Lame Duck (rough)

The days are counting down. The election was over. Soon there will be a new president. I knew this was coming. I signed up for this. I wielded the power of the most powerful country on the planet for four god damn years. It was a good run. I accomplished a lot. I served the people and they are grateful.

I will try to get a few more things passed and I will have my team reach out to the new administration to help them with the transition. I guess my last act will be helping explain the job to my successor. And then he’ll watch me die. With everyone else. He’ll watch me hang and then he’ll place his hand on the Bible and be sworn in.

He seems like a good man. I think he’ll continue some of the things I got the ball rolling on, but one can only get so far on these projects in four years. So I should count myself lucky to know that the next president will not put a halt on what I began. I can go out knowing that my life will not be taken in vain. I did not spend four years working my ass off for this country only to be hanged right before everything I did is undone.

I realize the threat of my work being dismantled wasn’t that high. Neither candidate was out to destroy the goodwill I’ve been building. Since implementing a death penalty for being the president, a lot less power-hungry candidates run. It skews toward people who want to sacrifice for their country. That’s not the official reason given of course.

It would be nice if we were honest and told the citizens that making the presidency the ultimate sacrifice has removed the majority of the worst candidates from running. Instead we’ve got some Wicker Man bullshit. But that’s what it took to sell the Christian right on the concept. So now I have to die for what the pain this country inflicts on the rest of the world. I tried to reduce the harm, but the only way this country can be this country is if we rape and maim the rest of the world. And a person who kills thousands must die in this country. Ironically enough, the federal death penalty was abolished by the third president to serve under these conditions. But still, this country says that we must sacrifice me for the sins I committed while in office.

As much as things have improved, there is still a collective delusion. This country can do no wrong. The citizens who benefit from the horrors inflicted by their government have no blood on their hands. The government and all the people it takes to run it bear no responsibility for what is done. No, it is my fault. I must be sacrificed for what I did. Solely.

And for some, it is about fairness. The punishment fits the crime. For others, there is more superstition. They remember 9/11. But the right finally lost its stranglehold on the memory. Thus it became understood not as a lesson about being hyper vigilant about anyone who doesn’t love this country, but as what happens in response to what we do to people in other countries. But, this is still the United States and we do still have our bizarre beliefs we won’t let go no matter overwhelming evidence to the contrary. So sacrificing one man, me, is said to ward off any repercussions.

If the general public was more concerned about where their freedom comes from, they might see how much money we spend on national security, they might look at our military budget - and they could put two and two together and realize there may be another reason there aren’t more terrorist attacks. But they’ve been sold on my execution and there’s nothing they love more than tradition.

Billboards

As I walked down the street, I saw the billboards watching me. The Happy Cow, selling… himself? his friends, family?… His joyful face up high above next to a pound of flesh. Happy Cow Beef Company - we chop ‘em up before they know what hit ‘em the billboard reads, but that’s not what the Happy Cow says to me. To me, he says the CIA is getting off their plane at the airport now. I don’t fully believe the CIA would fly coach, but that’s what he says. Nope, no private jet - two agents crammed in coach. And once they have their luggage, they’re gonna come fucking kill me. I sure hope there is a luggage mix up.

“No luggage mix-up!” shouts the Lumberjack selling… Viagra? about a block away. My eyes aren’t great.

“Are you on a billboard for Viagra?! What does a lumberjack have to do with getting your dick hard…” I shout back at him, my voice quieting as the last words escape my mouth, realizing how foolish I sound! Lumberjacks get tons of people’s dicks hard! And also, I should be less focused on these billboards people were probably paid six figures to design and more focused on the CIA agents coming to kill me. Still, I stay for a moment to hear the Lumberjack respond.

“No, this is a billboard for Vitamix! Get your eyes checked, you dumb bitch!” The Lumberjack pauses, I can tell he isn’t quite done talking though, “and I’ll have you know I can still turn quite a few heads even if I am getting up there in age!”

Feeling slightly guilty about insulting the Lumberjack like that, I scurry away - after all, the CIA agents are coming for me. I don’t know how the Lumberjack knows their luggage was put on the right plane - or how the Happy Cow knows the agents are on a plane at all… or that they are coming for me. No time to ask questions when one is running from CIA agents.

As I dart and dash between buildings, down streets, hoping to find somewhere to hide maybe? Or am I just trying to get as far away as possible? I’m not sure. Are the CIA agents coming to the exact spot I was informed about them or are they coming after me, the moving target? If I keep running and they keep coming after me, wherever I am, then it seems it may be best to hide. Or perhaps it is best to just keep moving and at some point I will be far enough away from wherever they believe I was that they can no longer find me. I’ve watched a lot of thrillers, cat-and-mouse type of movies, but never really fully grasped the whole being on the lam thing and how best to do it. Perhaps I could go join some Amish people like that Harrison Ford movie The Conversation - just kidding, that’s a Gene Hackman movie, Harrison Ford only has a small role in it… and it’s not about Amish people at all, it’s actually about technology, the movie I was really referring to was Witness. But enough joking, I am fleeing for my life!

Everywhere I go the billboards watch me. The polyamorous cartoon gorillas selling… dog food? And the stern old man selling, um, car washes? Do they need billboards for car washes? Don’t the car washes just have signs up saying “come in here to get your car washed?” They don’t give me any tips or updates about the CIA agents, they just watch me as I dart and dash, as I dip and dive. I almost get hit by a car and the cobra selling malt liquor laughs. The baby with a phone number to call if I want evidence that candy is bad for my teeth looks like he wants to tell me something, but he isn’t old enough to form sentences.

Then I see the vampire selling real estate outside the Taco Cult restaurant. He tells me he’s got some information for me, but I have to pay him. I tell him I don’t know how to pay a billboard monster and he seems hurt I referred to him as a “monster,” but he tells me there’s a clothing shop with only two shirts in it that is a front for a heroin cartel and if I buy the green shirt, there will be a note the vampire wrote on the tag. So I keep moving - now with a destination. But I get to the store and there’s a sign saying the only employee is on break so it’s essentially closed for… well the sign says half an hour, but obviously they guy put the sign up before I got there so it’s less than that.

I stand and I wait. The guy comes back and is wearing a fucking penis costume like he just left a bachelorette party or something. I don’t get it. But I don’t want to really get into a conversation with him so I just pretend it’s normal - which is hard because it’s not. It’s weird. As I go to grab the shirt off it’s hanger to buy it, I keep thinking about how weird it is. Like it’s already weird on it’s own to be dressed like that at all, but at work? Even any job at all. Like if you worked at a bar or somewhere that let’s you dress in street clothes. If you worked in the backroom in a warehouse or whatever where no customers see you, your boss still wouldn’t let this shit fly. And this dude is working retail. I mean, I guess it is a front, but still. So I fucking open my mouth, I can’t help it.

As I put the shirt on the counter to purchase it, I ask, “why are you dressed like a penis at work?”

And he gets so mad. Like you aren’t even imagining it right. He gets absolutely furious. Think about the most angry your dad has ever been. And think about how it was sort of justified. Like you either were just an absolute brat for 10 hours straight or you were genuinely innocent, but you almost accidentally burnt down the house or cut your brother in half or got hit by a car. So your dad is just like maximum emotion and he’s so angry because we’re all socialized wrong so it’s just easiest to be mad about things when you gotta tap into some emotion. I don’t know if that makes sense to you, it’s something I’ve been thinking about and I haven’t fully fleshed it out yet, but think about your dad super pissed off, yelling at you at the top of his lungs like either he cannot fucking believe that he is raised such a fucking dickhead or like he cannot at all accept how close he came to being one of those super shitty parents that let their kid die like he is not gonna be one of those horror stories so he’s mad. This guy was madder than that. For a legitimate question. He is acting like I walked into his home, not his place of work - a public place - and started trying to make him justify his life decisions and, honestly, even in the privacy of one’s own home, I really just could not see why someone would be wearing a penis costume, like how do those businesses stay afloat, selling penis costumes? But anyway, he’s big mad. And I’m trying to calm him down so I can buy the shirt, but I am also a little bit still trying to get the answer - curiosity killed the cat and all that.

Anyway, the long and short of it is that in a panic I just kind of grab the shirt and run. “I’ll pay later” is how I justify it. I’m not stealing. But also it’s a drug cartel front. It’s almost more ethical to steal it. It’s pretty easy to out run a guy in a penis costume, his legs can’t move much and also tourists or whoever are trying to stop him to take pictures like they’re in Time Square. I just run ‘cause dude’s got cartel connections so I am definitely not getting caught by him. I’d rather take my chances with the CIA agents. I finally get far enough away that I’m pretty sure I lost him - which I guess is how those thrillers go, but it’s much easier to do the whole running away thing when the person is actively chasing you versus when some people just got off an airplane and are coming your way at some point, but aren’t currently in the vicinity - and I look at the tag for the secret message and it just says “made by some child slaves in some country that your government has been committing genocide in since before you were alive” and I think “damn, that vampire is pretty fucking woke, but how is this going to help me get away from the CIA?” so I take the shirt back to the vampire on his billboard to demand some answers.

When I arrive, I’m about to get the question out, but he sees the shirt in my hand and shouts at me like I’m a little kid, “THE GREEN SHIRT! I told you to get the green shirt! That’s the blue one!”

I feel sort of stupid, it kind of makes sense that he’s treating me like a little kid since I did mix up my colors, but still why did he need to make things so complicated? Why can’t he just put the message on both shirts? Or just have one shirt in the store? It’s not a real store!

Now he’s shouting at me more - or I guess he never stopped, I just kind of started blocking him out while I was thinking of ways to blame him for the fuck up. But he’s shouting “the BLUE shirt was for the banker to learn a lesson about the horrors of capitalize! You have to go back and return the shirt!”

But like I said, I would rather take my chances with the CIA agents coming to kill me than that cartel penis costume dude that I sort of stole the shirt from. God, I hope that banker not learning his lesson from the shirt isn’t going to have some massive butterfly effect thing that kills a bunch of kids in a factory collapsing in a third world country or… who am I kidding? That’s obviously exactly what’s going to happen, it’s pretty obvious, but when we get right down to it, like gun-to-the-head, gut-reaction I guess I do think my life is worth more than all of theirs combined. I mean, on an intellectual level I do not and on a moral level I also do not, but I am not going to risk my life returning the shirt to stop it from happening so one whatever level that is, I do.

So now I’ve got a vampire billboard mad at me and a guy in a penis costume with cartel connections mad at me and some CIA agents who maybe aren’t mad at me, but are going to kill me. I start thinking about how much simpler things were back when I was just chatting with the Happy Cow and even after I’d offended the lumberjack a bit. I knew the CIA was out to kill me, but life was still simpler just a few hours earlier talking to them. And as I reminisced about those simpler, more pleasant times, it dawned on me that I had no reason to trust a cow selling his own kind to humans to consume and…well the lumberjack, I wasn’t as confidence in dismissing though I think partly that was because it felt like adding insult to injury after offending him, but what kind of lumberjack sells a blender? Isn’t a blender sort of the competition to an axe? Like television killed the radio star? The blender is just faster, automated chopping, the kind that could put a lumberjack out of work - so a cow selling the flesh of his own and a lumberjack putting his fellow lumberjacks out of work? Why should I trust them?

100% content that the CIA was not trying to kill me, I headed home to get some rest. I don’t think I’ve done anything important enough for the CIA to try to kill me. I mean, I don’t think they’re opposed to killing me, but it would probably be in some sort of friendly fire sort of way. Maybe they’ll drop a bomb on my neighbors and not care when I also die? Was that the CIA that dropped the bomb on MOVE? I don’t know. All I know is that I was headed home to watch some TV - where the ads are supposed to talk to me.

a little something: Goddamn Dog

As I was tucking my dog into bed, a thought occurred to me, a dark thought. This dog had known a life before me, before I adopted him from the Humane Society. He had a mother and father out in the world or dead. We had each lived portions of our lives the other would never know. I could tell him about my wild college days and my childhood, my first girlfriend, but would he understand? Would he comprehend? We can communicate with animals; I think one would need to be a sociopath to disagree, but I am willing to admit it is more of a “grey” area when one gets into which sort of concepts a dog would understand and which they would not - and, of course, “communicate” is one thing, but spoken English language is another. Would a dog have an easier time with a slide show? Sure, he’d see the pictures from my elementary school birthday parties, but would he recognize me in them? Would he know why I was showing him these photos? Even if he were to understand the meaning of the photos, it seemed unlikely that he would understand the “why” of the situation - why I was pulling him out of bed moments after tucking him in to show him photos; which is to say that he would not understand my sudden, overwhelming existential dread. Whether or not a dog could conceive of existential dread was a question for another day, the matter at hand was how a dog could possibly read the look on my face of pure panic and know it was not the result of a home invasion or a fire, but of something grander, yet more abstract. For, I must concede, even though I was aware of dread as something that happened to me, surely, in the past, I had not understood what another human was going through while they were experiencing what I was now feeling - and, even worse, while I could recognize this as a short-coming and a mistake in my past, I could not confidently say whether or not I had ever ignored my dog’s feeling of doom. Thus, it was safe to say that an inter-species communication as to the concept of malaise did not exist. It was at that moment that my home suddenly felt very empty and the companionship of my dog no longer comforted me anymore. My stupid dog who didn’t understand me at all, who only loved me because I gave him food, was my only friend in the whole world and he didn’t even understand we were friends.

Torn Apart by Dogs

And we watched, as the dogs tore them apart. From people to shreds, right before our eyes. There were a few gasps and certainly some people who couldn’t bear to look – though they didn’t seem to realize they were free to leave the scene. Nobody was happy with what lay in front of us: a bloody scene to be sure. And nobody was particularly happy to continue on their life as a witness.

Hell, even the dogs would have preferred to take no part in it. Trust me.

As the sound of ambulances shook us all from our state of shock, we scattered like rats – or something much lower than rats, something that didn’t deserve to live.

We went about our days. First, to brush our teeth before going to bed – it was the night after all. Then, we arose – still with the gruesome images burnt into our brains. Our wives and husbands and sons and daughters wouldn’t understand what we had seen. There was no point in sharing. We ate our cereal in silence – with milk as usual. And we drank our orange juice, with a taste of bitterness that wasn’t there before. Then we went off to be bankers and grocers and florists and bus drivers and school teachers and we took comfort in our roles. We told ourselves that, without us, society would fall apart. We were brave. After what we had seen, we didn’t give up our posts. We didn’t let anyone down. Nobody took a sick day though we were all sick to our stomachs.

And none of our co-workers would understand, so we just focused on each task at hand. We created lists in our minds where we could cross off goals and feel accomplished, like there was an end. Just three more jobs left to check off. We tried not to be surly, those of us who had jobs involving interaction with people. The people who worked “behind the scenes” to keep everything running were free to be their usual anti-social selves. Their co-workers expected a lack of chatter. But the school teachers and wait staff really had to grit their teeth and bear it. They had to put on fake smiles the likes of which they’d never worn before. The children and the people who would hopefully leave big tips needn’t be worried about the previous night.

And so the day ended and we headed home to silent dinners. There were a few more nervous glances and a bit more uncertainly amongst our husbands and wives and daughters and sons. Nobody said anything to daddy. Nobody said anything to mommy. Thank God there were no children to witness the horror.

Another weekend hit us. None of us felt like going out. We all wanted to throw up. Yet keeping up appearances is important. We wouldn’t want the neighbors to talk. Our wives went off to spend time nurturing their friendships while we went to the bar to sulk in our own masculine silence. Our husbands went off to have a “boys’ night out” while we tried to drown ourselves out by the lake only to have some spoil-sport-late-night-jogger call the police. We lucked out and managed to get our blue faces away before the authorities arrived and questions would have been asked.

We all wished we could change that night. We all wished we had kicked a dog. We all wanted to kick a dog. But that wasn’t the issue at hand. The dogs, just like us, were playing their roles. Them, as perpetrators only following orders; us, as complacent figures. We may as well have been trees growing in those back alleys.

Some of us began making incisions where we hoped our husband or wife wouldn’t look – or at least not ask any questions. Some of us followed through with our misguided intent to take out our disappointment in ourselves on animals. We kicked dogs; we kicked cats; hell, we tried to kick some squirrels, but they were all far too fast. Most of the cats were too. We misplaced our disgust with ourselves wherever we could. You better believe our wives and husbands and sons and daughters felt it. Not that any of them were brave enough to ask the origin of the abuse, those who weren’t lucky enough to find their fathers and mothers and husbands and wives with tear drenched faces and rope burn on their neck next to a kicked over stool in the attic, those who got cigarette burns on the backs of their necks instead of the responsibility of driving mommy or daddy or their wife or their husband to the emergency room with blood gushing from their wrists.

In the hospital beds, some of us heard the howls. It was happening again. How many thousand people heard the same howls? That’s what the nurse asked me when I buzzed him for assistance. When I explained what was happening. I told him he needed to do something. He told me the buzzer wasn’t a toy and that my ability to ask for assistance with it was a privilege, not a right. I asked if he could up the morphine. I was comfortable as I left this plane.

“Torn Apart by Dogs” originally appeared in the Escúcheme zine.

Haunted by Diarrhea

The tumble down the stairs didn’t look too bad. She seemed like she was going to make it as the ambulance arrived and took her off – all covered in blood from that crack in her head. A few days after her visit from Vermont was cut short by the accident, I felt a cold gust of wind. It shouldn’t have stuck out to me so much, but it did.

She’d been complaining about the restaurant we had taken her to the previous night. On and on, she went, about the quality of the food. After a few hours of this business, my dad had declared that we could go out for another meal. This time, she’d get to pick the restaurant. She stated “I want to go to the Olive Garden” – then, just to make sure my dad’s guilt didn’t disintegrate before we got to the Olive Garden, she added “…even though I still don’t feel very well.”

As she was raving about the bread sticks and telling us to be prepared for the best meal we’d ever had, she slipped. We didn’t bother going after the ambulance took her off. I still don’t know if she was right.

It wasn’t until around a year after that Christmas that I worked up the nerve to inquire into her whereabouts. My parents had kept up the façade that she’s headed back to Winooski directly from the hospital. That is what you tell a kid when their dog dies, not when their teenage cousin cracks her head open on the staircase that he walks up every night to go to bed. The howls I had heard through our paper-thin walls made more sense now. I was still very angry they had lied to me, but impressed at how well composed they’d kept themselves in my presence during the weeks after the accident – or as impressed as an eight-year-old can be.

The howls grew louder. I thought my mom, finally out in the open with her grief, was really letting it all out until one night when her and dad went to the movies. I heard it and it wasn’t coming from their room. It was across the hall from them, the extra bedroom. I didn’t dare look. Once you fully acknowledge something, there’s no denying its very existence. I put my headphones on and turned my Beatles tape waaaaaaay up. I wished I had louder music.

The moans got louder and louder. I got so scared, I ran out of the house. As I fled into the middle of the street, unsure of where to go, my neighbor almost hit me with his car.

After I explained what was happening, he laughed at me before reassuring me that he would “check it out.” As he turned the knob on the door to the extra bedroom, he fainted. I didn’t know what to do, so I ran. I ran for my life.

I came home hours later to find my mother bawling and my father looking anxious, talking to the police. They were simultaneously relieved and angry to see me. The cops were ecstatic that they didn’t have to do any work, but annoyed they had been required to come over. I told my parents about what had happened and why I’d run away. They told me they didn’t know what I was talking about and that Jeff wasn’t here.

Months went by; Jeff’s house went up for sale. Someone towed away his car. Nobody acknowledged any of it. A young couple with a newborn moved in and Jeff faded from everyone’s memory. When my parents are out, I still hear my cousin wailing from the extra bedroom.

“Haunted by Diarrhea” originally appeared in the infamous Haunted by Diarrhea zine.

Theodore: A Children's Tale

There once was a dragon. He was the loneliest creature in the entire world. He couldn’t sleep at night because he was so lonely. He had huge bags under his dragon eyes. He was miserable. The one escape he should have had from loneliness - sleep - was evading him. What a shitty hand he had been dealt.

All these mother fuckers had gone and killed all the other dragons. But they hadn’t had the mercy to snuff him out. Or maybe it was god’s fault. Of course it was god’s fault. Everything was god’s fault. Those mother fuckers definitely wanted poor Theodore dead. They just weren’t thorough with their genocide. It wasn’t like those mother fuckers were so sadistic that they had left behind one dragon for all the mental anguish. god just hadn’t created dragon-killing mother fuckers to have very good brains, bunch of half-wits.

Theodore had to pass the time somehow, though. He was, after all, so painfully alive. Every breath he took hurt. Every morning he awoke, his soul died a little bit more - yet he stayed alive. It was unfortunate, but before his grandpappy had been speared through the eye, he had told young Theodore that a dragon must never hurt another living soul and he most certainly must never commit suicide. Grandpappy had actually made a rhyme: “a dragon is many things / along with the joy that being one brings / a dragon is majestic and the top living creature / as a result there are certain things one’s life must not feature / a dragon must never use his power to hurt another sentient being / he shall wince just thinking of such horrid things / and a dragon must always keep his head held high / he must hold onto his glory and his pride / most of all, though / a dragon must never commit suicide”. The rhyme had some good advice and some stupid shit. Firstly, it was rooted in patriarchy and, as a result, used the masculine for all dragons. Secondly, hurting others should really be a more important no-no than killing one’s self. Still, a dragon must do as a dragon is asked to do. That wasn’t a rule, but it seemed like a good saying to live by. With no one to turn to, all Theodore had left was that rhyme (which he refused to question for fear of losing his sense of dragoness).

Theodore was sitting around eating some grapes one day when he saw a man being run out of the town those mother fuckers had established – an exile. (Theodore probably could have died sooner if he had stopped eating, but that seemed like a form of suicide so he opted to keep eating the delicious grapes that all dragons loved so much.) This poor exile nearly shit his pants when he saw Theodore.

“I-I-I thought dragons were extinct!”

Theodore would have explained (it would have been rude not to), but he was a fucking dragon. He just gave the Exile a look and the Exile understood. And that is how their relationship went. Theodore gave the Exile a look and the Exile knew he was in no harm. The mother fuckers had spread propaganda for years about how dangerous dragons were and sometimes the Exile still caught himself thinking rather speciesist anti-dragon sentiments as a result, but he knew Theodore was not a threat.

One day, Theodore gave the Exile one of his looks and the Exile knew the dragon wanted to know why he had been exiled. The Exile thought; should he lie? Then he uttered the truth.

“I’m a serial killer.”

The dragon didn’t seem taken aback. He seemed like he was deep in thought. Maybe god wasn’t such a fuck-up after all. god had really blown it by inventing the mother fuckers in the first place, but he’d finally gotten one thing right. He’d sent Theodore the answer to all his prayers (well, his prayers that didn’t consist of “please kill me”). Still, god had sent the answer to Theodore’s other, less frequent prayers for revenge. The dragon code wouldn’t let Theodore do jack shit to the mother fuckers other than resent them and that didn’t seem to do anything to the mother fuckers. It didn’t even seem to hurt their self-esteem – possibly because they didn’t know Theodore was still alive, let alone thinking nasty thoughts about them.

Theodore immediately went to task gathering materials. After what seemed like hours of non-stop work while the Exile just sat there looking perplexed (and feeling bad about not helping), the dragon gave the Exile a look and he knew the dragon had gathered everything.

The dragon gave another look. “A trebuchet? Are you going to launch me over the stone walls and back into the kingdom? I could get seriously hurt!” shouted the Exile without saying a single word. He had finally picked up the dragon’s ability to express so much with simple looks.

Despite the Exile’s fear of heights, he knew it must be done. He too had sworn to his grandpappy to never commit suicide. (He thanked his lucky stars he had never promised to not be a serial killer to anyone because he really loved serial killing.) Both the dragon and the Exile wished for death, but had to wait for it to come. And both wished for revenge as they waited. The Exile felt the logistics of possibly dying by consenting to being launched into the air was questionable as far as not committing suicide, but he decided to take his chances and hoped his grandpappy wouldn’t be too mad at him.

Before dawn one morning, the Exile and Theodore rolled the trebuchet down the hill to the kingdom’s walls and got everything in place. They knew they only had one shot. The Exile nervously got in. Then Theodore cut the rope.

Theodore heard a rather painful-sounding thud on the other side of the wall. He was briefly worried, but then, as Theodore stood just outside the walls of the kingdom, he heard a blood-curdling scream. His work was done and the plan was working. He went back to his cave to eat grapes. After about three hours of eating grapes, he felt that something was wrong. The plan wasn’t going perfectly. He stuck his dragon head out of his cave and saw smoke. Then, almost instantly, a massive fire lit up the entire kingdom.

The Exile had set the place ablaze. The Exile knew he couldn’t pull off all the individual killings. He sacrificed himself to kill everyone in the kingdom. Yes, the Exile had sacrificed himself. He didn’t commit suicide, but did a favor for a friend. The Exile had sent himself to a fiery death for Theodore. What a thoughtful thing to do. And Theodore knew that someone had really cared about him. Theodore knew that, one day, he would do the same. He would sacrifice himself for somebody. With a belly full of delicious grapes and a mile-wide smile, Theodore slept like a baby that night.

“Theodore: A Children’s Tale” originally appeared in the Well-Adjusted Childhood zine.

Alone

He couldn’t really remember the last time he’d been alone. He was alone now. He was always alone, but he was never alone-alone. The voices never left. Some people, anyone that may have known about his condition probably pitied him, but he didn’t know life any other way. The voices got to him – they really got to him, but he was pretty sure he would miss them if they left. They were like siblings – they fought with him, but he’d been around them his whole life and, at the end of the day, he kind of loved them.

            When people used to find out about “the voices”, they would leave. Even his parents left him. Of course, his parents couldn’t leave him the same way everyone else did, but the day he turned eighteen, they kicked him out of the house and, from then on, he was on his own. He had no family or friends. The best he could make was acquaintances because if they got any closer to him, they could sense something was up and then the secret would come out – the voices would be found out.

            Some days he cursed the voices and the hand he’d been dealt in life. Other days he thanked god that he had the voices since he had no one else. They fought like brothers and made up like brothers. They were the only people he could count on. When he needed advice, they were always there. When he just needed to hear someone’s voice, they were there. When he needed someone to tell him that he mattered, they were there. When he needed someone to put him in his place and shit all over him, they were there. Sometimes, he got the wrong treatment at the wrong time, but at least he got some kind of treatment from someone. Thank god for that.

            He often fantasized about what his life could have been like if he hadn’t had the voices. As much as he appreciated their company, it was hard to resist fantasizing about living a normal life. He mostly thought about that on his “bad” days, the days when he cursed the voices. Frankly, though, it was hard to think about much at all when the voices were all yelling at him full blast. But when it was over, that is when he cursed them and dreamt of days when they would go away or of an alternate reality in which they never existed.

            Of course, since he was kicked out at the young age of eighteen-years-old, he had to get a job right then and there. He only had a high school diploma and his grades were nothing to brag about. It was pretty amazing he had even finished high school, but he had – without any support from his parents who had given up on him years before he graduated high school. He had a pretty easy job at a restaurant – washing dishes. He really had no say in his hours and was a bit too intimidated to ever ask for any days off, but the pay was enough for him to get by on. It was the kind of job that most people would complain about, but he just thought that things could be worse. That was how he lived most of his life. He didn’t have anything in his life that was unbearable, so he was content enough with everything. Even the voices could be worse. On his worst days, the voices weren’t too harsh in their criticisms of him – they never really went straight for the jugular, but, instead, choose to make general, broad statements about him. He could put up with it, so he did.

            Like everyone else in his life, his co-workers weren’t particularly close with him. Why would they be? They just worked together, that didn’t mean they had anything in common. He kept on pleasant terms with everyone because that seemed best, but he kept his distance so nobody really saw what was going on in his head and to avoid bonding too strongly with anyone. When he’d let himself get too close in the past, it was the most pain he’d ever felt when they eventually found out about the voices and left him. He’d always regretted building those people up in his mind so much, it made it much worse when he saw the look of disgust and fear in their faces when they figured out about the voices or figured out enough to know something was wrong with him. But his co-workers he got along fine with. Other than doing his best to be polite and accommodating to them, he had seniority at the job. He’d seen at least 3 or 4 waves of kids come and go from that job. A few had moved up to higher positions, but most just used the job as a few lines on their résumé. However, he was content staying at this job. He knew how to do it and he knew where it was and he was fairly good at it. He’d been talked to a couple times about maybe having aspirations to move up to a higher position. He just shrugged them off and said he was happy where he was. Although he rarely noticed it, a lot of the people at his job gave him weird looks. Looks like they knew something was wrong with him. Maybe he’d gotten too close to them despite making an effort to keep his distance. It was bound to happen when working with people consistently. However, he didn’t really take much note of it and was fairly confident that they were none-the-wiser about his voices.

            That was just it, they were his voices. He had no reason to share them with anyone. They were his. He could do with them what he liked. He chose not to share them and he was happy with the choice he’d made. He wasn’t ashamed of the voices, but people acted weird about the voices so he decided not to share them.

            The voices consumed his life. That isn’t to say they were always there, but they nearly were. He had the occasional “normal” day, but most days they popped in to say something quite a bit throughout the day. And, as we’ve been over, there were days of nothing but voices screaming at him – but that was fairly rare, maybe once a month, twice tops. The voices were such a part of his life and his only company that he often thought about the rest of the world that he kept at a distance. He thought about what they thought of him, but he thought even more about what they would think about him once he was gone. He was a loner, there was no doubt about that.

            He would spend hours, when the voices didn’t interrupt, thinking about how the world would receive his death. Death was inevitable and it seemed only logical that he embrace it as something that was bound to happen. He wasn’t suicidal or too fixated on death, he just knew it was coming and sometimes wondered about the world after he left it.

            He thought about his co-workers, surely the first to notice when he died – when he didn’t come into work. He was always great about going to work, never a sick day and always on-time. So surely they would be the first to become aware that he was no longer there. And surely they would be the ones to start investigated. They would probably file a missing person report. He wondered how soon they would file that report. After the first day of missing work? They might just because he was always so reliable, but they might give him a couple of days. Three tops, he decided.

            What would happen next? How curious would they be about him? They weren’t that curious about him while he was alive as far as he could tell, but there seemed like there was something to a dead person that intrigued people. Admittedly, there would be some interest in how he died – he’d be sorry to disappoint them with “natural causes” – but he thought there was more. When a person is alive, people think they have all the time in the world with them. They can find out more about the person next week, they can talk to them tomorrow, but after they’re dead, they’re gone. There is no postponing anything. There is a certain amount of information in existence and there won’t be any new information being created. The longer they wait, the more likely the information will disappear.

            Maybe he was being ridiculous. Maybe his co-workers really wouldn’t care about him. They probably won’t miss him. Although, while they might not miss him, they would surely have to acknowledge that he was missing. He was at that job for over a decade now and, by the time he died, it would probably be at least another decade if not a few more decades.

            If they were interested in finding out about him after he died, what would they learn? What could they learn? People tend to learn about people through the people that knew them, but nobody knew him. He hadn’t spoken to his parents in years and they didn’t even know if he was alive anymore. It was at that point that he took out a piece of paper and a pen and he started a list. He wrote things about himself on that list. He started off with the most obvious, “voices” and then began listing things he enjoyed: action movies, non-fiction books, jazz music, tennis games on television…

            It seemed silly to him. What did he care if anyone found out anything about him after he died? He would be dead after all – and nobody cared to learn about him while he was alive. Still, it felt good. He couldn’t help, but feel better that he would be leaving some sort of mark behind after he died. He might not have made any friendships, but if anyone was interested, hopefully they’d be made aware of this piece of paper explaining himself to whoever was concerned even if it was overly simple. Hopefully they could put the pieces together and figure out what the list meant. He put the paper on his counter - and made a mental note to continue adding to it as long as he lived -  before putting on his coat and heading out the door to work.

Drive

            When he was younger, he was always afraid of getting in the car. Whenever he did, he was always amazed at how fast the car was going. It seemed ridiculous to him that all these people in all these cars were moving at such fast speeds. He thought about how they could all die so very easily. If anyone drove a little off course, they could crash and die, but everyone drove around at rapid speeds to get to the places they wanted to be at. Convenience seemed more important to everyone than their own lives. People were willing to risk their lives just to travel across town. Every time that he arrived at a place still in one piece, he was amazed at his luck.

            As he got older, he went on plane trips and the occasional boat trip. These seemed like even more insane ways of traveling. The possibility of traveling anywhere in the world in a handful of hours didn’t really make up for the possibility of falling out of the sky to his death. And the possibility of drowning in the middle of the ocean put a damper on the fun of being able to travel by boat. The only reason he got in cars, airplanes, and boats at all was all thanks to his parents. As parents tend to do, they forced him to take all these trips with them. They said things like it would be good for him and that it was perfectly normal to travel these ways. As much as these means of transportation scared him, he grew used to using them to travel.

            He eventually got to the age when it was time for him to learn to drive and while he’d rather not have had the pressure of being in control of one of these vehicles, his parents pressured him – hell, society pressured him – so he just tried to push the thoughts of death out of his mind. So, despite not wanting it, he got his driver’s license and continued on with a fairly regular life.

            After years of being pressured to travel in cars, planes, and boats and told he was irrational he learned to be ashamed of his fears. As a result, he didn’t tell people about them. Those were things that 10-year-old him said, now they were things that 25-year-old him only thought. No one needed to hear his fears – they would just ridicule him and tell him that they were irrational thoughts. So he went on living his life in fear, but came across “normal” to the outside world. He had a job and it really was convenient to own and drive a car. It was also, he told himself, a good way to fight these fears that he knew – because everyone had told him – were irrational. So he drove to and from work every day always slightly amazed that he arrived at his destination still alive. He continued to be amazed no matter how many times he drove somewhere without dying.

            All of that changed one day while driving on his way to work. He crashed. Somehow, after all these years of driving without any accidents – although always expecting them, he lost control of his car on this day. That was enough for him. He was a grown man and he had no one to tell him to get in a car. He decided it would be best to never drive again. He had known how dangerous driving was, yet he did it anyway and clearly, he’d pushed his luck at this point.

            Of course, it wasn’t as simple as choosing to no longer drive or get in any car. That was a big decision. He had to rearrange his life a bit to accommodate the complete lack of automobiles. He quit his job and got one closer to his house. It paid less, but he could walk to it in only forty-or-so minutes. It also helped fill the gap between his old pay and his new pay that he no longer bought gas. He took comfort in that even though there was still a definite loss of income.

            He also took comfort in getting to enjoy the outdoors. He got to breathe fresher air and he could – if time permitted – stop and look at things on his way to work. He felt like he finally got to really see the world around him now that he wasn’t confined into a car as he traveled. Yes, this truly was the live. His anxieties were finally justified. Always driving, despite his fear, had certainly taken its toll on him. The stress definitely hadn’t been healthy and now he finally to be free of the whole ordeal. He could just walk to his humble job and make enough to be comfortable – and on the way there and on the way back, he could take in his surroundings and see how beautiful life was.

            He’d often enjoy the smug feeling he got from judging all the saps driving in their cars. He never vocalized it, but he knew what they were missing even if they didn’t and he got quite a bit of enjoyment from that feeling. He knew he shouldn’t be so judgmental, but he had a bit of a mean streak. Frankly, if his mean streak only got as bad as feeling like people in cars were not getting to enjoy the world fully, it wasn’t too bad of a mean streak. He felt he could live with that mean streak – besides, it didn’t hurt anyone and it genuinely made him feel good.

            However, as time went on, walking the same route, twice each day, couldn’t maintain its original beauty. He’d seen the things on his way to work so many times that he could picture it all vividly on request at any point. So he chose a different route to walk. He wasn’t a dumb man, though; he knew that route would eventually bore him too. So one day when he didn’t have work, he figured out a few different ways to walk to work and changed the routes to keep himself interested – with some longer, more scenic routes for coming back from work.  On the way back from work, he had all the time in the world. No one was waiting for him. Sometimes, he wouldn’t go home for hours after work because he was out looking at the world – it wasn’t unusual for him to walk miles off the route back to his house.

            On one of his routes to work one day, he saw the most beautiful squirrel he’d ever seen. “Beautiful” is often not the word people think of when they see squirrels, even very good-looking ones – but this squirrel was, without a doubt, beautiful. And he’d spent years walking to and from work seeing all sorts of squirrels each day so he was about as close as it came to an expert on squirrel beauty. If there ever were squirrel beauty pageants, he could probably quit his job and get a job in that industry. However, at this point in his life, he was not aware of any sort of beauty pageant for squirrels and, thus, continued on his way to work.

            He only continued walking to work for a brief few minutes. It was at that point that a driver hit him with his car. Cars – as he knew – are a dangerous thing. It is amazing more pedestrians don’t get hit by cars. He hadn’t really thought about it, but he really was lucky to have walked to work all those days and not been hit by a car.

            As his ghost looked down on the scene, he thought how lucky he had been to have lived as long as he had. He had been in cars for years without getting into a single crash. He had eventually crashed his own car and hadn’t died. He had walked near cars – at least for part of the trip – on his way to and from work for years and hadn’t been hit once until now. It was amazing he hadn’t died sooner. Plus, he got to see that really beautiful squirrel. Hopefully, someday, in his honor, they’ll throw squirrel beauty pageants.

Face

            I remember his face. It had this indescribable quality to it so I won’t spend much time attempting to describe it. What is important to know is that his face was like no one else’s face had ever been in the history of the world. It wasn’t hideous; in fact, it was the exact opposite, but not a handsome face either. The important thing wasn’t that his face was so incredibly not hideous; the important thing was the power his face had. That’s where things get complicated. It had a way of affecting people. He could do plenty with it – popping his eyes out and other odd tricks – but he didn’t need to do anything with it, it just was. His face just existing was enough to affect everyone around him.

            I had a pretty standard childhood. I had two parents that loved each other. I had a brother. I had a cat named Boots and a dog named Roscoe. I loved them all. I got decent enough grades. I rarely got an A in any of my classes, but I also rarely got a C. I was a nearly straight B student – although that might have been best explained by the fact that I never pushed myself, not once. I always, no matter how mind-numbingly boring or as much as another class might be more interesting, took the easiest classes I could find from the easiest teachers. Although my life was perfectly fine, I picked up all the wrong messages. I focused too much on grades and not at all on learning anything. I focused on numbers of friends rather than any sort of closeness. Rather than simply enjoy my dog, I spent a lot of my time bragging about all the things he could do – play dead, jump through hoops. One time my brother and I got Boots to ride a skateboard from one end of my street to the next. Half the kids in town saw it, but I still spent the next three years telling everyone about it – I guess I didn’t have enough to be proud of for how proud I wanted to be. Boots died – of natural causes - and Roscoe ran away and I, still to this day, have never felt more shame. I told no one and when people brought up either pet, I would attempt to change the conversation as fast as possible. I had the best cat in the world and it didn’t make sense to me at the time that the best cat in the world would die. And, of course, the best dog in the world wouldn’t ever run away. For years after that, I’d make up things that Boots and Roscoe supposedly did in an attempt to continue having things to brag about and keep up the façade that they were still around. But I’ve started getting ahead of myself.

            There was a man that came, seemingly out of nowhere, one day and left the same. It was almost if he’d never been there at all, but he had left his impact on us all – there was no doubting that. I was only eleven years old when he came so my memory of him is foggy at best, but the one thing I do remember is that he definitely existed – which seems to be more than can be said for everyone else’s memory. No one ever really spoke of him after he left and it was hard to tell if everyone else had somehow forgotten about him except for me or if people just preferred to not mention him.

            The one thing he left with us was a baby. This baby isn’t what you think; he didn’t get anybody here pregnant. The man brought a baby with him when he showed up and simply never took it when he left. No one had a clue about the mother’s whereabouts and no one ever asked him or thought about it – until he left. We embodied that saying “it takes a village to raise a child”. No one even thought about slacking on helping raise the baby boy because we all realized that this two-year-old boy that had been abandoned by his father needed all of us to help raise him.

            Time moved on and that man faded from our memories – some completely forgetting him and others, like myself, remembering him and wondering about him, but never getting any answers and slowly learning to not care. I, like everyone else, moved on with my life. The baby boy was older now and people stopped thinking of him as an innocent baby. A woman down the street took over as his guardian. Everyone else kept an eye on him and tried to teach him things, but only            half-heartedly. He was a weird kid and we all sensed it – he wasn’t as cute and lovable as he was as a baby. This is always the case with babies, but especially so with this boy. No one could really blame him for being weird, he was abandoned by his father in a small town where he knew no one and no one knew him. All the same, everyone attempted to keep a bit of a distance between themselves and the strange five-year-old boy – even the woman down the street.

            It was around this time, when the boy was eight-ish – we never knew his birthday, just a general age – when Roscoe ran away, a few months after Boots had died. All my habits and decisions had clearly had an effect on my life as I now had no one to spend much time with. My brother had gotten older and moved away – to the big city as it seemed like so many people chose to do. I was only close with my parents. So I started spending time with that weird little boy.

            That weird little boy had only gotten weirder since I’d last really paid attention to him. He had the face of a much older person, but not a worn, old face – simply a more mature face, one of someone as old as 25. It was quite bizarre to see, but also quite fascinating. And the little boy, as odd as he was, was very interesting himself. He was interesting because he was odd. He was a little like me, with no close friends – at least I had my parents.

            He only got odder when he entered middle school. By this time, everyone was fascinated by the little boy. People had always been a bit curious about him. First when he was brought to our town only to be abandoned. Then when people started to wonder how he’d turn out with a life like his. After that, when people saw how he turned out with a life like his their fascination just continued growing. When he got the face of a much older person at such a young age, people just got even more interested in him. But people still kept their distance – which was probably for the best. However, he knew everyone was watching him from a distance; no one in this town was too subtle about anything.

            However, when he entered middle school, people’s interest in him didn’t grow – except mine. It probably had something to do with my parents having recently dying and the fact that I was now completely alone in this town except for this odd, little boy that interested me. People’s interest was still there, but it was clearly dimming. He was just a weird kid with a really odd, old face. As bizarre as he looked and as bizarre as he was, one starts to get used to it when they see him every day. There weren’t really any new developments with him and hadn’t been in a few years – at least as far as everyone else knew. The difference is that no one besides me had bothered to get to know him. It was in middle school when he realized that his face could do odd tricks. He practiced every day and often attempted to find new tricks that it could do. He’d show me, but he never showed anyone else because he knew they looked at him and judged him. I remember, every single time, no matter how many times, I’d ask him how he did those tricks with his face. He’d attempt to explain all the face tricks to me, but they never made any sense to me – although I’d expect nothing else from someone so odd as him. In eighth grade, he thought he’d perfected his face tricks and decided to enter the school’s talent contest – partially in an attempt to make friends and partially because, and I believe this was my fault because of all the praise I’d thrown his way and the ideas I’d filled his head with, to kind of brag about his talents to all the kids at once. Unfortunately, he died the night before the talent show. No one really knows why – or at least no one told me why. It might have had something to do with his older face or maybe he got so excited for the talent show that his heart burst or maybe it was just his time to go. Life never makes sense. All that really matters is that he was dead – and he never got to show off his talent.

            We obviously had to give him a funeral, so we did. The woman down the street gave him a nice eulogy – at least as nice as you would expect from someone who didn’t really know him. I was kind of upset, but got over it. If she – and the rest of the town – wanted to lie to themselves and act as if she truly knew him, so be it. Despite that fact, I still went to the funeral – as most of the town did. I think most people went to look like they cared because no one really cared. No one knew him or cared about him except for me. To everyone else, he was just a walking, talking sideshow exhibit living in their town. Sitting in the back row, I cried. I cried tears of blood. No one saw. No one needed to know about this. This was between me and that dead boy. I’d finally learned a trick that my face could do.

            Time moved on and that boy faded from our memories – everyone else completely forgetting him while I continued remembering him and wondering about him, but never getting any answers - how could I? - and slowly learning to not care. I never told anyone about my face trick, so don’t bother asking them. Don’t bother asking about the man or the boy or the boy’s face tricks either because I’m the only one who cared enough in this town to remember any of this and I’ve told you all I know here. I still do my “face trick” when I think of that little, misunderstood boy – or when I think of Boots or Roscoe or mom or dad or my brother who I’ve lost contact with.