In Which Mrs. Loretta McEnnis, Recently Widowed, Discovers Reality Has Folded in on Itself

A House by the Ocean

Loretta retraced her steps of the night. She had supped alone – after Miss Reynolds had deftly turned away dreadful Mrs. Johnson, who seemed to call not to check on Loretta’s welfare but discover if she was ready to admit her husband was dead and have her meet her youngest son, Carroll, and Loretta would reward Miss Reynolds in her weekly pay – and then she had sent Miss Reynolds home for the night. She had tried to sleep, spent some hours tossing and turning, and then had given up entirely. If sleep were to abandon her again, she would rather spend her night staring at the ocean than staring at the top of her bed frame. There, in the dark of the night, where the world around her consisted only of charcoal smudges, and she could hear the whispers of ocean even so far away, and above her the same moon and stars that her poor Roger might be looking at, it was somehow easier to be at peace, even if the people in town didn’t believe her, even if they whispered when they thought she couldn’t hear.

And then this strange person was quite suddenly behind her and speaking insanities, all the while dressed…well, even the destitute she had met in Boston dressed with more decorum than this person did.

“I will warn you, I do not make it a habit to give handouts. Especially to those who sneak into my home and nearly kill me.”

“Uh huh,” she grunted. Perhaps she was clearing her throat. “What year do you think it is?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Year. What year is it?”

Loretta shook her head. This person was in need of far more help than she initially thought.

“If you will remember, it’s 1868. August.”

She nodded as she pursed her lips. “Okay, so you’ve got the ‘August’ part right. But what if I told you you were off by about a hundred and fifty years?”

Loretta smiled patiently. “I would say that is quite the lovely, if certainly confusing, fantasy you have, and-”

She was distracted by a sound, coming far too close. A sort of…well, she was finding she didn’t quite have the words to describe it. A sort of whispered humming, coming closer and closer. Loretta stood and went to the balcony, wondering what new madness this was. Since being nearly scared to death by the stranger on her balcony, she had not looked back out to the rest of the world. The ocean and the stars and the hangnail moon were all the same. But when she looked to the half mile between her home and the beach, the half mile that should have been only trees and a single horse-path, her heart skipped exactly three beats.

The soft darkness was gone. Most of the trees were gone. The entire hill down to the beach had been populated with small homes and evenly paved roads in a matter of minutes. More than that, some of the roads were lined with lights, lights that burned more evenly than any lantern she had ever seen. There were buildings next to the beach, lit with the same even lights, that were far bigger than her house, and her house had been the biggest for miles not a quarter of an hour ago. Below, there was now a road directly in front of the house. And a house immediately to the left, and to the right, and on the other side of the road. They looked odd. And the sound she had been hearing was…well, she didn’t know what it was. A sort of, well, Loretta supposed it could be a carriage. But there were no horses, and on the front were even more of those peculiar lights. And the carriage thing was going far, far too fast.

The strange woman had gotten up and was standing next to her, a fact she only discovered when the woman made a derisive sound.

“That’s Danny, Jeanie and Davis’ idiot son. They buy him these expensive cars and then he drives like a bat out of hell. He’s wrecked three of them already, but they just keep buying him more. Shitheads raising shitheads.”

Loretta released the clutched grip she had on the railing and clasped her hands together, turning to look at the woman. Her head was swimming and, rather alarmingly, there were now two of the other woman.

“Okay, come on, let’s sit back down,” the woman said, taking her by the elbows and leading her back to the strangely shaped chair. “I know that look, I don’t need anyone passing out tonight.”

Loretta took slow breaths as she tried to keep the world before her. The woman began fanning her face with something, and the little puffs of cool air did help. Then the woman had thrust something into her hands, and Loretta drank deeply before realizing something and grimacing.

“Is this wine?”

“Yeah. Chardonnay. I think.”

“It’s awful,” Loretta said, and finished the glass.

“You get used to it. So, yeah, hi. My name’s Ramona Smi…Ramona Lark. I bought this house six months ago, and I live in it with my kids. They’re asleep downstairs. It’s not 1868, and it hasn’t been for a long time. I don’t know, there’s kind of a lot to fill you in on.”

“And what, I might ask, would be the point?” Loretta asked. “It’s like you said, isn’t it? I’m dead.”

“Right, I did say that. But now I’m not so sure. Because ghosts don’t faint. And ghosts don’t drink wine. Do you…do you remember dying?”

Loretta sniffed. “I remember no such thing. I was standing there, looking up at the moon. And then you were behind me.”

Ramona nodded, like somehow the situation was beginning to be clear, even though Loretta only felt like things were getting far more muddled.

“So, remember when I said the realtor told me your story? They eventually found your husband’s ship, but they never found you. You just, I don’t know, up and vanished. And I think this is where you vanished to.”

Loretta carefully set down the glass on the little table and sat as straight-backed as she could.

“If I am understanding you correctly, you no longer believe I have died and am a spirit, but now believe that I have somehow travelled through time, and, according to the histories, have no way of returning.”

Ramona nodded her head back and forth. “Yeah, that sums it up.”

She had her mouth open to say something, but she didn’t know what. Instead, she fainted.

Previous Next

Widow’s Walk

A House by the Ocean

It was approaching one in the morning, and like most nights, lately, Ramona was on the rooftop patio of her two-hundred year old coastal Victorian home, sitting in the oversized Adirondack chair her kids had painted, and drinking white wine from the box sitting on the table next to her. Above her were a smattering of stars between oil stain clouds, and a hangnail moon. In front of her was about half a mile of this nothing Maine town and then the never-ending Atlantic, dark and choppy. And underneath her was three stories of rotting floorboards, water-stained ceilings, hideous faded wallpaper, old wiring, ancient plumbing, a basement that she was sure had a body either buried in the packed dirt or hidden behind the bricked walls…she could go on and on.

This was supposed to be their project house. Her and Lloyd. Celebrate their new found fortune and early retirement by moving up to Maine, buying one of those charming, aging old homes by the water, and building it back up to its glory. A place to spend the back half, to finish raising their kids and eventually keep the grandkids, to give to them someday. Nothing is more foundational for success than a good solid house, and Ramona and Lloyd were going to give their kids the best.

Were.

Ramona sniffled and turned away from the ocean to where the box of wine sat. When she turned back, wine glass sloshing, she found a woman.

She was standing at the balcony railing, looking out to sea. Her nightgown was white and shapeless and ran down to her ankles. Blonde hair ran in waves all the way down almost to the bottom of the gown.  Ramona couldn’t see her face, but the woman was holding her hands up to her chest, and Ramona was sure she was crying. The woman looked solid enough. The breeze was even making her hair flutter a little bit. But Ramona was sure the woman was a ghost. Furthermore, thanks to nearly finishing the box of wine, Ramona didn’t care.

“Whatever you’re looking for-”

The woman turned and let out a scream. In her fright she tried to jump back, and would have gone right over the railing if Ramona’s mom reflexes hadn’t kicked in. In a heartbeat she was up, wine glass in one hand, the front of the woman’s ridiculous nightgown in the other. At least the gown was well made. It didn’t even tear. Once she had her balance back, the woman’s look of fear turned to embarrassment and anger, and she slapped at Ramona’s hand.

“Ouch. Jesus, lady, I was trying to help.” Although, perhaps ‘lady’ was generous. She looked like she was, at most, twenty-five, and could have still been a teenager. Her features were small, without makeup, and there wasn’t a single line around her mouth or eyes. She’d died young. Tragic, or whatever.

“By frightening me, quite literally nearly to death?” the woman asked, smoothing out her dress.

“Well, I mean, you’re already dead, so that would be pretty neat,” Ramona said, sitting back into her chair. She looked, and was happy to see she hadn’t spilled any of her wine.

“Oh!” the woman said. “If this isn’t quite the turn. Did someone in town put you up to this? Did they send a crazy fellow to invade my house and torment me?”

“First off,” Ramona said before burping, “I’m a woman.”

The woman held her hands on her hips as she looked Ramona up and down.

“But your hair is so short,” she said. “And you’re wearing…what is it that you’re wearing?”

“An oversized Minnie Mouse t-shirt covered in mustard stains and a pair of shorts that say ‘Juicy’ on the bottom. Also covered in mustard stains.”

“Why would your clothes say anything, much less ‘Juicy’?”

“Because ten years ago I thought I was hot shit.”

“I beg your par-”

“Oh!”

Ramona sat up in the chair, making the woman wince away from her again.

“I know who you are! Loretta McEnnis, right? Yeah, the realtor told us the whole story when we bought the place. You and your husband Robert-”

“Roger.”

“Roger, yeah. You guys built the place. But he was a sea merchant, or something, and he was always gone. And then he died at sea, and then you went missing. People said you probably walked into the ocean. Very tragic. I thought she was making most of it up to get a sale.”

With only the light from the moon, it was hard to tell that Loretta’s face had gone pale. The rapid blinking and the hands placed gently on her cheeks was easier to spot. Ramona cursed herself. Didn’t ghosts sometimes not know they were dead? What a way to find out. Loretta shifted her nightgown to each side and sat down gently in the other chair.

“I’m sorry,” Ramona said. “I thought you knew.”

Tears rolled down her cheeks, but Loretta straightened out her quivering jaw and shook her head.

“He’s been gone for months past when he should have come home to me. The people in town have been trying to tell me, I just…didn’t want to believe it.”

“But you’ll believe a crazy man half drunk on white wine who just appeared on your rooftop porch?”

“God works in mysterious ways,” Loretta said. “Perhaps you were sent to finally make me believe.”

“Listen, honey, I’ve been trying to tell you. I wasn’t sent anywhere. I live here now. You haven’t lived here for, like, two hundred years. You haven’t lived for two hundred years. You died. And you can go now. Go into the light. Be at peace. Be with Roger.”

Loretta’s face grew soft, her eyes taking on a sad look, and she reached out to touch Ramona’s knee.

“Is there a caretaker I can bring you back to? Someone who ensures you don’t hurt yourself?”

“For fuck’s sake,” Ramona muttered, and threw back her glass. She was going to need more wine. Convincing the dead they were dead was harder than she thought.

Next

My Favorite Disney Remake

There isn’t anything left to be said about this new Mulan remake, and I haven’t even seen it. I pretty much checked out of the whole thing early on, once news came that they were stripping this new version of both “I’ll Make a Man Out of You,” one of the greatest Disney musical numbers (fight me), and bi icon Li Shang, and now they’re trying to charge me thirty bucks to watch this thing on a service I’m already paying for? No, thank you, and by thank you, I mean fuck you. But while yet another live action remake is making its rounds of disappointment, I want to talk about one that, at least retroactively, might be the best one Disney has made: 2015’s Cinderella.

This movie never quite reaches ‘great,’ but it is solidly ‘good,’ which is far more than you can say for Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, or The Lion King, which all seem to be mixed bags at best (Full disclosure: I haven’t seen the last two remakes, either. After Beauty and the Beast left me feeling hollow and kind of sad, I fell off this remake train entirely). Disney’s attempts to update these movies are admirable, and what most people would want to see in a remake of such recent movies, I guess, but I fully don’t understand how they manage to screw this up time and time again.

For me, the live action Beauty and the Beast failed in every meaningful way, but especially because it seemed to lack any and all charm. There was no chemistry between Watson’s Belle and Steven’s Beast, and the only people seeming to have any kind of fun are Luke Evans and Josh Gad. Everyone else is just kind of pushing through it like the movie is some kind of work meeting they have to get through on a Friday afternoon before a three day weekend. Then there’s the same criticisms that all these new remakes have: this forced ‘woke’ narrative that never really sits right and the singing, especially Watson’s, is just ruined in post-production, and I know there’s a great deal of criticism that it’s too close to the original, but honestly I wish it had been more faithful.

The Cinderella remake is everything Beauty and the Beast wasn’t. They do strip the musical numbers, but the music in the original cartoon were mostly just Cindy singing to herself so the remake doesn’t lose much doing so. There are little additions to the plot here and there, but given how threadbare the plot of the original is, the additions feel like completing a thought instead of extra padding. The movie spends a few extra minutes showing how Cindy’s life was before both her parents died; Cindy and the prince meet before the ball and get to pine over each other for a couple of weeks before the big day; and both the Prince and Lady Tremaine get their characters expanded.

I really love what they did with Lady Tremaine. They managed to humanize her while still leaving her as the villain. She was in love with her first husband, who died. She married Cindy’s father for money – and she’s very careful to explain it was to support her daughters, whether you believe it or not – and then he dies and now she’s left in a house she hates with no money anyway and a living reminder that her second husband didn’t love her all that much, either. And after all that, they still leave her as a villain. You never root for her, not once, because she’s taking all of her hate and disappointment and lashing out a child who hasn’t really done anything to her (henceforth known as pulling a Snape, fuck you, you stringy haired bastard). It’s just enough of a tragic backstory so that at the end, when Cindy pauses before leaving for her new life and tells her ‘I forgive you,’ you understand why she did that, instead of just saying ‘eat shit and die’ and burning the house down as she left which is what she totally should have done in the cartoon, because that Lady Tremaine is the devil.

The way they expanded the Prince was nice, too. And I really mean it with that word. Nice. The explicit lesson of the movie is “Have courage and be kind,” and with all the superhero movies and action movies out there, I think this is a really great lesson for kids. You don’t have to be a badass to be a hero, you just have to be a good person. The Prince – Kit – is a genuinely nice guy who is just a little torn about who he is supposed to marry and who he wants to marry. He’s not complex, there’s no harrowing backstory or dark twist, because there doesn’t have to be. It’s a children’s movie based on a fairy tale, not everything has to be The Usual Suspects.

Additionally, I absolutely adore the scene where his father is dying (weird statement, hear me out). Usually men in movies have to be tough, and in another movie Kit might have just stood there stoically while a single tear rolled down his eyes or something else boring. Instead, both Kit and his father are crying, actually say the words ‘I love you’ to each other, and then Kit curls up next to him in bed like he’s a little kid again and his father just holds him. It is so rare to get scenes of men showing emotion to each other like that, and I just love it so, so much.

And then there’s Cindy herself, equally soft and heroic. She doesn’t know how to fight. She’s never mean. She’s a girl who was raised to be kind, and even as she’s dumped into terrible circumstances she still does her best. She meets a nice dude in the woods and wants to go to the ball to hang out again, and through a little effort and a lot of magic she makes it happen. Then she meets this nice dude and finds out he’s actually the prince and becomes scared he won’t like her if he knows what she is, but in the end just straight tells him because she’d rather be with someone who loves her for her. She is an actual Strong Female Character instead of what male writers still imagine they should be, aka A Man but with Boobs.

Overall, the movie is beautiful and charming. And it’s not trying to be much more than what the original was. Helena Bonham Carter is delightfully dotty as the fairy godmother, and they include just the right amount of magical realism throughout to help carry the transformation scene. It’s not trying to exist in the real world at all. The kingdoms are mostly vague and, when specific, obviously fake. The colors are oversaturated, and the royalty aren’t all inbred. It’s a fairy tale movie, something maybe these newer live actions remakes forgot.

Calvin

It was a beautiful night on the promenade. There was a breeze, cool and salty, bringing different smells from the vendors, popcorn and nuts and saltwater taffy all mixing together to create something so sweet it was nearly sickly. Cloying. Way above, a few of the brighter stars shone through. The rest were drowned out by the lights strung between the buildings, white lights with the occasional twinkling red or green or blue. Music came from a busker, soft violin rolling through the air.

The round man selling popcorn had a ridiculous mustache and he was scooping the seasoned kernels into a paper cup for a little family. Two mothers and two little boys, the youngest barely able to contain his excitement and bouncing in place. Not far down the brick lane a woman was sitting next to a table full of homemade jewelry, calling out to the couples as they passed. Across the way another woman sat at another table, this one empty save for the deck of cards she was casually shuffling. She didn’t seem to mind if anyone stopped or not.

When the air shifted in just the right way it carried the calliope music from the merry-go-round at the far end of the promenade. The lights flashed and reflected off everything, and the delighted screams of the young children on their plastic horses bounced off hard surfaces all the way down to the pier. Around the corner was an arcade lined with those cheating games. From the bench in the middle of the block the first half of the first game could be seen, the kind with the horses galloping across. Harsh buzzers sounded off every few minutes, followed by cheers and groans.

If anyone noticed Calvin sitting at that bench, head in his hands and hyperventilating, they pretended they didn’t. He’d stumbled up the entire way up the stairs and down the alley, needing open air. The little…whatever it was had become suffocating. The promenade, and its unrelenting normal nature, made things better. A little. Calvin would just sit here until dawn and if he did that the spell would be broken and everything would go back to the way it was. The way it was supposed to be.

Someone sat down next to him. Calvin didn’t have to look up to know it was Roo. Skinny. Smelling of leather. And he recognized his shoes. They sat together in silence for a few minutes, Calvin trying not to dry heave and Roo smoking one of his disgusting cigars.

“If it means anything,” Roo said, “I don’t agree with the way Polly went about that. Not how I would have done it.”

Calvin spat. “And how would you have done it?”

“I don’t rightly know,” Roo said. “But not like that.”

“Is there a better way to tell someone the world has changed?”

“There is. It just takes a while. And anyway, you’re looking at this all wrong, mate.”

Calvin rubbed his face with his hands and sat back. Once he was sure his stomach wasn’t going to give up the ghost he looked over at Roo. The man was looking at him. Waiting patiently.

“Okay, I give up,” Calvin said. “How should I be looking at it?”

“The world hasn’t changd. Just the way you perceive it. It’s like a filter’s been turned off, is all.”

Roo took what remained of his cigar and dropped it. As he stubbed it out with one foot he gestured up and down the promenade with both hands.

“Take all this. Looks normal, eh? Eh? But only if you don’t know what you’re looking for.”

Calvin glanced up one way, then the other, then made a long blink.

“I give up. What am I looking for?”

“Just look. Really look.”

With a sigh, Calvin went about trying to ‘really look,’ whatever that entailed. The lights above were just lights. The arcade game with the horses was just that. The merry-go-round-

The horses were alive. Not realizing he was doing it, Calvin rubbed at his eyes and looked again. No, definitely alive. Their tails were swishing back and forth, and their heads were looking this way and that. Nipping at each other. Looking up at the child riding them. Children who didn’t seem to notice any of it. Parents took pictures of their kids, and not of the horses below, despite the smiles they struck when they realized the camera was pointed at them.

There was an alley across from where he had been sitting that Calvin was sure hadn’t been there before. It was thin, and dark. Like the alley he had stumbled out of earlier. Would he turn and find that alley gone? Or would he ask the round man selling popcorn about the alleys and only get a confused look?

Waves of color were coming off the man playing the violin, so faint he wasn’t sure they were there even as he looked. They bled out into the air with the beat of the song, changing colors with the notes, spreading out down the promenade and floated away, up above.

The woman with the cards across the way was watching him now, still shuffling her cards. He thought they were playing cards, he was completely sure he had seen the usual blue pattern on the back. But now they were obviously not. Too big, too colorful, too different. Tarot cards.

Roo pulled a cigar out from his breast pocket and lit it with a flame that popped up from his thumb.

“People see what they expect to see,” he said after a puff. “The human mind is quite skilled at tricking itself. But, once just a bit of the thread unravels, just the tiniest bit, the whole piece of wool falls away. The world hasn’t changed, Calvin. You have.”

Someone Please Remake Dollhouse

Remaking Dollhouse is not the same as remaking Lost because Dollhouse is already a good show. Great, maybe. It was a two season sci-fi show that never seemed to get a lot of attention, potentially because everyone was still pining for Joss Whedon’s previous project Firefly, also unceremoniously cancelled by Fox who, just like your methed-out second cousin, made destroying its own stuff a habit. The only thing I think it really suffers from is being made about ten years too early, for one very explicit reason:

Wait. Spoilers from here on out, so if you still want to watch Dollhouse without knowing much about it go on over to Hulu. Here’s a lovely picture of a chocobo to act as a safe page break:

Kweh

Okay, anyway, one very explicit reason:

The Core Concept of Dollhouse is Beyond Fucked Up, and Dollhouse Fucking Knows It.

For anyone still reading who hasn’t seen it, Dollhouse is about a company – the Rossum Corporation – that has developed the technology to strip people down to their basic mental and emotional functions (‘Actives’ or ‘Dolls’) and then rebuild that person to any specification requested by someone with the money for it. Now, these dolls are volunteers, typically approached when they are at their lowest, mentally and emotionally. One doll was suffering from wartime PTSD, and another had just lost their baby. You know. Like how a cult recruits. And then anything that makes them them is stripped away until they’re a human shell with the mental capacity of a five year old and then some big shot with money decides they want someone to, say, be that willing-to-fuck-for-an-A student that doesn’t exist in real life and that human shell is programmed to be that person for a few hours.

Big yikes.

Already, this is critically fucked up. This is just prostitution with extra steps, with a couple heaping dashes of slavery tossed in, ‘volunteers’ my ass. And the thing is, if this had been made about ten to twenty years earlier, I can picture a scenario where this show airs and they never even begin to discuss how bad it is. You have your main character, Echo, and each week she can get into a different adventure as a different person with a different skill set. She’s a photographer to the stars! She’s a spy! Uh-oh, she’s been KIDNAPPED! Two or three seasons of client-of-the-week, a few sad attempts at a two or three episode arc, and then its unceremoniously canceled after a tepid cliffhanger. A decade later budding internet writers look back on an off-beat childhood favorite and begin writing articles about how, when you think about it, what was being done to the Dolls was, like, objectively evil and they never even addressed it in the show, man.

To be honest, the first season isn’t too far off from there. Sure, there’s an overarching plot, but it’s mostly about an FBI agent who’s essentially turned Echo into a princess he has to rescue, and any time they begin to approach the darker aspects of the concept they turn away pretty quickly. There are plenty of characters and plot points referencing how this is essentially some advanced formed of prostitution, but these are usually self-contained and fairly glib. And then came the season finale.

“Epitaph One” unceremoniously shoots ahead ten years into the future to show that the technology at the heart of the dollhouses ended the fucking world. Just a full blown apocalypse. Disastertown, population: these guys. It stopped just short of the writers coming on screen and saying, ‘Oh, yeah, we know it’s fucked up. Wait, you think the worst thing that could happen with this kind of technology is prostitution? Oh, honey.’

While the second season goes back to the original timeline, it doesn’t let up on plumbing the dark, gross depths of what could actually happen if this technology was developed and controlled by sociopaths because of course sociopaths would control this shit.  And when I say I want Dollhouse remade I’m really talking about season two. The second season had a smaller budget and then got cancelled, and you can tell how chained down the show is because of it. I want the show to be able to go even deeper into the madness. I don’t want some limp-dick, vapors-having sad sack coughing into his ascot while reading the scripts and crossing stuff out because the advertisers aren’t going to like it. I want whatever psychopaths are approving shit for Amazon and Netflix and wherever to look at that fucked up shit and scream ‘Radical!’ over their unicorn Frappuccino before throwing themselves out a window to wingsuit their way to their bicycles made of tubas. Whoever approves shit like The Boys and Love, Sex, and Robots, get them some spec scripts and let’s get weird.

I don’t mean I want more graphic sex scenes, and I’m looking at you Game of Thrones people. Because, as I stated before, the sex isn’t actually the worst you could do with this kind of technology. My worst fear is someone like HBO or Amazon getting the rights and just turning it into soft core porn. What I want is…okay, so there’s this season two episode called Stop-Loss where the aforementioned doll who signed up due to PTSD is released and – surprise – he still has PTSD, and then he’s grabbed by some other Rossum division called Scytheon that’s essentially What if Blackwater, but hivemind? Once you’re in, you’re in, and you don’t get to make your own decisions anymore. The episode as it stands now feels incredibly rushed with absolutely no time to breathe and actually explore the fuckery inherent. That episode needs to be remade and expanded upon, without some kiddie-shit network holding it back.

Which is, essentially, the thesis to this entire…whatever. Dollhouse is fucked up, but it could be more fucked up if it just had the right platform, and I am here for it.

Signal to the Noise: A Body of Thieves

A Body of Thieves

In truth, he didn’t have to do much talking. Only the barest amount of small talk, whatever would make it appropriate for a simple touch. A hand shake. A pat on the arm. Sometimes Vinnie didn’t even have to open his mouth. The ballroom was so crowded he could pass off his hand brushing against someone as an accident.

At first, it was manageable. A trickle. He introduced himself as Corbin Lecoeur to a woman who looked forty but was surely over fifty and took her hand lightly.

where is that man, where is Collier, he said he was coming tonight, he told me he was coming tonight and if he told me it was because he wanted me to be here so where is he, is he avoiding me? If he’s avoiding me I’ll kill him, I swear to god, I’ll-

This is, of course, a loose translation of what went on inside Vinnie’s mind as he held the woman’s hand. People had this idea that their thoughts flowed in a straight line, one thing after the other. Which was ridiculous. If people could only think one thing at a time humanity would have never moved past flinging their crap at each other from trees. Maybe something even earlier than that. The inanimate objects he touched broadcast a single channel, a single image or line or feeling. Touching a person was like having a television that somehow managed to show all sixty channels at the same time.

So, when he touched the woman he managed to distill it all into a few broken sentences. Really, he heard those broken lines, felt the impatience and anger rising in her, saw this man Collier in several states, including a naked one which he was not a fan of no matter how ripped this Collier man actually was, and saw all the ways she imagined killing him to the point where by the time he took his hand back he wondered if he should warn Collier.

I hate these things, I really do hate these things, I could be in my two million dollar home right now, I could be back in Westchester right now in my underwear eating my nachos in my underwear I could be watching sports I don’t even care what kind of sports I just don’t want to be here, these people are terrible and

look at that one, ain’t she pretty, oh no that’s one prettier, I’m going to find the prettiest and I’m going to be so smooth and all the ladies will say oh, James, how are you so smooth, I am smooth, smooth like peanut butter oh shit here she comes is my hair

no one’s paying enough attention to me, this is ridiculous, I am clearly the best person in here by any metric all metrics all the metrics I need to do something for attention, any attention at all, I’m going to waste away and die if someone doesn’t look at me no not you, someone else

macho macho man I want to be a macho man nacho nacho man I want to eat the nacho man poncho poncho man I want to meet the poncho man

Fifteen minutes. The clock above the bar told him it had been fifteen minutes. It felt like it had been fifteen hours. He stood on the other side of the ballroom, staring at the clock, hoping if he stared hard enough at the clock face he could ground himself. It was too much input. He kept his hands in his pockets. He tried not to barf. He hoped the people around him couldn’t tell he was sweating, trying not to pant.

Worst of all, his own mind had become a jumble. The signals of other people interfering with his own. It was too much. One person, one at a time, could be too much, and he had just parted the Red Sea. And gotten nothing. If he focused, he could see Joey, still sitting at the bar, laughing with the bartender but looking through the crowd at him, looking to see if he had any answers. Nodding his head to the left. Nodding his head to the left. Nodding-

Some gear in his brain finally fell back into place and Vinnie looked to his left. Standing only a couple of feet away was a tall man with broad shoulders, wearing a suit, standing alone with his hands clasped together in front of him. He might have looked like another wallflower. If you were particularly stupid. With a deep breath, Vinnie bent his knees and squared his jaw and let his hand fall on the man’s shoulder.

bored bored BORED like anything is actually going to happen nothing is going to happen no one even knows about the safe

There it was. Vinnie was so excited he almost threw up. The security guard had pictured the safe, pictured where it was. He knew where it was in relation to him, and he broadcast that knowledge out without ever knowing he did.

And now he was looking at Vinnie with dark, suspicious eyes. Because he knew Vinnie knew? Oh. Wait. No. Because Vinnie had touched him.

“Bathroom?” Vinnie asked.

His voice was a terrified squeak, and he was sure the security guard was going to see right through him. Open his mouth and tell him to come with him and then grab him and Vinnie only hoped he grabbed his arm and not his hand, please don’t touch me I can’t-

“Over there, man,” the guard said, pointing. “Looks like you’ve had too much.”

Oh. Right. He must have looked as bad as he felt. Vinnie grunted out a sound that was part laugh, part urp.

“You have no idea.”

Previous Next

Friends in High Places

He hit her again, in the face this time. She took it with a grunt, her entire body twisting in the chair under the ropes. For a brief second Garza thought she had passed out. Then she opened her eyes and spat blood at the hunter’s feet. Lester looked down at his shoes, once-white sneakers, then back at Flora. With a yell he backhanded her, Flora’s head swinging violently in the other direction.

“Stop!” Garza yelled.

“Lester,” Carmella said. She was still leaning comfortably against the wall, looking for all the world like she was loitering outside a convenience store.

Lester sniffed. “These sneakers were expensive.”

“Then maybe don’t wear them to something like this,” Flora said, her head still hanging. “Idiot.”

Lester pulled his fist back, but it froze with a single “Ah-ah” from Carmella.

“You’re sounding tired, Flora,” Carmella said. She pulled herself off the wall and took her time to cross the space between. It was a factory, long since abandoned and falling apart around them. If Flora had been screaming – which she hadn’t – there wasn’t anyone for miles to hear them.

Garza pulled against his own restraints as Carmella approached. He was untouched so far, besides some rope burns at his wrists and ankles. He knew that wouldn’t last. But at the last second Carmella turned from him, turned that shark’s grin from him to her. The sound of her high heels clicked dully against the concrete until she was standing directly in front of Flora. She spat again, even more blood this time. But Carmella’s shoes were already red.

“You think this is my only pair?” Carmella asked. She crouched down so she was at Flora’s level. With a clean hand with painted nails she took a fistful of Flora’s hair and pulled her head up, eliciting no more than a harsh push of air from Flora’s nose. “You look at me while I’m talking to you.”

“You’re the only bitch here besides me,” Flora got out. “You think I’m going to confuse you and the Great White Ape here?”

Carmella stopped Lester with a single hand, not even bothering to look back at him. Lester grunted but stopped, crossing his arms at his chest. There was nothing behind the man’s eyes, unless seething rage could somehow count as a thought. Garza had always wondered if he was something besides human. But an inhuman hunter? An actual crazy thought.

“I know you’re mad,” Carmella practically cooed into Flora’s ear. “And you’ve got all that anger directed at us. But we’re not the villains here. The choice is in your hands. Just bring him here, and this is all over.”

“I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” Flora said sweetly. “Even if I did your plan is pointless. You can’t kill a god.”

“No. But you can trap one,” Carmella said.

Flora and Garza frowned, and for the first time since this began Flora looked to Garza. He shrugged. First he was hearing of it.

“We’ve got the whole building rigged. I’m amazed you didn’t notice. Oh, right. You weren’t conscious. Well, if you had been, you would have seen the sigils out front, and the blood and salt and whatever else we did out there. Honestly, it was all a blur.”

“Magic,” Garza said. “That’s magic. You people don’t do magic.”

Carmella looked at him over her shoulder, still holding Flora’s head, and shrugged. “What upper management doesn’t know doesn’t hurt them. Now-”

She turned back to Flora and pulled her hair again, making Flora wince. “This is your last chance. I know you can bring him here, I know he gave you a way to do it. So do it. Or…what did you call him…the Great White Ape starts working on little bro here.”

Lester cracked his knuckles, and despite himself Garza swallowed hard. Sweat dripped into his eyes, making him blink.

“Lester’s a bit of a sexist,” Carmella stage whispered behind her hand. “He’s been pulling his punches with you. He won’t with little brother.”

“Don’t.”

“I won’t. If you do it.”

“I can’t.”

“You can. You just don’t want to. I can change that. Lester?”

He began moving toward Garza, hands already in fists.

“Please, don’t.”

“Flora, don’t say anything.”

“He’s not supposed to be a part of this.”

“Flora, don’t-”

Lester’s fist found Garza’s stomach, and his other found his face. The air was gone and stars were there and Flora was still yelling but he couldn’t make out the words over the crash of waves. He hadn’t been hit since the fifth grade and Lester hit a lot harder than Timmy Weston. He looked up in time to see Lester’s fist pulled back again and he turned his head away, waiting.

Instead of the fist, Flora started singing.

“If you want to view paradise, simply look around and view it. Anything you want to, do it. Want to change the world, there’s nothing…to it.”

She spat the last words out like the blood before. Panting, she looked up at Carmella.

“Happy?”

Carmella grinned. “I’m about to be. Lester, leave him. Get to your post, just like we rehearsed. We’ve prepared a room for our guest, and we don’t want to disappoint a god. Even if he is just the trickster god of thieves.”

Flora’s head snapped up so quickly Garza heard something crack in her neck. And then she was laughing. It was hysterical. And dark. Carmella and Lester exchanged looks, at first annoyed. But like eddies of oil leaking into a river, concern began to show on Carmella’s face.

“What is so funny?” she asked, finally.

At first, Flora couldn’t answer, she was still laughing so hard. She had to exert effort to get herself under control. As she spoke, Garza noticed that the concrete underneath his feet had begun to shake, ever so slightly.

“You think that little song was a call for Vance? I worked with him for years. If I want to get a hold of Vance I just call him on the fucking phone.”

For the first time, Carmella didn’t look self-satisfied. She looked…well, she looked scared.

“The holding sigils are for him,” she said. “They won’t hold anyone else.”

Flora leaned back in her chair as the room began to shake properly. “You should have done more research.”

Carmella lunged forward, grabbing Flora by each shoulder and almost pushing her and the chair back onto the floor.

“Who did you call?” she screamed. Even Lester was beginning to crack, giving the lights above them dancing violently on their strings a doubtful look.

“I just called him Al. But you might know him as Odin, or Mars, or Ares. Tell me, Carmella, can your little trap hold the god of war?”

With a roar, the ceiling above them ripped in two.

Woman in White

“Is that someone walking?”

“Who’d be walking out here? It must be a deer.”

But as their car got closer to the figure on the side of the road, it became impossible to deny that the figure was human. A woman wearing a white dress, dark hair falling down her back.

“Why would someone be all the way out here?” Kyle asked, leaning forward over the steering wheel to get a better look. They were in the southern wilds of Illinois, nothing but crops on either side of the road and at least another thirty miles until the edge of suburbia took them. It was a dark night, no moon, and they hadn’t seen her until the high beams caught her. Dillon rubbed his hands together nervously. If she was going to walk on the road at night she should have a flashlight, or a reflective vest.

“Maybe there’s a farm behind the corn somewhere?” Dillon asked. “Hey, wait, wait…why are you slowing down?”

“We should check on her, right?” It wasn’t really a question. “She’s out here all alone.”

“Which is why you need to step on the freaking gas pedal. Do you not watch horror movies?”

Kyle didn’t look at Dillon but made a face anyway. “Horror movies aren’t real, idiot.”

“You’re the idiot.”

“You can’t really be afraid of her. She looks tiny!”

“Don’t stop, Kyle.”

But it was too late. They had reached her, and Kyle was slowing the car to a stop next to her. The woman hadn’t once acknowledged them, hadn’t turned around to see who was coming, hadn’t even stopped walking. Now, as Kyle pulled in and pushed the button on his side of the door to roll the window down (because no way Dillon was doing that), she at least stopped walking. But still, she stared straight ahead, her dark hair blocking her face.

Dillon didn’t like any bit of this. This close Dillon could see how pale she was, like all the blood had left her. Her dark hair looked mussed and dirty. He was, like, 86% sure he could see a twig in there. Worse, he could now see that the white dress wasn’t just a dress, it was a nightgown. Also dirty. And she was barefoot.

“Hi there, miss? Are you okay? Do you need a ride?”

Dillon thought he was going to have a stroke. Kyle was leaning over the center console, his view should have been the same as Dillon’s, he should have seen all the details Dillon was seeing, and he was still talking to this woman like she wasn’t very obviously some kind of fucked up? Dillon’s heart was racing and his skin had become clammy and he wanted to tell Kyle to just shut up and put the car in drive but he found his tongue had been glued to the roof of his mouth.

The woman was turning around. Dillon was going to scream. She wasn’t going to have a face, he just knew she would turn around and a skull would be showing through rotted meat, the plate where the forehead should have been dented in, and if Dillon saw all that he was going to scream.

The woman’s face was normal. Still pale. Otherwise intact. Her eyes were heavily lidded and her mouth showed no emotion. But she looked normal.

But Dillon had been so sure.

“I need to get to Chicago.”

To Dillon, the voice had seemed to come from everywhere except her mouth. Every nerve ending in his body was telling him that something was broken and he needed to get away from the broken thing. A signal not reaching Kyle, as he heard Kyle scoff like this was a normal situation.

“Chicago’s still a hundred miles off, miss. We’re not going that far. But we can get you to civilization, at least. Somewhere with a phone. Come on, hop in.”

The woman didn’t do anything so fast, but she did slowly turn and get in the back of the car. Had the door opened and closed? Dillon couldn’t be so sure. Kyle smiled at her through the rearview mirror and started off again.

“I’m Kyle. This is Dillon. What’s your name?”

“Misty,” she said. To Dillon, it sounded like gravel. Kyle only nodded.

“Misty, that’s nice. What’s waiting for you in Chicago?”

She didn’t answer at first, only stared. There was a smell now, Dillon was sure of it. The pressure was rising in him, and he couldn’t take any of this anymore. He spun around in his seat, facing her directly.

“Okay, this is going to drive me crazy. You’re dead, right?”

“Dillon, what the fuck?”

“Shut up, Kyle,” Dillon pointed a finger at him, then turned back to the woman. “You’re dead.”

Misty only stared at him coolly. But Dillon could sense surprise on her, somehow.

“Yeah, you’re dead.”

“Stop it,” Kyle said, hitting him. “You sound like you’re threatening her. Misty, I’m so sorry, I don’t know-”

“She’s dead, Kyle! I can’t believe you don’t see it! The dirt in her hair! Her bare feet! I saw your skull bashed in!”

Kyle was saying something, calling him ridiculous or crazy, but Dillon wasn’t hearing it. He was looking at the woman, still with that cool face. Now a single tear rolled down her cheek though. And Dillon realized something.

“You didn’t just fall and hit your head, did you? You were murdered. Jesus, you were murdered. Someone took you out here. I bet they never found your body. Lady, that sucks.”

“I need to get to Chicago,” she said again.

“I’m sorry my friend is going crazy,” Kyle said.

“But do you?” Dillon asked. “I mean, do you need to get to Chicago? You must want to tell someone something, right? Look, I’ve heard this story before. We all have. Woman in white on the side of the road, asks for a lift, wants to go home. But by the time the driver gets there the woman has disappeared. I bet you’ve done this a lot, right? Do you ever make it to Chicago? Or do you just, like, reset?”

Misty shifted in the back seat but said nothing. At least Kyle wasn’t looking at him like he was crazy anymore. The car was now going down the little road at about seven miles an hour as Kyle’s eyes darted between the rearview mirror and Dillon.

“Misty?” Kyle asked. “Tell this guy he’s crazy.”

“I don’t think she can. I don’t know what the rules for ghosts are, but it doesn’t seem like she can say or do much.”

“She’s not a ghost,” Kyle said half-heartedly.

“Get over it, Kyle. Oh, I know! If you can’t get to Chicago, maybe we can get a message to someone there. What’s your name? Like, your full name, don’t just say ‘Misty’ again.”

For the first time her face changed, a simple furrowed brow. She was thinking. Trying to remember.

“Misty Kowalski,” she said, spitting out the words like she had to pull them from somewhere.

“Oh, good,” Kyle said at the same time Dillon said, “Oh, fuck.”

“What? At least she didn’t say ‘Smith’ or something.”

“It’s Chicago, Kyle. Do you know how many Kowalskis are in Chicago? Okay, you’ve got to give us something else. An address. A name. Something. And we’ll find them, and tell them what happened. But you’ve got to give us something else, Misty.”

She looked like she was about to cry, now, but Dillon could tell she was trying. He could also sense the edge coming for them fast. Misty had just seconds left. He could see the dent in the forehead again. The blood. Now, though, he wasn’t scared.

“Krakow Deli.”

And she was gone.

“What the hell was that?” Kyle asked.

Dillon sat straight in the car and fixed his clothes and seat belt. “It was a ghost, Kyle, Jesus, try to keep up. Now, we have to figure out how to tell the Kowalskis at Krakow Deli their daughter was murdered without them thinking we fucking did it.”

A Heatherheart Wake

This is the traditional heatherheart wake.

Specifically, this is the wake for Jeremiah Jones, or JJ to his friends and family. He was forty-six years old, and had been a heatherheart for the last eighteen. He was well liked. Real good at the job, very clear-headed and rational, and in the past he had been quick-witted enough to pull himself out of situations that might have gotten a duller man killed. Sometimes, though, it doesn’t matter how quick-witted you are. Sometimes a witch with a broken sense of humor conjures a piano above your head and you die like a cartoon character. Que sera and all that.

It could be any heatherheart’s wake, though. For such a small group that prides themselves on their lack of rules and over-the-top individuality, they do seem to love a good tradition. And never is this more apparent than when one of them eats the big one. To begin, the wake is usually held weeks after the death, although the reasoning for this is less sentimental and more technical. You try gathering twenty to thirty people spread out across three countries and see how fast you can get them all in the same state or province, let alone the same bar. By the time of JJ’s wake it has been four and a half weeks since he was set ablaze on a pyre. Since they were in Florida and the ocean was right there, JJ’s partners Nikita Brown and Elmer Roundhouse decided to give him a Viking funeral by putting JJ and the pyre on a wooden boat and pushing him out into the water. It didn’t go well.

Once the heatherhearts manage to get as many of them together as they can, always allowing if someone is too far away or stuck in a job, they take over the closest bar to the place of the death. In the case of JJ, this means the Gator Tooth, barely more than an open-air shack sitting next to a swampy natural spring and guarded by bug-zapper sentinels that went off almost continuously. The few locals present are wondering why their little sleepy little booze-pit is suddenly filled with people they’ve never seen before, but it doesn’t take long for them to realize.

All of the heatherhearts present will order two shots, one of whatever the recently deceased liked and one whiskey. So, typically, two whiskeys. Tonight, though, it’s a shot of whiskey and a shot of  vodka. The heatherhearts start by raising the vodka over their heads.

“To JJ,” Nikita and Elmer say.

“To JJ,” the others repeat, and then shoot. Gasps and groans all around. No one besides JJ really likes vodka.

Now, it’s time to raise the whiskey.

“To Amos Smith,” Nikita and Elmer say.

“My God, what has he done?” the others call back, and then shoot.

This is the oldest tradition amongst the heatherhearts, so old everyone present really only knows the barest details. Amos Smith was the very first heatherheart, a Union soldier turned hunter who eventually decided the hunters stood for everything he had just fought against. He turned west. He fought the darkness in his own way. He found others to join him, and when he died those others toasted him just the same. No one remembers why. But when the next of the heatherhearts died, they toasted Amos as well. And the next. And the next. And two hundred and twenty years, and two hundred and thirty six dead heatherhearts later, they were still doing it.

Now, we have the usual things any group of people do at a wake. The telling of stories. The staring into the long distance as folks present think of their own death, looming. The occasional drunken fist fight. A close observer, though, will notice that as the heatherhearts go about healing themselves from the loss, they will occasionally look at the door of the bar – or, in the Gator Tooth’s case, the place at the front of the bar where a door should be – and say, “Get out of here, JJ,” or, “Go home, JJ, you’re dead,” or “It’s over JJ, time to move on.” Like the delay in the wake after death, this one has more practical than sentimental reasons. No one wants to think they let a friend and colleague turn into a trapped spirit, the kind who doesn’t realize they’re dead and gets mad about it. After a little bit of trial and error back in the mid-twentieth century, the heatherhearts realized this kind of repeated, gentle reminder was the best way to make sure the dead went where they were supposed to go. Wherever that is.

And then, there is the final tradition. The newest tradition. Requested by one Millie Pfeifer some sixty years earlier. Millie was an odd one, they said. The picture of her that hung in Ms. Didi’s house made her seem like she had been a Lowa, even though she died before the Lowa even became a thing. Skinny, pale, bright make-up and hair dyed black and cut up choppy with bright red streaks. Anyone who had actually worked with her was already dead, but Ms. Didi and a few others were old enough to remember them. They had called Millie an ‘emo’ like this was supposed to mean something. She had liked this sad kind of music, real whiney-like, and always talked about the ‘aesthetic’ of things. She’s scowling in the picture at Ms. Didi’s house, but that was apparently for her image. She was an unusually upbeat heatherheart, always ready for a fight, and when the discussion of death came up, she had always had just one request for her own wake.

Well, after she had taken that cultist’s ax to the neck they had honored her request. And it turned out it wasn’t a bad one. In fact, a couple others requested it at their own wakes. And then a couple others. Only two of the heatherhearts who had worked with Millie didn’t have the song played at their wake. The rest did. All the rest did, in fact. Right through to tonight, to JJ’s wake at the Gator Tooth in the middle of a Florida swamp.

It was also a tradition to pretend they didn’t like the song. The lyrics were a little on-point, they would say between wakes. It was overly-dramatic. It wasn’t the kind of music any of them would even dare to listen to on their own. Or at least admit they listen to. But when the bartender rang the bell for last call and the wake was drawing to a close, without fail the heatherhearts found a way to play their death song. Metal heads, country fans, even Quincy Marquis who only ever listened to classical and opera. Hell, JJ was a hip hop head. But he would have wanted it.

The Gator Tooth has it on their jukebox. It costs a dime. The heatherhearts know all the words. They are all very drunk. They clutch each other. They sing into each other’s faces. When the song gets fast, they dance. They dance like they never do. They get on tables. They sing so loud it carries over the swamp and into the night, making the deer run and the gators blink. The locals are pissed, but they understand. They see it for what it is. The bizarre ritual, this five minute relic from when the 21st century still seemed new and shiny, that allows this strange collection of people to mourn, to grieve, to heal, and to move on.

Statistically speaking, it will be a little over a year before they do it all again.

The Case for a LOST Remake

Just to catch everyone up real quick, Lost was a vaguely fantasy drama that ran on ABC from 2004 to 2010. It featured a cast of roughly three dozen people, shifting timelines, a smoke monster, ‘the others,’ a hippy commune that didn’t really seem to get hippies, a really concerning lack of communication, a never ending series of poor decisions, JJ fucking Abrams fucking mystery box filled with (surprise, surprise) absolutely fucking nothing of substance, one of the best TV pilots, a really uneven six seasons, and easily the worst series finale I’ve personally seen. Granted, I haven’t watched Game of Thrones or Dexter, but the series finale of Lost managed to retroactively ruin the only thing the entire last season had going for it, so that has to count for fucking something.

I loved this show. I still love most of it. Back when physical media was a thing I owned five out of the six seasons on DVD and rewatched them regularly. I still think the fifth season finale is a far better ending than the actual ending, which can just fuck right off. I’ve never been so mad at a piece of media. No, wait. I’ve only ever been this mad at another piece of media once, and that was X-Men: Apocalypse because A, it was boring as sin, and B, how are you going to finally put Jubilee in a movie and then not let her use her fucking powers??

ANYway, I’m a big believer in remaking things that almost worked, and I really wish someone would get on remaking this show, because I think with a splash of paint and a couple hits with a baseball bat you could make something actually, fully good.

Also, spoilers, in case you care about a not-entirely-well regarded show that’s been off the air for a decade.

Get It the Fuck Off Network Television

This is true for everything. There’s too many restrictions to what you can do, and to what you have to do. Specifically, season length. Back when this show started, a typical network drama was ordered for around 22-24 episodes a season. They didn’t do half orders unless it was a mid-season replacement, so if you were running a show you had to come up with that much content, even if the story you were telling didn’t really call for it (I am 100% talking out of my ass on this, folks, do not quote me). The fact that the last three seasons were so short is a testament to how much power the creators of the show had at ABC, and how fast television was evolving in those years. So, if someone is going to wrench Lost from Disney’s hands, or – more realistically – if Disney remakes it and puts it on Disney+, the first thing they have to do is:

Tighten That Shit Up

No, wait, the real first thing they have to do is:

Plot Out the Whole Fucking Show

You heard me. No more of this ‘meander around a vague plot and hope we figure out something clever before we get to the end.’ It didn’t work the first time, it’s not going to work the next time, it’s never going to work any time so stop it. Stuff a bunch of writers in a room, lock the door, and don’t let them out until they can describe the finale to you. Once they have that done, you can:

Tighten That Shit Up

There was too many fucking people in this show, and not nearly enough of them mattered. A side effect of the meandering, because many of these characters ended up dead before their plot had any functional resolution, anyway. Off the top of my head, they could re-do this show and leave Shannon and Boone, Nikki and Paulo, and all of the fucking ‘tailies’ on the cutting room floor and not lose a step of momentum. Do you remember that literally all of the people from the tail section who survived were dead by the end of the season? Except Bernard. And I will fucking fight for Rose and Bernard.

So, cut down your characters to the core and then cut down the episodes. There are literal hours of filler that can be shaved away to make this show better, including a lot of the flashbacks. Not the entire idea of flashbacks (and flash-forwards, and flash-whateverthefucks), but some of them were just a little on the really stupid side.

Lean Into the Fantasy Aspects

Even back in the day when I was watching this I always got the sense that ABC wasn’t exactly comfortable with one of their biggest shows having such a fantasy bent. Which…what? You’re owned by Disney. Why are we pussy-footing around the idea of one guy seeing the future, another guy talking to the dead? Part of it might have just been the era. The 2000s, for the most part, was very much the era of taking fun stories with fantastical elements and coating them with that gray paint of reality (looking at you, Nolan’s Batman). Well, now we as a society are obviously over that, so let that freak flag fly. It’s a fucking tropical island that is inexplicably holding back a great evil that wants to destroy the world (for some reason) and also there’s a donkey wheel that can move it in time and also it can occasionally explode and knock planes out of the sky, and I for one am ready for all that to be the tip of the iceberg and not what’s left of the melting Arctic.

Change the Entire Last Season and Make the Flash-Sideways Actual Flash-Sideways

I hated 97% of the series finale, but the moment I hated the most was the moment I realized that the season long “flash-sideways” that were supposedly peering into an alternate dimension, were actually peering into the afterlife and everyone was dead and had been dead and every single minute we had spent in the sixth season watching these flash-sideways were actually meaningless because everyone was fucking dead and just because they didn’t know it right away and just because it was ‘only’ half of the last season doesn’t make it hurt any less these fucking people spent six god damned years telling everyone the island wasn’t purgatory but they still managed to shove purgatory in there some-fucking-how and thus told an entirely meaningless story because it’s purgatory and once they fucking realized that, everything they were feeling and struggling with just washes away in a heavenly fucking light and seriously, seriously, I will never stop being mad about this, not as long as I’m breathing, it’s such cheap storytelling and they did things to make it seem like it was an alternate reality, they fucking tricked us so we wouldn’t riot well jokes on them I’ve been rioting about this every fuCKING DAY IN MY HEART OF HEARTS CARLTON CUSE YOU ARE A HACK I HOPE YOU ALWAYS FORGET THE WORD YOU WANT JUST AS YOU ARE ABOUT TO TYPE IT.

Ugh. Never mind. I’ve changed my mind. Don’t ever remake this show. I need scotch.