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96. Smoking on the Railroad

featured in Calliope Magazine’s Fall 2017 edition.

Francine Hope
And I myself
At the blinking, dinging
Railroad Crossing
With hands in our pockets,
Our hoodies zipped up.
We pace back and forth
‘Long the tracks
In the Fall.

With a puff of smoke
From the cold and a joint,
Francine began
Complaining a point
That

“Some folks go wastin’
Their lives away,
You know?
Sittin’ on their asses
Waitin’ for something good
To happen when they don’t make no-
Thin’ but trouble.
And then they give in
To depression and shit
When their life don’t get great
From only doin’ things that
Make ‘em happy
For a little bit
All the time.
You know?”

I knew
As I slurped up the nicotine
From my cigarette,
Bitter and burning and black
Like that sulfurous smokestack from Hell,
Coughing three times for good measure,
That I didn’t know
What the Hell she was talking about.

And I reckon
She didn’t neither.

What I do know
Is I’m pissed
That my ass is freezin’
For forgetting the reason
Why we’re standing here wheezin’
At this Railroad Crossing
Where the train doesn’t stop,
But passes on by.

We’ve been here, smoking,
For damn near six hours
And I have yet to see
One Goddamned train.

“A Knock at the Door…Who could it Be?”

The essay prompt that spurred the bizarre beginning of a short story that got me into the Chapman University Screenwriting program. This is the unedited submitted copy, for all you folks trying out for creative programs at university.

The lesson is this, that there are three things you need to know how to deliver: entertainment, purpose, and expectations. Once you show that you can work with these three things, using them and giving them to your audience, you might at least get a shot.

That being said, it’s funny how unpolished my style was back then, looking at it now.

“Good evening! I was rather parched, so I helped myself to your tea. I hope you don’t mind?”

“GYAH!”

No sooner had I closed the door to my apartment and flipped on the lights was I met with the unexpected response of a voice that was coming from my empty rooms. Not only is my heart still beating from such a nasty shock, but the surprise also caused me to trip backwards and conk my head against the door handle. Jeez, that hurts…oh, terrific. Now I’m bleeding. Can this day possibly get any worse?

“Incorrect, my dear boy! Your day cannot get any worse!”

Wait, did the voice just…read my mind? Hah, yeah, like that’s possible. Who exactly is speaking to me, anyway? I’m really not in the mood to get toyed with like this.

“You are right; it’s not possible to read minds. I’m just…well, sufficiently educated, I suppose you could say. OH! Deary me! Forgive my impudence; please allow me to greet you properly. After all, I am a man of manners, if nothing else.”

The singsong voice finally manifested itself as a squat little man who had been sitting on my couch the entire time. Funny how I didn’t notice the voice coming from that direction. Then again, it was sort of echoing throughout the apartment. He bounced up onto the back of the sofa with a squeak of his shoes and sprang across the room to daintily land on my dining table with a second squeak. I finally got a good look at the owner of that strange, childish voice, and I must say that I have never seen anyone like him. If he stood next to me, I’m sure that his head would come to the bottom of my chest. He was astonishingly round…like a beach ball. I can hardly believe I’m saying it, but he looks like a beach ball. I mean, his legs and arms look about the correct proportion for his size, but…his body…A beach ball decked out in a grey suit and spats, with a tiny round bowler hat resting atop his gleaming, hairless head. His sideburns were bushy, running all the way down his hard-set, rectangular jawbones until they reached his chin, where they were divided straight down the middle. His thin, sharp moustache twitched with every movement of his scraggly eyebrows, which were positioned over beady, expressionless eyes. They were expressionless in that they were wide open, threatening to render his countenance as one of madness if his mannerisms weren’t so contrastingly jolly. Actually, only his right eye looked as such, since I can’t affirm what’s behind that misty, cracked monocle covering his left eye. When his feet touched the tabletop, he tossed his bowler hat onto the tip of his black, ragged umbrella and spun slowly on one foot.

“I am your Ferry Godfather! Your misfortunes have played sad melodies unto my ears, and I have sailed across the Space Stream with the answer to your plague of problems!”

Okay… either this guy escaped from a mental ward, or I unconsciously stopped by a bar for a drink on the way home.

“So, you’re my Fairy Godfather, huh? Is that your magic wand?”

“This is an umbrella, young man. And it is Ferry Godfather, not Fairy. If you are this daft, then I am now not at all ignorant as to why you are faced with such adversity.”

“Ho, yeah? What do you know about my adversity, old man? You could be in a lot more trouble than me if I call the police on you for breaking and entering.”

Ferry stopped twirling, but his foot didn’t return to the ground. He peered at me from the side, flashing a broad smile full of crooked teeth, and flung his hat from the umbrella’s point back onto his head. He started to wheeze profusely, and it wasn’t until he opened his mouth and let out several booming guffaws that I realized the old coot was laughing.

“My dear Mr. Niles, permit me enlighten you as to your current situation. Your parents have cut you off monetarily. This raises a problem since you are in desperate need of funds. Sadly, because you were fired from your job recently, you have hardly anything left to eat, and will also soon lose rights to this cozy apartment. The icing on the cake is that your girlfriend just broke up with you tonight when she discovered could no longer provide for her.”

I can’t believe it…he knows my name already, what I’m going through…

“How…how do you know all of this?”

Instead of answering my question, Ferry threw his umbrella into the air before thrusting it inches away from my nose. The enthusiasm of his motions was bizarre, especially since whatever nature his tone reflected never affected the wild look in his eyes.

“My dear boy, I have journeyed here to you with an opportunity. An opportunity to find what you are looking for. Your discontent is due to some fault within yourself, yes, but also because of the faults you find in the world. Shake my hand, and I will take you on a journey to find your ideal reality in the hopes that you might discover exactly what it is you need.”
“You’re talking idiocy. Just leave; all I want is peace.”

“Which you will never find if that is your pursuit. Peace is a byproduct, for it is never permanent for a single second. Besides…”

Ferry drew close and stared into my eyes, burning them with the paced wheezing of his putrid breath. I could almost swear that he was floating in midair.

“I thought you wanted to live a different life?”

He’s been following me home. There’s no other explanation. I said that in the streets…and how else could he have known about my breakup with Kylie? But, even so…this balloon-shaped man is making a pretty nice offer. The life that I want? It sounds too good to be true, but I clasped his outstretched hand anyway. Might be funny to watch the lunatic try.

“I doubt you can do it, but, if granting my wishes will get you out of my house, then go ahead and work your magic.”

The wind howled hard against the side of the building, as if with the intention of reducing it to rubble. Ferry’s grin stretched even further than before, his moustache’s tips pointing straight up and to the side in the shape of a “v.” In a single squeaky bounce, he flew across the living room and landed directly in front of the window. He spun the umbrella in his fingertips before gripping it firmly by the middle and cleanly swiping downwards beside him. The crook of the handle caught on some piece of fabric that appeared to be woven into thin air, and then…impossible…
“Come forth, dear Mr. Niles. It is time for me to ferry you across the Space Stream.”

“I don’t know…I’m not sure I feel comfortable going through there…”

I nodded to the giant, bluish-black void that seemed to be torn right through the stitching of reality. It pulled at my heart, like some giant vacuum. At my response, Ferry’s face darkened, but it was only for a brief second. His cheeks returned to their rosy color, and he laughed heartily.

“Please, Mr. Niles. I am more than capable of ferrying you across the Space Stream.”

“But…you don’t even have a boat!”

“Nonsense! Everyone knows that umbrellas are the most efficient way to travel!”
Ferry stuck his arm into his bowler hat and pulled out an umbrella. I tried to escape the ravings of this odd entity, but he latched the crook of it onto the back of my pants.

“You are now one of my treasured passengers of fate, Mr. Niles! Welcome aboard!”


With a grand flick of his wrist, the umbrella’s folds burst open, and I was dragged into that vast expanse; away from the portly ferryman and my apartment, bound for who-knows-where.

225. Misty Mountain Morning

In the misty mountain morning

I saw a sight sublime:

A fairy woman dancing

Along the steep incline,

Her figure deftly swaying

Among its glossy reeds

With wistful feet betraying

The fairness of her breed

As she skipped across a brook

Flowing with peony red –

The frailest one she took

To ornament her head –

Her silhouette cavorting

Against the rising sun

As the birds began reporting

On the shadows of her run

Then aloud sang she

With a voice as bright as gold

When she jumped out from a tree

With stark glare icy cold:

“This mountain’s mine, fuck off!”

Spat straight into my face,

Held her foot aloft

And shoved me off the place

Sending me a-tumbling

Over brooks and across fields.

My body caused a rumbling

As to gravity it yields

And my puzzling descent

Leads me not to figure out

What for I was rent

From picturesque to now without

A fairy woman to appreciate

And a scene to be blessed by

But hurtling at increasing rate

All blurs inside the eye

When the valley fast approaching

Sends heavenborne its lakes

As her mountain falls a-crumbling

And my misty morning breaks.

153. This is Not a Poem

featured in Calliope Literary Magazine’s Fall 2018 edition

There are many self-proven poets who will write a big block of text like this and call it poetry but they’re all scamming you by forcing running monologue through a half-baked story in their lives that they could tell in a more grammatically-polished format that’s completely readable and artistic at the same time yet opt instead for a lazy hashdash of thought constructed in five minutes as I have done here that takes the reader thirty minutes to read by helping them to recall nothing for what is the point of writing something that a reader will forget especially if you don’t give them tools like rhyme or meter to drill it into their memory because either the story must stick out as original when it usually is not or there must be some spice of clever construction that makes it last for example all that I have written here will be forgotten by the reader because I have not helped his or her brain to categorize such a massive dump and there is no denying it is a slippery dump of information just how no one can keep an abstract painting entirely intact in their mind’s eye when a landscape is so much easier to absorb while also being harder to create well so is this block of so-called poetry exactly like an abstract painting except I’m actually trying to make a concrete statement that will not be remembered except as “oh that poet wrote a poem about how much he hates the style he wrote the poem in” but my particular word choice will not be remembered at all not because of free verse which I acquiesce as poetry because the poet makes a conscious arrangement of his words in lines but this is just a bucket of brain-paint sloshed onto a canvas where the word “poetry” is written everywhere even though there is nothing poetic about it but constantly proclaiming “Behold my poetry” which is about as legitimate as someone having a vicious bowel movement and proclaiming “Behold, my child” only because both were brought into the world near the ass though the baby will be remembered because it is organic and continues to grow whereas the other is just excess waste spilled over from an overdose of emotional laxatives and will be flushed down the toilet of time as this long rant of mine might be except for the title which will effectively stick with you since that large block of text you were hesitant to read below it was in fact not a poem and you only read it because you were ready to agree wholeheartedly with me or fight my stance but now don’t care because it was too much of a nuisance to follow such a cataclysmic mind-dump and keep mental notes on the points simultaneously though you are thinking hard on whether this is poetry or not since I have clearly said it isn’t but you have seen poems exactly like this and so now I leave you as confused on the subject as you were before or might not have been but you will still forget the body of what has been written just as you always have because this is not a poem for the reason that I say it isn’t if nothing else but none of that really matters in hindsight or does it?

57. My Cozy Little Coffee Shop

Between the lanes of Spice and Sugar

At mailbox twenty-seven,

Past cobbler and tinker and lawyer and butcher

A sequestered shade of Heaven.

Swaying sign of carefully carved coal

Marks its awning entrance –

Relinquish, curious convoy, your palatal leader

To steaming, sweeping essence!

Come inside, rest easy amongst friends

On stools of scarlet leather,

Smiling round faces of maids serving blends

At ends of slackened tether.

Beams of chestnut lacquer, home of varnished cedar,

Erected flat-roofed steeple –

Scented burgundy bookshelves, dim warm chandelier

Sheltering tranquil people.

Perusing newspapers, novels, poetry –

Sipping silky brew –

Sketching portraits, landscape, liturgy,

Ink slicks black and blue.

Sample a slice of our sweet sponge cake,

Dollop of cream cheese frosting

Whipped and flavored to tenderly bake

Every misty morning.

Any café can only amount to the best

Of its valued patrons;

Out of their satisfaction buds the kindest

Kind of motivation.

Fare thee well, dear guest, ever blessed

You followed curious curve –

For as long as this hearth burns none the less,

You will find us here to serve.

14. Pumpkin Spice Dream

Just pour a pack of sugar

And drown it all in cream,

Then spurt a spot of honey

For a Pumpkin Spice Dream.

Fill up your favorite mug

With that pumpkin spice roast,

Then stir it all together –

‘Tis what I like the most!

Two cups in the morning,

Three in the afternoon,

Four and a half at tea time –

When night comes, you shall swoon

And rocket way off into

The Pumpkin Spice Realm!

Hop aboard the Dream Ship,

Be our Captain at the helm!

Once in an Autumn, that drink comes around

To lift all your spirits miles off the ground

Coloring the Moon that red-orange of Mars

Your taste buds will twinkle alongside the stars~

Before your tummy tingles,

This Dream will meet its end.

That creamy cup of coffee

You finally comprehend

Is drained from its container

And not a drop is spared…

Perhaps I’ll brew another

Then, maybe, we can share!

0. Haiku for Fluidity

Birds relish the Warmth

of Spring’s caress on their Wings

though Lightning strikes near

Raindrops pitter-patter

Puddles swell into Rivers

our dry Land is quenched

Waterfall’s deaf Roar

tumbles across crystal Lake –

stagnant, clear, at rest

Fixation

Last night, I saw a demon.

It came to me in a garden touched by autumn. The leaves were browned with rot, a murky stream of fog flowing in-between dense hedge. Not much else could be seen, except that the sky was nearing twilight, all blackish orange. My vision faded in and out, in and out – synchronized with jagged breathing. Walking forward, I gradually realized with faint concern that I was not going anywhere at all; it was the garden moving past me.

The scenery remained the same, never-changing, those autumn leaves tinged in their rusty orange dimmed further by the fog and the choking sun. I was nervous, trembling nervous. Yet the garden kept walking, on and on into nothingness. I wished so desperately for it to stop, not because I saw anything frightening, not because I expected any terror from the faceless leaves, but because I could not control if I would eventually come upon something frightening or terrible.

It was a fear realized when I came upon the demon.

I cannot say how I knew it was a demon. Until this dream, I had never been in the presence of one. It appeared first as no more than part of the pitch nothingness at the end of the garden. But, as I drew nearer, its shape was defined by what was not there, and I became aware of a malicious consciousness lurking in a spiritual form. As my heart raced, my vision cleared, and I saw that the pitch was formed with purpose: the shape of a human, cut out like a paper man in the fabric of space, a black hole sucking the garden into itself. Sprouting from its head were two long appendages, an appearance like ears. There was nothing overt about it that would make one consider it a demon. Yet it was, simply because I knew it to be true as soon as I saw it. I classified it immediately by the feeling alone, before I even had the chance to mark its appearance.

The demon stood suspended, waiting for me to come. The clearer that empty form became, the faster my heart raced from fear. Those two ears twitched, as if hearing my pulse, and its own evil owner crackled like static, not from glee, but from the anticipation of satiated hunger. I do not know what exactly it was hungry for, but I knew that whatever it was was stored deep inside me. At first I knew this was but a dream – I was convinced this was a vision that could not affect me. But, the longer I stared into the infinite darkness of the demon, the less certain I was that this was certain. As my courage wavered, I was aware that the demon had some sort of physical body; bits and pieces of a describable appearance phased in and out of the darkness. I strained my vision to see those pieces clearly.

It was then I began to fear for my life.

I can’t tell you why. I’ve basically given up all possible explanations, and there’s no way of finding explanations when you’re trapped inside a nightmare. All I know is that the longer I stared into the demon, the more aware I became that I was going to die in that garden, at the feet of that demon. My whole body was wracked with hopelessness, the primal fear of promised doom.

I stared and the demon stared back. It had no eyes, , not all of the time, yet somehow it held my stare without break. My neck strained under that Hellish glare – my head jolted up and down – these were the throes of death, more violent the clearer my spectre became. I had to look away, or I would die there.

I could not look away. So I woke up.

I woke not on my own, but by the uncontrollable thrashings of my own body. They startled me out of my mind, and, even pulled back into the communal plane, I continued jerking about like one possessed for another minute. When the shakes subsided, and my head stopped its possessed bobbing, I was left exhausted, traumatized, sleepless at four in the morning. It was an epileptic seizure that saved me, but I was sure, if I were to see the demon again, it would be an epileptic seizure that kills me. Oh-so close to death in those waking moments, I wandered my apartment without a thought in my head for a while. Thoughts were replaced with terror, terror that every shadow behind every door concealed a devil determined to draw me back into the dream – to force me to stare into the demon until I finally succumbed to hopelessness. I sweated, fearful that a devious grin or a black form was waiting to propel me into fear again, behind the door, at the foot of the bed, at the end of the hall. This was neurosis speaking. But that neurosis revealed something to me: I understood the only way to avoid such an end was to force myself not to expect, and consequently peer into the demon. It was the demon’s unveiling, not its presence, that would prove to be fatal. Knowing this didn’t do a thing to quell my fears.

After wiping the drool off my pillow and cleaning the sweat off with a shower, I fixed some coffee and watched The Autopsy of Jane Doe. It was a frightful film, but I had chosen it in particular because I wanted to check something: to see if the nightmare affected my experience with the movie. It helped feed the dark atmosphere, certainly, but my thoughts were untinged by the evil in that movie. It was posing as evil, a watered-down replication of the darkest malignance, which I had borne witness to. The film even proved to be a welcome distraction, entertaining me and drawing my thoughts away from thoughts that would otherwise make the morning drudge along in fear of every dark corner.

When the film finished, I looked online for explanations of that nightmare. Some people propose to be experts at reading visions, and most opinions online are free (some of the traumatized love to relieve their fears to connect with others of the same thought or experience). However, all I could find were mentions of “dark men” with “black hats,” furry beasts, or your Slenderman types; hardly any were recognized as the demon that I came upon. There were records of possessions that lead to epileptic seizures, but barely any provided descriptions of the demonic culprit. Moreover, none had mentioned that singular despair of looking into the figure – how that figure fashioned from void material clenched your gut with the feeling that life was on the line. As far as I could tell, I was the only one writing about it. It was my fear alone.

I noticed something over the next few weeks. I noticed that the people around me were not privy to fear. Anxiety, yes. Depression, yes. Wariness, most definitely. But true, unadulterated fear is not something present in most college students’ lives. True fear is founded on the precept that all things are about to end, and that there will be no chance for recovery because there will be nothing to build from. Just one ruined shell of what was once a being, laid low by forces outside their control. That is death. That is the fear I woke to in those dawning hours. Their numbness was not born from courage, but rather imperceptibility. They had not faced death – there is no way they could no what fear felt like.

Yet the fear only lasted through half the day. My mind became preoccupied with other things, and what I thought I saw in the demon was discounted as a nightmare, brought on by subconscious thoughts that I could not be bothered to untangle. My fear was irrational, heightened by the certainty that I knew what I had been looking at, when I really did not. But, as I considered the impact of fear on my peers, I became more relaxed with the idea that whatever would come, would come. Only One has the power to stop it, and I prayed, but I was unafraid because I knew the demon could only take my life, not me.

Within a month, I found myself returned to the twilight garden. It had been some time since I stopped philosophizing fear, content with the answers I found. I did not fight the hedges and the fog as they rolled onwards, but focused rather on confronting what would be at the end. It took longer than last time. Much longer. Perhaps it only seemed longer, since I was now aware, but the garden appeared to have grown while I was away. My nerves were steeled in preparation, but they loosened with impatience as there was no break in the orange-black foliage in sight.

Only then did the demon manifest. At the end of the garden, wherein it only seems to continue on towards nowhere, did the demon finally manifest through its spatial tear. My body was transported by spasms, and I gasped for the courage to stare my reaper straight in its faceless eyes. The longer I held my gaze, the clearer the demon seemed to me; likewise, the longer I held my gaze, the more violent my spasms became. The waiting, the journey through the garden, had sent me to slaughter, wearing down all my reassurances by forcing me to stand at attention until it arrived at the proper point. And now the demon had the upper hand.

But still I gazed, and still I picked apart the demon’s existence. As its body became clear to me, I realized it was not made of parts familiar to corporeal sight, but felt in the mind’s eye. The more I picked it apart, the less I saw, and consequently the more I feared because the demon was made of fear itself, and had tricked me by its stillness into believing I could stare directly into it and not be afraid. Its ears twitched. They were not ears at all, but antennae detecting the worry in my heart and manipulating it into possessive fear. I had fallen for the demon’s unassuming nature, and my body was now beyond my control.

Unable to look away, unable to run away, I had no choice but to look into the depths of that hole as I was drawn ever nearer. Closer, closer, death approached. The garden soon brought me to the demon’s feet, and I realized that we had reached the end. As I collapsed to the ground, trembling from seizures, I stared unflinchingly up at the demon. Its gaze seemed to look past me, as if I were already lost and thereby not worth further attention. My vision faded in and out of blackness, as the twilight was slowly fading into night. On the cusp of death, I realized that this figure, this demon, though made of fear, was not frightening at all. It was the fear I saw in it, and what I feared that meant for me, which brought me nearer to death. It was fear for loss of control, not the loss of control itself, that convinced me that hope was now just a dream, and this nightmare a reality.

In that dawning thought, I found strength. In that strength, I found peace.

Spontaneous Combustion

I can’t tell you the exact day when the world went crazy. Little implosions in the background – you never notice them at first, right? White noise, that’s all it starts as. Just slightly odd people doing slightly odd things – You can tell the odd ones by their eyes. Those with “the glaze” are generally harmless, but you can never be certain. The instant you’re certain is the instant they act unpredictably cruel. I’ve seen two classmates jump onto the desks and perform a sweet schottische together, and I’ve seen a boy cut out his own tongue and tie it around his head as a pointless eye patch, until he died from blood loss. There are always two conditions under possession of “the glaze”: the actions come from nowhere with no reason, and nobody else regards them. 

But I do. And they notice me, too, staring back with thoughtless, blank eyes. I’ve trained myself to notice them as well, to steel myself against the expectedly unexpected. It’s exhausting – my nerves feel taut for hours on end, as if steel cords were passing through them. But keeping calm at the point of calamity is the only way to keep that white noise in the background.

I see the glaze now, in fact. Across the street, at the edge of a park, sits a lovey-dovey couple on a dew-coated bench. Their backs were turned to me, watching the pond – at first. Their heads swiveled to face me when I wasn’t looking, and now stare with the same glazed eyes my brother had. I can hear my heart picking up the pace as I stop to stand my ground. What will they do? I have no idea. They draw closer to each other…closer…stress like wires through my veins chokes off my breath…closer…

And flap their tongues together, like some sort of perverse handshake.

Breathe out. Walk on, but never break eye contact. Those with the “glaze” are generally harmless, but you can never be certain; they act so unpredictably. I’ve had two classmates jump onto the desks and perform a schottische while standing on their hands. I’ve seen a man cut out his own tongue and tie it around his head as a pointless eye patch until he died from blood loss. There are two conditions that always reoccur under this possession: the actions come from nowhere and with no reason, and nobody else in the area regards them. I’ve trained myself to catch their eyes, to steel myself against the unexpected. Breathe in, breathe out, move on.

Home is my sanctuary. I live alone with my older brother, who has not once been possessed with the “glaze.” Every day I am certain it will happen, but it never does.

“You seem tense lately, Kuriho. What’s the matter?”

A shrug and some generic “not enough sleep” excuse concerns him more.

“You high school students and anxiety. I tell you, I don’t miss it at all. When you graduate and have less things and people to worry about, you’ll wonder what it was all for.”

Sounds like a nice dream, made to be broken.

My brother laughs and picks up my bowl, offers to get me more potatoes.

“It’s much more manageable when you have a reason to care, too.”

He winks and heads into the kitchen. I can’t help but feel a little more relaxed, a little more optimistic. I’m grateful for my brother in times like this; at least I can be certain of that.

A few seconds passed before I pick up the sound of sizzling, the smell of burning. I dashed to the kitchen and beheld my brother standing rigid, his hand in a pot of boiling oil. His eyes…blank.

Recovering from shock, I leapt after him, tried to pull his hand out, screamed as loud as I could. But he was frozen, a silent statue as the apartment filled with the smell of bubbling flesh.

That was two weeks ago. Every night now, without fail, those eyes keep me up. Distant, strained as wide as they can without adding anything to his expression. No frown, no sneer, no grimace – just eyes. They looked down at me, as if to jeer, “You can’t stop this. But you can’t help trying.” My nerves tighten; it gets harder and harder to breathe, to think with clarity.

I’ve seen those eyes many times before. But now they’re in my own home. I can’t unsee them any longer. I pull the covers over me, but I feel a gaze… Waiting out there, through the crack in my door, peering at me behind the mask of my brother. In the morning he is weak from the loss of his hand. At night…Well, whether asleep or awake, there is no longer any sanctuary.

A few hours go by after my brother goes to bed. I pick up the sledgehammer hidden beneath my bed, bought today on a whim, and tiptoe over to his room. The only way to beat this new world’s secret madness is to beat it to the punch. Who knows when you’ll put my hand in the pot next, brother? You understand. You must know why I raise this sledgehammer above your head, if only you could just see yourself in a mirror right now. Are feelings even real to the glazed? Staring at me with milky, lifeless eyes as you do now – the eyes of someone who has no control, no desire, no awareness. The eyes of someone who isn’t really in there at all. So I know you will forgive me.

I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror on his dresser. It is a relief to see myself clearly, and my eyes, which, though wild at this turning point, are still full of life and thought. I am certain of this, at least.

Something gleams in the moonlight. My heart skips a beat. Tied to my arms, my legs, my body, my head…Where did all these strings come from, rising up towards nothing?

No…not towards nothing. Those red cords – my “nerves” – dangle from two enormous yellow spheres. Pale waxing moons suspended in the darkness of the ceiling, but clearly eyes of some ethereal kind. They shine on me with dim pupils, the strings zigging along them like nerves. In a blink – they disappear.

All at once: the cords snap, my nerves tighten, the hammer is swung, the “glaze” persists.