Thankful for Ghosts

I’m thankful for having a genius brother. I could always pass a Math test, but Jasper had ambition, whether it was hot-wiring cars or counting bullets left in the revolvers of the assholes chasing us. When he died, it was with a purpose.

I’m thankful that Jasper died with unfinished business. It’s hard on me, and harder on him, but it was smart. He let lovers get away from him, and made promises knowing they’d go unfulfilled, and just about asked the Syndicate’s assassins to pin him down. We knew we wouldn’t get out of Georgia alive. The hopelessness was an investment.

Before we were two teenaged fuck-ups trying to take on the world. The next morning, we were one teenaged fuck-up and one pissed off ghost. We got a lot more work done. All that fancy throwing knife shit the Syndicate teaches didn’t do salt against Jasper. And when they turned and tried to escape, he’d possess their engine blocks and drive them into the ocean.

It once took us eighteen months to find the safe house where the man who strangled our father hid – an ugly labor, even if it’s how I met Hilde. And I’m thankful we don’t have to tail anyone anymore. Jasper sucked salt at tailing people, and I had to bail his ass more times than I’ve got fingers left. After he let himself die, after he died in my place in a sweltering warehouse and under a hail of knives, things got plain easier. He found Syndicate lawyers and magi faster than a GPS.

I almost began collecting a scrapbook of his greatest hits. The suspected heroin kingpin whose elevator malfunctioned. The three demonists posing as patent lawyers who went missing with their yacht.

I almost did it, but I worry that if I praise him too much, that’ll acknowledge his work, and then he’ll be done. If his business is settled, Jasper will cease to be. And maybe Jasper deserves the rest of ceasing to be. I can’t ask him because he doesn’t reckon things that way anymore. He’s still the pissed off ghost of a teenager, where I’m an expecting father of twins. I’m a little scared to tell him about them. I’m a little scared to tell him I’d like to slow down.

But I’m thankful. I’ll never pretend I’m not. Hilde wants to name one of the twins after him, and I owe him. I just don’t know how much further a man can owe.

10 Insights From A Fan Who'd Never Seen Evangelion Before

This past weekend I had the distinct privilege of watching Evangelion with someone who had never seen it before. The number of otaku (or nerds in general) who are actually Eva virgins is vanishingly small, and given the series’ controversial reputation, I was eager to see how it played to someone with no strong bias. At first I joked that this ought to be a scientific experiment, but eventually I did make a few notes about her reactions. I've included some of them below, though I've stricken her name in case of angry fanboy avalanche. Here are ten highlights from the marathon:

When you find out what's under those bandages...

1. She actually liked Rei Ayanami, particularly as a counterpart to the angst and hysteric aggression broadcasted by Shinji and Asuka. She was vocally waiting for Rei to “flip her shit” on someone and cackled any time Rei shut Asuka down. As I come from a background of every woman in my life hating Rei, this was highly unexpected.

2. She was surprised to learn the series was nearly twenty years old. The animation holds up exceptionally well, though the Director’s Cut additional scenes are clearly done with a higher budget and different sense of lighting. Gainax’s production values were untouchable, which made the still sequences funnier. It was hard not to joke about them running out of budget at those points.

3. She quickly predicted that the Evas were some version of angels being contained by our technology. By the middle, she also immediately caught the hints that Shinji’s mother had a relationship to EVA-01. It was particularly fun watching her pump her fists in the air when she was proven right.

 

4. She quickly predicted that the angels were actually alien invaders, and that all the voices from SEELE who hid their faces were gods, angels or some other non-human beings. That’s what they get for having their Skype avatars set to 2001: A Space Odyssey monoliths. In hindsight, boy SEELE is weird.

 

5. The hypothesis that the series’ mythological roots are harder to contextualize if you don’t know what the Dead Sea Scrolls are was confirmed. Pre-Wikipedia, I know most fans had no idea what they were. Post-Wikipedia, it still holds.

6. She thought it was “adorable” that I needed other people to tell me Kaworu was gay. I have absolutely no sense about these things. He’s still my favorite character.

I'm sure this is somebody's OTP.

7. I never noticed how the show baited every possible romantic pairing. There is at least one scene to suggest fan-shippable tension between almost every major character, and some of them are just incongruous. You want Shinji/Kaji? Here's a watermelon patch. It is as though Evangelion anticipated Tumblr.

8. The only part of the ending that seriously riled her up was the notion that the “School Comedy” alternate universe might have been what was going on all along. I’d never considered the cop-out of the angels all being a dream. Naturally they aren’t, but her threats to “cut a bitch if this is real” made this splendid.

However, this still earned a well-deserved "What?!!"

9. The rest of the ending, particularly the two-part psychoanalysis episode that takes place almost exclusively inside characters’ heads, didn’t upset her at all. Going into the series she said she knew many people hated how it ended; during the actual ending, she kept shaking her head and decrying anyone who didn’t see how this fit. Indeed, the introspection scenes are heavily precedented across the middle of the series, but I’m not used to hearing people care about that.

10. Her positive reaction to the TV finale made The End of Evangelion movie more interesting. We both disliked it strongly. I’d forgotten how poorly written it is, managing in its first half to be more bombastic and violent-for-show than the TV series, and the second half actually managing to become more pretentious. Her only positive takeaway was a one-sentence suggestion of what the angels actually are, which I agree ought to have been dropped into the series.

- - -

My own first viewing was biased as heck. It reached me at a time in my teens when I was struggling with paternal abandonment, serious health issues, and psychological BS. I may have been the perfect American audience for it, but now, at the decrepit age of 32, it held up as a great show. The pacing was surprisingly strong and it harbored atypically progressive storytelling for an anime, especially one that seems like it’s establishing such an obvious episode formula. It was splendid to go through it with someone who was inexperienced, smart and a good sport. Probably the greatest testament to what the show does is I'm considering re-watching it yet again starting next weekend.

Girl of Steel w/ Magnet

Theirs was barely a love story. And the attraction? Unfair. She was the Girl of Steel, and he was a magnet. She never bent, she never broke, but she couldn't let go of him. They met in the middle of a Chemistry exam: an alloy plus an object possessed of a magnetic field equaled true love. Neither were consulted about the affair they'd never stop having. They were merely equated, as romance tends to work.

It hurt the Girl of Steel's self-esteem. She was used to resisting, to withstanding, and at her favorite times, upholding. But this boy walked by and she instantly zipped to his side, and she never minded it. She minded that she didn't mind. She minded what others would think, too.

The world still needed her to build cars and skyscrapers and specific models of cans. They needed her for frying pans and satellites. There was not a country on the planet that didn't view her as a one-woman industry. Not a country on the planet that wouldn't judge the affair with this boy with his lopsided electrons.

He didn't see her as an industry. The magnet didn’t even see her as industrious; she got no work done around him. They looked into each others' eyes, studying the ripples in electron behavior, and watching countless hours of The Food Network. It was stuff the other major materials made fun of – the stuff she'd made fun of until that fated exam. The stuff she'd thought was cliché without having ever considered how clichés established.

He said that perhaps clichés were an industry. Was not all industry repetition?

That was trite, and she knew it, and she couldn't help liking it anyway. Not giggling, certainly not giggling like he did at her slights and insights. He was so enthusiastic, despite never having been asked to love her, to always be there, to, in his own way, always zip to her side, which, when she paid attention, she realized he did, being less massive than her. Sometimes bites of him chipped off on impact. The Girl of Steel collected those bits of him, and turned them into earrings, since they were clingy. He called her industrious. She called that trite, and she was right, and she didn't care, and that ambivalence bothered her, and she didn't care about that either.

Soon they went on public dates to every Friday exam at the lab, to see what other couples Science would pair up on paper. To see what else would come out the other side of equations. It was difficult to understand, and the magnet never really understood, but it felt nice. That was the Girl of Steel's reasoning, too, not that she ever said it. It was easier watching the inexplicable when the explicable didn't work. Love and the Friday exams were exasperating.

Hydra-Electric Plant

It’s a different way to power a frontier city. There’s zero pollution, minimal clean-up, and statistically fewer people die from the hydra-electric plant than from hydroelectric plants. Only one bulky guy every so often, whenever the west head phones us for feed.

It began with a two-headed hydra, the west head of which happily sold out and murdered the east head. It murdered its two children, and their four children, and so forth, until it had thousands of cranial neighbors. While it retained the intellect of a full half a hydra-brain, its cranial neighbors had to split their brain matter, over and over, until they were too dumb to understand why they lived with socks over their heads.

Now the thousands of hydra heads rub against the world’s most frictive carpet, built from the skin of a particularly tough lion, generating more static electricity than a lesser city would be able to deal with. We deal with it just fine, though. All the west head of the hydra asks is to eat a body builder every once in a while. We’re not sure what that’s about.

The 4 Ways Marvel Really Got Thor Wrong

Recently, Marvel Comics released their second movie about Thor. It’s part of their Avengers franchise of movies, which show very little scholarship about mythology. Many of us wonder if Marvel cares about anything more than making lots of money by way of vapid movies that are a lot of fun to watch. In doing so, they've utterly ruined the character forever. This must be remedied. Here are their four greatest transgressions.

Why would they do this to him?

1. Thor Speaks English At All
Some critics have pointed out that, historically, Marvel made Thor speak in a bad impression of Shakespearean English. A Norse god wouldn’t sound like Shakespeare. But this ignores the real contention: a Norse god wouldn’t be speaking English at all. He should be bantering in a dialect of Old Norse that’s unrecognizable even to modern Scandinavians. It would seriously help the authenticity of Marvel films if everything Thor said was utterly incomprehensible to any typical American moviegoer.

They didn't have contact lenses, either.

2. The Race Card
Some people have complained that Heimdall is blackwashed in the Thor movies, played by Idris Elba. Idris Elba is blacker than the average American imagines the average Icelander is. The average American doesn’t know much about how many ethnicities spread across Europe by the 13th century, and the average theologian has barely cracked why gods do anything, much less why they pick a specific skin tone or bone structure. However, Idris Elba has an amazing gravitas that we can all agree every god should have. Because Idris Elba is only one actor, most of the gods in the Thor movies don’t have this gravitas. Marvel screwed this up big time by not cloning Idris Elba.

No one asks if Tom Hiddleston is the right race to play a trickster god.

3. Thor Coexists With The Hulk
Look, it’s not that hard. The pre-Christian Nords didn’t know about radiation. There is nothing in their lore or cycles that references gamma waves or their implausible relationship to human emotion. The Incredible Hulk is simply irreconcilable with any of Thor’s mythology. Any modern science has no place in a shared universe with Thor, even science as miraculously bad as what supports the Hulk’s existence.

Yup. Pride, Instagram and Haar.

4. Thor Wasn’t a Comic Book Character
Our primary sources for the Norse gods are the Poetic Edda, the Prose Edda, and the Gesta Danorum. While some of the manuscripts in the Prose Edda were illuminated with beautiful imagery, the stories of Thor were never relayed in screen-printed sequential art. Frankly, everything Jack Kirby ever drew looked entirely inaccurate to visual stylings of the 13th century Scandinavians. Worse: they didn’t have movies. Making the things into movies is fundamentally inaccurate. If Marvel had any cultural sensitivity, they would force audiences at all their premieres to starve around camp fires in the middle of a blizzard and have Stan Lee recount the tales orally. He’d probably do it. He loves cameos.

This is actually 100% historically accurate.

It's my hope that by starting a dialogue about Marvel's failure to accurately capture their source material, that we will bring about change. By forcing blockbuster movies to be entirely accurate to someone else's vision, and by stripping anything that anyone was having fun with, we will create films that no one wants to see. And once no one will go see them, no one will ever complain about them again.

The future is in your hands, True Believers.

It's :EL

This is the story of two cultures coming together, told by one of them. It's the story of one proud and old culture, making the most of everything on their land, and so using precious little of it to get by. And it's the story of a bustling, revitalizing culture that couldn't get enough of the world, and so bridged its rivers and sailed its oceans.

Let's call the proud and old culture _____. They were the first to discover government, and chart the seasons and subvert the rain to feed all. _____ barely recognize what they live on top of. This is a story of _____ staring gratefully from their shores as the bustling, revitalizing culture proves to them that they are not alone under this endless and unfeeling sky. It's the greatest moment in their history. Sure their ignorance causes some _____ to die off from a disease or accidental dispute, but they're ecstatic.

Let's call the bustling, revitalizing culture *****. ***** are as ecstatic as _____ are about not being alone on this cold planet, and to find a people who live on such rich mineral deposits and resources. Rich mineral deposits and resources that _____ barely know are there, the very sorts of stuff ***** had to leave their homes abroad due to scarcity of. ***** generously assist _____ in mining and harvesting their resources, teaching them how to do it quickly, hastily, even riskily, because _____ are so happy to help their new neighbors from across the ocean. Soon _____ perform nearly all the labor out of love for *****, who they see as brothers. ***** say that _____ always saw them as brothers.

This is a story about a bond that lasts a hundred lifetimes. Harvesting the minerals is caustic to the human body, and so the healthiest and youngest ***** become sicker, and the _____ have to find ways to comfort and motivate them. _____ use their superior education to tell ***** when to eat, and where to live, and which customs are best to keep following as their cultures move forward. ***** are grateful for ______’s lessons in government, but take governing over for them, and subvert the rain to feed all who need feeding rather than carelessly feeding all.

Soon ***** live in the highest towers ever built, and more of their people sail hither to enjoy the spoils of _____’s minerals, and to watch _____ at labor, even if _____’s productivity has fallen behind for reasons that don't bear recording.

Soon _____'s numbers dwindle until they are difficult to record, too.

This is the story about a culture that embraced another, and worked itself to the bone of its own accord, and when it died, it did so thanking the outsiders for having shown it how to live. ***** will never forget the people who used to live here, even if they can't remember their names.

"Why Fantasy?" My answer, and asking yours.

 On Reddit someone was collecting various authors' answers to the question, "Why Fantasy?" It's an interesting thread, and despite being completely exhausted, this little explanation burbled out of me.

Because my mind has never been bound by the same rules as my body, and while I have great respect for pragmatists and wonder in the face of science, it's the fantastic that elicits my greatest intrigue and loudest laughter.

Nonsense is my mother tongue.

I'm an irrationalist. It's my nature.

If you care for Fantasy: why?

13 Ways to Get Out of a Fantasy Army Without Deserting

A friend was recently stuck in her novel and asked me how someone could get out of the army without deserting. Being a great friend, I dropped everything and started IMing her with every dumb idea I could come up with. For anyone who's stuck in such a plot, here are thirteen totally viable and not at all suspicious ways to get out of a Fantasy army:

1. The war ends, demand for troops drops, and the Powers That Be release people to return to farming/etc. Presto! But I sense this doesn’t solve your problem. How about…

2. Nepotism or favors, such as knowing the colonel is diddling his mother, and blackmailing him for discharge.

3. You die! And now you’re a ghost, utterly free from duty to military service. Being a ghost is a good start for many kinds of plots.

4. You are reassigned to something like reconstruction, no longer in active military service while still technically drawing a salary. Also, congratulations on drawing a salary in the Fantasy military!

5. Injury that causes them to be given an honorable discharge but doesn’t turn you into a ghost. You’ve got spunk but you don't have arms anymore, and we're in a very stab-based economy.

6. Hardship discharge for something like trouble at home, such as half your family dying. You can come home to discover they’re ghosts, if your author is into that sort of thing.

7. Paperwork error. "You were supposed to serve another seven years, but they stamped in the wrong place." It happened in more feudal armies than you’d expect.

8. We don't know how to break this to you, but you're awful luck. As the main character, you are doubtless still alive, but being a novel with war, many others are not. Through whatever system of logic the author finds funny, we now suspect you are a walking Bermuda Triangle. Well walk your ass back home. We'd kill you, but then the executioner would be cursed too.

9. Identical twin takes your place! What a sport.

10. Fox demon takes your place because his mom says he needs to learn how to be human. You go off and have the plot of the novel. He shows up near the denouement, a changed man, now a very ranty pacifist who can't believe humans do such-and-such to each other when they only live blah blah yeah.

11. Your entire battalion is wiped out by a surprise meteor! You are the only survivor. Having no one to immediately answer to, and being shellshocked, you decide "fuck this," and go to the coast to open a sea food restaurant.

12. You get drunk and go bowling with bearded gnomes. You pass out for a little while You wake up to find your shrew wife dead, your daughter an adult and grateful to see you again, and everyone is very high on someone called "Washington."

13. You fall through a magic closet and into a realm of witches, satyrs and very pious lions.

Have any plot troubles in your current work in progress? Maybe I'll come up with thirteen ways to fix that next week. Prod me in the comments!

Bathroom Monologue: Telling Dad

There were only my parents left to tell. I rolled up to the house and found Dad on the porch. An extension cord ran through the window to power a fan that blew into his face while he smoked his pipe. Maybe that’s why he was smiling. It was a rare event.

My bowels tightened as I approached, but it was probably better to catch him in a good mood for this.

"Hey Dad," I said. "Can we talk a minute? I have something to tell you."

"Is it that you're going to pay back-rent for the eighteen years I raised you?"

“You don’t have the legal grounds for that, Dad.”

“You going to pay me back for sending you to law school, then?”

I smiled into my sleeve, not wanting to show him too much positive reinforcement. Dad took encouragement like others took alcohol, and he was an abusive drunk.

“You know how I’ve had the same roommate for three years?”

“How is that lease?”

And down we went. Sucked directly into an inferno of topics on his mind. I bided my time, weathering complaints about the Dodgers’ line-up and the Republicans' concessions to Obama. There was a pause around what we were going to do for Memorial Day. Charcoal was a tenuous issue for him.

Charcoal is not how most people come out, but it was a break. I jumped in.

"Dad. I need you to know: I'm gay. Danny isn’t just my roommate. We’ve been together for almost a year."

He studied the handrail of the steps. I put my hand on it, and he studied another part of it. There was this big opening, and honestly I didn’t know how to fill it. Then Dad looked up, lower lip puckered.

"Okay," he said. "I tongued your mother's asshole last night."

My mouth fell open a little.

"You... what?"

"Kind of makes you want to throw up, eh?" His lip wasn't quivering anymore. "But you're not going to stop me. So what are we doing for the grill?"

And that was it. He even helped me break it to Mom, which was nice because it was another week before I could look her in the eye.

I swear he's a good man.

Bats, Dollars and Freezing Children

"Hello, this is Missouri Byrne. I’m staying with the Hopscot Family Refuge, which I’m learning has been without heat for two weeks because of an outstanding bill for twenty-one thousand dollars. Perhaps you don’t understand that nine mothers, two fathers and twenty-eight children sleep here because they have nowhere else. Perhaps twenty-one thousand dollars seems more important to you. I’m mostly calling to discover whether or not your business knows there will be a blizzard tonight.

"I have twenty-four thousand dollars and a baseball bat on my person. I don’t need to be in a place like this, but I am, and that’s all you need to know. I also have plenty of money in my checking account if you’d like to call me back and settle the matter by phone. If you can’t, but can send a truck immediately, then whoever comes can bring twenty-one thousand dollars of fuel and leave with twenty-four thousand dollars. They can keep the difference. I don’t care so long as they’re here in the next two hours.

"If they arrive two hours and one minute from now, I will beat them senseless with this bat. It’s aluminum.

"If you don’t send anyone and these families are cold again tonight, I will be on your doorstep at the opening of business tomorrow to make you feel as uncomfortable as a nine-year-old wrapped in five blankets during a blizzard. It will be a rough estimate. It will be as fair as I can make it."

#NaNoWriMo Fails

We're a few days into November which means, like every year, that thousands of aspiring writers are sweating with dread. As NaNoWriMo ended last year I had to console multiple people in outright hysterics - just as I finished comforting one, the next IM’d me. After three hours, I think I ran out of patience. It’s for such things that I'm writing this again this year, to reminded you that National Novel Writing Month is imaginary and you’ll all be fine no matter how it ends.

There are a few dozen professional authors with whom I speak regularly. None of them are currently doing #NaNoWriMo the way it’s intended. Most aren't doing it at all; I'm not, either. A few are using the community aspects and inspirational messages to psych themselves into getting as many words as they can for their projects – most of which, I think, are going to finish at double or more the 50,000-word goal line whenever they do finish. Novels are how they pay their bills, and they just wanted progress on hard projects.

I frame this in terms of what they do to ask you something simple: what do you want out of this thing?

Do you want a publishable book? Bullshit! Almost no one in the history of almost everywhere has ever written a decent novel in one month. Maybe Stephen King, maybe once, out of a career headed for triple digits.

Are you doing it for camaraderie with other writers? Then enjoy the bonds you're forming. And good news: those people will still be around in December, so you can still talk to them, encourage them, and share your work with them.

Are you trying to start writing again? Then you did, and if this art form expressed something from within you that nothing else reaches, you probably ought to keep going. Maybe writing this, maybe something different, maybe something shorter. You've got a lot of November left to experiment, and if it doesn't work, then maybe December is your National Short Story Writing Month, where you nail a smaller thing that squirmed out of the novel, to feel that you can conquer an idea. Or maybe you just keep pace until this novel itself has an end.

Is the high demand stressing you out, wrecking your outline, or otherwise leaving you unable to work effectively? Then start over with a more generous time table. There are eleven months before the next NaNo, and many talented people will be writing during those, including every single professional author I know. It is actually legal to keep writing today. You have my permission.

Look: today's word count doesn’t make you a novelist. Unless you were contracted to someone for a manuscript by today, you haven’t failed at jack shit. You will only fail if you don’t embrace what you wanted out of this before you die.

Also, take it for granted that if you die, there’ll be greater concerns than word count.

There Is No Greater Context to this Story

The chirping washes over Leroy as soon as he opens the front door. He wishes his family a goodnight against the steady intrusive noise from outside, kissing his grandmother on the top of her silver curls and waving to his sisters. He doesn't want them to have to come out, so the goodbye is brisk before he jogs off into the sweltering humidity of night’s hello.

Every little house along the road is a faint yellow dot in a cloying mist he can scarcely see through. He fans his fingers over his eyes just in case. The boundaries of his vision are the tall reeds, brown in the pale yellow cast by the houses.

The chirping only grows as he approaches the road, roaring up into a cacophony he’s too ill-studied to recognize. Are they crickets, cicadas, or toads? He can see tall reeds, but nothing else in the fog, and so can’t tell what environment they’d live in. Whatever they are, wherever they are, he can’t hear the jingling of his keys over their din, much less can he hear anything following behind him.

Leroy flips from the aquamarine key to the lipstick red key - that's the one for the car, he thinks, not thinking of anything else. It's another few long seconds of pavement before the mist yields his rusted Ford, resting on an angle against the slope leading into the roadside gutter. He can't see the bottom of that gutter, though there's obvious and erratic motion down there. Maybe water run-off, maybe fauna swarming.

He feels something stirring behind him and the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. He scratches the hairs, then unlocks the Ford and climbs into the cab, not checking behind himself, as people check on their irrational senses far less than they think. The seat groans beneath him, the first sound he's heard since leaving his grandmother’s house, beside all those bugs, or toads, out there. He lingers at the cab door, not shutting it just yet, squinting into the black-on-black night for a glimpse of what army is making that sound. He leans his head out through the frame, and something definitely stirs in the gutter.

He uses a rough palm to flatten the hairs on the back of his neck, eying the dim gutter until he remembers pre-season football is on tonight. He shuts the cab and drives off. Nothing happens to him. Nothing lurks watching him leave, except the mosquitoes that missed the opportunity to nibble on him. We promise there’s no greater context to this story. We would know; we were there watching.

Bathroom Monologue: Black Cat Monologue

 

"This penguin is good and thoroughly conquered! Typically, were I to best a bird, it would be properly devoured, yet this, this flightless failure among feathered creatures yields a grain of companionship. There is something to resting atop her, without complaint or wrestling, as though she needs my companionship as much as I need her pillowy nature. If there other cat asks, I will have to execute her. I hope the other cat does not ask. I'm fast taken to having this bed of bird."

For Elephant’s Child

True Stories of John: The Prison Transport

I’d just picked up a friend from the train. Let’s call her Gladys, because it’s a nice name and I don’t want to give her real one out. We rolled down the hill in my little Camry and onto the small concrete bridge. At the end was a stop light, with just one vehicle paused there. It was a white transport, like a short bus for school, but with state and police markings.

Waiting behind them, Gladys and I chatted idly about her job search. We looked around my empty car, to the stone walls that artistically lined either side of the bridge, and at the overcast sky. Anywhere but the police transport in front of us. There was a mix of that awkwardness about looking into other people’s cars, and the intimidation of police.

Eventually the light turned green and the transport remained at the intersection. I frowned at the transport. Then Gladys asked something.

“Is there anybody in there?”

I craned my neck and looked through their rear windows. You could see up the aisle of padded benches. There was no one in sight, even on the driver’s side. I stuck my head out the window and noticed the driver’s side door was open. So was the passenger’s exit. The transport simply sat there, engine off, under the grey light of an overcast day.

“Where do you think they went?” I asked. I didn’t have many ideas.

Gladys shifted in her seat, trying to see over the stone wall to our right. It was only a couple feet away, and only a couple feet high. On the other side was a slope leading to the river. My imagination, being my best friend, and best friends very often playing horrible tricks on you, suggested a serial killer crouched on the other side of the wall, lying in wait for a dumb enough local to get out of his car.

Gladys asked, “Should we wait?”

I didn’t know what to answer. Could you pull around a police transport? Was this a traffic sting? I felt like, at best, I would leave this intersection with a ticket.

The light went yellow, then red. No one came back. No driver, no maniac, no state troopers escorting a convict after letting him take a leak. We sat there behind this hulking vehicle, until the light turned green again.

Gladys developed this magnificent two-face act. She would look at the transport and seem pathetically nervous, then look at me like this was no big deal and I should go. She swapped between the looks dissociative brilliance. No argument had to be made; she quietly convinced me that something awful was waiting around here and we should let it be.

I gave in and pulled us around the left side of the transport. We looked through all the windows. No one was there. The driver’s side door was gaping open, and we could see through to the side of the road and the grassy hill on the other side. I turned us onto the main road and looked down the hill, expecting to see some explanation. There was no one there. We didn’t even see another car on the road for another ten miles.

There was nothing about it in the paper the next day or blotter report that weekend. I asked a couple of people who were in local law enforcement, but nobody knew what I was talking about. I never found out what was going on that day.

It's Incorporeal Vengeance Week!

Reminder: October 28-October 30th is an open “vengeance” period for all licensed incorporeal entities. Any human beings or related physical entities who have run afoul of the dead or generally incorporeal are advised to make good on all pacts and make reparations for all indiscretions by midnight of October 27th at the very latest.

Due to the sequester, local governments will not be providing any assistance or clean-up related to such massacres.

For non-physical entities who cannot rise from the crypt or claw their way into reality for vengeance by October 30th, there is an additional grace period extending to November 28th. Applicants must have at least two signed evaluations from the government-recognized Spiritualists and Theologians List in order to qualify for the grace period. The government apologizes for the grace period closing on November 28th, but we need those department stores unhaunted for Black Friday.

To our citizens of fleshy substance, remember:

• Practice respectful rites!
• Make good on your pacts!
• Avoid unnecessary transgressions against the memories of the arcane!
• Get a costume together for the Halloween Parade of Relief on the 31st! We sure hope to see you there!

Halloween Calendar.

Viable Paradise 17

I'm home again from the last big trip of my year. This one was the hardest physically, but easily the most rewarding. The Viable Paradise workshop is is one of the best writing environments I've ever been in, stewarded by such professional instructors, staffed by compassionate graduates, and everyone I worked with in the class belonged there. It was a solid week of working with people who were at or above my level in various areas of craft, sometimes challenging the ego, but usually exciting the mind. I met so many people who I want to help succeed. You're going to see amazing work from these folks.

The workshop itself is world-class. Group critiques of submitted work began at 9:30 AM, though on Friday Teresa Nielsen Hayden had me over before breakfast for a one-on-one at 8:30, and Debra Doyle saw me as late as 7:00 at night. Ultimately I got four one-on-ones and one group critique just on the manuscript sample and synopsis I'd submitted. And that was a tiny part of everything we covered that week.

There were lectures and collegiums spanning the craft throughout most of every day in addition to a challenging assignment we'll call The Horror That Is Thursday. It's as stressful as they could reasonably make it, never cruel, simply packing the week they had. It was supplemented by the staff providing moral support and excellent meals, and some wacky evening fun, like a group improv performance of The Merry Wives of Windsor. Any emerging writer that can handle criticism would benefit greatly from this sort of environment.

It's all organized by James Macdonald and Debra Doyle, who have been publishing and editing all manner of fiction for many years. Additional instructors included Elizabeth Bear, Steven Brust, SFWA-President Steven Gould, Teresa Nielsen Hayden and Patrick Nielsen Hayden from Tor Books, and Scott Lynch. Scott was with us for the announcement that he'd cracked the New York Times Bestseller List for Republic of Thieves.

I was giddy to get critiqued by Scott, whose novels aren't just splendid, but are also the closest to what I'm trying to do that I've found in the current market. For his first time as a full-on instructor, he fit right in (full disclosure: some of his critiques made me do a little dance). The crew is a diversity of successful writers and editors who, at many points, respectfully disagreed with each other in front of the entire class. Everything was steeped in the sincerity of deeply experienced and intelligent people who taught and tipped on things ranging from inspiration to submissions.

It never felt unreasonably stressful, but if you know me, then you know my body isn't reasonable about stress. Each night I woke up at least twice from health-related problems, such that by Tuesday I was fighting the losing battle against a sleep-deprivation migraine. Asthma blindsided me for Thursday; hotels typically have carpets, and that means prolonged exposure to dust and residue. It will be a couple of weeks before I can pull myself together. The syndrome pain is extremely disorienting, and really started to get to me on my second bus towards home. My lungs are caked, my ears are ringing, my legs keep locking up, and I don't regret a thing. Just please excuse me if I'm a little radio silent for a while.

I feel so damned lucky for all this.David Twiddy was a great roommate to me, and I could babble about conversations and people I met for an entire blog series. Instead I'm going to finish a short story and leave you with a photo I've shamelessly stolen from Shannon Rampe's blog. These are the fine folks who granted me the best week of my year. Thank you, one and all, and to Bart, Chris, Jen, Mac and Pippin, who are not in any of these photographs because they were busy taking them.

Bathroom Monologue: The Moon from Lionhead Lane

If you’ve been seeing the moon in the midday sky, you are not mad. Disregard the harassment of your many peers who do not see it there, and do not think it has been following the commuters along Lionhead Lane. Those who cannot see the moon’s daytime activities have an unusual belligerence, likely triggered by the moon’s private machinations.

If you suspect the moon has been whispering things to you, you’re not crazy. If it’s been whispering things to you that previously believed no one else could know, you’ve been right all along.

Regardless of your experiences, do not trust the moon.

If you’ve been seeing the moon in the midday sky, attempt to catch it and the sun in the same photograph. I haven’t worked out the physics of it yet, but I suspect it’s impossible. If you can do it, I’d be very interested to see the photos.

If the midday sun is whispering anything to you, return to your medication. The sun can’t telespeak.

If you have seen demons of any religious or secular stripe flying along Lionhead Lane, you’re not crazy. Avoid listening to them, and above all things, avoid looking at them and the moon at the same time. Do not photograph the demons.

If you have listened to or photographed the demons, stare the sun until the disembodied voices cease. If for some reason you fear the sun, very bright camera flashes may be a substitute. Regardless, do not heed the disembodied voices. They’re lying about the moon’s promises.

If you have listened to or photographed the demons… well, then you’re not reading this message, are you? You’re probably hearing it as I think it out before typing.

If you are experiencing this message telepathically, come to the coffee shop on the corner of 16th and Lionhead Lane. Bring ear muffs and solar lamps. We have work to do.

Two-Punch Pitches (as many as John can write before he passes out)

Hi, I'm John Wiswell and I write about tentacle monsters and post-apocalyptic optimism.

...and I write about dinosaurs and giant robots.

...and I write about prison breaks and the succubae who make it fun.

...and I write what lives between Humor and Horror.

...and I write excuses to have magical swords that work the way swords aren't supposed to.

...and I write about sentient puddles and the con men they love.

...and I write about the people who live on the border between empire and anarchy. It's nice this time of year.

...and I write about worlds that have seen so many apocalypses they're considered part of the weather.

...and I write about liars who need to be heroes and heroes who'd be better off as liars.

...and I write about giant monsters and insignificant survivors who need them.

Poltergeist Leak, OR, To Each, Another

Tuesday D’amato smells it, but thinks it’s a bad dream. Then Trystram and Ysolde’s claws tack-tack-tack up the stairs as they flee the basement, and they mewl so loud they’ll wake Delilah. Cats are so needy. So Tuesday gets up and opens the basement door, and they flee for the safety of the bedroom, while he takes in the musty smell. Like sweat on copper pennies.

There are two water leaks down there. Physical water is at least two inches deep in the gloom, lapping around the base of the stairs and the boxes from two years ago that he still hasn’t unpacked. His fault, he’s resigned, and he doesn’t care about that water. The other water, a ghost leak, shimmers halfway up the stairs, and translucent trout swim in the air.

“Except they’re not trout,” he corrects himself. It’s late and he’s groggy. He pads back into the bedroom, careful not to wake Delilah. Trystram and Ysolde are already in his closet, twining around his iron harpoon. Ninety-nine percent iron, a ghost’s least favorite metal. Delilah had just about killed him when he ordered it, but it kept coming in handy.

Tuesday D’amato hastens back to the stairs and sits at the top. He stirs the second water, the spectral water leak, with the tip of his harpoon, and the things that look like trout spook and swim away, into the recesses of the basement. Of course they look like trout. The ghost pipes are leaking directly above his unpacked boxes, and so they’ve gotten into his mementos, and they know all his childhood memories. About him falling in the water while fishing.

The trout fleeing, he rests the harpoon on the third stair down. The tide is climbing and he’ll need to keep an eye out until the ghost water dissipates back into another plane of existence. Then he’ll need to call a plumber. The super better cover this.

He doesn’t realize he’s grown nervous, that his bare feet are shifting on the top stair as though begging him to run. He doesn’t realize anything until Delilah touches his shoulder, and then he jerks up at her. He’s never been so relieved her head isn’t a trout.

“What is it, Big D’am?” she asks, pushing on his shoulder until he slides over. Then she plops down beside him, her hip rubbing against his. She’s wielding a night gown and that precious tablet of hers.

“Another leak,” he says, gesturing at an errant spectral trout with his iron harpoon. “Got to make sure it doesn’t rise to this floor.”

“Mhm. Mhm,” she says, turning on her tablet. “Anything neat in the water this time?”

Tuesday D’amato so tired that he forgets how to answer, and he rests his head against the harpoon. Sweat on iron does not smell the same as sweat on copper, at least not when you’re afraid for your life. Or when you’re relieved for company.

Delilah takes his head from the harpoon and instead lays it on one half of her broad lap. He can’t argue; it’s more cushioned here. But she doesn’t baby him, rather staring down into the retinal screen, booting up an avatar to slay digital ghouls for better loot drops. As the beeps and squelches and high-def MP3 soundtracks whirr into being, he wonders if there are harpoons in her game. She always plays the same one, never buying different ones, only the sequels to this. He doesn’t understand the game. He doesn’t like the game. So why, he wonders as he hears the attack sound for the two-millionth and thirty-thousandth time while resting his temple against her knee, does he find that sound soothing?

“Got to keep watch,” he says, trying to blink sleep from his eyes, trying to blink sight back into them. The ghost water laps five steps down now; he thinks it’s receding, draining into another dimension. “Got to keep us safe.”

The two million, thirty-thousand and first attack noise is her first response. Then there’s a little victory tune, and she strokes his temple with the back of her hand. “I know, and you always do. Lucky you don’t have to stop the Ghoul Lords from breaking out of the digital dimension.”

“Yeah,” he murmurs into her lap. He’s glad he bought her the silk nightgown for Christmas. “That work seems hard, too. How do you keep it up?”

“Hm?” she asks, eyes already diving back into the game, new attack noises sprouting up as she slays the undead trapped into silicon chips. “It helps having someone who understands.”

Where John is Going for a Week

So, the Bathroom Monologues have been a little quiet lately, and they’ll be a little quieter next week. I’ve got a fresh Bathroom Monologue for Tuesday, and a Friday Flash ready for the following Friday, but otherwise, I may be off the internet entirely.

Where am I going? Viable Paradise.

No, it’s not a cult. It sounds like a cult. When I first heard Moses Siregar III mention it, I thought he was saying “Bible Paradise,” which made the reverence sound even more cult-like.

Okay, that slogan is slight cult-ish too.

But it’s actually an intense weeklong workshop with several of the leading editors and authors in American Fantasy and Science Fiction. Of particular excitement for me are Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden, two lead editors from Tor, and novelists Scott Lynch and Elizabeth Bear. Lynch is coming in straight off a press tour for Republic of Thieves, which I imagine will be a whirlwind.

I’ve seen a few peers surprised or even angry that I applied to a workshop. I’ve hesitated to write about this, but, what the hell. It’s as though they thought they were about as good as me, and they jumped into self-publishing thinking they were good enough to go immediately, and I’m offending them by taking more pains for craft. It’s a weird position to be in, and I’ve yet to deal well with one of these arguments. Responding to being yelled at by neither a) deflecting nor b) turning belligerent is one of those abilities I certainly need to hone. I have, perhaps, too strong a desire to engage.

The truth is that I push myself very hard in my writing, am enormously self-critical, read as much as I can, and never feel like I do enough. This year my health failed enough that I could no longer keep up my writing schedule, which is a big part of why the Bathroom Monologues are no longer daily. And there are small presses that would take my novels at this point, but I want to run them through a real crucible. There are many things to get out of Viable Paradise, and for a year now this has been the planned precipice. I’m returning to hard subs and publishing plans as soon as I leave.

Friends Theresa Bazelli and Brent Bowen are both graduates of VP and have glowing words for it. Whatever it says about me, I’m most looking forward to critiquing my fellow students’ work, to helping others toward perfecting their craft. That’s a unity I cherish in prose communities.

Yet I’m not excited, as I don’t get excited about many important things. I get excited about dumb things, like going to Pacific Rim with a friend, or an ice cream break at the end of a diet week. The wait for VP feels like learning to walk again, and going to college, and having surgery. God willing it’ll be more fun than surgery, but my head is just in Wait Mode until the minute things actually happen and demand response.

What it will all amount to for you, my beloved faithful readers, is a series of novels that will be worth your time. I will not waste your time.

Bathroom Monologue: Apocalypses Like Me

Please do not waste this man’s life by killing him. He’s like me. Let me deal with him.

For the first time in his life he’s worse than deaf. He can hear everything that everyone in the city around him says – he can hear your war room talking about the best way to put him down, and my dissent right now, but he can’t understand any of us. Every word he hears is a sliver of glass tearing through his mind. This man is in agony, like me.

He doesn’t understand how to stop calling the waves. He’s not making it hurricane or earthquake because he’s angry. Like I was when I first woke up, he’s too confused to be angry at anyone, and he desperately needs someone who won’t turn to stone when he looks at them. Once he calms down enough to understand anything, when the world stops being noise, he’ll be desperate for someone who can resist him.

I can’t imagine how much it would have meant to me to have one person around when I woke up who I didn’t turn to ash by accident. Someone who understood what it means to remember the entire world all at once.

Let me talk to him. He’s like me. All the storms in the world won’t stop him from hearing me.

Horror Writers Donating Blood

It'd be great if Horror authors would agree to donate a pint of blood for every one they spilled on the page.

A nasty wound? That's one donation to the Red Cross.

You fridged the lead's girlfriend? How clever. That'll be six pints.

Most phlebotomists I've talked to recommend donating only once every two months. At two pints, that's only one literary murder per year. You'd have to make it count.

Alternatively, for humorous Horror writers, it's ten thousand paper cuts per year.

Another alternative would be putting your Horror novel on layaway. You've just got to kill five people? That's going to take you almost five years. Of course, some authors strive five years in writing a good scare, so you could earn your way to your body count by the publication date. Heck, if your publisher drags its feet, you may have a few pints of credit by release, for that sequel.

You may, however, resent the laws of Horror sequels being bloodier. You may buck convention to save yourself a few pricks and cases of lightheadedness.

Blood donation is something more people would do if they thought about it. It actually does save lives, and every year some region has blood shortages. In my case, I didn't do it regularly until this year. Why? Pure ignorance and laziness. I never thought about it, despite seeing ample footage of public shootings and having friends who worked as EMTs. I deserve no quarter for not getting around to it until a blood mobile literally parked in front of my hotel.

Feel free to write a story about a blood mobile pulling up in front of a hotel. Anyone could climb out. The outcome, though, may cost you.

“Apparently there's a Narcoleptic Vampires series...” – Colin F. Barnes

DeMarcus has always possessed an alarming tolerance to alcohol and pain killers, which is why he dropped out of college. It's also why he's custodian here, of all places, though being custodian of any busy cemetery requires tolerance for people's discomfort and oddities. Because his mother is a head trauma specialist who married the president of a Fantasy Football League, he has a high tolerance for the absurd. That last serves him well this Wednesday morning as he discovers another mound of ash in front of one of the doors to one of the crypts.

DeMarcus squints from the ash, to the authentic faux-gothic crypt, to the sun. That last makes him wince; he’s never been good at not looking the sky in the eye, and it's always too bright in the mornings. Must have to do with Global Warming. Jerking away causes his neck to ache, and he rubs at the bandage. The twin punctures beneath sting familiarly. He wishes he could take something for it. Maybe holy water?

Any non-holiday Wednesday morning is a slow one; the dew before every grave is undisturbed. He collects his broom and dust pan, then notices the keys jutting from the crypt door's lock. He steps over the ashes, pushing the door with the broom handle. It jostles against its bolts; it's still locked.

"Passed out that close to home, eh?"

DeMarcus rubs his bandage again. He's also grown a high tolerance to irony, he thinks, as he pulls out his cell and dials Kristopher. He always gets voice mail. For all his tolerances, DeMarcus hates that Kristopher always lets him go to voicemail, and so DeMarcus just says it.

"Another one bites the dust. Also bit me - third one this season, so I'll be keeping eighty percent of his deposit this time. You can put out another open space ad. Got to tell me how you keep finding the narcoleptic ones." He chuckles, which causes the muscles in his neck to lock up in protest until he squats against the crypt for support. This hurts like hell, even for eighty percent. It's in the throes of the ache that he adds, "You're lucky I've got a high tolerance to vampirism, asshole. See you before dusk, unless you want to handle a night shift for once."

Bathroom Monologue: The Cutting Edge of Football

The following is an experimental product to be sold only to the most adventurous professional NFL team.

Do you think it’s odd that it’s illegal for a ball carrier to kick or punch the defense, which is empowered to tackled and injure him? Surely a few well-placed blows to the opposing team would greatly reduce the pain a Running Back suffers over the course of a season. Yet he is not permitted even the slightest physical altercation against attackers.

To my best scrutiny of the NFL’s rules, he is allowed to wear protective clothing. This includes armored chest pieces, thigh pieces and helmets, all meager, if well-intentioned, defensive gear for a collision with an attacker. But as the best Americans have often pointed out, the best defense is a good offense, and to protect the most important parts of your offense.

Consider the benefits of a chest plate covered in knives.

Not truly covered – only six protruding from the pectorals and shoulders would dissuade many linebackers from most high-speed physical contact. If tackled, the attacker would surely get the worst of it, but preliminary testing in high school football programs suggests an 86% decrease in general tackling. And good luck stripping the ball of a Running Back who’s impaled the pigskin on his left boob.

Detractors will say this is illegal, immoral, or ruining the game. They say this about every advancement in personal safety. I say if you’re going to dress like a Raider, then dress like you mean it. You’re protecting your players and keeping the NFL on the cutting edge.

Bathroom Monologue: You Didn't Have to Elope

You didn’t have to elope. Okay, your mother never would have given her blessing to you marrying a… one of them. But I would have. You’re my boy. You would have made the decision no matter what I said – that’s obvious because you ran off and got married without asking me! And if you had to do it that weekend, fine. But if you called, I would have come. I would have been on the first plane to be there. I would have gone to your Bachelor Party. I would have paid for dinner after the reception. I will spend the rest of my life wishing I could have been there for this. And I’m not angry at you. You’re a married man now, and you’re going to have a lot more problems than some over the hill guy from the middle class being mad at you. I’m telling you this because I want you to call me. When you buy a house. When she gets pregnant. When my first grandchild is born. I don’t know what I ever did to make you think you couldn’t call me or shouldn’t tell me, but please: call. I will be on that first flight to see my grandson take his first steps or graduate third grade. Just call.

Bathroom Monologue: The Head Case

Reed’s head was a book, and one that was three-quarters unwritten.

Penn’s head was a writing utensil. Not a pen or pencil, because even I’m not that bad, but a fine horse hair brush. Penn fell madly in love with Reed, and he went on to scrawl most of the following in the margins of his lover’s head.

Taryn’s head was a fire hydrant. She spat on burning buildings, and for this was considered a hero. She had many unwanted suitors.

The Finn Quintuplets’ heads were fish. They kept trying to swim in Taryn’s spittle, following her around from heroism to heroism. She found this untoward, and so kept her valve shut whenever the Finns were at the similar parties.

If there was someone Taryn admired, it was Antonio, whose head was a water filtration system, and whose head filled hers with the naughtiest thoughts a hydrant can retain without leaking. He was, to Reed’s estimation, Penn’s mental image of himself. Antonio threw the best parties, with the spiciest foods, and interesting foreigners who played the latest music on their heads, and it all would have been perfect if Antonio didn’t own the biggest and most elaborate swimming pool in the city. The Finns always used this as an excuse to come, and so they followed Taryn along through the intricate tubing of the pool. They could be in any room she was.

Marta Maria’s head was the most elaborate swimming pool in the city. It was very hard on her neck, and she got quite lonely having to keep her body two floors below the best parties in the city. Thus Antonio often excused himself early to go downstairs and visit with her, and rub tiger balm on her neck.

Taryn would excuse herself early and follow Antonio to be jealous of Marta Maria’s neck problems.

The Finn Quintuplets tried to excuse themselves, but were stuck up in the pool, unless it was raining. If it was raining, they followed Taryn down and performed obnoxious tricks with flakes of calzone crust.

Marta Maria would have given them all a disparaging look if she were capable. However, she was capable of asking Miss Yaki for help. Miss Yaki was a city councilperson and universally heralded as wise since her head was an idea. If you wanted solutions, you had to look into Miss Yaki’s eyes. Fortunately for Marta Maria, Miss Yaki loved spicy food and was entirely intolerant of it, and so always attended Antonio’s parties, and always ate a bite too much, and always needed a glass of water. As you’d imagine, Marta Maria had always been good at finding glasses of water. Miss Yaki owed her a favor, and Miss Yaki came up with a solution seven seconds later.

Now Penn thought this solution should have been: “That solution, like the rest of this story, is in Reed’s head.”

Reed, however, kept blotting away Penn’s brush strokes. Reed felt that the solution should be: “And they found Rosetta, a nice girl whose head was the world’s best neck support, and Rosetta and Maria Marta fell madly in love, and they explained sexual harassment to the Finn Quintuplets, and Taryn confessed her feelings to Antonio, who let her down gently about his lack of reciprocity, and the two of them instead became casual friends with minimal awkwardness ever after.”

Penn felt that his lover, while cute, was a terrible writer. And so the man with head of pages and the man with the head of a brush argued about the ending for three dawns, until as a gag they started transcribing the best parts of their bickering, the sharpest lines and barbs, and goofiest ideas. It is surely for that reason that Jove showed up in their story, a radiant third-gendered young person with a god for a head, who fixed everything for everyone to everyone’s satisfaction.

If that seems like a disappointing ending, then you’ve likely guessed that by the third dawn, Reed and Penn had stopped taking their joint novel seriously. Co-authoring is very difficult for some people. Partners tend to get ahead of themselves.

Where John Went

This space has been too quiet, don't you think?  Aside from my Friday Flash, The Bathroom Monologues were pretty much dormant for the last week. It still feels like cheating. Does it feel like being cheated? I sure hope not.

Most of my energy had been going into the first feature length screenplay of my life. I can't say too much about it, or who it's for, or what might come of it - not yet. But I can say these three things:

1. It's a Horror movie.
2. In fact, a Slasher movie, responding to the things I grew up loving about them.
3. Specifically those things Scream and Behind the Mask didn't cover. Cabin in the Woods? Ehhh. No.

I'll throw in that Scream 4 was madly underrated. Love that final act enough that I'd pay money for a Scream 5. I'm one of those people. I grew up walking distance from a pharmacy with a VHS section that rented movies for a dollar a day. My siblings can attest to how thoroughly I plumbed the Horror racks. The amount of times I rented Predator 2 alone probably paid for some pharmacist's kid's braces.

That's also why one of my killers is a pharmacist.

Darn it, now I've said too much.

I've also been relatively quiet on all social media because I spent Friday traveling to visit a friend and build a new PC. It's the first computer I've ever built by hand and I learned that I really don't know what I'm doing. There's just enough competence for me to figure out that a zip-tie is caught in a side-fan. Just barely enough. But the new rig is sturdy, non-figuratively cool, and has Word 2003 all loaded up. I think I'm six scenes away from the rough draft being ready to rest in peace.


More than the building of the computer, the driving destroyed me. After six hours at the wheel for two days, I can barely move my ankles, my hamstrings keep waking me up, and my knees, neck and spine all hate me. It was still neat to know I can physically drive that far, even if it means a little agony.

Also, I'm going to start saying "non-figuratively" until we get "literally" back. Or, in case we never get it back. One seems more likely than the other.

What have you been up to?

The Canterbury Deaths

When I die, it'll be with a perky goth girl who's been waiting for me her entire life. She'll be gentle, and whimsical, and philosophical about easing me into a void where even the damned dream. They must dream or else they'll escape.

You read too much Neil Gaiman. When I die, it'll be an androgynous, tall figure in a black robe. It will carry a sickle. It will think of me as little more than grain to be reaped, for what else is earth but a field upon which death grows harvests?

You don't know that. When I die, it'll be a Backspace key. It'll delete the end of my life, then the midlife crisis, then the mistakes in my thirties, my time interning in Silicon Valley, then the mistake of going to college, then my all my awful teenage romances, and I'll de-adolesce into a string of nonsense sentences about childhood, until the only remark that's left is, "Unremarkably, Mario Marquez Jianming was born."

I'll wrestle a serpent down the trunk of the first tree that ever bloomed, only resting when it submits to my will.

When I die, I'll get into an elevator where all the floors are 13. It's where they keep the places every other building is afraid to go. Sometimes I visit skyscrapers that have a 13 just to see what death is like. It feels a lot like a tense ball in your gut and minimum wage insurance auto-dialing banks.

Death isn't a thing. There's a sweet man with skin like a cardboard tube and hair the color of toilet paper, and he's a shameless flirt, and everybody wants his attention and his gaze and a dance and then another dance and then another of something else. Some people are stillborn and never meet him, and someone people stumble on the first step of the papery waltz. He's Life, and he's real, but death is just when he stops paying attention to you. It's a petty absence.

I imagine it'll be midway through the journey of our life, and akin to finding ourselves in a sloping and darkened forest, surrounded by wolves and lions that stir in us such feelings that we question if we are body or shade. That's the death of it – not the afterward. I need to flesh out the afterward.

Bathroom Monologue: Why do you own so many pillows?

Photo by GardenKings.

This is the Monarch of the Pillows. Unlike most animal monarchs, this is not the biggest or strongest, yet it must be the ruler because it always rests on the top of the arrangement. It is unique in that it is circular and possesses gold frills, and too small to be of any utility in sleeping. Lenin would smile to know that the Monarch of the Pillows is the first cast to the floor every night.

The twins it rests upon must be the arch-dukes or some form of Pillow Priesthood. They are a stark color against the Monarch, standing out like wings behind his back. They take flight second and third to the floor every night, unless one of us tosses or turns in our sleep, in which case we may pretend one is useful between our knees for a while. That delusion is always brought to end by the Priest-pillow being punted back to the carpet.

One would expect them to descend into a pyramid of pillows. Instead, the Priesthood rests against two larger pillows, of size to jut out and remain apparent despite being three rows back on the bed-top. These are some level of elite Laboring pillows, stuffed enough and of mass to support the head. Why they have not cast off their ruling classes and taken up sole occupancy of the bed is beyond me. I sleep with one; my wife with the other. We need no additional cushioning for most of the year.

And yet there is a fourth layer, a wall of Gargantuan pillows the size of my torso, stacked like soldiers behind the Laborer-class of pillows. These are clearly too large to serve for sleep; a shoulder jars, and the neck is never at a comfortable angle. Sometimes one is of use to cuddle during a depressing or romantic film, but only until my wife returns. They are as ornamental as the Monarch, yet considerably more pathetic, adding such volume to the pillow display while adding almost no actual aesthetic. Oftentimes other ornamental pillows are placed on top of them, adding a second tier to the ranks. It is my belief that the laborer pillows pity the Gargantuans, and shelter and hide them, knowing they have no right place in the world and yet trying to afford them continuation. These I drop on the floor last, out of shared sympathy for something so large and so useless.

I do not understand why there must be so many pillows on the bed. I have wondered, but I have never been so foolish as to ask.