The Appeal of the Apocalypse

When you hear the word ‘apocalypse’ you might think of the end of days. A meteor the size of Puerto Rico slams into the earth. Jerk-off scientists in some underground lab make the Rage Virus and unleash the kind of zombies that can run (it would have to be that kind of zombies. Most of this country is armed and constantly itching to shoot someone. The real problem in a slow-zombie apocalypse would be Paulie Prepper and Big Joe and their big bunker of guns and MREs because they fucking prepared for this shit, man, and they’re all methed up out of their minds and not really properly checking if someone is a zombie or not before blowing their head off with the armor-piercing rounds they somehow own while living in East Shithill, Oklahoma). The Yellowstone Caldera pops off, instantly killing everyone in Western America and slowly killing everyone else. The biblical Armageddon, complete with brimstone from the sky and rivers of fire. The apocalypse is a violent, terrifying end to all life on the planet.

But what if it wasn’t? Okay, I know some people are pushing their glasses up their noses and thinking, “Then it wouldn’t actually be an apocalypse because by definition blah blah blah blah blah blah I’m a pompous ass.” Nobody fucking cares, professor. English is a) a living language, and b) a whorechild, so get the fuck out of here with your ‘this means that’ semantics. I’m not even looking up the etymology to fight with you because that’s not the point.

Okay, I did look up the etymology. But only because etymology is fun! It’s like bite sized history. No, I won’t be telling you anything about apocalypse. Go do your own homework.

What I’m talking about here is a ‘soft apocalypse.’ Something big happens, but it’s less a world-ender, and more a civilization-ender. There’s no explosions or fire and brimstone, or at least not a lot of it. And a lot of people died. But all of that was in the past. Now, living past the end, there’s no bombs or zombies or sickness to be afraid of. There’s only rebuilding what you can of society. Living in a small village in the ruins of an old world town. Learning how to farm, raiding old stores, protecting yourself from the occasional marauder. Very occasional. And in this situation it’s obvious that they’re the bad guy and you’re the good guy. Your inbox is empty because you don’t have an inbox anymore. You sleep well.

This is the appeal of the apocalypse. Living here, now, in whatever this (gestures wildly at everything) is, it can actually be a pleasant diversion to imagine everything torn down to the nails. It doesn’t quite hold up to scrutiny. For one, it’s glossing over the, you know, mass death of humanity. For another, a lot of the time these fantasies make it seem like the challenges in a soft apocalypse would be easier than the challenges today, even if the challenges in a soft-apocalypse involve not dying from starvation. That said, I fucking love soft apocalypse stories and I’m not blaming anyone else who does, either.

It’s kind of an ill-defined term and potentially something Tumblr came up with, but there’s a lot of fiction that fits nicely. Personally, I see soft apocalypse fiction as having these features:

  1. Society is either in the middle of a collapse or has already collapsed, but the earth itself is still livable.
  2. Whatever killed society poses no threat to the protagonists.
  3. The drama comes from somewhere else. It could come from adapting to survive in the new world, or discovering something about the old world, but it doesn’t come from surviving the apocalypse.

With any kind of genre there is, of course, wiggle room. I think a lot of zombie fiction could count as a soft apocalypse. Look at The Walking Dead. I mean, I stopped watching after a while, so I’m not a hundred percent sure, but didn’t most of the cast die from other humans and not zombies? I’m pretty sure I remember the internet freaking out for a while about a guy with a baseball bat wrapped with barbed wire, and that doesn’t seem like something a zombie would carry. Stephen King’s The Stand would definitely fit. The protagonists are immune to the Super Flu that destroys society and the drama comes from rebuilding society and figuring out what the fuck to do with that prick Randall Flagg. My two favorite examples are also two of my favorite video games ever: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Horizon Zero Dawn.

Breath of the Wild takes place one hundred years after Calamity Ganon has successfully destroyed Hyrule – almost. You, as Link, are not trying to fix that because you fucking can’t. You are trying to put the pieces together to stop Calamity Ganon from finishing what he started, but even if you do Hyrule is never going back to what it was. Honestly, the game is so perfectly calming and Zen I didn’t even realize it qualified as post-apocalyptic until I was at least fifty hours in. It’s a beautiful, empty, lonely world with such lovely music I use to play these videos for my patients to calm them down before a procedure.

Much of the drama of Horizon Zero Dawn comes from unraveling the mystery of what happened to the ‘metal world.’ The rest of the drama comes from trying to figure out how to bring down a robot T-Rex with your bow and arrow. I fucking love this game so much. Like Breath of the Wild, it’s about staving off future calamity while living in the ruins of a past calamity. The beautiful, scenic ruins.

Stories like this are appealing because we can pretend that when the end comes, it will come as something we can survive. We’re all the protagonists of our own stories, right? So we can imagine that we can survive the end and come out the other side as new people. People free from all the things we hate about our lives, suddenly living in quiet simplicity and never having to worry about finishing school or being late to work or global warming again. It’s an enduring fantasy, and the fact that so many people, myself included, can pleasantly fantasize about the collapse of society freeing them is something I am not equipped to analyze.

Dinner at Rosa’s

Sometimes jobs fall right into your god damned lap.

Paulie and Tosh were sitting at a booth in Rosa’s, a twenty-four hour diner directly off the highway in a town that had grown up only to serve it. The highway, not Rosa’s. In the same large parking lot as Rosa’s there was a Trucker’s Haven Quick Stop and Mini-Mart, two separate gas stations, a couple dozen trucks parked for the night, and a handful of prostitutes making their rounds. Across the street was a large but cheap hotel called The Cozy Shack, which Paulie and Tosh had been arguing about. Paulie wanted to stop for the night. It was almost midnight, they had been driving since before nine that morning, and they still had something like six hours to get to Miami, despite crossing the Georgia-Florida line a few miles back. Tosh just wanted to make a run for it and sleep when they get there. They wouldn’t be able to start poking around until evening, anyway, so if they got into town around four, they could sleep until midafternoon.

“We won’t get there around four,” Paulie said. “We’ll be too busy being dead after falling asleep behind the wheel and steering the car into the Everglades.”

“We’re not going anywhere near the Everglades.”

“Not the point,” Paulie said. He took a sip of his coffee and made the same wincing face he had made after every sip he had taken of the wretched thing.

“Why are you still drinking that?” Tosh asked.

“I paid for it.”

“It was a dollar. I’ll give you the dollar if you stop drinking it and making that stupid face.”

“It’s the principle of the thing. And now you’re just avoiding this all together. Maybe we won’t drive the car into the Everglades. Maybe it will be a swamp. Maybe it will be an orange tree, or Cinderella’s fucking castle. The point is it won’t be on the road anymore.”

“I’m not tired. I’m nocturnal, remember?”

“You’re also a terrible driver.”

“Fuck you.”

“How many accidents have we been in the past three years? How many have been your fault?”

“I feel like this is beside the point.”

“Can I get you boys a refill?”

The waitress was blonde, busty, middle aged, and shamelessly flirting with Tosh. As did most of the women they met. Tosh was annoyingly attractive. Even Paulie had to admit it, and it pissed him right off. Tall, broad shoulders, muscular, with this blond hair that did this attractive wave thing on his head and these blue eyes that were so bright they practically served as high beams. A lot of the women would start talking to him thinking he was a movie star or a model. The bastard.

The cherry on top of the annoying, gorgeous cake was the charm. Tosh was handsome. Tosh knew it. Tosh knew how to use it. He smiled at the busty waitress so his dimples came out and Paulie thought she was going to swoon right in front of them, dropping the coffee pot and the tray of pie slices she was carrying.

“I think I’ve had my fill of caffeine for the night, Charlene, but my friend here would love a top off.”

“What? No, I don’t, I’m-”

Charlene wasn’t listening to him. She wasn’t even really looking at him, or his coffee cup, gauging when to stop out of the corner of her eye while she eye fucked Tosh. Thankfully, she missed her mark and only filled the cup up halfway.

“Are you staying in town tonight, or going off onto that big, lonely highway again?”

“My friend and I were just arguing about that, actually.”

“Tosh.”

“I’m starting to think maybe he was right about-”

“Tosh, seriously,” Paulie said. His tone had grown dark, and when Tosh actually looked at him, he could see his annoyance had been replaced with something else. Something harder.

“Your six,” Paulie said.

Tosh turned to look over his shoulder and almost immediately became pissed off. He usually didn’t sleep with the woman who flirted with him. He’d never be out of bed if he did that. He had wondered, off and on, if these women who gave him the hungry eyes would be so keen to follow up on their desires if they knew why it was happening or what was supposed to happen afterwards. Probably they’d run, but there was a small, terrified part of Tosh that imagined that they wouldn’t.

Anyway, he was completely ready to bang Charlene. It had been a few weeks, it looked like Paulie was going to win the argument about staying (he was the one with the car keys in his jeans pocket), and Charlene looked old enough to not get attached. Younger girls and women, even into their early thirties, always seemed to have even a small hope that their one night of fun was going to turn into something else, no matter how much Tosh assured them it wasn’t before even taking off his shirt. These older women, though, upper thirties, forties, maybe divorced, maybe with kids, they knew the score. They weren’t looking for commitment with a total stranger, and they weren’t looking for complications. They were looking for one night of sex, preferably with someone who wouldn’t mind leaving early in the morning before they had to get work or get the kids to school. He could see that in Charlene. She’d probably kick him out before he could even doze off, claiming she needed to shower and didn’t trust him alone in her bedroom.

What he saw over his shoulder ruined all of his plans. He wouldn’t be driving south to Miami tonight, and he wouldn’t be making sweet sweet love to Charlene the waitress, either. He would be working.

Across the diner in another booth, a young woman in jeans and a black tank top was talking to a young man, a trucker by the look of him, all stubble and weariness around his eyes. It was clear from their body language that they had just met, and that they were doing the same dance that Tosh and Charlene had been doing. As Tosh watched, she ran a bare foot up his leg. The young man blushed hard but didn’t remove it. She had pretty much closed this deal.

Behind them ran the pane glass window that ran around the whole of the diner. During the day it looked out at the mini mart and the trucks. At night, though it was dark enough outside and bright enough inside that the glass acted as a mirror. In the reflection of that particular booth, the young man was drinking his coffee with no one and blushing over nothing in particular. The woman’s reflection had been swallowed up by the aether, apparently.

Tosh turned back and sighed. God damn it. He fucking hated vampires.

I got one of those constantly running water fountains for the cats and Bruce thinks its the devil. Anyway, you should subscribe.

First Day on the Job: A Body of Thieves

A Body of Thieves

This was, easily, the weirdest first day on the job he’d ever had. Including the water park, and that first day had ended with three paramedics and a small fire. At least when he’d shown up the location had seen normal. Parking lot away from the customers, locker room, other college kids either eager or over it. The address he had walked to from the train was a factory with some old logo fading off the brick, surrounded by other factories in varying levels of disrepair. Some were still in use, he could hear machine noises and people calling to each other, but the sounds were echoes off the walls. All the buildings closest were empty and dark, including the one he was standing in front of. There was a single window three stories above him with lights on, and as he stood wondering if he should just go the tinkling sound of a woman laughing came through the glass. If he didn’t go in, where would he go instead? He looked up beyond the building, at the thick gray of the sky. It didn’t have any answers for him. Pushing down any other hesitation, Vinnie opened the door.

There was another door waiting for him at the top of the stairs, and he pushed it open without waiting, knowing if he hesitated he’d turn and run all the way back down. A thin, flaky relief made him shiver when he saw Joey sitting at the head of a table. At least he was in the right place. Four others sat there, turning to look at him, three women and a man. They had been talking, laughing about something when he opened the door but now were silent and waiting.

“There he is!” Joey said, his tan face beaming. “Right on time, too. Come in, get over here, didn’t your mother teach you not to linger in doorways?”

He almost turned and ran again, and gripped his fists in his gloves to hold himself. Yes, he could go. Nothing was stopping him. But what else was out there for him again? Oh, yes. Nothing. Walk to the table and breathe.

“This is our new Face?” one of the women said. She had a high, breathy voice – hers must have been the laughter he had heard downstairs – and small features. Her brown hair was shaped in a way that made him think of a mouse, and as she stared at him she shifted her coke-bottle glasses around as though they weren’t quite strong enough. She was sitting so close to the other man that their arms touched from shoulder to forearm.

Vinnie swallowed, terrified his words would come out cracked. “Hi, I’m-“

“No names,” Joey said. “Not until the end of the audition.”

“Audition?” There had been no mention of an audition the last time they had talked. Just a promise.

“Of course, audition. What, you think we hire just anyone? We need to make sure we work well together, and if we don’t we don’t need you out there putting names to faces for feds.”

Vinnie took a step back. “I don’t…I would never…”

Joey waved at him. “Relax. You’re going to pass today and then you’ll be one of us and we can have proper introductions. For now, we’ll stick with labels. That’s Eyes, and Fist. This is Smile. Down there is Spirit. And you, of course, will be Face.”

Oh, of course. Of course? These labels meant nothing to him, but the others were nodding like it all made sense.

“He doesn’t look like Sem,” the man – Fist – growled. Not maliciously. He must growl everything. Him and Eyes, the mousy woman, were a study in opposites. Short to tall, small to broad, pale-skinned to…well, the darkest black skin Vinnie had ever seen, at least in person. And if she was a mouse, he would come at you with the ferocity of a lion. Every angle he could see seemed chiseled from stone.

“Sem got burned,” Eyes said. “Wouldn’t make sense to hire someone just like him.”

“He looks a little wet behind the ears.”

This from the woman introduced as Smile, a slim Asian woman so impeccably dressed Vinnie wondered where the runway was. She was looking him up and down so closely, undressing him with her eyes without a hint of flirtation – or shame – that Vinnie had to look away before an awful blush could creep up his cheeks.

“He doesn’t look like a good liar,” Eyes said.

“Kind of the point. Unless he’s not actually good. You are good, right?”

They were all looking at him, now, in that intense examination. Behind the table the window above the door was slightly open, and he considered throwing himself out of it. This wasn’t what he expected. Or what Joey had promised.

“I’ve, uh, well, I’ve been in a lot of roles, plenty of leading, too, uh I was…”

“Wait, wait,” Smile said, holding up a hand and not living up to her name. “You’re a STAGE actor?”

“An actor, Joe? Really? Has he done…have you done any jobs?”

The half a second after the words, “Like TV?” left his mouth he realized what they were asking. The damage was done. The three of them were talking over each other, under each other, interweaving words to make it hard to pick any of it out. But he got the gist.

A heavy hand clapped him on the shoulder, nearly making him jump out of his skin.

“You people are vultures. Of course the guy’s good, I scouted him myself. What, you think I would fuck this up? If you don’t trust him, trust me.” The others said nothing but didn’t quite look placated. “Come on. Spirit trusts me, right?”

Spirit was the last woman at the far end of the table, boots up on the corner and leaning back in her chair with her arms crossed. She looked like she belonged in some biker bar on the outskirts of town, with her jeans and black t-shirt and sunglasses indoors. Actually…

Joey grunted. “She’s asleep, isn’t she?”

With an eye roll, Fist pushed Spirit’s boots off the table. They hit the ground with a SMACK and she started with a grunt, grabbing the table as though it was flying away. When she realized the room wasn’t collapsing she took her sunglasses off, revealing dazed gray eyes. They settled on Smile.

“You were supposed to wake me up when we started,” she said.

“I never said that.”

“Oh. Must have dreamed it.” She looked at Vinnie for the first time and sniffed. “Who’s the dweeb?”

Vinnie had already been pushed past any sort of place where ‘dweeb’ could offend him… much…but next to him he heard Joey sigh. This was the moment, he was sure of it. The moment he would prove himself. The moment he would finally be accepted for who he was. He began to pull a glove off.

Joey stopped him with a single hand and a barely perceptible shake of his head. And Vinnie thought, what?

Next

Profanity

I’ve been getting in trouble for swearing since pre-school.

One of my first memories is standing in front of my mother in the middle of summer, and I must have been…three? Four? Something like that. And I was sweating. And I wanted to say ‘I’m sweating like a pig.’ But I was a stupid little kid and my brain was still mostly packed away in the IKEA boxes it came in and nothing was wired right and no one could find the right Allen wrench, so what I said instead of ‘pig’ was ‘bitch.’ A four year old looking her mom dead in the eye and saying, ‘I’m sweating like a bitch.’

Yeah, it ended the way you’re imagining.

I guess I don’t look like the type who would cuss, and I know this because every time I cuss for the first time in front of new people you’d think I was a French poodle that just medaled in the biathlon. ‘Oh, you do that? I didn’t think you’d do that. Wow, you do not look like someone who would do that.’ Yeah, no shit. You think I don’t know I look like Model UN Barbie? Like the mild-mannered alter ego of some mild-mannered superhero with reading-based super powers? Like if you looked up ‘white’ in the dictionary there I would be, doofy grin on my face, hand waving frantically, while I just repeated ‘Gee golly gosh!’ over and over again? I have a mirror I know that’s what I look like thanks.

Okay, part of it is my fault. Whenever I get into a new situation, like a new job, I’m always super quiet at first while my social anxiety goes to war on itself so, really, nobody expects me to do anything. Then after, say, three months, I loosen up and I start to show people my real self (Well, not my real real self. Not at work, anyway. The closest I ever came to showing people at work my real real self was after I did seven night shifts in a row. The shitty IKEA furniture that is your brain has a tendency to start popping screws after that much sleep deprivation.). The hardest heel turn I ever did was about six months into my first nursing job when I had been waiting for the pharmacy to send me an antibiotic drip I needed for close to two hours. I went up to my charge nurse and very casually asked, “Who’s dick do I have to suck to get some Zosyn around here?”

I just like swearing! All these people trotting out excuses about how swearing is a sign of this or shows someone has that and brain things and whatever. I like swearing. It’s fun. It sounds good. Seriously, it sounds so good. I want a ring tone that’s just someone booming, ‘motherFUCKER’ over and over again. I’d want that as my alarm. I want that played at my funeral. There’s just this nice, crisp sound to the word ‘fuck’ that makes it sound so much better than ‘hell’ or ‘screw’ in most situations. ‘Fuck’ is like a cuss explosion. 

And they’re so fucking versatile. You could put ‘fuck’ and ‘shit’ into every sentence you uttered, it’s fucking GREAT. ‘Oh, you don’t want to do that, you’ll diminish the impact of swearing if you swear all the time!’ Yeah, don’t fucking care. I’m not looking to make an impact, I just want to swear a lot. Swearing to make an impact doesn’t work because swearing is constantly progressing and what used to make people clutch their pearls doesn’t even register today. They had to update all the profanity in Deadwood to make it sound better to us, because a bunch of hardened, grizzled outlaws living in the filth of South Dakota and shouting ‘goldarn’ and ‘tarnation’ at each other is some Monty Python shit. ‘Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.’ That shit caused riots. Little old ladies in fucking East Asshole, Alabama were ripping the seats out of the floor and running into the street with their ankles showing when they heard that.

‘Oh, you don’t need swearing to be funny!’ Who cares! I’m not funny anyway, I might as well swear about it.

I’m not even making a big fucking statement! People my age swear all the time. And it doesn’t matter! Once I ordered delivery from a sandwich shop and when it showed up I was missing my sandwich. I called the restaurant to let them know, and do you know what this minimum wage Shakespeare said to me? ‘Oh…oh balls.’ Customer service! Middle of the afternoon! On a Sunday! ‘Oh balls.’ The calling of a revolution.

Because there’s too much actual stuff to care about right now. We’re headed for a recession and for fascism and even if we avoid all that global warming is still getting worse and won’t get better until we can curb corporate greed no matter how much recycling and composting you do because the people who are in charge are sociopaths with no object permanence, but yeah, you get mad because I dropped an F-bomb, Deborah.

Lost Soul

Humans cannot possess magic. It was simply one of the known facts of the universe among people who knew these things. Humans could borrow magic, if one of the factions was willing to share. And if someone was only part human they could have magic from whatever else ran through their being. But full humans were just that – boring, non-magical humans. The only thing a human possessed that kept the rest of magic interested was their souls. Nebulous, gangly things that no one really knew what to do with but for whatever reason everyone wanted. So, like diamonds? Yes, like diamonds. Souls are diamonds, but as a negative comparison. The bloody, useless parts of diamonds. Not the shiny parts.

Anyway, Ollie didn’t know any of that. He wasn’t particularly inclined to do any research on the matter, either. No, Ollie had been particularly depressed since he had died. Marred in a bitter, shocked funk he didn’t see a way out of. Sadly quite common among the suddenly deceased. If you know it’s coming it can be an easy transition, even pleasant for some depending on what the last inches of life had been like. But if you’re a healthy twenty-nine year old just crossing the street on your way home from the first job you actually like and the next thing you know you’re standing next to the car parked directly on top of your lifeless body and watching while an eighty-nine year old man in the thickest glasses you’ve ever seen tries to put the car in park but only succeeds in turning the windshield wipers on and then off and then on again, well, you’re going to need some time to process. At least an hour. Maybe closer to a couple decades.

Ollie had just followed his body around at first. He still didn’t completely believe he was dead. Also, he didn’t know what else to do. His body was like the one friend he knew at a party, and every time it got away from him, even a little bit, gnawing anxiety made his heart race. Well, he didn’t have a heart anymore. Apparently, though, having a heart wasn’t integral to having it race. He could still be anxious dead. If he was dead. Which he refused to believe. After all, how could the dead be anxious? Ollie had watched the paramedics show up and move the car. They hadn’t done CPR, probably because they hadn’t needed to. Ollie was alive, after all, just a little…disjointed. They had loaded his body up in a bag, to keep him warm, and driven him to the morgue. Ollie had waited for the autopsy, not knowing there was no need to do an autopsy when the answer to ‘how dead?’ was an obvious ‘car splat.’ No, to Ollie, they hadn’t done an autopsy because he wasn’t dead.

It was right around the time they were lowering his body into the ground that he began to suspect he might not be waking up from this particularly weird dream. His mother was nearly screaming, she was wailing so hard. Obvious to everyone else there she was trying to bring all the attention to herself. Ollie had always known his mother was a narcissist, but it was nice to see other families roll their eyes and make the jerk-off motion behind her back while she draped herself over his unmoving body. His father hadn’t been much better when he had been alive, always a pushover, allowing Mom to get everything she wanted, but at least he seemed to be actually grieving. Maybe it was for himself. Ollie had left him to deal with her all on his lonesome.

His body was lowered in a box into the ground and everybody left. His parents. His friends. A few people he never considered more than acquaintances or colleagues, certainly not close enough to show up to his funeral. There were a fair few missing that he was sure would have shown up, too. Your own life was mostly a mystery right up until you died and all the answers were laid bare. Everybody left and he almost followed them to the wake but thought, what’s the point? Wakes were supposed to be a celebration of the dead guy’s life, but Ollie had been to enough himself to know what they really were. The people he left behind were going to begin to figure out how to live without him. How to continue. He didn’t get to continue, and he didn’t want to watch that.

So, Ollie sat on the gravestone of one Frank Abilene (1889-1972) and watched as the gravediggers filled in the space above the box that held his body. Around him, the world looked the same. He looked the same, at least to himself. He would have thought he’d be able to see right through himself, but as he held his hands up to his face all he saw were his palms, the same color they had been when he was alive. It was very easy to keep telling himself he was alive. But the gravediggers didn’t see him. For the past three days, no one had seen him. He hadn’t been hungry, or had to go to the bathroom. He couldn’t feel the warmth from the sun on his face, or the breeze as it rushed by.

“I’m dead,” he said.

The gravediggers didn’t stop what they were doing. They hadn’t heard him at all.

“I’m dead,” he said again.

Ollie didn’t wake up in his bed.

“I’m dead.”

The skies didn’t open up above him. A door didn’t appear in the grass. No one showed up wearing robes and carrying a scythe. He saw no others like him, there but not there, sitting on graves or otherwise. Slowly, a new revelation dawned. Ollie had only just figured out life. Now, apparently, he would have to go through it all again to figure out his death.

“Fuck.”

If you’re lost, maybe more stories will help!

Invocation

In a small clearing of trees not far from the Route 85 Rest Stop #14, three men and a woman stood staring at each other. Rocky Lopes and Verity Fields stood on one side. Ozzie Gomez and Perseus Onri on the other. Between them was a hastily assembled shrine, a heavy leather book with the Sioux Falls Library sticker still on the spine, and more than a fair bit of animosity. At every motorcycle growl or roar of a truck that managed to cut through the trees to find them, Rocky and Verity cut nervous glances back toward the rest stop and the road. If their superiors knew they were here, they would be, at best, fired. More likely killed. Ozzie and Perseus were considerably more relaxed. If Rocky and Verity didn’t succeed at killing them at the end of this (they both knew the attempt would come), the two of them planned to tell everyone they had ever met.

Verity cleared her throat and tossed her braid back over her shoulder.

“All that’s left is the spell, right?”

“It’s not a spell, it’s-”

But Ozzie cut off as Perseus put a hand on his arm. They had lost count of how many times they had been over this with the two hunters, and it was near impossible to tell if they were only pretending not to get it just to piss them off, or if they really were this dense. Ozzie took a short, controlled breath while Perseus nodded.

“Yes, all that’s left is the invocation,” Perseus said. He began to reach for the book. “These have been a specialty of mine, so-”

Verity and Rocky had their guns out and trained on the heatherheart’s hands before Perseus could even get close to the book. He took a step back, hands up, knowing Ozzie had his own gun out without even looking behind him. Perseus didn’t carry a gun for the simple reason that he thought they were stupid.

“No way no how we are letting one of you read from that book,” Rocky said.

“What? Why on earth not?” Perseus asked, hands still up. Just because he thought guns were stupid didn’t mean he didn’t recognize their lethality.

“There’s other spells in that spell book,” Verity said.

“You could summon something else,” Rocky said. “Or turn us into toads.”

Perseus snorted. “Kind of redundant, don’t you think?”

Their grips around their precious guns tightened. Ozzie took two cautious steps forward, getting between his friend and these two incomprehensible hunters.

“Okay, okay. Let’s all stop putting coal on the fire,” he said, cutting his eyes between everyone one at a time. “We’re all here for the same thing, right? So let’s get this done and never have to see each other again. Perseus, if they want to read from the book, let them.”

Perseus opened his mouth to argue and only stopped when he saw Ozzie wink at him. It only took a couple of seconds for Perseus to know exactly what Ozzie was thinking and realize he was right.

“Fine,” Perseus said. “Your show, your script. We’ll just…stand here, then.”

The guns went away in quick, twitchy motions, Verity and Rocky doing a damn fine job of showing just how quick they would be to pull again in the future. The two nodded at each other, and then Verity stepped into the middle of the clearing, pulled her braid so it was back over her shoulder, and picked up the book. Upon opening to where the bookmark with the cartoon owl was, she frowned.

“This is in English,” she said, looking up at Ozzie and Perseus like they had laid a trap. Never mind the hunters were the one to find the book.

“And?” Ozzie asked.

“And spells aren’t in English,” Verity said. “You picked the wrong one. Or something.”

“All of the magic in that book is in English,” Ozzie said. “You’ve been watching too many movies. It has to be in your language, so you know what you’re asking for. Do you speak Latin?” 

Verity and Rocky exchanged a glance. They didn’t believe Ozzie. Didn’t trust him. And that was fine. Ozzie didn’t trust them, either. But, of the four people there, two had practical experience with magic while the other two were basing everything they knew off the movies and television they had watched. Rocky shrugged. Verity rolled her eyes and went back to the book. She cleared her throat, and began a slow, flat incantation.

“Frigga. Goddess of foresight and wisdom. Goddess of love and motherhood. We honor you, and ask of you to join us. Bring unto us your beauty and your talent. Be among us and receive praise, and answer the questions we have of the universe. Come to us, oh goddess, and bring us joy.”

Verity looked up from the book. She frowned. She and Rocky began looking around the little clearing, waiting for any sort of sign of the goddess. Nothing had changed. From the highway, a blaring horn made the two jump. But the blaring horn was not the goddess. The two finally looked to Ozzie and Perseus, both wearing looks that managed to be bemused and unsurprised at the same time.

“See, Oz,” Perseus said. “This is what abstinence-only education gets you.”

“That should have worked,” Verity said. “Why didn’t it work?”

Both Verity and Rocky reached for their guns and Ozzie and Perseus rolled their eyes.

“Why is it always guns with you?” Ozzie asked. “Put those damned things away, I’m not reaching for mine.”

“You don’t know what you’re doing and you did it wrong,” Perseus said. He put his hand out for the book. Verity only stared at him.

“We built the shrine and we read the words of the spell. She has to come!”

Perseus sighed loudly enough that a squirrel crossing the edge of the clearing stopped to watch.

“She is a goddess. She has to do nothing. And for the last ridiculous time, this is not a spell. This is an invocation. And invitation! You have to spice it up, baby, make it seem worth their while. And get their attention. I doubt Frigga even heard you with that hum drum delivery. Now, give me that, and let me get it done. Like I said, this shit is my specialty.”

Verity and Rocky looked to Ozzie, who nodded.

“Why do you think I brought him?”

She shoved the book into Perseus hands, practically bending them back. With a glare, Perseus turned the book around and looked over the words. He read them to himself three times, the last time whispering them and toying around with his enunciation. Then, he shut the book and handed it to Ozzie. Verity and Rocky looked at him in confusion. Ozzie only held up a finger. Wait for it.

“Frigga!” Perseus shouted, making the others jump back and reach for their guns. He read out something close to the same words Verity had, only with far greater enthusiasm, his tongue rolling over the words, shouting them to the heavens, his hands and arms moving wildly yet gracefully.

“GODDESS of foresight and wisdom. Goddess of LOVE and motherhood. We honor you, and ask of you to come on down, baby girl. Bring unto us your shining beauty and your engaging talent. Have a drink with us and let us tell you just how much we love you in great detail. And if you’ve got an extra minute, answer the questions we have of the universe. We’re bored, sugar, and need you to liven things up for us.”

Verity and Rocky didn’t even get a chance to be skeptical. He was only halfway through his reading when the wind started to pick up, and began to spin around the little clearing. Lightning flashed in a blue sky, and then Perseus finished and everything was quiet.

“Perseus Onri,” said the new woman. “You tease.”

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What to Expect When Shaving Your Head

So, about three months ago, I’m in the shower and I’m washing my hair. I’d gotten it dyed red and pink about two weeks before the country realized just how badly we’d all been lied to about the coronavirus and everything had started systematically shutting down. I was working from home. The only people getting to see my hair was myself and my husband, and he doesn’t even like dyed hair (“I’m glad you like it!” he says when I ask). I didn’t wash my hair every day to try to protect the color, but I had a thought. Who cares if the pink gets faded, I’m not going anywhere. And then another thought. 

Who cares if I even have hair?

Dear God, I was giddy. I have always wanted to shave my head just to see what it looks like and watch it grow out. I can’t go outside for fear of catching a lower respiratory virus because I already have misbehaving lungs and regular respiratory viruses already try to murder, but I can finally shave my fucking head, damn it! Now, I wasn’t about to rush headlong into the idea. I thought about it for a few days. And I tried to do a little research on how, exactly, to shave my head and what to expect after. I did find good articles on the first part. For the second part, I mostly found beauty bloggers calling me ‘babe’ and telling me how empowered they felt when they shaved their head. Which, I mean, all the power to them, but that wasn’t quite what I was looking for.

So, here’s some of the things I was looking for, in case anyone else out there is looking for some practical tips and experience.

It’s not going to look as good as you hoped, but it won’t look as bad as you feared, either. Your mileage may vary, but that was my thought once we were done and I had nothing but peach fuzz on my skull. In my head, there were two versions of me. One where I looked like some super chic model wandering around LA in my jumpsuit and those shoes everyone loves, and one where I looked like a fascist bridge troll. I came out somewhere in the middle. It’s still just me, but with almost no hair.

Your head doesn’t look as lumpy as it feels. Always my biggest fear when thinking about doing it. My head feels particularly lumpy around the sides, and I was afraid my hair was merely masking my true elephant-man nature. Also, if you think your head feels ‘particularly’ lumpy, ask yourselves how many other heads you’ve actually touched.

Your entire scalp is going to ache for a day or two. You know how you can train your hair to go in a particular direction? If you don’t, try moving your part a few inches in either direction. For a few days you get a natural pop because your hair is still trying to point in the original direction, but then it will learn to go in the other direction and settle down. Well, once you’ve shaved your head you’ve removed all the weight. Now, all your follicles are learning a new direction at the same time – up. It’s an achy, weird feeling that can make you regret it, but don’t worry! It does go away.

You’re going to want to rub your head a lot. I particularly like to run my fingers through the hairs at the back of my head, but the front to back once over is a classic. There were also a lot of times I’d go to twist my hair or put it up in a ponytail, only to remember it was all gone when I couldn’t find anything.

You’ll feel the wind in your hair every time. Not a good or a bad thing, but for a while you will notice it every time you’re outside.

It will be weeks before you are used to your reflection. It’s been almost three months since I’ve shaved my head and there are still times I walk into the bathroom and am…well, I’m not shocked anymore. But there’s still this mild surprise. There’s this image of yourself that you carry with you, and every time you look in a mirror you’re enforcing that image. Whenever I dyed my hair I would always surprise myself with the color, but that only lasted a few days. I think because the change wasn’t so drastic. I still had the hair, it was just different. Now it’s gone, and I’m still subconsciously imaging all that hair there and being surprised to find out that it isn’t.

Shampoo and conditioner get in your eyes a lot easier. With long hair it would all follow the strand down to your shoulders or back or whatever and drip off there. Now, it’s all dripping off directly above your eyes. For the first few days I was constantly blinding myself. Tilt your head more.

You’re about to learn just how fast your hair grows. It’s hard to tell when you’ve got longer hair, but short hair has no secrets. I’ve always thought my hair grew fast, but now I have proof. It hasn’t been two months and already my hair is long enough to shape.

I have no idea how to style this. This is just me. I’m not saying, like, you think you know how to style short hair but you don’t! I’m saying, I don’t know what I’m doing. I wanted to shave my head and I did it. I don’t have a plan. Hell, I’m still afraid to go back to the salon. But it’s just hair. It’ll keep growing and eventually I’ll be able to have someone cut an actual style into it.

Watch some of those beauty bloggers. They weren’t talking about what I was looking for, but that doesn’t mean their points don’t have merit. Shaving your head for the first time requires confidence. Or, maybe, just not giving a fuck. You might shave your head and hate it, and you have to have the confidence to take that risk, and then the confidence to wear out hair you don’t like until it grows. But, hey, if you’re already researching cutting off all your hair, you probably already have all the confidence (or not-giving-a-fuck) you need!

Life is too short to give a shit what Pauline from accounting thinks about you.

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The Gate

The Guardian

There was no questioning if Milo was okay to run. It didn’t matter. If he wasn’t, he’d have to find a way anyway. That thing knew where they were. It was coming. They had to find the gate first.

He took Laurent’s hand and pulled. Waited for some piece of his body to protest. Nothing did. Not enough, anyway. Diffuse pain spread all along his back and down his thighs. He’d landed flat. It was hard to breathe. Not hard to move.

Laurent took a second to check the crystal. He took off into the fog. Milo followed as best he could. Caution and restraint were useless now. It was behind them. It was coming for them. It was gaining. Laurent and Milo were sprinting through the fog. Trees emerged and they dodge. Sometimes not well enough. It wasn’t long before their clothes became ripped. New bare skin became scratched. Leaves caught in Laurent’s hair. Milo was sure they caught in his, too. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. All could be fixed. Except being caught.

The crunch thud behind them had become continuous. Every sound happened at once. And now they could hear something new. Over the sounds of their own panting, they could hear the guardian breathing heavily. Snorting. More than a few times they heard an inhuman yelp as it hit a tree or a rock. It was as blind in this fog as they were. Small miracles.

The rest of the forest had awakened. Birds squawked as they took flight. Small animals in the underbrush scuttled away. Hiding was over. There was only running.

Laurent dodged too late and the tree hit him square on his shoulder. His momentum shoved him forward and he tumbled head over heels. Milo paused long enough to help him up. There was blood, but they didn’t care. They couldn’t. He tried to shake it off as they began running again.

“Where the fuck is it?” Laurent wheezed out. “Shouldn’t we have found it by now?”

“They never said how far!” Milo called. The pain in his back was getting worse. Breathing was fire. Maybe he had bruised a rib.

“They didn’t say a whole lot of anything! Just go! Find it! It’s in there! What if it’s not! What if we’re just some idiots they decided to sacrifice! What if…there!”

“I see it!”

Even without seeing the crystal, Milo knew. It had to be. What they were seeing made no sense. Far away, impossible to tell how far, was a square. A perfect square where there was no fog. Like someone had cut the fog away. Beyond it they could see the trees and the leaves and the sun. It shouldn’t make sense. There should have been fog in front of it. They shouldn’t have been able to see it that far away. But there it was.

The gate. It had to be.

Milo turned. The guardian was there, at the edge of what he could see. The fog behaved properly here. He couldn’t make out details. Just see a shadow, bounding at them. A large shadow.

“Save breath,” he shouted. “Run faster.”

The gate gave them their path. Highlighted the trees. They were free to run as fast as they could. Milo didn’t have to follow Laurent anymore. The crystal was only telling them what they already knew. He was faster, always had been. Without thinking he was in front. His only thought was the gate.

Until he heard the grunt and the thud behind him. Milo skidded to a stop. Behind him, Laurent was on the ground. His foot was caught in a root. Turning over, he kicked at it. Even some feet away Milo could see his laces were caught. Wound tight.

The guardian broke through the fog. They saw each other for the first time. It was the size of a bear. Even on all fours it towered over them. Brown fur was thick and matted. It had a nose like a wolf and large eyes. It saw them and roared, a bellowing sound that hurt their ears. All Milo could stare at were its teeth, yellow and sharp.

Its eyes pointed to Laurent on the ground, and it started running again. Milo ran, too. There was no thought. Not even in abject pictures. Brain blank, he ran. He was so much closer. But the guardian was bigger, and faster.

They reached Laurent at the same time.

Laurent covered his head with his arms.

The guardian opened his maw.

Milo punched the guardian in the snout.

To his surprise, the guardian whimpered and sat back. Blinking. It was everything Milo had but he knew that wasn’t enough. He’d gotten lucky. Hit the thing in just the right place.

Milo didn’t stop. If it had been the other way around, him on the ground with a fucked up foot, they’d both be dead. It would have been too big a miracle for Laurent to pick up Milo. He could count his lucky stars later. He swept his arms under Laurent and pulled. His back screamed. There was resistance as the root tried to hold on. Milo pulled harder and the root only kept Laurent’s shoe. He tossed Laurent on his shoulder and ran.

He didn’t feel the pain in his back. He didn’t hear Laurent screaming. He didn’t know how close the guardian was behind them, nearly at their heels. The only thing he knew was the gate. That perfect square of fogless woods grew bigger and bigger until it engulfed them. The fog was gone.

Laurent’s screams turned to a single word. “Stop!”

Gladly. Milo stumbled to the ground and half dropped Laurent. Exhausted, he turned around. The perfect square in the fog was still there. The fog did not surround them here, stopped in a straight line at the gate. On the other side of that perfect square was the guardian. Sitting. Looking extremely confused and put out. As they watched, it licked at its fur, huffed, and wandered away. The two sat in the shade of the leaves, panting and in pain.

Next to him, Laurent began to laugh.

“Did…did you really just punch that thing in the face?” he asked.

“I guess I did.”

He started laughing himself, painful gasps he couldn’t stop. Next to him, Laurent fell on his back.

They were finally through the gate.

I like to write, you like to read! We were MFEO.

The Guardian

Their laughter faded as one of the sounds coming through the trees caught their attention. The crystal had taken them deep into the forest. They had been surrounded by animal sounds the entire way. Birds’ wings flapping above. Critters crashing through the underbrush below. At first even the sound of a chipmunk chittering at them made them jump back and freeze. Now, hours later, the sounds had become comforting. Almost serene. Enough to lull them into a sense of security. A false one, it turned out.

This new sound was not one they had heard yet. It was heavy. The sound of something big. A crunch as whatever it was put the underbrush under its foot, and then the thud as that foot found the earth.

Crunch thud.

Crunch thud.

Crunch THUD.

They had unknowingly drawn closer together. Each turned their breathing shallow. It was impossible to pinpoint exactly where it was coming from. The trees bent the sound and passed it between them. The big late-summer leaves which had shaded them from the sun all day now blocked sight and sound. Their eyes scanned the part of the forest they thought it was coming from.

Milo swallowed hard. “If it’s the guardian, we must be close.”

“Maybe it’s not the guardian,” Laurent said with a lilt. “Maybe it’s just a…a bear, or a moose.”

“We don’t want to see either of those things, either,” Milo said. They were both speaking in whispers now. The sounds were coming closer but were still far off. “It can’t be too close. The other animals are still making noise.”

He didn’t even get to finish. Hush fell like a brick. Laurent glared at him.

“Just had to say it.”

“Shut up.”

“What do we do? Wait for it to pass?”

“If it is the guardian it’s not going to pass. We need to find the gate. Before the guardian finds us.”

Laurent held the crystal up and turned in place until the glow told him the direction. He let it fall back against his chest. They couldn’t pretend this was just a walk in the woods anymore. They stayed close together. Made small and careful steps. Walked so slow it was excruciating. The next large bush they came to Laurent began to push his way through. Milo grabbed his arm. Shook his head. In the new silence, the sound would be a beacon. It took them extra minutes to find a path clear of brambles. Extra minutes they maybe didn’t have.

The only sound beyond them was the crunch thud of whatever was out there. Sometimes it was so far back they could convince themselves it was leaving. Other times they were sure they’d turn around and see it. It never got faster. But they couldn’t deny it. It was following them.

Milo was looking back. Scanning. Trying to see through the leaves. He couldn’t see it. And he didn’t see the branch. Laurent pulled on his arm. But it was too late. Milo stepped firmly on the middle of the branch. The snapcrack went out like a shockwave. Milo nearly screamed. Laurent clapped a hand over his mouth. The two were as stones, unbreathing. The crunch thud stopped. All of the world was silence. Even the air was unmoving. They waited to hear the guardian begin to run at them.

It didn’t. But when it started again it was moving faster. Toward them.

“Come on,” Laurent said. He had to pull Milo’s hand to get him to start walking. They moved as fast as they dared.

“What is this?”

Fog was rolling in. No, not quite. It was stationary. They were walking into it. First just thin tendrils that reached out and wrapped around trees. Then a cloud at their feet. It blocked the ground enough to make each step a gamble. And it was rising. The further they went, the higher the fog. Only a few steps until it was at their hips. Then their shoulders. They stopped. They couldn’t see anything beyond a few feet in any direction. Not even the way they had come.

“Do you think the park service knows about this?” Milo asked.

“I think they would have marked it on the map.” Laurent wiped at his face. The fog was settling on them, making them damp. “We can’t see our feet.”

“Fog block sounds a little,” Milo said. “I think.”

Laurent frowned but said nothing. The crystal at his neck was still glowing. That’s all they really needed. The two started walking again.

The forest seemed barely the same. Sunlight came at them from all directions above. It scattered in the fog and made it bright. Almost too bright, making them squint. Trees and underbrush loomed out at them, always at the last second. A couple of times they came close to walking into bark face first. The sound of the guardian was still behind them. But it had become softer. They could hope their own sounds were softer, too. Too many times they stepped on a branch, or kicked a rock.

“We have to be getting close,” Milo muttered. They’d been sent without much information. Follow the crystal. Find the gate. Avoid the guardian. No one knew what the gate looked like. Or the guardian. Laurent was terrified they’d miss it. The crystal would send them in circles around it and they’d never know-

“Look out!”

Laurent pulled back in time but Milo didn’t. The ground below them had turned to stone and disappeared. Laurent reached for Milo and missed. With a scream, Milo fell into the fog. Laurent fell to his knees. The sound of Milo hitting the ground came quickly.

From behind him, the crunch thud stopped again.

Through the silence came a roar. One unlike anything either of them had ever heard. Loud. Guttural. Almost mechanical.

The guardian began running.

“Milo?”

“I’m here.”

He didn’t sound far, and Laurent took the risk. He jumped. His stomach rolled as he fell through the fog. But before it could complete a turn the ground found him. He landed inches away from Milo.

Above them, the guardian roared again. Much closer.

Laurent stood and held a hand out for Milo.

“We need to run.”

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Different Views, Same World

Let’s play a game, shall we? A game…of imagination (here I’m waving my hands).

No, get back here, I’m not done with you, yet. I’ll stop.

Now, imagine you’re a child born into a bitter dystopia. Like, real dark sci-fi shit. You’re living in a society on a distant planet, and from the first moment your little kid mind can really start having thoughts, you know everything is fucked. You just do. It’s not pessimism, its facts. The star your planet revolves around is going to explode in less than a hundred years. There’s a solution for this. This could have been fixed before you were born. But the adults of your society are still arguing about whether or not it’s going to explode (never mind the star looks visibly different than it did thirty years ago) and whether they can do what it takes to save the planet because it might be ‘too expensive.’ You’re too little to really understand money, but you vaguely get the sense that the whole system is broken and you’re never going to see enough in your lifetime. You do understand that you might get struck by a meteor and die while you’re at your education pod. This is, again, something the adults could have fixed before you were even born, but they’re still arguing about whether meteors are good or bad. The adults talk about a dream of your society, a promise and beautiful future. All you see is a shit sandwich they keep shoving at you and calling ham on rye. By eighteen you’re a nihilist, but you don’t know that because your educated pod is underfunded.

To everyone who made it through to the end, congratulations! You have now lived a day in the life of your average Gen Z (not fucking Zoomers, Jesus fucking Christ Boomers not everything is about you). To any Gen Z who might be reading this, I’m sorry for taking up your time telling you things you already know. You can go back to whatever it is the kids are doing these days. Tik-Toks? K-Pop? Whatever it is, you go have fun.

The concept of generations is mostly some kind of bullshit probably originally cooked up by Boomers, because if one thing is becoming rapidly clear it’s that Boomers have doomed us all in every way possible. If any Gen Z stuck around, let me explain Boomers:

You’re a child living on a planet with the best economy ever. It’s so great, in fact, you never stop being a child. You rail against ‘The Man’ until you become The Man, and then you hoard everything for yourself and make it harder for your own fucking children to live in the same society. You’re so self-obsessed you see your children as just pieces of you, so when they’re small and playing soccer and their team loses you feel like you lost and you demand they at least get a participation trophy and then, fifteen years later, when they start railing against you for the shit you’ve pulled you mock them for all those participation trophies they never even asked for.

Is this all Boomers? No, just like above isn’t all Gen Z. Because generations are mostly bullshit made to sell things to people. But broad differences do exist between people born four or five decades after other people, and it is true, I think, that Gen Z and Boomers are looking at entirely different worlds existing on the same plane.

Hell, I’m a Millennial (and what did they try to call us, in the beginning? Echo Boomers. Seriously, guys, not everything is about you), only one generation removed from Gen Z, and I can tell you there are differences. In fact, I’ll give you the main difference, one I alluded to up top: a dream. The American Dream. American Exceptionalism. Hope for the future. Basically, the Nineties.

There were some obviously terrible things occurring in the Nineties, but there was enough good that as a child, I still bought all those lies. The things we were promised. Racism has been fixed. The future is bright. You just need to go to college and then you’re guaranteed a great paying job, a house in the suburbs before you’re thirty, and a complete understanding of what stocks are and how they can help you buy your third car. And we were stupid kids, and we bought all of it, because why wouldn’t we? Oh, sure, Gen X was there, waving in the background and making ‘slit the throat’ motions. They were trying to warn us. But we were young and stupid and had our whole lives in front of us, so we didn’t listen.

And then 9/11. And then Hurricane Katrina. And then the 2008 recession. All ‘once in a lifetime’ events happening before I even graduated college. And with it the slow, painful understanding that everything sold to us as children was a lie. Then we graduated college with so, so much college debt and jobs that paid you nothing because you didn’t have ‘experience’ and rents that had gone through the roof, all the while the people who had put us in this situation were getting enraged that we weren’t going out to their restaurants or buying enough of their fabric softener and wonder why so many of us are on antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds.

For posterity, I will say that I am incredibly lucky to have parents who could support me through my twenties. Without them I never would have gone to college (twice!) and come out with only government loans that only took me eight years to pay off, and I only suffered through panic attacks in nursing school. Not everyone had such support.

Gen Z either doesn’t remember the nineties or weren’t even alive yet. Their world started with 9/11. If anyone ever tried to make the same promises to them as they did to us they probably just flipped them off with their little baby fingers. Lucky bastards. They never had to cope with learning the world was mostly shit. They just know. No wonder they’re out there partying on the beaches during a pandemic. It’s either die now or die in thirty years as the planet continues to get polluted to death.

They’re also doing a much better job of fighting back than my generation ever did. They’re not scared and confused. They’re angry, and they’re doing something about it, and I think I speak for Millennials when I say: go ahead and talk shit about us. Everybody does. At least when you’re done making fun of us for being obsessed with avocado toast, you then spend the rest of the day protesting for your rights instead of being the ones protested against.

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