Imposter Syndrome | Theland E. Thomas

I turn the key in the door and step inside, greeted by a blast of cool air. The AC’s been left on. Wait. My house is completely empty. Not robbed, unlived. No furniture, no dishes, no pictures. I pace through the living room and the kitchen. Empty. Sterile. Pristine. Not a spot on the counter, not an imprint on the carpet. But this is my house. This is where I’m supposed to be. Like an intruder, I slink upstairs, peering past the railing into the vacant rooms. There’s a car alarm going off in the distance. Slowly, and with trepidation, I turn the knob to my bedroom and open the door. Everything is gone. My bookshelf, bed, desk, disappeared. Only the four white walls stare curiously back at me.

I back out of the room, slam the door, and rush down the stairs. Out the window, I see my mother’s golden sedan approaching from down the street. A slight smile forms on my face when I realize that the horn is blaring from her car. Why can’t she turn it off? As she pulls into the driveway, I take her keys out of my pocket and turn off the alarm.

Something shifts in the corner of my eye, and I turn to see my mom sitting on a tan couch,legs crossed.

“Hi,” I start to say, but out the window, mom is sitting in her car wearing all black, and here she is on the couch in a green blouse. A queasy feeling finds my gut, as I eye my mom. She stares at me oddly, silently. “Hi, mom,” I say. No response. I draw closer, but keep my distance. “How can you be here if you’re in the car?” No response.

There’s something eerily captivating about her, and I can’t tear my eyes away. There’s something a little off, and her shadow is a little too dark. Everything here is so strange, lonely, and unfamiliar. All of the love has been sapped from this house, except for this one piece of furniture with my mother sitting on it. She sits silently beckoning for me to come closer, welcoming me with unconditional love.

Suddenly, I don’t care if she’s a little off, I just want to be closer to her, to feel some love, to wrap up in her arms and sleep. I come closer and lean in for a hug, but she doesn’t meet me halfway or raise her arms. When I try to embrace her, I can’t. An invisible barrier keeps me away. I try to fight against it, but the force is too strong, and I step back. From far away, I hear the car alarm again.

Staring at me, my mother stands and walks in front of the door. Her head is to the side, and she looks from the corner of her eye. Now I can see what’s off with her features. They’re too sharp. Her eyes and brows are angled, her nose is larger and pointed, and her chin juts. A long, diabolical smile splits her face. She is not my mother. She is an imposter. A tingling uneasiness creeps up from behind. Her stare splits my being with a radiant darkness, pulsing in tune with the darkness in me.

Then her features begin to morph and shift, melting into something else. Someone else. Her eyebrows grow thinner, her features softer. Her hair bleaches blonde and, by some unseen force, wraps into a ponytail. This young woman still gazes into me, hypnotizing me with her breathtaking sensuality. I am her captive held in place and drawn toward her. My eyes follow her as she glides back to the couch and sits gracefully. Her body monopolizes my entire field of vision. Her eyes grip my heart, pumping it faster and faster.

Suddenly, I am overcome by arousal, and I rush to the couch. My hair stands on end as my hands wrap around her waist and brush back a blonde lock. I lean in for a kiss, but at the last second, just as I feel her hot breath, I look into her eyes and see orbs of endless black, swirling, undulating, expanding, and caving in upon themselves. Her eyes are a portal to another realm - the bulging gates barely holding back a hungry evil.

Stumbling, I jump back and fall. Outside, my mother’s car is empty. On the couch, the imposter has disappeared. Only the car horn grows louder and louder and louder and louder and louder until--

I awaken with a gasp on the floor of my bedroom, surrounded by a fluid darkness that seems to breathe and move. Before me is my black desk, but I can’t see it in the dark. Behind me, my black bed. I can’t see it, but I know it’s there. No floorboard creaks or rustling wind, only prowling silence. I wonder how long I’ve been sleeping.

Then, my sister opens the door behind me and comes into the room. With her, floats the sound of a video game she’s playing. I want to get up, to turn around and talk to her, but somehow, I can’t find the strength. My limbs and head weigh heavily, holding me in place. It’s like I’m stuck in the middle space between sleep and wakefulness. I start kicking my legs, calling her name. My foot hits my nightstand with each kick, but no matter how much I call, she can’t hear me. She just stands behind me, out of sight, playing her video game. Finally, I scream her name with all my might, but it just comes through as a weak, “Uhhhh….”

My sister hear this and says, “Wake yourself up then.”

As she speaks, I feel the darkness in the room bend and ebb behind me to where my sister stands. Then, I feel in my gut that’s it’s not my sister behind me, but some malicious imposter. The thing standing behind me was not my sister, but a being crafted from darkness with harmful intent. I must wake up!

I kick faster, scream as hard as I can, filling the house with sound, sending the lamp and other objects crashing from the nightstand and the desk. I grit my teeth and close my eyes, but when I open them again, everything is the same. There is no sound, nothing has fallen, and the evil presence still lurks behind me. I scream at the top of my lungs, but all I can hear is that weak, “Uhhhh....”

Drifting again, I open my eyes to see my sister’s feet and pink pajama pants. She is standing over me, but it isn’t her. Panic screams for me to move, but I can’t. And when I blink, she is replaced by shadows blacker than the darkness of the room. The shadows hover over my body, pressing me down, trying to seep in. I feel the material force of malevolence strengthening behind me. Even though I can’t turn around, I can see it hovering in the air, slowly swirling behind me.

Like a fog, the blackness descends, close enough for a kiss. Its limbs wrap around my neck, gripping like a hug, like a noose, constricting my breathing, tightening, leaving me gasping for air. I squirm and scream,  but it only comes out as, “Uhhhh…. Uhhhh…. Uhhhh!”

In Your Absence... | Theland E. Thomas

I know you stalk me online, so I have a message for you. You don’t get a happy Father’s Day.

I went through a phase where I referred to you as a sperm donor, but then I stopped because even sperm donors are better fathers than you. At least they don’t sow pretense and reap disappointment.

I’d curse your name, but it’s not worth repeating.

My biggest fear is becoming like you, father. I have your blood. Seeing your characteristics in me makes me want to hunker down and hide my face and never want to talk to anyone again. I will never become like you. And if I do, I’ll kill myself.

You broke my mother’s heart. You stole her dreams. You ruined her. You did it, it was all you. She’ll never be the same. She’ll never love again because of you. You are a complete and utter failure. You are a curse, a disease. Everything you touch withers in your hands. You’re a son of a bitch and your children are bastards. I don’t care how you came to be the way you are. No one gives a shit anymore. Save your breath explaining because all you do is lie and dissumulate. You sully my mother’s name with the rest of the serpents. At least she stuck around to raise us; it’s better than you could ever do. You are not my father, you are my enemy. I know the truth about you - I lived through it. You disgust me.

Even your plea for forgiveness came with conditions. That’s not how it works. I wanted to reconcile with you many times, but that’s all over. I called you on Thanksgiving. And Christmas. And you didn’t answer. You didn’t call back because you thought your silly games were more important. You can die alone knowing that you squandered every chance at having a relationship with your children. I’ll never give you another chance. I’m done trying to reach out to you. I’m done crying in bed, pining after your withheld love. You never had any, and if you did and you held onto it for all these years, I hope it festers inside of you and eats you alive. You’ll die alone without any of us by your bedside. If I have to pull the plug, I will. At your funeral, my tears will be confused, and even then I’ll never be free of you.

Don’t have children if you’ll refuse to care for them. We didn’t ask to be here, but we’re the ones who have to live with the burden you laid upon our shoulders. We never recovered from the wounds you carved into our souls. Sometimes they take years to surface, but surface they always do in one way or another. Anger. Depression. Guilt. You did it. It’s all your fault. Waste away in your shame. You brought us into the world for pain and suffering. You left us crying ourselves to sleep night after night. We blamed ourselves, you know. Deep down, we always thought it was our fault. That you left because there was something wrong with us and we could never be loved. Even now, we never feel loved. We’ll never feel loved, and it’s all your fault. You taught us to never love. You taught us to never believe, reading straight from that fucking bible you clutch to your chest. You taught us how horrible the world really is.

My older sister knows everything. She knows things about you that I don’t know. She knows the truth about you. When you left, you shattered her mind. But you hurt her even when you were still around. And you continue to hurt her in your absence. You’re wicked, and she’s confused. She always wanted your love, but you never loved her. You never loved her. You disdained her because she reminded you of your flaws.You tried to teach her that she’d never be loved, but she had to find out for herself. You caused that. Now she tries to convince herself that God loves her, but how can that ever be true if her own father never did? Well, she has a long memory. She remembers everything. And one day, it’s all going to come flooding out to drown you. And if she won’t do it, I will.

My little sister has no memories of you and mom together. She only knows the void you left. She knows that you’ve forgotten about her. She remembers what you couldn’t every time her birthday comes around. Do you even know what day it is? Do you even know how old she is? Do you know what it’s like to grow up without so much of a card from your father on your birthday? I do. When I was 14, your last birthday card to me had nothing written in it. I’ll remember that forever. And then you show up at graduation to bask in glory that isn’t yours. To pretend that you were there the whole time. To convince others that she’s the product of your work. My little sister is the product of your absence! She is lost because you abandoned her.

You are a fake! You are a pretender! You are a liar! Down to your core, your soul is corrupt. I hope all the pain you caused us returns upon you a hundredfold. I hope the hatred and pain I feel radiates from these words. I hope you read this over and over again. I hope the guilt keeps you up at night. I hope your weeping never ends because mine never did. When you die, I hope your regrets play in a never-ending loop behind your eyelids. I hope you live four lifetimes of hell.

This Father’s Day, I want to thank you for all the times that you haven’t been there. I want to thank you for long nights studying without your support. For afternoons spent playing catch by myself. For all those awkward conversations about puberty that I didn’t have with you. Thanks for not helping chose where to go for college. Or paying a cent toward the bill. Thanks for not training me up in the way that I should go. Now that I’m older, all I do is stray. I want to thank you for lifting your guiding hand so I could grow up to be an upstanding member of society. I want to thank you for weeding yourself from the portrait so I could blossom without your poisonous influence. I really could have used a father, but I’ll never need you.

The Disablement Trilogy | Alexander T. Damle

Blood Orange

Look drop dead

Free for all downwards

Quantic quartic

Redundant

Resplendent

Clinical subliminal

Ending perpetual

Free associate

Bullet clip magazine

Make your choice all choices

Bare faced back drops

Flame out

God save the girl

Godless

Loveless

We are but the ether's atoms

Forever, never

Cyclical, parabolic

Why get up

When you can just lie there?

You with your last word

And yet the sun also rises

(always rises).

Pink and purple

And blood orange

Plains burn red

Burn bright

Burn out

God forgive these angry bastards

President God King

God kill the girl.

For once

We all die together

But still we all die alone

Together

Alone

Begin again

Disappear.

Overdose

Godless looking upwards star search castigation castrated. Forever nevermore lifeless loveless soulless heartless.

Bending down to pick up a penny off the ground your universe comes unstitched and in between the cracks in the sidewalk, you see a reflection of the world after we’re all dead, and you feel a general warmth and lightheadedness come amongst you.

Then you go insane.

Or you always were insane, can never quite tell. Pull your way up the walls by your bleeding fingers, nails ripped out down to the quick, macabre streaks chart your upward course, a reminder to all who look on from below that the only place we can go is up, aim for the moon, if you miss you’ll hit a star, etc. etc. etc. then you reach the top of the wall and, as you’re pulling yourself over, you lose your grip and fall and your spine snaps as you hit the pavement.

Piecemeal superstructures, cannibalizing themselves.

Someday the stars will all burn out and we’ll be pulled into the last energy, big bang afterbirth, at the centre of the universe, and in that moment we will know God and we will call her our lover.

Phantasmagoria of hearts wrenched from chests, slammed to the ground, and stomped into mush.

Live the dream.

If I had all the time and all the money in the world

I would

This very evening

Purchase a .45 semi-automatic handgun and a single round

And paint my brains all over this wall.

If I had very little time and no money

I would

This very evening

Steal a rope

And hang myself.

Instead I have enough time and enough money

And I spend almost every dollar I have on home remedies to a psychological ailment

That can never be cured

(Doc says its not a death sentence, but says instead I’ll have to live always with it)

Only held at bay for a few brief moments of bliss (pornography, all of it).

And I spend almost every second I have

Convincing myself to die.

But the tragedy of it is

The line between me and the other two hypothetical me’s is hope.

I still, somewhere, in some deep dark place hidden behind some nameless organ

Have some shred of hope left.

So each night, I try to dispel it.

And each morning, I wake up all the same.

Epilogue

Ha ha, all a joke. I'm fine. You're fine. We're all fine. This is fine. Ignore that everything is on fire, and that statues of angels all bleed from their eyes.

Depressing Weekend: Existentialist Nirvana | Theland E. Thomas

Atheists are the only ones who reach Nirvana because when they die, the cycle ends. When the rest of us die, we all go somewhere else. Heaven for some, Hell for most. God and the Devil lay in wait like bogeymen under the bed. But atheists, they learned the trick: If you don't believe, they can't get you.

Do you often stifle the urge to scream? Do you ever feel that sinking, hollow feeling in your gut? That churning dread? That brooding storm? Do you ever look out the window and want to jump right through it? Are you ever tempted to keep the wheel straight at a bend in the road? Do you struggle to hold your head up? Do you collapse when no one's around? When you're alone, are you plagued? By profound heaviness? By unforgivable guilt? Aren't you tired? Don't you just want some rest? Don't you want to fall asleep and never wake up?

This is partly a confession, partly an experiment to see who’s really listening.

Shadows lurk in every crevice. They've been watching me my entire life. They swarmed and crept from the corners, slithered and hissed, and when I was spooked, pulled the sheets over my eyes. They whispered in my ears until they crawled right in. Satan has been on my shoulders the entire time. His claws cleft wounds in my back, constantly reopening, oozing. His words contaminated my thoughts, painted them all black, built stumbling blocks and tore gaping holes in my mind through which I fell over and over again. I felt his hands weighing down my eyelids, constricting my neck, dragging me lower still. Like a puppet master, he planned my days, coordinated my steps, set up every moment. Like an imp he brought the memories to circle me. He brought the depression and negativity. He brought the inescapable pain. He pushed and crushed me. And when I couldn’t take it anymore, he guided my hands as I tied the noose. He lifted my head through it, and kicked the stool from under me. Choking, gagging, sputtering I kicked, flailed. Suddenly, I remembered: I didn’t want to die! He jumped giddily, clapping, laughing. Hot pressure pounding in my head. Throat crushing suffocation. Fuzzy, black splotches…..

Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is the only unforgivable sin, and there is no greater blasphemy than rejecting it until death. I remembered this as I descended into Hell.

Shh! It's okay. It's okay. Everything is alright. Just calm down. Take a few deep breaths. Relax. It's okay. You can get through this. Another damn day. You got through yesterday, didn't you? You can get through this one too. Just a few hours until lunch. Just a few hours until you're free to go home. Just a few lonely hours filling the void. Staying up to avoid sleep. Don't want to sleep. Yawning cavern, pouring rain, drowning, suffocating -- No -- Wait! Don't think that! Turn the corner. Think of something else. Something funny. Don't cry. Don't feel that! After all, tomorrow, another damn day awaits.

They said to me, You’re in a really dark place right now. I said, No, I’ve always been there, I just never had the courage to write it down. But when I’m alone I admit that it has gotten worse.

It’s always going to be like this.

Isn’t it?

There’s no amount of anything that can fix it.

Is there?

There is something broken deep down inside of me,

so far down,

I can’t even see it.

  G a p i n g  h o l e . . .

Festering wound.

Dark emptiness.

I’m not the only one. There are lots of us out there. Some go on living normal lives, smiling, pretending to love, functioning like normal human beings. No one knows the truth, and they keep the secret hidden in their hearts. Others hide it from themselves. In drugs, booze, late night parties. They don’t want to know. They don’t want anyone to know. Some of us can’t even get out of bed. Some of us struggle to function. Many of us are already dead. Me? I’m not that bad yet. But everyone knows there’s something wrong with me. I’m just a little weird. Just a little too cynical. Just a little aromantic. I think a lot about how people would react were I to end it. Many of them would say, I had a hunch.

My neck. In the morning, there is a sinking feeling as I wrap the necktie around my throat for yet another day. It’s so handsome to slowly choke to death. The uneasiness comes from the awareness that it would be so easy to just keep tightening. A morbid fascination. In the day, I pull my shirt away from my throat. It’s suddenly too tight. I’m suddenly winded, lightheaded. I just need a minute. I just need a year. Everyday, I’m digging, sinking lower all the time. I’ve gone so far down, the soil just falls back and buries me. If I can just make it through this day. If I can just make it through this year. If I can just make it through this life, then what?

Depressing Weekend: Cloud Suicide | Theland E. Thomas

I drink coffee in sips, but I drink water in gulps. Coffee is a slow drip, a steady injection of liquid energy. Water is thirst quenching, life giving. Greedily, I gulp water from my coffee mug and watch a drifting, wispy cloud commit suicide. Beaten by the wind, dried out by the sun, little puffs without enough water to survive. All the water is formless in the air or snow on the ground or liquid in my hand or contaminated with ground coffee and used to fuel a dependency. Sometimes, I think coffee is something I can’t live without, but after the highs and lows those brown beans bring, I’m left with an intolerable thirst. Without coffee, I can still wake up in the morning. Without water, I will shrivel up and dissolve like that wispy cloud.

I had a dream that I met this great girl at a club. Or maybe it was a private party at a club. Who knows, it was a dream. But anyway, her and I were two kindred hearts. Both seeking something, but uncomfortable with the party atmosphere. I don’t know who approached who, but once we started talking we didn’t stop all night, even though we had to huddle together and practically shout into each other’s ears. No, I’m not sure what we discussed, but, whatever it was, we were laughing all night. And she was absolutely gorgeous. What did she look like? I honestly don’t know. All I can remember is that she had dark hair. Well, anyway, we were still laughing and having a good time by the time everyone had left, and finally the place was empty and we had to go too. When we left, I woke up smiling, totally convinced I’d fallen in love that night, and then I had to face the slow realization that the girl didn’t exist and that it was all a fantasy.

Dreams are like clouds. They’re tangible but untouchable, heavy yet weightless.

Why do I even wave to people in the halls? They never wave back. I wonder if something happened to me while I was gone. During the break, I must have disappeared. My friends stopped contacting me. When I say hi to someone they don’t hear me. When I wave, they don’t see me. At first, I wondered if maybe I was speaking too softly, so I went up to someone I used to know and shouted her name, flailing my arms. She smiled, waved, and ran right past me into the embrace of another. Then, in the hall, I stood still to see if anyone would bump into or even brush me. The crowd just walked past me and through me. Desperate, I shredded my voice screaming and wore myself out running. But nobody noticed, nobody saw, nobody cared. Eventually, I sat on the sidelines of their lives, crushing despair weighing on me, watching everybody else interact. Laughing. Eating. Sharing. Loving. I sat and watched. Alone.

Dear God, if you reject me on Judgment Day, you’ll only be the second father to do so. I was tired of being so sinful, so I stopped believing in sin. I thought that you were the source of my self-hatred, and without you I would be happier. And I was for a little while, but now I don’t have you, and I still hate myself. Which came first, the faithful or the faithless? I used to talk to God, but I couldn’t hear him. Now he doesn't hear me because I don't talk to him. I asked God, what happened to your faithfulness? He said, I delivered Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. I asked, what about the other six million?

They say people who think happy people are deceiving themselves are depressed. But it’s true. All you happy people, sorry to break the news: you’re deceiving yourselves. Just take a look around. They say to identify and call out depressive thoughts. As if the depressive thoughts aren’t my own. Well, I thought it, didn’t I? My happiness is not contingent upon anything. If I get a raise, I will not be happy. If I get straight A’s, I will not be happy. If I am surrounded by loving family and friends, I will not be happy. If I stop everything and go travel the world, I will not be happy. When I was younger, my uncle asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up. I said, I wanted to be happy. He said wisely, “If you are not happy now, you never will be.” He was right. Funny thing is, happy clouds are dark, stormy, and brooding. They scream and cry and rush in a whirlwind. Depressed clouds commit suicide.

It’s all a joke. Stop looking at me like that.

Strawberry Jam | Alexander T. Damle

Up on the Mesa, tucked in away between the sagebrush and saguaro, lay the bones of a man long dead. And yet the town lain below bears his name, a spectre haunting ever the future. Does he know, somehow, that his name lasts out as such, carried forth forever on time turtle’s back (down, down, all the way down)?

Naught but gods and men can live forever. Gods and men and certain much prized house pets, stuffed and mounted above mantlepiece, name given, decades down, to firstborn children, origins shrouded, but still the dog remains.

Kill your father’s gods, fuck your mother’s whores, live forever, oh dear sweet Cain, forever under the banner of heaven, watchful skies, judgment set eternal of selfsame.

And Cain, what of your sweeter brother, Abel? Where does he hide? From what came you, man’s first murderer? What dark reservoir of your father’s love? Did your brother scream out for your mercy, as you bashed in his brains? Or did he simply succumb to immortal truth?

There are spots ever upon the sun, gaseous pale lumps. Bastard sons of wicked edge, snail crawls along, ever so gentle, uncut.

Apocalyptic images of love, dance ever across the brain.

Flaccid dreams a’tremble now, quiver like wet lips, suck though they may. Up now sweet child! For It! Gets! Better! (Damned, damnable, all to hell).

The earth is a great machine, each its trembling yammerings a twist of gears leviathanic.

And we’re but products of our own ambitions, yammering kind of incoherent, as if some meaning may yet spring from fountains ever trapped in youth and lustre (lost), birthing tythes, what it takes to be human, we’re all but little pieces (geometric) of a complete whole, a race as an individual.

Turn now to chapter ten, paragraph five, sentence three: “All contained within is fiction, any similarity to individuals, living or dead, is simply the vast preponderance of the universe’s impenetrable desire for eternal coincidence”.

One day the birds will fall from the sky, and the last men and women will lay down to die, and winter skies will be beset by ash, and yet still all I will be able to think of is your pretty lips on that cold December night when you kissed me on the cheek.

Death is but a promised Springtime.

She sat eating strawberry jam out of the jar as a record player skipped over a scratched copy of the score to Tarkovsky’s Solaris in the background.

He saw his face in the mirror and he didn’t recognize it.

Time flows like a melting glacier.

A melting glacier flows like a dissolving clock.

Scrawling beautiful font, cursive curly qs, the F with which her name began written in a way indicating much thought and practice, but all fading out at note’s end. She knew she’d never again see his ethereal, ephemeral scrawl. She remembered his face.

Across lips spattered and smeared, bright summer’s day, crickets chirping, scent of newly cut grass.

Miasmatic breathe in deep, cloaks you chokes you.

Deep in the wood’s primordial darkness from the ground the mushroom sprouts, and though to his eyes it is small, beneath the earth it is connected to a creature older and vaster than humanity’s greatest cities. It is the earth’s largest organism, and yet the man does not even bare it a glance down. Snowstorm is coming. Got to get inside before the clouds break.

Stormhead full steam ahead.

Their hands brush each other briefly in the normal loping step of bipedal walk, and they recoil at the tingling touch, but each of them feels a slight warmth in their heart, a general thawing, at the contact, however brief.

A lethal overdose of fluoxetine is extremely difficult to achieve. A lethal overdose of an antihistamine based sleeping aide is nigh-impossible.

Play it again, Johnny Guitar.

Forever more, sinking slow, dreaming of a summer day when you were small, the beast uncoils itself from your body.

The Great Red Dragon - reach for the sky.

And yet time and memory persist, even as, with each passing day, the woman grows more and more convinced that the two are simply poltergeists of her younger self, demanding she walk a different path.

And yet paths never change, even when they fork and curve in on themselves and begin again.

I wish I remembered how to cry.

You remember a song from your adolescence like the face of a vanished lover, lay in bed next to you. And yet somehow you cannot recall its name.

The woman shelters in the cave from the storm outside. She wraps her arms tight around itself for warmth.

The train clicks down the tracks, and the young man watches it through the window of his run-down home. He thinks of running outside, clambering on, and just seeing where it takes him. But he doesn’t.

A faint whisper of steam crawls upwards from the coffee cup

Must we live forever?

Exploring the basement of an old house tucked back in a woods deep in the heart of Louisiana, I found a trap door in the floor. I opened it, and found a root cellar, so I went inside. I wandered through the cellar a bit, and found another trapdoor. When I opened this one, all that I saw was a yawning chasm, deep and infinite. So I went inside. 

Imagination Spacemobile | Theland E. Thomas

Finally, the kid jumped up in class and shouted, “I don’t want to do this anymore! I want to be something! I want to do stuff! I want to have fun!” He leapt onto the desk, the students gaped in awe, and the menacing teacher lumbered toward him, monstrous mouth commanding control. He refused to be seated, to fall in line. Enraged, the teacher’s face began to contort, the features of her eyes replaced by a sinister glowing red. She screamed for him to sit, and as she growled, a lightning hot laser beam shot from her mouth. But the kid was too nimble. He danced to the side and karate kicked the teacher in the face, causing the students to rise up and cheer. Slithering on the floor, the teacher started to transform into a giant reptile, tail whipping back and forth under her dress. She stumbled up and spewed lasers indiscriminately, striking students at random. The kid took a running start and smashed through the window.

Torpedoing out with glass and lasers flying all around him, the kid plummeted toward the ground. A deafening roar shook the earth, shattered the windows, and blew the leaves from the trees. And just before he hit the ground, the kid thought, You know what would be cool? A spacemobile! And then was sitting in a pilot seat, and he grabbed the controls, and thrusted upward into the sky. He was free! Soaring in the clouds, untethered, unbound.

Down below, the hopeless students, workers, and slaves, looked up and saw the spacemobile shooting from one horizon to the other. Bewildered, they looked down at their shackles and back up at the child and asked, “Little boy, what powers that spaceship?”

He called down, “The power of my imagination!”

And then they cried, “But how did you get free?”
And he repeated, “Through the power of my imagination!”

And the slaves looked down at their chains and imagined they were free, and their shackles fell off. When their masters come with gleaming eyes and screaming mouths, the freed men imagined that they too had spacemobiles to escape from the deadly laser beams. Under the leadership of the boy, the freed men grew into an army of Imagination Fighters, spreading freedom across the earth. Across the sky they flew, opening the minds of all who saw them.

The masters of the world hated him, for his power was a great equalizer. While the masters would have their slaves toil for their wages, the Liberated men could imagine that they had enough to eat and it was so. While the Liberated went about setting up Heaven on Earth, the masters waged war against the boy and his army.

As he flew, they trained their rockets on Utopia and fired. Red streaked the sky and heat parted the clouds, and all the world stopped for the piercing squeal of missiles headed toward Utopia. But the Liberated could not be so easily defeated. They simply imagined that the great city had a magnificent shield that could obliterate missiles. The bombardment met with an invisible force field in an awesome display of fire and crashing, but the people resided in quiet safety.

Then the boy led an elite squad of Imagination Fighters to the leader of the masters to try to spread the good news of his wonderful gift. At the palace, he walked through halls of gold and white and was led by guards to a throne room. The master of the masters reclined on his throne. His belly stretched against his robes, and his golden crown titled lazily in his grey mane. Sneering, he bellowed, “So this is the child that’s caused me so much trouble! Tell me, little one, don’t you know the order of things?”

“No”, the kid replied simply, “I left school.”

The master of the masters chuckled dryly, then his face fell flat. He approached the boy until his massive body towered over him. Looking down his nose he pointed down at him. “Child, you need to learn this truth and learn it well. Imagination isn’t real and it never will be. This world that we, the masters have created, is the only thing that exists.”

The boy laughed out loud. “That’s not true!”

“It is the greatest truth. You have to abandon your silly fantasies and learn to be practical. Then you can live up to your full potential as a contributing member of society.”

Impassioned, the boy stepped back and spoke expressively. “But your society isn’t fair! With the power imagination, people can be all they can be!”

The master of the master’s eyes flashed red, and a shock of scales erupted across his skin as quickly as they disappeared. “I told, you, you need to forget those child’s fantasies and live in the real world or we’ll have to beat them out of you.” He roared, “Imagination has no power!”

The boy yelled back, “You’re lying!”

With that, the master of the masters let his true colors show. His skin transformed and was covered with scales of grey and gold, and he expanded in height and size until he lumbered over 10 feet. His silken robes stretched and ripped, and his crown looked comical atop his oversized head. His face was no longer human. His jaw protruded, revealing dripping fangs, and his reptilian nose matched his gleaming, angular eyes. And his roar shook the entire palace.

With the roar, a blazing fast laser beam blasted from the monster’s mouth toward the boy, who somersaulted away just in time to avoid becoming a smoking hole in the floor. Shrieking, the cowardly guards scurried away. Then, the boy imagined that he had a laser beam deflection shield in one hand, and a laser blaster in the other, and he ran circles around the master, shooting lasers in every direction. But the lasers only burned through the robes and deflected off the scales, shattering lights on the chandeliers and ruining the banners that hung on the walls.

The master bellowed, “You’ll pay for this disruption, child!” His scaly tail swept back and forth and knocked the boy to the ground. Winded, the boy squirmed as the monster stomped around him, crushing the stone floor. The master spat, spraying the boy with tiny, searing beams.

The boy rolled back to his feet and shot a few useless blasts at the towering humanoid dragon, but the monster just spread his arms and uttered a deafening cackle as the laser bounced away from him. “You’ll never defeat me!” He laughed, “Your imagination is useless!”

Then, an idea sprang into the child’s mind. He smiled, breathing in the sizzling air. “No it isn’t!”

On both sides of the shredded throne room, the walls exploded as two large, red-plated orbs bounced in. When they reached the monster, the orbs unraveled revealing two giant armadillos. The armadillos had bright blue eyes and razor-sharp claws, and they circled around the master, looking down on him and grunting. The master of the masters shifted back and forth and turned around, realizing that there was no escape from his predicament. In disbelief, he cried, “You - you can’t do this!”

The boy grinned from ear to ear. “Yes, I can. I can do anything I put my mind to.” With that, he walked away as the imaginary armadillos began tearing into the monster.

After overthrowing the master, the boy was able to spread the power of imagination to the entire world and establish an egalitarian society where nobody was in want and everyone could live up to their potential. The Imagination Fighters grew in numbers and strength until they were able to use their imagination spacemobiles to spread the power of imagination from planet to planet, slowly chipping away at the iron grip of the masters. Soon, the boy grew into a man - a handsome, formidable warrior and the strongest wielder of imagination known to the Cosmos. Under his leadership, the Imagination Fighters blossomed into an elite army of humans and alien species from all of the freed planets.

One fateful day, when warring to free a human planet, the man found himself fighting alongside a formidable warrior - a woman whose talent was unsurpassed, and whose beauty even he could not imagine. From then on, they stuck together. They married - an unstoppable power-team of strength and love. The childlike wonder that fueled their imagination was also the source of their strength, and it drew them closer day by day, year by year, as they hopped from planet to planet empowering the powerless.

But after years of steadily losing huge expanses of the galaxy to the Imagination Fighters, the masters decided to form an Interplanetary Coalition to put a stop to their antics once and for all. The Coalition formed a sealed perimeter around Imagination-occupied galactic space and started corrupting freed planets again. Soon, entire planets were losing faith in the power of imagination and accepting that the masters were right all along. If asked about their time in Utopia, the reconquered would simply say,

“It was all a dream.”

“A fantasy.”

“None of it was real.”

Losing space fast, the Imagination Fighters had no choice but to attack the coalition head on. The man and his wife lead the Fighters to the frontlines. It was a battle like none other seen in the history of the universe. The Fighters waged war, surrounded on all sides by the evil Intergalactic Coalition, whose sleek, dark spaceships embodied the oppression they cast upon the galaxy. Their untraceable lasers were dark like the blackness, contrasting with the bright yellow beams from the Imagination Fighters. Alongside his wife, the man twisted and maneuvered, his imagination spacemobile, spiraling through lasers and wreckage. All around them, particles of friends and foe, obliterated into smithereens, the heat of laser beams against the unfathomable iciness of space in lightspeed flashes. They fought valiantly, but eventually the spinning and explosions stopped, and the man and woman hovered alone. They were the only Imagination Fighters left.

Around them, an enclosed sphere of Coalition ships trained their guns on them. There they sat in the still silence of space until half of the sphere parted, making way for what can only be described as a demon. It was an enormous, deep purple orb that hovered closer until to took up their entire field of vision. Protruding from the orb, were two humongous eyes that reflected deep space - or nothing at all - swirling streaks of stars flashing at a dizzying pace.

The man tried to imagine any scenario that would get him out of this situation. Any amazing feat, twist of fate, deus ex machina, but his imagination failed him. It was completely stunted in the presence of this monstrous demon.

Over the radio, the woman whispered, “I’m scared.”

The man whispered back, “Me too.”

Suddenly, a voice erupted from the orb, so deafening that they clasped their hands over their ears, only to realize that it blared from inside their own heads.

I AM THE GALACTIC OVERLORD. YOU WILL SURRENDER TO ME.

The man replied, defiant. “I surrender to no one.”

The voice intensified, BY WHICH GROUNDS TO YOU DEFY ME?

“I fight for freedom, justice, and equality through the power of imagination. You fight power and control using fear and oppression. We will never surrender to you!”

The Galactic Overlord paused, as if considering. WHO IS “WE”? THERE ARE NO IMAGINATION FIGHTERS. EVEN NOW, WE ARE OVERTAKING THE FINAL STRONGHOLDS OF IMAGINATION AND ERADICATING THEM FROM THE GALAXY. YOU WILL SURRENDER TO ME.

Tears welled up in the man’s eyes, and for a moment, he was just a boy again. He screamed, “That’s not true!”

YOU WILL SURRENDER TO ME.

“You can’t defeat us,” he sobbed, tears streaming down his face. We have the power of imagination on our side! You can never stop us!” He strained to conjure up something, anything, to no avail. The giant orb pulsed, with what seemed like laughter.

YOU ARE BUT A CHILD. YOU THINK YOU HAVE POWER OVER ALL THE IMAGINATION IN THE UNIVERSE, BUT YOU NOT RECOGNIZE IT IN ITS PUREST FORM. BEHOLD THE TRUE POWER OF IMAGINATION.

His wife gasped, “It can’t be!” Suddenly, she was careening toward the demon, blasters firing, then she stopped, as if suspended, flames sputtering uselessly out the back of her spacemobile, yellow lasers hanging in space. A third black space opened up in the face of the demon, this time swirling with the deepest red the man had ever seen. Then, the universe was an ocean of blinding, blazing red. Then. Nothing. His wife… was nothing. Only the demon remained.

The man choked on his sobs, then they came in a long, continuous wail. He screamed as anguish flooded his mind and blotted out his thoughts, but even that anguish was overpowered by the chanting TO ME YOU WILL SURRENDER TO ME YOU WILL SURRENDER TO ME YOU WILL SURRENDER TO ME YOU WILL SURRENDER TO ME YOU WILL SURRENDER TO ME YOU WILL SURRENDER TO ME YOU WILL SURRENDER TO ME YOU WILL SURRENDER TO ME YOU WILL SURRENDER TO ME YOU WILL SURRENDER

***

The master of the masters sat on his golden throne, swathed in thick, opulent robes. His grey beard spilled over his chest, and his dulled eyes squinted across the throne room as two guards dragged in a young boy. The boy wore tattered rags that were the same color as the dirt in which he toiled. But his eyes had a bright fire, and his face a set defiance that declared that, despite the guards’ shoving, he was here by choice.

The master recognized this attribute, and he squinted through his glasses as he approached the boy. Kneeling to the boy’s level, he looked into his fiery eyes. Finally he spoke. “I hear allegations that you’re spreading this imagination nonsense about. Is that true?”

The boy shouted back, “It’s not nonsense! It’s real!”

The master pursed his lips and shook his head. “You’re wrong, little child. Imagination is not real. It has no power. And you’d best stop spreading this foolishness before someone you love gets seriously hurt. Do you understand?”

The boy stared back at him intensely , even as the tears welled up in his eyes. “It’s not foolishness! You just don’t get it! We can make the world a better place! We can save the galaxy!”

Abruptly, the master stretched open his mouth and shot a searing, red laser through the boy’s heart. He sighed wearily, watching the small body crumple. As he strode back to his throne, he ordered, “Find that boy’s village and wipe it off the face of the earth.”