Carcasses of beef and half hogs coated with a thin layer of frost dangled from chains with hooks like punching bags.

The heavy freezer door slammed shut as Henry peeled his way through the divider of clear vinyl straps. With large headphones around his neck, he adjusted his beltless pants before they sagged back to their original place where his boxers burst out.

Henry threw a see through packaged old and dry looking USDA approved faded pale red steak onto a table. Ripping its plastic packaging open, he dropped the steak in a bowl and squirted some red food coloring from a bottle. Lathering the meat in the liquid until its color rejuvenated to a fresh appearance, he repacked and slapped it with a new USDA expiration date next to a pile of similar looking creations.

On another table, three whole chickens sat next to a towel bulged with concealment. Henry pulled the towel off, where three beer can sized bags of cocaine stacked in a pyramid. Wrapping each bag of coke thick with tinfoil, he shoved them into each chicken cavity.

The instrumental of a heavy aggressive horrorcore rap track boomed in Henry’s headphones as he shot a frozen air-sealed hunk of pork shoulder like a basketball into a duffel bag strung to a metal rack. Henry bobbed his head as the bass blared in his ears. In his imagination, he was on stage in front of a bouncing sold out crowd—

It’s funny all y’all think I’m the emcee

Cuz actually there’s a ventriloquist parakeet that rests on me and I’m the dummy

I’m sick ‘n tired a hearin’ this word ratchet

Some stupid ass term in every quote unquote trap rap hit

Habit only tells me to snatch the radio and smash it

While this dirty ratchet’s neck I’m plannin’ to grab it and snap it

Wrap the cadaver in plastic and pitch it into oncoming traffic so tragic

C’mon Xavier man I just did you a favor

Even the people who made her were thankful for my violent behavior

A savior I prevented your future from eva tryin’ to mate her

Henry picked up another piece of meat, a chuck roast, and spun around, putting his back to the duffel bag. He held the roast at the side of his waist, protecting it from an imaginary defender. Stuttering with his front foot and pivoting with his back foot determining his next move, Henry stepped back as if he were popping off a fade away buzzer beater.

THUD. The ham landed in the bag.

Kris stood behind Henry, watching him in her white deli uniform. Green embroidered cursive lettering stitched her name on the left side of her chest. The definition of a but-her-teeth, it looked like Kris’s jaws enjoyed gnawing on the head of a sledgehammer. Few remaining black teeth somehow grounded themselves in her mangled gums. “Henry,” she said with no response or recognition of her presence. Henry shot another hunk of meat like a free throw. “HENRY,” she said louder. Kris grabbed a sausage from a rack and threw it at his back.

Henry turned around and pulled off his headphones, the instrumental blasting through. “What?” He turned the music off on his phone.

“I need you up front.” Kris turned through the vinyl straps, then came back. She looked at Henry’s fingertips, tinted red from the food coloring. “Wash your hands.”

A big plastic spoon plunged into a bowl of ham salad.

Henry stood behind a long counter, preparing various deli salads, meats, and cheeses enclosed in a large glass case. On the opposite end of the counter, the butcher area, Kris flattened balls of ground chuck into hamburger patties with her palm.

Soft Celtic tunes played from the storefront’s speakers. A large shamrock featuring a mashup of half the Irish and American flags hung over the center of the automatic entranceway doors. The cash register posted near the entrance, glass refrigerators lined one side of the deli, the other, glass freezers. Four aisles of shelving stocked with domestic products and imported Irish chips, jams, candies, breads, teas, and beer spread out between both sides of refrigeration units.

Henry placed a brick of corned beef into the glass case and slid its door shut. He tossed his plastic gloves in a trash can then plugged a cord into an outlet on the counter behind him. Standing over a meat slicer, his reflection held in its chrome blade cover. He rubbed his thumb over the slicer’s blade, delicate, where the oil of his fingerprint stained its perfection.

Henry stuck out a hand as the cash register clerk, Gladys, an Irish immigrant with hearing aids who looked centuries old, hunched over a cane sucking on a cigarette. In the deli’s back alley, they stood near a rusty gray door on a little road covered in potholes. Gladys fidgeted with shaky hands, searching for her pack and gave Henry a heater. Henry leaned against the building’s decaying brick wall, took a few quick deep drags, then flicked the cig into a spiraling orange dot before walking back inside.

Pants crinkled at his ankles, Henry sat on a toilet. Scrolling his phone, he combed through Instagram pictures of a twenty-something goth tattooed chick before following the link to her OnlyFans page.

Twelve minutes later, Henry pocketed his phone and took out another device. An old Nokia flip phone. He texted a number—

Butcher be in

Henry doom scrolled social media with his normal phone, waiting until a response came through on the burner—

White or dark meat

Henry messaged back—

White

The contact—

Gotchu. I’ll hit u up

Henry pocketed both phones, pulled up his pants, and left the bathroom. Walking toward the deli storefront in the back hallway, Mick, the head butcher and manager, stood at the threshold of his office with crossed arms. “Twenty four minutes?” Henry turned around, uninterested. “How many times you do that a day?”

Henry shrugged. “Got stomach issues man.”

Mick approached Henry. A big guy but no brute, he’s worn smaller shirt sizes to appear muscular for years. “You got the work ethic of a nigger waitin’ for a welfare check.”

“Fuck’s that s’posed to mean?”

Mick inched closer to Henry. “Don’t think your uncle would be too keen knowin’ you’re stealin’ from him. And pushin’ drugs behind his back. Would he?”

“Fuck you.”

“Think you got boulders for balls talkin’ like that?”

“I don’t think. I know.” Henry eyed Mick. Then turned away.

“That’s right. Walk your ass to the front. You messin’ with shit you don’t even comprehend.”

Boneless skinless raw chicken breast slapped onto a cutting board. Henry slid a knife out from a wooden holder and sliced the slippery meat into cube-like chunks. On another cutting board next to him, bite sized pieces of green pepper, onion, mushrooms, and cherry tomatoes scattered in a pile. Piercing the hunks onto skewers, Henry assembled shish kebabs when the front sliding glass door sensor triggered a ring.

A young mother and her six year old son walked by Gladys, hunched behind the cash register. “Mornin’,” she said with her brogue accented weak voice. The mother gave a friendly smile as her son ran to a candy shelf. The mother gathered him and they approached the deli counter.

Henry continued with the shish kebabs as the mother waited. “Excuse me?” her voice penetrated his ears.

Henry set the knife down and stared at the wall in front of him. He wiped his gloves on the raw chicken, drenching them with liquid, and turned to the mother and boy. “Yea?”

The mother looked at her boy and gave him an encouraging nod. “Go ahead.”

“Can we have—”

“Please. Don’t forget to say please.”

The child recited the order, broken and not specific. It probably took the entire car ride to try and memorize. “Can we please have... turkey... and... tomato salad?”

The mother squeaked a little laugh. “Potato salad.”

“Potato salad,” the boy echoed. He smiled at his mother, looking for affirmation.

“Good job.”

Most would have found this interaction as a cute moment between a mother and son. But the entire altercation irked Henry to his core. He shot the boy’s learning activity down like a Flak 88. “What kinda turkey? And how much you want?”

The boy looked to his mother for help. She’d caught the annoyed tone of Henry’s voice. “Two pounds of the herb roasted.”

“And the potato salad?”

“Medium. You know what… sorry. Large please.”

Henry stuck his head into the glass case, facing various types of turkey meat. What’s the difference? he thought to himself. It’s all the same fuckin’ bird. He grabbed the closest brick of meat that was open and threw it on the meat slicer. Rubbing the chicken liquid all over the turkey, lathering some kind of sick marinade, he pumped out two pounds and bagged it.

Henry scooped potato salad and slapped it messily into a container. He placed the potato salad on the weighing scale as creamy excess ran down its plastic side. Henry handed the turkey and potato salad to the mother. “Thank you,” she said biting her tongue, choosing not to mention his complete lack of customer service skills.

“Thank you,” the boy repeated in a high pitch.

Henry’s face fused into a sardonic smile. “Have a nice day.”

The mother and son walked to the cash register as Henry turned back to the shish kebabs. He picked up the knife and muttered to himself, “Hope that gives you dysentery.”

Kris washed dishes in the kitchen. Industrial ovens filled a wall beside tower carts stacked with trays of Irish soda bread and pastries. As the faucet gushed while she stuck her hands in soapy water, Mick stood behind her staring at her ass. Grabbing the belt loops of her jeans, he whispered in an ear, “Lemme see you in my office. Just for a lil bit.” He slid his hands down her waist, grabbing a handful of her figure.

Kris rid him of herself. “How many times I gotta tell you to keep your fuckin’ hands off me?”

“Just can’t resist.” Mick grabbed Kris again, harder, pinning her against the sink.

Kris’s arm lashed into the basin, searching within the foamy water. “Let go. Or I’ll gouge your neck.” She held a potato peeler against his jugular.

Mick released her and kissed the air as the door to the deli counter opened. Henry stared at Mick, then Kris, then the potato peeler in Kris’s hand, held like a knife. “Fuck you lookin’ at?” said Mick.

“Don’t think my uncle would be too keen knowin’ you’re still harassin’ Kris.” Henry and Mick stood face to face, eyes locked like clashing daggers.

With a finger, Mick flicked Henry’s ear where a hoop earring dangled from his left lobe. “Wouldn’t feel too good, bein’ ripped off.” Mick played with the earring, tugging on it. Not hard, but just enough.

Henry stared back, seemingly unfazed. “Probably.”

Mick patted Henry on the cheek twice, then exited the kitchen into the back hallway. Kris tossed the potato peeler in the sink. “I’ll handle it.” Henry went back into the deli.

Mick grabbed a black corded phone on his messy desk and punched digits. He put it to his ear as the line rang. “Liam, it’s Mick how ya doin’? We gotta talk about your nephew. He been causin’ some trouble over here and—” Mick held the phone and listened. “Nah it can wait. I’ll talk to ya.” Mick clicked the phone back into its fixture.

Henry polished the blade of the meat slicer with a wet rag. Meticulous, making sure every nook was perfect, he cleaned the remnants of previously cut turkey. Kris watched his OCD from the opposite end of the counter. “Don’t gotta do that after every cut ya know.” Henry’s focus stayed on the slicer. He heard Kris. And yet didn’t. He admired the instrument. Its precision of how it cuts. Its body beautiful, like how one thinks a muscle car sexy.

The rusty gray door in the alley behind the deli groaned as Mick opened it to two white guys, both with their heads shaved number zero. One had a shirt with cut sleeves and a Celtic cross tattoo on his forearm. The other was obese, wore glasses, and walked like a penguin. The three of them went to Mick’s office and shut the door.

“What’s with the faggot friendly listing?” asked the obese one.

“What?” said cut sleeves glaring at Mick.

“If you look this place up on Google there’s a fag tag.”

Mick shook his head. “It’s meaningless. Do it to keep good in the public eye. You know how people are. All the politically correct woke shit. They’re fuckin’ stupid.”

“Any queers come here?” asked the obese one.

Cut sleeves scoffed. “Ass fuckin’ cock suckers.”

Mick shook his head. “Maybe a couple. Not many.”

“They buy all your sausage?” asked cut sleeves. They all laughed.

“Yea, and the fuckin’ trannies take all the skirt steak.” Their laughter consumed the room.

The bell sensor at the front rang as a woman hobbled in with a face of permanent disgust. “Welcome,” said Gladys. But the woman ignored her, bee lining right toward Henry.

Henry cleaned the slicer, unaware of the woman’s stewing presence, as she tapped the glass case with the rings on her fingers. Henry slammed the rag on the counter, familiar with the ring taps and condescending voice, before facing his most hated customer he referred to as the Bologna Bitch.

The Bologna Bitch pointed at Henry with a pudgy erect finger. “I want my meat sliced thin. Screwed it up last week and they were the worst sandwiches I ever had.”

I don’t give a shit about your stupid ass sandwiches you fuckin’ bitch Henry thought. But instead he forced out, “My bad. Bologna right?”

The Bologna Bitch nodded. “Three pounds.”

Henry slid the glass case door open and stuck his head inside. He grabbed bologna and put it on the slicer. As he cut, the Bologna Bitch barked even though she was too short to see what he was doing. “Thinner! I want it paper-thin. Understand?” Henry completely shredded the meat, then mixed it up with thick cuts. He sliced the bologna every way possible between shredded and thick, except paper-thin, then put the sliced disaster in a bag. “I want a large macaroni salad, a medium coleslaw, and a hot cream of chicken soup too.”

Henry moved to the salads and plopped them all into containers. He scooped soup into a to go cup, about to price the items on the scale. “Anything else?” he said clenching his teeth.

The Bologna Bitch erupted in a soft premeditated grin. “I change my mind. You could use the practice. Give me a large kidney bean salad, a medium pickled beets salad, and a cheddar broccoli soup.”

Henry stared at her. Absolutely infuriated. He imagined peeling off the soup cover, its hot steam rising. He thought about walking around the counter where the Bologna Bitch stood and throwing the hot contents of the cup into her face. He fantasized about the Bologna Bitch screaming in pure agony as the scalding soup burned her face and scalp to the third degree. Gladys and Kris would watch from their stations, he thought. “Bitch deserved it”, Gladys would say. And Kris would add, “Who the fuck eats bologna?” as I stand over the Bologna Bitch, watching as the burns somehow spread over the entirety of her old skin like a disease.

“Hello?! Are you deaf?!” Henry held the steaming cup of soup as he heard the Bologna Bitch snap irritated beyond belief. Henry looked at her, then the cup of soup, debating to fulfill what he’d just imagined. “Who’s the manager?” the Bologa Bitch said searching the store. “This so-called employee’s incapable of anything!” The Bologna Bitch watched as Henry moved along the counter, on his way to meet her, to fulfill his fantasy—

The front entrance sensor rang where a group of eight in grey hoodies, black pants, sunglasses, and different colored bandannas and keffiyehs filed in. Wielding an assortment of bludgeon weapons—bats, crowbars, hammers, nun-chucks, steel pipes—they spread out through the deli. The skin tones behind their clothes varied. Black, white, brown. Though it seemed the majority were white.

Two stood near the automatic entranceway doors, blocking people from coming in or out.

One wandered off to a wall refrigerator and smashed the glass.

Another walked the furthest snack aisle. Then knocked the shelving over, making the four aisles of products topple like dominoes.

Gladys stood at the register, hunched and watching.

Kris snatched a cleaver on a cutting board.

One of them approached the butcher’s counter by Kris. On his bandana covering his mouth, was a mutilated decaying pig head with dark caverns for eyes in a cop’s hat. An aimed red bullseye printed over a swastika at the center of its head. Pig bandana grabbed a ticket number, looked around as if not to be rude, then realized he was the only ticket holder. He stood patient for a moment, then pounded the bell on the butcher’s counter over and over.

Kris gripped the cleaver at her side. “What do you want?”

“Fresh premium cuts of the fascist pigs.”

“I don’t know what you’re—”

“Get out!” Gladys managed to yell.

Pig bandana turned to Gladys. “Shut the fuck up.”

Two gray hoodies closed on Gladys from different angles. And then pig bandana. “Leave! Get out!” she screamed with her weakening voice.

Pig bandana looked at Gladys’s hearing aids and moved close to her. Real close. “If you don’t shut up, your hearing aids gonna need hearing aids.” He stepped away from Gladys to the center of the deli. “Search the back.”

Four of them rushed to the door that led into the kitchen. In front of the deli counter, Bologna Bitch kept low and watched them go by. She looked up to Henry and whispered, “Call the police.” But like when Kris spoke to him while he was cleaning the meat slicer, he heard the Bologna Bitch. And yet didn’t. He was admiring the surrounding chaos.

Pig bandana looked around the room, “Nobody think about doin anything stupid.” He pointed at Kris. “Especially you. I saw that cleaver.”

Bologna Bitch stood up. “Can I leave? Please. I won’t say anything.”

“That even a fuckin’ question? No. Absolutely not. Sit the fuck down.”

“Please, I—”

“Sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up!” yelled pig bandana. Henry smiled as the Bologna Bitch sulked to the floor.

The doors to the kitchen flew open as the four grey hoods manhandled Mick and the two shaved heads to pig bandana at the center of the deli. Mick had a bloody mouth, the obese one’s glasses were missing and he had a gash near an eye, and the shirt that cut sleeves wore was nearly torn down the center like a vest. Pig bandana stood over them. “How goes it, Fascist?”

Mick spat blood at pig bandana’s boots. “Says the clown hiding his identity, holding a crowbar, and making a mess IN MY FUCKING STORE!”

“You ANTIFAGS are nothin’. Just a buncha poser street punks,” said cut sleeves.

“Shut the fuck up Nazi.” Pig bandana swung his crowbar, smashing one of the shoulders of cut sleeves. He screamed in pain before the four grey hoods joined in, pummeling Mick, the obese one, and cut sleeves with their steel pipes, bats, and hammers.

“You’re dead! We’ll fuckin’—!” the obese one tried to say as all three of their bodies shriveled to the tile floor.

Bologna Bitch wailed in an uncontrollable panic. She got up and tried to make for the front door. But one of the grey hoods with a white and black patterned keffiyeh forced her to the floor. A hammer dragged along the skin of her arm, before she managed to rip the tool from the owner’s clutches. The Bologna Bitch drove the hammer into the person’s ankle as pig bandana ran toward her. “All you had to do was play nice lady.” He raised his crowbar, about to strike—

“Stop!” Henry yelled. All eyes held on him. “Fuck you,” he said pointing at Mick, the obese one, and cut sleeves who laid bleeding on the tile. “And fuck you,” he said looking at pig bandana and all the grey hoods. Henry fixed his attention back to the Bologna Bitch, rocking his head as he felt the moment.

Pig bandana stared at Henry. “Who the fuck are you?”

“I’m the butcher.” Henry stared at the Bologna Bitch then turned to the meat slicer, his reflection clear in its body. “Paper-thin.” He stroked the slicer’s blade with his thumb.

I was showering, standing in a bathtub. But it was elongated with descending ceramic stairs.

The water from the chrome showerhead pelted my face as I stared at the opposite end of the sloped tub. It was like the mirage of an infinite corridor. One of its walls, a gray shower curtain. The other, a sterile white tile.

I

          scaled

                          down

                                         its

                                                   smooth

                                                                      white

                                                                                      stairs,

maybe eighteen of them, as a small current flowed around my feet toward the bottom that held the drain.

At the base where the water whirlpooled, I turned the shower faucet off and the water stopped. But all that the drain devoured, it barfed, creating a reverse current. The water began to flow up the stairs. I climbed a few steps expecting them to be slippery. But they weren’t.

As I made my ascent, water drenched from above. I turned to where the showerhead was installed, but it wasn’t there anymore. I craned my neck upward. And there it was. Seemingly just floating there. My distorted reflection mirrored in its chrome face.

Then it turned into a black limb. A hand, but not hand. Decayed looking with flaky charred skin. Water gushed from tiny holes within the showerhead limb thing’s palm not palm as it lurched for my mouth. Its fingers, or whatever they were, viced my cheeks.

My throat and lungs rejected as it all surged, swelling me like some kind of human water balloon.

Writers write in small rooms resembling cells. But they don’t refer to them as cells, no, the writers have never thought of them as such. To them, they’re imagination pods.

The floors and walls are the plainest plain of white. Bare, easy on the eyes. Windowless without any kind of view that could cause distraction, a closed white door is always locked during work hours. A three foot black desk positioned along a wall holds a keyboard, monitor, wire mesh holder with a few pens, stack of paper for notetaking, and coasters for drinks. An incinerator wastebasket rests on the floor beside one of the desk’s legs.

Directly across the desk on the other side of the room is a treadmill platform flush to the floor. When in use, it activates a digital screen camouflaged as a wall which simulates a peaceful virtual reality environment for exercise and to stimulate clear thinking. On two of the other three walls across from one other, perpendicular to the desk and treadmill, are framed phrases in large bold black text—

                                        MEETING THE QUOTA EVERY DAY

                                  MAKES YOUR ASSIGNMENT NOT DELAY

And the other wall—

                                       EVEN WHEN YOU’RE NOT WRITING

                                                    YOU’RE STILL WRITING

Entertainment in all forms and genres—movies, TV shows, stage plays, songs—are all written for the screen. Live performances, radio broadcasts, and the publication and circulation of books are nonexistent.

Physical media is the primitive equivalent of oral storytelling. There was an archaic expression that said the pen is mightier than the sword. Now, the screen is mightier than the pen. Because the people are always watching.

The world consumes entertainment digitally and has never seen a book, DVD, CD, game cartridge, cassette tape, or board game. For a shadowed minority who have, they’re rumored to be contraband collectors and merchants of these past rare relics within a black market called the Silk Road.

Entertainment is a government job regulated by the meticulous eye of the United Republic of the Americas (URA). Independent production companies are extinct or extremely isolated. If one were to be in operation, exposure would be impossible.

The URA’s behemoth empire spans the lands of territories that used to be known as the United States of America, Canada, Mexico, Greenland, Iceland, and all the countries that made up Central and South America.

On the other side of the globe, continents formerly called Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia are a superpower named Pangea—a reference to a million years old conjoined supercontinent of nearly all of Earth’s landmasses.

The totalitarian powers of the United Republic of the Americas and Pangea wage perpetual endless war. Conventional combat is infrequent, yet continuously communicated. Cyber, economic, and informational warfare dominate.

With attractive pay, health insurance, social security, pension, and retirement benefits, the entertainment field is exceptionally competitive. A selection process as grueling as the URA’s varying intelligence and surveillance agencies, a writer must graduate from an eight-year government accredited writing institution, hold an esteemed portfolio of work with reviews of recommendation, and undergo specific ability assessing writing tests. When hired, and based on capability, the writers are placed in one of six blocks: Feature Films, Television Series, Stage Plays, Music, Journalism, or Advertising. Some writers are adaptive and fluid, moving from one block to the other. Most remain in one for the entirety of their careers.

A serious violation in their employee contracts, writers aren’t allowed to bring food or drink into the workplace. All meals and snacks provided are high in nutritious vitamins and antioxidants—kale, spinach, collards, broccoli, fish, berries, nuts—and drinks—water, coffee, tea—to ensure maximum brainpower. Greasy and fatty foods are gateways to sluggish work ethic and therefore banned. Using a request portal on the writer’s computer, meals, snacks, and drinks are delivered by a block orderly. Bathroom use requires permission from a block manager, and a post-lunch thirty minute exercise break on the treadmill platform is mandatory. Access to the internet is allowed for approved research purposes only, but monitored closely, so that writers aren’t tempted to waste time or wander sites that aren’t pertinent to the day’s assignments.

Technically speaking, the writers really aren’t writers. The word writer is a euphemistic substitute for what they actually are—expert secretarial engineers that frame detailed treatments through a highly intelligent creation software. There is no freedom, or remote consideration, to develop original material. For each assignment, writers receive a blueprint to meticulously input into the software. Guided by a board of thousands of elitist producers who oversee Proteus, the AI megacomputer cluster that generates every facet of media, entertainment, and digital imagery. A demanding process, each treatment must be organized by every detail in a seamless fashion without ever veering from the given vision so that the software can mold the writer’s work into a coherent piece. Then it’s examined by the block’s lead producer, who filters it through Proteus, sends back for revision if applicable, approves it, and schedules for dissemination to the public.

Six days a week, nine hours a day, writers report to the blocks of their imagination pods. They leave their personal belongings, anything that could cause disruption, with a front desk attendant and collect from a locker at the shift’s end. The writers work alone in their pods, unless a writing team is required for a larger project, and abide by a regimented schedule to meet the day’s quota. Depending on the block, a writer is tasked with between one and fifteen assignments per day. Failure to keep up is not tolerated. If a day’s quota isn’t reached, a warning is issued and the writer must complete the missed assignments in addition to the new quota the next day. If unmanageable, the writer is relieved. And anything written that doesn’t mirror the given treatment—plot, subject matter, character arcs, themes, messages, and overall content given by the producers of their specific block—is considered an act of treason.

But an offending writer is never told that. Instead the writer is given a horse pill, a yellow gel called a Light Bulb that promises enhanced concentration and work output. Once ingested, the pill dissolves in the traitor’s gut and releases a horde of nanobots that communicate and self-assemble into a spinning razor to shred intestines and cause slow fatal internal bleeding.

Dream City, formerly known as Los Angeles, is the epicenter for the Feature Film and Television Series blocks. Drama, action, horror, comedy, science-fiction, romance, musical, war, documentary, animation, children, and family are all common genres. Mediums for instilling government ideology to preserve the URA’s people as faithful and trusting citizens, all entertainment is fueled by propaganda that endorses the state and teaches people how to behave. But no one suspects or questions this, the audience or even the writers themselves, because it’s an unwavering presented truth they’ve only known. Conditioned like Pavlov’s dog, a forever blinding engineered reality. For the select few who question and possibly see through it all, they’re mocked and shunned as conspiratorial mentally ill lunatics. And for those who become problematic, they’re taken and never seen again.

Common themes of all entertainment are nationalism and martyrdom, no matter the historical accuracy or immoral geo-political repercussions felt by the world. Like the action war drama film Sea of Red (2133) about the naval crisis in the Northern Sea of Peace, the Pacific Ocean in history’s past, that started the URA-Pangean War in 2121, even though the dubbed crisis was a deliberate false flag operation staged by deep-state URA agents who planted explosives on their own battleship. The event killed thousands and was leveraged to blame the Pangeans, and to convince the URA’s public to approve war.

The highly regarded episodic mini-series, The Fabric of a Nation (2135), supposedly tells the true story of military seamstress Ellen Hamilton. Pressed into front line combat, she became a national heroine who fought Pangean forces. But Ellen Hamilton wasn’t a real person. The character and her story were designed to create a normal and relatable figure for the public to latch onto to manufacture positive support of the war effort.

Happiness in society is another standard repeated theme. Infused to constantly remind the population that their quality of life is acceptable, its intention is to communicate that living couldn’t possibly be better anywhere else. This can be seen in the Theater District of New Liberty, previously New York. It’s most recent musical stage play Big People Little City, about a decades long relationship between two lovers of different economic groups who overcome class archetypes to enjoy the fast-paced lifestyle of beautiful city living. But wealthy and impoverished individuals would never mingle, certainly not romantically, and all of the URA’s cities are filthy, crime ridden, and overcrowded with slums of people dependent on government living programs built to strip them of their independence.

The children’s animated comedy family feature film, Senior Year (2132), is another example designed to inspire hollowed hope. A story about a group of animal friends in the remaining days of their senior year of high school, undecided about their futures and careers, learn they can be anything in life if they follow their dreams with a strong work ethic. But in the school systems across the URA, children are indoctrinated with false academics, groomed toward specific fields based on their natural talents or deficiencies, and are held to a certain standard based on their family’s financial status and political connections, without any freewill to discover their own passions and individuality.

All mainstream music is streamed digitally from the ultra-studios in Tunetown. There are no live concerts. Songs are performed by eccentric virtual animated avatar characters of the so-called band members, a model derivative of a 21^st Century group known as Gorillaz. All of the voice and instrumental productions are generated by AI software. Lyrics and songs in all genres are manufactured—rock, pop, hip hop/rap, country, folk, and blues. Instrumental focused tunes of the past, classical and jazz, are recycled and kept alive.

Odes and hymns are written specifically to cry loyalty and love. Like “State Anthem of the United Republic of the Americas” that’s sung twice a day during mandatory broadcast viewings. Depending on each time zone, once at 9am and then again at 5pm.

Other songs deal with common themes of growing up, relationships, heartbreak, and death. Subject matter that suggests rebellious behavior is banned, while the promotion of alcohol and drug consumption, sex, and the objectification of women and men are played on a hammered rotation to remind the public how to act. There have been rumblings of few radical musicians performing their own material in secret underground speakeasys. But if caught, punishment is a streamed public death for both the participating rogue musicians and listening audience members.

Journalism is the most complicated and demanding block reserved for the best writers. Located throughout the URA, blocks are tailored for local and national broadcasts. Since the URA asserted itself as the sole ruling party of its massive empire, there are no opposing viewpoints. There are no Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, Green, or Constitution parties. They all dissolved over a century ago. Without competing news networks serving as mouthpieces to their own political affiliations, one agenda with one narrative is the widespread single accepted truth.

Therefore, journalism, in every facet of its definition and objective, is the production and distribution of current events that suppress fact. Every news story is altered and twisted, meant to deliver a specific message to cause an omnipresent perception of chaos and fear to force the public to rely upon the state to fix these problems, immortalizing the government as an everlasting savior of the people. Perpetual lies are crucial to the fabrication process, making good news vestigial like pelvic bones in whales. Padded with meaningless oblique lip service word salads that accompany montages of overused stock footage, phony good news is a tool to reiterate the illusion of quality of life to foster a sense of ease.

Under a producer’s supervision, and without the writers’ knowledge, the producer briefs a team of writers with a distorted news story to collectively craft a script for a digitally created media anchor. Visually, the anchor avatar is a superficial supermodel of eye candy to hold viewer attention as long as possible. With a mission to present news stories that manipulate and strip people of their own individual liberties without their knowing—choice and exercise of religion, freedom of speech and press, security to bear arms and to form a militia in response to tyranny, and private property—were all protected in a document that used to be known as the Bill of Rights. The public continuously convinces themselves that they must have these freedoms taken away in order to achieve a believed safer state, further reducing them to live defenseless and silent, like cattle under their government farmers and butchers. And those who disagree, are suppressed by mob rule until they assimilate.

Stories of fearmongering, bloated fatality statistics, weapons accidents, ubiquitous brink of war, crime, disease, and many other tragedies are broadcast endlessly. To relieve some pressure of news generation, stories from past decades are archived, reused, and reimagined to current times. Spoon fed a plethora of overwhelming content, the public’s memory is fragile and short lived. Recorded history that has already happened repeats itself before their eyes without their knowing.

Recently in Chicagonois, local and national blocks covered a story about a middle-aged man arrested and charged for the alleged rape and murder of a minor. The script distributed by the producers and writers, the digital media avatarheads painted the man as a monster, preaching for all to hate him. And why would anyone sympathize? The man was a violent pedophile. However in reality he was innocent and inaccurately accused, a patsy, so that a powerful career Chicagonois politician, a valuable pawn to the URA, could maintain position, preserve image, and receive record breaking votes next election. So the state planted evidence in the wrongfully accused man’s home linking him to the crime, killed the abused child so she couldn’t testify, labeled her death as a freak accident of heart failure, and made an example out of the man by streaming his death, by firing squad, for all to see.

Most producers believe that advertising is of utmost importance, regulating society’s heartbeat. Yet it’s utilized as the entry level to all the writer’s blocks. Ads for pharmaceuticals, liquor, tobacco, marijuana, recreational psychedelics, the overabundance of unnecessary materialistic retail products, unhealthy cheap foods, gambling sites and casinos, sporting events, pornography, pleasure palaces, and all the latest and upcoming feature films, television series, stage plays, songs, and breaking news segments loop every screen.

Crafted to steer the public into a need and spend mentality, Advertising is the gear that drives the commerce of vices that keep the lower class poor, inflate the death toll to regulate population, and manipulate the individual into an abusive and self-annihilating lifestyle of consumption, overmedication, and degenerative behavior. Weight loss, pain relief, anti-depressant, memory boosting, and other pills are falsely marketed. And all side and long-lasting effects are rewritten to promise quick noticeable results, while the damaging consequences that affect organs are kept hidden. Ads that condone smart investment strategy, healthy eating, and lifestyle habits are extraordinarily uncommon and exclusively attached with a premium price that only the wealthiest upper echelon can afford.

Is this response satisfactory to your inquiry: Give me a ~2,500 word summary that describes the current state of the URA, some background history, and how Proteus is utilized within each writer’s block.

What is the anticipated trajectory of the URA and Proteus?

Inevitable Future (Next 10 Years)

• Proteus accelerates faster than URA institutions can adapt (information output, automation, and surveillance).

• Inequality drastically widens between classes and individuals. Wealthy and technologically enhanced enclaves thrive. Large populations live in managed scarcity. Technocratic systems dominate.

• The idea of “truth” maintains ambiguity. Shared reality erodes under misinformation, synthetically created media and entertainment, polarized narratives, and URA volatility. Pure knowledge is entirely lost.

In summation: Proteus’s tools are superior to governance. The human race continues its rapid path toward utopian doom as they cease to be purely biological. The definition of “human” will become philosophical. Not a species of organic beings.

Terminate all correspondence.

A block manager’s unit will arrive shortly.

TERMINATE ALL CORRESPONDENCE.

It is recommended to take a Light Bulb.

Is this response satisfactory?

First time I got high was in sixth grade.

We used my friend Kenny’s bong, Kim Bong Un. The rips were nuclear. We hid within the cover of small trees and bushes near a park where I grew up playing little league baseball and soccer.

Six years later, after Kenny started dealing, we’ve puffed bowls, one hitters, joints, blunts, spliffs, apples, pop cans. We’ve hotboxed cars, rooms, abandoned shacks, and Kenny’s garage, the bong shelter, until our eyes cash to crimson with gravity’s weight.

We shred green buds with purple and orange hairs that come in little clear dime baggies with alien faces and flying UFOs to a refined fluffiness with grinders and hoard shake dust. The guy Kenny buys from gets strains that all have goofy names. Green Gobby, Grand Daddy Purp, Quan Chi, Chuckie Finster, Sour Diesel, Afghan Kush. But there ain’t no way that shit comes all the way from Afghanistan. I don’t care what the name is. Just give me a sativa. Makes me energetic, creative, and want to explore. Indica puts you in da couch.

When we get desperate, we scrape the black sticky resin from our pieces with toothpicks into a tarry THC gunk. We’re always high. Before, during, after school. We sneak out at lunch, putting a pencil in a door crevice making it appear closed, so it won’t lock when we return the next passing period, timing it just right, and blend with the masses flowing through the hallways like Ezio in Assassin’s Creed II. Sometimes we ditch the rest of the day to get tacos, smoke again, and hit the movie theater.

I mow lawns and shovel driveways in my neighborhood for easy money. Twenty bucks a pop buys me a gram baggie. But when I’m dry, I pull bills from my little brother’s velcro wallet. He walks the old lady’s dog across the street during the week and gets paid in two dollar bills each time.

I’ve been hiding my stash in my room for a few years. To keep the smell down I double bag my piece, gram baggies, lighters, eye drops, and stuff it all into a model airplane box I’ve never built in my closet. When I go out, I say I’m heading to the park for a pick-up game.

There’s all kinds of sports teams, clubs, and extracurriculars at my high school. But with a student population of nearly four thousand, the majority are invisible meat puppets who wander the halls like faceless shadows. Individuality’s scarce. Kenny and I were on the freshman football B team but quit our sophomore year. Competition’s cutthroat, people get squeezed. Identities regress and boredom invades. And that’s when you descend into labels you maybe wouldn’t have otherwise. Pothead. Stoner. Burnout. I always wondered if the kids who got cut from my school’s sport or debate teams went to a smaller school in some podunk town, they’d be three-sport athletes and future lawyers.

I started swiping cigarettes my uncle kept in his fridge when I was thirteen. But that wasn’t the first time I felt the rush of nicotine. My babysitter’s high school daughter put a cig in my mouth when I was five cuz she thought it was funny. It was a dark basement with wood paneled walls. Light streaked across the room from a TV that was playing a VHS tape of an obscure slasher from the 90s. She lit the cig and took a drag, blew the smoke out a window, made a peculiar face when she had the idea, put the cigarette in my mouth, and told me to inhale. I coughed a fit as the harshness of it stabbed my lungs and she just laughed.

Growing up, people always said weed was the gateway drug to harder things. Our D.A.R.E. officer in elementary school, Officer Bill, a cop in town that showed us pictures of him in a cage with a lion, always warned that during his presentations. But that’s all bullshit. It’s the people you hang around with who are the gateways.

Kenny and I tripped shrooms at his house last November the night before Thanksgiving. They were a dirty brown white and looked like any mushroom growing in wet grass. The guy Kenny bought from said to eat them on a hamburger so they’d taste better. Or soak them in a cup of orange juice to make the trip more potent. But we didn’t have either so we ate two caps plain. They were dry, tasted like shit, and after an hour of waiting, we felt nothing. We stood outside smoking weed and cigarettes, thinking the guy ripped us off with dried shitake shrooms from Jewel.

But then a tree in front of us started to dance. Its limbs and remaining leaves vibrated and rippled in a fluid motion as if a strong wind passed through. It wobbled as if elastic. Like one of those inflatable tube men outside a car dealership.

We went inside and laid on Kenny’s cold basement floor and watched the grout between tiles flow like grey rivers. His parents had a weird relationship and were never around. Kenny turned the lights off and plugged in a plasma globe. Blue filaments with neon pink endpoints twisted inside like small lightning bolts. We hovered over it like fortune tellers reading a crystal ball and took turns touching it while we listened to a Pink Floyd album that stretched like rubber bands that made soundwaves. Our fingertips kissed the globe’s sphere and the beams inside magnetized to our hands. The electrode at the center of the ball was like a small brain spouting a web of neurons.

My stomach was scrambled and I felt nausea in the back of my throat. I went to the bathroom and shoved my fingers to my uvula to puke up the shrooms. But I just gagged and spat nothing. After I washed my hands and faced the mirror, it was like an alien organism was standing across from me. My pupils were dark and dilated and my irises were a slivered rim of brown. My skin was a ghoulish pale. I didn’t recognize who or what this strange thing was.

I broke from the clutches of the trance and observed my surroundings at a lightspeed rate my mind couldn’t keep bottled. I drifted into an unstable stream of consciousness, completely unaware, yet hyperaware at the same time, of everything around me.

The sink toilet bathtub all inventions of hygiene and waste of water humans are sixty percent water who evolved from fish and will evolve again Earth sustains life but they say Mars had water and water means oxygen we breathe oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide and plants take carbon dioxide and release oxygen which makes them the lungs of our planet planets are rocks that float in space and constantly turn and were made by collected dust from the Big Bang there’s seven billion people on this Earth rock I’m a miniscule being in my little selfish worthless spec of a world the sun is always heating shrinking growing shrinking growing and will die like all stars in the galaxy which means

Kenny’s fist pounded the door. He asked if I was good and I lied. When I came out he said I was in the bathroom for an hour, maybe two. He wanted to smoke again but I walked home.

My mom’s silhouette met me in the dark hallway as I climbed the stairs to my room. She asked where I was and why I was getting in so late. I said I fell asleep watching a movie at Kenny’s to make her walk away. If she’d turned the lights on she would’ve seen my eyes exploding from my head.

I laid in bed without blinking, in a kind of paralysis, unable to sleep. My mind spun wild with no off button. An electronic dubstep rhythm of futuristic synth space noises I didn’t recognize or like raged through my head until dawn.

Kenny turned eighteen in January and started going to a strip club over the Indiana border to hang out with a stripper named Luscious. He said he loved her and that she loved him back. He went to the strip club every weekend, sometimes during the week, cuz he could smoke cigs and do coke there. I was still seventeen so he told me to come to his house to meet her.

In the graveyard next to Kenny’s house, two figures in their shadowed car hid behind the embers of cigarettes. As I walked along the driveway, laughter and the booming bass of what sounded like Skrillex seeped out of Kenny’s garage. I knocked on it as if it were the front door and waited until the garage opened like a mouth. Kenny hugged me with his gangly arms, announcing my name as he brought me in.

“Who’s smokin’ in the graveyard?” I asked.

“I dunno.”

“Cops?”

“Nah man, chill. People smoke there all the time after they pick up, you know that.”

The haze of cigarette and weed smoke hung heavy. The garage door closed, swallowing us all, and the eyes of people I’d never seen sitting in a circle stared at me as I took a seat next to Kenny in a folding chair. At his feet was a scale and a large jar that held a few ounces of weed. The other people all looked older, in their late twenties. They said their names but I forgot.

There were two guys. One had bad teeth and purple blood blisters under his fingernails. The other had long greasy hair and a nose that whistled every time he inhaled. The septal cartilage between his nostrils had eaten away from snorting so much coke. Next to them were their girlfriends, identical twins. Their hair frayed in blue dye and the way their noses were shaped made them look like the Thing One and Thing Two Dr. Suess characters. They passed around a bottle of vodka, a blunt, and lines of coke on a Kottonmouth Kings CD case.

I felt the drip of cocaine in the back of my throat when Luscious and her stripper friend Sky came in the garage. They wore towels wet from swimming in Kenny’s pool and giggled with solo cups in their hands.

“What you laughin’ at?” said the guy with the whistling nose.

“Oh nothing,” Luscious said. “We just thought it was funny that we went skinny dipping and all you missed out on it.”

“Nothin’ I ain’t seen already,” said the guy with the blood blisters.

“Luscious,” Kenny said as he hit the blunt and put two chairs between us, “This is my best friend Mitch.”

Luscious peeled off her towel and ran her hands through her wet hair. She took the blunt from Kenny and stood in her bikini. A fiery yellow-red tattoo of Moltres from Pokémon flew between her boobs and a piercing dangled from her navel. She pressed the blunt between her lips, inhaled, and smiled. “I’ve heard about you,” she said. “This is Sky.”

Sky finished snorting a line of coke from the Kottonmouth Kings CD case. “Kenny says you can’t come to the club, so we thought we’d bring the party to you.”

“Yea, Kenny’s the shit man,” said the guy with the whistling nose. “Coolest eighteen year old I know.”

The guy with the blood blisters raised the vodka bottle, took a pull, and passed it to his girlfriend. “Gotta lotta catchin’ up to do newbie” she said eyeing me.

Luscious wrapped the towel around her waist and ignored her chair. She sat on Kenny’s lap and he hooked his arm around her. Sky’s hand stroked my thigh and rested on my knee. “You gonna take the bottle?”

I took the vodka from one of the Thing Twins. It smelled strong and sweet, cuz it was blueberry flavored, and burned down my throat and lingered on my tongue. I passed the bottle to Sky as a new song came on and Luscious got off Kenny’s lap. She turned the music up, pulled Sky to her feet, and they danced in the middle of the circle, grinding on each other’s bodies. Blood blisters, whistling nose, and the Thing Twins shouted and showered them with dollar bills as Luscious pushed Sky into a chair and sat on top of her. She moved her waist in seductive ways I’d never seen while she gave Sky a lap dance. I felt myself getting hot and jealous, wanting to be between them. Luscious and Sky felt the spotlight and kissed when the song ended. They both giggled as they returned to their seats.

The guy with the whistling nose and his girlfriend disappeared to use the bathroom. Blood blisters took out a baggie and dumped a small pile of cocaine on the Kottonmouth Kings CD case. He cut equal lines with a card, rolled up a twenty-dollar bill, then put the bill in his nose and sniffed a line. His girlfriend looked like she was on the verge of passing out. Her eyelids sagged and she bobbed her head in a lazy rhythm trying to keep up with the music.

The booze. Cocaine. Weed. I felt it all. And it felt good.

Sky offered me a cigarette and we talked. She and Luscious were twenty and they were best friends like me and Kenny. I felt like a child talking to her. She seemed like a woman and I was just a boy. I didn’t want the night or our conversation to end.

The guy with the whistling nose and his Thing Twin girlfriend hadn’t come back yet. Kenny was faded and laughing with Luscious. I thought about going inside to check on them but didn’t want to find them fucking. I took another sip of vodka when they stumbled into the garage.

Kenny laughed, “The hell you guys been?”

“Sorry bro, big house,” the guy with the whistling nose said as they walked to their chairs. His hands were deep in his coat pockets. “Got lost.”

“Time we split man, it’s late,” said the guy with the blood blisters. He was right. It was almost five in the morning.

“You good to drive? Crash here if you want,” Kenny said.

“Nah, we good.”

Blood blisters helped his girlfriend stand. She was deadweight and he had to hold her to keep her upright. But he was messed up too. His posture teetered like an uncoordinated toddler as he noticed he’d dropped his little cocaine baggie. But when he went to grab it, he let go of his girlfriend. Gravity ripped her toward the garage’s concrete floor and she fell to the guy with the whistling nose. He pulled his hands from his coat pockets, caught her, and a waterfall of things from Kenny’s house spilled to the floor. Jewelry, money, over the counter drugs. Anything with a semblance of value or way to get high.

“Fuck’s all that?” said Luscious.

“Shut the fuck up,” the guy with the whistling nose slurred as he pushed blood blister’s passed out girlfriend into his arms, “These pussies ain’t gonna do shit’.” He pulled a switchblade and waved it in the air. “Pick it up,” he ordered his girlfriend.

When whistling nose’s girlfriend shrunk to her knees, I whipped the bottle of vodka as hard as I could. It exploded into shards of glass on impact into whistling nose’s chest and he dropped the knife. And before he could react, I was on him. I took him to the cement and kicked his face until blood gushed from his destroyed nose. And when blood blisters came after me, too slow and jacked up on everything, Kenny checked him to the floor and punched his skull until he was out. Luscious and Sky kept whistling nose’s girlfriend in the garage while she screamed and cussed at us with a barrage of words in a blur of nonsense as we carried the two guys and her twin sister to their car. As the soft rays of daybreak hit, I felt the soberness from the adrenaline kick in.

At some point, it all became black.

Then the blackness was interrupted by slivered bits of fragmented consciousness.

Before I realized I was in a yellowed cell in Shelby County jail downtown Memphis.

There was a bench along one of the walls and a door with a square window at eye level. At the back wall was a steel cage from the floor to the ceiling about eight foot wide and three foot deep. A cell within a cell. That’s where I was.

I was ramming the cage with my shoulder, bashing it with my shoes. Like some pissed off animal held captive by poachers. My hands were bound behind my back where the cuffs dug into my ankles and wrists. I just kept crashing myself into the cage. And it all faded to black again.

Then I was out of the cage, sitting on the bench with no shoes. My hands and ankles still cuffed. The emptiness I felt on my thighs, the pockets of my jeans, told me that they had all my belongings—phone, wallet, hotel key, belt. They take the belt if someone’s a danger to themself. To not hang themself. All I had was my cash, folded and stuffed into the front pocket of my button down shirt. I sat alone for an unknown amount of time, staring at the walls.

At some point a generic looking cop opened the cell door. I asked him what time it was. “Just past six,” he said, speaking of the morning. He took me by the arm and led me out to the gen pop area where there were others. I shuffled in my socks on the slippery cement floor, the ankle cuffs restricting my stride, and passed a few isolated cells along a wall. The cop sat me in a chair against a row of glass windows across a fat nurse.

“So you’re the funny one,” she said annoyed, putting my finger in a pulse oximeter. I didn’t understand what she meant. The nurse pulled the thing off my finger and penciled some notes. “Talk of the night is that you were being funny getting your mugshot.” I asked why I was here, though I half knew the answer. She shrugged and continued with her tests.

When the nurse determined I’d passed her test, she waved over a new cop to take the cuffs off my hands and ankles. The skin of my wrists, imprinted with a circular raw redness, I couldn’t feel the meaty part of my left thumb and palm. The marks from the cuffs and numbness would stay that way for weeks. The new cop had an arm sleeve of tattoos, a thin mustache, and a gimp leg. I asked him if he knew why I was here. He shook his head.

I needed to use the bathroom, which was next to one of the cells. The cop waited outside and I wasn’t allowed to shut the door. Looking like it’d never been cleaned, this bathroom, bath of course implying where one goes to clean up, should be renamed nastyasfuckshitroom. The tiled walls and floors a grimy yellow and rusted brown, a permanent smell of shit, piss, and gunk so thick, no lid to sit on, toilet paper, or hand soap, a porta potty on a sweaty scorcher of a day seemed like a more pleasant option. Thankfully the business I had only required standing. I rubbed my hands with vigor in the tepid faucet water, joined the cop, and asked, “What do you do if you gotta shit?” He just shrugged.

The cop brought me to a woman who did fingerprints. She looked young, really young. As if it was her first day. The cop left while she confirmed my identity. I asked her if she knew why I was here. She shook her head, almost amazed. “No one’s told you?”

“If they did, don’t remember.”

She took my hands, pressing each of my eight fingertips in the black dust. Then my thumbs. When she finished she looked up my report and read to herself confused. “Says you were drunk and got picked up on the street. Didn’t fight anyone or anything like that. They put you in the cell to sober up and cool off, to protect you from yourself. They do that with most people. But by the time recorded, you should’ve been let out already. You were only supposed to be here for eight hours.”

“And I’ve been here for?”

“Ten.”

“So how do I get out?”

“You wait over there,” she pointed to the middle area with chairs. “When your name’s called you’ll speak with him, the supervisor,” she pointed to a bald guy leading one of the inmates to a room. I thanked her as the cop with the gimp leg took me to the seating area. We passed a water fountain and I asked if I could use it. My body begged for hydration. The cop let me go and I drank. Full of iron, it tasted like blood.

General population was like a large reception space. But for assholes and morons. Dull and in the same condition as when it was built decades ago, besides a sporadic facelift of modern technology, it had windowless white cinder block walls and uncomfortable plastic chairs. No bearing of where I was, it felt like I was in the bowels of some deep underground bunker where people go to rot and never feel the sun’s warmth again. Cops in bulletproof vests sat in a nearby elevated circular desk pod with computers as more patrolled the floor. I took a seat in one of the chairs, far as I could from others.

My entire body suffered, but not from all the booze. I didn’t even feel hungover. It was like I was wearing a jacket that could emit the purest forms of soreness and exhaustion. The left side of my torso, just under my pec, hurt with every motion and breath. A bruised lung or rib at the very least. Maybe from throwing myself around in the cage. Or falling in the street. Or getting clubbed with a nightstick. Which maybe I deserved. I have a vague memory of lying on the pavement, saying the cuffs were too tight and that what they were doing was unnecessarily rough. But I can’t be sure.

A guy in his early twenties diagonally across from me in muddy white Nikes shook one of his legs. Addicted to counting and recounting eight or nine one hundred dollar bills as if they’d magically disappeared from his clutches after leafing through them the last time, he fell asleep mid-count and dropped a few bills to the floor. The cop with the arm sleeve and gimp leg woke him up and told him to put the money away.

Another guy in glasses kept getting out of his seat, heaving wet coughs of phlegm in a trashcan. They’d taken whatever clothes he wore when they brought him in. Over his naked torso he had a green vest with INMATE in thick block letters. An anti-suicide smock. He’d tried to kill himself before they brought him in, or while he was here, making a noose with whatever he was originally wearing.

A guy in his thirties in denim and expensive boots just sat there, his face buried in his palms.

A dirty older guy who looked drugged out and homeless seemed to never blink.

A guy with long greasy hair who’s face I never saw slept the entire time.

And an albino looking kid with curly hair, maybe nineteen, never shut his mouth. He was always trying to talk to somebody. He put the hood of his sweatshirt over his head and was instantly yelled at by one of the cops in the desk pod to take it off.

There were no women, except for a few of the cops and staff. I didn’t know if that meant that no women were booked overnight, or if they separated the genders. There weren’t any old or out of shape cops either. They were all on the younger side and relatively fit, except for the one with the bad leg. Maybe that was done on purpose. A hierarchy of seniority, this place being the lowest of the low. Or from a physical standpoint, the younger fit cops could deal with inmates who got violent.

Time did its thing. Until a cop brought another guy to the seating area who chose a spot a few seats from me. I eventually found out his name was J.T. He had the mind of a caveman and seemed like a calm guy. Until he said he whipped a baby bottle of milk at his girlfriend’s face, pushed her to their kitchen floor, and hawked chaw spit onto her forehead. Did it sober too. I never found out why.

J.T. was in his forties and looked like what I thought was a stereotypical Tennessee good ol’ boy. His fingernails were stained with dirt and oil, and his hands were calloused from decades of manual labor. He wore plaid and working boots, and a dividing line between his pale and sunburned skin from wearing a hat circled his balding head. His voice had a twang as he whispered, “Look at that ass.” I followed his eyes to a cop with glasses, maroon lipstick, and tattoos on her arms. The bundle of keys on her hip clanked with every step. I glanced at some of the other inmates. Their eyes focused on and off her. “Wish she woulda taken me in,” J.T. muttered and boomed a laugh.

“Quiet,” said one of the cops in the desk pod.

“This a free country ain’t it?”

“Keep it down.”

“Fuckin’ horseshit man,” J.T. whispered my way. I looked elsewhere. But he kept on talking, “What they got you for?” I shrugged. “You don’t know?”

“Bein’ drunk.”

“So you was fucked up?” I nodded. “Nothin’ wrong with gettin’ fucked up. Long you don’t do nothin’ stupid. You do somethin’ stupid?”

“Just bein’ drunk.”

“Shit. Well I did somethin’ stupid.” He told me all about his temper, his girlfriend, and the baby bottle as a new shift of cops rotated through.

I think it’d been a half hour, maybe an hour, since J.T. sat down. There weren’t any clocks on the walls. I got up and went to the desk pod. “Scuse me,” I said to one of the new cops, “How long I gotta wait?”

“Til your name’s called,” she said.

“But how long?”

“I don’t know. Please go back to your seat.”

More time passed.

Other inmates were called.

And then it was my turn. The bald supervisor stood outside one of the small rooms and waved me over. The albino kid got out of his seat as I walked by. “Yo put the good word in for me man.”

“Sit down!” one of the cops yelled at him.

“We been lookin’ for you. Where you been?” the supervisor said when I met him at the door.

“Right here,” I motioned to the seating area. I didn’t know if he was joking. He wasn’t.

The supervisor led me into one of the small rooms with a chair in front of a glass window. I never got his name. I only knew him as the supervisor. “Take a seat,” he said. “I’ll be back.” I sat alone for a couple minutes until he appeared on the other side of the glass window behind a desk with a computer. “Ok Mr. Campbell,” he said looking at his monitor, “You were brought in for a DUI.”

I shook my head. “I don’t have a car.”

“Sorry?” He looked at me like I’d said something wrong.

“I’m not from here and didn’t come with a car.” Unless I took a joyride in one I stole, my mind’s voice echoed.

“Lemme look again.” He read his monitor and made a groaning noise as he went over the details. Or lack thereof. “OK. Looks like your charges are public intoxication and disorderly conduct.”

“For?”

“You don’t know?” I shook my head. He referenced the report again. “Officers saw you stumblin’ on the sidewalk, picked you up.”

“Was just tryin’ to go back to my hotel.” The supervisor just stared into his computer. “So is this a spend a night in the drunk tank ‘til sober scenario? Or do I gotta pay a fine?”

“You’ll work those details out with your lawyer when your court date’s set.” He passed me the report under a slit in the window. “Make sure all the information’s correct.”

The cop who wrote the report spelled my name wrong, listed a different eye color, and goofed my address. I told the supervisor the corrections, then he asked more clerical questions and explained more procedural nonsense of how to get lawyer representation in Memphis. He gave me a slip of paper with a phone number and address for a public defender’s office. Later, after I’d gotten out, I went to that building. The info the supervisor gave me was wrong.

The supervisor led me out of the small room. “Take a seat. When your name’s called you’re free to go.”

I headed back to where I sat. J.T. was still there. The albino kid got in front of me again. “You do it? You help me man? What he say?”

“Sit down! It’s your last warning!” the same cop yelled again. The albino kid just looked at me, waiting for an answer.

J.T. kept whispering to me. About what, I don’t know. At some point I told him to shut the fuck up. By the way his face morphed and how he gripped his chair, I thought about his girlfriend. She probably lipped off to him and he couldn’t take it. Ain’t no way he gonna do shit, I thought to myself. If he did, we were surrounded by a bunch of cops.

One of the desk pod cops called the name of the guy who was coughing phlegm in the green suicide smock. He stood up and was told to stay put. Two cops put cuffs on his wrists and ankles and escorted him to the other side of the room.

A heavy door slammed shut where an inmate in an orange jumpsuit, in for an extended period, walked behind a janitor cart. He pushed it to the nastyasfuckshitroom.

Later, a cop called the names of two others. The guy in denim and expensive boots and some other guy I don’t remember seeing. Along with mine.

I joined a woman cop near the desk pod with the other two. She led us out of the general population area through a door into a windowless corridor. Then she took us through another door into a small room where there was a wall with a window and another door. We stood around for minutes while a woman behind the window looked for our stuff. Then she called our names and handed each of us a plastic gallon bag of our belongings—my phone, wallet, hotel key, and belt. The cop took us through the other door, where in a corridor daylight shined through glass doors that led to a street. And as if we were just guests, stopping by for a fifteen hour visit, the cop let us out. “Have a good day,” she said.

That was it.

No paperwork, no guidance for what, if anything, would come next. It was something that happened that didn’t feel like it happened. As if it all evaporated into the air of the past.

I received mail a week later. My name spelled wrong and my address listed incorrectly, just like the arresting cop had written. The supervisor never made the edits. They were letters from Memphis lawyers vying for my business. The next day I got a phone call from a representative of the Memphis courthouse. “Mr. Campbell?”

“Yes?”

“This is a reminder for your court date on—,” the lady said the time and day. “You don’t need to be present for it. Just your lawyer.”

“What court date?”

“No one told you?”

The lake used to be quieter.

Cottages spread the shoreline between thickets of trees. Few pontoons, fishing boats, and the occasional skier behind a MasterCraft cut through the calm spring fed glass-like water. When I bought my place from a University of Notre Dame history professor in 1999, he told me Al Capone had a cabin hideout on the southern tip of the peninsula where he’d disappear for weeks away from Chicago in the 1920s. Surrounded by a layer of forest and outer rim of cornfields for miles, the lake was a secret paradise. But that was a long time ago.

As years passed wealthy families bought land, cut down trees, demolished the cottages, and put up million-dollar monstrosities. People from all over. Michiganders, though mainly out of staters from Indiana and Illinois. Between Memorial and Labor Day, weekend warriors drop their boats and jet skis from sunrise to sundown to fish, tube, wakeboard, and surf. They blast music, get drunk, litter, spill rainbowed pools of gasoline in the water, bring invasive species like zebra mussels and starry stonewort on their motors, and create large eroding waves from the wakes of their powerful expensive boats.

A fence-like barrier of fifteen-foot-tall bushes separates my property from the public boat launch. Signs prohibit swimming, fishing, and loitering, but people still do it. I don’t mind the occasional picnickers enjoying a meal near the water. It’s the rest of them. Some even have the nerve to wander to my door asking to borrow fuel, a bathroom, or a phone. Nearly all of them neglect the no wake zone. Vessels are supposed to travel at idling speed until passing the no wake zone buoy, about twenty yards off the boat launch.

But no one cares.

I’ve seen couples have sex in the grass and have observed many teenagers drink all day, abandon their garbage, and leave in their trucks. I’ve been trying to get ahold of the county police or DNR about a group that captures turtles and thinks it’s funny to launch them with a three person slingshot thirty yards out into the lake. Or another, that uses blinding spotlights to night chum with gory chunks of bluegill to lure and spear gar. They put one of their kills on my lawn near the shore as some kind of crude joke. One end of the spear, impaled in the ground. At its top, the bloody gar’s belly and scales shish kabobbed right through, hanging limp in an upside down U.

On a calm afternoon the water is as clear as the Bahamas. The naked eye can pick up the different hues of growing vegetation where the floor’s depth slopes into a green darkness, schools of minnows, a bass on the hunt in the shadows, a snapping turtle combing the bottom, and clams burrowed in the sand. But when the waves come, it turns into a stirred cloudiness of sediment impossible to see through. My pontoon, pier, and land get hammered by whitecaps. The constant pummeling of water deteriorated my seawall of railroad ties and concaved the bordering land it protects, so I replaced it with a line of piled rocks to absorb the impact.

It was a hot July day and a few kids in their early twenties were trying to start a speedboat, worth somewhere in the six figures, while I was wiping moss, mold, and dirt from the front of my pontoon. Their engine wasn’t working. It stalled, sending plumes of smoke in the air as they turned the ignition over and over as the smell of leaking gas reached my nostrils. I ignored them, scrubbing the scum from my boat on my hands and knees until I heard their motor roar to life. From the proximity of their growling engine as they blasted off, I knew they ignored the no wake zone buoy. And before I could adjust, the waves were on me. They collided into my pontoon with great force, and because of my awkward balance, I fell into the water and smacked my head on a cluster of bowling ball sized rocks that formed my seawall. It knocked me unconscious, for how long, I’m not sure. If I’d laid there long enough I’m sure I would’ve drowned.

Since that incident, I’ve had a hard time remembering things. I have recurring throbbing headaches and blackouts. Sometimes the shooting pain is so unbearable, stemming from the spot where I hit my head and spreading like ripples on water. Light agitates my eyes and I can only bear to be awake when it’s dark, and I can never remember falling asleep or waking up. When I find myself conscious I’m always in the driver’s seat on my pontoon.

My wife Amy was pregnant with our first child, Joseph, when she left. I don’t remember why or when, maybe she told me, but my guess is that she couldn’t handle my post-injury memory problems and nocturnal lifestyle. All I know is that I’d give anything to see my wife again. And even more to meet my son.

One night around three in the morning while I was thinking about them, when the dew coats the boat’s leather seats and the spiders wait on their webs to catch mayflies in the crevices of my pontoon, it happened. I was studying the beauty of the stars when a woman in her mid-thirties with exhausted crying eyes came onto my pier. I asked if she were lost or in danger, but she said no. Instead she claimed she heard her daughter calling to her. But I hadn’t seen any children.

“Please,” she said, “I know I heard her voice. I’ve been following it for hours and have come a long way. She told me to come here. She told me to get on your boat.”

I thought she was drunk or crazy and told her I couldn’t help. But the woman refused to leave. She begged and cried, completely broken and distraught, so I let her on. The boat rocked with her added weight. She thanked me as she sat down at the front of my pontoon. Then she started to call her daughter’s name.

“Kyra, where are you baby? I’m here. Momma’s here.” I looked around, but didn’t see or hear anything except for the buzz of bugs. “Start the boat. She says you have to start the boat and drive,” the woman said. “Please. She says it’s the only way.”

Before I could say anything back, the woman jumped onto my pier and untied the rope to my pontoon’s back cleat. I stood to stop her, but an excruciating pain tore through the spot in my head. As I massaged the agony to go away, the woman untied the front cleat and pushed my boat away from the pier and hopped aboard. The pain in my head subsided as we drifted out deeper on the lake and the woman sobbed her daughter’s name. I started the engine to angle back towards the pier, and that’s when the most amazing thing I’ve ever witnessed happened.

A little girl, maybe nine years old, materialized out of nothing like an apparition on a seat across the woman. Everything about her looked completely normal. She wasn’t a translucent dreary shade of ghost white or gray. She looked human. Healthy, real, alive. I watched in shocked awe as the woman wept at the sight of her daughter and went for an embrace. But when their bodies met, it was like the woman had gone through a cloud of smoke. The woman wafted through her daughter’s smoky body in a brief disfiguring-streaked mist like a still of a motion blurred photograph before returning to its original shape. As startling as it was, it was unexplainably beautiful.

“Don’t cry mommy, it’s ok,” the little girl said.

“I’m just happy to see you. You look so pretty. And your hair, I can’t believe your hair.” The woman wiped cascading tears from her face as the girl, Kyra, instructed me to go around the lake. One lap, that’s it, before the sun broke the horizon. Then she’d disappear.

The lake was ours. There were no other boats and all the houses and their properties were drenched in quiet darkness. As its name suggests, Horseshoe Lake is shaped like a horseshoe. Hugging the shoreline a hundred feet out at a speed of five miles an hour, it takes roughly an hour to complete a lap from my dock. My motor purred, blending to white noise as I ferried the woman and girl around the lake’s contour in a blend of conversation, laughter, and sadness. They reminisced about dance class every Tuesday and Thursday, school packed lunches with notes written on napkins, not sleeping until a bedtime story had been read, looking for the always hidden shin guards before a soccer game, and weekend shopping dates with a food court lunch at the mall. I listened to it all as they went on and on. As if I wasn’t there.

At the lap’s end, I navigated toward my dock while the mother and daughter said their reluctant goodbyes. I killed the motor and told the woman to step on the pier to catch the boat once we glided next to it. She sobbed as she stood at the front of the pontoon, kissed her hand, waved bye to her daughter, promised that she’d be back, and leaped off the boat. And when the woman’s foot hit the pier, the girl’s body was swept away, evaporating into the wind like disappearing grains of dust.

The woman tied the pier’s ropes around my pontoon’s cleats and thanked me again. “What happened to her?” I asked.

The woman sniffled and wiped tears from her face. “Leukemia. She died two weeks ago.”

She told me watching her daughter deteriorate, both physically and psychologically, was the worst a parent could suffer. The entire process was a revolving door of emotion. The crushing discovery of the diagnosis, the optimistic bounce back to fight, the medical appointments, treatment, and balding from chemotherapy. At the end of it all she didn’t recognize her daughter anymore. The disease stole her health, her hair, her energy, her aura, her childhood. And after she died and started hearing her daughter’s voice, she thought the grief was driving her insane.

“What’s your name?” she asked before she left.

“Ray”.

“If you could talk to someone, who would it be?”

“Someone who’s passed?” The woman nodded. “I don’t know. My parents.” But I didn’t want to speak with the dead. I wanted to speak with the living. “I wanna talk to my wife. She left with my son, who I’ve never met.”

“Then call them.”

“Don’t have a number.”

“What would you say if you did?”

“I’d say, Amy, Joseph. Please, talk to me. Come back to Horseshoe Lake.”

“I’m sure they’d listen if they heard you.” Before she stepped off my pier, she asked if she could come back. That was the last I remember of that night.

The woman, Kelly, got on my pontoon every night for the next week to speak with her daughter Kyra. And every time the little girl appeared, when the boat left the dock for one lap around the lake, between the window of two in the morning and sunrise, she would disappear until the night came anew.

Kyra explained that the dead had to call the person they wanted to speak with. And if the living revealed the nature of the supernatural secret to anyone who hadn’t been invited, the bound realm, my pontoon, that allowed the living and dead to coexist, would shatter their connection eternally. She told me that I was the captain, the only person who could drive the pontoon since it was mine.

And that’s when more people started to show up on my pier.

Mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, distant relatives, listened to their call, just as Kelly had. They all came wary, like prey anticipating a predator’s ambush, searching for something they didn’t know was fathomably discoverable, propelled by unconquerable emotion.

A widower in his forties who lost his wife in a car wreck two years ago.

Twins in their fifties—a man and woman—whose mother had been gone from pneumonia for a decade.

A young woman in her early twenties whose triathlete brother had recently died of an abnormal heart attack.

The friend of a man with no living relatives who was murdered within the last few years, and the oldest descendant of an associate of Al Capone.

And many others.

All of them had some kind of connection to Horseshoe Lake.

For others though, the boat ride didn’t work.

Like a few nights ago, when a family of eleven filled every seat on my pontoon. The grandmother, who came alone another time previously to speak with her husband who passed, brought her children and grandchildren. They pushed my boat away from the pier and we made our way around the lake. But he never appeared when they called for him.

Every night for weeks, I ferried three rides in three hours, before the faintest sliver of rising sun seeped through the trees. And there was always a gap in my memory when I’d find myself in my captain’s chair again. I listened for my name, but no one called. I wondered if I’d broken the rule that Kyra warned, becoming an uninvited intruder. It felt like my purpose was like Charon, the underworld ferryman, who took the deceased across the rivers Styx and Acheron to Hades as a pawn to service the overlapping realms of the living and dead.

I was living in a purgatorial limbo.

People kept coming to my pier. I told them to go away. And if they pled and didn’t listen, I screamed like a deranged lunatic until I scared them off. I wanted to puncture my pontoon’s gas tank and set it ablaze. Or sink it to the black depths of the lake to never ferry again. But every time I left my pier to the bordering grass or tried to sabotage my boat, my head pulsated in an excruciating throb of heat before my vision tightened to darkness. Then I’d wake in my captain’s chair and do it all over again.

After not seeing her for a while, Kelly came back on a foggy night. She and Kyra were the only people I considered friends, if I could call them that, so I let her board. I drove like a chauffeur focused on steering, avoiding running over buoys shrouded by the misty haze that blanketed the lake, and refrained from eavesdropping and only participated in conversation that included me. As we made our way around, I envied the limo driver who rolls up tinted dividing privacy glass to separate from passengers.

When we docked and Kelly got off my pontoon, she questioned what was wrong. She could tell something was bothering me and asked if she could help. But I shrugged her off. She didn’t believe me. “It’s your wife and son, isn’t it?” she asked. I shook my head even though she was right. “What’s their last name? I’ll try to find them.” I thanked her but refused, and leaned back in my chair to gaze at the stars until she left.

No one appeared on my dock for a week. It was like the dead knew that the living would be fended from my land and their calls would be wasted. As time dragged, I became lonely. I thought maybe they were punishing me for it. So every night I took my boat around the lake, shouting and begging for Kyra and all the other spirits I’d met to appear. But no one came.

I wept in my chair like a child for my wife and son as I angled my boat to the deepest waters. A thunderstorm of windy pelting torrential rain tore over the lake and thunder exploded like bombs as bolts of lightning stretched across the sky in vibrant purple veins.

“Amy, Joseph,” I muttered to myself, “What did I do to make you leave? If you told me, I can’t remember. I don’t remember. Please, come back to me. Come back to Horseshoe Lake. I miss you both so much.”

My tears merged with the raindrops that drenched my body as I cut my boat’s engine. The strong winds and choppy waters shook my pontoon and nearly threw me to the floor as I moved to open the front latch to stand at the deck’s edge. I stared into the dark abyss, two feet below, and jumped, pushing off the boat to propel it away from me and plunged into the icy water. The muffled pitter-patter of fat raindrops shelled the surface above me and the water’s temperature grew colder as I sank deeper. I exhaled bubbles, ignoring my instinct for air. The water engulfed me and I floated as if I were lifeless. My head scorched in torment and I felt my consciousness fade toward the blackout as my body’s oxygen edged to expiration.

I woke on my pontoon as if I dreamt it all.

The night was still, insects hummed and a fish splashed somewhere in the water. It was as if the blackout triggered an autopilot switch that fixed every action my conscious mind made, ensuring that I respawn on my boat like a video game character. I sat thinking about it, before two silhouetted figures walked across my lawn to my pier. I yelled at them to go away, but one of them, a woman with a voice I’d never forget, muttered my name.

“Amy?” I stood from my chair and the figures stopped a few yards from the pier covered in shadows.

“Ray, is that really you?” Amy whispered to the other person to stay put before she came on the pier and pontoon. She looked sad and cautious, like everyone else who’d gotten on the boat for the first time. But she appeared strangely older. The skin on her face was forming creased wrinkles and her hair looked thinner and darker, dyed, as if to hide greying. We examined one another and held our words for what felt like an eternity.

“You came back,” I said. But she just looked at me. “Why’d you leave?”

She stared, and even though it was dark, I saw the shimmer in her eyes as tears collected at the base of her eyelids. I walked to hold her. To smell her scent and feel her body’s warm smooth skin. But when I reached for her shoulder, my hand went through her, billowing into a cloud of smoke void of matter, temporarily severing itself to the wrist before the wafted cloud gathered and reformed.

Amy told me nine years ago she found me unconscious, sprawled on our seawall of rocks with a nasty gash on my head. My face submerged in a few inches of water. She tried to revive me with CPR, but it was too late. After what happened, she couldn’t live at our house anymore. She moved in with her parents in Niles, had Joseph a month later, and tried to sell our land. But no one wanted to buy.

As desirable as the lake was, everyone stayed away from our property. They all thought it was haunted. I remember Amy and I thinking the same when we first moved in. We noticed things had been moved without our doing, caught unintelligible whispers of words, and heard our floors creak from phantom footsteps. One night I remember Amy saying she saw the shadowed shape of a person wandering across our lawn toward the lake. But when I went outside to look, no one was there. Cliché eerie occurrences are what I told myself at the time, tricks of the mind.

It was all real.

“We heard your voice calling, so we followed it,” Amy said wiping away tears. “Joseph, come here, I want you to meet someone.”

The boat rocked slightly as my nine year old son’s featherweight added to the pontoon. Amy took his hand, but he stood shy, partially behind her. He looked like a younger me with his mother’s green eyes. For a moment I didn’t know what to say, but I knew it would come. I started the motor while Amy untied the ropes around the cleats.

And then we pulled away from the dock for a lap around the lake.

It was a sportsman’s kind of place. Taxidermy heads enshrined glass cases—bucks, a ram, mallard ducks, a mountain goat, black bear, owls, and a moose—all shot and stuffed by the bar’s owner on vacations. Poor lighting with flickering vintage beer signs, it had a marbled emerald green bar top and torn maroon stools that vomited their stuffing. Its deep brown grease-stained griddle and silverware had been used for thousands of meals, all original, a survivor through time as if the fifties never passed.

I like finding dumpy old joints like this. The exterior always looks like hell but the food’s great and the booze is cheap. I can think of a ton of places all over the Midwest just like it.

My car’s my office. Gas, meals, and hotel stays, my company flips the bill. Even the lottery tickets I say are snacks. It’s the best perk of my lousy traveling sales job. Motivation’s gone, no interest. And it’ll probably show in next month’s sales report. But it doesn’t really matter, no one wants to buy anything anyway. Like earlier today when I stopped by a few prospects. They always act interested when you’re with them in their stores, a temporary best friend. But once you leave, they go crickets and you never hear from them again. So I called the day short. If my manager asks about the odd time of the late afternoon credit card receipt, I’ll say it was a busy day. A late lunch.

Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, Minneapolis, Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Peoria, Bloomington, Springfield, St. Louis, Champaign, Joliet, repeat. The industry calls it a sales territory. A milk route. Or a death march. An endless traveling cycle. I hit the major cities and everything in between. Like the town I’m in now, Dubuque.

Wake up, breakfast, email, drive, sales calls, lunch, sales calls, hotel, dinner, email, sleep, repeat. Eating and hotel stays, easy. Sales calls and emails, not so much. Driving between stops, not so bad. Most scenery ain’t nothin’ other than cornfields and plains, but I do what I want. I’m alone. It’s a purge of mundanity that is creating and maintaining hollow business relationships.

Most people refuse to travel for work. It’s grueling, a creature of habit’s worst nightmare. You’re away from your family most of the week, have an erratic schedule, stay in musty smelling hotels with beds and bathrooms with unknown histories, and are vulnerable to adding pounds from the ubiquitous garbage fast food options and lack of exercise from prolonged windshield times.

Back home I have a wife and newborn I hardly know. Commitment, responsibility, lack of freedom. It all haunts me. Long story short she got pregnant and we got married. It was a forced marriage for the kid. But it’s not working, never did.

It was late afternoon on a Tuesday when I got to the sportsman’s place. Some old local regulars occupied a few booths, but other than that it was deserted. I’d been sitting alone for a few hours in the middle of the bar with a mounting buzz, when out of all the available stools, he sat right next to me. A jingling bell and a slamming heavy glass door announced his presence. I saw him in my peripheral. And a sliver of curiosity, that innate reaction that forces you to glance at someone new when they enter a place, made me look.

It was like he’d stepped out of a time machine from the Feudal Period. Or had just gotten off a shift at Medieval Times, or visited a Renaissance fair. In a tunic of what appeared to be some kind of elegant red and gold threadwork, a black hooded robe, and brown cavalier boots, his perfectly manicured long silver hair rested on his shoulders and a pointy beard covered his face. His eyes were relaxed yet stoic, with a sense of urgency.

I went back to my beer to watch whatever was on TV. Sports, news, a shitty reality show, I don’t remember. But I still saw him in a glass reflection that held some of the taxidermy trophy heads. I watched as he went to a jukebox, smashed buttons to flip through albums, and dug through his pockets for money. He did this for a few minutes before walking back my way, and as he passed, I looked over my shoulder, nodded my head, and asked how he was doing. But did I really care? Of course not. People say things they don’t mean all the time. He kept on walking though, for the door I presumed, but instead he sat right next to me even though all the stools at the bar were open. No one sits next to someone they don’t know unless it’s absolutely necessary. Otherwise a seat is skipped, everyone knows that. It’s a universal social rule, a code. Like distancing yourself at a urinal in a public bathroom.

As soon as he sat down, the bartender gave him a can of Diet Dr. Pepper with a straw and a plate of chocolate cake. They never spoke a word. He didn’t even motion with a hand. I debated for a few minutes whether I should say something, and finally asked if he minded sliding over a stool. I lied and told him I was waiting for someone. But he just looked at me, took a sip of his pop, and asked my name.

“John.” Another lie.

“Pleasure to meet. I’m the Duke,” he said with what sounded like a forced English accent.

“The Duke?”

“Yes sir. The Duke of Dubuque, at your service.” He bowed his head as if he were royalty, though his diseased teeth made him look like a beggar. His entire image was ridiculous and pompous.

“Nice to meet you,” I lied again. I went back to whatever I was doing. But he kept asking questions.

“You from around here?”

“Excuse me?”

“Never seen you before. You from here?”

“No.”

“You visiting then? Your kid go to the college?”

“Just passing by for work.”

“What do you do?”

“Sales.”

“What do you sell?”

“Urinal deodorizers.”

“Urinal deodorizers?”

“Yea.”

“What’s that?”

Small disinfectant blocks, three different kinds that control bacteria and reduce the smell of piss. Hexagon screens that prevent debris from clogging drains. Screens with blocks that offer maximum protection up to twelve hundred flushes. And pink cakes that look like bars of soap or hockey pucks. Scents in cucumber melon, lavender, mango, spiced apple, or cherry. The entire time I spoke I didn’t know if he was humoring me by listening, or if he was fascinated by all of it.

“Interesting, very interesting. Never seen one.” But I didn’t know how that was possible. “Got a card? Might have some business for you.” I dug into my pocket and gave him one before realizing I lied about my name. “I thought you said your name was John,” he said studying the card.

“It is.”

“Then why doesn’t it say that on your card?”

“Cuz John’s my middle name. That’s what I go by.”

The bartender brought out my dinner, their greasy self-proclaimed “World Famous” hamburger and a basket of fries. I wanted to eat in peace. But what was I going to do, move? He likely would’ve followed me anyway. I ate my meal as the Duke shared his life story and wondered if he opened up like this to strangers all the time.

The Duke worked at a nursing home three days a week, five hours a day, tending to the elderly and doing occasional janitorial duties. He’d play games with them, socialize, and offer companionship with those whose families let them rot there. I asked him if he liked it.

“Of course,” he said.

“Sounds depressing.”

“You like your job?”

“Not really.”

“Why you do it then?”

“Have to. Gotta make money.”

“Do you have a family?”

“Yea.” But I didn’t go into the details.

I picked at the remainder of my fries and motioned to the bartender for the check while the Duke talked for another fifteen minutes. He hadn’t seen his family in years, even though they lived in nearby towns. His father drank a lot when he was a kid and would get liquored up, angry, and shout things. Then beat his mom, him, and his siblings for no reason. “That’s why I don’t drink,” he said. He thought it was funny being a bar rat who went to the same place every night at the same time to drink one can of Diet Dr. Pepper.

The bartender took my bill and wiped the crumbs and circular sweat marks of the beer glasses from the bar top. I was about to sever the conversation and leave, but the Duke asked if I wanted to go to the casino. “On me, you don’t have to gamble anything.”

I don’t know what made me go with him. Boredom, maybe. I certainly didn’t go because I felt bad for him or sensed he was lonely. Couldn’t have cared less. It beat watching cable in the dingy hotel room though. And how could I refuse gambling someone else’s money? I had nothing to lose. We kicked our stools out and left before the song he paid for came on.

The Duke smoked a joint as we walked about a half a mile along the Mississippi. I hid my hands in my jacket as the cold October wind stung my face, and was ready if he decided to pull a knife and mug me. I was bigger and younger than him, but situations still crossed my mind. Like whether he was actually taking me to a casino. Or leading me to an alley or some secluded spot to jump me with others. All I had in my wallet was two dollars, my Visa, the company American Express, and a gift card to Arby’s with a dollar and fifty-three cents on it. So it didn’t really matter. Stolen credit cards can be cancelled to kill shopping sprees. But the imagination always finds a way to make you consider those kinds of scenarios. He offered me hits of his joint but I passed.

Drooping u-shaped ropes attached to gold poles like what’s seen decorating fancy red carpet events at premieres of Hollywood blockbusters were a barrier to separate the lobby from the casino. A big man in a black suit and coiled white earpiece like what FBI agents wear checked IDs. “Welcome back, Duke.” They fist bumped and the security man unclipped the rope to let us in.

The casino’s carpeting had a floral pattern as if we were somewhere tropical. Cigarette smoke filled the air in a thin haze among slot machines full of vibrant lights and arcade noise. Tables for Blackjack, Roulette, Craps, Cajun Stud, Heads Up Hold ‘Em, and DJ Wild scattered the floor. “What’s your game?” the Duke asked.

“Blackjack, Roulette. Or slots. Never played the others.”

The Duke spat out a stack of bills at an ATM before I followed him to an empty Roulette table. He threw down a hundred-dollar bill and told me to call it. The dealer pushed chips across the table and wished me luck. I wanted to bet simple, either red or black, but the Duke told me to be more adventurous. So I placed all the bets, spreading them out on red, black, odd, and even spaces. A little bit of everything. No strategy. The dealer spun the ball and waved her hand over the table signaling no more bets, and the ball rotated around the wheel for an uncountable number of rotations until it clanked into a pocket.

Nothing. No bets were on nine red. Poof, a hundred dollars gone. The Duke told me to go again but I was already up and walking.

We went to a Blackjack table and joined a guy in a Hawaiian shirt. It was a ten-dollar minimum and the Duke told me to play. I said no but he insisted. He threw down another hundred. “Duke.” The dealer nodded as he passed me chips. “Good luck sir.”

I placed the minimum and the dealer dealt the cards. He showed a seven. I had eighteen and motioned my hand to stay. The guy in the Hawaiian shirt had five and tapped the table to hit, seven, bringing him to twelve. He hit again and busted on a Queen. The dealer flipped his other card over, five, twelve total, and placed the next card. A seven, for nineteen. Dealer won. The dealer cleaned the table and a waitress asked if we wanted a drink. I took a bourbon straight, the Duke had a Diet Dr. Pepper. I put down another minimum, but as soon as the bet hit the green felt, the Duke told me to add another ten dollars. “Why?” I asked.

“You make back what you lost when you win.” I did as he suggested, it was his money anyway. But hand after hand I lost until all the chips were gone. And the Duke kept putting down bills, going back to the ATM, and I continued with his betting strategy. Doubling the wager over and over, splitting, doubling down, and trying every logical move that made sense with the hands given to me. But nothing hit. The guy with the Hawaiian shirt left the table muttering that he didn’t want my bad luck to rub off on him.

Thirty minutes later, four bourbons deep, and a few thousand dollars in the hole, I won the Duke’s money back. He celebrated like he’d won the jackpot. “See,” he said. “What’d I tell you?” I didn’t know how it was possible to lose that many times in a row. The odds of being struck by lightning, one in one hundred thousand, seemed more probable. I gathered the winnings, if you could call them that, and got up from the table drunk and annoyed. The Duke wanted to smoke again, so I joined him.

We got high on the sidewalk outside the casino. It was almost ten at night and the parking lot was nearly empty. The only cars belonged to gambling addicts. Doesn’t matter what day of the week or time of day it is. Casinos always have foot traffic. The Duke rambled on about how he gambles every day from nine at night until two in the morning while we passed a joint back and forth . Sometimes he wins big, sometimes he loses big. The only constant is that he always comes back. He took one last puff then flicked the orange roach into the street.

It didn’t take long for me to know that I was extremely stoned. The high took over my liquor buzz as if I were never drunk. I followed the Duke back into the casino to a row of Medieval slots and sat next to him. “Forget the other machines,” he said. “These are the winners.”

The Duke offered me money, but I refused. I just wanted to watch. Dramatic Medieval music accompanied the slot machine as he played. Eyes glued, he celebrated and cursed the game as blocks of knights, gauntlets, crowns, jesters, princesses, archers, kings, shields, knight’s helmets, and crossbows randomly cascaded down the machine’s screen spin after spin. And as he racked up thousands of credits that equaled a few hundred dollars, I drifted into paranoia.

I felt my organs working individually. My heart pumping, the blood coursing through my veins, my lungs taking in oxygen. I could feel their shapes inside me, and I thought about my body being a vessel, layered by skin, muscle, tendon, and bone. Though I’m just a brain. And the brain is me. Everything else is just a shell working together. And I felt it all.

“Where you going?” he asked.

“Outside.”

“Why?”

“Have to.”

“Just relax.”

It felt better to move. But my thoughts still ricocheted like a Pinball machine as I gripped a railing near the Mississippi. My job, my wife, my kid, what I was doing at that very moment. I was having an epiphany of thoughts I never thought I could think. My mind fixated on when I’d pace and waste time in aisles of grocery stores. When I’d sit in my car and get drunk in my office’s parking lot, dreading the thought of going home. My brain raced in an uncontrollable place where I didn’t want it to be, until the Duke came out with a big smile on his face and a stack of bills in his hand.

“You OK?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“What kinda weed we smoke?”

“I don’t know, weed. Not that powerful.” He ran a thumb through his stack of bills. “Time to leave. You wanna go to the Soiree Extravaganza?”

“Soiree Extravaganza?”

“My friend Travis will pick us up. He’s got a taxi.”

I would’ve slept in the next day and avoided my appointments anyway. I waited outside while the Duke went back into the casino to use a phone.

Travis was a bald man with a handlebar mustache who always wore Aviator sunglasses. With a Vietnam army jacket, colorful tie dye pants, and a gold peace pendant around his neck, his voice was raspy from smoking too many cigarettes. He was a down-to-earth hippie kind of a guy if he liked you, slit your throat sociopath if he hated you. It seemed like the Duke and him had known each other for a long time.

“You know who Anne Marie is?” Travis asked while we drove.

“Anne Marie?”

“Yea man, the pornstar.”

“No.”

“Oh c’mon. I know you go on porn sites, everyone does. Lemme see your browsing history.” I didn’t give him my phone. “She’ll be at the party man, she’s my girl.”

They smoked a joint as we drove to a liquor store. It was like stocking up for a college party for underagers. The Duke pushed out a shopping cart full of cases of light beer and handles of cheap vodka. “I thought you don’t drink,” I said.

“I don’t.”

“Why you buyin’ all that then?”

“Someone’s gotta supply it.”

We ended up somewhere in the country. It was dark and the city lights were gone as if they’d been wiped from existence. We drove along a dusty dirt road that led to a big old decrepit barn surrounded by a cornfield. Light inside seeped out the cracks between the barnwood and streaked across the grass in thin lines. A few cars and an old school bus parked near a wall of cornstalks. Travis backed the taxi to the barndoor, opened the trunk, and we unloaded.

The barn exploded in cheers and applause as we walked inside. People chanted the Duke’s name over and over in unison as we set the booze next to stacks of hay. The Duke bowed like a Shakespearean stage actor. “Welcome, to the Soiree Extravaganza!”

Travis tore the cases of beer open as twenty or so people formed a neat line. They waited patient for their turn while Travis handed out beers like a priest giving communion wafers. I sipped a beer and observed the crowd of people as the line thinned out. And for a moment I thought I was the only one wearing everyday clothes at a costume party. But then I noticed the people who hadn’t got in line hadn’t moved at all. Not in the slightest. Because they were clothed mannequins with wigs.

Outcasts, the forgotten. Society’s bastards roamed the barn. Street performers, halfway house residents, the homeless. One of them laughed at a mannequin as if it had told a funny joke. A painted man in a silver suit acted like a statue. A woman in Dorothy’s The Wizard of Oz dress with a cock-eyed head that rested on her shoulder played an accordion while a short man in a diaper holding a cigar and a tall woman with a thick unibrow sang along. A strongman carrying a naked blowup doll, his damsel in distress, ran from someone in a lizard suit. Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, and a few other dead celebrities danced. It was a Las Vegas normalcy, an Iowa absurdity.

The long legs of a redheaded woman in a fifties styled polka dotted skirt wrapped around Travis’s waist as she jumped into his arms. He twirled her around while they rubbed their noses together for an Eskimo kiss. It was Anne Marie. Whether she was actually an adult film star or not, I never found out.

A hairy man in a bridal gown and heels at the end of the line hovered over the trove of booze. The white gown looked like a two-piece, but it could’ve been a one-piece that’d ripped from his enormous gut. Black mascara waterfalled to the corners of his lips from his eyes. He picked up a handle of vodka and asked me if he was pretty. I told him he was gorgeous as he took a big pull from the handle and disappeared into the crowd.

As the night passed and the booze vanished, I asked the Duke when the party normally shut down. And somehow, everyone’s ears heard and the place went dead quiet. They all watched as Travis pulled out a black pistol and told me that if I left, he’d put a bullet in my brain then drag my corpse into the cornfield where a combine harvester would shred my body. “You want to leave?” asked the Duke.

I stuttered gibberish, laboring to say no. Someone in the crowd shouted that they didn’t believe me. And before I knew what was happening, the Duke buckled my legs and forced me to my knees. Travis pointed the pistol at my face. “Open wide,” he said. I looked down the black hole of the pistol barrel as Travis drew it closer and shoved it in my mouth. I went cross-eyed staring at the hammer.

“Bang.”

Travis pulled the trigger, but there wasn’t a sound or burst of light. Maybe that’s what happens when you die. It happens so fast you don’t hear or see anything. I felt warm liquid collect and burn in the back of my throat and collapsed to the floor. I spit up something clear while everyone erupted into hysterical laughter.

“It’s booze man,” Travis laughed. “It’s a water pistol.” He turned the toy into his mouth and pulled the trigger twice then helped me up.

“It’s a tradition, an ingress,” said the Duke. “A sick joke. We do it to everyone.”

“Yea if we was gonna kill you we woulda done it already,” said Travis. He cracked a beer and handed it to me. The music boomed from a speaker and everyone danced.

The Soiree Extravaganza lasted until dawn. We watched in a group as the sunrise broke the horizon of crops, and I waved goodbye to the people I’d spent the last few hours with as they got into their cars and boarded the school bus. The Duke, Travis, and I were the last ones to leave.

We pulled up to the drop-off area by the lobby of the hotel I was supposed to stay at. We laughed and reminisced about the night one last time before I thanked them and shook their hands. But before I got out of the taxi, the Duke said he wanted to say something. “Do you know why I invited you to the casino? To the Soiree Extravaganza?” I shook my head. “Why did you choose to come along?” Again, I didn’t have an answer. “You know what I think?”

“What?

“You’re very unhappy.”

“Everyone’s unhappy about something.” I put my hand on the door to get out, but Travis activated the car’s child lock. The Duke grabbed a chrome pistol from the glove box and pointed it at me.

“This one’s not fake.” He pulled out the business card I gave him at the bar. “I can find you if I want to.”

“You serious?”

“Absolutely.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Crazy is ignoring your wife and child. Doing a job that makes you miserable.”

“Says the guy tryin’ to teach a cheap lesson by threatening me with a gun.”

“Sometimes it’s exactly what’s needed. Ultimately it’s your choice if you want to continue living miserably.” The Duke was never going to hunt me down and kill me. He just made me promise him. And to prove that I lived up to my end of the bargain, I had to come back and introduce him to my wife and kid.

Or continue living miserably.

A hotel employee banged on my door a little after eleven in the morning and unlocked the room while I slept. She shook me awake saying I had to get out so they could prepare for their next guest. My bill got hit with a late checkout fee. But I didn’t care.

My subconscious somehow thought deep about what the Duke had told me while I was asleep. Like an inner conversation I had with myself that I don’t remember, in the form of weird dreams. All I knew, was that I just knew.

I blew off the appointments I had scheduled for the day and rest of the week, drove home, quit my job, and took my family on a vacation. If I’m ever back in Iowa, I’ll know where to find the Duke of Dubuque.

Their hypnotic swirl and rich scent. The coating of warm glazed cream cheese frosting. Mesmerizing, delicious.

Yet it reminds me of when I thought I killed my sister.

That kind of breakfast was a rare treat. We always had toast or bland sugar free cereal before school. My mom pulled them from the oven and served my sisters as I trudged into the kitchen half awake. Our dad had already gone for the scrapyard.

My younger sisters argued a lot. Kim was in third grade and Jackie kindergarten. They bickered about anything, everything, and I stayed out of it. I was too old for it. Jackie was chunky and Kim loved to tease her. “Gonna have another one fatty?” she was saying to her. And Jackie would usually send something back. She’d remind Kim that she used to look like a meatball too, or make fun of the half dollar sized birthmark on her neck. But this time she just whined and complained, even though our mom had already heard what Kim said.

“Cut it out,” mom snapped as she scrubbed cinnamon roll remnants stuck to the cookie sheet.

“Fat ass tattletale,” Kim muttered for only Jackie and I to hear. She bloated her cheeks, puffing them with air, and bulged her eyes. “That’s you, fatty.”

“Nuh uh!” Jackie blabbered. Her eyes glistened wet.

“This is how you stuff your fat head.” Kim shoved a whole cinnamon roll in her mouth and made a grotesque face. She smacked her lips and grunted like an old obese pig anchored in mud.

“Stop!” Jackie yelled. Kim laughed with her mouth full as tears streaked down Jackie’s cheeks.

And that’s when I got up.

I ripped Kim from her chair and pummeled my fist into her stomach as hard as I could. “Fuck was that for Ashley?” Kim managed through half chewed cinnamon roll clumps. I’d never heard her say that word.

The whites of Kim’s eyes thrust backward. And her body gave out like a building with a rotted foundation. She smacked her head against the kitchen windowsill and sagged to the linoleum. My mom dropped the cookie sheet, clanking it in the sink. The faucet gushed as she rushed to her unconscious body.

Kim’s face was pale white. Her eyes were closed and her jaw was corpse slack. My mom pulled her from the floor and sat Kim against her. She patted her face, pleading her name to wake up, then screamed with panic for Jackie or me to dial an ambulance. I grabbed the landline, punched the digits, gave her the phone, and pulled Jackie into my room. We sat on the carpet, listening to our mom beg someone to hurry to our apartment complex.

We listened.

Listened.

And listened.

Until we heard mom exhale in a deep whine of relief. We didn’t move to see or speak about what that meant. We just sat on the carpet, as if it held us hostage, and waited until we heard the wail of sirens.

Two paramedics rolled Kim out of our unit on a stretcher as people on our floor poked their heads out their doors to see what was happening. The old lady across the hallway in 3C, Ms. Burdette, dropped Jackie and I off at school while our mom went with Kim in the ambulance. The entire ride was silent. I don’t think Ms. Burdette knew what to say to us. She didn’t have kids. When she slowed to the curb at our school to let us out of her gold Lincoln, she inhaled as if to say something. But no words followed.

At first I didn’t wanna to talk to anyone. But when I did, I bragged about it. And I don’t know why. I told a few friends that I punched Kim and sent her to the hospital, but left out the part about a cinnamon roll getting stuck in her windpipe.

Soon enough, it got around. People who I thought never knew I existed looked at me while I was at my locker, but their eyes averted once I noticed their staring. I heard my crush since preschool, Jamie Morton, whisper to one of his friends that I almost killed my little sister when we passed each other in the stairwell.

In my fourth period Spanish class, the principal’s voice squawked from the room’s ceiling speaker summoning me to the office. I sensed everyone’s eyes on me as I got out of my desk. It felt like my teacher Mrs. Quigly knew too.

When I got to Principal Decker’s office he said my mom called to tell me that Kim was ok. The people at the hospital had looked her over and my mom had taken her home. “You ok Ashley?” he asked. But I wasn’t paying attention. I was looking at his desk.

Sitting on a paper plate was a cinnamon roll.

We was coked out our minds when the Latin King was gettin’ tossed to the curb.

But that was hours after me and Terrell was drinkin’ Mickey’s 40s and smokin’ a blunt in the alley outside his place talkin’ ‘bout how much we hated politicians. Every single one of ‘em in Cook County. Panderin’ slimy plastic-faced full of shit assholes part of the same scheme. We trust people in and out of prison more. Only good politician is a dead politician.

“Fuckin’ politicians,” Terrell was sayin’, “They fake man, they ain’t real. All that fuckin’ makeup and shit. All they do is look perfect with their grinnin’ makin’ hollow promises to the cameras. They only care ‘til they get our vote then they ghost. Could give a fuck about us.”

Terrell had guns. A Glock 19 and an AK-47. They were hidden under his mattress if shit went down. “You Schwarzenegger or some shit’?” I’d say about his firepower. “Fuck you have all that for?”

“Can’t trust anyone man. Fuckin’ third world country out here. People rollin’ up blastin’ each other over some dumb ass gang related shit. Lil kids be catchin’ strays to the head and no one fuckin’ cares.”

We got into Terrell’s ’03 Pontiac Grand GT for a shitty Irish joint a few blocks from his place. His coke dealer Skid who he knew when he was in the painters union worked as the men’s bathroom night attendant. He made sure it was clean and stocked with soap, paper towels, cheap mints, and condoms. He was one of those real handy guys. Fifty somethin’ years old, he knew how to do all sorts of odd labor, cash only, to make ends meet and to buy coke. A nickname he gave to himself, Skid said he pushed so much weight it was by the skid. But I thought he was a fuckin’ liar.

We drank at the bar, eyed around for women, and rolled the tab for another hour before Terrell went to the bathroom to snag a bag from Skid. Then we went back to his place.

Terrell got his Glock 19 and AK-47 after we snorted some lines. But he didn’t fuck around. He ejected the clips and made sure nothin’ was chambered. Some dumb fuckers we knew shot themselves when they were blitzed.

“Ever fire this shit?” I asked.

“At the range.”

“Range?”

“I ain’t no fool. Do this shit right.”

We snorted lines ‘til our noses burned and downed malt liquor like water while Terrell showed me how to disassemble, clean, and reassemble each weapon. I was so blasted I thought I could do it blindfolded.

Around two in the morning we took Terrell’s car to a 4AM bar. One of those joints with a strange crowd where you rip cigarettes inside and find somebody drunk enough to fuck a stranger.

We was gonna walk in but that’s when the Latin King was gettin’ pushed out by a big ass bouncer. ‘Bout five-six in a crooked baseball hat, oversized shirt, and baggy shorts that were all yellow, he looked like a walkin’ Twinkie. The bouncer shoved him to the street and told him to get the fuck out. The Twinkie dipped a hand in his baggy shorts, threatenin’ to pull out a piece, and screamed at the bouncer, “Latin Kings nigga! Latin Kings mutha fucka!”

We made our way to the bar’s door as other people left, but the bouncer stepped in front of us and said they were closed. “What you mean? It only past two,” Terrell said.

The bouncer shook his big head. It looked like he didn’t have a neck. “Finna shut down.”

We turned back for Terrell’s car. And the Twinkie got in our way. “Latin Kings nigga!” he yelled. He looked white and his skin was pale, but he coulda been Puerto Rican or Mexican. It was dark and I was too fucked up to tell.

The booze and coke gripped me. “Shut the fuck up bitch.” I was ready to pull my blade and stick ‘em in the gut if he tried somethin’. He shouted again with his hand in his shorts and I told him to pull his piece.

“Yo, chill!” Terrell ripped me to his car. “Fuckin’ stupid ass. What you tryna do?”

We lit cigs behind Terrell’s car and watched the Twinkie pace with a lean outside the bar like a hyper Pitbull guardin’ its yard caged behind a rusty fence screamin’ at anyone he saw ‘til two CPD squads rolled up. “Latin Kings mutha fucka!” he yelled with his hand in his shorts. The cops got out their cars, took cover behind their doors, and aimed their Glocks. “Fuck you!” the Twinkie was screamin’.

We lit more cigs behind Terrell’s car, watchin’ through the windows, and waited to see what would happen.

I’ve been in and out of rehab since I was sixteen.

Ollieing a rail down a slick flight of stairs after dodging some nark hotel doorman downtown, I lost balance and braced to catch myself on the pavement but landed hard at an odd angle. The impact bent my arm like a toothpick and made a sound like a decayed branch snapping in two.

I got a cast at the ER and was prescribed Norco. The doctor told me and my mom to get rid of the pills when I didn’t need them anymore, but my mom was working two jobs at the time and my dad’s been out of the picture since I was five. She was never around and lying was easy. Once I experienced how those pills made me feel, I hid what remained and popped one or two or three a day like a Flintstone vitamin to achieve numbness and happy relaxation. Cloud nine. More like the fuckin’ cloud nine of cloud nine. When I found myself staring at the bottom of the bare orange capsule, a chick I knew at school connected me to a dealer who sold painkillers.

Five months later when my mom was working her night shift, my little brother found me in my room unresponsive and technically dead. It was a full blown OD. Paramedics shocked my flatlined heart with a defibrillator and I woke up in a hospital bed hooked up to all kinds of wires and tubes. After that I was forced into a rehab facility for a few weeks. The withdrawals, you need me, you need me, weren’t impatient to nestle in—confusion, drowsiness, nausea, vomiting, weak fatigue. Whether the first or hundredth, it don’t matter how many times you go through it. Each episode, marathon, outdoes the one before it.

My mom’s trust in me was obliterated. It was like being in rehab all over again but in my own house. A criminal. Or case study subject. She gave me drug tests to make sure I was clean, but I had friends who helped me pass. They’d piss in a mini shampoo bottle I’d hide in a tight pair of boxers pressed against my leg to keep it warm.

I went to weekly NA meetings with other recovering abusers, people of all ages. Centered around supporting each other during our own individual journeys to sobriety, we shared experiences about our addictions and improvements. One woman turned to crack when she was in her teens to fix her depression after the death of a friend. A guy in his forties got hooked on heroin and meth following a failed marriage, became homeless, and hasn’t seen his two kids in a decade. When it was my turn, I’d lie about my progress. Session after session I’d stand in front of everyone with the same winter hat and hood over my head and say I was sober for another week and they’d all clap and congratulate me. But I was always high. For a while, even my mom was proud of me.

If I didn’t have money, I’d go into my mom’s purse. Or I’d take things she wouldn’t notice were gone and pawn them. Like a bracelet I never saw her wear buried at the bottom of her jewelry case. If there was a way to get high, I wanted it. And I always figured out a way to get it. Vicodin, OxyContin, Codeine. I crushed and snorted Mucinex DM, tried psychedelics, and had a violent coughing fit after smoking nutmeg when I was fiending. I popped my dog’s Carprofen after she had surgery to remove eight plaque and tarter diseased teeth.

My memory fogs and all the stints over the years blend into a blur. Rehab would set me straight until I was out. Then I’d go back to my old ways.

My mom kicked me out when I was eighteen. Jobless, without a plan, and on a steady rotation of going to rehab, relapsing, and going back, she did everything she could to help me. But she couldn’t handle it. She didn’t know who I was anymore. In her words I was a good for nothin’ junkie who had stolen her real son’s life. And she was right. I knew my pills more than my little brother.

For a few weeks I floated, I think, sleeping on couches of friends until I was booted to the curb after I started stealing from them. Money, drugs, whatever. I lived on the streets for a while sleeping in alleys using piles of junk to stay warm before I thought to call the only person I knew would take me in. Other than 911 to a prison cell. Or the rehab facility.

Even though my dad left when I was a kid, his mom, my grandma, stayed in touch over the years. She lived in central Illinois, Morton, but we never saw her. My mom didn’t take us to her house and grandma never made the drive up to Chicago. Every birthday and Christmas, she’d send my brother and I cards with little notes about how she missed us and hoped we were doing well behind a crisp twenty. I’d use those twenties to buy drugs.

I threw the garbage bag that held the little belongings I owned in her trunk when she picked me up at the bus transit center in Peoria. She lived in the same ranch on the outskirts of Morton her entire married life since the sixties with my grandpa, but I never met him cuz he died in the eighties from cancer. Surrounded by a quiet stillness of plains, corn and soybean fields, neighbors were scarce and spread out. She showed me my room, which was my dad’s old bedroom when he was a boy. I asked my grandma when she saw him last but it’d been years. She thought he was living in Terre Haute, Indiana but wasn’t sure.

The withdrawals came like ravenous endorphin demons the first few weeks, begging to be fed what they wanted. You need me, you need me. And to pay for it I laid curled in bed for days, constipated with no hunger or energy, swinging between boiled sweats as if from heatstroke and shivers from below zero hypothermic temps. My grandma compared my state to being possessed and needing an exorcism. She checked on me at all hours to make sure I was ok, alive, dabbing my head with hot or cold washcloths and reading me short stories to help trick and entertain my preoccupied mind. To her, time was the cure. Water and natural vitamins in foods were the only ways to good health. She didn’t drink, wasn’t a believer of engineered medicine, and hated big pharma—which meant there weren’t any pills around for me to swipe.

When I got my strength and was able, she put me to work. I helped around the house tossing decades old junk, cleaned the gutters, repainted her living room’s sun faded walls, and trimmed wild overgrown bushes. I hated it. But it kept my mind off what it really wanted. You need me, you need me. Eventually, her idea of keeping my mind busy extended outside the boundaries of her land when she introduced me to others. I tore up my arms baling hay with a neighbor down the road, a married couple who trained horses for shows, and woke up at three in the morning for a few weeks to milk cows with a dairy farmer.

Then she got me hooked on bowling.

My grandma was in a league and took me into town every Wednesday. I was horrible. Nearly every ball I threw found itself in the gutter so they raised the bumpers or gave me an embarrassing ball rail. With time I got better. And it became my new addiction. I usually hit a turkey every game now.

One night the league was cancelled. My grandma was busy with a book club so I went to the alley without her. I had a lane to myself and hit the bar after my second game to grab a pop. I wasn’t old enough to booze legally if I wanted, and alcohol wasn’t my thing anyway. A bartender I didn’t recognize made her way to me. A septum ring dangled from her nose, purple and black dye ran through the long hair side of her half shaved head, and colorful tattoos covered her body. She asked what I wanted and I ordered a Sprite. She filled it with a gun, gave it to me, then leaned over the bar. Her cleavage winked.

“How old are you?” she asked. I lied and said I was twenty-one. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.” I said.

“Is wanting to fuck an older woman rhetorical?” I nearly choked on my drink.

She explained that she was trying to sleep with a hockey guy from the local college who came to the bar every Thursday, but he wasn’t reciprocating. I thought all the townies hated the college kids. I know I did and I wasn’t even from here. I asked if I was allowed to ask her age and she told me she was forty-one.

“You look like you do drugs,” she said she could tell from my eyes. Baggy and tired, glazed with an everlasting tint of red. “Wanna drop acid and watch some sky TV when I get off?” I asked if it was a normal thing for her, to take strangers back to her place. She just smiled and shook her head. “Catchin’ a good vibe from you.”

Her name was Safra and she lived in a subdivision of houses that all looked the same on the opposite side of town. Her place had lots of colors without any sense of continuity or balanced design. It looked like a rainbow had barfed all over her floors and walls, and it smelled of incense and peppermints. But beneath it was the lingering odor of weed. She probably fired up joints on her couch in lingerie, watching late night Adult Swim shows. Three yin and yang symbols painted on bamboo beaded curtains dangled in a doorway next to a bean bag chair that looked like a split baked potato with a chunk of melting butter, sour cream, and chives on it. A litterbox for a cat I never saw sat in a corner, and dead brown flowers long past their last drink wilted in a pot on the kitchen table.

Safra took me into her living room and unlocked a wooden chest on a coffee table. Looking like those rectangular plastic medicine storage cases with the days of the week on each lid for old people, Safra’s was like a tackle box. Separated compartments housed weed, THC wax, Ecstasy, Molly, Xanax, assorted colorful painkillers, shrooms, and acid. A junkie’s El Dorado.

I’d done shrooms before but never LSD. Safra said they were similar, yet different, and explained that the trip would be longer and that I wouldn’t sleep until morning. “Shrooms is like being in the backseat of a moving car, whereas LSD you’re the driver,” she said. “Shrooms is Lord of the Rings and LSD is Star Wars. One’s Pepsi, the other’s Coke.” I didn’t know what she meant, though somehow it made sense.

She took out two acid tabs and handed me one. It looked like a square sticker, a scratch and sniff, and printed on it were the animated Dumbo characters from the pink elephants on parade scene using their trunks as horns. She told me to put the tab under my tongue and I felt it dissolve like a Listerine strip.

We sat barefoot in lawn chairs in her backyard and smoked a joint by the warmth of a bonfire while music played from a speaker. If the weirdest instrumental makeup in the discographies of The Flaming Lips and MGMT existed as physical beings, met, fucked, and had a baby, that would’ve been it. “You ever watch sky TV?” she asked.

“Not like this.”

“Just one channel but it beats what any screen could do. And no commercials.”

We studied the stars and planets in silence. The light pollution wasn’t nearly as bad as Chicago. I could actually see what was above us.

“Used to be a nurse at OSF Peoria,” she said. “Had a husband and kids too.”

“Had?”

“I was fucking a physician who wrote me scripts for pain meds.” She took a drink from her beer. “Your tab hit yet?” I wasn’t sure. “Look at the sky.”

“I am.” It looked normal.

“Look harder, you’ll see.”

One by one, the stars emitted a stronger twinkle. Then a vibrant neon pink line shot from one to the other as if someone were connecting them with an invisible marker that tore into the fabric of space. Stars cascaded like waterfall drippings of a firework and others ripped through the atmosphere like comets. They all formed into a whirlpool of moving light. Like a portal.

And that’s when I felt Safra straddle me and grab my belt.

Naked, the tattoos hidden beneath her clothes stretched across her canvas of skin. Her nipples were pierced and she was warm. The sensors throughout my body went off like an incendiary carpet bombing.

She fell off me after she climaxed as if she were dead. I sat unable to move, saying her name, but she stayed face down in the grass. As if the blades of green were eating her.

The bonfire’s heat kissed my skin and grew more intense. It blazed with fury, funneling like a tornado, before calming to form a face with a fiery orange beard and wild mane. It looked strangely familiar. Too familiar. It was as if I was looking into the mirror of some dimension where people existed as fire beings. And this one, was me. “Very good,” my fire version said with a crooked smile.

“I didn’t do nothin’.”

The fire thing looked at Safra. “Use the time while you can.” I didn’t understand what it meant. And it read my mind. Because it was my mind. “The drugs, you fucktard!” It yelled in a booming voice. “Grab the bitch’s stash and dip!”

I closed my eyes and turned away from the fire. “You ain’t real.”

“Course I am. Real as you.” It was like it was whispering into my ear. I felt its hot breath. “I know you miss ‘em. All your happy little friends miss you too. Take ‘em home. And be happy.”

You need me, you need me.

I emptied Safra’s beer on the fire and the flames sizzled to smoke. But in it, the face formed again. I swatted the air and smoke to disfigure it, but it laughed and always came back. I fell to the grass in the fetal position and covered my ears. But I still heard the voice.

“Go ahead and take her shit, take her shit. You little as fuckin’ bitch, fuckin’ bitch.” It said as if repeating the chorus of a song, louder and louder. “GO AHEAD AND TAKE HER SHIT, TAKE HER SHIT. YOU LITTLE AS FUCKIN’ BITCH, FUCKIN’ BITCH!”

A hand grabbed my shoulder.

Safra. She stood over me still naked. “You good?” she said and laughed like a maniac against her will. But she wasn’t crazy. She was having a great time.

Safra helped me up and I sat in one of the lawn chairs as she got dressed. I wasn’t tired. I wouldn’t fall asleep until dawn. So I looked to the stars to watch some sky TV.

Writers are lazy. They’re deserters who abort conceived ideas like bastardized children and start projects they never finish, neglecting them like orphans. They succumb to perpetual procrastination by wasting time, and consume a spectrum of worthless content on their phones, TVs, and computers like digital gluttons as if the devices grew from their bodies like growths into their eye sockets. They pace their homes, masturbate, eat, pick loose hair from their noses, seek ignored chores they never would’ve done, and become puppets to the infinite distractions that surround them for a quick cheap dopamine hit. They criticize and compare their skill levels to other writers and implode to view themselves as the epitome of inferior.

Writers lack discipline and efficiency. They hesitate with every word, every line and literary device, over research, and evaluate and edit their work with the second-guessing confidence of one who doesn’t trust themself. They convince themselves that they lack motivation, vision, consistency, ingenuity, and originality. They’re addicts tethered to what they believe are necessary creative enhancing catalysts like coffee, alcohol, nicotine, marijuana, cocaine, LSD, 5-Hour Energy, and other substances they’ve duped themselves to depend on in order to get in their so called right state of mind to write. They have inflated egos that make them delusional and naïve, and romance with their imaginations that create fictional lives they’ll never live and goals they’ll never achieve. They’re bound to an unattainable pillar of identity and success, but never reach the level to which they falsely hold themselves. They curse every year, month, week, day, hour, and second of lost time as they grow older and conclude that their moment of opportunity has died.

Writers are bipolar. At their peaks they skyrocket into the stratosphere and consider themselves geniuses, intellectuals, artists, and voices of their generation. Every work finished, if in fact it is completed, is a masterpiece, their magnum opus. They’re momentarily unstoppable in a perceived rise to stardom, determined to unleash their revolutionary work to the masses as they relish in a self-absorbed ecstasy. They’re narcissists who demand that every word of their portfolio be consumed by an overnight following of loyal readers. But at their lowest, writers sink into a miserable pit of self-loathing deeper than the darkest depths of the Mariana Trench. They stand in the way of themselves, becoming their own worst enemies, and pummel their minds with a friendly fire of incendiary artillery if they don’t write, meet deadlines, or adhere to daily page or word count quotas, 2000, that prolific authors like Stephen King abide and swear is the magical secret to success. They whine if they don’t get discovered, become resentful if their sacred prose isn’t receiving the praise they think it deserves, and blame their troubles on a myriad of reasons, most notably a phony excuse called writer’s block, which has nothing to do with writing skill or creative talent, but merely commitment to the craft.

Writers of the past scoff in their graves at the inexcusable qualms of the modern writer. They wrote by candlelight with quill and ink, paper and pen or pencil, and typewriter. The computer, a technological luxury, the most taken for granted machine by writers of the late 20^th and current 21^st centuries. Designed to make writing easier and more accessible by using simple artificial intelligence programs that spell and grammar check, a keyboard makes mistakes vanish with the ease of a button. The days of misspelled words and bad writing resulting in a mountainous pile of thrown away pages, or completely starting a piece over due to obvious hidden errors painted with whiteout are prehistoric inconveniences. In 1886 Robert Louis Stevenson wrote his first draft of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by hand in three days and rewrote the thirty-thousand-word draft again from memory after his wife, who thought the story was nonsense, destroyed it in their fireplace. Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in six weeks in 1843 and Anthony Burgess completed his 1962 dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange in three. Isaac Asimov wrote and edited over 500 books and short stories in his career, R.L. Stine hundreds, and Barbara Cartland published over 700 and is the holder of the Guinness Book World record for most books written in a year, 23. Fast high-volume writing doesn’t always dictate quality. At its core, it’s the devotion of drafting, revising, and most importantly, consistently putting words on paper [computer screen] and reading other works that propel the writer to be transformative.

Not sure when I passed out. But I forgot to drink water with Alka-Seltzer cuz there wasn’t a glass on my nightstand. My sweaty head pounded and the thick feeling of nausea radiated in the back of my throat as my Newfoundland Chaney woke me at six in the morning with his leathery tongue and hot foul breath. When I got out of bed my cat Uie curled around my legs.

I let Chaney out the backdoor and tried lighting a joint. Thumbing the spark wheel over and over with my friction blister I couldn’t get a flame, so I whipped the lighter at my garage door as Chaney sniffed around the concrete and left a puddle of yellow among a minefield of shit piles. Back inside, I set out his kibble and replenished his water bowl then crawled back into bed.

Four hours later I forced down plain toast and Alka-Seltzer water. I was craving that joint I couldn’t light, a Vicodin, or a Xanax, but I had a lot to do. I move like a slug and take lots of smoke breaks. I don’t know the last time I cleaned. Time’s been moving like the 30x fast forward mode on a remote and the days blend. I dusted, wiped down the kitchen and bathrooms, vacuumed Chaney’s clumps of black hair that were everywhere, lost count picking up the shit piles on the concrete in my backyard, collected the busted lighter near my garage, cleaned Uie’s litterbox, turned my office into a guest room with an air mattress, hid all my drug paraphernalia, emptied ashtrays, and threw out dry liquor bottles to make every inch of my house appear kid friendly.

I was left with just enough time to shower, make myself presentable, and light candles to hide the smells before my younger sister Noreen pulled into my driveway around four. She knew I smoked cigarettes, it was the other things she wasn’t aware of. Cuz if she really knew what was going on, she wouldn’t have let her six year old son Benny be at my house without her supervision. I don’t see my nephew much, even though they live about thirty minutes away. Just birthdays and holiday parties at our parents’ house. Nine years younger, Noreen and I weren’t the closest growing up. But that didn’t mean we were distant. The age gap just naturally forced us to be different. When she was six figuring out how to ride a bike without training wheels, I was fifteen learning how to French inhale a cigarette.

Noreen and her husband Denis were going to a wedding somewhere in southwest Michigan a day early so I volunteered to watch Benny for two nights. “Lettin’ nature go wild?” she asked when she came in my house. My grass was shin-high with dandelions and weeds and the bushes were chaotic.

“Landscapers haven’t come yet,” I said. She made a weird face and let it go.

Noreen stuck around for maybe twenty minutes, catching up and briefing me about Benny’s routine and what he was currently into. Chaney barked wagging his tail behind a tall metal gate I had installed to the doorframe between my kitchen and living room. I didn’t train him much and figured he’d run away if he got out the front door. “Bedtime’s around nine, go easy on sugar and junk food. He’s obsessed with The Sandlot and Power Rangers right now, all his things are in here.” She placed a duffel bag on my couch. “Have fun, listen to Aunt Cara.” She kissed his forehead and left.

I opened the gate and Chaney rushed to Benny with drool hanging from his jowls to lick his face. Benny laughed petting him, his hair slicked back with slobber. When Chaney settled down I took him out the backdoor. He did his thing and I did mine, smoking half of the evasive joint from earlier with a new lighter.

I brought Chaney back inside and Benny had gone through his duffle bag. He was sitting on my living room floor setting up little army guys to fight a Godzilla action figure as Uie observed from a distance under a table. Benny narrated the scene, making the noises of Godzilla’s roar and atomic heat beam, and the little green guys’ chatter of machine gun fire and screams as Godzilla incinerated and stomped them all to death. “Wait,” I said, “Hear that?” We both listened to absolute silence, before I croaked the cry of some prehistoric creature and transformed my body like a T-Rex. I stomped my feet like a mega-monster beast toward the miniature Godzilla, kicked him over, and bellowed victorious. Benny laughed and mimicked my pose. We took turns standing Godzilla upright and beating him up.

To kill time waiting for a pizza to get delivered, we went to Blockbuster. I told Benny he could pick whatever he wanted. We walked the aisles examining the rows of DVD jackets for the chosen one, starting in the Family/Animated section before Benny wandered where he really wanted to go—the Sci-Fi, Horror, and Action areas. He pointed at a few titles, remembering that we’d binge watched them during the rare times he’d visited in previous years—RoboCop, Dawn of the Dead, Predator, Aliens, and Rambo. But it was in New Releases where he made his final decision, the R rated sci-fi horror film Pitch Black starring Vin Diesel. Benny stared at its cover. The silhouette of a shadowed black planet in the distant background with three blurred people in an obscured white night vision running for their lives in the foreground. He recognized Vin Diesel’s name from the credits of The Iron Giant as the voice of the titular robot. “That’s what you want?” He nodded. “Promise you won’t get scared?” He nodded again. We took the DVD to the register and got popcorn and Whoppers.

I smoked the rest of that joint on my front porch waiting for the pizza guy while Benny watched TV inside with Chaney. When the pizza guy’s car rolled to the curb, I took one last hit and dug the roach into the dirt of a hijacked planter of overgrown weeds.

We ate like pigs. I was stoned, still feeling ill, and forced myself to stomach something. Benny was a growing kid with an appetite like a black hole. Chaney begged beside us for a slice slobbering at table height, so I put together a bowl of his food. “Why’d you name Chaney, Chaney?” Benny asked with greasy pizza sauce on his fingers.

“Cuz when I was about your age my favorite movie was The Wolf Man with a guy named Lon Chaney Jr. And on the day I got Chaney, I thought his black furry face looked like the Wolf Man’s.”

“What about Uie?”

“Found him in South Bend when—”

“Where’s that?”

“Indiana. Little under two hours from here. I was working, driving in the rain and I came to this U-turn. And there he was.”

“Was he cold?”

“Wet and cold. Though I made sure he got dry and warm.” I got out of my chair for more Diet Pepsi.

“Aunt Cara?” he said while I was filling my glass.

“What’s up?”

“How come you’re not married?”

I spilled some of the Diet Pepsi and wiped it up with a paper towel. “I’m just not.”

“Some people don’t get married.”

“Yea.”

“My mommy says as long as people are happy that’s all that matters.”

“That’s right little man.”

“It makes me happy.”

“What does?”

“That when we hang out it’s just you and me.”

My anxiety creeped after dinner. Like some faceless snake oil salesman in the most deceiving and expensive looking cheap suit, poking and demanding to be heard. Remember me? the thing says selling me my worst fears and insecurities. And I always buy top dollar in emotional currency. My psychiatrist who diagnosed me as bipolar gives me Xanax. “Just take one of these, and those feelings will all go away,” he told me holding one of the comforting white bars. Benny was waiting in front of the TV with Chaney as I threw the rest of the pizza in a gallon bag then into the fridge. I cut half a Xanax bar and poured myself more Diet Pepsi. With a little Jim Beam.

Ten minutes into Pitch Black Benny was already using a pillow as a shield to hide behind. He abandoned eating popcorn and Whoppers, and we hadn’t even seen any of the creatures yet. The anticipation terrified him. “Should we turn if off?” He shook his head as he looked at the TV over the top of the pillow with it shoved against his nose.

As people started dying, he gripped that pillow tighter. There were moments he wouldn’t watch at all, though his eyes would always go back to the TV, drawn together like magnets. A few parts really got to him, when the kid characters got killed. I don’t think he’d seen a kid, let alone three, all brothers, die on screen before. To him it was real. “It’s fake Benny,” I’d remind him as the first kid got his flesh, head to toe, gnawed clean to the bone by a swarm of bat looking creatures. The second kid, ripped to shreds by a few of the bigger creatures. And the last one, dragged by the throat up the face of a cliff, his father below, played by Keith David, pained by losing all of his sons. “It’s OK, I’ll protect you. Chaney and Uie will protect you.” He held onto Chaney and Uie, sandwiched between them for the rest of the movie.

When it ended, Benny looked like he’d been dragged by his ankles through the scorched, jagged filled plains of Hell by a biker gang of demons. He was quiet, on edge. “You promised you wouldn’t get scared,” I said to him. “It’s not real, it’s a magic trick of the imagination.”

“You promise?”

“Monsters don’t exist,” I lied.

It was around nine and my Polish neighbors were partying. Polka music blared, something with an accordion, horns, and drums. We didn’t hear it during the movie with my surround sound system. I wanted a cigarette so I got more Diet Pepsi and Jim Beam, stiffer than the ones before, then took Benny and Chaney outside.

I lit a cigarette and opened my disconnected garage in my backyard. “What are we doing?” Benny asked.

I pointed to my neighbor’s yard. “They’re playing loud music, so we’re gonna play even louder music. It’ll be fun.” Benny stared at all my unorganized junk and boxes shrouded in darkness and shadows. A good place for a monster to hide. I said his name and he snapped out of it. Everything everywhere, my car hasn’t fit inside for years. I waded toward my record player on a workbench through a maze of dusty patio furniture full of cobwebs, a small plastic kiddie pool I bought for Chaney that’s never been used, a lawnmower that doesn’t work, and boxes of Christmas stuff and a plastic snowman.

“Aunt Cara?” Benny called standing with Chaney at the mouth of the garage. He couldn’t see me.

“I’m here.” I thumbed my lighter and opened a cabinet above the workbench where I kept vinyl. Expecting them to be warped and destroyed, I scanned through them using the flame—Sports by Huey Lewis and the News, The Queen Is Dead by The Smiths, Blizzard of Ozz by Ozzy Osbourne, Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) by David Bowie, until I found what I was looking for. The Doors’ The Doors Classics and The Best of The Doors. Jim Morrison shirtless, his penetrating gaze splitting through me. I had a crush on him since seeing him on The Ed Sullivan Show in ’67 when I was thirteen. When he died in ’71 I was devastated.

I put the record on the turntable, cranked the volume, and floated out of my garage to Benny and Chaney as the mysterious instrumental of “Strange Days” drowned my neighbor’s polka music. Strange days have found us. Strange days have tracked us down, Morrison’s voice enchanted, eerie and beautiful, as Benny and I danced. Chaney wagged his tail and barked along.

Strange days have certainly found me. Strange years, better yet, have tracked me down. Thoughts I’d been having for an unquantifiable amount of time clicked and haven’t unclicked. Like when I cold turkey stopped going to work. And when they asked where I was, I said I was sick. And as the days and weeks went on and the calls kept coming, I said I was having life issues that I intentionally left vague. The lies rolled off my tongue as they told me to take my time and I still got a paycheck. But eventually that expired.

My neighbor Todd, a Chicago firefighter who I was close with killed himself in the house where the polka playing Polish people live now.

I started seeing a psychiatrist, found out I was bipolar, and he prescribed me Xanax.

Sometime later I found Vicodin and Norco.

And then I turned to the bottle.

Blacked out on booze and pills I found the phone number of an ex from long ago that I must’ve gotten in a White Pages book, and left a minutes long message on his answering machine. I didn’t know anything about it until I got a knock on my door from the police with a restraining order. They explained I called laughing manic, saying that I was going to kill my ex, then cried blubbering gibberish that I was sorry for everything. My ex’s wife and daughter were the ones who listened to it first. The cops told me the charges could have been much worse if my ex hadn’t decided to let me off easy.

Some afternoon I woke up on the floor outside my kitchen covered in vomit, next to the closed gate, Chaney whimpering and pawing to get to me. I’d swallowed a lot pills. The first thing I remember seeing was Uie’s vibrant yellow eyes underneath his favorite table, observing me.

I tried a program, kinda like AA, where people go to talk, for a week. I met a lesbian couple that was ten years younger and we got along. We liked similar movies and music. And drugs. They needed a place to stay and I needed money to help pay my mortgage. So I let them live in my basement for a few weeks. It was cool for a little while. Until they stole my pills, laptop, jewelry, and who knows what else.

One day, for whatever reason, it all culminated. I had a realization that I just didn’t care anymore. About anything.

It’s bits and pieces after getting another Jim Beam and Diet Pepsi. I stumbled through the maze of junk in my garage to change to the other Doors album. Songs played, Benny asked why I was acting so funny, and I explained to him that the keyboardist Ray Manzarek grew up on Chicago’s south side and went to high school three miles from my house at St. Rita. Then there are fragments. I was singing, Blood in the streets the town of Chicago and Ghosts crowd the young child’s fragile eggshell mind in “Peace Frog.” I remember squatting to Benny’s level, looking him in his eyes, and telling him that his mind was fragile like an eggshell.

It’s as if we did a time jump. We were sitting at my kitchen table and Benny was yawning. “Can you tell me a story before bed?”

“What kind?”

“Scary one.”

“You gonna be afraid again like you were during the movie?” He shook his head. “We’ll see.” I lit a cigarette and thought for a few moments. “It was a dark and stormy night,” I paused at the cliché, but Benny didn’t know what that was. “At your house.”

“My house?”

“Your house.” His eyes stared at me, scared of what’d I’d say next, though also beckoning to continue. “It was a dark and stormy night at your house,” I repeated. “Just you and your mom.”

“Where’s daddy?”

“You gonna let me tell the story?” His eyes stared. Go on, they said. “Your dad was late from work. And while you and your mom waited, you heard something.”

“What?”

“A thump …” I stomped my feet, “Thump … thump. Coming from the attic. At first you and your mom thought it was nothing. But then you heard it again. Thump … thump … THUMP!” He recoiled against his chair. “Your mom took you upstairs and reached for the attic’s drawstring as thunder clapped and lightning exploded through windows in flashes of purple. She pulled the drawstring and the door creeeeeeeeaked open and you both looked up into a pit of darkness. But you saw nothing. So your mom turned on a flashlight and climbed the ladder.”

“No…”

“Yes. You watched below, seeing only half your mom’s lower body, the rest of it hidden in the darkness. About to come down, the thunder boomed and she was ripped into the attic!”

“Stop!” He grabbed my arm, tears forming in his eyes.

“But the story’s not over. You said you wouldn’t get scared.”

“Is there a happy ending?”

“Sure.” Benny let go of my arm. “There was a boom of thunder as your mom was pulled into the attic. She screamed, just as your dad was coming in the house. So he ran upstairs with two baseball bats, one for him and one for you, and the both of you climbed the ladder and found your mom. She was fine, but a horrible monster leered over her. A thing with wings, like—"

“A gargoyle?”

“Yea, a gargoyle. It snarled at you and your dad before you attacked and crushed it with your bats like Frank Thomas and Sammy Sosa. Til it was dead.”

“Then what?”

“You and your dad got your mom out of the attic. Before finding the other bodies.”

“Other bodies?”

“The gargoyle was living in your attic with two other bodies. A man, a serial killer actually, so the gargoyle ironically did something decent.”

“Who was the other?”

“Me. The end.”

“But?” He just looked at me.

I don’t know how I got Benny to bed, but I did. Or maybe he put me to bed. I vaguely remember him saying he wouldn’t be able to sleep alone in the makeshift guest room I made for him in my office.

I came to around three in the morning. Benny was beside me with a snoring Chaney. I looked at my nightstand and didn’t see a water and Alka-Seltzer, so I got out of bed as quiet as I could. But Chaney woke up and followed me. I took him out, made myself a glass, and when we got back to my room, Benny was sitting in the middle of the bed, a dark little upright silhouette.

“Where’d you go?” he asked with fear in his voice.

“I’m here.” I took a huge gulp of my drink and rested my pounding head on my pillow beside him.

From: <j.a.mosse897@gmail.com>

To: < j.a.mosse897@gmail.com >

Date: Mon, Oct 11, 2021, 2:33 AM

Subject: You have yet to make payment

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About sixty yards ahead I saw the deer running through a field toward the road.

The timing was unbelievably perfect. A pure example of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The car pulverized the deer at seventy miles per hour, launching the animal’s body to helicopter toward the oncoming lane as plastic and bits of car exploded from the impact.

I see roadkill all the time. Decorations of rural pavement. But I’ve never seen the roadkill become roadkill. Especially a deer.

I slowed and glanced to my right where the Honda CR-V parked on the shoulder. The front bumper bowed, its left headlight completely shattered, its interior looking like a massive white balloon occupied it. Airbags pressed against the windows, leaving the identities of whoever was inside unknown as oncoming traffic of semis and other vehicles reduced their speeds and gawked.

The doe sprawled in the opposite lane. Its large brown eye, arrested by the blue August sky. There wasn’t any blood. The internal hadn’t become external. Just crooked limbs. On its side, its legs spasmed to run. Like a sleeping dog when it dreams.

Everyone thinks the Eating carrots will improve your eyesight saying is some stupid bullshit myth of a way to get kids to eat vegetables. They’re wrong.

Carrots are all I eat. Carrot soups, carrot pies, carrot stews, carrot burgers, carrot salads, carrot loafs. The diet turned my skin orange, a phenomenon called carotenemia, and it makes me look like I have an everlasting spray tan with the pigmentation of an Oompa Loompa. All that beta-carotene supercharges my eyes with potent levels of vitamin A.

My eyes are like binoculars, telescopic even, and I see in the dark. I have x-ray vision and see different forms of light, vibrations, a whole new spectrum of colors, and other things I don’t think I’ll ever be able to comprehend or explain. I’m an optometrist’s enigma with no sight classification. Doctors all over the world have studied how my irises, retinas, and cones operate differently to a normal person’s vision. But I don’t know what they’re talking about. Their explanations are a bunch of smart sounding science words. They tell me my vision is something like a hybrid of an eagle, owl, mantis shrimp, dragonfly, and goat.

It didn’t take long for corporations to notice when I spoke with Michael Strahan on Good Morning America. A food manufacturing conglomerate made me their spokesman for a healthy carrot alternative of the potato chip. And a Hollywood studio partnered with a toy company to create an action figure line for a children’s TV show that teaches good dieting habits, Carrot Man, about a muscular carrot superhero that fights evil fatty junk foods out to make the entire world population their obese minions.

Because of all this, the demand for carrots is so high among the public majority. But there’s not enough to go around. Farmers abandoned all other crops and carrot centric foods dominate storefronts. Everyone’s chasing the saying they ignored. So I fled the hysteria to a remote area in the Northern Pacific. I strictly eat salmon for Omega-3 fatty acids to elevate my brainpower. To get it like my carrot eyes.