The World Thins

So, this is sort of a COVID bummer story. I got to thinking, what if the waves and spikes never stopped? This isn’t supposed to be a prediction or anything and it’s not backed by any science, just a ‘what if’ story, but still: if you’re not in the mood to read about anything related to COVID, maybe skip this one.

“It was supposed to happen fast,” Cara said. She had paused on the sidewalk and broken her rule. Her eyes were scanning the buildings, the windows, the streets, looking for signs of life.

“What was?”

She mentally cursed, and kicked a pebble in front of her so it skidded across to brown grass. She had thought Jessica was too far ahead to hear her. Half a block up, now paused under the shade of a tree and staring back at her.

A few years ago, Jessica wouldn’t have heard her. The cars driving down the road would have drowned out anything that wasn’t at least a half-hearted shout. But the cars that drove the city’s streets now were few and far between. Not totally gone. Thinned out.

“What was?” Jessica asked again as Cara caught up. There was no avoiding the question. Her entire life Jessica had had the worst case of FOMO Cara had ever seen, about everything. If Cara had said something, even if it wasn’t meant for her, Jessica would not stop until she knew what it was.

“The end,” Cara said. “The end of the world was supposed to be fast.”

Jessica stared at her, in that way she had been doing more and more often, before turning up her nose.

“You’re such a fucking pessimist.” Jessica turned on her heel and stomped off down the sidewalk.

Cara sighed – silently – and then trailed after her. Precisely why she hadn’t wanted Jessica to hear. Even now, even after all this, the two of them were still falling into the same trap. Jessica was the bright, bubbly optimist. Cara the quiet, introspective pessimist. True, or self-fulfilling prophecy? Hard to say. Didn’t matter. Either way, the pattern continued.

The only thing that changed was the world around them. In the beginning, Cara had admired Jess’s positivity. Relied on it. The news would proclaim its doom and gloom and Cara would begin reaching for her anti-anxiety medication and there would Jess, right next to her on the couch, snorting her nose and shaking her head.

“These people love reporting on the end of the world,” Jess would say. “Like it happens every week. It’ll be fine. We have processes in place and we know how to take care of ourselves. Telling everyone the sky is falling is a great way to sell umbrellas.”

It helped. It really did. Cara’s anxiety had the tendency to get the better of her. Cloud her mind until she couldn’t see the blue sky anymore. But Jess had always been there, to show her she was overreacting. Worrying for nothing. They were taking precautions. Both of them worked out of their shared apartment, they did curbside pick up for everything and hadn’t seen the inside of a restaurant in years. They weren’t pretending it wasn’t happening. But Jess was the only one who could see it would get better.

Except…

Except.

“Will you hurry up?” Jessica called from a block up. It was so quiet she could have used her inside voice and Cara would have heard. “I want to get out of this sun, I’m already frying and we have to walk all the way back.”

Walk.

They were walking the mile and a half to the grocery store because the car was out of gas and, furthermore, the gas stations were out of gas. The same ‘supply chain’ issues they’d been hearing about since the beginning, only now not just stuff like toilet paper and bleach wipes. Everything.

Everything.

Cara had been wondering all morning what they would even find at the grocery store, but she kept her mouth closed on the subject. She didn’t want to hear it.

The waves had kept coming. Four years of waves, now. Countless the amount of times it looked like everything was finally over. The roll out of the first vaccines. Then, the second vaccine, far more comprehensive and easier to make and ship. Then the boosters. Then, finally, a vaccine so easy to make and ship it could go all around the world within weeks. That time, it should have been it. That time, it should have been all over.

But the entire time, since the very beginning, there were the people who wouldn’t take it.

Religious reasons. Political reasons. Fear of needles. That one always infuriated Cara, more than any of the others. If you’re afraid of a needle in the arm, she would think, wait until you see the tube they’re going to shove down your throat.

“Finally!”

Cara cut across the grass between the sidewalk and the parking lot. It was mostly overgrown and dead. It was the middle of summer. Water bans had been going on for months, and surely this little patch of grass didn’t deserve a daily sprinkle over other things.

The parking lot was empty save for four cars and a big camper parked at the back. Two of the cars had clearly been here for weeks, one of them sitting on three flats and the other with its windshield busted in entirely. The other two looked fresh. Driven. Somebody still had gas.

Cara had been terrified of the grocery store being mobbed, but it wasn’t. It was as empty as the rest of the city they had passed. Her new fear, as she crossed the sizzling parking lot like a desperado fumbling his way through the desert, was that it would be closed. The trip would have been for nothing.

Jessica approached the front doors. Cara held her breath.

The doors slid open, just as they would have in a normal world.

Cara relaxed. A little. She pulled her cloth mask out, the one with the bunny rabbits, and put it on out of habit.

Inside was deliciously cool, easily twenty degrees colder than outside. A moist, slick feeling covered her skin from the humidity that for once she didn’t mind. Hopefully they would get what they needed and get out before another brownout.

“Sussudio” by Phil Collins was playing overhead. Cara pulled a wipe out from the dispenser, wiped down a basket, and tossed it at a little wastebasket overflowing with the little white sheets. Then she took her basket and walked in.

For a few seconds, she could pretend everything was normal. The lights were on, the air was cold, the poppiest of eighties rock was playing over poorly maintained speakers. Visions of younger times, as a kid, teens, college, going grocery shopping every weekend. The way you do. The way everyone does.

Did.

The spell was broken quickly. As soon as she turned into the produce section and was faced with empty shelves. She stood next to a square stand that according to the sign should have been filled with watermelon and stared. Back muscles around her spine started to contract. Her heart fell into her stomach and started to cook in the acid. The store began to swim a little.

Not a single piece of produce was left. Nothing. Leafy greens, carrots, potato, onions, tomato. Fruit. No fruit. No watermelon, or berries.

Nothing.

Fake thunder rolled and then the sprinklers started watering the shelves, creating puddles that spilled out onto the floor.

“Jeff was supposed to turn that off.”

Cara jumped but managed to keep from screaming. Behind her, a young man was frowning at the growing mess. He caught her staring and shrugged.

“Nothing fresh, but I think there’s still some canned stuff left if you want,” he said.

“What happened?”

Cara knew full well what happened, but she needed to hear someone else say it.

He shrugged again. “We haven’t seen a produce truck in…weeks, I guess. Supply chain issues.”

She winced at the phrase. It wasn’t quite right and she knew it. But they all kept saying it. Without another word she wandered off to find Jessica.

The bakery was the same as the produce section. Deli, too. She found a handful of other people, wandering the aisles, staring at the great big heaps of nothing and wondering what to take. They were all wearing masks. All the ones left wore masks, now.

Wave after wave, and with each one the population went down just a little bit more. At first, it was easy to miss. Or pretend it hadn’t happened. After the first year a couple million people died. Double that by the end of the second year. Newspapers kept running pieces about the great worker shortage. No one wants to work anymore, they would say, the younger generations are coddled. The airlines had to cut flights, busses couldn’t run, restaurants closed early. Signs on the doors. We will be closing at eight because no one knows what a work ethic is anymore.

Cara would stare at those signs. At those headlines. At the talking heads on the news. And she would wonder, do they really not know how many died? Or are they pretending?

Speaking of pretending, she found Jessica down the cookie aisle, staring at the single package of Oreos on the shelf. Her basket was filled with a couple other things. Eggs, a mushed loaf of bread, a pack of frozen French fries.

“What are you doing?” Cara asked.

“Making sure they don’t have any Double Stuf,” Jessica said.

Besides the single pack of regular Oreos the shelf was empty. There were other, less popular cookies still sitting there, but on either side of this regular pack of Oreos was at least a foot, maybe two, of empty shelf.

“Looks like it’s the one package left, Jess,” Cara said, very careful of her tone.

“I have to be sure,” Jessica said. “I don’t want to come back.”

They stood there for a few seconds. “Sussudio” had finished, replaced with “3 AM” by Matchbox Twenty. If Cara stared at the section of store brand wafer cookies, she could pretend everything was normal.

But she didn’t want to do that anymore. It was getting harder and harder to leave that pretend-land and come back to reality. The shelf was chock full of wafer cookies because nobody fucking liked wafer cookies. Most everything else had been taken.

And Jess.

Jess was doing a lot more than pretending.

“Just take the cookies,” Cara said. They might be the last ones you ever have.

But Jess shook her head, her pony tail swinging. “I don’t like regular ones. The ratio is off. I’ll wait until next time. They’ll have Double Stuf by then.”

Jessica walked off down the aisle like she had somewhere to be.

The package crinkled in Cara’s hands as put it in her basket. She liked the Double Stuf better, too.

The last few waves had been brutal. Everyone had thought it was all over, you see. Even Cara had been getting looser with her own restrictions. She and Jessica had met with friends to eat at a restaurant. Even sitting outside – even fully vaccinated – her heart had been in her throat. They’d gone to the beach, a theme park, and even to a mostly-empty theater. Once.

Then a new strain. One that dodged the vaccines with a sort of efficiency that was hard not to characterize as calculated. The numbers started to go up. But no one wanted to go back.

Cara sort of understood. She didn’t want to go back, either. But when looking at the other option…

This is a very small wave. But people were testing at home and not reporting their positives. Wastewater testing showed a wave much, much larger than even the first one. No one talked about it.

People can’t get it again, they become super-immune! But they could, and they didn’t. This wasn’t the chickenpox, this was the cold or the flu, constantly mutating. One of Jessica’s coworkers got it on three separate occasions, before finally…

If you’re vaccinated, why worry? Because it was mutating away from the version they had all been vaccinated for. Because a new vaccination would take months to create and roll out and by then it would have mutated again.

We can’t live in fear anymore! Well, she didn’t know about anyone else, but Cara had been living in fear her entire life and didn’t really see the problem.

What little the governments had done to help stop the spread had ended when the first vaccines came out and never started again. Cara would go into a store and could have counted the amount of others wearing their mask on one hand. Even Jessica had wanted to stop. Cara had pleaded like she never had before in her life. No crying. She knew if she cried Jessica would think she was just being sad, scared Cara again. So she kept her eyes dry. Jessica promised to wear a mask, for her.

The waves from this new strain were worse, but not catastrophic. They’d never make a movie about it, because it wasn’t dramatic enough. After the third year, though, the news reported that a billion people had died worldwide.

Given underreporting, Cara knew the number was more like double that.

They started to feel the effects.

Supply chain issues became the norm. Restaurants were open for half the week, if that. Public transportation slowly died. Schools closed and never reopened.

The amount of people to staff the vast world humanity had built had been thinned almost to the point of failure.

Well, Cara thought, trailing after Jess down empty aisle after empty aisle, I guess it’s not ‘almost’ anymore.

The latest waves had run through entirely unchecked. The news wasn’t even talking about it anymore. The CDC had issued no statements about future vaccines. No one was counting the dead.

“Come on, I think we’ve got enough.”

Both of their baskets were full but Cara couldn’t even remember putting stuff in. It was all random. Lots of cans. A tub of salmon cream cheese. Frozen spinach. Neither of them even liked spinach.

I wonder if I can grow a garden, Cara thought, not for the first time.

The self-checkout machines were all closed. Not just closed, completely turned off. Still, Jessica stalked up to one and started pressing buttons. Trying to get it to come to life.

“The lights are off,” Cara said.

“Conserving energy,” Jessica said, pushing at the next one down the row. “Got to wake it up.”

None of them woke up, of course. They weren’t in some sort of sleep mode. They were completely off. Cara could even see where the plugs had been pulled from the floor sockets.

“Jessica…I think we should just go.”

Besides the young man in the produce section, she hadn’t seen a single employee. None of the manned registers were lit up. As she stood there wishing Jessica would stop punching the touch screen, she watched a mother with a toddler in the cart walk out the front without bothering to find someone. The alarm went off for a few seconds, then stopped. No one came.

“We have to pay,” Jessica said. “We’re not thieves.”

She gave up on the self-checkout machines and went to the manned machines. Looked around, head and eyes swinging wildly. No one stood behind any of the check out counters. The belts were still. The lights were off. The candy boxes were totally empty.

“Hello!” Jessica called, making her wince. “Hello? Customer needs to check out!”

“Jessica-”

“Hello!” she called louder.

“Jessica, please-”

“Hey! A customer wants to check out! My God, does no one want to work anymore?”

Cara could almost feel the snap in her mind.

“They’re all dead!” she practically screamed. Somewhere behind her, someone dropped something. Because of her? Maybe. Probably.

Jessica was staring at her like a deer in headlights. There was something…unhinged in her eyes.

“Who?” she breathed out.

“Everyone!” Cara said, not screaming. But still yelling. “Almost everyone, anyway. Enough that everything is broken. Broken and I don’t think we can fix it.”

Jessica shook her head so hard the tie in her hair lost its grip. It fell down the pony tail and Jessica’s hair bunched around her head, making her look wild.

“It’s always the same fucking thing with you! You always see the worst possible outcome. It’s just a virus, Cara. We’ve dealt with worse before. It’s all almost over, anyway. Everything is almost back to normal. You’re just being your usual, pessimistic self.”

This was the part in the conversation where Cara was supposed to relent. Tell Jessica she was right. Start looking for the brighter future.

“Jessica.” Cara’s voice was quiet, now, and she closed the gap between them. “Look around. The grocery store is empty. The city is empty. Barely any people. No food or gas or…or anything. No one is shipping anything anymore because there aren’t people to drive the trucks or the pilot the ships. No one’s left to pick fruit or bake bread. There’s no one left to stock stores. Or sell people things. Or take people anywhere. I’m not being pessimistic. Not this time. And you’re not being optimistic. If you think the world is going to be able to fix itself after this, you’re being delusional.”

Cara didn’t wait for a response. She took her basket of random food – quite possibly the last food she’d take from a grocery store – and went to the front near the doors. She packed the food into her backpack, careful to put the heavy stuff in first. When everything was in, and the bag was zipped up, she slung the straps over her shoulders and spared a last look.

Jessica was still standing by the checkout lanes. She was wearing a look Cara knew all too well for herself, but had never seen on Jessica. The wide eyes, working jaw, the way her fingers constantly moved as she held the basket or worked on her shirt.

Baby’s first panic attack. And then she chided herself. That was mean. And she’d already been mean enough.

“Come on,” Cara said, taking the basket from her. She repeated herself with Jessica’s backpack, and then helped her put it on.

Above them, the lights flickered and then died. The ambient noise of the air through the ducts quit.

“Let’s go home,” Cara said, pulling gently on Jessica’s arm. She was almost hyperventilating.

Jessica clung to Cara’s shoulder.

“It’s not over,” she whispered.

Cara patted her hand. “Yes, it is. But we’ll deal with that later.”

A Variety of Opinions I Have That Don’t Deserve Their Own Column

Stephen King is Freaky and He Can’t Stop Telling on Himself

Recently someone on r/books asked if Stephen King always puts weirdly sexual scenes into his books and there are over five thousands responses from people explaining how they’ve been personally victimized by King.

This is not the first time this topic has come up and it won’t be the last. And I know, he’s sort of writing in that pulpy genre where all sorts of weird and terrible shit happens, but, like…every book, Stephen?

And it’s all over the place, too. There’s the absolutely buckwild shit, like the infamous scene in It or the less infamous but no more ‘That’s It, I’m Calling Chris Hansen’ demon birth scene in whichever later Dark Tower book, to just, like, a really large amount of relationships between men and women with at least a fifteen year age gap, sometimes larger, always the man older the woman, and then there’s the rape. So, so much rape.

Everyone keeps making the same fucking excuse, too: cocaine is a helluva drug. And I mean, it is, but y’all know he’s not still on the cocaine, right? And yet these scenes keep happening? The cocaine is an excuse. The man is a writer in the streets and a freak in the sheets…of paper he’s writing on.

He needs therapy, is what I’m trying to say.

I Can’t Stop Reading r/AmItheAsshole Because It’s An Addiction Now, But If I Have to Read About One More Woman Wondering if She’s the Asshole While in a Clearly Abusive Relationship I’m Going to Start Screaming and Never Stop

These are so fucking common and I don’t think I can stand it anymore. I was thinking I’d link a bunch but I don’t have to. Go over there and browse around, I guarantee you’ll find one within sixty seconds.

I am, of course, glad these women are at least sort of realizing something is wrong to the point where they seek out an outside perspective. But the shit these women describe as their daily life? And they think it’s normal and they might be the asshole because they dared to stand up for themselves for once in their life and their abusive partners immediately turned it all back on them? It hurts, okay? It hurts my brain and it hurts my heart. He’s locking you, a pregnant woman, out of the bathroom at night because it wakes it him up. That’s not normal, hun.

Even more baffling to me are the ones where the mother in law clearly hates them, the husband keeps siding with his mommy, and the woman just…puts up with it? Over and over? Even if my husband was on my side and actively defending me from his mother’s bullshit I would still have to think the relationship over depending on how bad she got. If my husband wasn’t defending me, and telling me to suck it up? I would be out of there so fast the house would burn down from friction. Maybe I’m not the most impartial person because I have cut people out of my life for way, way less, but seriously. No man is worth being constantly subjected to a toxic person who only derives joy from watching you sweat.

Just in case anyone needs to hear this today:

You deserve love. You deserve respect. There is no amount of ‘other good qualities’ that makes up for a lack of either from your partner.

Something I Miss From the Broadcast TV Days: Standard Volume

Anyone who remembers the days of watching broadcast television are already getting all antsy and thinking about the commercials. And to those people I say: Yes, there did use to be a problem where network and cable channels would pump up the volume on the commercials. I, too, have not-so-fond memories of falling asleep to the dulcet tones of Jerry Orbach and Christopher Noth wittily discussing a case on the streets of New York only to be blasted awake by that guy wailing on the first note of the Pizza Bagels jingle. But, if you’ll also remember: they fucking fixed that. It took an actual act of congress to fix it, but they did, and for a few years you could safely go to the kitchen without any of the twenty-six thousand car insurance mascots screaming in your ear while you made a sandwich.

I don’t have cable anymore, so I can’t comment on what commercials are like today. What I’m talking about is trying to switch from watching something on YouTube, then Hulu, then Amazon, and every single streaming service is broadcasting on an entirely different audio spectrum. Hulu and HBO are entirely too quiet and we have to increase the volume on the television by about a dozen pips. And then God forbid we forget we had to do that and switch over to Netflix because then that double barrel Netflix sound is going to ring through the entire house, startling the cats and knocking picture frames off the wall.

Is it a dumb thing to complain about? No, go fuck yourself.

Star Wars Sucks Because No One Can Agree On What It Should Be

I guess ‘sucks’ is a strong word but whatever. It’s overall not good. I was never really a fan to begin with. I’d seen the original trilogy as a kid on VHS tapes and was unimpressed. The prequels came out when I was in middle school/high school and I had zero interest except for that Weird Al song which is a certified banger. I wasn’t into video games until 2015 so I missed stuff like Knights of the Old Republic and what not.

Then Disney backed a dump truck full of money into George Lucas’ front yard and started work on the sequels and I thought, hey, maybe now is the time I become a fan of Star Wars!

Nope.

I love The Last Jedi but it doesn’t super work as a stand-alone movie and the other two movies are either Just Okay or A Chaotic Mess. The Disney+ shows have all been various levels of Fine, I Guess. I think at this point the Star Wars thing I like the most is Jedi: Fallen Order.

And I think all of the meh-ness surrounding what is still, somehow, one of the most popular things on the planet is because ever since control was wrested away from Lucas by shoving one hundred dollar bills down his chimney until they all scattered through the air invitations-to-Hogwarts style is no one – not even the creators – can agree on what Star Wars actually is.

I’m not saying I know! Fully don’t. But I’m not the one trying to make a Star Wars movie or show or whatever. I’m merely pointing out that every time someone does make a new movie or show or whatever, they seem to spend a large chunk of time not-so-subtly pointing out why other movies and shows and whatevers aren’t REALLY Star Wars. Maybe if everyone stopped obsessing over the perceived mistakes of their predecessors and focused on the task at hand we could get Actually Good Star Wars movies with, like, I don’t know, cohesive plots and character development. I’m just spit balling here.

Dean Winchester is a Heavily Closeted Chaotic Bisexual

You have to believe me when I tell you that this statement on certain websites about ten years ago would have started a fucking FIGHT. The show is finally over and I’m still burying this deep and not even tagging Supernatural just in case.

Dean’s dad, John, is a marginally sentient turd with enough brain power to operate a crossbow or his legs, not both. He channeled all the grief from his wife dying tragically into his own fantasy revenge plot that only tangentially involved his sons, thereby wrecking all three lives to various degrees, and then he just fucking yeets himself into hell like, yeah, protecting your sons once is enough to make up for a lifetime of emotional and mental abuse.

And of course, because Papa Talked Shit and Died was in the military, all of his abuse is in the My Boys Better Be Fucking MEN vein, all classic cars with leather seats and massive oversized pick up trucks with leather seats and bomber jackets and washed out color pallets and nonstop dad rock. Sam managed to rebel with his long hippy hair but in fifteen seasons Dean manages to never actually get out from under the generational trauma and thus never figures out that his dick swings wildly in all directions at all times, even when he’s actively hitting on other men.

He’s so deep in the closet he’s got a gun to Mr. Tumnus’ head.

A Night at Lisa Marie’s

Lisa Marie was on the front porch in the dark when Donna arrived. She only knew she was sitting there because the headlights splashed across her as Donna pulled into the drive. The smoke from Lisa Marie’s cigarette wafted to her on the night breeze as she got out of the old Buick and followed the broken stone path to the little house’s porch. As her eyes adjusted to the dark she saw the ash tray on the table next to her, almost overflowing with ash and butts.

“You came,” Lisa Marie said, her voice watery.

“Of course I did.”

“The girls…?”

“Jerry had stayed the night, anyway. He’s good with them.”

“Jerry?”

Donna heard the way the panic tilted her voice up slightly, and patted the air.

“He won’t say a thing. You know he hated him. Maybe more than I did.”

In the dark, all Donna could make out was some sort of movement from Lisa Marie. She could figure out on her own it was a head nod. With expert precision Lisa Marie crushed out what remained of her cigarette and reached for the pack to light another.

“Is Cindy-”

Donna was cut off by a car engine. Coming down the street, a few houses away. Headlights off. It slipped easily into the driveway and then Cindy was slowly closing the door of her car and hustling toward them.

“I’m sorry,” she huffed. “There was traffic on the bridge. At this hour. Can you believe it?”

Donna heard Lisa Marie drag and blow. “Bob?”

A puff of air on her face as Cindy waved a hand. “He could sleep through a bomb going off in the house. He didn’t wake up from the phone ringing or me getting ready. If I’m not back by the time his third alarm goes off he’ll just think I went to work.”

A moment of silence as they all contemplated what came next. And then Lisa Marie took a big breath in – with her cigarette or without Donna couldn’t tell – and let all the air out in hitches and shakes.

“He’s inside.”

She led them through the house with the front lights off. For the most part the neighborhood would be sleeping, but Donna knew Lisa Marie was thinking of old Mrs. Carrington across the street and a house down. The woman had reached the age where sleep happened when it wanted and didn’t happen when it didn’t. Lisa Marie often told them she sat in the front window of her house the way a spider sits in the middle of the web. Watching.

So Lisa Marie left the lights off until they had reached the kitchen. With a smooth hand she found the switch on the wall, and Donna and Cindy were faced with the entire scene for the first time.

Lisa Marie looked the worst they had ever seen her. Her lip was split. Teeth stained with blood. And no amount of concealer would completely cover up the bruise forming around her right eye. It was practically swelled shut.

Worse than her face were her arms. Scratches all up and down the left arm. An ugly bruise forming on the right. Purple. Swelling. In the rough shape of a hand circling her bicep.

Worse than her arms was her neck. Rising up above the collar of her night shirt came bruises the same shade as her eye and her arm. Swelling. Wrapping all the way around.

Cindy crossed herself and lifted her eyes to the ceiling as she muttered something.

Donna got out her own holy words.

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

“I made steaks,” she said. A mess of pots and pans were still on the stove. “It was our anniversary today, remember? So I made steaks, and he said he wanted his medium-rare. But when I put it in front of him he said it was medium. He hadn’t even cut it into it.”

There were two steaks, along with mashed potatoes and corn and some bread and butter. Donna had to work to find them all, like puzzle pieces scattered over a pile of broken wood from a kitchen table and set of chairs that had been bashed in. There was gravy and blood on the walls.

Lisa Marie was fumbling for another cigarette. Outside, in the dark, she had been a stone. Now she was back in the kitchen and the lights were on and her great resolve was beginning to break. She gave up trying to light the cigarette and looked at Donna with freshly watering eyes.

“Maybe if I had cooked it rare…”

Donna didn’t let her get anything more out before pulling her close and squeezing her tight. So tight the words couldn’t come. Tight enough, she hoped, that the thoughts couldn’t come either. Lisa Marie let her arms dangle to either side of her but leaned into Donna nearly hard enough to make her lose her balance. She wept into her shoulder, the tears soaking through Donna’s blouse. Cindy waited patiently nearby, watching, but after some indescribable amount of time she looked at Donna, and then pointedly looked up at the clock.

Time did not stop for grief.

“Lisa Marie…Lisa Marie, look at me. Look at me.”

Donna held her at arm’s length, her hands resting gently on her shoulders, and she waited until Lisa Marie had pulled herself together enough to look into her eyes.

The most wonderful shade of brown with the smallest flecks of green. Those beautiful eyes were supposed to draw in the man of her dreams, an actor, a prince. Not a lazy piece of shit who kept getting fired from his job for not showing up and got his car repossessed while she was driving it.

“You are going to repeat after me,” Donna said. She waited until she had gotten the smallest nod from Lisa Marie before continuing. “This is not my fault.”

“This is…not my fault.”

“This is not my fault.”

Lisa Marie stood up a little taller. “This is not my fault.”

“He made me do this.”

“He made me do this.”

“I’m glad he’s dead.”

Lisa Marie winced, and Cindy gave her a disapproving look, but Donna knew. She knew.

“…glad…dead.”

“What?”

“I’m glad he’s dead,” came in a whisper.

“I couldn’t hear you.”

Lisa Marie set her jaw, and Donna saw the spark she was looking for. “I’m glad he’s dead.”

“Good. Now, show us the body.”

It was on the other side of the kitchen. There was a little step down into what Lisa Marie had always referred to as the Mud Room, even if the space was no more than three feet by three feet. A door to the driveway was on the other side, the curtains drawn. The basement stairs started between, wooden and splintered and creaking.

In a sprawled out puddle was Jim. Blood covered all nine square feet of the Mud Room floor. Splattered the kitchen tile and the walls. Worst of all, it was dripping down the stairs. Cindy reached over the body and flicked on the light. The blood had gotten two thirds of the way down. The air reeked of iron.

On the kitchen floor in front of the fridge, sitting in the middle of its own small puddle, was a steak knife. Surrounding it were all the letter magnets and pictures that had been up on the freezer. It was easy to piece it all together. The steak was ‘overcooked.’ Jim started taking his negative emotions out the only way he knew how. Lisa Marie grabbed her steak knife. Or maybe she had never put it down. He started choking her, up against the fridge, knocking everything off.

Then Lisa Marie had used the knife.

And again.

And again.

Driving him toward the Mud Room.

He was lying face down. She was unable to see how many times the knife had gone in. She wanted to see, wanted to count exactly how many times her friend had driven it deep, taking back her life.

She wished she could have seen the look on his face.

Cindy was examining the scene, her eyes bright and her chin set. They had seen that look on her plenty of times, usually before cooking for the church or setting about some project.

It was the look of a woman setting about important work.

“First, the body,” Cindy said, rolling up her sleeves. “Other circumstances I’d say we should move him to a bathtub, but looks like most of his blood is already on the floor so I guess that’s a moot point. Lisa Marie, did Jim have a hack saw?”

Lisa Marie looked between her dead husband and Cindy and nodded. “Out back. In the shed.”

Cindy nodded. “I’ll find it. Meanwhile, you two gather up all the cleaning supplies you have in the house. Bleach. All the bleach you have.”

All the bleach Lisa Marie wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. But Cindy, coming back in with a small bundle of sharp tools wrapped in a towel, patted Lisa Marie’s arm and told her not to worry.

“We take care of the body, we can clean up the rest in the day,” she said. “No one was coming, right?”

Lisa Marie nodded rapidly. “Right.”

A knock on the front door. A rap so small they almost didn’t hear it. They all froze, Donna and Lisa Marie holding bloody rags in gloved hands and Cindy with the saw poised just above Jim’s right elbow.

The rap came again.

And then a voice.

“Lisa Marie? Hello?”

Lisa Marie’s eyes went wide, and she mouthed, Mrs. Carrington.

Nosy bitch, Donna mouthed back. Between the three of them she was least covered in blood and bruises, so she quickly peeled off the gloves, dropped the rags in the sink, and walked cautiously to the front.

There were no red and blue lights coming through the front windows. That was a good sign. Donna was still convinced she would open the door and find not only Mrs. Carrington, but also the local finest. Guns drawn. Ready to run in.

Donna opened the door in the dark. The moon had risen. Mrs. Carrington was hunched on the front. There was no one else on the porch, or the lawn, or the street.

“Hello?” Donna asked.

Mrs. Carrington tried to look past Donna. “A little late for a party, don’t you think?”

“Can I help you with something?” she answered, closing the door a little.

“Maybe. Maybe not. I heard noises earlier this evening. Awful noises. Coming from here.”

Donna’s spine stiffened, grew cold. “Is that so?”

“Just so,” Mrs. Carrington said. “I almost called the police. Then the noises stopped, and I thought, well, just like every week. Then I saw you pull up. And your other friend, too, with the headlights off. She shouldn’t be driving like that.”

“I’m sorry, what was the point to this visit?”

Mrs. Carrington stared at her. Donna stared back, trying to seem both casual and frightening. Fear was crawling up her back. Why was the old woman here? She must know something. And if she knew something, she’d say something. Maybe not tonight. But tomorrow. Eventually. The whole town would know. Everything would come out. Everything would be ruined.

Suddenly, Mrs. Carrington smiled. “There was, actually. I have all this laundry bleach and I don’t need it.”

“What.”

“Yes. You see, I was going to donate it to the church, but then I saw Cindy’s car and thought she could bring it for me.”

Sure enough, sitting on the porch behind Mrs. Carrington was three two gallon jugs of bleach. Also a canvas shopping bag, filled to the brim with rags and old shirts.

“She can bring these to the church for me, can’t she?” Mrs. Carrington asked. “Or, maybe, she can use them. Yes, maybe you three should take them home. So if they don’t show up at the church, I won’t mind at all.”

“Um…thank you.” It was all Donna could figure out to say.

Mrs. Carrington’s eyes twinkled in the dim moonlight. “Don’t mention it.”

The old woman passed through the bleach jugs and toddled down the stairs, gripping the railing. When she reached the bottom she turned ever so slightly, the moonlight reflecting off her glasses.

“You know, there used to be a Mr. Carrington.”

Donna carried the jugs and rags into the kitchen and set them down on the counter. From where the knelt on the floor Cindy and Lisa Marie looked at her with questioning, frightened eyes.

“We don’t have to worry about Mrs. Carrington.”

The work was done by dawn. The house reeked of bleach but the floors and walls were clean. The table and chairs were brought out to the wood scrap pile. The magnets and pictures were cleaned and put back on the fridge.

Jim was in pieces, buried under the floor of the shed. If anyone asked, he’d taking a new trucking job the day before. He’d be back in a week.

Lisa Marie took ibuprofen and some of Donna’s Xanax and went to bed.

Donna arrived home around seven, an hour after dawn. Jerry was sitting outside, smoking, in a scene so similar to the beginning of the night she feared it was somehow repeating. He met her at the car.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi.”

“The girls are up. I have bags packed for them, they don’t know it. I figured, if we needed to, we could leave town for a few days. If we don’t, we can go get pancakes. What do you think?”

She gave him an exhausted smile and shrugged.

“Let’s start with pancakes, and see what the day brings.”

The Righteous

I was the most righteous.

Bathed in the blood.

Devout and proper, as all women should be.

I was raised in a good southern home by good southern parents. I graduated high school top of my class and went to the local college. I dated around a little – I never want farther than second base for I am not a loose whore – until I found my future husband. We dated for a year before he proposed. It was a June wedding, and I wore white. It was the happiest day of my life.

Until my son came, anyway. And then my daughter. And then my second son. God blessed me with a bounty of happiest days, and I knew it was because I had devoted my life to Him. I was faithful. I was in his flock. Everything I did was in His name, so everything I did was good.

Church on Sundays. Ladies Circle on Thursdays. Every other moment with my beautiful children. They were exhausting. They kept me running. Kept me fit. Kept me tired. Also kept our money thin. But we made things work. My husband worked long hours, I barely saw him, but when I did it was bliss. We took what vacations we could afford, to his parents, to my parents, to a rental cabin a couple hours away. The kids wore hand-me-downs with a smile. They were teased at school, but they knew as long as they had the Lord behind their back those bullies words were nothing but air.

Then it happened. Our methods failed.

I was pregnant again.

But it couldn’t be. We had been cautious, it seemed like it physically couldn’t happen.

But it did.

But it couldn’t be. Because we couldn’t afford it.

We crunched the numbers over and over, trying to see the light. But we were barely holding on. My husbands hours had gotten reduced – thank God he hadn’t gotten laid off like so many others had – and I’d picked up hours at a local restaurant to make ends meet. Another baby would mean I couldn’t work for at least a few months. Another baby meant childcare. Another baby meant diapers, and bottles, and clothes, and all the supplies we’d foolishly given away at the church. Our youngest was already ten. This wasn’t supposed to happen again!

But God had seen fit to give us another, so we would have to find a way. His way. There was…that other option. But I dared not think it, let alone speak it. That other option was no option at all. It was a ticket to damnation, to be cast aside from God’s love for all eternity.

Or so I believed.

Until I prayed on it.

I prayed and prayed into the night, until a small, soft voice began to speak to me.

I was the most righteous.

I went to church. I was bathed in the blood. I spoke His words.

Surely, then, if I needed that other option, that would be the right thing to do?

Yes, of course, that would be the right thing to do. Another baby, and my family would suffer. More than they already were. This was a test from God, a test to protect my family, and I would not fail.

I could not fail.

I was the most righteous.

My actions, all of them, come from that place of righteousness.

I wasn’t one of those disgusting sluts, fucking all the men they come across and aborting the results to fix my mistakes. Not some heathen, destroying my body for short-lived pleasure. I knew the word of God! I knew what I must do to achieve eternal paradise! This would not be some frivolous procedure. This would be righteous.

I did not go on Thursday. That was when the Ladies Circle went. I circled the block a couple of time anyway, just in case. There was a crowd out front, of course, there always ways. But I didn’t recognize any of them.

They screamed at me, the same things I had screamed at others. I took it all in stride. They were doing righteous work. They did not know I was righteous also. That was alright.

If I talked back, they might have remembered my face.

So now, I am here. On the table. The procedure has begun. I pray to keep the pain down. A gentle nurse tries to take my hand and I whip it away.

For I know the real devil in the room, and it’s not just me.

“You’ll burn,” I say to her. “Child murderers. All of you. He’ll send you to hell for what you do here.”

The nurse and the doctor exchange a look. Then continue patiently on. They do not argue, because they do not know I am right. They have no faith. When they die they will be cast to the furthest, hottest reaches of pain and oblivion and they will be there for years before they realize it.

I, however, will be in his Heavenly temple, by His side for all eternity.

For I am the most righteous.

The Founding Fathers

After decades of arguments about what America’s Founding Fathers would actually want for America, scientists did the impossible and brought them back. Here are some highlights from their interviews.

George Washington: How did you get candles in the ceiling and why are they burning like that?…’Electricity?’ I don’t understand what that is.

Benjamin Franklin: To be clear, you are a woman, yes? And you dress like that? You’re allowed to dress like that everywhere you go? Two more questions: Are you a prostitute and how much?

John Adams: So, it’s the year 2022, and America is still a thing. Well. Wow. Okay, then. You didn’t bring back Abigail, too, did you? I guess I owe her some money.

Alexander Hamilton: Do you people still have banks? Good, you didn’t screw that up. Explain to me how they work…What do you mean, you don’t know? Get me someone who does, then!

John Jay: Unintelligible screaming

James Madison: Where are we, anyway? Looks pretty green out there…North Carolina? South Carolina?…California? What the hell is that?

Thomas Jefferson: The Constitution? Forget that thing. Bring me the Declaration of Independence. That’s where the real truth lies.

George Washington: Okay, so it’s like that thing Mr. Franklin did with the key and the kite…urban legend? Are you kidding me? It’s the only thing he talked about for an entire year.

Benjamin Franklin: You guys ever hear about the time I tied a key to a kite?

John Adams: How’s it doing? The country?…Oh…Uh huh…wow…sucks in air through teeth…oh, do not tell Mr. Washington about the two parties thing. He’s going to lose his mind.

George Washington: examining a smart phone…Huh? Oh, yeah, two party systems, bad news, you people shouldn’t have done that…so this thing will answer any question I ask it?

John Jay: More screaming, some flailing

James Madison: All the way to the next ocean, huh? I knew we could do it. That must have meant killing so many Indians. You must have been mowing them down left and right. ‘Make way for whitey!’ Ha ha ha. Why are you all staring at me like that?

Alexander Hamilton: going over documents…No, no, no. None of this is good. This is all doomed to collapse…it already has? And it probably will again? And you’re all just sitting there? What…a play? Why do I care about a play?

George Washington: Madam Siri, when did the English Empire collapse?…Aww, it’s still there? I was hoping the French had wiped them out.

Benjamin Franklin: Hey, who’s leg do I have to hump to get a drink around here, anyway?

John Adams: By the way, why am I here?…You want my opinion of the current state of the country?…Why?

John Jay: mostly screaming, flailing…nothing!…nothing at all!…screaming

Thomas Jefferson: Is that it? Give it to me…Excellent! My signature still stands out above all the rest! Mr. Hamilton called me some choice names for writing it so big, but two hundred and fifty years later and I bet the people don’t even remember him…there’s a what?

Alexander Hamilton: Musical theater? About my life? Like, all of my life? It didn’t include the part with…oh, come on!

George Washington: Wait, this says we went to the moon…What? Abortion? Why would I have an opinion on that, I’m not a doctor…Stop asking me about that, we went to the moon? The moon in the sky?…Well, who’s up there now?…You figured out how to go to the moon and then you STOPPED?

James Madison: Guns? Hmm, let’s see, what do I think about guns? They’re…loud. Hard to handle. Take forever to load…Oh, there’s new ones? That’s nice, I guess…I don’t quite understand why we’re talking about guns so much.

Benjamin Franklin: Is the US a Christian nation? Let me answer a question with another question: Did you get kicked in the head by a mule as a child? Sure, the Puritans got here first. And completely wrecked everything. You know those people can’t even look each other in the eye without praying about it. I wouldn’t let them be in charge of a corner shop, let alone an entire country.

Thomas Jefferson: Abortion? I know a guy if you…no, hmm, he’s probably dead, isn’t he?

Abraham Lincoln: Why am I here? I’m not a Founding Father.

John Jay: Inconsolable sobbing…nothing…there was nothing…I was on my death bed, now I am here…nothing!

John Adams: I cannot answer any of your questions. This is the twenty-first century. I don’t understand how any of it works, so why do you want my opinion?…My boy, I’m not an authority on anything. I was barely an authority in my time. I spent most of my life treading water simply to keep my head above the waves. We were a bunch of idiots thrust into a political situation none of us knew how to handle and we did the best we could with what we had. Many people back then didn’t listen to us, I don’t know why you think you should listen to us.

Alexander Hamilton: Yes, yes, the play is very nice. Can we please go back to talking about banking? Someone try to explain this ‘trickle down economics’ to me in a way that won’t make me want to kill everyone in this room.

James Madison: God? What’s He got to do with anything?

Thomas Jefferson: Wait, wait, wait….Hamilton is on the ten dollar bill? What am I on?…Two dollars? Well, surely that bill is used far more frequently than the ten…what do you mean hardly anyone ever uses it?…If Hamilton is on the ten, I should be on the twenty!…Who the hell is that?

Benjamin Franklin: Oh, ho! So, not only am I on the highest denomination of currency commonly in use, my name has become a common term for high amounts of money?…I love it. I worried that my legacy would be twisted into something unbecoming of me, but it seems like you guys still get me.

George Washington: Give me that back! The things humanity has accomplished and you only brought me back to talk about America? Fuck America! Give me the magic book back!

Someone Outside

It was night, and there was someone outside.

Drew reached out and fumbled against the wall until he found the bank of light switches. He counted three from the wall and flipped it.

The flood lamp above the door flashed on, bathing the entire yard and some of the street with searing white light.

The lawn was empty.

“Drew?” Nancy called from the top of the stairs. “What are you doing?”

“Funniest thing,” Drew said, not finding it funny at all. “I thought I saw someone standing in the middle of the front lawn.”

A pause as his wife thought about it.

“Maybe it was the neighbors dog,” she said. “Or a coyote. Meredith down the street said she saw one the other day on her morning jog.”

Drew made a variety of noises indicating she was probably right.

But it didn’t feel right. Drew had been certain the dark shape in the middle of his lawn had been a man. About his height, maybe a little taller, skinny, casting a thin shadow from the street lamp fifty yards down the way. He always looked out the front window as he locked the door, more out of bored curiosity than anything. Tonight, he’d seen the shadow, and his gut instinct hadn’t been that it was an animal. He’d shrunk back, taken a couple of steps away from the window even. And then stared at the shadow, daring it to move, the entire time he’d fumbled for the lights.

It hadn’t been an animal. It had been a person.

“Well? Are you coming up?”

Drew gave the lawn and the street and the neighbors lawns a final glance. Then, with some hesitation, he flicked off the flood lamp.

The shadow did not return.

“Yeah, I’m coming.”

The memory of someone outside flaked off in little bits as he brushed his teeth, and by the time Drew was in bed, back to back with his wife, he’d forgotten all about it.

One of the stupid little things Drew was proud of in his life was his hydration. When his kids had been born he’d wanted to model good habits and had started drinking water regularly. Now he never need moisturizer or lip balm except for the dead of winter and his piss was so pale you could swim in it. The downside, of course, was that he usually had to get up in the middle of the night.

Right around one or two in the morning, without fail. He’d gotten good at navigating the bathroom without ever having to turn on a light. Nancy slept heavily on her side of the bed. She wasn’t snoring. That was good. Trying to go back to sleep while Nancy was snoring was like trying to have a conversation at a blender festival.

He stood at the toilet, staring at the landscape painting he’d put up on the wall and not really seeing it. Finished. Fix his boxers. Flushed the toilet and, out of habit, glanced out the little window to the back yard.

Someone was outside.

Standing in the middle of his back yard.

A person in complete shadow.

But Drew knew.

Someone was looking at him.

Drew stared back, unwilling to move. What if he moved, and the person saw? What if he moved, and the person moved, too? Toward the house?

Is the kitchen door locked?

They had remembered to lock the kitchen door every night for seven years. But what if tonight was the night they forgot? What if the deadbolt was flipped back, sitting comfortably in the door and not in the door frame?

What if Holly hadn’t closed it all the way when she came in from walking Bully? What if the back kitchen door was slightly ajar, totally unlocked, and a mysterious figure was standing in the middle of his back yard? Waiting for Drew to leave to dart across the yard, throw open the door, be in the house…and…and…

The someone in the middle of his yard hadn’t moved an inch.

Drew took a large, steadying breath.

He ran out of the room, banging the bathroom door open.

Ran out into the hall. Down the stairs, around the foyer, into the kitchen. Expected to find the someone standing there, the door behind them wide open.

The kitchen was empty.

The door was closed.

The lock was thrown.

The someone was standing outside the window.

“Drew, what-”

The light came on.

Drew screamed.

He backed up, staring at his reflection in the window, fumbling behind him for the light switches while Nancy looked at him with wide eyes.

He found the switch and smacked it hard.

The lights went off.

The window was empty.

Racing across the room, Drew kicked a chair and stubbed his toe as he crossed to turn on the lights outside.

Nothing but the back deck, the table and chairs, and the grill.

Beyond, the yard was devoid of someones, too.

“Drew,” Nancy said, her voice level. “What the fuck is the matter with you?”

“I saw someone,” he said, panting. “Someone outside.”

“What, before?”

“No, Nancy, again. I saw someone out back.”

“It’s probably the same dog. Or coyote.”

Drew finally turned from the window. Reluctantly.

“It’s not a damned dog,” he said. “Whoever this person is, they’re taller than me.”

“Well, how can you even tell? They’re outside, you’re inside. And it’s dark. Maybe it just seems like they’re taller than you. Maybe it’s the neighbors greyhound. That thing comes up past my belly button.”

It wasn’t a damned greyhound and Drew knew it. But how to explain to Nancy? She hadn’t seen. Any more attempts to explain would make him seem crazy.

And it would be easier if it was a dog.

Drew rubbed his face, rough hairs rasping under his palms.

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess.”

Nancy saw the look on his face when he turned, and her own face softened. “If you really think someone is skulking around there we should call the police.”

“No! No, I’m…I’m letting my mind play tricks on me, I guess. Come on. We’ve got to have the kids up in four hours.”

With the dawn, fear fades.

With the day, fears feel silly.

With dusk, those fears come back.

Drew washed the dishes with his head down, afraid of what he’d see glancing out the window.

When Holly took Bully out back he flipped on all the lights and told her to stay where he could see her.

He drew the blinds in the den, telling his kids he only wanted privacy even though none of the neighbors had a view inside.

And when it was time for bed, he checked the back door. And the garage doors. And the door from the kitchen to the garage. And finally the front door.

He kept his eyes down, refusing to look.

Halfway up the stairs, he paused.

This is ridiculous. I’m being ridiculous.

Drew forced himself back down the stairs. Across the foyer, to the window. And with great strength, he made himself look.

The yard was empty. The street was empty. Everything was as it should be.

Despite himself, relief spread across his brain like menthol. He allowed himself a giggle.

“What is it?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all. I-”

That was not Nancy standing at the top of the stairs.

Someone stood there. The hall lights were on, but they were in shadow.

The someone stared at him.

Drew stared back.

He opened his mouth to scream.

And got no further.

Lands of Eternal Summer

One day summer came and never left again.

At first, the people were okay with this. They liked this. After all, the winter had been harsh. Cruel. So dark, so cold, filled with the calls of wolves both plaintive and hungry. The people had always liked summer better. Summer was bright, and cheerful, and so full of bounty that when the days did not shorten and the evenings did not become so cool and the leaves did not begin to turn and fall they were happy, and threw joyous celebrations every week it lasted.

For a long while they still loved it. They did not know for how long, because without the turning of the seasons it became hard to track time. This did not seem like a reason to worry, though. Soon, they built new calendars, marking off the days on the wall or particularly large trees. This new summer was bringing challenges, yes, but nothing the clever people could not fix with their ingenuity.

After their calendars marked over a thousand days of summer, enthusiasm began to wane. It was always growing season, which was a good thing because it meant they did not have to worry about starving the way they had done in those brutal winters. But…it was always growing season. There was always work to be done. The people soon realized that winters had been a sort of respite to the hard work in the hot days, and now that respite was gone.

And the hot days! Oh, how the hot days marched on. Strong sun, small breezes, close air. The heat marched on and on into the night, leaving barely any of the cool hours left in the darkest parts of the night. Warmth would start creeping in again before the sky was even light to the east. Soon, even that was gone. It was warm all the time.

Then hot all the time.

Except, of course, for the storms.

Savage summer storms that rolled across plains and mountains and crops as though none of it could slow them down or stand in their way. Pelted their precious rows of corn and wheat and leafy greens with hail the size of apples, punching through leaves and knocking down stems. The people did not want to admit it to each other except when they were mostly alone, groups of two or three, hidden in the middle of otherwise empty fields or down in root cellars:

The storms were getting worse.

It’s funny, the things that start slow and end fast. Within another hundred days of summer the people were begging for winter. The darkness to give their eyes rest, the cold so they could cuddle up with each other for warmth, even the plaintive calls of the wolves were missed.

Fall, the people would say, we would settle for a fall.

But even fall was out of reach.

Eventually, the people left. Searching for winter. And if they found it, the lands of eternal summer couldn’t say.

Disney Adults: Leave Them Alone

As I basically live on the internet, I’ve noticed the slow, mellow spread of hate for “Disney Adults.” It sprung up shortly before the beginning of the pandemic when one woman took to Facebook to complain that childless adults had deprived her kid of a Mickey pretzel.

Oh, holy shit. I just re-read that post for the first time in who-the-fuck-knows and am now realizing I changed the story in my memory to be way more rational that it actually is. I thought she had been in line with her kid for a pretzel and the ‘immature millennial’ had bought the last one. Nah. Not even that. The ‘immature millennial’ was minding her own fucking business with a pretzel, the kid saw it and threw a hissy fit for one, and somehow this is the millennial’s fault simply for existing with a pretzel? Not the kid for throwing a temper tantrum, and not the mom for not managing the kids emotions. No. The unrelated human whose only crime was paying eight bucks for a shitty pretzel is the real villain of this story.

(Off-topic rant: Just because you’re at Disney World doesn’t mean your kids don’t need their afternoon nap. They do. They do.)

Anyway, for the most part the Internet was not on the poster’s side about this, but then the pandemic shut the parks down and a bunch of people started making posts about how much they missed the park and they couldn’t wait to go back. And then the parks re-opened – far too early, in my opinion – and the same people posted a bunch of videos and pictures of them running into Mickey’s open arms and crying about it.

Since then, this idea that Disney Adults are some sort of group to be hated and pitied has been casually bandied about. Never blowing up into an actual Interent Kerfuffle but never really going away either. The whole thing has left a bad taste in my mouth.

If I Still Lived in Florida, I’d Probably Be a Disney Adult

Fuck, I basically was one before we moved, before the term was a thing and no one really seemed to give a shit. When I was in nursing school, I told myself as soon as I had my very first Real Job I was going to treat myself to a Disney Annual Pass. And I did. And I used the shit out of it. Easily got my money back and then some. My family would come in and we’d go. One of our favorite things to do was go to Epcot and just sort of hang out drinking all day. Bonus if it was the Food and Wine Festival. Every January for over a decade we did one race or another in the Disney Marathon Weekend. Fuck, I even did that thing on Leap Day in 2012 where the parks were open for twenty-four hours, and I stayed for the whole twenty-four hours. Fell asleep in the Hall of Presidents. Truly magical.

I guess I no longer qualify as a Disney Adult as I now live thousands of miles from both sets of parks and have no desire to fly in either direction solely to go. And anyway, this is basically the tiniest reason for why this whole thing is making me uncomfortable. Even if I was still showing up every month in my personalized Mickey Ears I wouldn’t worry what shitheads on the internet were saying about me.

This Feels Like Another Way to Hate Women…

I know! There’s already so many ways! Like, wow, do we really need another one? How about you finish the other ways you have to hate women first, and then we’ll consider getting another one. Sheesh.

Actually, this stems from an incredibly popular way to hate women: hate the things they love. You’ve noticed this, right? Every time there’s something that becomes popular with women, suddenly there’s a big backlash against it. It’s been happening to teenage girls forever. This idea that anything they specifically like – makeup, boy bands, the color pink, fashion – are all vapid, airheaded dreck that should be mocked at every turn even by full grown adults who surely have better things to be doing is so ingrained in society that an entirely other culture of teenage girls – the I’m Not Like Other Girls girls – has grown up around it.

Adult women aren’t immune to this, either. Women like rosé and fruity drinks so these drinks are perceived as weak, immature, and basically little baby drinks compared to a Real Man’s drink. Which is totally backwards because after a night of drinking Manhattans I’m a little hungover but after a night of drinking Blue Hawaii’s I wake up to my liver, stomach, and bowels sobbing in the corner and preparing a mutiny.

Women like true crime? It’s dumb and they’re weird for fetishizing violence. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m right in the middle of the fortieth book on World War II I’ve read this year.

 Disney Adults aren’t exclusively women but it sure does seem like they’re in the center of this shit every time it pops up. If you Google ‘people crying at Disney’ all of these articles are about women. Two r/AmItheAsshole threads on the topic both featured women as the Disney Adult (we’ll circle back to those). And the incident I mentioned earlier, with the mother complaining about the younger woman daring to enter Disney as a childless adult? Yeah, in the middle of her rant she also goes out of her way to call the woman a “cunt in some very SLUTTY shorts.”

Not all Disney Adults are women, but it seems they are the ones who catch shit for being one.

…And Also Millennials

Look, I don’t need to explain this one, right? Just last week, in the Year of Our Lord 2022, there was yet another article about how Boomers think that all Millennials need to do to afford a house is cancel Netflix and stop ordering take-out. These fucking “think” pieces have been coming out since right around the time Millennials started graduating from college (directly into a recession, by the way). Millennials are childish, coddled, selfish people who have no money management skills and therefore overspend on streaming services and avocado toast (why is it always the avocado toast??) and could have had a house and a couple of babies by now if they just shaped up!

The whole Disney Adults thing slots in very nicely. How dare these grown adults enjoy something made for kids? How dare these people complain that they can’t afford a house (or rent) and then turn around and spend their money on something fun? Don’t they know they’re not allowed to have fun things?

As with the women demographic, Millennials are not all Disney Adults, they’re just the ones in the middle of all this.

Also, in my own experience, all of this Boomers Hate Millennials shit is just more drama made up for the internet and twenty-four hour news stations. I’ve never actually had a Baby Boomer say to my face that the reason I can’t save for a family is because I got participation trophies as a kid, or whatever.

Further, the whole ‘generation warfare’ thing is manufactured to distract people from the class war we should really be waging, and by class war I mean ‘billionaires versus literally everyone else on the planet.’ Millennials and every other generation alive are having an exponentially shittier time paying for housing, rent, gas, groceries, basically everything because we have a government beholden to corporations and not the people, and those corporations jack up prices for their own profits and then turn around and tell people the actual problem is their parents or their kids.

But Back to Disney Adults

Here’s a summary of those two r/AmItheAsshole posts:

In the first, a twenty-eight year old woman wants to know if she’s the asshole because for her wedding instead of paying for catering and bar services she spent those thousands of dollars to have an hour appearance by Mickey and Minnie.

In the second, a man asks if he’s the asshole because he told his sister she needs to stop being obsessed with Disney. ‘Obsessed’ here meaning, by his own account, she wears Disney-printed scrubs at work (but she doesn’t work pediatrics, she works with old people!), she has Disney-related items in her own home (but ‘her house isn’t overtaken like some of the fanatics I’ve heard online’), and she spends all her vacation time going to Disney World, Disney Land, or on a Disney Cruise. Like, that’s it. That’s her ‘obsession.’

First off: I know there’s a non-zero chance and most likely a high probability that either or both of these posts are entirely fabricated. I basically read this subreddit like it’s reality TV: obviously scripted but juicy nonetheless. Even if both are fake, whoever wrote them is still trying to capitalize on the Nonsense Du Jour so I think it still stands to take a look at them.

The first lady was voted the asshole, and for obvious reasons.

The second dude was also voted the asshole, also for obvious reasons.

And I think the difference in these stories makes a point worth looking at.

For Anyone Actually Complaining About Disney Adults: How Are These People Hurting You, Exactly?

The first lady, yeah, shit dude, what the actual fuck? But the heart of the issue isn’t the fact that she’s obsessed with Disney. It could have been any obsession at all. She could have spent that money on a giant fireworks display, or a celebrity appearance by Dwayne Johnson. The sticking point is that she deliberately chose to not feed or water her guests so she could indulge in something unnecessary.

That second post, though. This guy is basically the face (or the ass) of all this. He was also voted the asshole, and the top comment gets to the heart of the matter:

Info: Her vacation preferences harm you how, exactly?

This is basically what I think every time I see a new thing about Disney Adults. Why the fuck does anyone care what people do with their own time and money? How is it hurting you, exactly, to see people so excited to be in the Magic Kingdom they start crying? Why do you care that strangers are getting some sort of contentment from putting on Mickey Ears and dressing up to go see the latest movie? How does it impact you in the slightest if a childless woman decides she wants to wear fun prints to work to liven up her day?

Just like the whole Boomers versus Millennials thing, this whole Disney Adults situation primarily lives online, and is entirely fueled by bored idiots behind a desk or people with a deadline. As Sony recently learned the hard way, the internet is not actually a good indicator of what goes on in the real world, and I bet the stories of Disney Adults running into someone in real life who gives them shit are few and far between.

I get it. You’re at the computer and you want to simultaneously complain about something and get attention for your sweet, funny Hot Take. But, I don’t know, maybe instead you can fuck all the way off with this shit and complain about something else?

The Irony Here is Palpable

I know. I’m part of the problem. I, too, have deadlines.

There Are Legitimate Reasons To Hate Disney

They are a mega-corporation who has spent the last decade eating up lots of other little companies and are on their way to becoming a monopoly.

The prices for their parks and cruises has sky-rocketed to the point where if you tell the younger generations that Disney used to be sort-of reasonably priced they absolutely will not believe you. When I was a kid in the nineties my family was so broke we almost lost the house a few times and we still managed to afford a trip every April.

They are excessively wishy-washy about LGBTQ rights, touting their newest blink-and-you’ll-miss-it gay character and/or interaction while quietly removing that scene for releases in other countries and also making their creators fight tooth and nail to even get that scene in.

They pushed opening their parks after COVID way, way too early.

They have been completely ignoring paying royalties to authors who wrote Star Wars tie-in and EU novels even after they bought all the rights to said novels.

Disney as a corporation objectively sucks, and I can see why some people feel gross watching other people climb into the heart of the beast and start crying about it.

But…that’s everything.

Didn’t we all watch The Good Place? Didn’t we all learn the lesson that capitalism has twisted so much of our everyday life that it’s literally impossible to make completely ethical choices? Everything is fucked up.

EVERYTHING IS FUCKED UP

The world as a whole is so FUBAR its hard to see a way out sometimes, but if we ever do find it its going to be through voting, legislation, and maybe some sort of fucked up revolution. You know what isn’t the way out of it?

Mocking people online for clinging to the few things in life that can give them joy. The world is ending, guys, let people have the things that keep them from the brink of insanity. Shit.

The Green Man

“You guys want to hear a scary story?” Ashley asked, leaning into the fire so the shadows played on her face.

Rita looked at her nervously over the fire, shooting glances into the dark woods pressing in on them from every side. “I guess we’re in the right spot for one.”

“Is it about Murphy’s crotch rot,” Kyle asked, spilling beer down his shirt.

Murphy threw a bottle at his head, missing his ear by inches.

“What the fuck, bro? Stop bringing that up!”

“Seriously,” Rita said. “We don’t want to hear about why Murphy needs a penis doctor.”

Murphy sat back in his folding chair and crossed his arms. “I just need a regular doctor,” he muttered.

“Anyway,” Ashely said, trying to get the group’s attention again. “Did you know that thirty years ago, in this very campsite, there was a grisly, gruesome septuple murder?”

Kyle snorted. “Nice try, Ashley. The whole ‘people died right where you’re sitting’ thing. Classic.”

“The fuck does ‘septuple’ mean?” Murphy asked.

“But it’s true!” Ashley said, keeping her voice low. “This place used to be a summer camp, you know. We passed under the sign on the way in. Or what’s left of it. Camp Sunshine Lakeside. Before all the kids showed up, though, the counselors would be here for a week. Setting everything up. And it was during this week, a couple of nights before the kids came, that they all…”

Ashley drew a slow thumb nail across the length of her neck, making a terrible throaty noise.

Rita leaned back. “Ashley, don’t. Why can’t we talk about nice things?”

“Like Murphy’s diseased penis?”

“Bruh!”

Rita sighed. “Okay, fine. How did they die?”

As she spoke again, she lowered her voice, forcing her friends to lean in to hear over the wind through the leaves above them.

“They were found all over,” she said. “The first was found under the camp sign, stretched out along the road, reaching. As though he was trying to go for help. The next two were found under an old oak tree by the office, hanging by their necks from their branches, all of their entrails reaching to the ground. One counselor they found in the bonfire pit, nothing more bones and ashes. Another, drowned on the beach. The last one they found in one of the cabins, pinned to the floor by bed posts that looked like they had been torn clean off.”

Ashley waited for a few seconds, watching their reaction. Her smirk turn downward.

“This is where you ask about the seventh,” she said.

“What seventh?” Rita asked.

“The seventh victim!”

Kyle spilled more beer on himself. “How were we supposed to know there was seven?”

“That’s what ‘septuple’ means!”

The other three all chorused an oh. Ashley waved her hands around, trying to bring them back to the story.

“The seventh, they never found,” she said. “The only sign of her was long, deep scratches on the floor of the mess hall, and frantic gouges in the ground leading right…to…the well.”

“You mean…that well?” Kyle asked, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb.

They all turned to look at the old fashioned well only ten feet away from them. It was made of stone, and had a little wooden roof that Rita had called ‘adorable’ when they had been setting up. Now it squatted in the dark and glared at them ominously and Rita took back every good thing she had ever thought about it.

“Sick,” Murphy said under his breath.

“They never found the killer?” Rita asked.

“No. But everyone knows who killed them.”

She waited until they were all looking at her, waiting with held breath. With a crooked smile, Ashley let them have it.

“They summoned the Green Man.”

“Who the fuck is the Green Man and why was anyone out here summoning anything?”

Ashley shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe they were bored. Maybe it was a dare. Or maybe…they thought they could beat him.”

“Beat him?” Rita asked.

“They say if you beat the Green Man at his game he’ll give you everything your heart desires. But if you lose…”

Kyle sniffed. “You end up murdered with six other people. Kind of a bad deal.”

“But think of what you could have if you win!” Ashley said.

“Anything I want?” Murphy asked, glancing at his crotch.

“Not just anything. Everything. So, what do you say?”

Rita scoffed. “Say about what? Jesus Christ, Ashley, you can’t possibly want to summon this thing?”

“Why not?” Kyle shrugged.

“She literally just told us why not.”

Kyle waved a hand, spilling more beer. “That’s a story. I’m sure some murderer from the state pen two miles up the river just escaped and killed everyone before riding off into the sunset. To continue murdering.”

Rita looked at Murphy, catching him glancing at his crotch. “Murph! Say something!”

“Oh, I’m all in. One hundred percent. Let’s summon this demon or whatever it is.”

She threw up her hands. “Fine. It’s not real, anyway. What do we have to do?”

With a smile, Ashley said, “First, we draw a line in the sand around the fire. Then, we all spit into the fire. Then, we must each gather a stripped branch of oak from the forest. Then, we-”

“Okay, time out,” Kyle said. “This seems like a lot of steps.”

For the first time, Ashley looked thrown. “What? No, it’s not.”

Murphy was nodding. “I mean, yeah, it is.”

“I’ve only said three things!”

“And then you were going to say a fourth,” Kyle pointed out. “Usually when it’s some murderous monster fucking over teens there’s, like, one step. Maybe two. Look in a mirror, chant a name. Hell, just chant the name.”

“Sometimes just being a teenager is enough,” Rita said. “You don’t have to do anything.”

“It’s just four things!” Ashley said.

“Is it?” Murphy asked. “Ashely, is it just four things?”

Ashley stared at him, jaw jutted out and mouth working, until she slouched in her chair.

“No,” she muttered.

“How many things is it?”

Ashley didn’t answer.

“Well?”

“I’m counting!”

Murphy stood up. “Okay, never mind. If there’s so many steps to summoning this dude that you have to silently count in your head, that sounds less like fun and more like work. If anyone needs me, I’m going to be a few feet in the woods taking care of a medical problem.”

“Guess I’ll be going to my tent,” Kyle said, standing up and spilling more beer.

“Kyle, come on! You love doing stupid shit!”

“Yeah, I do! When that stupid shit is easy! Who does this Green Guy think he is, making me work for my untimely death. Pass. Anyway, you basically implied he lives down that well, right?”

Ashley rubbed her hands together. “Yeah, I guess.”

“I already pissed down there.”

“God damn it, Kyle.”

“Yeah. First thing I did when I got there. So, I’m not dealing with a dude who has piss all over him, magical murder properties or not.”

Ashely looked hopefully at Rita. “Rita?”

She put her hands up. “I didn’t want to do this in the first place! I definitely don’t want to die tonight if the guys aren’t going to. That’s so embarrassing. Sorry, Ashley.”

Rita got up and walked off to her tent with confidence. All of the fear Ashley had instilled in them completely gone.

That fear had been the real step one.

She tossed a handful of grass into the fire. “Shit.”

“We’ll get the next group,” said a voice from the well.

“I told you, Andrew! It’s too many steps!”

An Unknown Man

“Don’t you know who I am?”

Alice thought about it as hard as she could, studying the man’s features. Eventually, though, she was forced to shake her head.

“I’m sorry. I don’t,” she said. “Should I?”

“Of course you should!” he said. “Everyone should!”

“Oh,” Alice said. She waited for a few seconds, but soon understood, from the look on the man’s face and the way he crossed his arms, that he wasn’t going to say anything more.

“Aren’t you going to tell me?”

The man’s face grew red. “Why should I have to tell you? You should just know!”

“I’m very, very sorry, but I don’t!”

“Well, I would prefer it if you did.”

“Please,” she said, trying to remember how things had gotten this way in the first place. “I have never met you before, and I cannot know who you are if you don’t tell me.”

The man tutted and shook his head, his arms still crossed. The red in his face somehow deepened, becoming a shade of purple Alice thought was very unbecoming. Not that she would say such a thing.

“This is completely unacceptable. I cannot accept this. Nor will I. Accept it, that is.”

Alice furrowed her brow and brought her hand to her chin as she tried even harder to remember the man. But she plainly hadn’t met him.

“Are you, perhaps, famous?” she asked.

The man laughed. But it was an angry laugh, and his face stayed purple. “What a shallow thing to ask! Is that all you think about? Fame?”

“Well, no, but-”

“Vanity! As if I would be consumed with such a thing as fame!”

This conversation was really very troubling, and Alice very much wished it would be over. Only she had to get past the man, and she didn’t see a way without him moving to the side.

“I’m sorry,” she said for the third time. “But if we haven’t met, and you are not famous, I do not see how I would know you.”

“I’m not famous,” the man said, rolling his eyes. “I’m important.”

“Important?”

“Of course!”

“Why are you important?”

The man tugged on his mustache with his fingers. “Well, why wouldn’t I be! Of course I’m important! I’m an important, known man, and it’s completely unacceptable you do not know who I am?”

This must be a game, Alice thought to herself. A game I cannot win.

She didn’t relish the idea of turning back to find another way, but with every passing moment standing with the curious, unknown man it seemed turning back would be faster.

“I must be going,” she told the man. “I hope the next person knows who you are!”

The man turned up his nose. “I should say that they will!”

The man stayed that way, nose up and arms crossed, the entire time Alice walked away, right up until she turned a corner and lost him.