrist. Johnson sat up, opening bleary eyes, but not focusing on anything in particular. "I was saying that cutting the budget by a specific percentage is inadequate to--"

Johnson started violently coughing up phlegm. His face turned red as he fished around his various suit pockets for a handkerchief. He finally found one, and covered his mouth with it.

"Those tobacco lobbyists that have you in their pocket working out for you there?" said Wrayworth under her breath, under the sound of the labored coughing. Finally it subsided, and Johnson returned to half-asleep stupor.

"As I was say, a specific percentage is too vague too--"

"Excuse me, Lila," said Thompson with a smirk. "I think we've heard enough of your specifics for tonight."

"It's like an endless list," added Martelli.

"You need to give it a rest," said Thompson. "Let the big boys handle this one." He smiled broadly, glanced over at Martelli, and they shared a chuckle. Wrayworth nearly swallowed her tongue in order to keep it at bay.

"Sure," said Wrayworth.

"We moved on to the NES, actually. Thompson and I agreed that a twenty percent cut across the board, plus moving of pensions to 401Ks, should shed about thirty million over the next five years," said Martelli.

"Write that down," said Thompson, lazily pointing his finger at Wrayworth's note pad. She laid her pen down on the table, straightening it to align in parallel with the pad. She looked at Thompson with her poker face.

"Where did you get those numbers?" asked Gableman, just as a tinny pig began to squeal out the chorus to "Ode to Joy". He did not even glance up as he thumbtapped rapidly.

"You know..." said Martelli.

"What?" asked Wrayworth, who was ignored. Gableman continued.

"Moving pensions isn't necessarily going to save--"

"We can work out the details, after the fact," said Thompson.

"That's the problem," said Wrayworth. "I mean beyond our inherent, party line disagreements about policy, we're not actually dealing with--"

"Shall the issue defeat the party, or shall the party defeat the issue?" asked Long, arching an eyebrow dramatically.

Wrayworth sighed deeply.

"We need to--" she started.

"We need to cut the EPA entirely!" exclaimed Payne.

"No--" said Wrayworth, as if mollycoddling a child.

"The EPA is the enemy of capitalism! It dampens the engines of our economies!"

"Don't they clean up toxic spills and stuff?" asked Reilly.

"It is the right of the corporations to do as they need with their industrial byproducts!" shouted Payne. "Who are we to say, 'no, you can't make money because your factory killed some trees'?! A tree is not protected under Habeus Corpus. This is America! Cut it 100%!"

"It would mean we wouldn't have to haggle over the details," said Gableman calmly but tapping frantically.

"Now, now," said Thompson. "We have to give and take with the other side, Fred. A bill that cuts the EPA entirely will never pass the--"

"So?! It would be gesture! A signal to the silent voter that they've been heard!"

"Do you mean deaf voters?" asked Reilly.

"A vote cast is a vote counted," said Long, slowly nodding his head.

"There are consequences, Fred," said Martelli. "As you know, we only have thirty six more hours to come up with a comprehensive plan--"

"Consequences? Consequences?!" exclaimed Payne. "Why, the very future of our great nation is at stake! We must free the corporations from their bondage! We must draft an amendment to the constitution that will permanently ensure that--"

"Shut the fuck up!" screamed Wrayworth. She shed her suit coat and thrashed it against the edge of the table. Then she climbed up, and stood on top of the table, looking down at the other committee members. "Are you kidding me? All of you! All of you are insane!"

"Get off there!' shouted Thompson, standing up in indignation.

"No!" yelled Wrayworth. She kicked the pizza box at Thompson. "You're going to listen to! For once, you're going to listen to me!"

"You must listen before you can be heard," said Long.

"Shut up!" said Wrayworth, pointing a finger at Long. "All of you! I have the floor!"

"We're not on--"

"I said shut up!" Wrayworth started striding across the table, looking at each one of them in turn. "This is what we're going to do. We're going to spend the next thirty six hours going through each of the major projects of each department, and we're going to aim for a 10% reduction overall. Some we'll reduce more, some less, but there will always be a coherent reason for why! From here on out, I'm leading this god-damned committee. You can take the credit, I don't care. Do you understand?!"

A pig squealed. Wrayworth leaned down and snatched the phone from Gableman's grasp and threw it into a corner of the room.

"No playing with toys, no bathroom breaks longer than five minutes, and don't travel there with a buddy. And no falling asleep! Got it?"

No one nodded.

"Got it?!" screamed Wrayworth.

They nodded in unison.

"Excellent," said Wrayworth. "Let's get down to some real work." She did not descend to here chair.
---
FYI the actual supercommittee is composed of twelve members (only one of which is a woman).

Note to self: title this one "That's What She Said"

144/365 -- Playlist Story -- inspired by "Here to There" by "Sonya Kitchell"

2011-09-14T03:37:00.000-07:00

The subject is trembling, ever so slightly. "Step inside the chamber," I say, in a calm voice.

"I have a question," he asks. He stands there, on the cleanroom floor, in his blue paper jumpsuit and booties, his fingers twitching at his sides. It makes me think that maybe he really wants to take a smoke, and I'm annoyed, because I explicitly told my grad students to filter out any smokers. I don't like their breath.

"What is it?" I say.

"Will it kill me?" His eyelids flutter when he says it.

"No," I say. "It definitely won't kill you."

"But," he stutters, "will I still be me, on the other side?"

"You will always be you." I say. I don't particularly care if I comfort him or not, I don't care one iota about this guy, I just want him to get into the chamber so I can collect my data.

"I mean, maybe you don't understand, but will my soul be in my reconstituted body? On the other side?" He motions with his hands. I don't know how to respond, but I do anywhere.

"There's no such thing as souls," I say and he blanches. "What we, well, what people like you think of is a soul, is just the emergence of the mind from the brain." He opens his mouth as if to speak but then doesn't. His cheeks and neck get red. I continue, "since the mind is emergent, and your brain will be exactly, exactly, identical after the experiment, then your, as you call it, 'soul', will still be intact."

"Oh," he says, looking confused and unconvinced. He turns around and looks into the chamber, his hands clutching either side of the door way.

"Look," I say, "you can be a pioneer. You'll be in the record books. You get to do something no one in history has done yet. You, sir, are the first. That's wonderful, don't you think?"

"I dunno," he mumbles, not looking at me but at the floor of the chamber. I look at my watch. "Why don't you get in it then, if it's so great?"

"I'm conducting the experiment. It's scientifically irresponsible to experiment on yourself." I tap the floor with my foot and flash him an in-genuine smile.

"How do you know it's safe?" he says. I feel like rolling my eyes. I regret not having one of my grad students deal with this guy.

"We've teleported dozens of animals, objects, and computers. Everything comes through just fine. We just now, finally," I emphasize it, because the government nearly shut us down, until the last election when we got a much more forward thinking president who was able to whip Congress into shape and repeal that ridiculous anti-teleportation bill, the troglodytes, although frankly I think the oil industry lobbyists were behind that bill, "got legal permission to run human trials. Otherwise we would have been done with this a decade ago." And it feels like I've been mollycoddling this ignorant nimrod for a decade already.

"They come out exactly the same?"

"Yes," I say. Is he hard of hearing, I wonder?

He closes his eyes and exhales deeply.

"Okay," he says, "I'll do it."

"Excellent!" I say. "Now just step inside please."

He gets in. I strap down the restraints, which are meant to prevent him from moving during the scanning process. I can feel him shaking. I smile warmly at him, but he doesn't seem to calm down much. I shut the hatch and give him a hands up signal through the thick glass porthole. I leave the containment room, and walk to the adjacent observation and control room where one of my grad students is sitting (Charles or Jim, or Kip, or some similar upper middle class name that always makes me think his parents must have met while playing tennis at the local country club on a Saturday afternoon--I have no idea what this one's name is. I give all my students B's because I can never tell who's who, and well, it just means I don't have to bother grading them on anything).

We've got an excellent view of the containment room, through a one-way mirror, which was probably unnecessary, but I had an extra couple thousand dollars to spend from my research grant. The teleportation chamber sits in the middle of the containment room, with it's power supply and feeding down into it from a hole in the ceiling like a thick umbilical cord.

I nod to Kip or whoever. He types in the command to initiate the quantum scan. The chamber lights up green. The green light isn't necessary because the scan is invisible, but I thought it would be useful to show definitively when the scan is happening.

The subject suddenly starts screaming. I can't hear anything, since there is no mic in the chamber. I'm not sure if he's in pain, or just has second thoughts. I all of our animal experiments, the animals never showed any signs of stress, so I assume it's just the latter, and I make a note to ask him by phone when he arrives in the companion chamber in Singapore in a minute or two.

The scan completes, and the chamber fills with a brief burst of blinding white light. That is real, because it's the actual destruction of the subject, and why we have to contain everything in a chamber in the first place--so that the intense radiation doesn't leak out. The chamber is filled with hydrogen, helium, and a little bit of lithium residue, which will need to be cleaned out before the next teleport.

I prompt Kip to call Singapore, and he does.

"Yeah, just now. Do you have him?" he asks, perfunctorily. "Yeah. Should be. About twenty seconds ago. Yeah. No."

"What is it?" I asked. I'm annoyed he didn't use the speakerphone.

He swivels around in his chair and looks up at me, eyebrows furrowed. I furrow mine back.

"He hasn't arrived," says Kip.

"What?" I say.

"He's not there."

"Tell them to check their buffers," I say.

"That's what they're doing right now," he says. "Oh wait...oh...okay, yeah," he says to the phone. "Their computer was in sleep mode. It missed half of the transmission, and then it threw an error because it was incomplete."

"Oh," I say. "You had the subject sign the waiver, didn't you?" Kip looks at me like I just strangled his dear old grandmother with barbed wire. "Didn't you?" I repeat.

Kip nods.

"Okay then, let's bring in the next subject."

143/365 -- Playlist Story -- inspired by "Everyday" by Vetiver

2011-09-13T13:40:00.000-07:00

Just FYI, this almost became a Voldemort/Bellatrix fanfic.
---

"Go away woman! Let me sleep!" Lord Avarice Smelting, fifth Baron of Castle Widowframmeling, deep in the mountains of the high country, pulled his black satin sheets up over his head and closed his eyes tightly, willing the last shards of evening twilight back.

"But master, it's time to go hunt the people in the village!" said his housekeeper, Miss Grimheidle Groaning, leaning in, and saturating the air above Lord Smelting's covered face with the rank odor of of wet ferret fur and dead stinkbugs.

Lord Smelting gagged. He threw the sheets back and sat up, distancing himself from the blackened and rotting orifice that was Miss Groaning's ancient mouth. She smiled a wide, dark smile, dotting with the odd yellow tooth canted at a dentally unfit bad angle, her eyes bloodshot and gleeful. She admired him deeply. She loved nothing more than to serve him faithfully, in all his bad, bad deeds. Had five hundred and twenty years not separated their horrible births, she would have pursued him as one of her husbands, but alas, the age difference was too great.

"It's night sir," said Miss Groaning, twitching her fingers. "I have a cup of warm blood for you, freshly drawn from the litter of kittens in the second cellar." She handed him a clattering teacup on a saucer.

"Baah!" bellowed Lord Smelting, swiping the back of his hand at the teacup, and throwing it out of Miss Groaning's hands, and into the stone wall of his bedroom. The contents dripped down thickly, and splotched the dense purple carpet.

"Are we going to throw a fit tonight, master?" she asked. Miss Groaning clasped her hands together and continued to smile at him.

He narrowed his eyes at her, then suddenly leapt out of bed, seemingly more lithe than his muscular bulk would suggest he was capable of. He snatched up his fur lined dressing gown and flung it over his shoulders as he strode to the wide window that looked down upon the village. He tied the sash of the gown, made of the tender hide of wolf cubs.

"This is such a burdensome obligation," he said, then sighed. He traced the outline of the village on the glass.

"Master?" prompted Miss Groaning, confused.

"I was born to this position, Grimheidle. I cannot escape it, even for a single night. Every night is the same. I go down to the village on my red-eyed steed, Hellsbane, with swords and maces, or whips and guns, and I terrorize the people down there, kidnap at least one, then come back here to commence torturing said individual in the dungeon, then drain their blood and burn their flesh, and eat their innards."

"Yes!" said Miss Groaning brightly, letting her inner eye drift off in lazy contentment.

"No!" exclaimed Lord Smelting, whipping around, and taking hold of her fragile, wiry shoulders. "Why should this be? Why should I do the same thing over and over again? For two long centuries now!" He released her, and slumped to his knees. He leaned his shoulder against the wall under the window.

"But master, it's your duty, to your departed father and mother, and all your ancestors!"

"No," whined Lord Smelting.

"Shhh!" said Miss groaning, holding a shaking finger up to her mouth, "they will hear you!"

"And what if they do!?" he bellowed. "Curse their disembodied souls!"

"Master! They will hear you and throw all the knives and skewers in the kitchen into disarray! The last time they got upset, I had to replace all the cupboard fronts. Of course, then I got to cook the carpenter and his apprentice, and they certainly made tender morsels--"

"Grimheidle!" screamed Lord Smelting.

"Yes, master," she said, bowing her head as the cartilage in her back produced a series of sickening cracking sounds.

"I want to go on vacation, at the very least," said Lord Smelting.

"Ah, you have sophisticated tastes master!"

"What do you mean?" asked Lord Smelting with suspicion.

"You want to try foreign food. Perhaps some hot-blooded Spaniards? Or maybe chilled Himalayans--or slow-moving scientists in Antarctica with a side of penguin guts!" Miss Groaning rubbed her hands together and visible salivated.

"No! Not at all Grimheidle! You don't understand--that is precisely what I want to get away from, the constant killing. The mess. The smell. The physical exertion." He sighed deeply and closed his eyes. "I want to sun myself on a beach in the Riviera. I want to stroll through museums. I want to smile at people without them running away in terror."

"Well, what about a nice war? There are always several going on, you could have your pick of geography. You could take Hellsbane with you, you know how he likes to graze, and have a right good time feasting on the fallen bodies of soldiers and civilians alike, without any of the effort of having to kill them yourself. Wouldn't that be nice?"

"No," said Lord Smelting, his voice cracking. "That's not what I want at all, Grimheidle." He looked at her sideways, deciding whether or not to speak further. "I...I want to have ice cream!" It came out in a rush, and he held his hands to his mouth immediately after he spoke.

"Ice--ice cream?" stuttered Miss Groaning. She stumble a few steps back, absolutely horrified. "Ice cream?" she repeated.

Lord Smelting nodded silently.

"Ice cream..." The color drained completely from Miss Groaning's face.

"I've always wanted to try it," said Lord Smelting. "Ever since I was a little boy, back when father showed me the proper way to gut an newborn baby. It was a tepid day in summer, and all the children were eating ice cream, when we swooped down to select our catch. Before we moved in, I saw the children laughing and cajoling and enjoying themselves...and I wanted to be like them."

"But you're not like them, not at all!" screeched Miss Groaning. "Ice cream won't change you into a simpering, weak human!" She spat out the last words, drenching Lord Smelting in thick droplets of rancid, yellow saliva.

"RAAAAAAAAGH!" snarled Lord Smelting baring his enormous teeth and jumping up to tower over Miss Groaning. She hissed at him and scratched the air between them with her long, tattered fingernails. "LEAVE ME!" he bellowed.

Miss Groaning shuffled out of the room, glancing back at Lord Smelting with acidic anger. When she slammed the door, and went off down the corridor muttering loud epithets, Lord Smelting returned to his massive bed. He slumped down into the soft center of the bed, pressed his lips together tightly. He wiped away a single tear with the thick collar of his dressing gown.

142/365 -- Playlist Story -- inspired by "Breeze" by Apollo Sunshine

2011-09-12T01:36:00.000-07:00

Sara slept in her yellow penguin pajamas, in a tangle of sheets and blankets, on an Ikea bed, in a darkened room without any discernable interior decorating and littered with discarded clothes, when it happened. The clock by her bedside, with it's red staring digits, read 11:53pm. The room burst with light and Sara shot bolt upright. Her synethesia interpreted part of the light as a high-pitched buzzing sound in the middle of her head. She scrambled to the headboard and clung to it, shaking. The blackout curtains on her window were transparent, like rendered-down onions in a frying pan. her pupils shrunk to millimeters and she instinctively squeezed her eyes shut, but the light came through orange, outlining all the tiny capillaries in her eyelids. The sound took on an addition low tone. She held up her arm, and peeked, and saw the bones as dark masses in the middle of transparent orange flesh. A moment later her son, in the second bedroom, in his new big boy bed, started to scream.

Sara leapt up, tripped over clothes, and found her way out of her bedroom. She ran to Tommy's room, down the brown carpeted hallway, feeling with her toes and arms out, her eyes shut to the light. She found his doorway, and stumbled to his bed.

"I'm here!" she announced. Their arms found each other. They embraced. "Don't look," said Sara, pushing Tommy's forehead into her chest. His face was already wet.

"I can't see!" wailed Tommy. "What's happening?"

"I don't know," said Sara. She noticed that the room was getting hot. The buzzing started to oscillate, leaping from ear to ear inside her brain.

"I'm scared!"

"I know!" Sara thought about saying 'It's okay,' but she immediately recognized that it would be in-genuine. Instead she pulled him off the bed and carried him into the closet with her. She closed the door tightly. They sat on shoes and army men and balled up socks. The sound faded to an intermittent beeping, like a very slow clock alarm. Her eyes remained closed, but the orange of her eyelids faded to green afterimage. Tommy whimpered, but then there was total silence outside Sara's head, and just the beeping remained.

She opened her eyes. The closet was completely illuminated, just from the light pouring through the cracks around the door, as if it were noon in the tropics. Stuffed animals stared at her with dead eyes. She looked down at Tommy. He was sweating, and his thumb was shoved deep into his mouth. Normally she would have corrected him, but thought the comfort of it was more important.

"Open your eyes, Tommy," said Sara gently. He did. "Can you see now?" Tommy nodded, then looked up at his mother with questioning eyes. "I don't know what's happening," she said. "I'm scared too."

"Is it morning?" asked Tommy.

"No, I don't think so," said Sara.

"Is it the moon?"

"No, no it's not. At least I don't think so," said Sara, temporarily entertaining the idea that some rogue state had somehow nuked the moon into total oblivion. Then she thought that maybe it was nuclear bomb, just closer to home. She quickly went back to thinking about the moon. "No, I saw the moon during the day, so it wouldn't be the moon." She looked down at Tommy, he still looked at her, waiting for any kind of substantive, clear answer. "If we see the moon during the day, we won't see it during night, and if we see the moon at night, we won't see it during the day, because it orbits the Earth."

Tommy squinted his eyes briefly, then turned to look at the crack between the closet door and the doorframe.

"Can we go out and see what it is?" he asked.

"I don't know," said Sara. The house hadn't yet been blown to smithereens from a pressure wave, so Sara cultivated the idea that maybe it wasn't a bomb. "Maybe in a few minutes." Tommy rested his head against her neck. A cramp started to developing in Sara's right calf, right where an army rifleman was embedded, smothered in her skin.

They waited.

Sara estimated that an hour had passed, and yet the light still had not diminished. They waited another hour. The phone rang from within her bedroom. Tommy looked at her expectantly. Sara smiled at him and ruffled his hair. The phone kept ringing. Tommy looked at the door, then back to Sara. The phone stopped.

After another two hours, both were sound asleep, still bathed in light. It was sweltering. Both were soaked through with sweat. A wind kicked up outside the house. The joints of the house began to creaked. Sara woke again. Tommy was slumped down in her arms, his head lolled, leaking saliva. The light had finally lost some of it's intensity. Sara carefully laid Tommy down in a pile of laundry and stuffed toys. She stood, aching, and squeezed through the door, trying not to let anymore light in than necessary.

She held her arm over her eyes again, but did not see bones. Tommy's room itself was very bright, as if several outdoor spotlights were all focused on the tiny little area. She could see the air littered with dust, and every unvacuumed particle and hair in the carpet. The beeping was more distant now, hollower, with a hint of an echo. She padded to the bathroom, and out of habit turned on the light, but it added little to the ambient light flooding in from the rest of the house. She turned on the cold water tap. Water ran, but it was warm. She filled the glass to the brim and drank the whole thing. She filled it again, not quite to the top, flicked off the light switch without thinking, and walked back to Tommy's closet. She opened the door slowly.

"Tommy," she said quietly. "Tommy?" He stirred, and held his hands over his eyes. "It's okay now. You can look. It might hurt at first, but you can uncover your eyes."

Tommy did. He squirmed and stretched.

"Is it morning?" he asked.

"Soon," said Sara. "Here," she said, squatting down next to him, and holding out the glass. "You have to drink this, okay?"

He grabbed the glass and drank as greedily as she had.

"What happened?" he asked, after he had powered through half the glass.

"I still don't know honey," said Sara. "Maybe we can find out."

"Okay."

They both stood and Sara drank the last of the water in the glass. She took Tommy's hand, and they walked out of the room and down the hall. Sara headed for the living room and the TV, but Tommy pulled her towards the front door, insistently.

"It's out there," he said, pointing and pulling.

"I'm not sure that's a good idea--"

"It's out there!" yelled Tommy.

"Alright," said Sara. She yielded to his pull.

Tommy had almost reached the doorknob, his hand up--

"No, don't touch it!" cautioned Sara. "It might be hot. I'll do it."

Sara unbuttoned the bottom two buttons of her pajama top, and putting her hand underneath it, she touched the doorknob. There was no additional heat. Then she touched it with a bare finger. It was warm, but that was okay. She grasped it fully, and turned, remembered the deadbolt, unlocked that, then opened the door slowly.

Blinding light assaulted them. The buzzing spiked up. Sara tested it again with her arm. No bones. She lowered her arm. Tommy groaned in pain. Both looked at the ground, the cement of the stoop, hyperlit, their bare feet like luminescent alabaster. Sara stepped out onto the stoop. It was warm, hot even. She looked around slowly. The light was coming from just above the treetops on the other side of the cul-de-sac.

"Betelgeuse!" yelled a male voice to her left.

"What?" asked Sara.

"It finally went," said the man. Sara turned her head in his direction. She saw her neighbor sitting in a lawn chair, in shorts and a t-shirt, his back to the light, and a shoebox in his hand, into which he was staring intently.

"The star?" asked Sara.

"Yes," said the neighbor. He turned to look at her. "Come over. You can see it."

"It's hard not to see it. Why is it so bright?"

"It novaed," he said. "Come over, I'll show you."

Sara took Tommy by the hand and they walked over the grass to the neighbor's yard.

"What's that?" asked Tommy, pointing to the box.

"It's a camera obscura," said the neighbor. "I made it for my daughter when we had that solar eclipse about twenty years ago. Look the light goes in here, this tiny pinprick, and it shows a little image of the sun, or in this case, the nova at this end here. Clever isn't it?"

Tommy nodded. The neighbor gave Tommy the box to hold and look at.

"Are we in any danger?" asked Sara.

"Hard to tell. The light will fade, and will go completely dark again. It might takes weeks, or months. We might have some changes in the weather, just from the extra heat, but I don't really know. I'm not an expert."

"What about radiation? Don't they give off radiation?"

"Yes, photons and electrons, light and electricity, and the electrons won't reach us for awhile, and they'll make some interesting northern lights when they get here, but I think we're generally safe from anything harmful. Again, I'm not an expert."

"Betelgeuse, you say," said Sara. The word started repeating in her head, softly, murmuring. She looked down at the image in the box. It swirled and moved on the cardboard.

"One less star in the heavens," said the neighbor, sighing. "All things die, in their own time." He looked down at his hands, every wrinkle highlighted, his parchmenty skin a sea of whitecapped waves. "It will set soon though, and the sun will come up. And from where we live, it will be day for the next few weeks at least. But the light will fade. The last gasp. The angry cry out, the death rattle. Then nothing."

"And night will return," said Tommy.

"And night will return."