17 | Alexander T. Damle

            17 days. We graduate in 17 days. I know because I count, I’ve been counting and will continue to count until that number drops to zero. In 17 days, I’ll never have to see this shuddering fever dream that we call high school again, in 17 days I’ll never have to deal with the collusion of muck and mud that is the constant in and out, over and over social vice, applied with a casual cruelty every moment of every day. In 17 days, all I’ll have is summer before I can finally leave this patch of scorched earth, trapped in it every day since birth, but thank Christ not till death, because in 17 days the next step of my life is leaving America behind and going to university in Scotland, because where better to escape to than the land of Robert the Bruce, William Wallace, and Bonnie Prince Charlie. In 17 days, all the years of humiliation and heartbreak, all the times we had to get our friends taken to the hospital so they wouldn’t slit their wrists, all the girls who turned me down, all the guys who threatened me, everyone who called me weird, laughed at me, wouldn’t even look at me, told me I was going to shoot up the school because I was such a fuck up, they’ll all be trapped in a past I’ll never have to return to. 17 days.

            Walking through the main hallway first thing in the morning is always such an experience, everyone sitting around just... waiting, talking, gossiping, laughing, making out, arguing, playing the guitar, forming their own brands of cool, but me, my eyes are on the ground, I don’t want a part of their cool, I’m better than that, or so I think as I wrap my trench coat tight around myself, oblivious to my self-satirical absurdity and pretension. I need to tell myself I’m weird, and I need to be weird, to justify the decade or so of universal hatred that has attached itself to me. I see my history teacher and he smiles at me, says hi, and I say hi back. I guess it’s nice to know my teachers like me at least.

            And don’t get me wrong, I’m not totally alone. I have my group, be as it may that we are forced together more through shared loneliness than any sort of real common cause. We don’t hang out in the hallway, we have a place all to our own, the green screen room, with an attached editing booth. We’re not supposed to be there outside of class time, but the film teacher has resigned himself to the fact that we’re not leaving anytime soon, after all, we’ve nowhere else to go.

            I push open the door to the room, and apparently I’m late because everyone is here already, give or take. The windows in this place are blacked out, casting the room into a perpetual state of evening. The expensive film equipment tossed about gives the place a cyberpunk sort of aura, straight out of Gibson, with the addition of all our angst and pimples.

            “Milo. Ever get a chance to read that story I emailed you?”

            “Not yet man, I’ve been busy?”

            “With what?”

            “I don’t know, school?”

            “Right.”

            Terrence - smart as all hell, with a drive to match. He doesn’t come from money, but that only seems to fuel him on, over his impossible drive to success, even if it’s quite clear, if given a real choice he’d be a writer before a lawyer, but life doesn’t grant choices. I know he’ll make it on the money front because he wants it, and he works hard enough that he can guarantee anything he wants. Except for love, that is, but he’s thoroughly convinced everyone, particularly himself, that love is the one thing he doesn’t want.

            “Hey man.”

            “Phillip.”

            “Did you get a chance to talk to Erika?”

            “I told you man, not interested. Also you know she’s in the next room, right? She can probably hear you.”

            “Fuck.”

            Phillip - quiet and shy, but that doesn’t make him anything approaching a decent person. He’s scrawny, pale, the Hollywood trope of a nerd, straight out of John Hughes. He’s depressed. I mean, we all are, that’s kind of the point, but he wears it like a badge of honour, always wanting the rest of us to pat him on the back and tell him it will be okay. If it’s not strikingly obvious, he’s not exactly my favorite person.

            “Hey Erika.”

            “Philip.”

            “You don’t look so great - everything okay?”

            “I... I don’t know. Something’s up with Dahlia.”

            Erika - she’s pretty and bubbly, but that doesn’t make her happy, in fact it almost makes her the opposite, always managing to draw the wrong kind of intention from the wrong kind of people, namely Philip, her avowed nerdiness on top of the cool girl demeanor making her manic pixie dream girl incarnate. For all the shit I give her, she’s my best friend in the world and I wouldn’t still be breathing without her.

            “Hey Milo, can you come look at this?”

            “Look at what Heath?”

            “This error I’m getting - I don’t know what the hell it means.”

            “What were you trying to do?”

            “Knock OSX off and install Mint.”

            “You know this is school property, right?”

            Heath - our unofficial leader, blessed with this title as much for his domineering stature as any particular function of personality. He probably has a slightly higher opinion of himself than warranted. He’s basically used this last semester of senior year to blow off any and all work. He doesn’t go to class, let alone turn in his homework. He’s Mormon, and that means after this, he’s going on a mission to Mexico, which I suppose is his excuse to not do anything. As the rest of us, he believes just surviving, just getting out, will save his soul.

            “Morning man, you want to see the new cut?”

            “Yeah, sure Joel. Are we going to be done by the deadline?”

            “You mean by five minutes before Mr. Vincetti comes in here asking where the hell our film is?”

            “Something like that.”

            “In that case I’ll tentatively say yes.”

            “Good enough.”

            Joel - he wants to be a director, and if he doesn’t make it at that he’ll be a bum, because movies are pretty much the only thing he’s thought about for the last four years, and, if film school goes according to plan, the only thing he’ll eat, sleep, and breathe for the next four, and all the years after that. For me filmmaking, more the writing and producing side, is a hobby and an elective credit, but I appreciate getting to work with someone so driven and passionate.

            “Hey. Uh...”

            “Hey.”

            “I’m having a lan party on Friday... You interested?”

            “Yeah man, that’d be cool.”

            Jonathan - I didn’t actually know we were talking. For years we were really good friends. He got me through some of my worst days. If I’m being wholly honest, I’d be dead if he hadn’t been there for me sophomore year. But then he started dating Dahlia, my ex, and I’m not sure from where the tension arose, but arise it did. Jonathan is without a doubt one of the smartest people I know, but just as Terrence seems to be willing his way to success, Jonathan is trying just as hard to do absolutely nothing with his life.

            “Milo.”

            “Dahlia.” And then she kisses Jonathan, holding out the act, seemingly for my benefit.

            Dahlia - my ex. My only ex, a relationship so catastrophic, so nihilistically fatalist, that it can hardly be called a relationship at all. During our few months together we never kissed, and when she broke things off, I did my damndest to ruin her life. The fact that we can be in a room together without killing each other is testament to her restraint. She’s another future law student.

            The bell rings, and I start to leave, though not before trying yet again to get Heath to see reason.

            “You coming to Stat?”

            “Nah man. I don’t think Ms. Sawyer even knows what I look like at this point.”

            “That’s your own fault, you know.”

            “Whatever man.”

            On the way to class I see her - the prettiest girl I’ve ever met, outside of movies and pornography. I don’t know the first thing about her, not her name, her grade, anything. We ride the same bus, and I can tell you her mom always drops her off and picks her up from the stop, driving an olive green Toyota Prius, and she’s always listening to music. This is all I know. I suppose I could talk to her, but then the mystery would be gone, and she’d be just another girl. Now, though, she’s a mystery, an enigma, a beautiful thing in my life to consider, to hold just out of reach, one of Gatsby’s green lights. I try to tell myself that when I get to university there will be tons of women like her, with exotic accents to boot. I try to tell myself I’ll somehow end up with one of them and everything will be okay, though I know it never will.

            After Stat is English, with Terrence. As we’re waiting for the teacher to start the class - she’s retiring this year and that 17 holds for her as much as for us - Terrence tells me something I don’t really want to hear.

            “You know Erika asked me out?”

            “Uh... what did you say.”

            “I said no... I guess I’m just not... I don’t really have time for dating.”

            “I don’t know man, I think you should give it a shot.”

            “It’s not worth it. I can date in college.”

            “Sure man, whatever.”

            I then proceed to zone out for the duration of the lecture - English comes pretty naturally to me, and I’m sure to let the teacher know how little of a shit I need to give to get straight A’s. Sometimes she’ll ask the class a question and, met with blank stares, I’ll let a silence hang in the air for a good thirty seconds, before opening with a deep sigh, then launching into a convoluted answer that answers her question, along with three she hasn’t yet asked. Everyone needs a hobby.

            Next, history. I love history, stories old and new, the whole human parabola laid bare before us, inscribed in ever shifting, ever changing, ever revised tomes of analysis, facts twisted and shaped and remade in the name of the present zeitgeist. Today, though, is exam prep, and honestly, I could not possibly give less of a shit. The teacher is letting us work in pairs or small groups, and I have the class with Erika, which provides us an opportunity to talk.

            “So. Dahlia.” I begin the conversation because one of us has to.

            “Dahlia.”

            “Yes?”

            “Well. You know how we used to be, like, really good friends?”

            “Yeah.”

            “I guess you’ve probably noticed for the last few months we haven’t been... been...”

            “Even looking at each other?”

            “Yeah, that. So I finally confronted her, asked her what was up?”

            “You mean you didn’t know?”

            “Not really. I mean, I thought it was something to do with Jonathan but I didn’t really...”

            “Go ahead.”

            “I just didn’t know what. So I asked her. She wouldn’t even talk to me.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “She just gave me this death glare and left the room.”

            “I don’t know. I can’t tell what’s up with that girl... I mean, ever since we dated...”

            “Oh come on, you’re not the center of the fucking universe.”

            “I know but, I mean, the way I treated her.”

            “Jesus Christ. This wasn’t supposed to be about you.”

            “Fucking hell. Sorry.”

            “Yeah. Yeah, I know, you’re just trying to help.”

            “What do you want me to say then?”

            “I don’t know. I just want Dahlia to be my friend again.”

            “I’m probably the last person to talk to about that one. Have you asked Jonathan?”
            “He’s a total dick, and you know that.”

            “Have you considered that maybe that attitude is why his girlfriend hates you?”

            “Fuck off.”

            “Whatever. Do you want to maybe actually try to study for the final now?”

            “Fuck that.”

            And so it goes. Another history class wasted. Every day, I know I have fewer and fewer history classes to waste, up until I start university and can focus on history full time, preferably with fewer mandatory study periods for me to sleep through. And potentially less bullshit teen angst.

            Lunch is just another opportunity to hang out in the green screen room - I haven’t been anywhere near the cafeteria since the middle of Freshman year, and I’d prefer to keep it that way.

            On the way back to the room, Erika splits off to talk to someone, and I run into Phillip. I always dread our little chats.

            “Hey Milo.”

            “Phillip.”

            “Look, about Erika.”

            “I told you man, she’s not fucking interested.”

            “I know. I get it... I just...”

            Oh no. Oh shit. Time for another Philip monologue on how he’s uniquely alone, uniquely cut off by the world as a whole, as a direct result of him being just such a nice guy.

            “It’s just that... I met someone this weekend, and we had coffee and... she’s going to be going to my college... and I don’t know. I just wanted to make sure everything is cool with Erika. I mean, I just wanted to make sure she gets that I’m over her, and I just want to be friends.”

            This is about the polar opposite of what I was expecting, but it makes me happy. Phillip deserves a little luck after all the constant rejection. I guess I’d been selling him short, prejudging the conversation off my own internal bias. Well, this is certainly a useful way of cutting down on the constant maelstrom of drama, self loathing, and suicide attempts that seem to be a constant part of our little circle of personality disorders, Philip falling in love, I mean.

            As soon as I get to the room, I walk into the editing booth, see Joel there scanning through the timeline of our film, looking for the little fuck ups that always seem to bring down projects like this. This year we’d decided to go and do something ambitious, make a full length film with high school students as the cast, using the minimal equipment available to us, and the little money I made from working as a janitor, and now, after months of fighting and stressing and thinking the damned thing was doomed, there it sat in editing, right in front of me, just ready for us to call final cut and export the thing. The culmination of the life long dreams of two men, our film, our twisting, arching story of teenage love and suicide, of the tragedy and angst and passion and drive and quiet rebellion that had made up our own lives for years. Everyone had watched us with eager anticipation of our great fall, but yet here we stood, proud.

            “Well, man, this is it. We made a movie.”

            “Yeah Milo. It’s... damn.”

            “I was pretty sure for a while there it wasn’t going to happen.”

            “We got it though.”
            “By the luck of the devil.”

            “So what do you think- you going to try to keep making films in Scotland?” I think for a moment.

            “Nah man, I think this scratched my itch. I’ve lived that dream. I think I’ll write a book next.”

            “Well, good luck with that, I guess.”

            “Yeah, well, I’m sure this is just the start for you.”

            “I hope so.” I stare at the screen for a while.

            “I still can’t believe we actually did it.”

            Jonathan walks into the room.

            “You guys finish?”

            “More or less, I’m going to run through it a few more times, but, yeah, I think so.” Joel looks happier than I’ve ever seen him. I take Jonathan aside.

            “Hey man, are we cool?”

            “What do you mean?”

            “I don’t know, it’s just seemed like, lately, with you and Dahlia...”

            “You don’t own her, just because you dated sophomore year.”

            “I know man it’s just, I don’t know. It feels weird for me. You know how long I was into her before we actually went out.”

            “Yeah, I know man.”

            “I’m glad to see you two happy together, though.”

            “Thanks. It... it feels pretty good. To share... to share everything with someone like this.” I smile at him. He walks out, and I see Dahlia standing there. I shut the door to the editing room, and I sit down next to Joel as he hits play.

           

            The final title card comes up, Over the Horizon. It’s a little sappy, a little sentimental, but that’s the point, I think. Because despite the sentimentality, it’s raw, a brutality of emotion. It may not be the best film ever made, sure, but it’s an honest one, and that’s really the most I could’ve hoped for. I get up, head to take a piss.

            As I step out into the green screen room, I look around, see Phillip talking to Erika.

            “...and you know what, I just feel happy, really, truly happy, and I think this is the first time in my life I can honestly say that...”

            Dahlia and Jonathan are holding each other close, and outwardly I grimace, but inside I feel a warmth, a quiet happiness. I hear a snatch of muttered dedication from Dahlia.

            “...I’m really glad I have you...”

            Terrence and Heath are talking and both look happy. Heath puts his hand on Terence's shoulder-

            “...I know we aren’t handling this whole senior year thing the same way, but, in the end, what really matters is we make it through, past that, well, we’ll figure it out...”

            I walk through the hallway, see all the people talking, laughing, just being, and despite it all, my feigned resentment, my forced separation, I find a certain love for this place, for its honesty despite the posturing, for it’s fervent desire to just be, in spite of itself.

            Standing at the urinal, I notice the guy standing beside me, and it occurs to me briefly that I went to preschool with him, back in another life. I think about saying something, but I remember the great unwritten rule of men’s bathrooms. I go to the sink, wash my hands, lose track of myself, lost deep in my thoughts, turning my hands over and over in the warm water, thinking about the future, about the life I’m soon to have, wandering through the streets of an ancient city, meeting people from all over the world, finally deciding just what the hell it is that I want to be in this life.

            I leave the bathroom and I see, standing by herself, looking out the huge, two storey, floor to ceiling windows, at the plains rising to the mountains that tower all above this place, her, the green light, the girl whose car I know but not her name. I think to myself about all the years and months and days and hours and seconds that have built into this moment, all the struggle and fighting, everything I’ve been through, everything I’ve done, and I take a few steps towards her, then I consider all the rejections and how everyone says just keep trying, and I take a few more, I think of everyone who always called me a weirdo and a loser, and now I’m a couple feet away from her. I open my mouth and...

            I hear a crack like thunder and I see blood erupt out the side of her head as she falls to the ground, the moment stretched out towards oblivion in slow motion, and I turn to see a girl with an AR-15,  and I vaguely think I remember her from Physics as I take off running, got to move, got to make it, I hear more cracks and I am consumed by a fear of awesome power, got to make it to the room, the citadel, it’s saved me from everything else and by god it will save me now, screams all around me, people running, backpacks cast aside, my shoes skid across the polished tile floors, and I rip the door to the room open, and I look over the faces before me and I realize they don’t yet realize what’s going on, but I soon tell them and then they start to scream, and we lock the door and we all find places to hide, and I find myself in the editing room, hid under a desk, next to Erika, Jonathan and Dahlia across from us, them holding each other close, and I look to Erika and give her the biggest hug I can, then I simply say

            “Thank you.”

            I remember we have a second door.

            I get up, start to run, but the door pushes open with an impossible force, and I see Philip break for the opening, but he’s cut down, just standing then not, healthy then covered in blood. Life and death without pretension. The shooter comes towards me and I stare for an impossible second, the time it takes Terrence and Heath to sneak out behind her, and break into a dead run, as I throw myself back into the editing booth.

            I try to hold the door closed, but I cannot. As I see that AR-15 come through the frame of the door, I look to Erika and in her eyes I see death, and I try to run for her, even as the echoing cracks announce her fall, then the gun turns towards Dahlia, and I decide it’s time to do something, because what else can we do but something, and in that split second I see Jonathan decide the same, and we both rush the shooter, and Jonathan is on the ground bleeding and screaming, then he stops screaming, and somehow Dahlia makes it out the room behind us, and I look to the girl with the gun, and I open my mouth and I scr

Untowards | Alexander T. Damle

                We’ve moved into the post-everything age: a post-modern, post-colonial, post-racial, post-humanist, post-pubescent age. Me? I’m post-intellectual. If intellectualism is all about smart people knowing everything about everything and always talking and thinking about all of it, I’m all about knowing nothing about anything, and never thinking about any of it.

                These thoughts stroll leisurely through my mind, as I roll out of bed. They then slam the door on the way out as I feel the piercing buzz of last night’s hangover. I look to my dirty window, layers of grime and dead insects caked up over years of this place being inhabited solely by alcoholics and other wastes of oxygen, writers and artists all trying to re-enact Hemingway without the shotgun finish.

                Outside the window is Tangiers, a city well past its prime, architecture largely unchanged for hundreds of years, the whole place straining at its ropes, buildings beginning to crumble, streets and alleyways narrow and claustrophobic, people routed around, rats in a maze. It’s a city of tourists and expats, where all the real people hide themselves away, oppressive sub-tropical air, thick with the broad unease of a future lost to the mythic past.

                Bars and nightclubs fizzle and burn against all the old architecture and older culture, stars in a tar black sky, places where the booze flows and people are as liberated as in any global city. It’s a tense liberation though, a malaise hanging about in furtive glances, drinks poured carefully, voices all a little too low or a little too loud. I make my money off these places, tourists shown around to a bit of the city’s “real” nightlife, every item on the itinerary premeditated by money slipped across sticky bar tops.

                I’m good at this job - I have the basic understanding of how to herd a group of drunks such that no one gets lost, plus the global tourists like getting led around by an American ex-patriot. Everyone’s read Hemingway, or at least everyone who chooses to come to this shit hole.

                Eventually, realizing it’s almost three o’clock in the afternoon, and I’ve now managed to waste a good part of my day rotting in bed and drinking, I pick up a t-shirt off the floor, pull it over my head, and start downstairs. I live right above a bar, which can be useful, given my profession.

                I sit down on a barstool, and the bartender ambles over to me. He doesn’t even need to ask what I’m having because, the way my nights usually go.

                “You look like shit.”

                “Thanks man, that’s always good to hear.”

                “You know me.” I drink down the water and my head swims, that waking dream in whence you feel like if you don’t figure out where you are soon, you’re going to up and float away. Like that waking dream, with the addition of a piercing headache.

                I stumble out of the bar into the afternoon light. We’re not far from the sea here, and I have a good view of the water sparkling in a warm blue, stark contrast to Tangiers’ white and tan architecture. I appreciate the heat and sun for a few moments, before the simple pleasure of the beautiful weather turns into a piercing headache. A few doors down from my place is a kebab shop, from which I get my breakfast/lunch/it may actually be now late enough to call this dinner.

                I stroll down to the beach, sit at water’s edge, take off my sandals, and let the waves lick at my toes. It’s warm and comforting. Clean. I lay my head down in the sand, feel myself sink a few inches. I stare up at the sapphire sky, feel the warmth of the summer burrow deep inside me and threaten to take another few waking hours.  

               

                As the sun sinks low in the sky, I find myself on my tour route a little early, it being an hour still till I need to meet tonight’s shambling horde. I wander into a nightclub called “The Bittersweet Life,” or something approximating that, printed in French in a curling font, colonial ghosts mixed into the mortar.

                The furniture, the wallpaper, even the carpet, it’s all luscious and beautifully old, out of a 1950s Hollywood film, right when color was new and still thought of as something luxurious, to be revered. She stands on the stage and croons into a microphone in Spanish. This place is a contradiction of nations, a Mexican singer in a French club in a Moroccan city. She’s not much different than me, lost in this world but for her passport, transience as an excuse against the static rigidity of waking life. She was one of the first people I met when I moved here. She’s beautiful, tanned and tall, long dark hair and delicate cheekbones, hazel eyes reaching deep into the dark heart of my memories, some girl I left behind when I got bored of wherever I was living way back when.

                She smiles at me, but goes on singing. I’ll bring whoever’s signed up for tonight’s bullshit back here later, but I like to hear her when its just me and a few locals, in before the tourists show up. It feels like it means something that it never does when the walls are quivering and the carpet is crawling with the multitude of drinks and excess of people.

                I meet my charge for the night at a little restaurant on a square dating from the French occupation. The architecture is trying to be Paris because, afterall, this is Tangiers, where everything living is masquerading as something long dead. It’s the usual collection of young couples looking for something a little more exciting than the standard tourist attractions. I notice a guy, maybe late twenties, looks American, maybe German, standing off on his own at the edge of the group.

I introduce myself to the crowd, hoping my constant exhaustion doesn’t wear through. Or maybe not, maybe I want it heard, maybe I want people to complain, maybe I want to get fired. It’s time to move on again, time to find another city, another country. Another singer in another nightclub to pine over. Another sea to stare at longingly. Another squeaky bed, mouldy carpet, peeling wallpaper shit hole. Another life. Every few years from now since then on to infinity or death, whichever comes first, always another life.

                As we walk under the phosphorescent lights of the city, our faces and shadows cut at weird angles, illuminated with a certain kind of privilege, I look to all the young couples, the way they hang on each other, as their everythings, all in ignorance of the sea and the distance, in utter rejection of the drift and flow, the natural falling in and out of that which we dream of in terms like love.

                The first bar of the night is an old school jazz joint. The man singing on the stage is short of stature, and rather pale for a Moroccan, but there is a throaty, confrontational intensity to his voice, such that it fills every nook and cranny of the room, demanding attention. I give my speech about the place’s imagined history, then go to the bar, and I’m poured a drink without hardly asking. The whiskey burns its way down my throat, thermite through a cell door. I swirl the glass slightly, watch the pale auburn liquid float about with a heavy, hazy disregard for the night. I notice again the guy standing on his own, and I wander over to him. Misery loves company, I suppose.

                “Hey, how’s your night going?” He makes a noise in my direction that a more optimistic man might term a grunt. “You enjoying the tour?”

                “Sure man. Whatever.” He’s American, and clearly in no mood to talk. I give him space.

                Our second stop of the night is the sort of trendy, hedonistic, hell hole you can find in any city, beautiful young hipsters spouting armchair philosophy and unsolicited advice, drinking drinks in colours I don’t know the names of. The whole place is lit up with a throbbingly bright white light, obfuscating any attempt at reason or thought. Here I drink a double and without even a moment of hesitation or consideration order a second. Music plays at a volume I’m not sure whether to term altogether too loud or too quiet, built as it is of an endless baseline, with none of the requisite soprano contrast. The American is standing a few feet away from me, pressed up against the bar, looking out straight ahead, his eyes spotlights against the darkness, seeking out... something. I order him a drink, and he turns to look at me.

                His eyes are furrowed in on themselves, and though he meets my gaze, I can tell the light bouncing off his corneas isn’t making its way any deeper, he isn’t seeing or hearing any of it, no, I can see reflected off the water’s surface images of a life that could have been, bounced off his ear drums the sound of a woman’s saccharine voice, the promise of children’s laughter.

                “Hey man, you doing okay?” He stares at me for a time that edges my mind into recollection of 80s horror movies.

                “No. No, not really.”

                “Well, uh...” I’m a tour guide for fuck’s sake.

                “I wasn’t supposed to be alone tonight. I wasn’t supposed to be alone, period, I guess. I wasn’t this morning.” I order him another drink, and he looks into the glass of liquid just a little too clear, the harsh chemical smell of good vodka drifting up from the glass and passing unfiltered into his head, with a near imperceptible curl of his nose. He drinks it down anyway, and he cringes ever so slightly. He’s not me, then. He’s not yet learned to embrace the pain in the name of killing the hurt.

                The third stop is familiar already in my brain’s immediate consciousness, the woman on stage needing no further introduction. As expected, the thick red carpet is crawling like ants up my wavering vision. I push back the scene’s encroaching sibilation with another drink or two, the burn of the whiskey now a slick honey sliding reassuring down my throat.

                For the fourth time tonight, I notice my single charge. He’s staring longingly at the girl on the stage, and I feel an edging annoyance at his internalized presumption, being as it is a mirror onto my own dark night of the soul. Still, though, the thought has a surprising lucidity in amongst the hazy, smoky air, my drunken stumble, and that salted caramel voice playing loud like Nancy Sinatra. I try to push it back into the recesses of long and oft forgotten self-knowledge.

                I order two drinks and bring one over to the man who’s name I still don’t know. He stares at it for a long moment of eyes crashing down out the bottom of the glass into the pit of his own misery, before looking up to me. He sips quickly, and I can tell he doesn’t really know how to drink whiskey either. No, this is the sort of man who hasn’t drunk anything but beer and wine since he graduated college a decade and ten million miles ago.

                “I don’t think I caught your name?” He looks like he may not bother with my hanging question, but in the end he decides to take my hook and run it out to the fifty yard line.

                “Jonathon. Never Johnny. You know, I booked this tour for both of us? At the end of the night, I was going to propose to her, find some pretty spot overlooking the city and the ocean and... you know, somewhere romantic. And then I was going to ask her to marry me. This morning, she found the ring in my bag. I came out of the shower and she was just... looking at it, you know? Like she’d found... I don’t know... drugs or something. She looked up at me and it was just like... it was like she was scared. Her beautiful blue eyes... they were terrified. Wouldn’t even talk to me. She just packed her clothes and left, without a word. She’s ignored all my texts and emails and phone calls and... Jesus Christ.”

I order him another drink, and at the bottom of the glass I see refracted in golden brown a life lived out long towards old age, kids and a dog and a big suburban home, first words, first steps, college, retirement, but in the end all I see is lying alone in a hospital bed,  computers quietly beeping out the death notice.

I’ve no response to this man I hardly know, in the midst of what will likely be the great personal tragedy of his life. I’ve built an existence on running away from pain, and in his eyes, the shake in his hands, the tired tremor hovering just at the edge of his voice, I’m reminded why. It’s hard to have your heart broken when you never love in a distance longer than minutes.

In the midst of all this, with a tired sort or irony that lives in the very atmosphere of places like this, the woman on stage begins to croon out “My Baby Shot me Down,” and I decide it’s time to move on to our last stop of the night. This hell hole is at serious risk of being the death of at least one of us, going off the thousand yard stare Jonathan is cutting through Sunny Bono’s eulogy to the left behind.

The final stop of the night, the easy one, is a nightclub no different from a million others all the world over, a hundred, two hundred young people blissed out on booze and sometimes pills, listening to the simplest distillation of the noise of the time, holding on to each other for fear that, should they let go, they’ll fall backwards and pitch long into the void of non-existence and irrelevance. I bid a good night to the group, for here I let them on their own and make my way off to whatever bar will still let me in, to drown out the rest of the night with five drinks too many.

Tonight though is different, as all tonights are. Jonathan stares listlessly over the crowd, at the blissed ecstasy of perfected group thought, at dozens of pretty women and handsome men, all clinging desperately to one another, and I see reflected in him myself before I stopped caring, when I still believed I could be a part of all this, I see it and I want to help him because the worst fate you can wish upon another is that they become you, for we all know our own shit is the worst.

I walk over to him and he stares listlessly at me, the look of a dead man.

“You don’t want to be here man, not now.” I tell him, not totally confident in that particular assertion.

“Where, then?”

“It’s a big world, plenty of options.”

“Most of them closed.”

“Says who?”

“I’m an American. We’re ill suited to movement.”

“I figured it out.”

“Did you?”

               

                Eventually I get him out of the club. The sticky, sweaty air was starting to creep up on me, threatening to suck me into the dancers like I still had a hope for that kind of thoughtless joy. The salty, spicy Moroccan air is a welcome contrast, signs of real life already beginning to stir in amongst the early morning - bakers and butchers and all the rest of the mechanisations of this place, seeping out of the woodwork in these few hours safe from the expat wastrels and lost tourists. In this life I see hope, the simple beauty of normal, routine existence, if not for me, then for Jonathan.

                Now, though, he just looks tired and dazed and a little drunk. Despite my best attempts to the contrary, I’m already feeling a little sober, and I really wish I wasn’t. I steer Jonathan down to the beach, hoping the lapping of the waves can offer him the same freedom and release as it offers me.

                In the night, with the backlight of the city, the sea looks black and endless, but it is onto that which we cannot see that we write hope. Jonathan takes his shoes off with a surprising amount of care, socks too, and walks out a few yards, until the water pushes and pulses at the bottom of his bermuda shorts. He stretches his arms out and the image of Christ is more than subtle.

                “I could just keep walking, you know?” He sounds happy as he says it.

                “You could. I did.”

                “And you didn’t drown?”

                “Every night, only to awaken the next day my hurts all the stronger.”

                “So what do you suggest I do, then?”

                “Go home. Back to your job, back to your life.”

                “What about her?”

                “What about you?”

                There he stands for hours, arms now at his sides, watching the sea, me on the sands behind him, trying to keep my eyes open, in the off chance I have to play Hasselhoff, or try to, rather. The sun stretches and yawns up slowly above the distant horizon, the sky illuminated in brilliant blood and orange and gold, light reflecting off the water with a glittering wit, and behind us the city languorously awakens, the sounds of people beginning another day in the endless saga of repetition, day in, day out, on and on, that which we call life. As I watch Jonathan, I consider I’ve had enough of Tangiers. I need another city, another promise of a life worth holding on to. Maybe Sao Paulo or Cape Town, somewhere far away, a new language, a new culture, new people and bars and restaurants, a new job, a new girl in a new nightclub. As my mind ponders life in Brazil, I hear the ringing of a phone. I check mine, and it’s silent. I look to Jonathan. He takes his phone out of his pocket, hesitantly, looks at the screen.

                “It’s her.”

                He lets his hand come to rest by his hip, turns his eyes back towards the sun, it now just over the line of the blue horizon, then, all at once, he raises his hand behind his head, twists his body, then, in a violent flash of movement, wrenches his arm forward, relaxing his grip as he does so.

A Happy Story | Theland E. Thomas

I’m sitting at my desk, laptop open before me, typing these words. The desk is at the end of my room, against the wall, and my back faces the open door. Old pens clutter the edge. I don’t know how I got so many, but I hardly use them. I type everything now. On the left of my laptop is a tissue box, complete with crumpled tissues next to it. A testament to the final vestiges of a cold I’ve fought and beaten and am chasing to a humiliating retreat. Behind the laptop is a picture of myself, age 10 standing in front of the sign displaying the library’s hours. Next to that is an expensive greeting card with that has a blue, cloth coat on a coat rack popping out of the paper. A former co-worker gave me that card when she left the company, and I read it whenever I’m feeling depressed. It tells me all the good things I seem to ignore about myself. On the back, it reads, “I hope we stay in touch!” Well, she didn’t make good on her end of that bargain.

It’s Saturday night, and I’m stuck with the familiar feeling of my time evaporating with every second. Just vanishing into thin air with each tick of the clock. Saturday night, Sunday, school, homework, work, homework, school, homework, work, and when will I have time to write again? Recently, I feel like life has become a series of tasks I have to do before I can do what I want. And that those tasks are so consuming, so taxing, that I’m exhausted when I finish. Worse yet, I don’t even know what I want. Except for tonight. I’m going to use my time tonight. I’m going to write a story.

A happy story. The prospect bounces around in my head without gaining any traction. Through the reflection of my screen, I notice my sister walk in. I turn to her, arm slung over the back of my chair. “I’m going to write a happy story.”

“Is that possible?”

I laugh. She’s really been on a roll with the sarcasm lately. I’ve never written a happy story before. The closest I’ve gotten is a story that ends with the same disappointment as waking from a fantastic dream. I don’t know if I can do it. It would be as much of a stretch as writing about love, something completely out of my frame of reference. I reply, “Maybe I’ll write a story about how I can’t write happy stories.” I open an onscreen notepad and type a few ideas, not noticing when my sister leaves. Hanging out with a writer must be boring. I slip my headphones back on, slow, stirring rock turning in my ears. Then, I open a document and start typing.

I can’t decide if writing is a reflection of the state of one’s soul, or a mere magnification of certain aspects. Those are quite limited categories, since there are many kinds of writing, so I’ll stick with fiction. Hemingway says,“there is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” This is true, in a way. A writer’s personality shines through in all his works, so when you read this, you’re seeing a piece of me. But you’re not seeing my whole soul are you? That’s preposterous! I doubt I have the skill to articulate every urging, memory, disposition, or notion of the soul or the unfathomable profundity of its intricacies. Rather, you’re seeing what I choose to show you, some subtext I include, and some that sneaks betwixt the letters, unbeknownst to me. Furthermore, I choose what aspects of life and self to focus on depending on the story. And some stories include personalities completely alien to my own, even if my biases influence how they are portrayed. But Hemingway is right, we writers do bleed on paper. I’ve never actually read Hemingway, but I have the audacity to compare myself to him.

I can’t really wrap my head around how to write a happy story. Good stories need conflict. They need action. Drama. Violence. Loss. Good stories need unhappy things. But, good, happy stories and good, unhappy stories share the preceding traits, so there must be something else that separates them. The ending! My stories all end with people dying or some hilarious body horror or a depressing twist. Well, I think I made a hopeful story once. No, I made a depressing story with a hopeful ending. So, if a tale can still be unhappy even if it ends well, what makes a happy story? The outlook. The mood, the voice, the word choice, the implications. It’s a whole new style that requires muscles I haven’t flexed. Would I drop the sarcasm? The cynicism? The commentary? I shake my head. I don’t want to write a happy story. I want to write what I feel. And what do I feel?

Unhappy. Not really as a mood, as a mentality. Here’s where I bleed on my keyboard. Sure, I smile a lot. Around people. I make jokes. Some say I’m funny. But no one would describe me as happy. I’ve heard “well-adjusted.” I love that phrase. Well-adjusted. Adjusted to what? The horrible reality of life? It just comes with the implication that the world is so startling, so crushing, that you have to adjust to it with coping mechanisms. Maybe that’s true, but I don’t think I have anything to complain about. So, if my life is so great, why do I have an unhappy temperament? Why, when I put my figurative pen to paper to write a happy story, does this blather spew forth instead? Maybe it’s chemical. Maybe it’s genetic. Maybe it’s what I focus on. Maybe it’s the music I listen to. Who knows?

I only know that I used to visualize my soul as a dark chamber filled with swirling, black clouds. A tumultuous environment of bitterness, sorrow, anger, frustration, and pain churning around the axis of my heavy heart. A place where hope is called fraud, where love is called lie, and where happiness is a pipedream. That’s the place from which my stories grow. That’s the void I see when I peek over the precipice. That’s the blackness in my blood mashed between the keys.

The stories I write are mine. They are reflections of my soul. Magnifications of my aspects. My stories are my blood shed and forged into letters, sentences, paragraphs. They are the natural outpouring from the well of my experience and perception. They are detailed insights into how I process and relate to the world. I get up and find my sister, saying, “I didn’t write a happy story. It’s not who I am.”

She smirks. “Well, I knew that.”

The Last Americans | Alexander T. Damle

                I remember one time back in junior high, some woman came in doing research on career paths in small towns. She seemed mighty taken aback when most of the guys told her we wanted to work in the mine, and most of the women said they didn’t want to work at all. She pressed us, asking why, and didn’t we have any dreams, and didn’t we want more out of life and all that sort of thing. She just couldn’t get it through her head, you’re born in Fordston, you work in the mine, or you’re a housewife, and that’s it. I don’t particularly like it any more than she did, but it isn’t my place to challenge the one real rule that holds this place together. Plus, if I recall correctly, I told her I wanted to be a poet.

                In a way, I am. I’ve had thirty seven poems published. The problem is, this day and age, being a published poet doesn’t make you a professional poet. As far as I can work out, the most poetry has ever funded for me is a nice bottle of Scotch once in a while. No, I’m not a professional poet, in fact, as far as money goes, you could say I’m a professional janitor. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. Sure, the money isn’t great, but the hours are flexible, and there’s nothing better for cultivating an artistic mind than standing around for hours on end with nothing better to do than sniffing heavy duty cleaning supplies.

                Right now I’m cleaning Herb’s Hardware, one of a few places in town I work for. Things are a little quiet tonight. We had a pretty damn impressive storm roll over us a few hours ago. The thing about Colorado weather is that it hits hard and fast, without much warning. It beats down with a heady intensity, an almost human desire to make hell for any living thing fool enough to get caught out in it. Anyway, whatever the poetic ramifications of our weather, it certainly limits the evening rush on Herb’s.

Of all the things I have to deal with as a janitor, my favorite is probably mopping. It takes just enough physical exertion to keep me focused, but little enough mentally to give time to really reflect. I’m not sure how I came upon that incident from junior high, but somehow the past always seems so much more relevant during a rain storm. It probably also helps that my boss has once again decided to blast Meat Loaf over the store speakers. He’s always seemed a bit young for that particular icon of 70s cheese, but I suppose there are worse things to play. The smaltzy pop-rock vocals create a lovely contrast with the grim weather and the dreary everyday of my job. The music switches off. I look up.

My boss, Herb, a former miner who bought this shop with the blood money the union negotiated from the company for the leg he lost, hobbles towards me. He looks oddly troubled.

“Neil... you know James and Marie don’t you?

“Yeah...”

“I just got a call... they went off the road into the river, driving into town from the trailer park. James is fine... but... Marie is dead.”

“Oh.” It’s the best I can manage. I look down at the mop. Herb looks at me like he wants to say something, but reconsiders and walks away.

                I remember James and Marie back in high school. They were the sort of couple we all knew would get together someday. They were also the sort of couple we expected to see old and wrinkled, arguing down at Rosie’s Diner sixty years down the line. James and I never really saw eye to eye on much... I had a bit of a reputation, I guess. Six and a half feet tall with the body of a boxer and the face of a movie actor, but more prone to self-imposed isolation than sports and parties. James always kind of resented that, I think. He was a damn good football player, but at well under six feet with a face that’s kind of... off... he really had to try to attain the popularity he held. I guess he figured if you had what I had, you ought to use it, be a man, as he would’ve said. Meat Loaf croons away in the background. I’ve never figured out if he was in on the joke or not. And then it cuts out again. Again Herb walks up to me, clears his throat.

“Its... Jesus this storm...”

“Yeah...?”

“Apparently a forest ranger found a body on the ridgeline south of town. Lightning... rumor has it that it was Max... the two of you were friends, right?” I can only look at him. I let the air out of my lungs and push the hair back from my face.

“Thanks for telling me.”

                Two in one night... I never knew Marie too well, but I can’t imagine what James is going through... and Max. Jesus Christ Max. As different as we were or are or however you handle the verb tense for someone dead for not more than a few hours, back in highschool, we were all we had. Outcasts of a unique breed, not the self imposed isolation of the nerds, not the hatred of everything fun of the punks or goths or emos, something entirely different. Among all of us, the entire forty person graduating class, we were the only ones who wouldn’t accept our fate, who didn’t want to be what Fordston made us.

                All that we said in high school though... it ended the way high school rebellion always ends. We became little beyond what was always expected of us. He became nothing more than a thug and me, with all my artistic inclinations, just a janitor. I can publish all the poetry I want, but that doesn’t change what I am.

                Rain is really coming down now. This part of the country, rains like this maybe once, twice a year. Sheets, they say, it’s coming down in sheets. I hate going to visit her fucking brother. That damn trailer park. All those inbred hillbillie motherfuckers, leering at my truck, my pretty wife, my well adjusted old fashioned American life. I still got values. I work for my money. And yet here we go again. She’s railing at me about her wanting to work or some shit. I can take care of this fucking family, and she god damned knows it.

“... and James if we want a kid in a few years...”

“We will.

“Yeah, but you know full well we don’t got the money, which is what I’m trying to tell you.”

“You ain’t workin’. I can take care of this family, just like my dad took care of mine, his took care of his, how its always been.” If its possible I think the damn rain’s coming down harder. I can hardly see the side of the road any more. God damn Colorado weather. And here she goes, still talking at me. She needs to learn when to shut the fuck up. Women...

“Are you even listening to me?

“Yes honey.”

“Well like I was saying, I think Harmony down at the bookstore is looking for some help and...”

“You ain’t workin’ for that... that... whatever the hell he is. It ain’t right.”

“What ain’t right?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Sometimes James you can be the most ignorant son of a bitch.”

“Don’t you talk that way to me.”

“We need the money.”

“I can take more hours at the mine, you’ll see, I’ll make it work.”

“Do they have more hours to give you?”

“I’ll ask Max down at the union... I’ve known him since... since Christ knows when... he’ll help me out.”

“Isn’t he just some thug the union sends after guys ain’t paying their dues?”

“Something’ll happen, I’ll get it figured out... five years out of high school Marie... we still got time...”

“For what?”

“...I don’t know, now would you shut up and let me...” You always think it won’t happen to you. Last time I remember was senior year. Couple kids from the trailer park coming into town for Prom. It was raining like this. Every time someone says to build up the guardrails or something. Every time we vote against it, we don’t want to pay for it, we say. It won’t happen to us. It won’t happen to me. Then it does.

                I don’t rightly remember how exactly it started. All I know is I see the guardrail rushing up to the hood of my Dodge. Then the water coming up towards us. Somewhere in there I get my seatbelt off. Put my hand out to protect Marie. Not that it’ll do much good. We smack the surface of the water. We’re sinking fast. I manage to force my door open. I’m not a real strong swimmer, but instinct takes over. I kick for the surface. Rain’s comin’ down hard and fast. I can’t see the shore.

                Then it hits me. Marie. God damn it where the hell... god damn it no! Like I said, I ain’t a strong swimmer, but soon as I don’t see her, I dive down. The water’s cold and dark. I see the car in front of me. Red 06’ Dodge Ram. I remember the day I bought it, from one of my classmate’s dads. I felt so damn proud, big truck, beautiful girl on my arm, good job at the mine. The future promised to me. Back when I was young and... God damn it feels like it was so long ago.

                I immediately swim to the passenger window. She’s in there, her dark brown hair floating up, obscuring her face. I pound on the window. Maybe I can break it, maybe something. She turns to look at me, brushes her hair out of the way. She looks at me and smiles. I swim around to the other side. I pull myself into the cab of the truck. I can feel my lungs starting to burn, but I ignore it. I put my hands under her arms. Seatbelt. The seatbelt is still on. I point to it, and she just looks at it. I try to get it, but its stuck. Wouldn’t you fucking know. I stab at it a few more times, and it pops free. I always promised I’d get that damn thing fixed. Or that I’d fix it myself. She isn’t looking good. I don’t have time.

                Without warning, bubbles explode out of her mouth, and she’s floundering. I hear her screaming dull in the back of my skull. And all of a sudden I lose it, I can’t hold my breath. I push to the surface. I take in breaths quick as I can. I’m ashamed. What it all comes down to. All that bullshit about protecting her and...

                I dive back down. I push myself to the bottom, but I can’t see the truck. God damn where the hell could it go, it’s a big fucking... There. I swim over to it. I already know. I knew when she didn’t break the surface next to me. Still, gotta check. And there she is. Her body floats in the cab of the truck, her beautiful auburn hair all up about her face. I take her body in my arms. No, Marie. I pull my way to the surface. I can see it above me. I still got a chance, maybe someone... CPR or somethin... just gotta reach the surface. God damn please not her. And all at once I’m there. The rain beats down around us. I pull her body in close. I remember back to high school. In the summers, we’d come down to the river here and just lie together, for hours sometimes. We ain’t done that near enough lately.

A lone figure climbed up the ridge, his shadow blinking through the trees, stretching long down the slope. He was short but moved with a sense of violent purpose. His eyes were dark and set deep into his head, his bone sculpted into the hard lines of a classic American bad-ass, big chin, hard lines, deep set eyes, high cheekbones, with a proper matt of slicked back brown hair, scrappy moustache and beard to match.

                That’s what I figure I look like anyway, what I want so damn bad to look like, hard, strong, untouchable, that quiet, old fashioned American tough guy, the Clint Eastwood, Steve McQueen, Paul Newman type, all snarls and grimaces, hard as the land we grew up on.

                I’ve always told myself all I got is my brain and my body, and my brain ain’t worth too much when it comes down to it, weak and chaotic, all speed, no muscle, none of the raw intelligence or drive of those men I try to tell myself I emulate.

I reach the crest of the hill and look out across the valley stretching away before me, shadows pulled out long with the late afternoon light. Looks like there’s a storm coming in down the valley, fast, I still have time though, admire the view, get off the ridge, no problem. Closest to me the molybdenum mine, the James and Sons Mine, fate of half my classmates since long before I could crawl, then the first rows of houses, home to the likes of the teachers and town politicians and union bosses, as rich as anyone ever got in Fordston, then the town, a proper one-everything classic American small town, town hall, bar, diner, book store, hardware store, the union offices, not a whole lot else, then more houses, more down to earth, the miners and the shopkeepers, then the schools, then forest, tall and dark and intimidating, a real and a symbolic wall before the trailer park, the white trash hell at the gates of the valley, unemployed smack heads and drug dealers, that place you never went to when you were younger and never went now without some sort of weapon on you.

I look out on my life, third person like that earlier bit of introspection, all that potential they always promised us, we can do anything, everything, whatever the hell we want but its not true because the most I was ever gonna be was what I became, a union grunt, a soldier for whatever the hell it is I’m soldiering for, just like my father before me, threatening those that don’t pay their dues or those that don’t want to deal with our brand of bullshit any more.

I  look farther out around me, the world I was born into, the one I’ll die out of, no hope, no promise, no love, any kids I may or may not ever have looking at the same damn fate, a father who every morning goes to work, beats people up, comes home, drinks, then passes out on the couch, his body battered and damn near broken.

                That there is one vision of the future but me, I see another one, without that damn mine, without the diner and the bar and the town hall and the fucking union, just me and a bike beneath my legs, a .44 Magnum proper Dirty Harry gun strapped to my hip, my saddle bags full up of food and ammo and none of the limitations of this life, just me and a thousand miles of horizon, the harsh black of the roadway cutting a path through the empty desert landscape and the endless loneliness of the post-apocalyptic haze, most of the population, all the fucking assholes I know wiped away in some sort of disaster, nuclear or chemical or a plague or whatever the hell it is that finally wipes us all the fuck out, just me and the landscape, my future mine and not the town I was born into, not the parents who bore me, just me, a bike, a gun, and the road. But that ain’t the future.

                I look out across the valley to the storm clouds rolling closer, dark and grim, rain and thunder and lightning and right then the wind picks up and I taste that smell, that taste, rain, soon, and hard, and I know I gotta get off that ridgeway, but I don’t really want to, I don’t wanna go back to my fate, my shitty house, my awful, violent for the sake of violence job, all the girls down at the bar who won’t talk to me because of my broken nose and my reputation as nothing but another thug, who I won’t talk to because I’m more intimidated by a pretty woman than the big, self righteous miners and drug dealers and fucking union bosses I have to deal with day by day, five years out of High School and this is my life ending one minute at a time.

                Town like this, end of highschool, everyone talks about up and leaving, but no one does. We could’ve all left for something better, but we didn’t. I guess that’s our fate, trapped in this town, this mindspace, Fordston now and forever, all pain and misery and casual American poverty, and the clouds are directly above me now, me on a bare ridge line, the tallest thing for half a mile, and the rain opens up and I feel the cool water washing over my face and watch the sharp bolts of lightning snake down to the valley floor and the lightning is ever closer but I don’t leave because just like it was five years ago, just like it is every morning when I get up and go to work and hate myself all the more for it, leaving ain’t my choice, I was born here, and god damn it won’t bother me if I die here.

Creation Undone | Theland E. Thomas

“See, the Lord is going to lay waste to the earth and devastate it; he will ruin its face and scatter its inhabitants... The earth will be completely laid waste and totally plundered. The Lord has spoken this word.” -Isaiah 25:1,3

In the end, God destroyed the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God departed from the waters.

On the first day, the people of the earth frolicked in foolishness. They drank wine and fornicated, saying “live for today,” and “if it feels good, do it”. The scholars researched and made themselves wise in their technological breakthroughs and evolutionary discoveries. But the Lord God says “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise.” God cursed this day and made it dark, for on this day he would awaken from his rest to correct the errors of his children.

God said, “Let us strip man from the privilege of our image and remove his rulership over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” It started with the women. They thought it was menstrual cramps. Debilitating, painful cramps that caused them to call in sick from their jobs and abstain from their usual daily activities. Then men puzzled over this as half of the world fell from commission. There was not enough time to figure it out before the men fell ill beside them. They clutched their sides for the horrible pain in their ribs. Beside them, the women went quiet from their shrieking and died in silence. The men watched their counterparts shrivel, their skin collapsing over their erased bones. As they disintegrated into dust, the men felt the motion in their ribs - of that long lost part returning. The children fell down into the streets and into their beds. They fell asleep next to their struggling fathers. Unlike their fathers, they did not feel the agony of ceasing as they too disintegrated into piles of brown dust. These are the words of the Lord God: “For dust you are, and to dust you will return.”

And God said, “Raze the land of living creatures according to their kinds” All the creatures of the land gathered with their kind and met together one last time. They did not erupt in noise or protest, for they knew the call of their maker. And in peace, they returned to the earth. -the second day.

And God said, “Let the water teem with corpses, and let the birds fall to the earth from the expanse of the sky.” So, the angel poured out his bowl on the sea, and it turned to blood like that of a dead man, and every living thing in the sea died. And the angel poured out his bowl on the rivers and springs of water, and they became blood. The inhabitants of the sea choked on this and died, floating up to the top of the blood until it bubbled with billions of formerly marvelous sea creatures belly-up in the redness. And the birds dived headlong from the sky into the buildings and into the ground, leaving red splatters and feathers at their points of impact. And they charged into the seas and rivers where they splashed to their doom inside the blood and among the floating creatures. -the third day.

And God said, “No longer will the lights in the expanse of the sky separate the day from the night.” With that, the orbit of the moon became erratic and unusually fast. It spun around the earth with increasing speed, its orbit growing wider and wider. Then, there remained no orbit at all, and the ball of grey clay unhinged, flying off into space to meet the sun. As this occurred, the brightness of the sun diminished. First, a third of the sun went dark, pockets of blackness on its surface like polka dot stains. It’s fires receded, and the once great star imploded on itself. The hot, molten orange extinguished, leaving nothing but a gigantic, black orb with no light to warm the planets. And once again, there was darkness. And the angels did lament, “The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars did wander darkling in the eternal space, rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth swung blind and blackening in the moonless air”-the fourth day.

Without heat, the air settled, and frost encrusted the earth - the trees and monuments alike. The land no longer produced vegetation. Instead, the stricken plants crystallized in the dark and cold and shattered to pieces in the slightness of the wind. Whole forests collapsed in the darkness, but they made no sound. -the fifth day

And God said, “Let the water under the sky be scattered across the lands so that no dry ground can appear.” And the frigid, red waters spilled over the land and flooded the continents. The blood washed through the city streets and swept away the debris left by humanity. And the blood swallowed up the land until the entire world was cloaked. Then, the atmosphere of the earth bled into the sea, until the air and the sea were one, and the entire world was a spinning ball of black blood. -the sixth day.

And God said, “Let there be darkness”, and extinguished the light from the universe. Now the earth was formless and empty. And God destroyed the heavens and the earth.

*quote from the fourth day from the poem “Darkness” by Lord Byron

*Bible quotations from the Zondervan New International Version Bible.