ONE PER DAY By: Andrew Marathas

February 24th, 2011 -- "Generation, Loudmouth"

2011-02-24T16:00:00.003-05:00

February 24th, 2011 -- "Generation, Loudmouth"

"This is not coffee. You want coffee? You want coffee? This is not coffee. Granted, it's winter. I'll give them that. I'll give you that. It's cold, getting the right stuff is difficult, but there are better options. There are better options for a bit more money, but what's money anyways? Money is an institution that defies the great tastes of the world. Better to be rid of the bucks in the winter and to be full of hot coffee.

Know what I mean? It's tough. Pass me one of those napkins..."

***

February 22nd, 2011 -- "Murray, Friend of the Land"

2011-02-22T20:41:00.007-05:00

"Murray, Friend of the Land"

Warm.

A warm day in the summer when the sea breeze from the west rides calm in straight lines and the pollen blends with air to create the healthy smell of sunlight. A warm day where the soft, short grass in the yards of all stands on end in the hot air, in a multitude, paying homage to last week's morning rainstorms. From below, the electric cloud pop of the sky reaches up and away, pushing the black and the steel-cold of space to the very edge of things with a very soft, flexing blue the color of a young robin's egg.

In the land of giants, it is Murray, and no other, who sits with nature at the table of friendship.

***

February 21st, 2011 -- "Pooling Skies"

2011-02-21T22:48:00.004-05:00

***

February 3rd, 2011 -- "3:44PM, Geranium observation #1, late winter, 2011"

2011-02-03T18:20:00.002-05:00

"3:44PM, Geranium observation #1, late winter, 2011"

"Damp, white, red, pink petals chilling in a literal sense against a thin pane of storm glass. The natural press of a plants reach. Many chunky leaves with a fine, grown fur. Fine fur like a kiwi, like soft skin smelling like organic, chemical life. A miniature forest of lime green, the slender stems giving way near the base to rough casings of hard, bending, plant branches. The tray sitting wide with many planters, small boxes of black plastic, dusty with light brown potter's soil. Yellowing, dead leaves dropped flat in piles in the dirt. Dirt taking leaves to make them part of the system of the room. The sill covered in water spots. The watering can, an empty soda bottle. "

***

January 13th, 2011 -- "Palace"

2011-01-13T07:33:00.002-05:00

"Palace"

***

January 12th, 2011 -- "Super"

2011-01-12T22:38:00.000-05:00

"Super"

***

January 3rd & 4th, 2011

2011-01-04T20:53:00.003-05:00

January 4th, 2011 -- "Altair IV"

The speed and stream of the bubbles and the vivid pink of the cylinder left the four scientists amazed. Was this really it?

***

January 3rd, 2011 -- "The Batman"

***

January 2nd, 2011 -- "The Star Chutes and The Worlds Below"

2011-01-02T19:46:00.007-05:00

"The Star Chutes and The Worlds Below"

A fine, swirling mist.
Massive strings of hot, cosmic space stuff.
Rings of blue hot radioactivity.
Crisp cracks of radio chatter.
The cold expanses of starry, black nothings.
In space, a light blue gray speck of space station.
Planets thick with choking atmospheres.
The multitude of debris and ghostly particles of worlds long past.
The painful freeze of disintegrating energy in the shadows of heavenly bodies.
Many men and women drawn bright white against black like little dots of spit in space.

A sun.
Many suns.
Stars of globed, orange fire, pulsing and alive, each with a place to sit.

This is their home.

City-sized blasts of space metal rotating slowly in an insane tumble.
Hair-like streams of fading space gas, the contrails of the quickly moving.
The blackened and fired morsels of silhouetted earths.
The ancient, the storied.
Small points of lacked light blotting out the surfaces of nearby stars.
The pull and struggle of time against the weight and the vertiginous relativity of objects, the confused distance seconds travel through space with no one in it.

Distance:
The idea of distance between the worlds.
Vast stretches of things with nothing nearby to tell the difference.
Many things in much space with little outward importance.
Ideas of destinations as things set aside,
islands of reality, the disconnection of the crucial.

In it all, white spots.

***

January 1st, 2011 -- "The Year of The Rabbit"

2011-01-01T19:03:00.002-05:00

"The Year of The Rabbit"

***

December 30th, 2010 -- "Galaxies from Kitchen Spice"

2010-12-30T22:51:00.008-05:00

"Galaxies from Kitchen Spice"

Belinda held her magnificent hands in the bright, soft light over the dish, her large bands and bangles jangling half-dull, heavy with gold as she worked, sparkling with all manner of earthly jewel, clinking rich with music as if to accompany, seeming forever timeless in the air in the night with the precious, imbued quality of old jewelry.

The children watched as the old woman they had known for years as the quiet, curious merchant in the corner apartment; as the old, kind, storied woman seemed to take hold of the dusty swirl of colorful, glowing, desert spices with invisible strings, things drawing impossible, fragile power from her fingertips and connecting to the edges of the matter in the bowl.

She paused for a moment in the light of the dish and the candles, as if to steady or remind herself - all of this warm, mind you, all of this calm and serene and nearly melodic under the full moon beaming bright, cool blue through the window, the stuff on the plate spinning idly in cosmic circles, every so often a bit of it flaring up with the light sound of a burning leaf and grouping together in a spitball of bright, tiny light, the feathers of fire reaching thin from the tips of candles in the corner glowing orange on the surfaces of rich emeralds, the entire room a soft, vital red.

She spread her fingers wide and lifted the thing with magic unknown to the children. Like a small tent, the tiny dunes of kitchen flavoring rose high above the plate into a new dimension. Now, what had previously been an incredibly flat pool of dry magic took life as the fired dust expanded and broke free in its small form from the thin strings to build out into a small, living galaxy.

***

December 24th, 2010 -- "Walter's Dapper Holiday"

2010-12-24T02:01:00.010-05:00

Tinsel. Silver tinsel and egg-shaped bulbs. Bright, metallic garlands run with tinsel draped over blinking glass. Shimmering, spidery rivers of plastic ornaments in bounding rows. Hooping arrangements of colorful, ornate globes. The mysterious, glowing caverns found in the warm gaps near the trunk of the thing. Thin strings of stale, blooming popcorn. The clear smell of candy canes and evergreen. His suit, neat and mauve. The grandfather clock in the shady corner by the window facing out to a holiday parade on main street floors below, 4pm.

***

December 23rd, 2010 -- "Welled"

2010-12-23T00:39:00.009-05:00

"Welled"

***

December 22nd, 2010 -- "Nathan Tyler, Ocarina of Time"

2010-12-22T17:57:00.006-05:00

"Nathan Tyler, Ocarina of Time"

In an interview, Nathan Tyler once remarked that the quality of everything old-seeming to feel as if it had a fine layer of chalk, not dust or death, he said, but chalk, forms a fine example in the winter months, the months where the coldly bright and the awful wind draws everything out and thin, where the objective of most men is to appreciate the wet dark wood of the dead season from the dry inside, to keep the murk and the dreariness for the air of the wilds and to keep everything on the inside of things arid and hot with fire, there accentuating and perpetuating - or, rather, he went on to elaborate, continuing, preserving the effect of dry, clean, chalky, old, as he would have it, effects - old books, clean pages, dry socks, cool sheets that skiff above mattresses with the most complete of airy sounds.

He talked of days by the window, the days he would sit by the electric, breathy film of cool atmosphere near the dusty panes and wonder about the sheer amounts of sunlight bringing a cold, halved illumination to the boxy room. He would remark about the absurd glow of a world so frozen, the strangely alive light, he explained, that remains and pours outward when the world goes to sleep for months. All the while wondering this, he would, as he said, close in on the glass, real close, and keep his nose in the airy cold for long enough of a moment to feel the moisture bounce from the tip of his face to the window pane as frosty dew, small snowflakes that never make it. Tiny circles of human fog, he stated quite plainly, as if the thought had been with him for a while, would hug the outside through clear plate for some seconds before giving up and vanishing completely.

Once done with the interview, Nathan adjusted the left lapel of his wool coat and continued with his coffee.

***

December 21st, 2010 -- "Reggie"

2010-12-21T19:50:00.003-05:00

"Reggie"

***

December 20th, 2010

2010-12-20T23:36:00.007-05:00

"The First of Ten Trillion"

With a fleshy, ozone burp, the small point of light in the center of the room spilled out of itself into a watery sphere of tight, light, liquid fire. Miles away, the windows of the seventy-second floor pulsed a strange, dull green, subdued by the UV screens of the laboratory's solar shields. By dawn, the planet would be no more than a small stream of molten solids in a huge, new sun, and the history of the two doctors' brief experiment with formula A would remain only in the scratchy, desperate radio transmissions sent last-minute and ahead of the initial, explosive pop and growl of the newly-formed star.

"....-hnson! Th-...-an't control th-.....slipping out of the d-sh! LOOK! LOO--..."

***

December 16th, 2010

2010-12-18T00:02:00.003-05:00

"visions of 2025"

A cell phone rumbles on a wood desk in the close dark of a side bedroom, the air of it dry and hot. Stiff warmth from a small, clanking radiator vibrates off dusty paintmetal to make stuffy, invisible odors, air that hangs in the room like a quiet, tasteless soup. The dark is mixed by climbing, slanted, salty light that slides up, over, and through distant trees set far back behind sleeping houses, light in through dusty panes, flimsy like clear paper, cold and stuck in wood, a twinkling sunlight that doesn't bend or gather in pools on the plaster white of the far wall, far off blinks that code the morning in hot yellow on the cold black green of waving trees. The winter is the future.

***

December 9th, 2010

2010-12-09T18:34:00.008-05:00

"10:34pm, on the 130th Floor of the Faucet Street Apartment Tower in Downtown Riverbank, HAN-ter01; October 28th, 2034"

On the night of the 28th - a Tuesday - it was cold, wet. Mona stood chilled in the modest back bedroom of her cube apartment and filled a brown suitcase as best she could with clothes. With each armful, she allowed the pile to dip down an inch and spring back up with a light, careless toss that seemed nearly pleasant, while Mona scrambled back to gather up shirts and paper and clothes hangers in a frantic, balled fist.

Outside, time was ticking bright in the clouds over the skyline of buildings blackened into silhouettes.

The other cities were quicker, she thought - went quicker. She had heard from her sister in 03. There was never any real warnings beyond rumors. It was said there was a light light, a tight shriek, a breath inward, a small, arterial pop, and you were gone, just like that, everyone gone. This idea did not sit well, and her ears popped lightly. She began to weep. More clothes.

The crowd in the square was much larger now, and the large displays showed maps and evacuation routes out of the city, the screens beaming bright, hot, purple slants of shifting glow through a sprayed mist on the surge of people too stupid or too stubborn to run. One woman flipped the screens the bird and shouted something awful, another looked skyward at a distinct kind of mindless nothing and wept, many others just watched - millions of glassy eyes in watery awe, a horde of the dead before dying in their city, their shouts and worries mixed together perfectly into a monotone song that, at a distance, could be mistaken for an ocean.

Mona's fingers hurt, were sliced and banged up in places where she wasn't careful. Her hands shook as she snapped the lid shut and grabbed the case. She hefted it with a certain amount of strength and, all at once, all of the lights in her apartment flicked off. Everything was, momentarily, very quiet and far off.

In the distance, the long sounds of losing power danced along down the street as, one by one, the impossibly large, steel brothers of the city switched off with huge, solid, thumping sounds. BUMPF! BUMPF! BUMPF! BUMPF!

Mona stood in her apartment at last, suitcase in hand, the effacement of accommodating light complete, the only light in her life now being that which hung in a shroud above the world, a choking smoke the color of pneumonia. The electric yellow light of weapons flashed distant and little on the horizon. The light, bumping sounds of explosions played a small symphony of lights in the sky.

She looked out the large plate of her front window and noted the crowd now darkened in the absence of power. So far down and confused, the sea rolled away in streams of running, some scared, some just very simply in a hurry.

The suitcase was heavy in her left hand. Her right hand lay still over her mouth, covering the inaudible expression of shock.

Pop.

***

December 8th, 2010

2010-12-08T21:31:00.002-05:00

"Hy"

Small.
Gray and small.
Brown with wet-looking spots of spiked, dry, and oily animal hair.
A small face with a small laugh.
Pearl teeth that grin past a small, simple, pitch-black smile.
A coat in the heat.
Ears.
Two small, round ears the color of young coal.
Straight patches of long, white hairs that grow out of the head like thin sawgrass, trembling in fragile strands of body hair when it's time to run.
Small feet.
Padded bits of chocolate kisses that make tiny dashes in orange piles of earth.
Hot blood, glassy and red on the dog.

***

December 7th, 2010

2010-12-07T21:14:00.000-05:00

"X-Ray"

***

December 3rd, 4th, 5th, & 6th, 2010

2010-12-06T13:52:00.005-05:00

"dreaming as the last bastion of good hope"

The thing was dead.

The brain of the thing, the silent thing, the metal, boxy, quiet figure of hot gold, sat clean and vibrating in wiry aluminum grips in the inside dark of the thing's head, hung firmly in place by tight, bright, dangling supports of thin metal. Accompanied within by a peculiarly sweet smell, like oranges, citrus, the brain of the thing on the inside of that thing's head twinkled with the microscopic and slow flashes of liquid, living glows, soft, mixed lights running in slow rivers as it dreamed warmly.

Better would be to say that the thing was not alive - animated, but not officially among the living; thinking, careful, aware of the world around it through synthetic endings of electric touch, but not of spontaneous life, not from the loins of humankind, but from instead its tables, from the categories of science that smash together to produce wildly imaginative ideas that end up thinking on their own.

Warm dreams. Dreams of flashing air and pumped stuff. The pleasant and screeching sounds from within a mind within a head within a box that produce heated light behind the things eyes. Animals. Bright, neon creatures - or, better, animations that dance in exotic leaps by fires in the dark. Wide open spaces and illusory landscapes that blow out time like a candle, leaving the thing alone in that world as a thing present. Spaces that stretch out and never stop expanding. A figure that twinkles in the lights of the dreams and observes.

A flicker, a twitch, the slow-rolling and tiny roars of enclosed motors brought to whirs, and the thing comes to life, giving rise to gold body and colored wire that lurches forward and up and out with a punch. Directives stream in ticker tapes that line the special kind of invisible in the air in front of it. Unknown servos make the arms and legs to move in fluid, jerky movements that betray the grace of the followed dream. Thick steams gush from vents with the sound of choking or puking, and the thing is gone in the violent display of hurried, directed action, the calm, singular voice of the dream swept for a time into the insignificant floats of nothing behind the something.

***

"9:32pm, McDonald's, Boston"

The large man stands in line in a sport jacket smelling strongly like after shave, his jacket frayed in random places to suggest some amount of calm time. He jiggles a wallet out of the back pocket of his worn, loose slacks and thumbs it open with a soft clap. He parts the middle and whispers out a few bills. All ones. Counting them twice, carefully, he stops for a breath of a moment that most would miss to do the worried math.

Is there enough?

***

"Sun and Lake"

All that is offered by the sun is left to spread in the early hour of the evening like milk across ripples of water.

***

"GOLD RUSH"

The dust of the day rose up in puffs of vapor sand as the new river bolted from the gapped recesses where dynamite punched through mountainside. The clear cold of the west river pushed the sand into piles of slick mud and tore away layers of sediment to reveal the gleaming yellow of everything Rupert had bet his life and family on. He reached down, grabbed at the rusted buckle of his screening pan, and dismounted with tears in his eyes.

***

December 2nd, 2010

2010-12-02T02:03:00.007-05:00

"Flight Simulation, 1998"

Larry stopped along the way to scratching the tip of his nose to tighten the sleeve loosely rolled one half of an inch above his left elbow. He reached over and grabbed at the cotton blue of the shirt, his aviator's watch catching white, glassy sunlight in a flat dial and sending it in an upward beam toward the cabin's padded, upholstered ceiling in a perfect circle. He grouped the handful of shirt into itself firmly, making a small, neat roll like a small, hallway runner, folded the unbuttoned cuff in toward his arm, and went on to scratch his nose as the small aircraft's engine breathed small, precise amounts of fire in a steady hum behind the cockpit's dash.

The divorce had been finalized last week. On the eve of his new life, Larry sat in a hotel room in Bangor, Maine with a TV Guide open in his lap. A warming cup of soda sat in a wet ring on wood by the desk lamp creating a dark, slick circle next to a pile of crappy, cork coasters.

He stared from bed at the soft, off-set, dark gray of the pulp newsprint pages in his lap as a phone pressed between his left ear and shoulder grew hot. The slanted, bright, yellow light from the hotel 60-watt in the lamp next to him lit the room up to his elbow and made everything else seem that much more dark. Every couple of minutes, Larry flashed the phone to keep it from blaring inactive in his ear as he waited to never make a call. Across from him and the bed, the large television set sat square and quiet in the entertainment center - off.

The plane bucked playfully as Larry brought it about thirty degrees to the east. The horizon glided in a tilt to the sky without any real weight, and light from the sun poured at angles that would seem strange in a room from the ground, with licks of soft, healthy light fingering their way in from the small, bullet windows to form pleasant bangles on objects throughout the cabin. The world shifted effortlessly beyond the glass, the sounds of it drowned out by the constant song of small-body flight.

November 30th & December 1st, 2010

2010-12-01T19:10:00.003-05:00

"2:13PM in a Parking Lot in New England in the Winter"

The cold, bumpy iron of the dark gray handrail seemed to glow backwards in the shade of the roof's overhang as the bright snow behind it created a blanketing wet so complete, taking the place of everything dry. The air, thin, denied the fat and the warm of the world, fading the dark, black treeline across the lot into a velvet.

In bursts of time over the course of the afternoon, cars mumble to life under packed snow and let it all slide off like sweat.

***

"November Men"

***

November 29th, 2010 -- "Life in the Sun, 1894"

2010-11-29T14:12:00.002-05:00

"Life in the Sun, 1894"

Todd placed his tools in the dirty dry of the wood bin, the heavy things hitting the cracking, splintering planks with a heavy metal clank, a hollow plop and metallic tumble as they rolled over each other awkwardly in a slide to the leaned side of the rusty cart, the dipped end frying in the sun and mixing in the brightness of it all in a near-white beige like a far off dynamite fire. Shade cut the shape of the box in sharp triangles that led off and out of the cart to the cooling ground beneath. Far off sounds of many bugs in heat filled the sweating air with an electric, living hum, a moving buzz with frantic shifts in tone, a sound with a smell.

It was 1894, he was thirty-six years old, and Grover Cleveland was the president of the nation. Todd had purchased the plot of land he was working as part of an expanded, free, labor deal that allowed for the buying of land on the cheap for the purposes of cultivating a thriving, rural economy in otherwise arid, tough regions - places of grit and salt, places where you grow things far in the damp ground deep down under the dry tops near the sun.

Potatoes. Peanuts. Legumes. Tubers. Candy from the planet that will turn a buck pretty slowly and steadily until there is no hot weather left in the tank, until the water from the world tosses itself up and into the air and comes back down in the frigid snap of winter as bright white, a hoary toss down a windy flume that puts all activity to sleep for months.

Sweating, Todd pulled liquid off the back of his neck with one hand while swiping away the cooling wet on his chest under the sun-bleached bandana around his neck. He pulled at the fingers of his gloves, took them off, clapped them together, and tossed them into the cart with the tools. Black, glossy leather and worn patches of light brown animal skin heated immediately in the bright in the back of the cart as Todd picked up the rig by the handles.

Two o'clock hot, wood wheels bolstered by plates and pins over blasted rocks, the shifting sounds of shoes that need a cobbler, dust-colored everything.

Todd walked home, ate an early supper, and spent the rest of the hot evening on the porch with a stinky pipe, smoking slowly and watching the nineteenth century count away before nightfall.

November 28th, 2010, not to mention some previously neglected works from the past two weeks or so...

2010-11-28T18:47:00.012-05:00

"The Ocean as a Comfortable and Forced Transition"

The wonder in his mind and in his head in the sand by the sea was made huge by the tides of water lapping in hushed pulls as he sat - or, better - sank in sand, the sand the last smile of the land before cupping or being cupped by the ocean. The great sun in the sky screened the beach in a film of hazy, salt yellow that made everything leading to the water feel very close and very hot, made from some gel of the land, some firm, juiced air with a body smell and real weight, a substance that could be better used to describe the junk pulled away from sleepy eyes in the heat of a room before noon, the lisping smack of a morning mouth thick with old spit and the taste of yesterday's garlic.

He had arrived at a line of change, an event marked by the animated horizon of dark and clear, salty liquid, the line of the land with regard to the sea, the cut and overlap of old water made new by movement, all swirls of excited, bubbled air and swells of cold water from the blind, silent deep.

There was a freshness, here, a dark collection of pools bright cold above packed, ancient mud. In a line, the air changed from thick and close and buzzing to something ultimately cleaner, something more open on the water with a missing weight, a misty day of blue gray clean backed by the electric pop of light behind floating water. Walk into that water to cut the line and feel the halving, the distinct split from bright discomfort and entrance into a coldly spraying clean, a curing mist that would dew lightly on top of small arm hairs to mix temperatures with the traveling blood below.

Pulling himself up and out of the sticking sand, the man clapped the bumpy dust from his hands and thighs. He bladed away patches of itchy salt from tanned dips in his shoulder bones and thought about the long walk through land that had come to this line, this forced place where things change without so much of a plan to consider it expected or good or bad or anything subjective like that. White turned blue, hot into clean cool. He got to his feet and stretched, the sun swearing into his back and sweat with a gradual, burning yawn, the ocean ahead of him roaring in an impossibly large and flat pile of much and dark, comforting weight. He neared the edge, there a filling wind, the hinted connection to the streams of quick and moving whispers offshore that travel along waves in bumped trajectories, purposeless, completely benign and without forced direction. In with a dive.

***

November 14th - 27th, more or less...

November 15th, 2010 -- "Forever Celebrating"

2010-11-15T21:54:00.006-05:00

"Forever Celebrating"

The blue black darkwater in the ocean turns emerald green and then white with a hush as it sweeps over dots of sand packed wet and hard in a flat cake to make up a salty ocean bar. The sky, a smack of pale, comfortable periwinkle, sits high and large and unobtrusively in the sky on the brink of the cosmos, playing as a kind of watcher, some kind of backdrop slapped back as far as it could be to hold everything that's real or far off in one large and blue sound that could not ever become confused or be confused for anything else.

The smells are everywhere. The churning of the ocean at the end of its lap, the salty smell of waves giving up to gravity and falling with a slap of water on rocks and sand. The cool smell, the clear smell of water dripping in the dark places between jetty breakers, the clear sting of the water's drop's life in a brief salt whiff before dropping in and mixing with everything forever. Everything is clear.

The young woman dressed in a warm-black swipe of deep and heated cloth stands barefoot in the drier piles of beige by the dunes, bits of lime green and dead grasses folded or twisted into soft bends that poke for a time through the soft of the beach earth before being shifted by clean feet that hang down naked from garments made for celebration. Some distance beyond the dunes are the beginnings of feasts being righted in circles of stone dug down inches into the salty shakes of the beach. Adults, groups of sweating men and focused women, gather in crouches by the bright beginnings of bonfires and add things in piles to smoke. They grab at ingredients with dark, smooth hands. For all the motion, there is hardly a sound above the constant sharing of the sea.

Above, a star gleams yellow through the dying soft blue of the mid-afternoon in a pinpoint and flickers in place to herald in the night.

***

October 30th, 2010

2010-10-30T22:29:00.001-04:00

"The Impossible Braid"

October 28th & 29th, 2010 -- HALLOWEEKEND (and Thursday, plus two...)

2010-10-29T22:39:00.002-04:00

"GOD HELP US ALL"

By the time he had come to, the charring was complete.

The wrecked skeleton of the house leaned in on its foundation on the hill against the fading light of the surrounding, remaining bits of inferno in the backyard. Chokes of smoke puked up brown from the flooded basement, becoming an intense, blood red in the sky that hung for a while like a thick ceiling.

He sat up and leaned on one elbow. At last, it was over, and there were only a few points of horror left to remind him of what had almost gone terribly wrong - the rusty 1986 F150 in the driveway with its windows sprayed in gore; flicked, gold casings from the shootout; the damned, dead dog, that loud, yipping bastard. What once looked like a calm house nestled in a hill by Rt. 12 now looked unbelievably like the cratered battlefield of some far-off military nightmare.

He adjusted himself and ran the side of his hand up his arm, blading some stinking mud off his soaked shirt. He winced and bit down hard as the ball of his palm bounced out and on past a bad bullet graze. He grabbed at it hard, surprised at the warmth that spread over his hand as fresh blood poured through the gaps in his grip. His eyes closed hard on themselves as his mouth formed an unnatural grimace that almost resembled an insane smile. He jumped to his feet and starting punching his head and chest while bringing his body into a tight clench. Beads of sweat and mud and blood ran down his forehead and into his eyes and he was furious.

"They almost got me! They almost got me! They almost got me! They almost got me! They almost got me! They almost got me! They almost got me! They almost got me! They almost got me! They almost got me! They almost got me!..."

At once, he froze in a snap, silent, hunched over, impossibly solid. His eyed popped open somewhere in the dark and widened into something terribly calm. His grimace seemed to melt downward in slow motion to form something horrible and insanely dangerous.

In a voice that almost resembled that of a raspy little girl, he whispered something demonic into the black treeline and sprinted quietly into the night.

Hours later, a faint and ungodly giggling could be heard somewhere horrible.

***

"Dave Andrews, abduction escapee"

"You look up into the night sky and you see...what? What do you see?

People do that, right? They look up into the sky and they watch for their favorite shapes, right? Look, there's the Big Dipper or that lion shit-for-brains, whatever his name is. Yeah, they do that. They do it, because they don't know what's gliding between those dots, the horribly silent minds that travel in straight lines to do horrible things with their sick lights. Hell, I used to do it, too. Won't catch me doing that anymore, though, not without a gun and a bullet.

Won't take me alive, again. Can't. They just can't.

Hit me again?"

***

"Devil"

"I...I don't know what you're asking, here..."

Mark adjusted his tie and gulped hard on the dry air of the train car. He was sweating. Looking around, he realized that no one else appeared to notice the small, chattering man to his right. Heads down. Earbuds pressed firmly into place. Heavy bestsellers resting pages-up in laps of people looking blandly across the cab into the windows at the attractive people sitting next to them.

Moments ago, the old woman in the seat had gotten up to wander out into the night, leaving this odd being with its strange fade and calm, ancient, red eyes.

Later, Mark would recall that it wasn't the insanity of the situation but the odd way the thing's lips seemed to jump around into crazy smiles and grins that had disquieted him the most. That odd way, of course, and the rows of horrible, horrible teeth.

He never had a chance.

***

"The Back Room"

After closing, the small shop, in the city of life, in the by-day-busy market now darkened and slicked with dew, swirled with hot twirls of the multicolored smokes of things that had been dried centuries ago and brought to burn in front of the future pictured in the orb. Nimble hands sliced quiet through the air around the radiant thing as entranced eyes stared into the humming red of the back room's decoration.

"Oh yes, I see it now. I seeeeeeeeee."

Outside in the sky, the moon, full and bright, seemed to intensify as it rose slowly into the night.

The hands of the wild soothsayer continued for much time before stopping abruptly. All light ran quickly from the room through the front door, and a room that had once been organic and alive with magic exhaled in the dark, empty and whistling with dust.

***

October 26th & 27th, 2010

2010-10-27T22:00:00.002-04:00

October 27th, 2010 -- "row eight, seat six"

The spotty rain of that Sunday morning sprayed the window of the train in broken, diagonal streaks against the green-gray sky that smelled like lightning. It was a tired ten in the morning, and her legs were pressed up in sharp, numb bends against the squeaky dark blue of the seat in front of her. Tinny music came from the white buds leading in hoops to her ears. Next to her, a brown, leather bag hung open across the seat, showing books and a phone.

The train rolled in jerks to a slight stop, and she left, leaving a squeezed coffee cup in between the seat and the wall.

***

October 26th, 2010 -- "GET INSIDE!"

Agnes squeezed her head through the curtains at the last, possible second and pressed her head to the wall by the small, slot window in the green iron. She grabbed the handle of the slide and slammed it to the left with a clank. Outside, the event had begun.

"Please, Matthew! Quick! Quick!"

***

October 25th, 2010 -- "Far Away From The Sun, Listening for Everything Space Has to Offer"

2010-10-25T22:09:00.015-04:00

"Far Away From The Sun, Listening for Everything Space Has to Offer"

It's odd, he thought.

You know, the scraping sensation that arrives when tearing through space, the tingling waves of bits of bright light that run lines down your body like white spit. They press in at high speed in a freckled sheet between you and the black of space to make the sharp form of a man from nothing, a zooming, traveling shadow in the night sky, silent, breathing, sparkling at its edges where small suns meet oil black along the razor side of a plain line.

It had been a small explosion, something that had a foundation in some cold, tank air - nothing fiery or lethal like a hydrogen spit or a chemical wash. It had been small and it had been just enough to shoot him out through the hatch door and into space with a cosmic pop!

The first few minutes were madness, a silent scream in slow motion that hung in the air like a dropped plate seconds before detonating into countless little things that no one ever wants to pick up. There was a cringe, a hunch, the gut-wrenching tingle at the ends of fingertips as hands reaching out for a purchase find nothing but nothing in nothing. In the night, far away from the unmanned station to properly give up, he brought his legs to his chest snugly and rolled in a straight line like an infant for miles while passing out slowly.

He awoke by Saturn and did his best to decide on some kind of "up" for himself. Calm or defeated or both, he closed his eyes and rubbed the soft of his suit with his rubbery gloves, making a noise that sounded like cleaning an empty tub. His stomach grumbled. It reminded him that dinner had been at 1900, whenever that had been, whichever day that had been, however long ago that was that would decide how much longer he had left to go in the starry slick.

The radio in his suit's helmet sizzled without much change for hours, and the sound reminded him of sleep.

***

(This blog turned one on the 16th!) October 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, & 20th.

2010-10-20T01:01:00.007-04:00

"Math"

Scarf sat at the table in the corner of the club and twirled a salt shaker between his hand and the hardwood. The light from the lantern in front of him was cut in half by his head on its way to the wall where it splashed in warm red on brightly leafed wallpaper. Inside, the salt looked like hot pink. By the lamp on the wall, menus rested in gooey piles of laminated paper stained and wrinkled by syrupy, brown alcohol and fruit juice. Packets of sugar and bits of coffee grounds pressed in a group in slots by the napkins. By those, a few bic pens ground up by teeth on the end.

By his hand, the check. "Thanks!"

The plan was simple.

***

"Preserves"

Wendy opened the shitty pantry. A breeze led on by the opening door came running in through the window on the adjacent wall. Tufts of fine hair fluttered in wind like white feathers on small forehead as fragile hands let go of the door. The jars glassed and clinked on shelves that lined up along the wall like a storefront.

Her eyes scanned the room, worried. This was all she had.

***

"a healthy realization of self worth in the face of personal and biting adversity, as well as an unexpected boost of self esteem and loss of cowardice due to pop rap"

Zipping his bag up, he thought about what noise it would make, the tying up of all the ends of his life like fat shoelaces long left untied. The headphones went on, and it came to him.

Ffft!

***

"The Creep's Admirable Statement of Purpose"

Sliding and smiling out of the dark with an unnatural rapidity, The Creep, at a speed, tempo, and intensity comparable to his emergence, said it.

I wake up in the morning wishing for the decimation of my mortal enemies.

As if sucked down a sick drain like the last bit of dirty liquid in a bunk, basement sink, he was gone into the murk doing God knew what, he stink of murder gone with him.

***

"Blind Date"

The Crass Ass ended up being able to offend three waiters and a customer by the bar before offering a buck to The Jerk for the check.

She looked up, shocked.

Six months later, they were married.

***

"Sar For Sil Map Boff Hos"

The ancient's eye flicked open with a sound faintly reminiscent of swordmetal.

***

"Sinister Nothing"

Spinning around at once in the road, the young girl saw nothing in the spot where the noise came from, which was almost worse, because something is something, and you have to deal with it, but nothing seems like nothing and could be something unseen, something that needs to be found out or run from!

The girl chose to run.

Big mistake.

***

October 9th, 10th, & 11th, 2010

2010-10-11T18:19:00.002-04:00

October 9th, 2010 -- "Sunshine, Inc."

***

October 10th, 2010 -- "Avid Stephen King Fan"

***

October 11th, 2010 -- "Survival Horror"

***

October 8th, 2010 -- "5"

2010-10-08T21:05:00.001-04:00

October 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, & 7th

2010-10-07T22:23:00.004-04:00

"Nudity"

At the lip of the cliff near the coast, the granite arched up into the sky on tiers of its own thick rock before passing off into nothing to drop to the sea.

William kept his hands at his sides and enjoyed the air, the dry and cold ocean gusts mixed with breaks of intense, direct warmth from the sun. Underfoot were broken and bent strands of coarse dune grass that broke through the rocks turned to sand to grab the light by the ocean. They poked and tickled the rough of his soles like hay.

Today was his birthday. His present to himself was to be naked.

***

"Morgan Freeman"

***

"Skittles"

***

"Richard's Autumn Apple"

Crap, he said, as the fruit tumbled into the gravel by the road.

***

"Untitled?"

***

"The Rite of the Sun Eater"

The ink black of the desert landscape burned cold in the arid night of the third moon. The purple of the sky pressed flat against the line of the horizon with a weight that pushed the rocks into deep holes in the dry dirt. Added was a silence in the atmosphere that could be brought down in hands like wet cloth and balled up into a massive thing, a heavy thing worth holding and noting and measured.

It was his night, his rite. Staring off into the east, the older man breathed slow and regular. His eyes fixed on a point and watched the gentle shift of light sift upward as sugary purple gave way to blood red. Gold leaked up and through the air in streams as the nearest star tickled the edge of the world.

Hot white exploded in the east, giving way to a tremendous pop of light!

***

October 1st, 2010 -- "Yards of Roses!"

2010-10-01T19:27:00.004-04:00

Little kid darted past two defender bullies on the scrabbled concrete behind the grocer's to score a lonely touchdown in the early cold wet of October.

***

September 29th & 30th, 2010

2010-09-30T22:27:00.001-04:00

September 25th, 26th, 27th, & 28th

2010-09-28T22:03:00.003-04:00

September 28th, 2010 -- "Frog Soup"

"This is my favorite table, hands down - hands down, lady. Know what I'm saying? They cook the food over there, see? See that? They come through that door with the tray, and I don't even have to wait long for it. They come through the door and they bring the tray and I'm just happy.

It's what I got going for me, you know?

Take the place down the street, right? You go to a place like that and you wait, what, forty minutes? You wait all that time and you get crap. You get less than crap. You order chicken and they bring you more dinner rolls with shit gravy on them. You order clam chowder and you get shark's blood. You want a steak? Get the hell out. 'Get the hell out, right now,' is what they'd say; and they wouldn't have to say that shit to me. I'd be out before they could kill the damn cat.

I'm good with this. They know me here. This is good.

You know what you want?"

***

September 27th, 2010 -- "Dream Sand"

The dream is usually the same.

***

September 26th, 2010 -- "Hank"

The cave's entrance had barely allowed for the many slabs of crude iron strapped to his back and arms.

Hank did not mind. Many dragons. Little time.

***

September 26th, 2010 -- "Cobwebs"

He stood in the relative dim of the half busted vanity mirror and stared. The cobwebs by the ceiling , long since abandoned by their previous inhabitants and covered by time in gray and stagnant particles, had taken to waving lightly in the air like ghost cloth.

It had been years, he thought, since he had stopped off after work to do anything. Visit a friend. Watch a movie. His life hadn't become work, but it hadn't become anything else, either. His days were filled with moments like these, these times of pause and bland wonderment. Look at the dust collected in sheets like lint. Watch the food in the fridge. Make sure that dish is clean. Grocery shop and like it.

The neon sign out in the night by his window flickered with a zapping sound in the hot night, and George felt a sweaty calm as he made his way through the room to his chair. He slapped the top of the tv on the way by to shoo the gremlins, a procedure that he had more faith in than God.

He grabbed the remote. Eight o'clock.

***

September 23rd & 24th, 2010

2010-09-24T06:49:00.002-04:00

September 23rd, 2010 -- "Night Buzzard"

Timothy turned the heavy key in the lock and lifted the latch on his front door. The ocean salt from the sea had entered the air enough to do a number on the metal hardware. The latch groaned to a click and left the door floating outward into the night.

His arm went out first, guided by the bright square of light in his great uncle's lantern. The sea fog collected in slow, thin sheets on the flake glass and brass of the box lantern as Timothy brought his head and shoulders past the door's threshold. Bravely, he brought a step out onto the dirt and looked around. The smell of ocean rain permeated the soupy black of his front lawn. It was strangely still.

The sounds had been horrible, the loud slapping of soft wings on air, guided by a voiceless and bald wrinkle of a head. He could imagine, worried and from his study, the black beads for eyes, the plain hook beak, the terrible disarray of mottled feathers. What is dead enough on the beach to bring such a blighted bird, he thought, is dead enough to cause any man a substantial and warranted amount squeamishness.

The word blanched the corners of his mind as he stood still as a cricket stirred by noise in the night - "death"!

***

September 24th, 2010 -- "Sitter"

Carl pulled his sleeves up to his shoulders to let the sun in and pressed his back against the tarred brick of the building's back. His break would end in a minute or two. He'd be back to work in the air conditioning and the bright lights. For now, the slow burn of the sun worked well enough.

***

September 22nd, 2010 -- "Diet Soda"

2010-09-22T18:00:00.004-04:00

Angela stood by the window in the kitchen and checked her sport watch. Four o'clock. She sighed lightly and looked out past the yard. Some sparrows flew quickly from the bushes to the roof of the shed and then back again in a kind of play.

She held the glass with ice with both hands and stayed in place for what seemed like an eternity before grabbing her leather purse and car keys from the table and going.

***

September 21st, 2010 -- "PREDATOR"

2010-09-21T20:57:00.001-04:00

September 20th, 2010 -- "Spider's Tale, as told by candlelight and hours past closing at Callahan's Lost Pub."

2010-09-20T23:06:00.005-04:00

All of the mugs of ale on the large and dusty oak table were warming in the dim light of the soft candles. Their owners were sitting heavy in their seats, relaxed, large men with large beards and dense clothing, sitting and wondering deeply as the story proceeded, breathing carefully and steady, leaning like children on creaky chair arms and elbows or table plank.

Spider sat at the head of the table and spoke softly. His eyes twinkled like fresh water next to the flame of the nearest candle. His speech was uninterrupted and spoke of spectacular marvels, epically proportioned accounts of near-death adventures and glamorous heroism. The crescendos of his sentences would climax with a slap or sweep of the table, maybe some pantomiming, all of which resulting in the combined gasping of the captivated audience. Tipped mugs would end up replaced lazily by their distracted owners.

From outside, the din of the story was held back by thick, wood walls; the glow of the candles a faint orange square from a distance. The woods by the edge of the field were dark and cool in the blue night. Above, the moon moved.

***

September 19th, 2010 -- "A Searcher"

2010-09-19T19:41:00.001-04:00

September 18th, 2010 -- "Hawkesworth's Goblins"

2010-09-18T14:53:00.005-04:00

"Hawkesworth's Goblins"

The cold air of autumn caved in through the high window by the banister, pushing the curtains into the room to cast horrible shadows in the dying light of the fall. Louise, in her fright, had flown the coop through the door by the pantry, her loose day shoes clapping with panicked rhythm on the uneven linoleum tile in the kitchen. The screen door, with its rough, plank frame, swung shut with a wobbly bounce at the end, a loud smack against the molding and the creaking of old, gray hinges.

He stood eying the thing, for he dared not touch it! Where it had come from wasn't important, because it was there. Although, Hank had figured that it had somehow made its way in through the window from lord knows where.

It was there, then, in the cold, this thing with its many dark, thick feathers and its chattering beak, its voracious and horrifyingly unknown hunger. The eyes of it were beady and curious in nature. Hank wondered, days later, how something so hideous could be so calm of eye and frantic of body. It wasn't tall. That is to say: the thing wasn't standing tall. It was huddled into a bunch of wiry limbs that indicated just as well as its freakish nature the actual height of the thing. If it stood, it would be a man's height. In a ball and guarding itself and its true height, it hobbled around on the landing in the dark corner.

"Begone!"

Much to Hank's dismay after gathering so much courage to exclaim basic, panicked rubric, the thing caught his eye with a cold blaze. Hank felt uncomfortable in his skin. Cold, empty. He felt the power of his self-encouraged expounding leave him like liquid through tight cloth. He brought his arms down from his head and let them hang by his hip. The thing barked and lunged forward threateningly as Hank took a step backward. He tripped on his own heel and fell two steps to the ground, hitting his head as he fell against the hard wood with a "BUKK!" sound. He noted, on the way down, the violent flapping of the curtains as the autumn came in.

He awoke at dawn in a cold sweat and with a large goose egg at the base of his skull. The window that had, before, been wide open to let the pre-winter chill in was closed tightly and locked firm. Lights had been turned down. The sun, which had been setting behind the house hours previous, was now coming back around and up above the trees past the front door. Light was spilling in and long over the hard cobblestone of the atrium like bright milk.

The house was still, stuffy. The air was hot and wet and thick, as if a large meal were being prepared busily in the kitchen. There was even the smell of food. Although, Hank could neither place it as any specific kind nor make any argument for it being a pleasant aroma.

The silence, which he had upon waking not given much mind to, was buzzing; or was it buzzing? It was peculiar. The floorboards that he had given much consideration to over the years as being loud and creaky creaked no more. Neither that, nor did the hard leather of his shoes' heels crack and stick against the floor. There seemed to be an audible and blocking tone that he couldn't quite make out, something thick for the ear that was previously absent.

He made his groggy way through the dark back hall toward his room. Though he was oddly calm, he had not forgotten the event that had brought him to this daze. He remembered that thing, that servant of hell, whatever it was. He remembered its eyes and shut himself in his bed chamber. It was much cooler in his room, and thank heavens for that, he remarked quietly.

He pulled the lock closed. He donned his warm robe. He pulled the shades open to allow for more light. He thought more on it and brought a chair over to the knob of the door. He secured the bright maple back under the shining gleam of the brass knob and froze.

He could see the stiff drift of dark shadow cast from nearby on the other side of the door. He could feel a slight weight, a slight shift of air as something mimicked his slow movements from the other side of things. He could hear it, whatever it was. He could hear it through the thin pine of the door, its careful movement and its blinking eyes. He could hear it.

It was breathing.

***

September 17th, 2010 -- "Stoplight Dreaming"

2010-09-17T19:50:00.005-04:00

He sat in white furniture by a glass table in the shade and palmed the dry back of his tanned neck. It was two o'clock on a relaxing, Monday afternoon. Blue sky, few clouds. The traffic on the corner was light. Some sedans rolled slowly over gray bits of loud gravel, coming to a gentle stop just past the stop line. At green, dusty trucks coursed through the intersection like liquid lines of metal blocks. The sun was calm and slow and humming with the movement of the city.

Ben recalled, later, after waking up, the conversation of the people around him as being light and fair. Two women to his top right sat eating tiny club sandwiches while talking about car insurance, the sweat on their cups of seltzer rolling slowly into pools on the table. A man behind him sat at a half-eaten pile of salad, occupied mostly by the soothing quality of a good phone conversation with his father. The mixed sounds of lighthearted chatter melted into a pleasant buzz, accented only by the singing noises of plates being stacked, silverware being clinked.

He looked out above the intersection to the light and the sky above it. For some minutes he sat for lack of something more pressing to do. He watched the lights change. He watched the clouds form and dissipate behind them in a constant play with the ever-changing shade of light blue behind them. Ben sat and watched and breathed in some clean air before getting up to go.

***

September 13th, 14th, 15th, & 16th

2010-09-16T13:36:00.004-04:00

September 16th, 2010 -- "Ghost Walk"

The warm night bent across the world to meet with the sharp line of the white hot sand in the distance. For the cat, the night was like most others, where bits of ground gave way to padded feet with the soft swishing of dry dirt. Off in the distance and all around her, bands of faint color raked the dark sky for miles before reaching semblances of light.

***

September 15th, 2010 -- "The Soldiers of the 54th Ocean Regiment"

It was often suggested that the men and women of the 54th Ocean Regiment were, in the pointed absence of war previous to 2132, ill-prepared for the horrors besieging humanity. Some would claim laziness, others naivete or greed or cowardice. The soldiers were seen as inept. They were seen as nothing more than a nominal security task force hellbent on fulfilling contracts to keep up with life. Some would say that they had no idea, that they were clueless and doomed, that the sum of their combined merit would stand only as an armed formality in place of empty space on a battlefield.

They were expecting a humiliating defeat.

***

September 14th, 2010 -- "The TV Guide"

The low light of the den snapped off with the broken bulb, and Bob sat indifferent in the blue glow of the tube. The flat, square buttons on his control were rubbed round from years of use.

It wasn't always this way.

***

September 13th, 2010 -- "Falling Into the Nearest Sun"

One walked ahead of the other for the sake of making some kind of move to pass by the pause.

They had both sat for some time, watching, deciding for themselves which was closer. Which of the two was closer? Was one larger than the other? Were they looking at the dawn of one with the lingering of the other?

Beyond the quiet blank of intense heat could be heard the faintly interfering noise of much light, the shrouded sound of exploding fire brought to the volume a pin's drop dropping over and over again for the two's ears.

They stood and wondered and burned lightly over the course of the day.

***

September 12th, 2010 -- ""Frogger Champion"

2010-09-12T22:51:00.004-04:00

"Listen, I know that we're friends and all. I know that, okay? We've been friends for a long time, and we've been through a lot. We've seen a lot together. We've laughed, you know? We've ******* laughed. We've been through a ton, but I swear to god - I swear to ******* god, if you don't give me that quarter so I can play this next ******* game, if you don't put that ******* coin in my waiting ******* hand so I can attain a ******* level of ******* virtual amphibian glory, if you don't enrich me by twenty ******* five ******* cents, I will be so, so, so, so, so, so, so ******* sad.

I need this, man. I ******* need it."

***

September 9th, 10th, & 11th, 2010

2010-09-11T17:28:00.000-04:00

September 11th, 2010 -- "Twins of Steel"

The warm air of the summer had done them both well, Jarvis thought. Edward had a slight tan from the extended periods of time spent outside. They both seemed taller, thinner maybe. Jarvis could breathe easier and deeper for reasons he couldn't place with any kind of certainty. Soon would come the fall, the autumn, bringing with it bright colors leading into a cold snap. This was his favorite time of year, he thought as he smiled.

***

September 10th, 2010 -- "The Best is Yet to Come"

The long hallways of the monastery glowed as the hot white of the sun came in through small escapes in the stone facade of the building. David blinked along the slate footpath at a quick pace, reflecting off his robes with a kind of steady rhythm the lines of sunlight otherwise hitting the wall to his left. This was an important day for him, an important day for anyone dealing with the well in the courtyard. For weeks, it had been doing fantastic thing, remarkable things, things that deserved the kinds of attention that it was receiving.

He walked quickly with a calm mood, leaving behind him a swirling crowd of floating dust that lingered long in the warmth of the day.

***

September 9th, 2010 -- "Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Mississippi, Nebraska"

Mable fumbled with a Camel Blue and a lighter as she turned to her older sister in the passenger seat. Flakes of black nail polish stuck in spots on her fingers and scraped away in blinks as she squeezed her hand down between the seats to grab the bright red thing. Her many bracelets made efforts to get stuck on the seatbelt housing, but were shaken into place with quick wrist movements.

"You asked me if this was going to be fun and I said 'I don't know', but this is pretty damn fun."

She lit the cigarette and cracked the shaky window of the Ford in one motion. Her sister turned away to look out at the landscape to the right and agreed. Months ago, this all seemed impossible. The books, the money, their family, school - fucking school. Nothing made sense until they got in the car. Once they were in, they were in. They were in.

The car backfired as they passed the state line.

***

September 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th & 9th

2010-09-08T23:03:00.000-04:00

September 3rd, 2010 -- "The Summer Drake"

2010-09-03T14:12:00.001-04:00

By late afternoon, all but some of the straggler party-goers had left quickly and in unison for home, their cars filing quietly onto the highway with the gentle roll of the fading sun casting oblong blocks of shadowy warm to the roadside treeline. Glinting reflections of orange light darted off the sidewalls of their coupes, acting from a distance as a final reminder of the day's excitement.

Michael stood with a stick. The last, best hope he had for keeping the peace of the daytime sat in the seven feet of petrified maple in his left hand. His taming rod.

At about half past noon, the lizard had arrived, largely impressive without wings, covered in many scales akin more to an adult pickerel than a large, dry reptile. With a heave, the dragon landed in the sunny dust and mud by the grill. She rested her head inches above the ground and nosed the air and dirt with the slow, rolling force of heavy lung air.

The arch of her back was graceful. Yet, it implied great weight, like that of a beached whale, where the slow arch plays a tense game with the space around it. The slow rise and fall of her breathing could make one think of water drops clinging to the top of a coin - the surface tension, immense.

By two, Michael had made the appropriate decision to keep his guests happy with the dark drake kept at bay. He stood dutifully near the belly of the thing and kept watch.

Staring always ahead, Michael paid mind to the thing's eyes. Never moving. Always forward. Michael paid mind to these, knowing that the shallow, split, yellow beads, never blinking, seemingly made from a very clear glass, were detached from the real meat of the beast. Behind those eyes was a smile that stared alone and needed nothing from the seen world. Behind those eyes was a seasoned spirit that enjoyed smiling more than anything.

Michael paid mind and, by dusk, he remained by the thing. He remained with his stick in place by the grill and waited for the next thing.

***

September 1st & 2nd, 2010

2010-09-02T17:59:00.002-04:00

"GHOST"

"OhhhHHHhhHhhhhhh..."

***

"Dragon Luck"

The den of choices lets you blow all but one candle out.

***

August 31st, 2010 -- "Wilds"

2010-08-31T22:45:00.002-04:00

The big cats, their fur matted by mud and thick blood, claws sunk into woven, dying plant matter, spotted with black ants. Under a new moon, their eyeballs lick the ink night. What proceeds within are countless calculations for distance and space and risk and hunger based on the scent of the nearby small and dying. Furred knuckles grind downward past rough pad and into a cold soft that dries in the sand beneath everything where roots can't press through.

A flash of movement in the jungle and they're gone - a clock's work, an end and some change.

***

August 29th & 30th, 2010

2010-08-30T23:37:00.003-04:00

"Mister, Mister, Mister, Mister"

The large man, the man with some plans, a man aged past his youth but placed far from gray hair.

He sits in the dark and laughs.

Small shit from his mouth.

His face moves quickly beneath closed eyes and on a head planted with creaky shoulders.

The movement slows and his eyes open with an exhausted kind of crazed sigh.

They took it from him.

He did not give it away.

Miles off, a cash register rings up a bag of chips and some crap, warm soda.

The man gets dressed for bed and sleeps for fourteen hours.

Winter comes.

***

"Don't Worry About It"

Complex 67-C had just installed its new battery wall plating. The low lights of the hallway offered much for firefighters. Many men. Much noise. Silence.

***

August 28th, 2010 -- "Pipedream Dave"

2010-08-28T15:13:00.000-04:00

Among many things, he is heralded in his town as a menace,

the old codger,

feared by children younger than five,

judged as a derelict by the established wealthy,

tossed to time by a shattered family and home,

given to the woods,

eyed by the cops,

hushed, stopped, and asked to leave by sturdy librarians,

left to live,

neglected by physicians,

ignored by dentists.

His life-

anything but plain,

without any real pause,

filled forever with strangely calm moments of constant worry.

His existence left for the day as that of a traveler,

his existence for the night left as that of a nonsense analyst.

***

August 20th, 2010

2010-08-20T17:50:00.002-04:00

August 19th, 2010 -- "Snakes"

2010-08-19T18:24:00.001-04:00

The bullets that come from the short barrel seem heavier, somehow. They might as well be coated in venom. The sun is always on his side.

***

August 17th, 2010

2010-08-18T00:06:00.001-04:00

***

August 16th, 2010 -- "Johnson Rd."

2010-08-16T22:10:00.002-04:00

The thin dirt steps tumble down the hill into the landing of the dock. In the distance, the clouds begin to mix the future.

***

August 9th, 2010 -- "Bring It Home"

2010-08-09T17:11:00.001-04:00

Dirt on the thick material of his day jacket caked in streams by the seams of the arms. The grass in the field behind him was nearly on fire in the sun. Eight miles of road sat ready to left or west. The fork was behind him. Dinner was at six.

***

August 8th, 2010 -- "Dolphin Deaths on the Rise"

2010-08-08T19:53:00.005-04:00

"What now?"

Smithson lit his Winston and fled, with a frown, from the immediate moment to some place in his mind that replayed continuously dark things like past bar fights lost and bad break ups brought up and on for months. Bad kids and tough math. Shitty breakfast. He stayed there for a good while to stay mad but ended up having to break. He bit down lightly on the clothy sponge end of the cigarette and didn't do much hiding. He grinned big and with much teeth.

Easy.

***

August 7th, 2010 -- "Sgt. Maurice Bradley, 10th Sky Division"

2010-08-07T17:25:00.007-04:00

During the sixth hour, the hour in which Sgt. Maurice Bradley earned his star, 88,023 shots were fired on the field. Bradley was only hit once, and it wasn't enough.

***

August 5th & 6th, 2010

2010-08-06T16:46:00.002-04:00

***

August 3rd, 2010 -- "Wall Wisher"

2010-08-03T11:35:00.002-04:00

***

August 1st & 2nd (weird), 2010

2010-08-02T23:59:00.003-04:00

***

July 31st, 2010 -- "Bradford Rusick and his damned jacket!"

2010-07-31T17:56:00.002-04:00

July 30th, 2010

2010-07-30T11:48:00.001-04:00

July 27th, 28th, & 29th

2010-07-29T16:36:00.000-04:00

July 24th, 25th, & 26th, 2010

2010-07-25T19:43:00.002-04:00

***

***

***

July 21st & 22nd, 2010

2010-07-22T10:14:00.002-04:00

July 21st, 2010 -- "l'océan est d'incendie"

July 22nd, 2010 -- "Mirror"

July 20th, 2010 - Two Untitleds

2010-07-20T18:06:00.000-04:00

July 18th & 19th, 2010

2010-07-19T19:34:00.003-04:00

July 18th, 2010 -- "Passive Observers"

***

July 19th, 2010 -- "Islander"

***

July 17th, 2010 -- "Star Ruin"

2010-07-17T09:39:00.002-04:00

In the dusty back room with the accordion door, an old man sits in a dry seat surrounded by slowly expanding twists of sage smoke and small electric lights. He stares carefully at some furniture toward the far end of the room and lets a small window fan lift and toss his string hair in the night heat. On a night like tonight, his rusted pop-up trailer - the same that he dragged out to this strip of canyon land some years ago with a borrowed truck - seems deceivingly large in the dark.

On a scratched table in the corner, a small, blocky radio whispers static and peers out at the world through its bright red power light. The old man checks a clock by the door and blinks lazily. Four o'clock. Not good enough.

Outside, a wolf howls and some insects skitter through the crazy sand for the cover.

***

July 16th, 2010 -- "Grouchfeathers"

2010-07-16T14:37:00.003-04:00

Grouped and soaked, clumped and wet, cold and deep and eerily eternal, the three slouch over their frames with a careful and unflinching rigidity. When moving, the damp collections of clipped feathers make the sound of black grass covered in thick water. On a night like tonight, when the moon is gone from the heavens and the stars in the sky seem like a serpentine fog of cosmic light, their eyes buzz outward from their sockets with a kind of low intensity that can be heard well enough before being seen.

They all blink in unison while grumbling quite low. This was a good night.

***

July 15, 2010 -- "MAGIC AND TRANSFORMATION"

2010-07-15T19:29:00.002-04:00

Oh my god.

***

July 14th, 2010 -- "The Battle for Boston"

2010-07-14T17:32:00.002-04:00

Smash! Crash! Boom!

Nigel stood in the relative warmth of the bug zapper and became quite animated. He loved his new books.

***

July 12th, 2010 -- "At Night in a City Before a Party With Lights On"

2010-07-12T20:48:00.004-04:00

July 11th, 2010 -- "The Harbinger"

2010-07-11T17:27:00.001-04:00

Inches above the tar, his breath slowed to a bubbling sputter that flecked the smoothing surface of the oily dark in front of him with small bits of saliva and grit. He had come to this land days ago with only fair trade in mind. He had his goods and his gold in his cat, and he had the tight light of the sun on his shoulders. He had no real sense for what his own arrival had brought with it, for he had arrived and brought with him the raked, cold mess that spreads.

As he sank, the moon smoothed its way along the deep black of the air.

It was only the beginning.

***

July 10th, 2010 -- "The Strange Window"

2010-07-08T17:18:00.002-04:00

There's an odd eye in the water. It was invited to this world to participate.

***

July 7th, 2010 -- "Edward"

2010-07-07T20:55:00.001-04:00

For Edward, the warmer days were proof positive that even the coldest, dirtiest sand could become a wonderfully cupping purchase of heavenly drift. Given that the conditions could end up perfect, any lonely shaft of loose parking sand could become like soft honey, like a velvet pool of earthglow, fit to sit and right to lay around in.

He had found this place early, when the sun wasn't as large in the sky. He found it early with no one around and stayed for a while. He stayed for a bit and then continued.

Eventually, at 2 o'clock, with no intention of moving, with no real plan to adapt to change, with no exceptional way of explaining his motives or lack thereof, he fell asleep in the sun peacefully.

***

July 6th, 2010 -- "The Careful Torrent"

2010-07-06T21:29:00.003-04:00

The plan was simple - get in, get out, no fuss, no mess. No red wires. No huge pillar of light. Simple. Quick. Banks had briefed her earlier in the day with the plan of operation. Do the job. No one gets hurt. The science was final and fine. Payment upon receipt. That kind of thing.

Lunch would be interesting, in the morning.

***

July 5th, 2010 -- "Permaduty"

2010-07-05T16:33:00.002-04:00

5438 cares too much or just enough. You won't be allowed enough time to form any kind of real opinion. Don't worry.

***

July 4th, 2010 -- "A Fire Scientist"

2010-07-04T16:08:00.005-04:00

With a low and thermal hum, the rabid world around the good doctor came to life.

***

July 2nd, 2010 -- "'Why don't you like pancakes...?'"

2010-07-02T18:17:00.002-04:00

The kitchen was dark, the only legitimate light source being a murky stove lamp stationed above the stained metal coils scratched with pot dust. Danielle stood by the window and sniffed at the cool breeze passing through the screen by a candle. She looked out.

The meal was fine. Most of the conversation for the night had revolved around menial tax trouble and entirely arbitrary history trivia. A drink had been spilled, which was fine. Some sauce hit the table in the shape of a noodle - also fine. The meal was fine and nice and led off into a quiet evening by the window.

What else could be said?

Outside, trees grew dark.

***

June 24th, 2010 -- "Jersey's Moons"

2010-06-24T16:08:00.002-04:00

The slippery muck field by Jersey's Shovel Park was the best to sit back and watch the heavenly bodies slide by lazily. A few shovels; a nice, blocky chair; some crackling firesticks; a couple of nocturnal animals - yeah, not a bad set up for a thick-aired night watching some crazy moon action.

He had saved up his entire life for this little, sloppy slice of heaven. If you asked him about it, Jersey would tell you it was the best place on Uranus.

No question.

***

June 23rd, 2010 -- "Critical Mass"

2010-06-23T21:27:00.002-04:00

"Oh,...oh no! N-n-no! Wh-wh-wa...aaait!"

***

June 22nd, 2010 -- "A Father of Some Lost Time"

2010-06-22T21:53:00.003-04:00

The wild, braided trail of a meteor clapped and cascaded across the top of the world with the sound of white light slicing bright purple firmament. The Sleeper, with his skin smooth and a vibrating kind of cool, remained embedded in the warm, dusty seat of slate. His fingertips sat in small pits of sand by his scratchy feet, the nails of both telling with cracks and wear and unimaginable stillness an ancient and hazy history of much movement on much land in some time.

His breathing was nearly a pause and quite heavy. His eyes seemed perfectly comfortable to remain closed. His garments sat firm and married to the light dirt of the passing air. The silhouette of his form enlarged and shrank away against the humming red of the fading light on the horizon.

Just a bit more, he, over the course of years, thought to himself.

Miles away, the meteor landed violently and alone in some trees and time went on.

***

2010-06-09T23:01:00.001-04:00

"ISLAND WIND"

The wind that runs away runs off to an island. It dries itself in the sun and slows down. It stays long enough to play clumsily with the sand.

***

"Built on Bones"

Cedric reached deep into his pocket to find the small jagged end of quartz he had found in the park on the road. He turned it over in his hand and admired, like he would've in his youth, the way that the stone glowed hot purple in the odd light of the evening. He scratched a nick of dirt from a groove on a flat side. He spit once and missed. He caught the rock with the second try and rubbed it clean.

Pulling out a cigarette, he stared ahead with the clean, white hunk hiding in his lowered palm.

He squeezed the rock, as the sun disappeared entirely.

***

June 7th, 2010 -- "A Future's Call to Arms"

2010-06-07T18:56:00.005-04:00

"Ah, splendid! You have your things together, then? You do, right? Yes, that will do mighty finely. Have a seat. Your uncle told me about you, you know? He told me about you. He told me about your history with the Emerald Guard. What a tour! BANG! He told me about your history there, and he told me that there would come a time where you'd need to, again, draw from those skills. He told me that I would know that time before you did; and I do know that time, you know? The time is now. You do know that, don't you? That time has come.

Your uncle is a good man.

Scotch?"

***

JUNE 6th, 2010 -- "A MASSIVE RETURN"

2010-06-06T19:04:00.010-04:00

"A Dive"

Williams pressed the rubber button cap for her suit's radio with a large, knobby, suited finger, a finger attached to a hand now made light by the controlled buoyancy of her steel shell in the deep. A fizzy trail of small bubbles erupted quickly and quietly from a small valve pass by her helmet's backing. She spoke into her probe microphone as she leaped off a 50 foot rise into a soft, gliding descent toward the blue brown of the ocean floor.

"This is fantastic! Are you getting of this, Laurie? Look at this!"

Laurie Mason was fumbling with a large, strange, ancient hunk of alien ambergris. She cleared the fog and perspiration from her faceplate with a switch-flick and a flash of insta-fluid that made a swooping, WHOOSH! sound. The remaining blue clean ran off the liquid resistance of her viewing plate in thin, veined lines as she blinked and looked ahead at Williams. She saw some dust kicked up in the blue haze and could make out Williams' headlamp blanketing a perfect circled section of some glassy hull.

"What is it? What have you got there??"

"Just get over here and check this out! This is just,...I don't know. What is this?"

Mason kicked her way across the ruddy muck of the trench's floor, keeping a fairly reasonable mind about not kicking anything living. She had passed the training, but only barely. She was only allowed past the checks to get into the suit, because of her mind; her brain was what they really needed. She reached the geodesic base of the spaceship and skidded slowly in the cloudy smear of earth in water.

"You see what I mean?"

Williams pointed to a few things. An odd ramp leading to a gelatinous portal, both now covered in a thin and ancient ocean slime. A few portholes that looked out at the water with a deep black - nothing inside, seemingly. Some antenna-like attachments that could be either communications equipment or guns or both.A few exposed wires. Some small, suspicious, and constant streams of bright green globules - the same globules that surfaced and collected together in fields of emerald to coax the team down from the surface in the first place.

It was massive. The shine of it was a dull purple that was hard to place. It seemed to catch light like glass, but it had the look - the feel of something fibrous. It was out of this world, really.

"Well?"

Laurie stood for a moment and let her brain click out a few basic calculations. Her left eye twitched and she made the decision.

"Yeah, screw it, let's go in."

***

"Just One Oil Man's Opinion"

"Whatever happened to that guy on the TV, hah? Whatshisname, Peter, somethin-er-other -- that guy, ya know? ABC or something. Seemed simpler than what we got now. I'd watch that guy on that TV. I'd get done' workin', beat like a dog. I'd drive home. I'd get something done around the house - maybe make something to eat, take a shower or something, and I'd sit down and watch. That guy knew his shit, boy. He was a hot shit. That guy knew his shit and he knew our shit, too. He would come on and it'd be good. It just felt better.

Same with that Rogers guy. Sweaters and crap. What a screwball. Dead now, but gotta love him. What a great thing for the kids. It's different, now.

Now, we got this oil shit. Oil this and oil that. Big money, no problem. I'm up to my elbows in this crap and no shower'll wash that smell clean off. I smell like I did when I worked at the pump station back in '83. I made two bucks an hour and that was big time. Smell ain't worth the money, though. Screw that crap.

People come on the news now and talk about the same things. I watch 'em come on and feel like going out. Gimme a break.

'Screw this, I'm going for a drive...' -- you know?

It just doesn't feel right.

It isn't right."

***

"The Sneakthief"

Happy.

He was quite happy with his find. It was light and it was solid. It used to be thier's, but now it belonged to him, light and solid and his in his hands.

He floated along in the air above the ground with a smile on his face and closed his eyes. He dreamed what could be inside the box. He thought lightly about how they would come to find that it had gone missing. Would they miss it? Would they send out a search party? He was a giggle personified. He was thrill incarnate. His movements were slow and steady and deliberate; and in no way was he escaping.

He dwindled on the road in the air toward the horizon and kept his eyes closed.

The future was unknown to him.

***

"River"

Cold and quick and in the shade.

Fizzing and clean and over rocks.

Sparkling and mirroring and in the sun.

The river ran at a surprisingly low volume through the pass in the hillside surrounded by tall, dark trees. Where the sun hit the air you could see bugs and dirt. Small spirals were made in front of a backdrop of dark, natural weight. The streams of water gulped their way down and through gapped piles of smooth stones and boulders and away from the sun. Down a ways, the river evened out into a field of water over small rocks from a distance. It seemed slower and there seemed to be less shade. Above all of that was a blanket of bright blue sky that took the twirling bugs and dust in the sun and blanked them out against the intense glow.

The girl steadied herself on a rock, tilted her head back while smiling, and let the sun in.

***

"Stumble Party"

They were all thinking the same thing.

"Where did the stars go?"

***

"Imaginary Driveways, Real Sunsets"

The colors of the world slowed and cooled off as the sun retreated in the western edge of the sky. Hot yellows melted away into soft browns and oranges as blues brightened up into a quick and vibrating gray-white. Things evened and allowed the blacks of the shade to relax into softer purples.

Everything became still.

The cigarette continued.

***

"June 3rd, in the garden, in the yard..."

The sparrows were fast!

They swooped down in the air from the large bush to the right and fought over the shovel's top. They argued in the arbor covered in grapes over something indeterminably unimportant. They scoffed and tweeted and moved very quickly around the yard, as if each of them was straight from some noisy city street.

The cardinals sat on a fence by the property line and waited.

They worried, together and always.

***

"A Machine"

His hands were big and fat and dumb. They moved slowly and with grinding noises. He hated them. They weren't new by any means, and they seemed as if they never were new in the first place.

He would try to grip his gun and it would hammer out with a clinching pop as the combination of bad finger grips and horrible wrist mechanics launched everything forward with a sparking flinch.

This won't do, he thought. This won't ever do. Everyone is at war and there are horrible things happening all around. There are fires and cities are disappearing from the earth like distant memories from some far off dreamer. This is screwy.

He didn't know how to do it, really. He knew that there were screws going into him, somewhere. Someone told him that they were only in his legs. It might've been Simmons, though. Fuck Simmons.

Without thinking much more on it, 49321 bent all the way down to the ground at just his waist. He twisted his hands one hundred and eighty degrees, stepped on them, and activated his shoulder winches.

Simmons was right, he thought. I'll be damned.

***

May 26th, 27th, & 28th

2010-05-28T03:15:00.003-04:00

May 28th, 2010 -- "Wrinkled"

KRRONCHK!

6684 bent the bottom angle of his flex-steel faceguard back and away from his neck so he could see better. He was leaking black fluid out of a few holes in his front guard and his arm was feeling a little weird, but he could see again. His optics trembled to life with the super white lamp backing glowing at half power. Eight more years and he'd have himself a new set of eyes, he thought.

Stretching his back a bit, 6684 picked up his Outliner with both hands and climbed on top of a nearby vehicle shell for a better view.

He had no idea what the hell that was that hit 'em, but he sure as hell knew it was going to change things dramatically.

***
May 27th, 2010 -- "Steps"

Baby steps got him this far, he thought. Baby steps and a lot of stairs.

***

May 26th, 2010 -- "The House of Noise by The Bay"

The kid they called Dog sat on the larger of the two pinions that used to allow the light's casing to spin in circles at the top of the beacon house. He sat and he spun slowly, using a crank he had rigged in a complicated fashion to power his own movement.

This was a place of caution.

He'd sit and he'd spin, only really changing his position for one of two things; the first thing being to reach a hand behind his back to collect the crank from his other hand as he turned, and the second things being moving his then-free hand to cup his mouth as his voiced a warning out to the ocean as he faced it.

He liked his job, but often wished for more.

***

May 25th, 2010 -- "Super Hot Highway, 495S, 9:13 AM, Massachusetts"

2010-05-25T11:29:00.005-04:00

A white car throws the sun back up into the sky at 73 miles an hour. A hot wind kicked up by the car's passing deceives the world with quick movement into thinking that it's a cool breeze. Pebbles bake by the gray grass of the median. The glinting green of faraway signs wiggle in funny frequencies with the radio stations through the curving film of heat against the surface of the asphalt. A radio in a truck in another lane crackles and sticks to the waning American station that, some years ago, would've had the budget and power to broadcast out here.

This is a blasted land.

***

TRIPLE May 22nd, 23rd, & 24th, 2010

2010-05-24T21:25:00.002-04:00

May 22nd, 2010 -- "Steeler"
At once, the sparks from his power tool shot up the cord from the floor and made its way, alive, quite quickly to Terrence's forearm. With a bright, searing flinch of flesh and smoke, and with a single peculiar popping sound, the spark disappeared into the meat of him, right under the bone. Terrence dropped to the floor and didn't awaken for quite some time. Little did he know that everything would be different.

***

May 23rd, 2010 -- "FOUND" "Okay, okay, so, okay,...so, get this. I got an idea, right? I got an idea and it's going to take me a little while to let you in on it. I'll let you in on it and it'll take some time for me to explain, but it'll be great, you know? You'll see. I've got it figured out, too! I've figured it all out with a bunch of buddies of mine. We figured it all out ahead of time, just so we could get the idea just right. It's perfect. You'll see! It's perfect and you'll be confused for a long time, but you'll know by the end that things were going according to plan the entire time - the entire friggin' time, kid... ...wait, what was I just talking about before all of that? I'll be back. I gotta go."

***
May 24th, 2010 -- "Last Laid Bricks"

In the last week in the last month before the last things got done, the last lady laid out the last of her errands with the last of her obligations in the last minutes. Lasting for some time on the last legs of her everlasting patience, the lady last later set out to outlast her own worst and last tendencies of late nervousness. She would later think on the longevity of her own spirits.

***

May 21st, 2010 -- "A Large Father"

2010-05-21T20:46:00.001-04:00

Climp!

Climp, clomp!

Climp, clomp, climp clomp!

CLIMP CLOMP CLIMP CLOMP CLIMP CLOMP!

***

May 20th, 2010 -- "Jonathan Luck: The Mist Monster"

2010-05-20T19:58:00.002-04:00

The dark mass, half man, half doom, sits by the sea and looks out at the horizon's dying light. In its eyes swirls an evil green and chaotically vibrant pool of iris that speaks in whispers to endless time and voracious hunger. It sits and clicks and waits in the cooling sand on the beach. Off in the far distance, his hearing picks up the worried footsteps of the island inhabitants. The massive thing furrows his brow into a squint and imagines a curled grin in his mind where his mouth would be.

The mist surrounding its face splits and crinkles to let his mouth through. He utters a word.

"Sooooooooon."

***

May 19th, 2010 -- "A Fine Day"

2010-05-19T20:41:00.004-04:00

The day in the park was just fine. The light hung on to the pollen in the air and was warm like hot glue. The walking path leading to the shore was dotted with shade and was surrounded on both sides by the dry, twigged branches of road weeds. Steve's demeanor was calm and he remained cool beneath the brim of his hat. Children from all over the state were swarming like jovial ants over and through the playground past the line of maples as parents watched. A black dog with a red collar lay panting by a blanket and his owner; on the ground next to them a plastic water gun filled with hose water. It was eleven o'clock now and would later be evening.

Steve padded his way down to the shore and sweated happily from the tops of his cheeks.

***

May 18th, 2010 -- "Wilson"

2010-05-18T20:11:00.005-04:00

The impossibly colored flatlands of the computer program stretched on for what seemed like a virtual eternity. Ever changing bands of bright information streamed along in thin wires across the surface of the world, giving shape and meaning to timeless forms that smoothed and blended at a distance and broke off into a severe horizon where nonexistent dirt met nonexistent sky in this nonexistent world with a line unbelievably flattened and leveled.

It had been many years since Wilson had entered and, indeed, he had aged many years since then. He was now eighty-six of mind, though his virtual look had, in a kind of brilliant and scientific retention, kept the impression of his nineteen year old self with a frighteningly exact memory. His shirt was new and impeccably clean. His jeans held not a fray. The scars of his actual life were forgotten. His history, gone. This was his chosen world.

In life, or what could be referred to otherwise as "real", Wilson was a math student. His days were filled with chalky classrooms clapped clean by old erasers after the equations had been met an dealt with. His nights were made for dutiful study and organized routines. His leisure, when the occasion did present itself, involved much running and much sunshine. His life knew pets. He had a goldfish, once. His mother's name was Mary, and his father worked hard at the plant to pay for his lessons. Time ebbed and flowed in the trees in the highlight of his youth and he was happy.

Wilson stood for some time on the artificial rock in front of a cobalt sky and wondered, for his sense of time was now the appropriate kind of clear that allowed him to remember his old life. He and he breathed and he tried to ignore the misplaced squeaking of the wind as it got the sound of air wrong.

He looked up and continued his work.

Any day now, he thought. Any day.

***

DOUBLE FEATURE May 16th & 17th, 2010

2010-05-17T21:43:00.003-04:00

May 17th, 2010 -- "Sammy and Monday"

Sammy looked down at his sleeves and thought about his clothes. His jacket, now loosely wrinkled and clinging to the higher joints of his body, laid threadbare and softened in parts. His tie, also wrinkled, was caught off to one side where his jacket pressed against his twisted shirt. His belt was a black-turned-brown; it was quite old. His shoes were old, flat. His hat was okay, he guessed.

It wasn't even eleven and he was thinking about the past.

Near him, a door opened to let the air back in.

***

May 16th, 2010 -- "The Last Meeting of The Friday Night Fright Club"

A branch broke and tumbled loudly to the pine needled ground in the dark, startling Curtis into a small leap.

Their eyes were huge and frantic in the flickering light of the flashlight, each set darting around the four-person circle in an attempt to rest on a courageous face among them. Stan blinked quickly at Emily. Curtis gulped and fetched Dan's squeamish glance, just as Emily breathed and batted her bangs away from her nose with a bright urgency. Dan looked at Stan. Stan looked at Curtis. Emily, with a look of desperate patience, leaned in at Dan. Stan looked at Dan. Dan signaled at Curtis. Emily waved at Curtis. Stan shrieked at Curtis, Emily dropped the flashlight, Dan fainted, and then Curtis was gone.

The club was thence disbanded as the remaining children scattered in the directions of their homes.

***

May 15th, 2010 -- "The Ring Mystery"

2010-05-15T20:11:00.002-04:00

Large, swooshing hoops. Sparking, cold, highly pressurized atmosphere. Crackling dirt slow to freeze. Steaming, bending trees. It was all too much. Marlboro looked off to the hillside with wild, wide, stallion eyes and wondered when Clyde would decide to point them both home. He didn't like this phenomenon one bit. Warm hay in the dark of the barn seemed like a far better idea, Marlboro thought. Yes.

***

May 14th, 2010 -- "Brinkley's Last Discovery"

2010-05-14T17:53:00.001-04:00

It was a dark and stormy night as Brinkley sat at the messy desk in his basement laboratory. Quite the Thing, INDEED, he shouted to a stack of papers just moments before he grabbed his overcoat and headed out into the rainy pitch black. The way would be long and the work hard, but it was his discovery, now, his find. The world would know now as it had not in the past. They would know! They would look upon The Thing and they would understand. They would see it and tremble at the thought of it, for the thought of it was a terrible kind of horror, its implications dry and clear and an unforgiving kind of certain. Their amazement would be total, and they would know what Brinkley had sought to know for some time. They would see The Thing and they would see Brinkley there, too, his image embedded firmly in the discovery of the horrible Thing's lurid existence.

Some time later, huddled behind the gravestone of someone long since past and gone from the world, Brinkley would fear his own demise in the blanketing light. He would tremble and see The Thing and would, in a sense that he couldn't fully, before, comprehend from that basement laboratory, genuinely discover the horror he had only - and only could have guessed at.

The pain was immense and quick and then gone along with Brinkley.

***

May 13th, 2010 -- "Summer Time Fun"

2010-05-13T23:48:00.003-04:00

On the sunny side of the waiting room, Miranda holds an old, dusty book up to her chest and squints at the soft and yellowed pages. In soft black lettering are some basic instructions, accompanied by small, little spot illustrations of kids at play, of dad's at grills and swimming pools with splashing water and pool toys. She looks to a small list bookended by a quick drawing of a seagull and a funny drawing of a snorkel mask. She brings the book closer to her face and reads.

Step 1:

Invite friends over for a party!

Step 2:

Apply suntan lotion and get a tan in the sun. Be safe!

Step 3:

Go to the local grocer and purchase some supplies. Buy ground beef, chips, soda, plates, and napkins. Buy a watermelon, too!

Step 4:

Have a party!

Miranda chuckles but takes the advice fairly seriously on such a nice day. She licks her finger and turns the page, noting a small note written in light pencil at the top of the page.

"Summer, 1999, a good one! Congrats!"

She looks up and wonders.

***

ONE PER DAY: May 12th, 2010 -- "The Bakery of Great Change"

2010-05-12T21:31:00.000-04:00

A baker mixes slippery eggs loudly in a greasy, green bowl and sings something undeniably French as he pirouettes across a dusty tile floor warmed by the hearth of a large, belching fire. His movement is precisely full of mistakes and he patches things where he can - a pinch of salt for the spoon dropped on the floor, some baking soda in with the water, lots of water, some hot butter in a bowl cooled to a gel, sugar and butter, some grated cheese, some milk, another egg.

He swishes his feet in the flour on the floor and slides the bowl and the mixture across the table to the far end. He picks up an apple and some cinnamon and begins to chop them up against the wet worn wood of the cutting board. Some sticky flour smears under his fingers as he cups the cuts into a large ceramic mug.

Outside, the smoke from the fire passes up and through the pipes of the chimney and into the dusk of the air. The plume billows up and away and takes a blocky form behind the small hut with the thatched roof. The light coming from the windows pulses like the slow breathing of a full man after supper. Everything is warm in the world as the baker makes something new.

***

DOUBLE FEATURE -- May 10th & May 11th, 2010

2010-05-11T23:34:00.002-04:00

May 10th, 2010 -- "The Dreamy Dream of Weary Bethany"

The dirt steps that pass through the shade of the arbor course past a flat bench spotted by sunlight. The leaves in the trees bend and flip in the quick breeze. Her dress streams in a direction opposite to the wind as she is carried off into the sun. There is no work to be done. The dream is always the same.

***

May 11th, 2010 -- "The Destruction of 2800-A"

"I got him, sir! Look at this!!"

Drake held up the limp pile of metal and pulled a mess of important wires and relays from beneath the helmet with a few sprays of hot sparks. His fingers strained under the rim of the faceplate and he stumbled back a bit on his knees to brace against the weight of the thing's upper half.

"Can you believe this shit? Look at this!"

The battle had been long - too long, Major thought. They brought their sick light and their burning waves with a cold relentlessness, and the end result was much chaos and much casualty. His radio went bust after The Big One and his compass was mashed into the dirt somewhere under the behemoth. Major looked at Drake and nodded.

"You bet, son. You bet. Let's get moving."

Drake continued, with a peculiar kind of childishness, to play with the wires wrapped around his chem-gloves as he steadied that back of the thing against a large rock. He finally unraveled the mess to free his hand and got up to run back with the rest of the unit.

Major turned back for a moment and surveyed the land behind them. Charred.

This was only the beginning.

***