Fifth Anniversary

The Smiling Oaks Bed and Breakfast was exactly as it was described in the newspaper ad. A stately Victorian home, somehow both large and quaint, with whimsical arches and angles built over the porch and windows and bright cheerful colors painted over the walls. A large oak tree dominated the front yard, and from a particularly low and sturdy branch a swing drifted back and forth in the night breeze. Lights were on inside the windows, warm and inviting. It was exactly as Ted and Nancy hoped for at the end of a long day of driving. It was perfect.

Except for the cemetery that seemed to start mere feet from the southern wall and stretched for as far as the eye could see.

“They left that out of the brochure,” Ted muttered to himself.

Nancy clung to his arm. “Oh, Ted!”

The mild unease he felt simply could have been reflux, so he patted Nancy hand still wrapped in her glove and gave her a smile. “I’m sure it’s fine, Nancy! It’s just a cemetery. Death is a part of life, after all.”

Nancy didn’t look convinced, and her eyes drifted back to the car.

No way in heck I’m driving all the way back to the city tonight. Think, Ted, think…

“We simply won’t go over there! And we’ll make sure we have a window that faces the other direction.”

She gave the gravestones another narrow look but stuck her chin out and nodded. His wife knew just as well as he did that going back to the city tonight meant picking up the children in the morning and having to explain to her parents why they were back so soon – no easy feat.

“Hello, hello!” a cheerful voice rang out as they entered the home’s foyer. An old woman as perky as the voice followed from the back hallway, short and white haired and complete with an apron and a matronly grin. “I’m so glad you made it tonight, I was getting quite worried! You must be the Winslows?”

“Yes!” Ted said, putting the bags down. “This is my wife, Nancy, and I’m Ted.”

“So nice to meet you both! I’m Gloria, I run the place with my lifelong friend Lily. She’ll be upstairs, turning down your room. We only just saw you pull up! Let me get you checked in.”

Ted wanted to ask about the cemetery next door, but he pulled himself short. Why had no one mentioned it? It was not in the brochure, not in the pictures, the travel agent they had booked through had made no mention…was it simply that a bed and breakfast next to a sprawling cemetery was bad for business? Or was there something more…

He chuckled as he shook his head. Those were the kind of thoughts a day on the road could bring.

…

Once they were settled in their room – facing north, not a headstone in sight – and had washed the road off them, Ted and Nancy went back down the stairs into the dining room to find places set, bread and drinks out, and some new faces sitting at the table. Gloria was at the head, and seated next to her was a matching old woman who must have been her friend Lily. Another couple sat with their backs to the windows, a thin man with a strong chin and blonde hair, smoking a thin cigarette, and a thinner woman with a sneer and black hair smoking an even thinner cigarette. They stopped to stare as Ted and Nancy took their seats.

“Ted and Nancy Winslow, this is Amelia and Chauncy Dearborn,” Gloria said. “And this is my good friend, Lily.”

“Nice to meet you both,” Lily said.

“And you,” Ted returned as he helped Nancy to her seat. “And a pleasure to meet you.”

Chauncy smiled and blew smoke in his direction. “Yes. I’m sure.”

Ted paused in sitting. The Amelia woman winked at him.

Oh. Great. Whatever this is.

“I’m sure you all will have plenty to talk about,” Lily said. “You’re all from the city and all.”

Amelia chuckled mirthlessly. “The city is quite big, my dear. I would wager we run in…different circles.”

“Well, who knows?” Nancy said brightly. “I’ve always thought of the city as a big neighborhood, really, it’s so funny the people you run into! So, where do you two live?”

The couple, in unison, gave Ted’s wife an up and down glance that would have been withering to her if she wasn’t the most pleasant, honest, naïve person Ted had ever had the honor of knowing. Nancy only kept smiling, waiting for their response.

Ted, on the other hand, was making fists under the table.

“Darling,” Chauncy said. “I’m not even sure you can afford the question.”

“Okay!” Gloria said, standing up and pulling Lily with her. Even Nancy was beginning to sense the tension in the air. “Why don’t we get dinner on the table?”

They hustled through the door to the kitchen, Lily glaring daggers at the two across the table.

Nancy sipped at her water, oblivious. “We live over in the Lincoln Park area, by that little park with the double fountain? Do you know it?”

“I’m sure I don’t.”

“Anyway, we are here on our fifth anniversary, can you believe it?”

“How could we?”

“We came here for our honeymoon. At first, we weren’t going to do anything big for anniversary, but then we realize it was a big number. Five!”

“Many people can’t count that high. Good for you.”

“So we called the travel agent, found out this place was still available, sent the kids to my parents, and we were in the car!”

Chauncy lit another cigarette while Amelia wandered over to the wet bar, neither of them giving Nancy another little jab. Nancy, of course, didn’t notice.

“And why did you folks come to this sleepy little town?”

Amelia scoffed as she poured scotch into a glass. “Yes, Chauncy. Why did we come to this charming…sleepy…empty…boring little town, eh?”

Chauncy rolled his eyes. “That’s quite a lot of adjectives, isn’t it, dear? A little trite, don’t you think?”

At least they don’t like each other, either.

With her drink freshened, Amelia sat in her chair, leaning hard to the side away from Chauncy. “Chauncy here is a writer. He said the city was stifling his creativity and he just had to get out. So far, he’s written… what is it dear, a page? Two?”

“It’s been three days, my dear.”

“Oh, I know. Believe me, I have felt every minute.”

Now that their viper aggression was pointed at each other Ted was starting to enjoy himself. Their comments were funny when they weren’t pointed at him and his wife. Just as Chauncy was clearly coiling himself up for another strike, a great sound exploded from the front hall of the house making all of them jump.

The door to the dining room opened.

A man stood in the frame.

He was a tall man, and singularly ugly. Crooked nose, chin too big, hat barely covering a too large forehead, cauliflower ears. He was wearing a cotton shirt under overalls with heavy work boots, all of it and his face, too, covered in dirt and mud and…something else. Something that smelled.

“Oh, well,” Amelia said, putting a hand to her nose. “Chauncy, if this doesn’t inspire something in you than I guess you can call it quits.”

“Um, hello,” Nancy said, smiling at the new man. “What’s your name?”

“Dead’s rising.”

Ted gave him a funny smile. “That’s an odd name. What was it again?”

The man looked at him full on with those small, dead eyes, and all the hairs on the back of Ted’s neck stood on end.

“Dead’s…rising.”

The other door opened again and Gloria sighed.

“Seamus, we told you,” she said, putting the tray of food down on the table. “You can’t be coming in when we have guests. This is Seamus. He works at the neighboring…park…”

Chauncy made an ah sound. “You mean the cemetery next door.”

“Yes,” Gloria said. “That. He comes over for meals…when we are empty which we are clearly not, so…”

“Dead’s rising,” Seamus said again, and he walked for the back of the house.

“He keeps saying that like it means something,” Amelia said.

Gloria’s face had gone pale. “Surely not. It’s far too early in the year for that, barely September…”

She had hustled over to the window on the south wall and pulled back the curtains. Ted watched as she put a hand on her hip.

“Shit.”

Chauncy gasped. “Such a firm word from a gentle-wait, what is that?”

He’d gotten up, intrigued by the open window. With the swift change in his tone, the others quickly followed suit.

In front of the headstones closest to the house were rather large piles of fresh dirt. And beyond, shambling away from the house in slow ugly steps, were the dead.

“Dead’s rising,” Ted muttered.

“You can’t be serious?” Chauncy asked, his cold veneer finally washed away. “Is this some sort of stupid prank?”

Ted and Nancy looked at each other, out the window, and then shrugged.

“What, do the dead not rise in your circles?” Ted asked.

Amelia scoffed, offended. “Certainly not! The dead in our part of town stay where they are supposed to be!”

“Well, ain’t that a kicker!” Nancy said. She nudged Ted. “Maybe that’s where we should go for our honeymoon next year. Some magical place in the city where the dead stay in their graves all year round.”

Ted and Gloria chuckled while Chauncy and Amelia fumed.

“I am so sorry about this,” Gloria said, letting the curtain down. “It really is quite early. They usually don’t get restless until October. We block off that whole month! I’ve never seen them up and about in September!”

“Nothing you could do about it,” Nancy said, patting the woman’s arm. “Don’t you worry. Now, which direction did Mr. Seamus go?”

Gloria’s eyes went wide. “No. No my dear, no, I could never make a guest-”

“What ‘make?’” Ted asked brightly. “We wouldn’t dream of letting the dead shamble around and do nothing about it.”

Nancy was nodding. “‘The freshly risen make good neighbors,’ that’s what my mom and dad always say. Now, why don’t you and Lily keep that meal fresh. We can go out and join Mr. Seamus, and I’m sure with the five of us we’ll have them all back in their beds in no time.”

“Five,” Amelia droned. “You must be kidding. You expect us to go out there and…what?”

“Punch their ticket. You know, knock them down. I mean, break their heads in until they stop moving again, at which point we put them back in their grave. Which is really why we should hurry, we don’t want them to get too far. They’re so heavy to drag once they’re dead again.”

Ted perhaps didn’t need to go into such a detailed explanation, but he was enjoying the looks on Mr. and Mrs. Dearborn’s faces.

“Dead’s rising,” Seamus said as he passed the hall door, a shotgun resting on either shoulder.

“Coming, old chap!” Ted said.

“Yes, save some for us!”

“Are you dears sure?” Gloria asked. “With my arthritis…”

“Of course,” Nancy said. “You sit here…and I supposed baby sit the Dearborns, hmm? Ted and I and Mr. Seamus will be back in…what do you think, Ted? An hour?”

Ted glanced out the window. “Two, tops.”

It was a bit of an interruption to their anniversary, but a couple hours of honest work in the cemetery was far better than whatever dinner was going to be with the Dearborns so Ted didn’t really mind.

Voices: Getting Your Characters To Sound Different

That’s right, I’m back again with Why Am I Taking Writing Advice From You, Again?

I don’t know, you chose to click on this link and I’m not your supervisor.

But while I’m not published except on this, the best website in the entire series of tubes, I have been writing for a long time and I’ve picked up a few things here and there.

Now, remember, the important thing about writing advice is to absorb as much of it as you can, and then figure out what works for you. If what I’ve got here doesn’t help, stop using it and look for other methods. But I hope some of this can keep your characters from sounding like a bad off-off-off Broadway one man show.

In Your First Draft, It’s Okay If Everyone Sounds Like the Same Person, and That Person is You

Anything goes in a first draft. Whatever helps to get all the sand in your sandbox. Name all your characters Bob. Start writing without knowing the ending. Start writing from the ending. Write the whole thing in Papyrus, no one gives a shit, except God who is weeping but whatever.

While I am a big believer in working to make your characters sound unique, I’m an even bigger believer of saving that for a later draft. In my first drafts, everyone sounds like me. My cadence, my sentence length, my swearing. I do this is because first drafts are quantity over quality, but that’s not the only reason.

In my first time writing fresh dialogue I don’t want to split my attention. My sole focus is on the substance of the sentences. What the character is saying, what the character actually means, what the character wants to say but can’t so is instead dancing around it by saying other things. That sort of stuff. I’m putting the meat on the table. The seasoning can come later.

Writing this way might also save you time later on down the road. Say you have a character that you’ve decided is going to be a charming Southern Belle type and you spend your first draft writing heavily into that. All ‘y’all’s and ‘bless your heart’s and whatnot. But then as the story comes to life in front of you realize that it would work better if she wasn’t Southern. She should be from Chicago, or England, or Jersey. Well, now you’re spending an entire draft going through her dialogue and untangling all that drawl.

I mean, you’re probably going to be doing lots of editing passes, anyway, might as well be able to take one off your plate.

Know Your Characters

I don’t mean doing one of those 238 Questions To Fully Know Your Character! things. I actually really hate those. It’s too much work for a character I might only know for one book! They’re a full grown adult doing adult things, I doubt the fact that their best friend in kindergarten was named Rodney is going to change anything.

For me, the dialogue edit is pretty late in the process. I’ve already done the first draft, and then all the macro edits which are usually drafts two through four for me. The setting is in stone, the plot makes sense, the pacing works, and the characters have been fully hammered out to what I want them to be. To get their dialogue down I don’t need to rank their top five favorite colors or specify their spirit animal. I’m taking the basics and putting them in front of me so I know how that’s going to change the way they speak. Basics like where they are from, age, education level, if they have a job or a hobby that comes with its own specific lingo, etc. These are going to form the base level of your characters speech pattern.

Now let’s talk about the fun stuff.

Verbosity

That’s a big word for ‘uses too many fucking words,’ and it might be one of the easiest tricks to getting your characters to sound different. Look at your character. Someone with an anxious personality who doesn’t like the quiet might ramble a lot while another character, equally anxious, might say as few words as possible because they’re afraid of sounding stupid. Confident characters can go in either direction, too – so confident they know they only need to say a few word to get the point across or confident in their voice and wanting to hear it a lot.

What I’m getting at is no matter what sort of collection of characters you have, you can find reasons to change the average length of their sentences. Having a character who speaks in short bursts right next to another character who can’t seem to find the point in under thirty seconds will immediately give the reader the sense that these are two different people without even worrying about the other stuff.

How Do They Feel About Big Words?

Are they pretentious as fuck and like using the biggest words possible every time to make sure everyone knows how smart they are?

Are they all of that but also very stupid and constantly use the big words wrong?

Are they smart but don’t need to advertise it and talk plainly?

Education level is an important jumping off point but I think there’s a lot more nuance in the character’s attitude to their own intelligence. The guy who’s smart and wants to show it off is going to sound very different from the guy who’s smart and so involved in his work he simply forgets that not everyone knows what a quark is.

Backstory Trauma

I’m not suddenly changing my mind and telling you to answer all 238 questions. But if you’ve already written a character with backstory trauma you have to think about how that’s going to change the way your character talks. Bill Denbrough in Stephen King’s It had a stutter as a child, which he had to work to grow out of, which led him to talking very slowly and deliberately in a Hollywood where most people motormouth around their cocaine, which led his wife Audra to be interested in him in the first place because his way of talking was so unusual.

If your character has any sort of trauma in their backstory, think about how that might change the way they talk.

Do They Swear, and How?

There are so many different ways to swear that it’s not just a binary.

In one of the things I’ve written, I’ve got a character who doesn’t like to swear. When she’s upset, she says stuff like ‘gosh darn’ and ‘hamburgers.’ The one or two times she says something worse, it’s an almost visible, physical effort to get herself to say it.

There’s another character who doesn’t swear not because he doesn’t want to but because it’s not in his nature. He drops something like a ‘holy shit’ or a ‘God damn it’ when the situation calls for it but otherwise keeps his language clean because that’s who he is.

Another character swears all the fucking time, but it’s primarily peppering in ‘fuck’s and ‘shit’s across all her sentences. She grew up rough and has language to match. She’s not trying to prove any point, swearing is simply a part of her.

And yet another character who also swears a lot, but he gets fucking creative with it. It’s an art to him. He’s not swearing, he’s crafting blue masterpieces. Swearing, for him, is a weapon to get a rise out of people.

There’s always been such a taboo about swearing that I think even now it can be an underutilized tool for personalizing characters. Even if you can’t write rough language because you’re publishing YA, or simply don’t want to write that sort of stuff, you can still set your characters apart by giving them different minced oaths to say. One character says ‘fudge’ a lot while the other says ‘Jiminy Christmas’ and still another doesn’t say anything like that at all.

The point is, everybody peppers their language with something, and it’s rare for two people to have the same exact spice level.

The Catchphrase

Please, please, do not give your characters actual catchphrases unless you have a plot-specific reason for it or you’re actually a time traveler writing for a sitcom in the early nineties.

I’m not talking about actual catchphrases. Just a close approximation.

Occasionally in your writing, you may come across a scene where two or a few characters are talking to each other. It’s a fast, snappy dialogue, maybe an argument or witty banter, and upon rereading the scene you’re finding the dialogue tags are slowing everything down. The pace of the conversation is faster than even the tiny pauses from ‘he said’ can handle. You need to cut out the dialogue tags altogether.

Now the problem is your reader can’t follow who is speaking. You have more than two characters, or only the two but the conversation has gone on too long and the reader might forget who is who. Instead of giving in and putting in a dialogue tag, I like to see if I can use the character’s catchphrase.

Again, not an actual catchphrase. What I mean by ‘catchphrase’ is the most unique characteristic to the dialogue I’ve established with this character. If he swears more than the other characters I’m tossing in an epithet. If she uses the biggest words, I’m tossing in something with four or five syllables. If they use the shortest sentences, I’m using a simple word or a grunt.

I’m basically taking all of the effort I’ve put it in to making my characters sounding different and I’m putting it to work.

Is this going to work every time? Probably not. But when it does, you’ve just creatively sorted a dialogue tag-less conversation without having to ruin your flow.

But My Characters Are All The Same!

I get what you’re saying. You’re writing a coming of age story about a bunch of kids in the San Fernando Valley in 1987. They’re all the same age, from the same place and time, with roughly the same upbringing. Basically, you don’t have a lot of wiggle room without it sounding disingenuous.

This is fine! Good, even! For all the reasons you’ve listed, these kids should sound mostly the same.

But only mostly.

The key here, and in any story really, is that you want your characters to sound different from each other. Even if you do have a cast of characters from all over the planet they don’t need to sound like wild stereotypes or a series of tumbling clowns. If they have different backgrounds and voices naturally, great! If they’re all from the same place, there will still be enough personality differences to give them different voices at least to the point your reader can tell them all apart.

If You Phonetically Write Out A Character’s Accent in Their Dialogue I Will Chuck Your Book Into a River

It’s hard to read and it’s tacky as shit. Don’t do it.

Oh, and One More Thing

A Different Sort of Smarts

There were those who thought that Cornelius didn’t have much in the way of brains. Even his own mother, may she burn, used to tell him he didn’t have the brains given to a cockroach. Folks had compared him to many things. A hollowed out stump. A box of hair. One of them spiny lizards sunning itself. That was just the stuff he overheard. Or the stuff that was said to his face.

The thing of it was, at least as far as Cornelius could see, he did have smarts. They just weren’t the kind of smarts most folks had. He didn’t have much learning or know much about anything. He sometimes had to have things explained to him a few times before he understood, but that didn’t mean he was brainless. It was just that all of his brains went to a single thing.

When it came to getting what he wanted, Cornelius was a gol’ darned professor.

It just seemed to be the very best way his brain worked. If there was something he wanted, he could always find a clear path to it. If someone had that something he wanted, he could always find a way to take it. Even if it was a game of luck or chance, he usually had a few tricks or two to get things to swing to his favor. Sometimes those tricks failed him, but not very often. No matter what other people said, it was a type of brains. A type Cornelius had in spades.

On top of that, he sometimes seemed to have a genuine streak of luck. There were nights he’d be winning at the poker table for hours before he had to employ some of his tricks (not a lot of those nights, lately, but quite a few in the past he looked fondly on). There was the time he’d skipped dinner at the saloon and ended up being damn near the only one in town not puking their guts up all night. And now here he was, standing on the stairs just above the little alcove where that holier-than-thou woman always perched, and just seconds before he was about to start making trouble, he was hearing the most wonderful, beautiful things.

“These flowers can grant immortality?”

“It’s not something I wanted to tell people.”

Living forever. Not something Cornelius had ever really thought about. There didn’t seem to be a way to do it without a lot books and practice, neither of which was particularly enticing. And he’d had enough daydreams about finding his mother in hell and paying her back for the roughest years of his life. But now that there was an opportunity, well, how exactly a person supposed to say no to that?

He hurried back to the table on the lightest feet he could muster, only glancing back when he was seated again. Still, he watched for one of them to poke their head out of alcove, to know that he had been there.

“What in the hell are you doing?” Neiro asked.

“Shut up,” Cornelius said.

“You didn’t do nothing-”

“I said, shut up. Wait.”

Cornelius watched and waited, ignoring the stone-cut looks Neiro was giving him. It wasn’t long at all before the two women came out from the alcove. Imrie in her leather, and the mage’s apprentice looking far too fancy for a trip up the mountain. The apprentice didn’t even glance at them, holding her head so high she looked like some sort of pretty bird, but Imrie gave them an annoyed look. Didn’t fool Cornelius one bit. He just tipped his glass at her as they walked by and waited until they were good and gone.

“Will you tell me what is going on?”

“We’ve got to pack up. We’re going for the flowers.”

Neiro blinked at him. “The flowers that mage wanted? From the top of the mountain?”

“What other flowers would I be talking about?” Cornelius asked, barely paying attention. His eyes were focused on a particular plank of wood in the floor, one with a knot. His mind was circling that knot, over and over, working on the solution.

“We turned her down. Then we were going to mess with them. Now you come back and say we took the job?”

“No, Imrie took the job. We’re going to get there first. We can do it. They don’t even know we’re going to the flowers, too. They don’t even know I know.”

“Know what?” Neiro just about yelled.

Cornelius looked all around, making sure Neiro hadn’t grabbed anyone’s attention. He smiled and waved at a table of miners until he was sure they had gone back to their meal.

“Keep your warbling voice down,” Cornelius said, kicking him under the table. He thought about not telling Neiro, or just making something up. But Neiro was the only person on the planet he trusted, even a little. Surely there’d be enough for the two of them. In fact, Cornelius was banking on there being enough for the two of them, and then more to sell. The prices he could set would set them up for life. He knew the basin she was talking about. It was flowers from edge to edge.

Cornelius leaned in over the table, and Neiro followed suit.

“These flowers she’s going after? They can give you life. Eternal life.”

Neiro blinked a few times. Cornelius could practically see the gears spinning in his head, and he just needed to wait for them to catch. Neiro didn’t have brains in the same way as Cornelius did. Neiro remembered every little fact he was told or read out of a book, but didn’t seem to have a way to put all that information together. This was how they worked together.

Nearly half a minute later, Neiro squinted a single eye, and then looked up at Cornelius.

“They’re magic flowers?” At least he had the good sense to whisper.

“Right, that’s why the mage wants ‘em. She can do something to them, turn them into a spell.”

“An immortality spell,” Neiro whispered.

“Keep your voice down! Yes, a…that. Now, they didn’t see me over there. They don’t know I know. So, we are going to go get those flowers, before they get there. We are going to use those flowers, and then we are going to sell the rest.”

Neiro was frozen, sitting sideways in his chair, one arm on his leg, the other on the table and his hand cradling his chin. He blinked a few times, and Cornelius thought now who looks like one of those spiny lizards. He was impatient, but knew he needed Neiro. So he waited.

“Why does the mage need these flowers, anyway?” he asked finally.

“Who knows? Who cares? Whatever she needs them for, she’ll be able to find another way to do it. She’s a mage, dummy. We need those flowers more than her. Do you know what people will pay for flowers that can…do that?”

Slowly, a smile bloomed on Neiro’s face. “People would pay a lot.”

“Yes. Exactly. We sell those flowers, we don’t have to be chappies anymore, Neiro. We can be whatever we want.”

Specifically speaking, Cornelius could be ‘not in debt to a creditor’, but Cornelius kept that part to himself.

Neiro’s slow smile had become a large grin. “We better get going, then, right?”

Cornelius gave a single nod. “We better.”

Streaming Shows Need to Tighten Their Shit Up

I want to preface this article by making it clear I’m coming at this from the standpoint of a TV viewer, not a writer. I have zero experience writing scripts. I wrote one without having any idea what I was doing and it’s (mostly) a joke. I have written some serials here for my website, but I have never written for television in any capacity. So don’t go through this looking for advice or any insider knowledge. I’m simply a thirty or forty year old woman complaining about shit. Thank you, and get off my land.

Oh, also, spoilers for Strangers Things and The Rings of Power that are so mild they need mayonnaise.

Back In My Day

I don’t want to go back to what television used to be, let’s just get that out there loud and clear. I already wrote this article about how television seemed to function in the nineties and most of it sucked. I do not miss how practically all television was strictly episodic because studios didn’t think the average viewer could follow an overarching story, and the saddest part is that they were mostly right because there was no internet or DVR and if you missed an episode the answer was ‘tough shit, cry about it.’

By the way, kids and young adults out there who are too young to have ever seriously interacted with a VCR: Someday, maybe soon, some older relative – your grandfather, or that uncle no one really likes – is going to find their old VCR in the attic and get all nostalgic and try to set it up. They’re going to make a lot of noises about they don’t make them like they used to (thank fuck) and this is when technology was built right or some shit. And then they’re going to try to make you program it, probably to prove their bullshit point that these kids don’t know anything these days.

 Do. Not. Fall. For. It.

Don’t even try. Play the fool and ask them to do it for you and watch them melt down into a puddle of piss and racist sentiment. Playing a VHS tape? Easiest shit in the world. Recording a VHS tape? I’d rather take the SATs again. I bet actual rocket scientists went home from NASA to sit down and watch TV with their VCR still blinking 12:00 at them the whole time.

Television is so much better now, but I’m starting to notice a few developments in streaming that are starting to make me, sort of, kind of, just a little but not really, wish for the old days. Stuff like:

Super Long Episodes

I’m fucking looking directly at you, season four of Stranger Things. The shortest episode is sixty-four minutes, and even if you exclude that fucking movie-length finale the average length is seventy-nine minutes long. Seventy-nine! On a network these would all be Very Special Double Episodes stretched out to two full hours with commercials.

I’m also occasionally giving the side-eye to Rings of Power, whose episodes all sat around the hour and ten minute range.

My problem here isn’t precisely with the episode length, I guess. I’ve got two adjacent problems.

Pacing and Self-Indulgence

The problem isn’t that an episode of Stranger Things lasted for an hour and a half. The problem is an episode of Stranger Things lasted for an hour and half and they fucking dragged. I felt the runtime in probably every episode. And I think the root of the problem with Stranger Things is that they spread themselves out too much, tried to follow too many different stories, and are so afraid of killing any of their main characters that we’re now up to, like, thirty of them who the Duffer Brothers all think deserve equal amounts of our attention.

In that article linked above about TV in the nineties I mentioned that shows are better now because generally creators seem to have far fewer restrictions from streaming services than they did from networks. But restrictions are sort of like fear: a little bit is healthy. A time or length restriction on a script or novel can really force the writer to cut the fat and streamline the story. Think about how much time was devoted to the ‘Angela Bullies Eleven’ story line in the first few episodes of the show, and then how that completely fell off once Eleven was drawn back into the main plot. Did we really need that much screen time to show that Eleven is lying to Mike about being happy in California when she’s really miserable and Angela is the main source of that misery? Or did the Duffer Brothers really want to have an Ode to Eighties Bullies Who Take it Way Too Far, Like, Seriously, How is This Teenager Not in Juvie or at Least One of Those Special High Schools?

Authors of certain genres of novels have a lot more leeway to sort of linger on little plots like this, but it’s a generally accepted fact that if you’re writing a script it has to be continually moving forward. And while I think a lot of writers for streaming shows understand that this is true for all scripts, it sure seems like sometimes creators simply see streaming television as a way to make their full-fat movie without some shitty exec name Devon trying to get it down to a tight ninety, except in this case Devon was fully fucking correct.

The problem with Rings of Power is the complete opposite: it didn’t have enough story to justify even being a television show, let alone a television show with overly-long episodes. Seriously, what the fuck was actually relevant of the first six episodes of that show? The whole thing could have been cut into a movie. The episodes were a little long and a lot boring and some of the pacing choices they made were baffling. In one early episode Galadriel finds out she has to go to the other side of the island she’s trapped on and then we get an extended sequence of her riding a horse on a beach. For what? Galadriel likes horses? Okay, fine, who cares though? What is this adding to the story? I know they spent a billion dollars on this shit and they wanted to show off their locations and sets and costume design, but maybe next season some of that money can go to, like, writers? Writers who know how to write for television? Just a thought.

Another show on Prime, The Boys, also has slightly-longer than average episodes coming in at around an hour each, but I never felt the length of those episodes. The pacing is basically perfect. And do you know why? Because Eric Kripke knows how to write for television. He even says as much in this Vulture interview:

“The downside of streaming is that a lot of filmmakers who work in streaming didn’t necessarily come out of that network grind. They’re more comfortable with the idea that they could give you ten hours where nothing happens until the eighth hour. That drives me fucking nuts, personally. As a network guy who had to get you people interested for 22 fucking hours a year, I didn’t get the benefit of, “Oh, just hang in there and don’t worry. The critics will tell you that by episode eight, shit really hits the fan.” Or anyone who says, “Well, what I’m really making is a ten-hour movie.” Fuck you! No you’re not! Make a TV show. You’re in the entertainment business.”

Before The Boys, Eric Kripke was the creator and showrunner of Supernatural. Say what you want about the quality of the show – I certainly do, all the fucking time – but the fact is Supernatural was a functional television show. Viewers were engaged not only for the forty-ish minute run time, but also from episode to episode. Oh, let’s do a fun side-heading on that.

Overarching Plots and Serialized Television Are Not Mutually Exclusive

I have no experience writing scripts but I do have experience writing a novel, and I’ve read a lot of books about it, too. One of the biggest pieces of advice present in a lot of these how-to books is to treat each chapter like it is it’s own complete thing. Have the same sort of opening-rising climax-denouement pattern as you would for an entire book. Each chapter needs to engage the read all on its own while contributing to the wider novel. You can, of course, play around with this concept, but you have to know the rules to know how to break them.

The same thing applies to serialized television. It’s what Kripke is saying up top. You can’t fart around for six episodes hoping your audience will hang on. I mean, I guess you can. And plenty do. And we watch it. Shit. I watched that whole season of Rings of Power even though I didn’t like it that much. That’s weird, right? I need to re-examine my priorities.

I Had Things I Wanted To Do Today

This one has a lot less to do with media criticism and is more a straight up complaint – episodes that are too long are hard to fit into a busy schedule. Especially now, when the amount of media to consume seems endless. In the nineties, you had whatever shows were broadcasting and that was it besides reruns. Now you can watch anything, any time. Movies, too, and video games. Every single piece of media created in this century and the entirety of the last is at your fingertips, and now the Duffer Brothers want your attention for an hour and a half, eight fucking times? Get out of here with that shit.

A Cat in the Morning

When I woke up this morning there was a little cat sitting on the floor next to my bed.

I don’t own a cat.

“I don’t own a cat,” I told the cat.

“Yes, I know,” the cat said. “You certainly don’t own me.”

“Perfect. Now that that’s settled, I’ll show you the door.”

The cat lazily stretched. “Don’t you even want to know why I’m here, then?”

“And why should I need to know the affairs of a cat? You’re probably looking for milk or something.”

“I should quite like milk, actually.”

“I’m lactose intolerant.”

The cat tutted. “Shame, then.”

“Well, off you go.”

“Not quite yet. I am here to deliver a message,” the cat said. He licked at his little paw for a few seconds – whether this was a dramatic pause or simply the way a cat holds itself I don’t know – and then finally stated rather plainly, “You will die.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Oh, is that all?”

“Is that all? I’m delivering a mortal warning and you ask is that all?”

“Exactly. I’m mortal. We all die, even me.”

“Yes,” the cat said, patience as thin as its fur. “But I’m telling you, you will die soon.”

“Oh?” I said around a yawn. It was very early in the morning, after all. “And what does ‘soon’ mean to you?”

“What?”

“I don’t know what sort of sense of time a cat has. Is soon in a couple of minutes? Or a couple of decades?”

The cat hissed. “Somewhere in between, I assure you.”

“Well, don’t you know anything more specific than ‘soon?’ Do you have a time period I can block off in my planner? Perhaps a location, too, that would be nice.”

“I have no such thing,” the cat said. “I am not here to deliver an appointment, I am here to deliver a warning.”

“And so you did. Good kitty.”

And then I woke up. And there was my room, but no cat. Although, come to think of it, there were little paw prints on the floor.

Oh, well. Never mind. I do have the strangest dreams sometimes.

Bloody Mary

The principal shifted uncomfortably in his seat again. His eyes went to the breast pocket where Lark had put his badge away. Lark sat perfectly still, hoping Principal Bob here wouldn’t want to see it again. It was a good phony, but it was still a phony.

“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “The kids really shouldn’t be talking to any authorities without their parents present.”

Fuck. A school administrator who knows the law. Whodda thunk?

Next to her, Jack smiled that big, friendly smile that had a way with the unwilling. Even now, the principal couldn’t help but relax in his seat, the tiniest bit.

“An excellent observation,” Jack said. “And a correct one. Usually. We’re not looking to interrogate anyone here. We have no reason to believe anyone in this high school is connected to these disappearances. Not as a perpetrator, anyway. We’re worried this is going to happen again. And soon. Any information we can get from any of the students on these missing girls might help us stop this before it happens again.”

“The local police already talked to a lot of the student body,” Principal Bob said.

“They don’t have the training we have,” Jack insisted. “We deal with nothing but missing kids. We might have a better idea of what to ask.”

The principal tilted his head to the side, like something Jack had said had triggered a memory.

“When you put it that way, I might have someone for you to talk to.”

Lark and Jack sat patiently next to each other while Principal Bob dove into his computer, mouse clicking and keyboard typing until he finally had the information that he wanted. He picked up his phone, dialed three numbers, and waited.

“Hey, it’s Bob. Can you send Raquel Anderson to my office, please? Yes, now. Thanks.”

“Raquel Anderson?” Lark asked.

“She wasn’t exactly friends with the missing, but she ran in the same circles and they saw each other a lot. When the local police came to interview the kids…well, the interviews were private, obviously, but I saw Raquel when she came out. She was very frustrated, but would only say that they wouldn’t listen to her. Perhaps this is exactly what you were talking about? Something the police wouldn’t understand but you would?”

Lark and Jack exchanged a look. In fact, it sounded exactly like something they were looking for. A lot of the stuff the actual cops thought was lies or bullshit was, in fact, the exact clue they needed to bust a case wide open.

And, sometimes, it was bullshit.

They tempered their emotions to cautiously optimistic.

“I should warn you, before she comes in,” Principal Bob said. “Raquel can be…a lot.”

The office door opened and a teenage girl walked in. The exact sort of teenage girl that used to bully Lark when she was a teenage girl. Jack didn’t exactly look comfortable either.

She had to be sixteen or seventeen but she was dressed like some Hollywood starlet out on the town. At 10:30 am. On a Wednesday. In the middle of Corn Maze, Iowa. Her clothes were tight and her makeup was heavy.  Ringlets of curls fell on either side of her face as she glared at her phone and typed frantically.

“Miss Anderson,” Principal Bob said with a sigh. “What’s the rule on phones?”

“No phones in class,” she answered automatically, not putting the phone down. “But I’m not in class right now, so, like, whatever.”

“Miss Anderson, please.”

Raquel lifted the phone to take a grimacing selfie and began rapidly typing again. Lark could almost imagine the post.

Sent to the principal, so lame.

Wait, did the kids still say lame? And where was she going to post it? Lark was pretty sure the kids didn’t like Facebook anymore, maybe not even Instagram. TwikTok? Was that a thing?

Finally, Raquel put the phone away and noticed Lark and Jack. She scowled.

“Miss Anderson, these people would like to talk to you. These are agents Brown and Smith from the FBI.”

Raquel grimaced as she looked both of them up and down. “Ew.”

“They want to talk to you about the missing girls.”

“Ugh, I already did this, though,” she said. “I’m going to miss lunch.”

“This won’t take long,” Lark said, standing up. “As I understand it, your conversation with the police didn’t really go the way you wanted it to?”

She still looked like she’d rather go to the cafeteria. But the way she jutted her hips out to the side made it clear she was interested in anyone who would hear her speak.

“Fine,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Just make it quick.”

Principal Bob set them up in a study room off the library. Raquel pulled a nail file out of her purse and started using it on nails that, as far as Lark could tell, were perfectly shaped already.

“So,” Jack said. “What was it you told the police that they didn’t want to hear?”

“Um, only, like, exactly who took those girls,” Raquel said. “Duh.”

“And who was that?”

“Are those khaki pants?”

“…yes?”

Raquel snorted like that was the funniest thing in the world while Jack tried to close his coat and cover the offending pants.

Lark snapped her fingers a couple of times. “Raquel? Can we focus.”

“Oh, like you get to talk in your little pantsuit.”

“Girl, please,” Lark said, tired of it. “I’m thirty-six. Do you know what that means?”

“Menopause?”

“It means you’re supposed to find me uncool and stupid. And I know that. So all your mean girl comments mean nothing to me. I’m immune.”

“You’re, like, bullying me, and that’s not okay.”

Lark rolled her eyes. “Who do you think took the girls, Raquel?”

“Okay, first of all, I don’t like that tone,” Raquel said, waving her hand around. “Second of all, I don’t think I know. I know I know.”

“Who then?”

“It was Bloody Mary.”

The three of them stared at each other for a few seconds.

“You know, Bloody Mary?” Raquel said again. “Chant her name, she comes out of the mirror, all that?”

“Yes,” Jack said. “We’re aware of who Bloody Mary is.”

“And…you’re not laughing?”

“Actually, Bloody Mary is exactly the sort of thing we investigate,” Lark said.

For the first time, Raquel looked something other than annoyed. “Like The X Files. Very retro.”

“Why do you think it’s Bloody Mary?”

“Because I walked in Makenzie and Britney and the others about to call her in the bathroom!” Raquel said. “All of them lined up in the mirror, about to chant her name. And they wanted me to join! I was like, no way, I am not helping the four of you resurrect that gross ghost. And then Patterson was all, what, are you scared? And I was like, no, I’m just not an idiot. And they were all, it’s not even real. And I was like, tell yourselves whatever you want to tell yourselves. I didn’t think Bloody Mary was real, either, but I still wasn’t going to go around calling her to come down and fuck up my life, you know? Like, have some self-respect and don’t fuck with what you don’t know. And now look – I’m here wasting a lunch period talking to you two and they’re all gone. Probably dead. You know, this is just like eighth grade, when I was at a party and a bunch of kids wanted to summon Slender Man. I called my mom and went home. They’re all dead, too.”

Lark blinked at her. “Uh, okay. Was anyone else in the bathroom that day?”

Raquel shrugged. “No, just the four of them. Stacey Higgins was going in as I was leaving and I grabbed her by the arm and pulled her down to the other bathroom. She may not understand how to dress for her body shape but I wasn’t going to let her get dragged into that mess.”

The room was quiet for a few minutes while Lark and Jack tried to understand what the fuck had just happened.

Finally, Raquel scoffed. “So, like, is that it? Can I eat now?”

“Yeah, yeah, go ahead.”

The door was already closing by the time Lark realized she was gone.

“Okay,” Jack said, putting his hands together. “I guess no one else is going to go missing around here. At least not from this.”

Lark nodded, staring at the door. “We somehow need to take that girl’s common sense and give it to everyone.”

Since When is Life Fair

Sam woke up and immediately regretted it.

What the fuck did I get into last night?

His head was pounding, he was in the fetal position, his stomach was in the fetal position and crying, his mouth was like a desert…

Desert. No, the woods. The camping trip. Fuck.

Now he remembered. He was upstate, on the boy’s weekend at the lake. The north side of the lake. Perfectly good cabins on the south side of the lake. Perfectly good road leading into town, too. But Billy was going through some sort of post-divorce crisis and for some God-forsaken reason that was manifesting as trying to be fucking seventeen again. Insisted they rough it. Get a tent, hike into the middle of nowhere, hang the food from the trees to protect against raccoons and bears. Sam wasn’t old yet, but he wasn’t young enough to be sleeping on the ground with nothing more than a bag and a slip of nylon between his back and a bunch of rocks, neither. And then Billy had wanted to party they were still seventeen and now-

“You’re awake.”

Sam shot up. Into a sitting position. He tried to stand and could actually hear the psychic screams of his entire gastro system before his knees gave out. His hands scraped across dirty rock as he caught himself. At least his head didn’t hit the…the…

Is that stone? Rock? Not like a stone floor. Like…stone.

Once he was sure he would keep from throwing up all six or seven liters of variously colored poisons he had drank the night before, Sam slowly raised his head.

A cave. He was in an honest-to-God cave. Not a big one by any stretch, maybe the size of his apartment. Stone floor, stone walls. Moss growing across the way. A woman standing on the other side. Strained sunlight came in from a hole up-

Wait. Go back.

A woman. Simple dress, no shoes, black hair down to her ass, and a face he couldn’t read. Standing here. In the middle of a cave.

Why is she in the middle of a cave?

Why am I in the middle of a cave?

“What.” It was all he managed to get out. Then his gorge rose and he sat back, walking his way through the lyrics of We Didn’t Start the Fire until the nausea passed.

“Are you okay?” she asked, her voice breathy. It made her seem younger than he’d originally pegged her. She knelt down next to him, putting a hand to his forehead. “You’re warm. Do you have a fever?”

Sam managed to shake his head. “No…no fever…just…I think we drank everything we brought for the whole damned weekend last night. Where are we?”

The woman – girl? – tilted her head to the side. “You don’t know?”

“Can’t remember,” he said. “I know I shouldn’t be here. I should be at the camp.”

“Camp?”

“We set up near the lake. On the north side.”

She let out a small gasp, even putting her hands over her mouth. “The lake? That’s almost a mile from here!”

A mile? A MILE? How the fuck did I drunkenly wander a whole damn mile? Why the fuck would I leave?

But it didn’t take long to remember. A fight. He had gotten into a fight.

Fucking Billy, man. Gets divorced and takes it out on the rest of us. All that booze. Egging us on. Game after game. Who plays drinking games at our age, huh? And then that stupid mother fucker…

“He stars talking shit about women. All women. All this red pill incel bullshit. I don’t even know where he heard it. When he had the time to find all that on the internet. And he tried to drag us into it! Get Connor to talk shit about his wife and Tim, his girlfriend. Wouldn’t fucking let it go.”

“But you respect women? Don’t mind a woman in charge?”

“Of course not!”

He’d finally had enough, he remembered now. Sort-of. Sam remembered finally screaming. He remembered it started off with what’s your problem, man? And then sort of devolved from there.

“Then what?” the woman asked.

“I hit him. Sucker-punched him, more like it.”

Billy had missed the fire by mere inches. Sam could remember the way the flames reflected on his wide open eyes as he stared at his near-death before scrambling away, spitting out blood, and coming for Sam.

“If Connor and Tim hadn’t gotten between us we would have killed each other,” he said. “That’s when…yeah, that’s right…I walked off. To cool down. Just to cool down. But I was already three sheets to the wind, and I got lost, and then in the darkness I saw a cave and…fuck, they’re probably looking for me.”

He stood up suddenly, hoping that if he did it quick enough he’d catch his body off guard and get it to work out of reflex. It mostly seemed to work. Nausea simmered and his head throbbed but he managed to keep his balance.

“Where do you think you’re going? You can’t go anywhere in this condition.”

“They’re going to get worried. If they haven’t already. I drunkenly walked off into the night…near a lake…Christ, they probably think I’m already dead.”

“That would make things easier.”

Sam stopped at the entrance to the cave. Barely an entrance, really. A hole in the wall and a pile of stones leading out. Into another part of the cave. The stones looked freshly disturbed, like they had been plugging up the hole until only the night before. Until someone came and…

He turned to look at the girl again. Except she wasn’t a girl, why had he thought that? She was a woman, clearly, around his age. Had her voice been breathy? It didn’t sound that way now.

“Easier?” he asked. “What…what are you doing out here, anyway?”

The woman clasped her hands in front of her and shrugged, looking around the cave wistfully. “This used to be my home.”

“Home?”

If her home was around here, he couldn’t be far off from town. Maybe he’d stumbled in that direction all night. His cell phone was back at camp, but if he could get into town he could find a phone and call someone. Let them know he was all right.

“Come on. I’m sure someone’s worried about you, too.”

Sam went to leave the cave.

And the funniest thing happened.

He couldn’t.

Or didn’t.

Or wouldn’t.

It was a weird sensation, one he had never felt before and thus couldn’t fully explain even to himself.

The entrance to the cave was right there. He wanted to leave and go back to his friends. The first step of leaving was leaving the cave, so obviously that’s what he should do now.

He didn’t.

“What’s happening?”

The woman behind him tsked. “You know, you’ve really thrown me for a loop. All this time waiting, and I thought whoever finally freed me would at least know what they were doing.”

“Free?”

“And then I hear you, stumbling around in the woods, tripping over all sorts of roots and rocks, and I figure, what the hell? What are the chances someone comes this way again?”

He tried leaving again, except he didn’t. For the first time, he felt something other than his hangover.

Fear.

“Why were you in this cave?” he asked again, refusing to turn around.

“I told you. This used to be my home. Well, I guess the proper term would be prison.”

“Prison?”

“Yes. These absolutely dreadful witch hunters caught up with me, some three hundred years ago now. They cheated. Used some magic from tribal people around the corner. I never saw them coming. Nex thing I knew, I was sealed up in here. Cursed.”

So dry…so dry.

“Witch hunters? That would make you…a…”

“Witch?”

He winced.

Somehow, he could sense her throwing her hands in the air behind him. “Oh, don’t be so delicate, darling. You aught to be able to say it, what with our new…relationship.”

So many questions. None of them made sense.

I was drunk. I wandered away from camp. I’m lucky I didn’t walk into the lake. I should be going home now. I need to tell my friends I’m okay. I need to apologize to Billy.

“Why…”

He didn’t want to ask. He didn’t want the answer. Sam swallowed and forced himself on, still unable to turn around.

“Why can’t I leave?”

“Because I’m not ready yet, silly boy. Neither are you, all sea-legged and sweaty. Come. Come back.”

Sam did as he was told.

“Sit.”

He half fell to the ground.

The woman’s simple dress had turned into jeans and a flannel, with a red vest over it. Very modern. She inspected these new clothes closely, feeling the threads and smelling the fleece.

“Is this how women dress now? Fascinating. I think I might like this century.”

“Who are you?”

She placed her palm on her cheek and looked at him the way you might like at a wounded puppy. “Oh, dear man, you really don’t know, do you? Has three centuries erased the very whisper of my existence? Have you never even heard of the Widow Witch?”

Sam shook his head numbly. “I’m not from here. I live in Brooklyn.”

“Ah. Maybe the locals still know my name, if not my deeds. I’ll have to find that out. You’ll forgive me for not introducing myself earlier, you were in such a state. My name is Eleanor. You, of course, will be calling me mistress. Or is that an odd thing to do, nowadays? Oh, I haven’t even asked you your name yet?”

Don’t tell her.

“Sam Robins,” said his betrayer of a tongue.

“Sam. Fine name.”

“Listen, lady-”

“Oh! Lady will do. Lady will do just fine!”

Frustration welled inside him. This situation made no sense! And now he was on the verge of tears. This was like so many nightmares where no one would listen to him and he just couldn’t wake up!

“I need to get back to my friends.”

“Oh, no, you won’t be doing that. Like you said, you were drunk. You wandered into the lake. You’re dead.”

“I…am?”

Eleanor shrugged. “That’s the story they’ll tell themselves, anyway. Maybe I’ll even put a body down there for them to find. If I’m feeling generous later, of course.”

Sam tried to speak and found a sob dangerously close to escaping. He breathed deep until the hitch was gone.

“Please…please, I don’t understand, I just…I want to understand…I want to go home.”

Eleanor sighed and sat in front of him, legs crossed. Again she began to look younger. Seventeen, maybe.

“Those witch hunters who trapped me didn’t know me. If they did, they would have known my tricks. I always have my tricks. And one of them was to add on to their little curse. Most think you cannot change another’s curse but it is not that hard. It’s not polite, of course, but it’s not hard. You see, I thought one of them would come back to check on me. Make sure I was secured. I thought one of them would come close. My power was diminished in here but not gone. I could…beckon. Get inside their head. Get them to dig me out.”

For the first time, Sam looked numbly at his hands. Covered in dirt, caked under the fingernails. Blood covered one of his fingers.

“You…you…”

“Like I said, I didn’t have many options left. They never came back. Cocky bastards. But the little trick I had woven into their curse remained. Whoever freed me, became mine.”

“Yours?”

“Well, a witch needs help, doesn’t she?” Eleanor asked brightly. “Especially in a century she doesn’t know. Tell me, has ale gotten any better?”

“I don’t want this.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“I want to go home.”

“Darling Sam, you are home. Haven’t I made that clear?”

“It isn’t fair. It was only a fight…I only walked away.”

Eleanor the witch shrugged her shoulders. “Who ever told you that things are fair? Now, I think I’m finally ready to leave. Mope all you want, as long as you follow.”

The witch walked out into her new world, and her new familiar followed.

In the Belly

You’re not supposed to feel sadness but I did anyway and that’s how I got sent to the engine room. Again.

They claim it’s for maintenance. Walk the rows of nuclear engines, connections, terminals, computers, dials, buttons, mainframes, sideframes, underframes, nuts, bolts, and nails. Find what’s broken. What can be cleaned. What can be replaced.

Was about the fourth time being sent down here that I realized it was all a sham. Everything had been built to spec. Perfect. Already we had been flying for three generations. Not once did I have to do anything. Nothing leaked. No rust. Nothing failed. Somehow, our imperfect ancestors had built a perfect machine.

Oops, there I go again. Imperfect. The sort of thoughts that get me engine room duty.

They say my brain isn’t right but they never say it directly to me so I don’t know what they’re talking about and anyway I think they’re wrong. There’s nothing wrong with my brain. I’m just different. We learned over and over in our primary classes that there’s nothing wrong with different. But that’s a lie. There’s nothing right with the right kind of different. I am the wrong kind of different. They decided that. They send me, over and over, to the engine room.

It’s okay, though. I like it down here. It’s cold, sure, they don’t waste a lot of energy on this space because its obvious people aren’t supposed to be down here. There is no main maintenance desk and only dim lights hang from an open ceiling revealing all sorts of pipes and ducts and bundles of cables that never make any sort of noise, not once not ever. No one should be down here. I shouldn’t be down here. But sometimes I get sad or bitter or angry so I’m sent down here anyway.

I have my own little set up, way far down from the elevator. It’s close to a ten minute walk but I don’t mind because I know no one will find it. None of them could bear to be in this dim, cold, quiet room for long enough. There are no screens on the walls to play diversions. No speakers, either. I am almost positive the air is completely untreated down here, too. No CheMists. Perfectly fine with me. My wrong kind of different means they don’t work on me.

The furthest end of the engine room from the elevators is the back of the ship, and for reasons I don’t know and will probably never know someone put in an observation deck. Big enough for one person. There is a good view of the outside vents. Perhaps, once upon a time, the engine room did call for maintenance staff, and they needed to see to the outside.

The first time I found it, on the second…no, third time down I cried. At first simple, stoic tears trailing down my cheeks. This turned into ugly, braying sobs. Snot bubbles. Hiccups. Salt staining my collar. By the time I was done I was exhausted, dehydrated, and I had a headache. I sat with it, staring out into the blackness of space, and relished every second of it.

I cried because, by design, there were no windows out to space in the rest of the ship. We weren’t supposed to be reminded of how our grand, beautiful home was in fact a microscopic island in the middle of a vast ocean of star dust and nothing. We weren’t supposed to think of our journey, escaping a ruined planet for a new one.

I cried harder because we weren’t supposed to cry at all, and down here no one would tell me to stop. I was already punished. What else could they do?

I relished the ache behind my forehead and my desperate need for water because usually I wouldn’t be allowed to feel those things, either. The CheMists would sense what I needed – what it thought I needed – and subtly the air around me would change until I didn’t have any sort of ache, didn’t feel the unbearable weight of tiredness on my shoulders. That’s why I’m almost positive the CheMists don’t run down here. Upstairs they don’t work right. Here they don’t seem to work at all. I love it.

I have smuggled all sorts of things down here. People stopped paying attention to me after the last doctor’s visit. When they told me my brain is wrong. They didn’t say much. My brain being wrong is a bad thing and no one says much about bad things. Bad things are scary, and fear is another thing the CheMists make sure we don’t feel.

Did I feel fear, that first time I found the observation deck? Is that why I cried? I still wonder. I felt so much.

The doctor said, in as few and as short words as possible, that there’s something wrong with my brain. It doesn’t process the CheMists the way everyone else’s brain does. I don’t really know how they make everyone else feel. All I can do is guess. People move slowly. Never raise their voice. Talk in quiet voices with small smiles and a sort of gauzy look to their eyes. Like they never quite have everything in focus. I guess they mostly feel fine. Just fine. Mellow. Happy. Sometimes someone trips. Stubs their toe. Begins to argue. Then you can hear the CheMists whir to life overhead and everything slows down.

They don’t work on me. Not because I’m wrong, no matter what they say. I’m different, that’s all. A good kind of different.

I have blankets down here. I stole them from everywhere. Home. Neighbors. School. Theater. No one seemed to mind. No one minds about anything. Food, too, some stuff that won’t go bad. A flashlight and books. Took them from the library. Hardly anyone ever goes in there so they won’t be missed. Sometimes I huddle in the blankets, back supported by six inches of see-through metal and then the vast nothing of space, and read and read and read. Sometimes I walk the spaces between the engines. Not because I think I’ll find anything. Just to stretch my legs. I sing. I scream. I cry. I make so much noise that rises above the hum of the machines that I think someone up there must hear me, even though all that metal. If they do, they never say.

They never say anything. Once when I was in tertiary classes we were having a lecture on the beauty of home and how we will recreate it when we arrive. And I asked, why did we leave? And the teacher asked, what do you mean? And I said, If Earth was so beautiful and perfect why did we leave? And the teacher said, Because we needed a new home. And I asked, why? And the teacher said, I meant we wanted a new home. We wanted to explore. And I asked, If we’re just exploring why did they send so many people? Why not send a few to build something first? Lines were forming in the teacher’s face, and then the CheMists went off above her and the lines smoothed until nothing was there. Nothing was there. The teacher moved on like we hadn’t been talking.

That’s how I figured out our ancestors destroyed Earth. Talking about leaving because we had to was too sad. I wish I knew what happened. I dream of some day getting one of the computers down here to talk to me. Whispering a password to it and then all of the secret histories will open up to me and I’ll know all the things they won’t want to. But I haven’t found that secret word yet, and anyway I have a theory. It is a theory I don’t like thinking about but I make myself anyway because if I don’t confront the bad parts of existing that makes me like them.

I don’t think there are any histories to be found. I think our ancestors purged them all when they put us on this ship. Only happy feelings. Only happy memories.

Sometimes I think of sabotage. I don’t think it has ever occurred to them that there is danger in letting someone wrong or different in the wrong kind of way down amongst their starship engine. That would be a bad thought, eh? Can’t have those.

I can have those, and I let myself have them. I imagine bringing a baseball bat down from the cages and going to town. Using what strength I have to wail on these engines and pipes and mainframes and sideframes and seeing what will break.

I am afraid nothing would break.

I am also afraid everything would.

I, too, live on this fragile little ship in the middle of a vacuum. Killing them would be killing me.

And anyway, they don’t deserve it. It’s not their fault. This is all they’ve know. All anyone has known for two generations. I guess that first generation knew of Earth. Maybe they installed the CheMists as a kindness. Take away the pain of leaving the only thing they’d ever known. The thing they’d killed. Once the CheMists were on, who would ever think of turning them off?

I think I will continue to live in exile. In fact, it only occurred to me yesterday that I could live down here permanently and no one would notice or mind. My last parent died. That is why I have been sent down here. You’re not supposed to feel sad about death. It’s natural. And I get that it’s natural. I’m also sad. Can’t have that.

I could live down here. Go up occasionally for food, water, more stuff to read. I doubt anyone will make a fuss. They are incapable. They might see me. They might nod and smile politely. But that will be it. I can take what I want and live down here, in the space. Near the space.

We will not reach our destination until after I’m dead. The fifth generation, I believe. Maybe I will find paper and pen and I will write. I will tell them all about my feelings, and how I process them with my wrong brain. I will tell them about hopes and dreams. Fears and sadness. I will tell that generation that finally finds a home planet what they need to know.

Because the CheMists are part of the ship. They cannot be taken off. And I don’t know if anyone upstairs with the right sort of brain has put two and two together yet.

Oh No! The Mario Movie Might Be (Mostly) Good?

Remember last year when they released the cast list and we weren’t sure if it was a joke or not? Especially the Chris Pratt part?

He’s so cool.

We all had this series of emotions, right? Shut the fuck up, we all did. How on God’s Green Earth did everyone at Nintendo manage to put this package together and sent it out on God’s  Beige Internet without all of them laughing to the point of stroke and/or hemorrhage? It all sounds like some terrible last minute Saturday Night Live sketch, you know, one of the ones they run at 12:55 because they don’t have a lot of confidence in it.

Of course you’re going to start the joke with Chris Pratt because this guy’s hammy face has to be in literally everything or the universe is going to collapse in itself or some shit. Then you toss out Charlie Day as Luigi because it would be funny to think of Luigi as Charlie from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. In fact, if this was a sketch, Charlie Day would be hosting and just doing Charlie lines in a cheap Luigi costume from Spirit with a cigarette in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other. And of course, the biggest laugh is saved for the end: Seth Rogen as fucking Donkey Kong because where the fuck is Donkey Kong supposed to show up in a Mario movie? That’s a double joke!

I don’t know, it took me a full day to realize this wasn’t some sort of elaborate, ill-timed prank.

And then a whole year went by, no stills, no teasers, nothing was released. We all know Nintendo can be exacting with their products and Illumination can be…um…cheap, I want to say? Yeah, cheap. How did this deal even happen in the first place, anyway?

Put simply, it was looking like the movie was going to be very, very bad.

But Now, The Trailer

It looks like it might be…good? The animation detail looks pretty on point, they somehow got Bowser to look like both Bowser and Jack Black at the same time, and the tone seems pretty spot on.

Key words here: might be good.

The teaser doesn’t really show us much of anything, and even if it did we’ve all been burned before. Trailers generally aren’t even cut by the people who make the movie for Christ’s sake, this could make us all weep in the theaters with much gnashing of teeth. There could be riots.

But maybe not.

And if it’s not? If the movie is serviceable, good, dare I say Very Good?

That Makes the Chris Pratt Thing 1000% Funnier

The only other voices we hear in this trailer from the cast drop are Bowser and Toad, and its obvious both Jack Black and Keegan-Michael Key have come to work. They are actually, you know, doing voice acting.

And then there’s Chris Pratt, with the mildest of Italian accents. The barest of Italian accents. The Olive Garden Italian accent. There was a dude in this local Italian joint I used to go to all the time in Orlando that I swear to bathtub Mary was faking his Italian accent for tips, and he was doing it a hell of a lot better than Chris Pratt here.

So if the movie is complete trash, it won’t matter, right? Chris Pratt’s terrible voice acting is going to be so much static in the noise. No one will notice.

But if the movie is good, that means that there will be entire sections of the movie – full minutes – where you’ll actually be enjoying yourself right up until Chris Pratt’s mildly-seasoned voice comes out of Mario’s tennis ball head to completely rip you out of the story and remind you that they fucking cast Chris Pratt as Mario when Charles Martinet is still alive.

One way or another this movie is going to be hilarious.

Not Hunkered Down

She opened the fridge again, peering into the cold and well lit cavern to find the bottle she was sure had been in there this morning. Her hands were shaking. She pretended they weren’t.

“Tiny! Get the fucking lead out, we’re going to miss it!”

“I can’t find the orange juice!” she called back over her shoulder.

There was some muffled talking from the direction of the front door.

“Ginny’s got it! Let’s gooooooo.”

Hunter was still pouring out an ooooooh sound as she got to the front door, slapping one hand with the back of the other for emphasis. Tiny flipped him off as she passed. She’d never admit she understood. Almost missing the celestial event of humanity for a three dollar plastic bottle of orange juice.

They’d poured what gas they had left into Lamar’s ratty Prius because it got the best gas mileage and could fit the five of them. Lamar got to drive, obviously, the Prius was half Tiny’s age and covered in dents and still Lamar was a mama bear. He had dumped two girlfriends on two entirely separate occasions for spilling something. The nail polish stains were still on the dash. He’d had the puke professionally cleaned.

Diamond got shotgun because she was a six foot tall body builder and took up half the backseat by herself. That left Tiny, Hunter, and Ginny squeezed in the back, knees almost up to their chests. Tiny opened the window to keep from getting claustrophobic.

Quick trip. It’s a quick trip.

That was a lie. Usually it was a quick trip. Tonight it would not be.

“No one on the road, anyway,” Lamar said as he pulled out of the driveway.

“Must be a big game I don’t know about?” Diamond said. They all laughed. Too hard.

The Prius, which had always felt like a boat to Tiny anyway, sailed down quiet streets at fifteen miles an hour. Headlights off, Lamar navigated by streetlamps, light off of houses, and moonlight. The curfew had started twelve hours before. Everyone was supposed to be hunkered down.

Hunkered down. Such a ridiculous phrase. All she could ever picture were groups of people hiding in basements, crouched down close to the floor, their chins resting on their knees and their hands over their heads. Faces scrunched up. Waiting for the hit.

Hits.

Earlier in the day they’d seen local cops and staties and even National Guard driving the streets, passing the house in either direction, looking for people who hadn’t hunkered down yet. What were they doing with these curfew breakers, she wondered? Were they taking them down to the station? Or were they simply going up to the closest house. Ringing the bell. Sorry to be a bother ma’am but this person has not correctly hunkered down yet. They must hunker down with you.

Maybe Tiny wasn’t so wrong. The houses they passed were mostly empty husks, their people having fled to shelters. Not everyone made it. Not everyone had been allowed in. Not everyone could go. Occasionally they would pass a house with lights still on in the basement. Once, she saw a face peering out at them from a small window. The expression had been unreadable.

Lamar drove without lights on, radio off, window down. All of them looking in every direction, waiting for some sort of authority to spot them, chase them, pull them over. But no one came. It was too close. The message was becoming clear.

If you’re not hunkered down by now, you’re on your own.

Exactly how they liked it.

After an agonizing fifteen minutes, Lamar finally found the edge of suburbia. A two lane road between a gas station and a bait and tackle. The streetlights fell off quick. The road started to wind through rocks. It started to climb. The five of them released a collective breath.

“What time is it?” Ginny asked from the other side of the back seat. Next to her, Hunter shifted uncomfortably. He’d never liked touching people, especially not girls.

“Quarter past midnight,” Diamond said, reading off the dashboard clock.

“T minus forty-two minutes,” Lamar mumbled, mostly to himself.

Hunter snorted. “They can know down to the minute when it will start, but they want us to believe they don’t know how bad it will be?”

The rest of them groaned.

“Not this shit again,” Ginny said.

Hunter sniffed. “This shit never stopped.”

“It’s not a conspiracy, man,” Lamar said.

“But they’re scientists,” Hunter said. “They stare into their little telescopes all fucking day. How can they look us in the face and tell us they don’t know how bad it’s going to be and expect us to believe us?”

Tiny tuned it all out. She didn’t need to hear it again. Ever since the announcement six or seven months back it had been a favorite topic of Hunter’s. The government’s grand conspiracy. It changed day to day, depending on how Hunter was feeling. Sometimes the government knew the world was going to end but was lying to keep the masses calm. Sometimes the government knew it was going to be fine but wanted everyone hidden away for a few hours so they could finish installing the new surveillance system. Never could Hunter articulate exactly which part of the government was doing all of this.

The difference between NASA and NSA is only one letter, he would say as though he were a sage imparting delicate wisdom and not some burnout mooching off his parents from their basement.

He’s lived his whole life hunkered down. He’s used to it.

It didn’t make any sense and Tiny began to realize she might be cracking. Her hands were still shaking.

“Let’s put on the radio,” she said, cutting through Hunter’s ongoing lecture.

Diamond happily complied. While Lamar cut through the wooded road as fast as he dared in nothing but moonlight, Diamond searched the band and found nothing but the emergency broadcast system telling them to go hunker down.

“We could plug in someone’s phone.”

Tiny shifted in her seat, uncomfortable for many reasons now. It felt wrong, somehow, to listen to their own music while they drove. Like they were disconnecting. Hunkering down the mind. The others apparently agreed. No one pulled out their phone, and they made the rest of the aching slow drive listening to the dulcet tones WEHHH WEHH WEHH WHHHMMMMMMMMMMM.

They had picked Lookout Point because it was the correct combination of ‘high enough’ and ‘easy to get to.’ Going to the top of Mount Carlisle would have been a better view. Would have given them a three-sixty view. But going to the top of Mount Carlisle was a further hour’s drive (at least) and then at least a forty minute climb. In the dark. Not worth if it nothing ended up happening. And if something did happen, and they were stuck on the trails? They wouldn’t see shit.

“What if there’s a crowd of people already up there?” Ginny asked out of nowhere, barely a minute before they’d reach the parking lot.

“Doubt anyone else is this stupid,” Diamond muttered.

“Plenty of people are this stupid,” Hunter said. “Stupider, even.”

So in the last few seconds of the worst car ride of her life a new fear was unlocked. Their quiet little spot to watch what happens wouldn’t be so quiet after all.

The parking lot was empty.

“Shit, took us a lot longer to get up here than I thought,” Hunter said.

“Nothing but moonlight, man!”

“Why couldn’t you turn the headlights on again?”

“They’d see them in town. Didn’t want anyone coming after us.”

“Five minutes!”

They all scrambled out of the car, to the trunk, pulling out the coolers and bags they had brought. It was only as they were heading for the short trail to the lookout that Tiny realized Lamar hadn’t bothered with a parking spot. The Prius was pulled right up to the trailhead, front bumper inches away from the informational sign.

RXG243 is an interstellar object recently discovered by scientists at NASA. Nicknamed Lemming, the asteroid has apparently had a dicey past. It would appear that at some point in its recent  history (‘recent’ here expressed on an interstellar scale) it had a collision with something, perhaps another asteroid or rogue planet. This would explain how it was knocked into our solar system, and how more than half of the asteroid is actually broken pieces following the unbroken half for thousands of kilometers. This largest piece is estimated to be twenty kilometers long – twice the size of the asteroid said to kill the dinosaurs – but the good news is that this piece will miss Earth, although it will be close. Close enough that the trailing pieces will almost definitely enter Earth’s atmosphere. That is the bad news.

This was not the information on the board. The board simply told of elevations, scenery, local animals. All of which, Tiny realized, was about to be fucked up by thousands of trailing Lemming pieces.

Probably. Five minutes to go and still no one was sure.

They all had different reasons for coming. For not hunkering down. She could go through them, one by one, but ultimately they all boiled down to the same peculiar brand of exhausted nihilism that had soaked into the world like so much vinegar and piss. The world had given them nothing, only taken away the things they’d fought for.

“There!”

The first light streaked across the sky just as they made the lookout. Tiny almost missed it.

“Nothing more than a shooting star,” Hunter said, huffing a little. “Maybe it won’t be so bad.”

“Another!”

And another. And another.

And at first, Hunter was right. Nothing more than shooting stars. Thin, quick streaks.

Only the streaks got longer, not blink and you’ll miss it but cutting the whole sky into pieces.

And then they got bigger.

Bright.

Closer.

“Here we go!” Diamond shouted. Tiny heard it in her voice before she felt it in herself.

Exhilaration.

Giddiness.

Hysteria?

The first piece of broken space rock made contact with the earth’s crust somewhere far to the north, and for the first time all night Tiny’s hands had stopped shaking.