Dunce Upon A Time

Update: It’s been brought to my attention (by the half-dozen people who e-mailed me under the impression that I was about to kill myself among others) that this may seem a bit darker than I had intended.

Thank you all for your concern. While I can’t describe myself as exactly happy, I’d like to assure you all that I’m going to be fine. However, I also understand that you’re in need of closure.

Here’s what I’ll do. I’m going to write one last story. Not for another few months. But it will be “The End” of my writing here. When that story is written, Dunce Upon A Time will be complete. I’ve decided I’ll leave it up with just a few nips and tucks. But I’m still going to move onto other things. I need to drastically change my life and that story will have, among other things, my reasons why.

In the mean time, I still care very much about you all. So, I’ll tell you what: if you send an e-mail to dunceuponatime@gmail.com, I’ll e-mail you the next time I do something. See, not gone. Just changed.

If you’ve ever contributed to my website you’re already on that list and you’re still going to get free books equal to whatever amount you donated. They just won’t be BC Woods books. You’re not forgotten.

Thank you all.

Love,

Andrew

Well, this is going to be extremely awkward, so it’s probably best to just come right out and say it.

I haven’t really been happy with my writing or this website for a while now. It started with the big website crash, and then the second one… and the other server catastrophes. Those crashes gave me an opportunity to really examine what it is that I’ve been doing here over a long period of time as I put the website back together piece by piece.

And the answer I came up with was: some small amount of writing, and a whole lot of wasting my life.

The wasting my life bit didn’t always bother me. It’s mine to piss away, after all. But it’s bothering me now because I was surprised to find that I don’t care enough to really knuckle down and fix things here. I’ve simply stopped caring. And as I read over the past few months of posts, it’s extremely obvious to me that I’ve stopped caring.

I could probably continue to phone it in for years. Maybe even until I got some new passion to continue, but why bother? I don’t want to write things that aren’t fun to write and even less fun to read. I think I’m done.

My life in general is probably contributing to this in some regard. Maybe even my diet. Maybe if I ate a really really good sandwich I’d change my mind about all of this. But I still don’t care. Believe me, I scraped the bottom of the “giving a fuck” barrel to see if I could find anything.

I’m exhausted. I feel very old and it’s taking everything I have inside of me just to feel like shit when I get up in the morning. Don’t get me wrong, I try to keep a sense of humor about it, but even when you’re laughing at how fucked up everything is it’s not the same as actually laughing. And you can’t fool people forever.

I’ll probably come out of this eventually, but I’m thinking that’s at least several months if not years away and I don’t feel like pretending in the mean time.

On top of all this, I had an experience recently that reminded me I’m just “Some Guy.” Not the protagonist of a story. Not the center of even my own universe. Just some random guy, like an extra in the background of a movie. And when I had that realization, everything I wrote here about my own life (however screwed up it was) felt like a pathetic cry for attention. I can stand to be silly but I can’t bear to be pathetic.

I’m going to leave my website up for at least the next three months so I can finish honoring the subscriber obligations I currently have. After that I’ll decide what I want to do with the website, as to whether or not I should delete it all so I don’t have to think about it ever again, or leave it up for posterity. I’ll also decide what I want to do with the eBook stuff I have scattered all over the place at that time. To be perfectly frank, I’m thinking that this will all be gone in a few months. Although if you ever do get lonesome for anything I’ve written I’m sure you could find it on the wayback machine or something.

I’m not going to stop writing. I don’t think I could do that if I tried. But I’m probably only going to be submitting things to professional venues under different names than BC Woods from now on, and if it gets rejected (which it probably will) it will stay on my computer forever.

Blah, I hate writing this. Seems so whiny.

As for the Glass Tongue stories, I think those are going on the scrap heap too. I don’t have the energy to deal with everything in my personal life and make those enjoyable. Like I said, I’m just very very tired.

There’s nothing anyone could say that would really change my mind about any of this so I’ve disabled comments, as well as my facebook page and twitter feed. If you really really need to e-mail me (which you probably don’t, not that you’re not important) you can find my e-mail easily enough by browsing the site.

Thank you for your readership. It has meant the world to me.

But I think I’m done now.

So long and thanks for all the fish.

PIZZA, CHARITY, PRIME MOVERS

Way back in college I used to eat Red Baron Supreme Oven-Bake Pizzas for pretty much every meal. Why? Because I could get 4 for $5 and I was very very lazy and didn’t like to make elaborate dinners. Mostly because if I did make an elaborate dinner I’d end up staring at it, thinking about how much work it was for just me, whether or not I was worth the effort, then start thinking about how alone I felt… and then get very existential all of the sudden.

So, ultimately because life is meaningless bullshit but also because I’d get hungry every so often, I’d go to the grocery store to buy pizza. Then, when I got back to my studio apartment, with my cardboard cut-out of Superman staring down at me in disapproval, I would eat a truly disgusting amount of Oven-Bake Pizza then fall asleep on my futon, because I wasn’t good enough to sleep on the bed I had in the next “room” five feet away.

I wrote quite a lot in this period of time (it was my start at DaddyDontHitMe, for those of you who go that far back) but it was not what I would call a happy existence.

One day, quite like any other, when I was standing in the check out line of the grocery store with my eight pizzas in hand, I happened to see this little old lady standing at the register across from mine. Gray-blue hair. Once-puffy coat now lumpy and intermittently ragged. No clear idea where she was. And her debit card had been declined.

So you know what I did?

Firstly, I stood there for a while waiting for someone else to do something. Then I looked around to see if someone was going to do the right thing. Then I looked up at the ceiling when some other people who were also waiting for someone else to do the right thing made eye-contact with me. The awkwardness created this sort of repulsive magnetic field that scattered all compassion away from the helpless old lady.

Then I coughed and looked at this Botswanian shelf-stocker guy who I also saw around campus, who I know didn’t have much money either (Well, I didn’t KNOW this, but I racistly assumed this because he was black and had an accent and stocked groceries for a living that he was as broke as me) and I could tell HE was getting ready to pay for the old lady’s groceries. Then I internally winced and thought:

“Jesus, that guy has probably worked his way over here from a whole other country where things are shitty and now he’s going to do the right thing even if it means he has to eat Tap Ramen and Oven Bake pizza for the rest of the month. I mean, I eat Tap Ramen and Oven Bake Pizza, but only because of self-indulgent self-loathing, not actual poverty. I’ve only worked my way here from a Harbor Town. I should probably be the one to jump on this grenade.”

So I muttered, “God damn it.” Then I ran over to that register and slid my debit card through the scanner thing and paid for that old lady’s groceries. I put my Oven Bake pizzas on the floor and then I walked away real quick because it would have been very awkward to have people mutter positive shit about me or, even worse, TO me.

I also ran away because I realized that the groceries the old lady was buying were kind of non-essential and unnecessary and had probably only been picked up in a fit of mania because she got bored of being in her house or something. And when you do something like blow $60 you barely have on some old lady’s groceries, you really desperately want to believe those groceries are absolutely necessary for her survival and not that she might actually need long-term living assistance because she’s a bit out of her mind and buying a half dozen toilet scrubbers and kitty litter for no reason.

Then I went home and thought about the integrity of my motives for helping anyone, ever. And masturbated with my cardboard cut-out of Superman facing the wall so I wouldn’t feel ashamed. And went to bed hungry but probably healthier.

BUT!

Do you know there are people who are NOT me? Who are good and decent people who never get stuck in masturbatory self-referential cycles of doubt and identity? Who help people not after thinking “Okay, I know what I would do. But what if I were an actual person, what would I do then?” but out of actual heartfelt connection to the rest of mankind?

Here are some wonderful awesome things to take part in on this Holiday Season.

WORLDBUILDERS

Embarrassingly Superior Human Being, Patrick Rothfuss, is being uncomfortably nice AGAIN.

How is he being nice? By giving chickens, goats, pigs, and other bullshit to poor people to help them build sustainable agriculture.

He will not only match your donation 50%, he will enter you into a lottery contest to win cool bullshit just for having the barest humanity necessary to drop $10 you might have spent on coffee on helping another human being instead.

One day they’re going to make a movie about Patrick Rothfuss being uncomfortably nice on the Hallmark Channel. Then I’ll watch it and get tears in my eyes and look away like I do every time I watch one of those stupid movies.

I bought the literary pin-up calendar. If I can do that, so can you.

MY STALKING VICTIM, JOE ABERCROMBIE

Has three books left for sale on his website from a massive auction I should probably have posted about earlier. To help homeless people. I would buy all of them and then sleep on them like a dragon with its hoard of gold but I already had to buy the children gifts for Christmas and it’s going to leave me a bit strapped for the next few months. I’m kind of posting about this a little late for it to mean much, I guess but every little bit helps.

Anyway, as I’m sure you all know these are awesome books and I highly recommend you buy them anyway whether for charity or just dirty, dirty profit.

LOUIS CK CARES ABOUT PEOPLE AS WELL

Another person I follow pretty heavily, who is also helping people, is Louis CK. He has released his comedy special on his website LouisCK.net for a mere $5.

If you read here, you’ll see he made over one million dollars through doing this and then gave a bunch of it to charity.

Not to say that he’ll necessarily give even more money to charity if you buy his special, but you should kind of do it anyway because it is really really good. Especially the bit about how it feels to hate little kids that are the enemy of your little kids when you’re an adult.

I’m so confident in this special that I thought about offering to give you your money back if you bought it and didn’t like it.

On Slightly Different Notes…

PATRICE O’NEAL

I listened to Patrice O’Neal pretty religiously on the Opie and Athony radio show, and he had one of the most unique perspectives of any comic I’ve ever heard. I laughed my ass off every time he was on, often to the point of tears. After a while of listening to someone you feel like you get to know them and I was very saddened to hear of his passing a few weeks back.

What is worse is that I think he was finally starting to live up to his full potential. For a long time I felt he was funnier being himself in interviews than on stage. But there was always this sense of an impending explosion building around Patrice, like watching sparks traveling along a fuse. His last show Elephant In The Room hit me a lot harder than some of his previous material and made me feel like it was only a matter of time until he finally blew up.

It’s available on Netflix Streaming, but I’d ask that you consider purchasing it to help support his family.

My Friend The Platypus

Long-Time Reader and Commenter ImpassionedPlatypus is starting up a business in the DC area, where she basically gets your house in order. Literally. By organizing shit.

You can hire her at this website. And you should do it because she’s a nice person.

Lastly, MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

Peter Anderson

I’ve been thinking about faking my own death, lately.

Actually, I don’t know why I clarified that it was my own death. No one ever tries to fake someone else’s death, do they? Has that ever happened, even once? I don’t think it has.

It all started when I saw a homeless man smoking a cigarette outside of a grocery store about two weeks ago. He had roughly my build and although he was approximately forty, I imagined that if he was burned beyond recognition that his charred corpse might be made to pass for mine. Of course, I suppose that goes with being burned beyond recognition. Why did I add that? I need to stop digressing on my digression.

He coughed a lot and kept moving around in ways to both make himself warmer and draw attention to his change dish without much luck. I didn’t have any change to give him, so I pretended not to see him standing there, and walked to the car and hated myself.

Pretty much what I do on a daily basis, in other words.

But as I climbed into the car, I thought: “I wonder if that homeless man has cancer and doesn’t even know it?”

I fantasized about following him to whatever Mission takes him in at night, because it’s too cold in Idaho to stay out on the streets. I thought about tapping his shoulder from out of the shadows and proposing an arrangement. I’d be wearing my knit wool winter cap when I did this, of course. You have to wear that kind of hat when you have a clandestine meeting.

I’d be wearing a black pea coat and my breath would fog the air when I speak. We’d be speaking at the edge of a street light’s illuminated cone. On the boundary of light and dark. Not quite wrong, but definitely not right.

“I’ll give you one hundred dollars every week and set you up in an apartment if you’ll let me have your body when you die.”

Of course, in my mind he does have cancer and he is going to be dead in six months. And of course, this modest sum seems princely to him. So he agrees, and our little partnership begins. His name is Jerry. He used to sell cars. And then five years ago, for no particular reason at all, his life fell apart.

I meet with him three times a week for dinner. We’d be friends if he weren’t dying. He almost seems happy I’ve given his life a purpose. He’s got two kids he hasn’t spoken to in forever. He says his son wouldn’t be that much younger than me. I say, “that’s nice Jerry, finish your ravioli.”

Jerry says he hasn’t had a hot meal and a home like this in forever.

I think about this when I pretend it’s okay that I’m not getting Jerry treatment for his cancer. I think I realized how stupid these internal fantasies are long enough to roll my eyes at myself here, but other than that I was pretty into it.

I’ve got good credit, so I open several new accounts and max them out with cash advances. I find the gravestone for an infant who died at approximately the same time I was born. I request his birth certificate and begin to build up a new identity. A new social security number. A new bank account. A new life.

Irony of ironies, this poor dead baby’s name was Peter Anderson. Ain’t that just a kick in the pants? I don’t let it worry me overmuch. I’ve already gone into a sort of emotional chrysalis, preparing for a change.

Peter Anderson has approximately $25,000 when Jerry dies. Dies on the shitter too weak to even wipe. Andrew Peterson cleans him up even though he’s about to defile his corpse, because he figures Jerry deserves at least that much. Peter Anderson doesn’t care though. Peter Anderson has no attachment to anyone else on this earth when Andrew Peterson drags Jerry’s corpse into the driver’s side seat of the car. Peter Anderson doesn’t even flinch when Jerry and Andrew go up in flames. A one in a billion explosion of a propane tank he’d gone out to get for the barbecue.

Andrew Peterson had stupidly left the old tank on and it had run empty. There was a big fight with the whole family before Andrew left to get it refilled. Now everyone regrets that this is the last conversation Andrew Peterson ever had. But Peter Anderson doesn’t care about this when he rents a car and drives far away. He never even stops to think about it.

Where will he end up? Who knows? It could be anywhere, really. But probably Brazil.

Peter Anderson could move to South America because that’s where Brazil is. He could keep losing weight like Andrew Peterson had been losing weight at the gym for the past two months. He could be unrecognizably thin and shapely inside of a year. Peter Anderson could dye his skin brown with silver nitrate and learn to speak Portuguese like a native. Peter Anderson is a genius and would never have to hide it because his competency embarrasses him.

Peter Anderson could be happy.

Because Peter Anderson doesn’t have a little brother and sister who always have to come first. Because Peter Anderson doesn’t have to stop writing to go downstairs and mediate an almost psychotically violent discussion about where the label on a ham is usually placed. Peter Anderson would be horrified at the notion of spending his whole life to make up for other people’s mistakes. Peter Anderson doesn’t HAVE to do anything.

Peter Anderson’s parents did him a favor and died shortly after he was born. Peter Anderson has no family. No humorous or horrific past at all. He was raised in an orphanage by some nuns who will corroborate any story if he just keeps sending them enough money.

Peter Anderson makes love to a waitress he met on the beach a year after he’s been in Brazil. Her name is Laurissa and she works at one of the resorts. She’s young, sweet, beautiful and innocent and Peter Anderson never once thinks that he doesn’t deserve her as he bangs her with such passion as poets aspire to even fathom. Or that love is just something meat does when it wants to forget it’s meat.

I think I stopped at a traffic light or something and came out of my fugue state. That’s what tends to happen when I fall into these fantasies.

So, instead of doing any of that, I drove home some groceries I paid for myself, bagged myself, and which I then unloaded myself. Almost three-hundred dollars worth. I bought some gifts for friends and forgave the children for being rude and withdrawn lately, because they’re teenagers after all and it won’t last forever. I mediated some disputes my mother had with my step-father, because it’s not like they’re doing it on purpose. They’re just that dumb and incapable of knowing better.

I decided it would be okay to keep doing this until the children are old enough to look after themselves, because I could always imagine little escape scenarios for my own amusement. And if people come up to me and say idiotic things like “those aren’t your kids” or “you don’t have any responsibility” I don’t have to be upset, because I get to make my own choices and they are no one’s business but mine.

I guess it comes down to my fundamental life philosophy:

What do you if you wake up one day and see the Devil snarling in your face?

Do you spit? Shout defiance? Make a thousand threats and die courageously?

Or do you cower and beg for mercy? Offer a bargain in exchange for your life? Give up every last ounce of your dignity for another moment of life.

No, I think not. Making binary choices is doing business on the Devil’s terms.

If you ever do wake up one day and see the Devil snarling in your face, you reach out with one hand, put your thumb between your first and middle fingers, and laugh: “I’ve got your nose! I’ve got your nose! I’ve got your goddamn nose, you stupid metaphor for all human evil!”

Then do an armpit fart.

If there really is such a thing as the Devil, it stands to reason those would be the kinds of things he is afraid of. All the things that take away the power that we’re accustomed to giving him. Or rather the metaphysical dread that he anthropomorphically embodies.

If sometimes the Devil is a less than ideal living situation, and grabbing his nose is imagining inventive ways to fake your death, so be it. Because occasionally grabbing the devil’s nose when someone is yelling very loudly is also you getting to reach out and give them a purple nurple, and the expression on their face is worth the world.

I think that was both more silly and poetic than I intended.

Did you know that cats can get AIDS?

It is true.

A Fancy Swewish Sweater

Someone I’m distantly related to prepares rooms for Boeing Executives. Or something. I don’t know. I’m not sure who they are, exactly.

Anyhow, my aunt and uncle came over two weeks ago.

Shamed by their incredible level of what I can only call functionalness, I decided to get brave and cooked them some eggs and bacon for breakfast. My mother also pretended that we were a regular family. Yada yada yada. Blah blah blah. Please don’t scratch the nickel coating on this lottery ticket because I’m afraid it’s a dud and I’d be very ashamed if you knew that.

That sort of thing.

Because I have this weird combination of egomania and self-loathing, I always use people’s accomplishments as a mirror in which to examine my own inadequacies. But who cares, I was cooking them breakfast, okay?

So, because they’re the kind of people who think about these things, they at their breakfast and then brought a Fancy Swewish Sweater out of their luggage. They said, and I misquote:

“Andrew, we do not like to waste things because we are conscientious people who are concerned about the environment. We do not ever find good things and just abandon them because of the existential dread that happiness would bring. One of our relatives was given this sweater by a Boeing Executive whom it did not fit. It also did not fit our relative and thus it was passed on down the line. You are a big person. Here is this big sweater. We thought of you the moment we found it.”

I put it on. It fit nice. No. Let’s not lie. It fit like getting a hug from God.

Then we went to visit my cousin at college. He’s going to become a dentist. He and his beautiful lawyer wife are also super functional people who never just stare off into the distance and imagine how awesome it would be to fake their own death. And then blog about it. Or whatever.

I walked around the college campus with everyone, thinking about how I only really need another year to get an engineering job I don’t want. And also about how nice the sweater was and how I had a hole in the crotch of my pants, but a very small one that was unnoticeable so long as I didn’t sit down with my legs spread.

We dropped my aunt and uncle off with some friends.

Then about a week later I thought, “this sweater sure is swell, I would like another as it makes me feel like maybe I’m not a piece of human garbage.” I looked up the manufacturer online.

That fancy Swewish sweater is worth over $500.

Jaysus.

My Brother Bryan is Married

Bryan is married, and I fear he is also becoming a super functional normal person. I went to his wedding reception last week. I gave him a big dirty wad of cash without a card, because I’m classy like that. He showed me around his house. That he owns. With his wife.

I asked him if he remembered when he was the weird one.

He says he still feels weird sometimes, but that he doesn’t masturbate like a paranoid wife trying to prevent her husband from physically being able to have an affair so it was easy to grow out of it. Or not really. But that’s what he would have said if he were me, and I’m the one with the blog.

But he is married to a nice young lady and I am very happy for the both of them.

I also saw my dad for the first time in four or five’ish years while I was there. He needed Bryan and I to go get some propane for a barbecue. It was very prophetic.

The Glass Tongue

Still working away at it, but progress has been a bit slow. I’m going to try to redouble my efforts. It would probably be helpful if I didn’t think about faking my own death so much. Or had a job.

When I first invented the Shaen’Woa (the mind-controlling demon monsters from the Tide World), which if I’m recalling correctly was sometime in the fifth grade, I thought “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all the things people do that make my life horrible would condemn them to a horrible, awful death?”

Then, with my evil childish village-of-the-damned like eyes, I laughed and laughed and laughed. In front of a fire. With blood running down my face. And a knife held above my head. Its edge gleaming in the moonlight.

Or something.

I was a bitter, angry child. Okay?

But anyway, around the same time I thought up the Shaen’Woa I invented the “Super Duper Warrior Culture” that every Fantasy really needs to fight the bad guys. In my case, the island nation of Angard. Then I started thinking, what would fighting demons really do to a culture over a long period of time?

Suppose there really were demons that could take over your mind if you drank, or did drugs, or were prone to rages. Suppose there were nasty things preying upon every human vice, waiting to pounce on you the moment you showed a second’s weakness? Creatures bent on the destruction of mankind. Creatures bad enough that you’d have to really build your whole society around fighting them.

Then I figured, over time, with pressure and selection… you would get Mormon Samurai Vikings.

This story is about how Mormon Samurai Vikings might respond to an alcoholic.

“You know what I think?”

Renner leaned forward… or as far forward as the ropes girdling his chest would allow, anyway. He stared Lieutenant Lo’Faen directly in her soft gray eyes and snarled like a mad dog. The bitch didn’t so much as flinch.

“I think you’re a fucking liar!” he shouted. He spit. A great big gray-green ball of phlegm… which fell short of Lieutenant Lo’Faen’s face. In fact, it seemed as though it hadn’t quite managed to reach the table. And actually, if he was being particularly honest, it might have landed in his lap.

Renner fell back in his seat, gasped to recoup the air from his shout, then hiccuped. He supposed this diminished his statement’s dramatic effect somewhat, but he was in too much pain to really care. And since no one had, if he again felt like being particularly honest, asked him for his thoughts, or even so much as stated their own thoughts aloud, it wasn’t as if he had expected to have much impact anyway.

“Your move, Master Gorashu,” said the Lieutenant without emotion.

Alarell bleeding at Ragnad how he needed to be sick! But they’d already given him something to make him throw up all he had already. Then made him swallow something else that had tasted like coal and gruel. This he had actually wanted to sick up, but it had settled in the bottom of his stomach like a sack of rocks. He shivered under the blanket they’d put around his shoulders. At least he had a nice fire to his back. A nice warm fire he could fall asleep by….

Time passed. Renner couldn’t tell how much. He came to with a start and another hiccup.

“Let me go you bitch! You harlot! Let me out of this chair!”

Lieutenant Lo’Faen failed to react. Failed to even look up from the playing board. Renner thrashed in the chair, rocking back and forth, frothing at the mouth and spitting. Dignified streams of drool ran off of his chin and dribbled onto his chest.

“Just you wait until my brother hears about this! Just you wait! He’ll have the whole armada down here to fetch me back! No one insults the honor of Jimroar and its dignitaries! No one!”

“Your move, Master Gorashu,” repeated the Lieutenant.

The whore didn’t even bother to refute him. Didn’t even bother to say that it was his brother that had sent him there in the first place. Didn’t bother to say she could do whatever the hell she wanted by law. Not to mention that Jefri had probably given them all manner of other cumbersome permissions for what they were allowed to do to him. Jefri and his stinking recriminations. Throwing him on that damned ship “for his own good.”

It occurred to Renner all of the sudden, that they might never let him drink again. Not a drop. Not ever.

Renner allowed himself a quiet moment to come to terms to this. If this moment was perhaps actually several minutes of hysterical sobbing, he did not let it wound his pride. A man did not always need to be quite so honest with himself. A vision of his sober life struck him like a world in which all of his friends had been murdered. A lonely, desolate, bleak world without even a chance to numb the pain. Finally, he sighed and reluctantly gave instructions to move one of his Woa across the Touraum Board. Or he may have shouted and thrown a few childish taunts. He didn’t bother reflecting too hard on which one it was.

He took the Lieutenant’s last Hunter. Now all but two of the pieces on the board were black.

He was shaking. That used to happen to him sometimes in the mornings if he’d drunk all his stock the night before. But nothing a trip to the market couldn’t fix. He needed a good Talli Wine. Or a stout Alarundi Rum. A strong Rivengaudi whiskey. Something crisp and wet that would feel like being submersed in hot mud. More time slipped away from him. Ran through his trembling fingers like sand.

“Everyone drinks, is all I’m saying. There’s no way a whole country doesn’t drink. It isn’t possible,” Renner muttered when he came to his senses again. He sensed there might have been a whole conversation before this, which he had forgotten.

Without hesitation, as if she hadn’t lost focus at all, the Lieutenant moved one of her remaining two pawns a single square to the left. Out of the Night and into the Day. A relatively safe square. For the moment.

“I assure you, that is both our custom and our law.”

Not so much as a sigh. Not so much as a rolling of the eyes. A statement, simple and direct. Not a hair out of place, not a wrinkle in her clothes. All of it seeming effortless. Alarell bleeding at Ragnad, her back was straighter than his and he was tied to a fucking chair!

Another blackout. Another return. A bit of a genius began to come upon to him. He coughed to clear his throat.

“I quite understand your reasoning now, Lieutenant. There is no longer any need for the restraints.” Renner wished he wasn’t still hiccuping. Damn hard to look honest with the hiccups especially when you were lying through your teeth. “You have my word I will never drink again while stationed here.”

“Drinking, as you call it, is not your problem. You have a disease, Master Gorashu. We do not let the diseased die if we can help it…” a faint hint of a smile, “even if they believe it is their own choice.”

Walkers-Crossed Angardi, and their bleak sense of humor! And they wondered why he shouted so often? He felt like a man in prison, clanging his cup across the bars just to make some godsdamn noise!

“Everybody drinks! Every society, every culture, every person! Every man woman and child takes a nip! It isn’t a disease! And I refuse to do otherwise than honor my… no! My infallible human nature commands!” Renner turned from side to side to see if any of the common men would cheer him on. None did. Two of the men seemed to be staring at him with naked hostility.

He still couldn’t make heads nor tails of it. No sex. No drink. No fun. Like a nation of fucking Orthodox Dians!

Well, fuck them!

“Tell me Master Gorashu, for I know but little of the continent, would all men, women and children smuggle alcohol into a nation in which such a substance is strictly prohibited? Where the punishments are often severe? If so, would all men women and children risk death to imbibe a version of alcohol so toxic it is better used for cleaning pens… simply to feel drunk? Is it common for them to be found hiding in stables, curled in a ball, body wracked by cramps, their own feces and urine filling their breeches? Tell me, Master Gorashu, for I desperately hope such is not the case.”

“Fuck you!” Renner spat, tears rolling down his cheeks. Hadn’t even shit that bad and he’d barely pissed at all. But she had to say it, right out here where everyone could hear. Without a thought for his pride. Renner was almost certain they’d brought in people from guard duty just to watch.

“I do not mean to embarrass you. It is not our hope to convince you through words, Master Gorashu. We have helped enough people from the continent with your affliction to realize this is foolish. We treat the sick. We do not simply command them to be well. You are here. You will see. Everyone here sees, eventually. And when you see it with your own two eyes, then you too will understand. Then you will go back and tell your people. You will be made well again. That is our agreement with your nation.”

The Lieutenant had still not removed her eyes from the board.

Snarling again, Renner ordered a piece moved at random. He didn’t want to play their stupid game anymore than he had to.

Lieutenant Lo’Faen calmly and deliberately grabbed hold of her other pawn and moved it onto a black square. Didn’t even take a second to think about it. You had to do that with pawns. The color of their square had to alternate every move, even when it left them open to attack.

“I hate this place. I hate every stone. Every handful of soil. Every draught of cold air is poison to me. But most of all, I hate every last one of your pious, self-righteous, idiotic citizens. I pray to the Walkers, to be witnessed by their Eyes above, that every last babbling moron on this island is taken to Ewil Brenven! The Shaen take you!”

Renner thought he could hear struggling behind him, but he couldn’t quite turn his head around to see. Whatever it was, it quickly quieted.

“Your move, Master Gorashu,” the Lieutenant replied with a small nod.

Grunting in annoyance, Renner ordered a Loke moved and slew the pawn, ignoring the nearby Woa that he could have used instead to take possession of it. A stupid game, this Touraum. A silly diversion that could barely keep the mind alive.

“You’re all dimlings! All of you! I’m drunk and not even trying that hard, and I’ve still got you beat in three moves. How is an officer of your low skill supposed to lead an army? Eh, tell me!” It was a lucky thing his stomach was mostly empty and that the gruel had already passed through him, because he’d shouted hard enough his last hiccup had brought up the taste of acid.

“We do not give up until the last piece has fallen, Master Gorashu.” The Lieutenant picked up her last silver piece. A simple pawn. She held it up reverently for him to see as if it were the light of the world. “You seem to misunderstand the point of the game. Touraum is like life. We do not play to win. There is no winning in life. We play to stave off certain death for as long as possible. To be brave and virtuous so long as we have a piece left to play. To play Touraum is to learn what it means to be Angardi.”

“There ain’t no fun to a game where the sides ain’t even! It’s all slaughter! Slaughter ain’t a game!”

“None of us leaves the world alive, Master Gorashu. There is only the eternity of the game, the pieces on the board, and the way you play in between. But I think this is enough instruction for today. You have me beat anyway you move next and you must rest.”

The Lieutenant made a quick motion and the silk cords tying him to the chair came loose. He tried to fight… or well, stumble really. But before he could even do that two pairs of hands gripped his arms and lifted him back up and over the chair as if he were a child.

He screamed at the men holding him. At the fireplace. At the ceiling. Screamed at godsdamn Jefri for sending him to this godsdamn place where there wasn’t a drop of what he needed just to feel right. Screamed, trembled and cried at himself for needing it so bad.

“And if you had been paying attention and used your Woa back there, you would have seen you could have had me in two moves. Not three. That is why we play, Master Gorashu! That is what you must learn!”

The Lieutenant’s voice seemed to echo all down the long hallway, beating at his head like a hammer again and again.

Godsdamn Jefri!

After I realized I just needed to use whatever artwork Erin had laying around for ebook covers, I decided I’d need to write a story called “The Glass Tongue.”

So I walked around and I thought and I thought and I thought.

I decided I wanted to write a story that was essentially “Cinderella in Reverse.” So, instead of a down-trodden girl transforming into a beautiful princess (which she always was on the inside) by the power of white magic and winning her heart’s desire… I wanted an ugly man to be put in a beautiful body by black magic only to find out that he was still a creep  (because he was ALWAYS a creep on the inside, and being ugly was just his excuse) then lose what he wanted to obtain because he was never worthy of it in the first place.

Lyle in this story is loosely based upon a creepy creepy creeeepy janitor* from my Freshman year of college. I changed the name to match that of a guy who once purposefully let a pipe hit me on the oil rig, coming within a few feet of smashing every bone in my body.

The janitor in question always tried to corner me and question me about my sexual thoughts and experiences, with a level of aggression that was disconcerting to say the least. He also had the bad habit of what I can only refer to as ”giving cunnilingus to the air” with his tongue when he said something sexual.

I got in the habit of scoping out a room like the member of a SWAT team before committing to crossing the threshold, whenever I needed to get through the dorm hallways to or from my room. The worst was when he found you alone in the laundry room, because then it was a lot harder to get away. Or God forbid you be taking a piss and look up to find him entering the bathroom.

I know my former roommate Kevin sometimes reads this website. I believe the janitor in question once cornered him and tried to discuss Asian pornography. Fun times, eh Kevin?

*I am against the negative portrayal of janitors in fiction, so I changed Lyle’s profession. I’ve known too many awesome janitors. Also, one of my all time personal heroes is a guy simply known as “Jerry the Janitor” from my Elementary School.

If I had done that, it would’ve been rape.

Lyle knew this with a cruel and cast-iron certainty that that sliced a razor of bitter loathing across the inside of his stomach and the backs of his eyes. If he had said those words… if he had given that playful shove on the shoulder… if he had assumed so much as half that familiarity, even now the girl would be holding back rebuke and glaring at him instead of laughing and tossing her hair from side to side.

“Oh shut up, Ian! You liar!” the girl laughed, returning the shove. Did her hand linger there for a moment? Lyle thought it did.

Even from behind, Lyle could tell the girl was blushing. Her pink-nailed fingers were writhing anxiously as she straightened her tight cotton dress. Whatever had been whispered in her ear, whatever words had left Ian’s handsome face and silver tongue, Lyle was certain would have landed him in jail if their positions had been reversed.

“You don’t think so? Why don’t you come out with me this Saturday and find out?”

She’d slap me for even asking. Smack me right in the face. Life isn’t fair.

“What did you have in mind?”

What was it they said a woman did if she was interested? Kept finding a reason to touch you, wasn’t it? Lyle didn’t have a real reason to know, but he found it interesting how the girl kept returning Ian’s playful shoves. How her hand kept lingering a heartbeat too long.

God her skin must be so soft. Like goose-down, silk-sheets, or the pillows in heaven.

In Lyle’s mind, he said the words Ian had said and the girl was not laughing. In this imaginary world the girl was backing away in disgust, and the other shoppers were already starting to take uncomfortable, almost hostile, stances. Whispering names under their breath. Getting ready to run him off like some kind of village monster. Well fuck them.

“Dinner at the Emerald Palace, six o’clock. I’ll look up your address in the rental database and pick you up at your place, what do you say?”

She’d call my boss when she got home and demand I be fired. Abuse of company resources. Hell, she might call the police and try to get a restraining order for stalking.

Another peal of laughter. More leaning forward. More whispers exchanged. Her hot breath must be stimulating every pore, every square millimeter of skin, every nerve cell.

Lyle watched the register from behind the action section, two or three DVD’s in his hand, not really browsing the selection. Not really doing anything but staring. He turned from side to side, to make sure no one had noticed him. People took note of him in public, sneaking peeks at him as if to make sure he wasn’t planning trouble. Especially around kids, which was probably about the most insulting thing Lyle could think of. But as far as Lyle was concerned, that made them the sickos, not him.

When Lyle was done checking to see if he had been observed, the girl was already writing down her phone number on a scrap piece of paper. Using one of those cute frilly pink pens they kept in a cup by the register. Something tacky that only nineteen year old bimbos would like. Something only twenty year old loser cashiers at video rental stores would find attractive.

Lyle waited a good five minutes after she left before he approached the register with his movies, not wanting to be too obvious. Even after so long, the girl’s scent had lingered. Smelled like cherry chapstick. Lyle caught himself murmuring under his breath, opening and closing his mouth to ingest the air, and could barely remember to stop.

“Is that all today?” Ian asked with a faint smile, polite but hardly warm, as he picked up the movies Lyle had put on the register. A smile for a stranger. As if Lyle hadn’t been coming there at least three times a week for the past two years. Stupid fucking kids.

“Got another one on the line, eh Ian?” Lyle asked, half-stuttering. He knew he was only being friendly, that it was Ian’s fault if he read anything suggestive into his words but… Christ, he could still smell cherries.

“What’s that?”

“The girl. Real good looking one, isn’t she?” Lyle tried his best not to look threatening.

“Uh, yeah. So, can I get you anything else?”

Before he could stop himself, the words tumbled out of his mouth. Like always.

“No, but I bet you’re going to get some, eh kid?”

Such a harsh frown. Such coldness. Maybe he’d been a bit forward, but he hadn’t deserved that kind of response. Why, hadn’t Lyle seen men of his age exchange pleasantries like this before? Why should this be so different?

“Listen kid, I was just-”

“Twelve bucks. Eight if you return them by tomorrow.”

“I’m just saying you got yourself a real hottie-”

“Good bye, Lyle.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.”

I had an epiphany last night that I suck. Really, really suck.

“Run, Run Judy” was the last story I wrote and finished that I actually liked. That was several months ago, and I felt it could have ended better than it did. That was an awful realization.

So, I stared at the ceiling for about an hour just hating myself. I obviously need to write more. Then I spent another hour hating myself for hating myself. It’s self-indulgent and unproductive. And to be truly meta, I hated myself for hating myself for hating myself.

I then realized this is the cycle I always go through before I hit another productive phase so maybe it wasn’t so bad. Then at some point I made myself fall asleep because you can only follow these things for so many inversions before it becomes too hard to keep track.

I’m going to force myself to have more fun with these stories I’m working on. I think at least three of the five could be truly excellent in the weird way I’m excellent when I’m not just weird. The other two are weird in the way that I’m almost frighteningly psychotic when I’m weird. But they can be more me than they are now.

I just have to remember to have fun, so I can squeeze my life-force into these things and make them special. People like my writing because I’m bizarre, a little bit frightening, and full of strange thoughts. Not because I think “too much” or “too far.”

After I write these stories, I’m writing one about a man who takes too much erection medication and whose penis grows to the size of the universe. His urethra is guarded by a giant blind pterodactyl named Murathax.

Also:

Avoid Trampling People to Death, and Shop at Amazon

Graham found the laundromat of the hotel in a utility closet in the back of the ballroom. Or rather what used to be the ballroom, back in some long ago heyday when the Longstreet had been able to afford the upkeep. As far as Graham could see, which was only about four or five feet in any direction, the ballroom was mostly a labyrinth of crumbling cardboard boxes now. The crypt-like darkness was lit only by occasional light bulbs, dangling from the vaulting ceiling like fruit-bearing vines from wires without fixtures.

Something which sounded disconcertingly both like and unalike the mewling of a cat came from a distant corner. Graham was suddenly acutely aware of the lingering blood-like scent of old iron, the pock-marked mirrors on the walls, and the crippling weight of his laundry bag.

“If everything else in this shit-hole had been perfect, I’d still rate it one star for the ballroom alone.” He paused long enough to jot this down on a pad of paper he kept in his back pocket.

Graham stuck the pen back in his breast pocket and continued through the utility closet door. The laundromat had a total of thirty-two machines, four rows of eight. Sixteen washers and sixteen dryers, ancient dinosaurs of steel and and rubber at least fifty years old. The glass fronts of each machine looked like a submarine window.

Graham figured the only reason the machines hadn’t been sold off to a junkyard for scrap metal was because they were inexplicably somehow larger than the door to the utility closet. He gave a machine an experimental shove. It didn’t budge so much as an inch, although the washer’s rough corner left a red mark in his palm. A manufacturer’s stamp on a small brass plate on the front of each machine stated that they were “Demons.”

“I’ve changed my mind. Two stars because now the creepiness has novelty value.”

Graham loaded his clothing into the machine, shaking his head in ceaseless wonder at the state of the Longstreet Hotel. Wondering why it wasn’t condemned let alone still taking customers. A crumpled blue box of “Wish Away” laundry soap with a post-it note reading “Complimentary!” drew his eye. Graham picked it up and sniffed. Whatever “Wish Away” laundry soap was normally supposed to smell like, this box smelled…. strangely of nothing.

Oh well.

He wasn’t there to review the hotel, or make fun of its horrifying lack of amenities. He definitely wasn’t there to wander the labyrinth of the ballroom and write cruel descriptions of its disorder to titillate readers. He was at the Longstreet to rekindle a flame that had burned out fifteen years ago. A flame he hadn’t even really ever thought about relighting, or even missed, and had thought contentedly abandoned until an e-mail he’d received about a week ago. A flame he was now sure he was trying to rekindle out a contemptible species of desperate boredom.

Graham started the machine. It hummed with a vigor that belied its age. His clothes circled round in swift, steady rhythm

“If you’re trying to fall back in love with someone you haven’t seen since high school, and would not like to be constantly reminded that you’re attempting it out of weakness, I would strongly recommend finding lodgings other than the Longstreet Hotel.”

He left in a hurry. Janna would be waiting.

… because the odds of two gay lion-taming German magicians with a love of flamboyant fashion being born in the same century, let alone within five years of each other, are sufficiently insurmountable for there to be any other rational explanation.

A positive thought for your Tuesday.

First, I want to talk to you about the physiological reaction to smelling farts and then I want to make some book recommendations.

The thing of it is, you can’t really force someone to smell a fart, can you? Oh, you can fart in an enclosed space, you can fart under some blankets, or (if you’re my step-father, for example) you can even cup your fart and put it under someone’s nose. But the thing of it is, as soon as someone gets a single whiff of that awful odor, they will fight like hell to find another source of oxygen. They’ll flee the room, use their shirt as a filter, or punch you until you move your hand. You can never make someone ingest flatulence with wholehearted abandon.

The only way to get someone to truly partake of the essence of a fart then, is not through force at all, but by trickery. It’s a bit like Aesop’s Fable about the Wind and the Sun making a bet as to which of them could get a man to take his coat off. The Wind blew and blew but the man only held his coat tighter and tighter. The sun came out and shone, and the man took his coat off right away.

In similar fashion, the Comedian Adam Carolla once forced Jimmy Kimmel to smell a fart by bottling his flatulence into a coffee can and telling his friend that it was full of freshly crushed grounds. I was once tricked into ingesting a fart when I had to do hard physical labor under someone standing directly above me. Once I had begun panting and showed no signs of slowing down, they kindly bent over and let one rip right next to my open mouth. On a clear day, when the wind is calm, I can still taste it.

This is a bit like what happened when I first read Dan Wells’ horror novel I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER (by the way, it looks like it’s on sale for $4 in paperback right now). You see, I’m a bit racist and a bit prone to preconceptions. I listened to Dan Wells’ podcast and heard him talk about horror and I thought “Oh yeah sure, I can’t wait to see what this polite cheerful Mormon Dude thinks is scary. I’m sure it’s going to be sooo scary.”

So, before I had ever even picked up the book I had decided it wasn’t going to be very scary and would depict characters who said things like “Golly gosh gee whiz soda crackers! We had better go kill that demon because it’s the right thing to do and we’re nice and curiously socially responsible people!”

So, when I actually read the book it was a bit like closing my eyes to be kissed (or you know, what I imagine that’s like for people who don’t have touching phobias and trust issues) and getting smacked in the temple with an aluminum crow bar… then getting curb-stomped before I had time to really come to grips with what had happened. It was such an overwhelming sensory joyride that I decided right then and there I’d never been so glad to be kind of racist.

And then I felt guilty because my grandpa gave me his sense of morality, and he was Catholic and being ashamed is just something you’re supposed to do. Which then became a sort of meta-shame spiral as I realized thinking this also made me sort of racist against Catholics. This ended with me sitting in the lotus position between two mirror for thirty-six hours and becoming the Kwisatz Haderach.

To get back on point: It was like swallowing that fart, except instead of losing 10 IQ points, I got to be wrapped up in the psychological struggles of a teenage sociopath without any of my defenses prepped or in place.

Anyway, Dan Wells has a brother named Rob who also wrote a book that has that same eery unsettling kind of violence called VARIANT and I wanted to recommend it to everyone. As I actually once interviewed Dan Wells (mostly just because I couldn’t possibly imagine he hadn’t actually seen some sick twisted horrible thing in his childhood and needed to know so that my view of the world could continue to make sense) I don’t know where this family talent for unsettling creepy horror came from except that maybe they once faced a Pennywise-like demon as children and had the experience erased from their memory… except when it bleeds through around the edges when they write fiction.

They’re good, I’d recommend buying them both.

Also, my beloved John Hodgman has a book out. I don’t know many other people in real life who share my love of John Hodgman (I suspect this is because I’m just a douchebag instead of being a hipster douchebag) but I recommend that as well, if for entirely different reasons that more or less begin and end with me wanting to be John Hodgman or at least engage in John Hodgman cosplay if such a thing does not yet exist. I want to call it Hodgmania. The book is entitled THAT IS ALL

Does anyone else remember when I used to post actual stories instead of just random shot-gun scatter updates or little bits of stories?

Yeah, I don’t either.

My hope is that Erin gets so angry about the text besmirching her picture, she’ll fix it without me having to ask her.

Soul-Shaped Atoms

“It happens.”

The frustrated scribbling of a pen gone dry. The hiss of a recorder, like the continual and distant crumpling of tinfoil. Soft murmuring as the it with the brown hair on its face cursed under its breath. A thousand thousand discordant actions and objects. Separations it struggled to unify, but could not.

“Sorry about that, Samantha. Can’t seem to keep a pen working in this humidity for more than a few days. What is it that happens exactly, Samantha?” asked the it with the brown hair on its face.

“It,” it said.

The it with the brown hair on its face nodded although it did not seem placated. The it with the brown hair on its face had been questioning it for the past hour, antagonizing it with separateness. It had not wanted to speak, but it had spoken anyway. A foolish choice. It could tell that the it with the brown hair on its face had not understood.

“Just to be certain for my records, Samantha, you are aware I was talking about your rape and childhood abuse? Is that correct, Samantha?”

The it with the brown hair on its face kept using that word. That separate, unique, untruthful word, Samantha. It knew that the it with the brown hair on its face was attempting to enrage it, but it grew frustrated anyway. Samantha was a dinstinction it had worked for years to unify.

It lay there, still as the couch it was stretched out on, now knowing that unity through separateness was a mistake and a delusion it should not have given into. Furthermore, it knew that the it with the brown hair on its face would leave it alone if it unified for long enough. The it with the brown hair on its face would grow frustrated, angry, and then bored. It was inevitable. It stared at its reflection in a large mirror on the opposing wall, until it could not tell which version of itself was inside the mirror and which was not.

It continued to unify, for how long it could not be certain, until the it with the brown hair slammed a clipboard on the table, and leaned forward aggressively. It did not react, but the it with the brown hair on its face now stood between it and the mirror.

“Shall we cut the bullshit, Samantha? Did Doctor Palmer tell you why you were referred to me from the psychiatric hospital or not? I get at least four people a day in here trying to fake your symptoms, and I’m getting a bit fucking tired of it.”

It blinked a few times. The bits of it that were its eyes had become dry. Suddenly a separation came between itself and itself. It would have to work hard to make the separation go away again. It struggled not to let itself become angry. Anger helped separation, strengthened the lie and any sign of anger would only encourage the it with the brown hair on its face.

“Won’t fess up? Then let me summarize your story as best I can. Your public health records until the age of eighteen indicate perfect health and regular stimulus response. There are no mentions of autism or schizotypal disorders. In fact, given some work my team has done tracking down old leasing records, you were living a normal life as little as three years ago.

“Your affliction seems to have begun when you were found in your apartment laying on the bathroom floor in what was originally thought to be a catatonic state triggered by the shock of a violent rape. Investigators believed you were there for four days before anyone thought to look for you. A battery of tests at the hospital revealed no neurological damage and your blood work came back normal.

“When you remained unresponsive you were remanded to a state institution for permanent care, until Doctor Palmer diagnosed you with IPO and referred you to me.”

It was better to have three mirrors, it thought. With three mirrors it could make a triangle and put its face in the middle of it, and follow its reflections all the way to infinity. No deceitful separations. None at all. Only truthful unity. A place where there would be so many Samanthas that a single Samantha would matter not at all.

“So, I have two theories. My first theory is that the trauma of your rape awakened memories of your childhood abuse. This coupled with your studies in psychology, triggered Latent Brownsfeld Melancholia, commonly referred to as IPO.

“My second theory is that you faked the rape, have kept up an elaborate facade for the last three years, in hopes that you would be sent to me so you could have the Panacea. It’s a long time for a Junkie Con but people smarter than you have gone to such lengths before. Although, and let me be clear, even when they were successful they realized how stupid they were in the end. The Panacea is more horrible than you can possibly begin to imagine.”

The it with the brown hair on its face stood up and walked over to it, again blocking its view of the mirror. The it with the brown hair leaned over it and brought its face close to its own. The it with the brown hair on its face breathed so close to its face that it could feel the air tickling its eyebrows.

“Are you lying to me, Samantha! Are you a little liar who made up a big story because she wanted an injection to take away all of her problems?” The it with the brown hair on its face screamed.

The it with the brown on its face raised a hand and struck it across the face. It tried to keep the separation away, tried to keep itself the same as the reflection it could not see, but it remembered itself as the negative stimulus response swept through its head. But it kept the sensation as a negative stimulus response, only. It did not let the negative stimulus response become pain. Pain was one of the most deceptive separations. Pain was the lie told by a billion billion cells that they were more than atoms in strange alignment. Pain was a comfort to which it would not submit.

The it with the brown hair on its face sighed and picked up the recorder.

“Let the record show that the subject lacks reflexive fight or flight responses. Diagnosis is Latent Brownsfeld Melancholia, commonly known as Impartial Personality Order. Administration of the Panacea and Treatment will begin tomorrow.”

First, in case anyone was in suspense, the Awful Russian Literature Scenario I was worried about in my last post has been averted. As we were leaving Arizona my mother had a mammogram that detected a 15cc mass. This coincided with her not having insurance anymore.

To make a long story short (and to skip over several disaster scenario plans I’d been making about custody issues if worse came to worse) her sonogram test results came back clean. Now my list of life problems is back to “manageable.”

Feels good.

Oh, and I’ve lost fifteen pounds.

Which also feels good.

AND I found my Irish hat in some boxes after I’d been afraid I’d lost it.

That just feels okay.

ALSO, I’ve been thinking even more about house-sized elephants lately.

WHICH is excellent.

I’ll shut up now. Here’s the sneak peek:

I know the font on this cover is horrible. That’s because I did it myself. I’ll get it fixed later. But you get the idea, right?

Family of Fang and Claw

“You okay, mom?”

Linda’s left eye fluttered open. The right eye started, shuddered, strained to overcome the rheum gluing its lashes together, before falling still once more. Half the world in light. Half the world in darkness.

By instinct, Linda reached out with her good hand and clawed at the darkness to her right. Trying to strike any hidden monsters. She was certain they were there, although she’d never managed to strike one. They were always there hiding, dancing and silently laughing beyond sight, trying to make her think she was crazy, the little shits. In only moments the effort exhausted her and Linda slouched back in the car seat as she gasped through what felt like a mouthful of dessicated, flavorless jam.

“Mom?”

Some part of her brain was still struggling with the disconnect in her eyes, still waiting for input from a dead orb, so it took a while before the world resolved from a blur into her daughter’s face.

Her daughter?

When had her daughter shown up?

No. The problem was deeper than that. When the fuck had she had a daughter?

“We’re there now, mom.”

Now? There? Here?

Linda squeezed her eye shut, as if by doing so could wring clarity out of the patchwork of living and dead tissue that her brain had become since the stroke. It didn’t help much, but then again it never did. It only gave her some small sense of control. Enough to leave her pissed off anyway. And being pissed off and crippled always felt a lot better than being confused and crippled.

She opened her eye again. A bit of clarity returned. She must’ve fallen asleep. Woken up somewhere strange. She needed to stop doing that.

Linda pushed on her chin with her shaking left hand to change her angle of view. The terrifying curtain of black that hid the right half of the world moved aside, now hiding God only knew what.

She was at some kind of condominium complex. The buildings looked like rectangular mountains against the rising sun. Why was she at a condominium complex?

“We’re going to take you out of the car now, okay?”

“Oo.”

No.

They must have grabbed her while she was asleep at the hospital. People were always moving her around without her consent. The fucks.

Linda reached out with her left hand to grasp her seat-belt, hoping it might make moving her more difficult, but her feeble grip broke when that fag her daughter had married reached in and wrapped his arms around around her waist. The memories were starting to come back now. Charles (don’t-call-me-Charlie followed by a stupid mock-serious look that was supposed to be funny but only ever came across as awkward) was a computer programmer. A great big fat slob with a too-tight shirt that showed off his tits. No kind of man at all, no matter how much money he made.

Linda wiggled against his fat gut to no avail.

“Ush oo oooaahh.”

“I love you too, mom. But we’ve really got to get you out of there now, okay?”

Linda shook her head impatiently. Had everyone gone deaf? Not love you. FUCK you. Fuck you both.

Sarah (THAT was her daughter’s name )patted her head, like she was some kind of damn retard. Linda’s blood pounded hard enough she could feel it swirling around her skull. Could feel the same swirling pressure she’d felt in the seconds before this tragedy had struck her.

She snarled at Sarah. Or tried to.

God she hated that fucking kid. She should have had the abortion… or no, wait… was that the other one? Did she even HAVE another kid? She couldn’t recall. In either case, it would be better to be ignored in a state hospital than to be dragged around while having to listen to this whiny cunt and her faggot husband. And now they were… what were they doing again?

It was hard to focus through the heat of her rage, but Linda was sure whatever they were doing was rotten. It had to be selfish. Mean-spirited. And….

That’s right! They were foisting her off onto her other daughter. She remembered now. She DID have another daughter. THAT was the daughter she’d almost aborted. The worst daughter. They were giving her to the worst daughter!

It wasn’t fair.

“Charles and I will be real gentle, mom. We promise.”

“Eeen isss!”

Eat piss.

No reaction. Idiots, the both of them.

She hung in Charles’ arms like a marionette with half its strings cut, until he walked her over to a bench and set her down on a thick white sheet like she was a bundle of dirty laundry. She should have rolled right out of the fucking thing and made them drag her out of the gutter. She couldn’t, of course. Not with the right side of her body paralyzed and the left half barely functional.

They wouldn’t have dared do this before the stroke. Not with her temper. They would have been too afraid. Linda balled her left hand into a fist so it shook. Oh, they wouldn’t have dared lay a finger on her if she was still in full control of herself! She was still dead certain of that.

“It’ll all be over soon mom. Then you’ll get to spend every day with, Gina. I bet you’ll really like that, huh?”

Gina? A flash of insight. Fuck Gina!

“Oo! Oo!”

No! No!

They carried her toward the stinking condos, each holding one end of the sheet. They nearly dropped her on the stairs half a dozen times so that she swung from side to side like a ship at sea. Made her want to vomit, but she couldn’t risk it, not after she’d almost choked at the hospital. She fought back the nausea with all of what little control she still had over her body.

When they finally entered the apartment at the top landing, Charles and Sarah unceremoniously dropped her into yet another in a never-ending series of stale hospital beds. The plastic sheets crinkled against the left half of her body. It felt like laying down on an open candy wrapper. Itchy and sticky at the same time.

“Ow oo uuu ing isss ooo ee! I uuur uuuiiinnn uer!”

How could you do this to me! I’m your fucking mother!

She reached out with her hand again, this time shaping it like a claw, hoping she might be able to snag an earring or something awful like that, but Sarah took her hand before she could grab anything interesting and squeezed it. Three times. I love you. Oh Christ, what a silly cunt she’d given birth to. What an oblivious, sanctimonious cunt!

“We bought this bed in special for you, mom. Do you like it?”

“Oo!”

No.

“Yes, it is good, isn’t it mom? It’s got all kind of motors in it to move you around just how you like! And we got you this tv to watch. And Gina is going to be home soon, and she’s going to take care of you. You two will get to be together again! Won’t you like that?”

Gina. The WORST daughter. The worst goddamn daughter.

Sarah kept babbling.

Linda scowled.

Funny how Sarah talked like this was something other than a ploy to get rid of her. Funny how she made it sound like charity. Unable to spit in her daughter’s face, or even turn, Linda stared at the ceiling with her one good eye.

“O oo och!”

Hope you choke.

“That’s okay mom, we’ll miss you too. But I promise we’ll come back to visit. We’re going to leave you with the nurse now. Her name is Rosa, remember? Rosa. Just ask her if you need anything. She’s real nice, I promise. I bet you two will get to be real good friends. Charles and I have to leave so we can get back in time to pick up the kids from school.”

Linda turned her head when they had gone. The nurse was a spick. They’d left her all alone with a spick.

It figured.