Billy on His Eighteenth Birthday

Billy woke up and knew what he had to do.

It was clear in his mind the way things never were immediately after waking. It was a mountain river rushing for a waterfall. It was clear. It had direction. And it was sweeping him away.

He pulled his clothes on, wincing when he had to lift his arm to get his shirt on. The bruise was an ugly purple, turning green at the edges. The last bruise. At least, the last from his shithead stepfather. There would be more. Billy had no illusions. Life was not about to get easier. It was just going to have a Carl-shaped hole in it, and that would be enough. It had to be.

Cash was hidden all around the room, nearly two grand. Billy had learned the hard way if the money was all together, Carl would find it and take it. He had to put it in little bits. Ten bucks under the lamp. Twenties taped to the back of his Metallica poster. Bills slipped into every album, under the mattress, lining the bottom of his sock drawer. And then the dummy stash. The cookie jar that had belonged to his equally worthless dad, shaped like an elephant. Carl stole from it regularly and thought Billy still didn’t notice. There was fifty bucks in there this morning, Carl must have been planning to take it later for drinking money. It was paycheck Friday, after all.

Money gathered, shoes on, he stopped at the door to his bedroom. He’d lived there his entire life. Played with his building blocks on the floor. Changed the posters as he discovered new music. The first instant he knew he loved Lacy was right at the window, watching her walk away down the street and steal glances back up at him. He knew he should want to take something. The cookie jar. Some of his albums. His bass. Billy didn’t want any of it. Even standing there at the doorway there already seemed to be some kind of film between him and his room, like he was staring at a picture. All of this was already in the past, and that was where it had to stay.

Carl was sleeping it off in their bedroom. Billy could see him through the door, neatly tucked in under the blanket. He knew for a fact his mother had done that. Carl never fell asleep, he only passed out, usually on top of the blankets and with at least one boot on. Now his boots were sitting neatly at the foot of the bed and Carl was under a pile of blankets, snoring. The door was closed halfway, blocking Billy from seeing his mother on the other side. Perhaps that was for the best.

He rushed down the stairs as fast as he dared, skipping the steps that creaked. All he had to do was pick up his keys from the front table and walk out the door. Parked at the far end of the driveway was his truck – his truck, paid for with his cash, title in his name sitting in a lockbox in the bank so Carl couldn’t change it. The bank was one of two stops this morning. And then he’d never see this town again.

A small sound from the kitchen stopped him. Small, but immediately identifiable. Spoon in a coffee cup. He’d only assumed Mom was still asleep. He almost went to her. Maybe he could explain himself. Maybe she would listen, and understand. Maybe she would give him her blessing, a twenty from her wallet, and only ask for a promise he would call.

Billy knew better. He knew if he went back there he’d never leave. Guilt hung around her like a shawl. No, more like a fucking gas leak. Intoxicating him. Infecting him, wearing him down. It was her choice to marry Carl and her choice to stay, but somehow it was all Billy’s fault. Standing here, in the hall, with her safely out of sight, he knew it wasn’t true. He remembered how many times he’d tried to help her, and the bruises he had gotten as thanks. But if he saw her those memories would fall apart, and he would be left with only the idea that he was her protector. And he would stay.

The spoon hit the coffee cup again and he turned and ran for his life.

Outside it was a beautiful summer morning. The chill from night was quickly fading and he left prints in the dewy grass as he crossed the yard. If she heard him open and close the front door he wouldn’t know. He couldn’t know. He didn’t turn around. He kept walking. The sky was blue and the sun was rising. Today was a good day to escape.

He put the truck in neutral and pushed it halfway down the street before starting it up. The house was behind. Carl. Mom. The streets he drove down were the streets he grew up on, but this morning they looked different. New, like he’d never seen them before. No, they weren’t different. He was. The urgency was still there, pushing his right foot down on the gas pedal and making his fingers tap on the steering wheel. But the fear was gone. He’d left it back at the house. He wasn’t going back for either. He’d never see his house again.

Two stops, and he’d never see this town again, either.

Lacy After Graduation

Music Videos in the Eighties

There is an evolution to music videos. In the beginning, no one knew what the fuck they were doing, and it was great. Here are some of my favorite music videos from the eighties.

“Young Turks” by Rod Stewart

Okay, so, obviously music videos as we know them started in the eighties. Prior to MTV they were just, like, the band on stage or something playing the song (See every ABBA video on the internet). Then there was a whole channel for these things and suddenly everybody had to get creative, but no one knew what the fuck to even do. Mostly, it seemed like there were three options:

  1. Here’s the artist performing the song, only instead of on stage, they are Somewhere Else
  2. Here’s the plot of the song, turned into a little movie
  3. Here’s some pretty people dancing.

And then you have “Young Turks,” where the creators decided that choices are for chumps and they could HAVE IT ALL. It starts with Billy and Patty leaving home to start their new life in LA while Rod Stewart sings the plot to them like some tiny Greek Choir, and then right around the 45 second mark one of those roving gangs of dancers that plagued LA all through the eighties show up and just, like, follow them around and I honestly have no clue what they’re supposed to represent, if anything. Youth? Freedom? Cocaine? Answer: Yes.

“You Might Think” by the Cars

I lied earlier. There was actually a fourth option for music videos in the eighties, and that option was COMPUTERS!! This shit was considered groundbreaking and won awards back in 1984, so remember that the next time you’re watching something with computer effects and think it’s going to last.

“If This Is It” By Huey Lewis and the News

Looking at this video from 2020, it honestly looks like an ad for skin cancer.

Besides that, it chose the ‘little movie’ option, to the point where there’s this entire B plot about a family who doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Huey, his weird ex-girlfriend, or the News trying to find a spot at the beach. Just, like, regular jamokes, trying to put their blanket down, and it takes all day, and then there’s a fucking Land Shark?! Man, fuck the beach.

Also, his weird ex-girlfriend? What the actual fuck are you doing, Susan? Breaking up is hard, and you don’t want to do it. But, like, you keep running into this guy on the beach. All day. Repeatedly. While you’re hanging off some other guy’s arm. Yeah, by the end of the day he should just take the hint, but all of this awkwardness could have been avoided if you just answered the phone that morning and told him it was over. Ho it up, girl, I’m not slut shaming anyone, but don’t be leaving these sadsacks in your wake. Own it when it’s over.

“Raspberry Beret” by Prince.

This music video is a beautiful chaotic mess and I love it. It’s essentially just Prince and the Revolution singing on stage, but they made everything a blue screen and then put all these weird, colorful images in the background and I’m 100% sure they dressed him in a blue suit so everything would bleed and be messy on purpose, and then all of these people look like side characters in an anime series and they’re doing this adorable half assed dance and there’s balloons and flowers and it’s all just incredibly endearing. And, look, I’ve never found Prince attractive. And here, I still don’t. But let me just say: Damn, Wendy Melvoin. How you doin’?

“We Built This City” by Starship

This is the silliest rock anthem ever and it comes paired with this video filled with people who really thought they were making a statement. No one is smiling. Grace Slick looks like she’s going to come out of the television and eat the smallest member of your family. They scream-shout the song at Abe Lincoln’s statue until the power of their rock and roll brings him to life and he, too, scream-shouts about the power of rock and roll. It is WILD, and further proof everybody in show business was so busy doing eight balls they didn’t have enough time to stop and think if maybe a rock and roll anthem shouldn’t be built on some of the poppiest synths of the day.

Northbound

Colors

She sat on the train and twiddled her thumbs and tried not to let the rhythm of the wheels on the rails make her fall asleep. When she came close, she would rub her tongue against the roof of her mouth, shift in her seat, button or unbutton her coat, depending on how it was. Once, she had gone up to the dining car and gotten a cup of tea. It still sat in the little cup holder, now nothing more than cold gray water.

Outside it had been raining for miles. She had begun to believe that the whole country was covered in a single rain cloud. Coast to coast covered with a gray blanket and fat, cold drops. It had been slowly letting a bit, though, hadn’t it? Yes. She was sure it had been raining much harder when the train had left the first station. The gray had been darker. Now it was light, and though it was still raining it was barely harder than drizzle.

She sat up. She had been falling asleep again. It was another two hours to her stop but she didn’t care. She hated sleeping on trains. That open feeling that felt so cozy and childish in her own home just made her feel vulnerable in public. It was a crowded car. She had nothing worth stealing, and she doubted any creep would come up and try to…do something with so many people around. But who knew. There were plenty of creeps, and you didn’t know you were talking to one until it was too late. Apparently, there were a lot of things you didn’t realize until it was too late.

The forward motion of the train, that was what she had to keep focused on. Every mile of track the train glided over felt like progress. Somewhere behind her, miles behind her now, was the bad life. The life that didn’t work. The job she hated and the little apartment that had stifled her and Moira. Oh, Moira. Everything had seemed so perfect in the beginning. But something you just don’t realize until it’s too late. She almost wished something big had happened. Moira cheating, Moira hitting her, Moira calling her fat or being mean. But none of that had happened. Moira was a good person. But Moira wasn’t good for her, and she wasn’t good for Moira, and neither of them had wanted to admit it for a very long time. They had stayed together as all the colors drained from their life until there was nothing left but black. The absence of colors.

She glanced at her phone. Habit. It was off. Had been off since the last time Moira had called her. There was nothing to say, and she didn’t know how to say it. She had sent a single text, white letters in a black space. I’m okay, goodbye. It wasn’t enough. But for now, it would have to be.

The train was getting warm, now, warm enough to lull her to sleep. Careful to not brush against the woman sitting next to her, she pulled off her sweater, leaving her to her white t-shirt. She hadn’t bothered with packing. She might be going back, after all this. The biggest gamble of her life. But it felt right. With careful motions she folded the sweater in front of her, and let herself dream of Alex.

They had shared a single class together in college. She had loved him after knowing him for half an hour. And she knew he loved her. It was impossible to miss that look in his eyes. But live moves on. Kids are stupid, and they had been no different. They had both left that miserable college town to have their own lives, their own careers. They had given it up because it had seemed too hard. But looking back, loving Alex had been the easiest thing in her life. Everything else since had been harder. Even in the beginning, with Moira, it hadn’t been as easy as with Alex.

What if he didn’t remember her? What if he did, but no longer loved her? What if there was someone else? None of it mattered. What mattered was trying. She knew where he was. She was going to show up, and she was going to try. And if it didn’t work, well, no one said she had to go home.

She watched the gray and the rain, and looked for a break in the clouds.

Inspiration

Act Like You Belong

“Well, I’ve never been, so that’s where we should go next. Don’t look at me like that. I’m the one trying to experience life here, so…oh, wait, hold on…excuse me…yes, excuse me…this is decaf.”

Paulette froze, a forkful of eggs halfway between her plate and her face. Dinah was looking at the waiter pleasantly, an easy smile and a charming twinkle in her eye giving her heavily made face a sort of Stepford feel. She didn’t look angry. She didn’t sound angry. The waiter, barely more than a boy and possibly still in high school, certainly didn’t think she was angry. He was standing at the table, looking down at her with that trained curiosity everybody in the service industry develops. Practically Swiss it was so neutral. He thought he could fix this. Paulette knew better. Either she had spent enough time with Dinah now to know her whims, or whatever rotten magic was inside her was rubbing off on Paulette and making her a mind reader. She put her fork down and readied herself.

“No, it’s regular,” the waiter said. “It’s what you ordered. I remember.”

“Yes, regular is what I ordered. In fact, I remember asking for ‘all the caffeine you have.’ I phrased it as a joke, but it wasn’t really a joke. But here I am, sipping on a decaf.”

The young man held his hands out before clasping them together in front of him. A long practiced gesture. Sorry not sorry. He still didn’t know what was happening here.

“There must have been a mistake in the back, let me replace it for you.”

Dinah put her hand over the mug before the waiter could reach for it.

“No.”

Paulette swallowed. “Dinah, don’t.”

“I seem to not be making myself clear,” Dinah said. She looked at Paulette. “Aren’t I being clear?”

Paulette shook her head, less as an answer and more as a please don’t do this.

“Well,” Dinah said, knowing full well what Paulette meant and pretending it meant what she wanted it to mean. “Let me be clear.”

The young man had been watching this back and forth completely still except for his eyes, bouncing back and forth like nystagmus had struck. He still looked carefully neutral, except…there was something in his smile now, wasn’t there? A sort of smugness? Oh. Oh, no.

Dinah leaned back in her chair to look the waiter in the face. “What I am saying is, you purposefully gave me decaf instead of regular as some sort of petty revenge for some perceived slight. I asked for cream and sugar so you thought I wouldn’t notice. But I did notice, Tyler. I noticed very much.”

Again, Tyler’s hands went out and then back together.

“I’m sorry, madam, but I would never do such a thing. It was just a mistake.”

“Oh, it’s madam now? What happened to stuck up hose beast?”

For the first time, neutrality broke. The Swiss had taken up arms, and Tyler’s face cracked. Just a bit. The smugness was certainly gone. What was he afraid of now? A write up? Getting fired? He would be lucky.

“I didn’t…I don’t…I’m not sure what you heard, madam, but-”

“I am sure!” she said. “Now, beast, sure, I’m not sure how you knew that, but I’ll give you that one. But stuck up? HOSE?”

“Madam, I-”

“And I don’t even like your tone on madam. Or that you’re calling me that at all. This is a truck stop diner, not the Four Seasons. I’ve never been so disrespected, and I’m going-”

“Dinah, you can’t kill him.”

The two of them looked at her like they had forgotten she was there, each with their own display of shock. Tyler looked like he wanted to run. In fact, why hadn’t he? At the very least Paulette would have expected him to bail for a manager by now. With an internal sigh, she realized Dinah must have been keeping him there. She really was planning on killing him. Right here.

“Why not?” Dinah asked. “I hurt his feelings, so he gives me decaf?”

“So you kill him?” Paulette hissed through her teeth, leaning forward. No one at the other tables had noticed the little spat and she wanted to keep it that way.

Dinah crossed her arms. “He needs to learn you don’t mess with a demon’s coffee.”

Tyler’s eyes grew wide, but otherwise he didn’t move. At all. Dinah had frozen him, hands together, slightly bent at the back. Paulette had three sentences to save his life. Four, tops.

“But you don’t want to be a demon anymore, remember? You’re trying to be human. And humans don’t kill other humans for just being a jerk.”

Dinah let out a laugh. “You humans kill each other for everything.”

“Not all of us,” Paulette said, shaking her head. “Just the worst ones. Do you really just want to be the worst kind of human?”

That at least got her to think. Paulette could see it in the way she shifted back in the chair, her shoulders now sloping. For all of their magic and their power, it was turning out to be quite easy to manipulate a demon. Pick a vice and play on it. In this case, pride.

“So,” Dinah said, drawing out the word. “What do most humans do in this situation? The best ones?”

Paulette shrugged. “The best ones would never have done what you did in the first place. A normal human would grumble about it to their friends but never say anything to the waiter. Give him a bad tip. But not, like, a bad bad tip, because tips are their livelihood. I don’t know, like, twelve percent.”

“And that will teach him a lesson?”

“No,” Paulette admitted. “But I think you’ve already taught him one. Look at him. He peed himself.”

“Oh. That’s what that was. Gross. Get away from me.”

Whatever was holding Tyler in place dissolved, and he turned to run, slipping on his own puddle at first and still trying to power through like a cartoon. Now the rest of the diner was looking at them. But there wasn’t really anything to look at. Just two women having a soggy breakfast.

“Won’t he tell somebody?” Dinah asked.

“No. And even if he does, no one will believe him.”

“Do you think he’ll be afraid for a while?”

“Definitely.”

Dinah beamed. “Okay. Now, back to Dollywood.”

Seeking a Friend for the End of Hyrule

Okay, I’m probably reading too much into this but whatever, let’s go!

Major spoilers for Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, so if you haven’t played it and want to maybe get on that, eh? And if you haven’t played it and never will play it but want to read just because you love me (love you, too!) here’s a summary.

Breath of the Wild is my first Legend of Zelda game. Sort of. Back in the glory days of the N64 we did have Ocarina of Time, widely regarded as one of the best Zelda games, and…I mean, to say I bounced off it is putting it lightly. I think I played forty minutes of it and I was straight bored and completely lost as to what the fuck I was even supposed to be doing compared to the bright colors of Mario 64 it just looked so, so ugly to me so I gave up and never even tried to play it again. Thus was my relationship with Zelda until the Breath of the Wild sequel trailer dropped.

Yes, that’s right, I didn’t even get into it until the sequel was announced, and it was this specific video that made me want to try it. Watch the employees on the left side of the screen. One of them is gripping that station thing behind her like she’s trying to keep herself from passing out. Everybody is seconds away ripping off their shirts and fucking each other they’re so excited, so I finally realized I had to try the first one.

And I’m not going to get into how great it because I don’t have to because everyone else already has. It’s got a 97% on Metacritic and a 10/10 on IGN, and is now considered the best Legend of Zelda game. Three years down the line and everyone has time to get over the hype and it’s still called the best. Holy shit. I will say it’s a great game even if you’ve only ever played forty minutes of another Zelda game and thus have no idea who any of these people are or what these places are or don’t recognize any of the musical cues. It’s still so much fun.

The reason I personally like it so much is the same reason so many others play endless hours of another Nintendo game, Animal Crossing: it’s soothing. BotW is the most open of open world games I’ve played. There are huge distances to travel, any direction you look in you can see for miles (or whatever the Hyrulian equivalent of miles is, like I said, I haven’t played any of the other games), and once you’re off the Great Plateau, the game is like, “Okay, go kill Ganon, I guess? Or don’t, whatever. I’m not your dad.” And then you can just fuck off for as long as you like.

And the way I play games, that means fucking off for a long time. The game is soothing to me because I can spend hours wandering around different calming environments, listening to someone riff on the piano, and collecting hundreds of apples. God, I love me a game that doesn’t restrict how much I can carry. Oh, sure, occasionally you have to fight a monster. Occasionally that fight is hard. You know what this game lets you do? Warp away in the middle of a fight. So if the fight is too hard I can just double fuck off and go into a forest to pick up three dozen mushrooms I will do absolutely nothing with. The point isn’t having them. The point is collecting them.

The first time I played this I probably put two hundred hours into. Just one play through. Because of all the fucking around. Picking stuff up and running errands for literally everybody and taking pictures and generally having the time of my life. Fighting Ganon was a bitch and a half, a sentiment most people don’t have, because I spent most of my time taking pictures and not enough time learning how to fire arrows off a horse. I hated riding the horses because you’d have to get off to pick stuff up, and like, I’ve made it abundantly clear what I’m here for so you can piss right off with that shit. Then I find a giant horse and I name it Chonkers and I can’t put the good harness on it? Fuck you, horse system. I’m a free man and I’ve been asleep for a hundred years so I will just hoof it across the entire kingdom and then some, thank you.

So, two hundred hours and where is my favorite scene? At the end. The very, very end. Quite literally the last few seconds of the scene after the credits.

Sometime after defeating Ganon, Link and Zelda stand on a high hill overlooking the kingdom and discuss what the hell comes next. After Zelda admits she thinks her power has diminished and she very much doesn’t care, she gives Link the biggest smile she has given him the entire game, and Link runs to her. The scene pulls out as they walk to their horses together and the camera lands on a field of Silent Princesses blowing in the breeze and I’m on the couch silently weeping. Not because I ship the two of them, I actually really adore their platonic relationship. I love this scene because it recontextualizes everything Link has done the entire game.

As I mentioned in The Appeal of the Apocalypse, this story takes place a hundred years after Ganon has all but won. Hyrule is destroyed. What Link walks through is mostly ruins with the occasional secluded village. Link has awoken without his memories. He literally wakes up in a puddle in a cave wearing nothing but boxer briefs knowing fuckall about anything and the first guy he meets is a douche that makes him run errands for a fricking sweet hang glider before revealing himself as the spirit of the king of Hyrule and then fucking off without any further help. Thankfully, along the way he is sent to scattered locations that help him remember.

Remember what? Well, Zelda, primarily. But also the rest of his crew. The Champions that had come together a century before to try to stop Ganon. His friends. They all died. Link has met their spirits, but they are dead and cannot travel with him this time. He has the voice of Zelda guiding him, but that’s it. A voice. There are a few allies and acquaintances still alive that he runs into, but most of them seem shocked he doesn’t remember anything even though that was a known side effect of the fucking plan. Link is set to this task alone, and it is killing him. Maybe not at first, because he doesn’t know any better. But every memory is really just a reminder of what he’s lost.

Now, most video game protagonists are playing alone, so I didn’t think twice about it. Until this end scene. Until his little, barely controlled jog to Zelda. That’s when I realized that more than being glad they had finally defeated Ganon, Link was just happy to not be alone anymore. Whatever they did next, they were going to do it together.

Like I said at the beginning, I’m probably reading too far into this. But it was an honest, immediate reaction and I’m not lying about crying on the couch. And, given the minimalist music, the empty fields, the bare ruins, maybe it’s not so far out there to imagine the game has themes of loneliness.

The Not-Deer

Clementine knew she shouldn’t have left the party just as soon as she did it, but through some combination of stubbornness and pride she kept on walking. This stupid party her boyfriend – ex-boyfriend – had dragged her to was all the way out in the boonies. She should have known it was a stupid idea when he said they would have to drive, and she had known it was stupid when the drive took forty minutes, all down winding, unlit roads that took them to some unnamed hamlet. Her head ached from the way she had gritted her teeth the whole ride, waiting for a deer to come bouncing into their headlights and crashing into the windshield, or for the road to just up and disappear around a bend and leave them crashing down a hill.

Once they had made the party she relaxed. It was a nice looking cabin, well lit, with a pool and a bonfire going in the back. Lots of people, and she knew some of them. She took the first beer offered to her and drank half of it in under a minute. Jason had just patted her on the back. He knew she was afraid of driving, especially at night. But maybe he had been right to make her come out. The party looked fun, and if she drank enough she could sleep through the drive back to campus.

Then, two hours later, she had pushed open a door thinking it was the bathroom and found Jason wedged between Cerise Cunningham and some brunette she’d never seen before. So busy they never even noticed the door open, or Clementine’s staring. Maybe they noticed the door slamming shut. She never stopped to find out. She never stopped. She went to the front of the house, pulled her coat out of the pile on the couch, and went out into the night. If anyone had tried to stop her, Clementine hadn’t heard over the sound of her tears and her rage.

If it hadn’t been for the nearly full moon she wouldn’t have been able to see anything. Clementine hugged the side, walking the edge of the pavement like a tightrope walker. All it would take was one car, one truck, not expecting anyone on the road – rightfully so! – for her to be thrown into the woods. Going back felt like crawling back. What were her options? Pretend she saw nothing and ride the whole way back with that cheating scumbag? Or get in a fight right there and potentially get left behind? No thank you, and no thank you. She was fairly sure they had passed a gas station not long before reaching the house, she only had to get there and then she could call-

Rustling leaves disrupted her thoughts and made her spin. The leaves had been rustling this whole time, yes, but this time it hadn’t been the wind. Probably an animal. This didn’t comfort her like it was supposed to. This whole time, walking the road, she had been afraid of getting hit by a car. She hadn’t even thought of animals. What was out here? Bears? Wolves? Cougars? Clementine swallowed hard as her eyes kept searching the darkness. She’d heard about people crossing cougars. You never knew they were there unless they wanted you to.

Clementine took a deep breath. She knew it was there, whatever it was, so it couldn’t have been a cougar. Probably. And the sound hadn’t happened again. She’d spent enough childhood summers with her grandparents in the country to know sometimes even small animals could make big noises, especially in the dark of night. It could have been a raccoon, or even just a squirrel. It took effort to make herself turn back around and start walking, and more effort to keep her pace steady.

The sound again, and again, and Clementine allowed herself to keep walking until she heard clicking on the pavement behind her. Startled at the new sound she whipped around, and with buttery relief realized she was looking at a deer. It was hard to make out the details with only a clouded moon, but even a child could recognize that shape. Just a dumb deer. Probably more scared of her than she was of it. Clementine even managed to laugh just a little bit before the clouds passed away from the moon.

It’s just a deer.

But every inch of her skin was crawling and itching, even the inside of her mouth and her eyes.

It’s just a deer.

But there was a new ringing in her ears that she couldn’t shake that sounded like a combination between machine grinding and mosquitos.

It’s just a deer.

But there was a tightness in her back and a watery feeling in her belly.

It was just a deer. That was what her senses were telling her. But some other part of her – the most primitive part of her brain, or, maybe, her soul – was telling her otherwise. She swallowed hard, and took a step back. And another. And if the deer-thing followed her, if she had to see it move, she knew she would go insane.

It didn’t move. But it was watching her. Flat eyes. It wasn’t afraid. It wasn’t anything.

It isn’t anything.

Clementine almost threw up.

She stopped. The road was bending. If she went any farther she’d lose sight of the deer, lost behind the trees. She didn’t want to be anywhere near it. She didn’t want to not know where it was, either. Not when the deer would clearly know where she was.

How long did she stand like that before they came? It was still dark. There was still a moon. Beyond that, she didn’t know. She didn’t know much of anything when the car came to a stop next to her, brakes screeching. The car had whipped around the deer like they’d never even seen it.

“Clementine? What are you doing out here? Clem?”

She glanced at Luanne, leaning out the passenger side window, for only a second before her eyes went back to the deer.

It wasn’t there.

Without invitation or hesitation she threw herself into the back of the car, slamming the door behind her.

Luanne and Todd looked at each other, then at her.

“Jason’s looking for you, you know.”

“He was fucking Cerise.”

Todd let out a low whistle and, “Yikes.” Luanne hit him.

The hairs on the back of Clementine’s neck stood on end.

“Can you just drive, please?” she said, unaware she was crying.

Todd shrugged and sat forward in the seat. As they drove away from the curve in the road the crawling and the buzzing and the tightness fell away. Luanne climbed into the back seat and sat next to her, patting her hand. Clementine didn’t even realize she had been falling asleep until the realization shot her with panic and she sat upright, making Luanne scream.

Deer don’t walk on two legs.

Inspiration

How Blue

Colors

Just a little ways from the shore the waves were blue monstrosities, towering higher than she knew waves could go. They foamed and curled and crashed and then the water came rushing at the white sand, flowing over it, reaching her toes and tickling them just so before retreating back to Mother Ocean. In between the waves – so big they must be dreams! – she could see the horizon, a straight line stretching all the way from one direction to the other. Blue meets blue. There was a continuous wind from the water, pushing sea spray and salt at her, but still the air was hotter than she had ever felt. The sun above, much stronger. She had only been sitting here…well, it couldn’t have been long, and already she felt the skin on her arms was pink. No matter. She could sit here forever.

She looked over her shoulder, turning slowly, and winced. The door to her bedroom was still there, sitting in the middle of the sand about halfway between where she sat and where the trees began. Curious trees, things she had only ever seen illustrations of and couldn’t quite remember the name although she could remember it was simple. Some stood straight up, some bent and thrust out at angles. All had large flat leaves, leaves that looked as big as her. If she sat on one of those leaves in the water, would it sink? Or would she float away?

The door drew her attention again. It made sense in her house, where everything was big and overly done up. Why should a bedroom door be so intricately carved? Who saw it besides whoever slept there? Certainly Mother and Father would be aghast if she had brought any guests in. Mrs. Haversham would probably be sent into convulsions.

What would happen to Mrs. Haversham, anyway? The old governess would be coming to wake her soon. This time it wasn’t her fault she was late for breakfast. She had woken up before the sun, unable to sleep through her anxiety any longer. She’d done her face and her hair and put on the blue dress Mother had put out for her the night before. There had been plenty of winks and quiet smiles between Mother and Mrs. Haversham as Mother had brought the dress in and hung it on the wall. They thought she didn’t know, that there was a surprise to keep. Well, she wasn’t just a pretty face. She had already gotten Margaret drunk in the kitchen and she had spilled everything. Mr. Walker. Francis. The absolute idiot. She had lain in bed all night, staring at the curtains around her bed, wishing for this to be taken away from her.

Mrs. Haversham had told her wishes were for children, so a small part of her wanted to see the old bag open the door and step out, tripping on the sand and falling on her face just like she had. Except she knew for a fact the governess had no joy nor imagination to speak of, and once she was done wiping off every grain of sand stuck to her she would take her by the ear and drag her back through the door. To her room. To Mr. Francis Walker.

“If I marry him, I shall also kill him,” she told the ocean. As she suspected, the ocean did not pale at hearing such things. It stayed that crystal blue, and now it seemed to her the crashing of the waves was a cheer. She knew in her heart it was true. She had heard…things about Mr. Francis Walker. Things he got up to in London. As if she had the divine gift, she could see their wedding night play out in her mind’s eye. There would be blood, oh, yes, but it would not be hers.

The door was still open, just a crack. She had been afraid of closing it all the way, afraid it would disappear. She was no longer afraid. She knew, logically, it was a bad idea. On the other side of that door were people she knew and her bed and her house and piles and piles of snow, yes, which she hated, but it was all things she knew. She knew nothing of this place. It was a beach on an ocean. She didn’t even know which ocean, although she couldn’t imagine anything so pretty and blue could be connected to the Atlantic she knew of.  Any second now she would tire of the sand and water between her toes and the heat on her skin and the thunder of waves in her ears. She would tire of the never ending blue in front of her. She would stand up. She would brush the sand off her dress. She would pick up her shoes. She would walk back into her room. Into her life. Staying here, on this beach, was madness.

She began. There wasn’t much point in delaying the inevitable. The sand brushed easily off the backside of her dress. Her shoes were sitting just where she left them. Every bit of sand had to be brushed off. She didn’t want to have to explain anything to Mrs. Haversham, and the governess would notice even a single grain.

The door pushed open easily. Everything was as it had been. The crimson blankets and the forest green wallpaper and the porcelain wash basin with the chip on the edge. Cold poured out of the doorway and raced past her feet. It was still early morning there, and just faintly she could hear the rest of the household waking up. What would happen when Mrs. Haversham tried to enter the door? She had come to the beach by trying to leave.

Well, not tried. She had left. Far more successfully than she had planned, actually.

“Will they miss me?”

She closed the door.

The Dark Tower of Ass

Spoilers, hey.

Okay, so, this isn’t so much a review of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series, but a brief look at why I hate every single word in all seven books.

Hate. Hate. I hate these books like I hate the Nazis. I hate these books so much Emperor Palpatine is somewhere in space getting a woody. If we could somehow harness the power of my hate into an energy source it could become a renewable energy that would support the entirety of the human race for hundreds of years but still wouldn’t be utilized to its full potential because the capitalist pigdogs are willing to let humanity kill the planet in the name of stock options.

Let’s back up. Like most people my age, I went through a Stephen King phase. It started in fifth and sixth grade as a true crime phase. We all went through that, right? A bunch of ten and eleven year olds running around knowing all the details of the Zodiac killings? Right? That wasn’t just me? If the internet has taught me anything (it hasn’t) it’s that I am in no way unique, so I know there’s at least a few of you out there who thought serial killers were just the bees knees when you were in middle school do not leave me hanging on this.

That morphed into reading Stephen King. I think I first read The Shining? Maybe The Dead Zone. One of the ones my parents owned, anyway, and soon it wouldn’t matter because in the space of, like, five years I had read everything of his I could get my hands on. My youth has already become a hazy web of sense memories with very few hard lines, but I do remember the days I would spend so much time reading I would become dissociated from the world. I also remember how terrified I was after reading The Jaunt in his Skeleton Crew collection. No written media has ever scared me as badly as The Jaunt. I finished that story, put the book down, and had to take a walk. I didn’t go back to the book for two days. I avoided The Stand for years because I didn’t think I could handle apocalyptic fiction. When I was finally ready, I read the whole unabridged version in three days. And I mean three entire days. I was fifteen, summer break had just started, and for three days I woke up and did nothing but read, occasionally getting up to eat or just move to another room.

All of this is just to say I love King’s work, and that’s probably why my hate for The Dark Tower is so visceral. If I simply didn’t like King novels, then I just wouldn’t like them and that would be the end of it and I could go about my day. But Stephen King’s work is a major part of my tween and teen years. I couldn’t point to specific examples, but the idea that he didn’t influence the way I write is laughable. Hell, for a very long time, like, over a decade, I would tell people ‘Salem’s Lot was my favorite novel (and while I still like it I can no longer ignore how fucked up Susan is as the only woman protagonist in the book).

I avoided The Dark Tower until I was in my twenties for the same reason I avoided Fleabag: sometimes I’m an irrational idiot who decides I’m not going to like something before I even experience it. I was immediately wrong about Fleabag. I was less immediately but more intensely right about The Dark Tower. The first novel was…fine. It was fine. And the opening line really is one of the best opening lines ever. “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” God, what a hook. I can understand being struck with that line and just dropping whatever you’re doing to rush home and figure out what to do with it.

I liked The Drawing of the Three best, mostly because it’s entirely possible Eddie is the only character I actually like in the whole fucking mess. I mostly dislike Susannah, the kid is a drip, and Roland…oh, Roland. God, I hate him. What a fucking jackass. What an absolute tool. What a shitty excuse for a human being. Maybe I just don’t like spending so much time with unredeemable characters. I also super didn’t like Uncut Gems. Just shitty jackasses screaming at each other for two hours. And Roland, as a main character…is bad. He’s a bad person and his quest is shit.

I almost liked Wizard and Glass. I liked what it was in the beginning. And then the whole book turned into a flashback as Roland told a story of his shitty, shitty childhood and once I realized this stupid flashback was the whole fucking book I almost rage quit right there. Does it ever fucking bother this asshole that everyone around him just dies because he sucks so much? That’s how I read these books. The universe just kills everyone around him because he sucks that much.

I didn’t stop reading, but the only reason I read the rest was out of spite. The self-insertion stuff couldn’t deepen my hatred because by then I was already in a deep sea pod exploring the Marianas Trench. I never stopped hating it. My hatred became gleeful. I didn’t enjoy the books, but I enjoyed how much I hated them. It became a vicious cycle. There are pieces of these books I might have enjoyed if they were not a part of the larger story, but because they were I automatically hated them. I hated all the characters and I hated all plot points and I hated how everyone died. Maybe these were the books that made me realize how fucked up Susan is in ‘Salem’s Lot because these were the books that made me wonder if he hates women. I mean, he can’t, right? I follow him on Twitter, he seems pretty liberal, but oof. Everything having to do with Susannah’s arc is straight out of the Clueless White Guy’s Handbook for The Only Problems Women Could Possibly Experience. Of course she somehow ends up pregnant. Of fucking course.

The only thing I didn’t hate was the ending. Like, the real ending. The sentient shitpile shaped like a human named Roland finally reaches the tower and it turns out time is cyclical and he’s already done this countless time and now here he goes to do it all over again. “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” Oh my God, I fell out laughing. I laughed for days. Even now, thinking about it makes me happy. This motherfucker who wasted so much of my time has to do all of this again. He didn’t learn his lesson, but I learned mine. Fuck you, sucks to suck, have fun getting all your friends killed again, asshole.

I hate The Dark Tower, but with such an intensity that can only be born from twisted love. I only hate it so much because I love most everything else Stephen King wrote. And I wanted to love it, but I didn’t even like it, so the only avenue left to me was to hate it. I’m not even saying it’s bad, I’m just saying I hate it. And I fucking paid for those books, so who’s the real loser?

Roland. Roland is. I cannot express to you how much I hate this fucking guy.

Just a Little Magic

This is the tale of Cecilia Ramos, who never figured out she was mildly psychic.

Strictly speaking, ‘psychic’ is a garbage term that umbrellas so many different types of mental abilities as to make it quite useless. A mind reader and a medium could both be called psychic, and if you asked, for example, the medium to tell you what you were thinking about they would balk. They would have very strong words. They might, if they were feeling particularly feisty and boozy toward the end of an Afterlife Convention after party at the nearby Thank Goodness for Saturday restaurant, throw their drink down and ask the wife of their rival if she wanted to step outside.

But this isn’t the story of Glen Grabowski from Milwaukee. This is about Cecilia Ramos, from North Lurleen, Texas, whose great-grandfather was a trickster god. No one knew, certainly not Cecilia. No, Cecilia was a God-fearing woman, and to even suggest the existence of little-g gods was blasphemous. To suggest she was descended from one was outright foolishness.

There never came a day where Cecilia learned the truth. The adventure she wished for as a young girl, where a captivating swashbuckler in tight leather pants and a Castilian accent showed up at her door to whisk her away to never ending nights of daring and intrigue, were closer than she ever could have imagined. There’s always adventure available for those who possess magic, especially if you’re not married to the details. But if you don’t know you possess magic? If you never know? Well, then, enjoy your life in North Lurleen with your husband and your in-laws and your three kids.

And Cecilia did. Every minute of it. No small thanks to the magic she didn’t even know was there. She had the power of precognition, the ability to see the future. Only the power was so weak, she really only had the ability to get the general sense of the future, and only some of the time. And it was easy enough to explain away. Coincidence, usually, or just perhaps paying more attention than she realized.

For instance, there was the time Cecilia was grocery shopping. It was the middle of the week and she had thought if she went to the grocery store a few hours before she usually did she would avoid Sheila Martin, that gabby snake who always seemed to be able to draw gossip out of Cecilia whether she wanted to share or not (Sheila Martin held no magic, she was just a bitch). But there Sheila was, hovering in front of the pile of tomatoes, seemingly waiting for someone from PTA to show up so she could follow them through the store like some chittering magpie. While distracted by Sheila and attempting to keep what few secrets she had to herself, Cecilia Ramos reached out and picked up a big box of large band aids, the largest size they had.

“And what are those for?” Sheila had asked, sensing a hot dish.

But Cecilia had looked at the box of band aids in her cart and couldn’t find an answer. And almost put them back. Almost. She just couldn’t do it. Sheila went home fuming, thinking Cecilia had managed to hold out on her, and Cecilia had pulled in the driveway just in time to see her oldest son Carlos launch his bike off the ramp he had made and fly directly into the mailbox. And in all the excitement of picking him and bringing him to the bathroom and running the bath and cleaning his knees, Cecilia forgot entirely that the band aids had been nothing more than an impulse.

There was one time she perhaps almost noticed that there was something off, and this was when she was fifty-six. Her youngest son, Henry, had been home from college for the summer and going into the city for a concert with his friends. Most of Cecilia’s attention had been on her knitting – the thread just wasn’t cooperating with the needle – when he kissed her on the cheek and headed for the door. Without thinking, words had come out of Cecilia’s mouth.

“Have fun. Stay safe. Don’t take the express rail home tonight, it’s going to crash.”

And Henry has said, “What?”

And Cecilia had looked up at him and blinked. “What?”

Henry, hand on the front door knob, stared at her. “You just said the express rail is going to crash tonight.”

“Tsh. No, I didn’t,” Cecilia had said. She honestly hadn’t remembered, even though it had only just happened. To be frank, she hadn’t even realized she had been talking to Henry at all.

“But you did. You said, ‘Don’t take the express rail home tonight, it’s going to crash.’”

Cecilia had opened her mouth to say how ridiculous that was. Only it hadn’t felt ridiculous. In fact, it had felt seriously, terrifyingly true. But how could it be? She couldn’t just know such a thing, could she?

Henry had still been staring at her, waiting for her to explain herself. His fear had been that his mother had just some kind of temporary stroke.

“I must have seen a crash on television earlier,” she had said. She hadn’t even been watching television that day. But that must have been it.

Henry had seen nothing else wrong with his mother, and had been increasingly worried about missing the express rail into the city, so he had left the matter and the house and not thought about it again. At least until it had been time to come home, at which point Henry had gotten onto the local instead of the express without even hesitating. It had taken him forty minutes longer to get home than if he had taken the express. But, if he had taken the express, he never would have gotten home at all because his mother had been right.

Cecilia had been watching the news that night, and when they broke into a cute story about a local dog who had learned to surf to announce that the train had crashed, she hadn’t panicked in the slightest. Because just like she had someone knew the crash would occur, she knew her son had gotten on the local. And for the next twenty-two minutes, before Henry came through the door, she sat and stared at the television without seeing it. And wondered.

This isn’t a story about an old woman realizing she’s ‘psychic’ and starting to use it for good, though. She wondered that night, and that night only. By the morning she had decided it had been God who had saved her son and never thought about it again. It was the only thing that had made sense. Henry would keep wondering, start noticing little things his mother seemed to know when she shouldn’t. But Henry was a good son, and knew bringing it up would only upset her. So Cecilia Ramos lived for forty more years and died peacefully in her bed at ninety-six and never once truly knew of the old magic that ran through her veins.

Subscribe, maybe?

The Biddies Above Broken Hearts

The Biddies and Broken Hearts

On the corner of Astoria and Sunday on the ridge above Broken Hearts were four Victorian homes. In happier times this was referred to in the town as the Biddies’ Corner, known for the four old women who had lived there and spent much of their lives together in one house or another, playing bunko and drinking gin. Not a one of them had survived, although the word had been Mrs. Rockby had tossed herself down the cellar stairs before the disease could get her. Whether it had been from delirium or her own demented way of cheating The Blues, well, that depended on whose mouth the word was coming from. The houses on Biddies’ Corner now were quiet, and looked just as abandoned as everything else. Given enough warning, the people who lived in those four houses could hide, and a passerby would never know what they’d almost stumbled across.

Wendy Ferguson was sitting at her little desk in the clinic reading up on endocrine disorders (something was going on with Leo Forrester, she just couldn’t pin down what) when she heard the front door of the Doblin Biddy open and close. Barely. People were in and out all the time going from one Biddy to another. She paid it so little mind she’d already forgotten it two seconds later when she heard Nico’s voice from the hall.

“Doc, Birdie’s coming for you.”

Wendy made a face and opened her mouth to say something but Nico had kept on to the kitchen and she was alone. Of course, even if she had managed to say something it wouldn’t have done any good. To the thirty-four people who lived in the four Victorian houses everyone called the Biddies, Wendy was and always would be their doctor. Never mind she hadn’t been one. She’d been a nurse, and to everyone here that was close enough. Wendy had tried explaining a few times why she couldn’t abide by it. Claiming you were something you were not in the medical industry wasn’t just rude, it was setting yourself up for a lawsuit. No one cared. There weren’t medical schools or nursing schools or law schools anymore, so who was she really afraid of? They were right, of course. But old habits die hard.

She closed the book with a bookmark made from a cut up fifty dollar bill and headed for the shelves at the back of the room. The shelves had once been placed in front of each window to block out the sun to make it easier for Elmira Doblin to play video games. Elmira, back when she had been alive and had owned the place, had called it her nest, and when she wasn’t drinking gin with the other biddies she was here, curled up in her oversized lounge chair, headset over her ears, controller in hand, handily beating young men a third her age at games that, by all rights, she shouldn’t have even known existed. Her nephew, Malcolm, had gotten her into them the summer he had spent with her getting back on his feet after his marriage had broken up on the shoals, and even after he moved out he still had come over once a week to make sure her set up was up-to-date and to roll her the joints she needed to loosen up her fingers enough to play. 

(Despite playing she had never become very good at understanding technology, and so she had died never knowing that she had become something of a legend on the internet. Entire forums had popped up to discuss the ‘gay gamer granny,’ a nickname she had earned through her favorite insult, “I fucked your grandmother while your granddaddy was in the war.” Malcom knew but had never said anything. He hadn’t wanted the fame to go to her head.)

Then Elmira had died, like most everyone else, and what remained of Broken Hearts had moved in. They had left the room shut, a little as a shrine but mostly because they hadn’t known what to do with it. On the one hand the bookshelves had had everyone fooled and what were they supposed to do with a windowless room in a time of no electricity? On the other hand, Elmira’s television and speakers had been too nice to part with, just in case they ever did figure out how to get the juice back on. It had been shut up for two years by the time Wendy agreed to stay and turn the room into a clinic on account of the size being just right and it was on the northern end of the house and cooler than the rest of the rooms by five degrees. She was just going to figure out a solution to the darkness when she and Leo had moved one of the heavy bookshelves and hey, let there be light.

The supplies had been ransacked from every pharmacy and clinic in a ten mile radius, not to mention the Heart of the Valley hospital, a quaint little thing that hadn’t looked much more than a glorified ER to Wendy. Most of the supplies were locked in the supply room in the basement but she kept the common stuff here. Including an entire shelf of gauze and tape and a drawer of antibiotic cream. There was a sharp bit on the ladder to the firewatch Birdie kept lookout from, and it seemed she cut herself every other month. She’d always say she was going to fix it and then never did. One of these days Wendy was going to pry herself from her room and go out there with a hammer herself.

“Doc,” she heard from behind her.

“Haven’t you fixed that ladder, yet? One of these days, Birdie, I’m…going…Merciful Christ.”

Besides looking flushed and out of breath, Birdie looked fine. The strange man standing next to her did not. Strange man. It had been over a year since Wendy had met anyone new. This alone was short-circuiting her wiring. The fact of it. The truth of it. That she hadn’t noticed. That she was noticing now. And the state he was in. Frostbitten, beaten, burnt, wearing Birdie’s nice, three-size-too-small coat and John’s beaten, three-sizes-too-big boots. Looking like he’d chased the oxy dragon into a wall.

“What…who. How? What.”

“Doc-”

“I’m not a doctor,” Wendy said, unaware she was crushing gauze in her hand.

“Well, can you be for a few minutes?”

Wendy shook her head, but only to shake off the shock. She nodded, and helped Birdie get the broken man to the exam table.

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