The Cowboy

The Cowboy walked through the automatic sliding doors of theArizona State University's medical center Emergency Room. His spurs jangled on his boots, the tassels on his jacket swayed with each bow-legged step. He ambled past the protesting admissions nurse and walked into the ward, straight up to the nurses' station. He leaned on the desk and took his thin, cheaply rolled cigar out of his mouth, then took his hat off and gave a slight bow to the head nurse.

"Howdy," he said. "Name's Whit Miller. I'm looking for my pa."

The nurse, whose nametag read "Alma," furrowed her brow and gave the cowboy a stare.

"You're going to have to put out that cigarette, sir, this is a hospital," she ordered.

"Got an ashtray?" asked the cowboy. The nurse shook her head.

"Most people know not to smoke in a hospital."

The cowboy took the cigarette out of his mouth, then licked two fingers and pinched out the smoking red end. He looked around to find a trash can, but not immediately finding one he quietly tucked the cigarette into the breast pocket of his flannel shirt.

"Now, who were you looking for?" asked the nurse.

"Aldous Miller," answered the cowboy. "My father."

The nurse looked in the computer and found the name. "I'm sorry, sir," she said with a look that was sympathetic while also seeming to say that he should know this already. "Your father has died."

"I know he's dead," said The Cowboy. "I want to see the body. Then I want to find the man responsible." The nurse sighed, then called an attendant to escort The Cowboy to the mortuary.

The room was cold, white and sterile. A morgue attendant pulled The Cowboy's father out of what looked like a long metal file cabinet drawer. The Cowboy stared down at his father, a man who had once been a towering and imposing figure, now laid out flat and thin, his body pale, his face sallow near to the point of translucency. The Cowboy stayed there for twenty minutes straight, staring down at the body while the morgue attendant ate a chicken Caesar salad while watching Montel Williams. He only looked up when he heard a voice call out "Mr. Miller?"

The doctor was tall and thin. His thin black hair was gelled and combed down in a severe and unflattering part. He had wire-framed glasses the he fidgeted with when he was nervous, which, at this particular moment, he was. He liked to leave these kinds of conversations to interns or chaplains or someone, anyone other than him. He appeared to be standing somewhat on the balls of his feet and his long, white hands held a file.

"Mr. Miller?" he asked again. The Cowboy looked up and nodded. "I was told you wanted to see me?"

"You the doctor who worked on my pa?" asked The Cowboy.

"Yes, I operated on Mr. Miller here," said the doctor, pushing the bridge of his glasses up his nose and adjusting the frame slightly. "If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them."

"How'd he die?" asked The Cowboy.

"Nothing too painful, if that's what you're concerned about," said the doctor. "A quick, simple coronary, more likely than not it killed him quietly in his sleep."

"So you didn't kill him?" The Cowboy narrowed his eyes as though he was sizing up a gun fighter awaiting a draw at twenty paces. The doctor coughed, then fidgeted with his glasses so thoroughly that he ended up simply taking them off and massaging his sinuses.

"No! Heavens no," said the doctor. "Your father was dead when he got here, basically. I did a couple tests then pronounced him late last night, that's all."

"So the people who brought him in killed him?" asked The Cowboy.

"No! Jesus!" said the doctor. "Nobody killed him. He was an old man, he lived a life of hard exertion, his heart just gave out, it's nobody's fault! Nobody killed him!"

The Cowboy crossed his arms and gave the doctor an ice cold stare. "Listen here, doc," The Cowboy said out of a snarl on the side of his mouth. "The man who gave me life, who raised me, is dead. I don't let those close to me pass without getting vengeance. One way or another someone's going to pay for this, now you tell me who it's got to be."

"I don't understand," said the doctor.

"My wife was attacked by wolves in the harsh winter of '73. I went out with a bowie knife and gutted every wolf in the surrounding ten miles until I found the pack that ate my Martha, then I slaughtered them all. When my partner Enid drowned in the Sasquahana River I traced that river all the way back to its source then dynamited the whole area and ran the river dry."

"That's psychotic," said the doctor.

"Nope," said The Cowboy. "That's prairie justice."

"Noooo, that's pretty psychotic," said the doctor.

"You just tell me what it was that killed my pa," demanded the cowboy.

The doctor shrugged his shoulders. "It was his heart, man. His heart gave out. No one's fault, it was just his time to go."

"Who decides when it was his time?" asked The Cowboy. "I didn't decide. I certainly don't think he did."

"I don't know," said the doctor, rubbing his sinuses again. "Just chalk it up to an act of God."

"God, eh?" said The Cowboy. He hitched up his belt. "God it is, then," and off he marched.

After three weeks of intense theological study and discussions with his local priests, ministers and rabbis, The Cowboy came to the conclusion that there was only one way to meet God. He sat on his horse high atop Raton Mesa. He took in the landscape around him, casting his eyes once more over the wide prairie he had called home his entire life.

"Best get on with it, then," he said. He spurred the horse into a full run. The horse galloped hard, closing the short distance to the mesa's edge quickly. As they reached the edge The Cowboy spurred the horse into a jump. Cowboy and horse flew over the edge of the mesa and sailed towards the earth.

There was no pain. The Cowboy could not even remember hitting the ground. He remembered it rushing up towards him, seeing it in such vivid detail that he remembered a small lizard darting away from the widening shadow man and horse were making, then, suddenly here he was, standing outside a large pearly gate that went off far into the horizon. The ground was white and fluffy, like the big clouds that hung in the sky on humid nights back on earth. Here he was, at the entrance to Heaven.

His horse was beside him, looking fine. The Cowboy led the horse up to the gate, where a man stood in a long white robe, his head enveloped in a golden glow.

"Hello," said the man as The Cowboy approached. "I'm St. Peter. Welcome to Heaven! I'm going to need your name and particular religious affiliation."

"Unaffiliated," said the man. "I'm just here to find the man who killed my pa."

"And who was your 'pa,' may I ask?" said St. Peter.

"Aldous Miller," said The Cowboy.

"Oooh. You're Aldous' boy?" said St. Peter, flipping through a large file. "He said there might be some trouble with you."

"No trouble with me," said The Cowboy. "I just need to speak with God."

"I imagine he's going to want to talk to you, too. Hold on just one second." St. Peter picked up a pearly white telephone from behind his pearly white podium and dialed.

"Hello?" he said into the phone. "Hello, it's Pete. Yep, down at the gate… Same old same old, how about you?... Of course I watched it, you know how long I've been waiting for a new Lost! Where do they come up with these stories, I know! That's why they make the big bucks. Listen, I've got Aldous Miller's son here at the gate… Oh I know, don't get me started. If you could get God down here, it shouldn't be long. Thanks, Margie, you're a doll."

St. Peter hung up the phone.

"You watch Lost?" St. Peter asked The Cowboy.

"No," said The Cowboy.

"Oh, you really should!" said the saint. "It gets a little dry around seasons 2 and 3, but if you stick with it's really good."

A silence blossomed and withered between them in the span of a moment. "You really watch tv here?" The Cowboy asked to break the silence. "Aren't you supposed to, you know… know everything? Seems like that would make tv boring."

"Oh, we don't know everything, that's just God."

"That makes sense, I guess," said The Cowboy. He patted his horse, then adjusted his belt and holster. It occurred to him that it was nice they'd let him come up with the sidearm, as he'd have had to improvise if they hadn't, and he hated improvising. The Cowboy coughed quietly into his hand.

"Umm, how long should it be until…" The Cowboy said.

"Not very long," said St. Peter. "God's a pretty busy deity, but also omniscient and omnipresent, so you know…" There was a loud popping noise and a burst of smoke and then suddenly a man in a toga that appeared to be changing colors.

"God here," said God. "What's the news?"

The Cowboy drew his pistol and fired before the burst of smoke had cleared. St. Peter let out a high-pitched shriek as God's head exploded. The body simply stood for a moment, the stump where the head used to be was smoking and pulpy. The stump bulged and bubbled for a second, then a second head grew out from the stump. The head shook itself off.

"Uuuh, God here? Immortal? You think I don't have powers of regeneration? Don't even try that shit."

The Cowboy holstered his weapon.

"You feel better now?" God asked. "You got the anger out? You gonna chill?" The cowboy said nothing. "Nice horse."

"Thanks."

"So, you want to see your dad?" asked God.

"Sure."

God took The Cowboy by the hand and suddenly they were standing right outside what looked like a room in an upscale hotel. "You all right?" asked God. "Sometimes people get funky when that happens for the first time."

"I'm all right," said The Cowboy.

God knocked on the door. There was a shuffling within the apartment and then the door slowly opened. Behind the door stood The Cowboy's father, looking just as he had the last time The Cowboy had seen him.

"Hello, son," said the old man.

"Hello, pa," said The Cowboy.

"Tried the whole vengeance thing, did you?" asked the old man. The Cowboy nodded. "I always thought that was a load of malarkey." The Cowboy cleared his throat.

"I know," he said, and pulled his hat down low over his eyes.

"Well, come on in," said the old man as he shuffled into the apartment. The old man sat in a Barcalounger and nodded The Cowboy towards the sofa. As The Cowboy sat down the old man turned on the television. "They got a system up here let's you watch anything that's ever been made!" the old man said. "You ever watched Lost?"

"They got Bonanza?" asked The Cowboy.

"Bonanza? Hell, you've seen every episode of that damn show twenty times! I'm talking about Lost!"

"I'll give it a shot," said The Cowboy. He kicked off his boots and put his feet up on the table. God smiled and closed the door behind him.

"You'll like Jack," said the old man. "He's a pistol."

Dull

Peggy Herschel sat in a café and looked out at the cold wet morning. She sipped her coffee and thought about Stan Parks. She was having an affair with him. Cheating on her husband of ten years with him. She had no idea why. She’d started an affair because the passion had gone out of her marriage, but she realized only this morning that there was no passion with Stan, either. She had traded out a dull and predictable boredom for a new and varied boredom. What a dull, sad old woman I’ve become, thought Peggy. She took her idea pad from her purse and flipped it open. She took the pen from the metal spirals at the top of the pad and jotted down a note. "Woman has affair, is bored." At least she’d have something to write about when she got home. Thank god for my writing, she thought, if it weren’t for my vivid imagination I don’t know how I’d get through this chore of a life.

The door to the café burst inward. A man in an expensive suit ran into the shop, a briefcase attached to his arm by handcuffs.

"Excuse me," he said to Peggy. His voice was low and sultry, with a hint of an accent. His eyes had an intensity that made Peggy nervous. "I’m in a bit of a hurry. I need to get to The United Nations. QUICK. I was wondering if you could drive me? I promise, you’ll be well compensated. It’s very important, the fate of an entire small country in the wilds ofEastern Europe depends on getting this suitcase to…"

"I’m sorry," Peggy gave a tired smile. "It’s just, I’m enjoying this coffee, you see."

"Oh. All right," said the man. "Well, thanks anyways." Peggy watched as the man moved down the bar to a cute blond girl reading a textbook on community planning. He gave her the same pitch he’d given Peggy and the girl nodded her head. As the two of them left the café they were accosted by two men in sunglasses and jumpsuits. The handsome man in the expensive suit said something to the two men, then began throwing punches. The fight was epic, the handsome man fending off both attackers, all while keeping a firm hold on the suitcase firmly attached to his wrist. The handsome man had one assailant in a choke hold, while kicking the other repeatedly with his left foot. The man he was kicking regained his senses long enough to put a hand up and grab a hold of the handsome man’s ankle. The handsome man then swung his right foot up over his left, delivering a crushing blow to the assailant’s face, knocking him to the ground. However, such acrobatics had forced him to loosen his choke hold on the other man. Before the handsome man could regain his footing the other assailant took a gun out of his waistband and pistol-whipped the handsome man. He said something, then raised the gun to the handsome man’s head. Just then the blond girl came up behind the assailant and hit him with the textbook in the back of his head. The man stumbled and dropped his gun. He turned and grabbed the woman by the neck and lifted her off the ground. The woman, choking and sputtering, pulled her leg up behind her and reached down. Her hand reached down and managed to slide off her two-inch pumps. Holding the shoe by the toe she threw her arm out and lodged the heel into the man’s eye. The man screamed in pain and dropped the woman. The handsome man came to and grabbed the assailant’s dropped gun and put two slugs into his stomach. As the man fell the blond came over and helped the handsome man to his feet. Their eyes met and they kissed, deep and violently passionate. The woman broke off the kiss and pulled out her keys, jogging over to a small Taurus across the street. The handsome man got into the passenger’s seat, and the car sped off down the street.

"Tsk," said Peggy. She looked back down at her notebook. "Man abandons creative, intelligent woman for dull slut," she wrote. She was full of ideas today.

If it wasn’t working out with Stan, maybe she should find someone else. She thought of the other men she knew. There was Phillip, the entrepreneur who had made a fortune developing a non-toxic fertilizer that was revolutionizing the wheat industry, some saying single-handedly lowering the price of bread a full thirty cents. Then there was Gordon, an actor who had recently translated a lauded stage career into film stardom as the tough-but-fair chief of police in a successful cop action series. Or perhaps Neil, who was gaining national attention for turning around problem schools in low-income areas. Then, of course, there was Arthur. There was something about the way Arthur tore down the other people in their writing group, really cut them down to size. There was a mystery about him. He wasn’t in good shape, he had a dead-end job and his stories were third-rate Don DeLillo rip-offs, but the way he carried himself with such assurance, such cocksure bravado, there must be something within him, thought Peggy. Maybe it was something dark, perhaps he was troubled. She would put a feeler out at the next writing meeting. Write a story just for him, see if he notices. She went back to her pad. "Entitled, arrogant yet sensitive artist ravishes marries woman." Good. That one would be fun to write.

Peggy stared out the window. On the street a boy dressed in lederhosen danced a jig while playing a pan flute. As he passed a sea of rats scurried out of the sewer, following him. It took Peggy a moment to realize that the rats, too, were dancing. As the last of the rats were dancing down the street a man who had been putting coins in a parking meter jumped into the street and grabbed one of the rats. He bit into the rat’s stomach, tearing out its guts and slurping out its insides. He then put the hollowed-out rat carcass on his head and let loose a loud, cackling laugh. "I WANTED TO DO IT, AND SO I DID IT," he said. "I AM LIKE A GOD!" An angel descended from the sky, holding a flaming sword in its hand. "How dare you blaspheme!" said the angel, and swung the sword of fire, releasing the man’s head from his body. The angel picked up the man’s head, with the rat body still on top, and placed it on its own head. The eyes of the man’s disembodied head shot open. "NOW I AM LIKE A HAT!" it said. The angel ascended back to the heavens. An old balding man stepped out of an apartment and watched the angel rise to the sky. "What a bunch of religious poppycock!" harped the old man. "I am a man of science! What use have I for angels when I have a Local Temporal Accelerator!" The old man pulled out what looked like a ray gun from a 1950s B-movie. "What’s that?" asked a pregnant woman passing on the street. "My invention!" beamed the old man. "What does it do?" asked the pregnant woman further. "THIS!" said the man. He pointed the gun at the woman and pulled the trigger. A pulsating purple wave overtook the woman. Her belly grew quickly, then suddenly a baby plopped to the ground. The woman began aging at a rapid pace, as did the baby at her feet. As the child began to grow up the mother grew old. They passed each other in a matter of moments. The child was nearing adulthood when the mother first bent over with great age, then passed away. The boy looked at the corpse of his mother and let out a howl of rage, then he too began to enter adulthood, then ever quicker old age and, finally, death. With two corpses lying before him the scientist raised the gun to the air. "See, you silly god!" he screamed. "I hold time, your greatest weapon, in my hand! Tremble before me, you pitiful deity! Witness sanctity in science!" Just then the jaws of a giant Tyrannosaurus Rex swept down from above and clamped down on the scientist. It lifted him up in the air and with a toss of its head the T-Rex threw the scientist in the air and swallowed him. Bombs began exploding around the ancient beast. It roared and began running away. Tanks and helicopters followed. A decorated general in an open-topped land rover sat on the back seat and yelled out of a megaphone, "Keep on him, boys! Let’s blast this abomination of science back to the Cretaceous Period! He’s headed towards the river, lads!"

Peggy sipped her coffee. "If he goes into the river at this time of day The Great Squids will get him, anyway," she said to no one. She wondered if her husband had any idea. She hadn’t exactly been discreet. Maybe if he would get angry at her, if he could loathe her, it would give her the freedom to feel something. How had it gotten like this? How had the world become so small, so inane?

Peggy finished her coffee. She jotted one final note onto the pad. "Unsatisfied woman blows brains out while cheating on her husband." At least I still have my creativity, she thought. She put the pad back into her purse and went to meet Stan.

The Amazing Vomitting Girl

Joanne Laurie had been sitting across from her best friend Suzanne at a very nice table at Balthazar, talking on the phone with her mother about her boyfriend’s sexual performance when she first started vomiting uncontrollably.

"If I wanted to get on top and work for myself I'd just get a Sybian. Maybe if he'd just man up and HURGGGHARFABLOOOOGGGG!!!!!"

Joanne covered her mouth, which only caused vomit to rocket out at various angles. Joanne ran to the bathroom, covering the other patrons in her upchuck. Suzanne shrugged to a waiter who came to clean the table and said, "If I was talking to my mom about fucking some guy I'd probably vomit, too."

In the bathroom Joanne hugged the toilet, filling it to the rim with vomit. She lifted a weak hand and flushed, clearing the bowl. However, the vomit kept rising again like a tide of sick. Joanne grew delirious. How much more vomit could their possibly be? What if she ran out of food and then began throwing up vital organs? With her head still over the toilet she stretched out a leg and kicked the door repeatedly to send out a distress signal for someone, anyone, to help her.

One of the wait staff came to the door and found Joanne with her steady stream of vomit, flailing her arms wildly. Joanne attempted to yell out to him, "Call an ambulance!" Instead, the small sentence came out as "Caug umb brauuuughlawphlarrrrg." Her head went back into the bowl. The waiter got the message. Moments later two paramedics with a stretcher were carrying Joanne out on her back, continuing to vomit an uninterrupted stream straight up into the air like some horrifically ill whale.

At the Joanne was placed in a room and given buckets to throw up in, but soon it became clear this would not do, as the buckets needed changing at hilariously short intervals.

At the suggestion of a particularly creative surgeon the nurses moved Joanne into the morgue and laid her face down on a table with a hole her head could rest in, so the vomit poured straight out of her mouth and into a large open drain. Later that night Joanne's boyfriend came to visit. He tried to read to her from Glamour, her favorite magazine, but could only make it part way through an article about The Worst Break-Ups when the sound and stench of unrepentant throw-up made him run from the room, never to return.

That evening Joanne, already on a hydration regiment that was less a saline drip than a hose, was fed intravenously. The creative surgeon came down that evening to check in on Joanne and was amazed to find her asleep, yet still vomiting.

The next day Joanne's mother came. At midday the surgeon came down to check in. Joanne's mother asked if the surgeon was going to operate. This was unlikely, the surgeon said, as the vomiting made it difficult to do any preemptive analysis like CAT scans, much less operate in anything near a hygienic environment. Joanne's mother then asked if the surgeon was single, as Joanne had recently come into trouble with her boyfriend, to which the doctor simply smiled, thinking to himself that frequent vomiting eroded the enamel on teeth, caused bad breath and could eventually eat through her throat and upper palate, which although he did find it quite tragic, he could not find terribly attractive.

The press inevitably found out. A conference was held amongst the hospital elite to decide what to do. Joanne's vitals had proved to be surprisingly steady. The vomit was only minutely acidic, so there was no immediate risk of damage. Hypothetically, the chief surgeon stated, with a steady IV regiment of fluid and nutrients, she could be, in a sense, all right.

An eccentric and ingenious medical equipment specialist was brought in to design an apparatus for Joanne. After a day of working and tinkering he came up with a device that looked like a combination of a gas mask and a vacuum cleaner, with a long hose attaching a facemask to a box the size of a medium-sized suitcase. The device operated in three ways; as a simple containment unit which would fill fairly quickly, as a basic filter akin to a Brita that would souse out the nastiness and release a flow of pure water (although this had the issue of needing frequent filter replacements and still had the byproduct of quite a bit of water), and as a heating and compacting unit which would basically boil the vomit internally releasing steam and creating a crust of burnt detritus that would have to be infrequently cleaned out. He apologized, saying he wished he could have done more, but the whole situation was simply "too icky" for him to continue.

And so Joanne went home with her mother looking like a soldier in a mustard gas attack who sold luggage. Joanne became despondent. She had become the popular tabloid item of the week. Everyone had thoughts on her predicament. David Letterman wondered if it had started after she'd seen the new CBS lineup. Arianna Huffington said this was the inevitable result of poor young women assaulted daily by sexist, damaging advertising. Pat Robertson said this is what happened to people in liberal meccas like New York. The worst were the interviews with her friends and coworkers. They weren't mean, but they certainly didn't sound nice either. Suzanne said that Joanne had been a bit of a boozer and a party girl. Her boyfriend had speculated that she had perhaps foreseen that he was going to break up with her, essentially doing so himself, at that moment, on Nightline, in front of a nation-wide audience that included Joanne herself sitting in a ratty chair in her mother's living room, vomiting into a vacuum cleaner, being fed through tubes and wanting to die. When her mother told her she should try to find the positive in all this she pulled up her shirt and poked her six pack abs brought about by the constant tension of a stomach in turmoil and the bare-bones dietary intake. She thought about how once upon a time having such a tight tummy would have made her ecstatic. Now it only seemed like a mocking joke.

Joanne had been approached by every paper, magazine, talk show and news program around, and she had rejected them all out of hand. She figured she'd make a lousy interview, just sitting there listening to the interviewer's faux concern and then writing her responses while quietly, intently throwing up into a portable incinerator. But then, one day, as she was flipping through the channels she passed the Oprah show, where she was interviewing a soldier who had lost his legs in Iraq. Joanne watched the whole interview in rapt attention. She saw Oprah's sympathy, her intent interest in the man's story. Joanne saw the man well up with tears as he thanked Oprah for listening. Then she saw Oprah well up and heard her thank the man for his courage. Then she felt herself well up, and suddenly she was crying. She wanted that, she wanted that so much, that unconditional appreciation, that sympathy that wasn't faked or from guilt or horror.

Joanne wiped the tears from her eyes and hopped out of the tattered old chair. She ran into the kitchen and flipped hurriedly through the mail that had piled up. She found the letter from Oprah's production company, her eyes tearing through the page until she found the number for the scheduling department. In her excitement she ran to the phone and dialed, listened through three rings before remembering that she was unable to speak into a phone and hung up just as a man answered the phone. Joanne ran down the hall and loudly knocked on her mom's door.

"What is it?" her mom asked, a worry in her voice that something, somehow, might have gotten worse. Joanne held up the Oprah letter and gave her mom a thumbs up. "Well, all right!" said Joanne's mom.

They were flown out in one of Oprah's own jets. They were put in a very nice hotel, got private seats at a show at the Chicago Theater and got to sit in the press box at a Cubs game. Then came the day of the show.

Joanne was brought into the show in a private limousine and taken in through the back entrance. Joanne got to meet Oprah. She talked to Joanne, and it was everything Joanne had dreamed. Oprah gave her the general run down of how the show would go, told her not to worry, that everything would be fine.

The show began and Joanne was brought out onstage. Her mother sat beside her. Oprah asked her questions and then waited patiently as Joanne wrote out her answers and her mother read them. Oprah told Joanne that she was very brave to come on the show. Joanne smiled, then she started to cry even though she had promised herself that she wouldn't, and wrote that she was actually just a normal girl and that's all she'd wanted to come on the show to say.

Oprah turned to the camera and said, "Come back after the break, I promise you, you won't want to miss this."

The show went to commercial and make up people came out and started futzing with Oprah and Joanne and her mom. Joanne looked over at her mom. Her mom looked back and smiled, then gave Joanne two thumbs up. "You're doing great," said Oprah, and patted Joanne on the knee. Oprah turned to the camera. Then they were back.

"When Joanne Laurie first experienced her unusual condition she was taken to St. Vincent's hospital in New York some of the best doctors in the county were at a loss with what to do for her. However, our next guest believes he may have an idea. Please welcome my guest and dear friend, Dr. Sanjarwal Patel!" Oprah stood up and clapped. The audience clapped as well. Onto the stage walked an Indian man in his early middle age with a bushy-bearded face round and paternal.

Dr. Patel explained that Joanne's condition was not entirely unheard of, a very advanced form of a rare disorder called Cyclical Vomiting Syndrome, or CVS. This disease was related to the patient's mental state. Not quite a psychosomatic illness, but close. Dr. Patel had developed a system to ease the sufferer's mind and assuage the affects of the illness. The doctor asked if Joanne would be interested in trying his cure. Joanne could hardly contain her excitement. She nodded ecstatically and clapped her hands, bouncing up and down in her chair. "All right then!" said Oprah, and the audience erupted into applause.

A massage table with a hole for the face to rest in, similar to the one Joanne had been placed on in the morgue, was brought onstage. A section was taken out of the side so that the tube could slide through. Joanne lay down. Dr. Patel stood behind her and began rubbing ointments onto her back, her shoulders, her neck. He reached underneath her and spread the ointments onto her stomach and just below her collar bone. Joanne felt her body ease its tension and begin to relax for the first time in ages. Finally Dr. Patel knelt in front of Joanne and told her to close her eyes. He was going to give her guided meditation.

Joanne heard Dr. Patel ask her to envision a lake in the middle of a field. He told her to walk along the lake's shore. He told her to imagine herself sitting down beside that lake and look to her right. On the sand by the lake was a fishing rod. Pick up the fishing rod and cast it far far out into the lake, Dr. Patel told her. Watch the bobber fly through the air. Watch it get very very small. Watch it bob up and down on top of the water. Now imagine you've got a bottle of your favorite drink beside you, Dr. Patel told her. Imagine opening the drink and taking a sip from it. Watch the waves on the water. Listen to the water moving.

She wasn't sure exactly what Dr. Patel kept saying, she couldn't hear his words. Maybe what she saw next was his instruction, maybe it was just drawn up from her own mind. She saw her mother sitting beside her on the beach. She saw Suzanne driving a boat across the middle of the lake, trailing Joanne’s boyfriend on a set of water-skis. They waved. Joanne waved back. Joanne saw a tree with long, wide branches and a tire swing. Standing on the tire swing was Oprah. She wore a bathing suit and was pushing and pulling the swing to move farther and farther out over the water. Oprah rode the tire as far out over the water as she could, then jumped. She flew through the air, and right as she reached the apex of her arc, Oprah stopped. Joanne saw Oprah looking at her, stuck in mid-air, her face contorted with a tension seemed as if Oprah's skull was growing larger than her skin. Then there was a scream.

Joanne came to, feeling her meditational landscape melt away. Except for the scream. Joanne gave a sluggish pull to lift up her head and felt a spray of liquid hit her face. Suddenly she was fully awake. She saw the audience gone amok, running to the exits and covering their faces. Some of them were vomiting. She turned and saw her mother's sad, pleading face. She heard Dr. Patel muttering "I'm so sorry, I felt her throat, thought she had stopped." Joanne felt around her body, looking for the mask. She heard a voice behind her say, "Joanne, your machine..." Joanne turned.

There stood Oprah, holding out the machine by the hose. Joanne saw her there, a frozen moment of Oprah reaching out to her for one pure, beautiful moment, just before the vomit hit her full in the chest. Oprah stumbled backwards at the impact of it, her whole front suddenly an abstract painting of fluid and sick. "Goddammit!" yelled Oprah, then caught herself and looked at Joanne, shame on her face. "Joanne," she said, then couldn't say any more. Joanne wanted to say "I'm sorry," she wanted to give Oprah a hug and thank her for trying, but she couldn't. She'd never be able to do that. She was an idiot for even coming, she thought, and ran backstage into her dressing room toilet, leaving a trail of vomit behind her. She locked the door behind her and collapsed on the floor, her head in the toilet, just like the day it all began.

Oprah came to the door, telling Joanne not to worry, she was sorry the show had turned out as it had, she had only wanted to help. Joanne couldn't even tell them to leave her alone. She continued to sit, vomiting into the toilet and crying. Joanne’s mother came to the door and asked to come in. Joanne stretched up an arm and unlocked the door. Joanne's mom had the device with her, but left it at the door for the moment and sat down beside her daughter. They sat there for an hour, mother holding daughter, rubbing her back, kissing the top of her head, telling her everything would be all right.

They flew back home. They resumed their life. They made trips to the doctor for check ups. They played scrabble every night. They started a book club, just the two of them. They watched tv together. They never watched Oprah.

About a month after her appearance on Oprah a letter came. It was from a small sustained living community in Washington state. They told Joanne about how they worked a small patch of land to grow everything they needed to survive and sold the excess products to get money for what little they couldn't make themselves. They said they had a place for her, if she wanted it. They believed they could use her particularly individual output as fertilizer to their crops. She would have to work, they said, but sometimes feeling a sense of accomplishment was something people needed in their lives, and if that's how she felt, she had a place in their community.

So Joanne got on a plane one more time, and found a place like home. She's still there. They say you can find her by putting your ear to the wind and listening for the sound of a girl vomiting, not just with viscous bodily upchuck, but with joy.

Curses!

The mummy sat in the museum thinking about curses. About 4,000 years ago his underlings had taken his corps, removed it of its fluids and organs, turned his body into a dried husk and then thrown his wrapped corpse into a box and buried in a bunch of big stones. They had also buried him with a small fortune; golden idols, coins, offerings of fruit and foodstuffs, even live animals. Heavy stones had also been placed on top of his tomb, in the hopes of keeping his body safe from scavengers, both animal and human. Just to be sure the grave was not disturbed they carved a curse onto the tomb, a curse meant to inflict fear and horror in anyone who might want to see what might be buried with a formerly living god that was too precious to be left in the anterior chamber. However, as with so many things in life, the curse didn’t work the way it had been supposed to work.

The curse says quite firmly that if the king’s grave was disturbed he would return from the dead to wreak vengeance on the offending parties. All well and good, but if a soul has completely crossed over, he’s not exactly going to come all the way back now, is he? So in the tomb the mummy sat, waiting for years, centuries even, as the world went by. Sure, he’d be pissed if someone messed with his grave, he thought, but certainly it wasn’t worth all this. Only once had his grave been disturbed, somewhere around 400 BC. A couple of grave robbers looking for loot. It had been nice to kill the offending parties and their entire families, it had been nice to do anything for a change, but still. Once it was done, back to the grave. Wow. Great.

And then it happened. 4,000 years after he was first interred a whole group of grad students stumbled onto his grave. "The burial tomb of a minor figure," one of them had said. "Possibly not even a king." Not even a king? When he was alive the mummy had had insubordinate, smart ass jerk-offs like this pantywaist strung up and eaten alive by tigers for fun. "Minor figure." After 4,000 years of laying in wait the rage that burned through his cold, dead form was a comforting, welcome warmth. However, as quickly as it came it faded. It had been 4,000 years. Who the hell cared who he was, anyway?

Besides, vengeance would be such hard work. These weren’t two local douche clowns robbing graves, this was an international team of research students. The mummy got tired thinking about how long it would take to not only kill the whole team, but to hunt down their entire families? It’d be exhausting! There were a good fifteen countries represented between them all. Just because he was dead doesn’t mean travel couldn’t still take it out of him.

Speaking of travel, they’d shipped his grave to a research lab at Yale, where he found himself currently. It was after hours and the mummy was sitting in the student lounge. No one was around. He was watching late night television and drinking a soda from the vending machine. Being dead was an odd thing. While he was entombed he had certainly been stuck, but his soul, his consciousness, still received information. Being dead was sort of like swimming in the collective unconscious. Still, it was different to be in it. It was interesting to see that television was actually as awesome and as horrifying as he’d thought it would be. And Coca-Cola tasted fucking delicious, if he did say so himself.

So there he sat, sipping his soda and watching some infomercial selling Girls Gone Wild videos. What if I don’t wreak my vengeance, thought the mummy. What if I just let it go? These kids had it bad enough as it was, they were archeology grad students in the current economy. There was nothing he could do to their families that were worse than the student loan debts they were accruing one meaningless class at a time. The mummy chuckled. Talk about a curse.

What would he do, he wondered? He couldn’t just go out and get an apartment, work at some shopping mart. He couldn’t just say who he was, that would be awful. They’d run tests, there’d be huge philosophical debates, even worse, they might make him do the talk show circuit. Of course, these days there was weirdness all over the place. And with all the liberal government social service foo-ferrah freaks were openly tolerated, even accepted. In his day anyone even remotely malformed was sunk in a river or thrown off a cliff. These days he could just say he had some crazy skin condition and no one would probably bat an eye. Maybe he could get a job working on a farm somewhere. He could go out to California. From what he’d heard he felt like he’d like California.

The girls on the television were still bouncing around. It’s a shame they removed all my bodily juices, thought the mummy, it’d be nice to get a little bit of that after 4,000 years.

The mummy finished his soda and threw the bottle in the recycling container. He broke into a handful of offices until he found one with a coat and extra pair of shoes in the closet. They were a bit snug but they’d work, at least of a bit. On his way out he saw a hat that said "1 Dad hanging on a coat rack. He put it on. He snuck out a side entrance and walked out into the cold morning air. The movement felt good. Maybe he’d try one of those cappuccinos he’d heard so much about. He started whistling an old, old tune. Just because he was cursed, doesn’t mean he couldn’t have a good time.

Pills

Pills are kind of funny if you think about them. Little capsules of chemistry that we swallow, and then they alter our internal chemistry, and we just accept it. It's like we ingest all these little chemistry sets every day, which is funny because whenever I think about chemistry sets I think about people accidentally blowing themselves up, like in cartoons. What if someone mixed up the wrong pills one day and blew themselves up? Like spontaneous combustion! Did you know that Charles Dickens once wrote a book in which a character spontaneously combusted? It's true! In Bleak House!

              I don't think that would actually happen, though. I work with pills. Well, I work at a place that works with pills. I do data entry at a pill place. There's a joke that goes around the pill place where I work that people who work with pills must love their work so much because they take it home with them. The joke there is that everybody takes pills, like a lot of pills. It's kind of funny, if you think about it. I once walked in on a boss of mine taking a pill in her office. I asked her what it was for, “out of professional curiosity,” I said, which was another joke. She said it was something to “help get her through the day,” so I'm assuming it was some sort of mood stabilizer, like Paxil or something. Although I guess you never really know. All pills look pretty much the same, it could have been a recreational drug, which I don't really think is that different from some of the drugs you can get prescriptions for. One time I asked one of my bosses what the real difference was between recreational and prescription drugs, and he got really uncomfortable and made a note in some notepad he had and walked away. Maybe I hit a nerve.

              I don't take recreational drugs. I bet some people think that I do, but I don't. I only take drugs prescribed to me by my physician or my therapist, which is a lot, actually. I have pills for blood pressure, anxiety, cholesterol, gastro-intestinal correctives, depression, chronic fatigue syndrome, hypertension, mood stabilizers, liver, migraines, a couple others as well. I'm afraid of mixing them up badly, you know, like with the spontaneous combustion thing, so I spread them out throughout the day, which is tricky because a few of them you have to take with meals, so I end up eating more meals in a day than an average person. Which reminds me, I also take weight stabilizers. I keep all my pills in a little pill container my therapist gave me with a guide to what I take when. My work therapist, not my prison therapist. Although I guess my work therapist is still kind of my prison therapist, 'cause I'm working there on a commuted prison sentence. I'm still under pretty strict observation. The apartment I live in is more of a cross between a prison and a hotel, which is fine by me, because I like hotels and, frankly, I didn't mind prison that much either. The only thing is I don't have a kitchen or a dining room or anything, but that's ok, I don't really cook, and I can't imagine myself doing any entertaining. Wouldn't that be a hoot?! Me playing host?! Not on your life, buster!

              It does get a little lonely sometimes, though. But I'll tell you something, here's a little trick I figured out. I like to think of somebody I know really, really well, right? The kind of person where when you have a conversation with them, you know exactly what they're going to say. Then here's what I do: I have a conversation with them in my head, BUT, and here's the trick, I only talk with them about stuff we would disagree on. That way, when I think of what they'd say, I completely have to think differently than the way I normally think. It's interesting, you'd be amazed how easy it is to do with a little practice, thinking something completely different from your normal thoughts. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I concentrated too hard on the other person's thoughts and I got stuck in that other person's perceptions and thought patterns. Would I still be me but just thinking like somebody else, or would I actually be somebody else, like a totally different person? I don't know! Isn't that funny to think about?

              I talk about this stuff with my therapist sometimes. My work therapist. My prison therapist mostly wanted to know how I'd gotten to be so violent. He said it was because I felt disenfranchised and I struck out at people to feel powerful and in control. I said that there were a lot of obnoxious people out there, and maybe trouncing a few of them wasn't the worst thing in the world a person could do.  I don't know that we made a lot of progress, although I do have conversations in my head with my old therapist from time to time. I think I've gotten pretty good at him. The new therapist likes to talk about how I'm feeling right now, which is nice, as I'm feeling much nicer now than I was then. The work therapist is very interested in the pills I'm taking. I have to fill out little charts about when I take them and how I feel before and after. The work therapist wants me to feel content, which I do, by and large. He asks me if I feel any of the rage I used to, and I say I don't, which is true, and he seems very pleased with the whole situation. But you want to hear something weird? I kind of miss it. The rage and stuff. I mean, it wasn't good, I know that, but to not feel it, I can't help wondering - where did it go? It was part of my chemistry, and now it's gone. Funny, huh?

              They get worried about me getting bored. It can be kind of a dull existence, just going to work, going to therapy, coming home. They want me to feel fulfilled, which is kind of funny to me in a way because the most fulfilled I've ever felt is when I was trouncing some jerk who didn't have the good sense God gave a cow. I don't say that, though. Plus, I'll tell you a little secret I figured out. Whenever you get bored, just do something to change things up. Like a couple of days ago I was having a crummy day, the kind of day where I used to go out and get into trouble, but since I don't do that anymore I was just sitting around my apartment, and all of a sudden I thought, “You know what I'll do? I'll put Kleenex boxes on my feet.” And I did! Howard Hughes used to do it! Seriously! And he was super-rich! So I put Kleenex boxes on my feet, and it was great! I got so much done; I cleaned the bathroom, washed the dishes, ironed all my shirts for next week, and it all seemed so different and funny because I was wearing my Kleenex boxes on my feet. It's much more productive than going out and trouncing some dude, I suppose, plus no one gets hurt. Unless Kleenex boxes have feelings?! Just kidding, I don't think they do. But if they did, wouldn't that be weird?

              That dullness can really freak some people out, though. Like there's a few of us around the pill place who are commuted sentencers, and we all go to counseling and we all get the pills, but sometimes one of the others starts feeling kind of paranoid or whatever and feeling like our bosses and the therapists and whoever are trying to control us and take away all souls or whatever, which is of course a bunch of malarkey. They're just trying to make us feel better! But sometimes feeling better doesn't feel better, I guess, to some people. Like sometimes when I'm sad I like listening to a sad song, which you think you wouldn't want to do, but you do. These guys miss those bad feelings more than I do, I guess. Plus you do tend to get a little fuzzy on the pills, which seems totally understandable to me because I think about all the chemicals getting all mixed up inside and making some big hazy cloud of pill chemicals in your head, and so of course you're going to get a little fuzzy. I think the problem with these guys is they can't adapt to their new way of living. My work therapist talks about that a lot. Adapting, acclimating, all that stuff. I think I do a pretty good job of it, probably because of all the practice I've had trying to think differently by pretending to be other people. The thing about this whole fuzziness issue is that you can get lost in it if you freak out, but if you work through it, it's totally fine! I'll tell you a little trick I figured out. Try and focus through the fuzziness by concentrating your mind. It's kind of like those old Magic Eye pictures where you look at a big old mess of colors, and then if you stare through it you see shapes? Well, what I like to do when I'm feeling fuzzy is just go somewhere real quiet and peaceful. Then find something you can really stare at, it helps if it's something really bland, like a beige wall or a crummy landscape painting or something. Then you just concentrate and try to stare through whatever you're looking at. Sometimes it might take a while, like maybe a couple hours or so, but if you really stick with it then all of a sudden things you didn't even know were blurry start coming into focus!

              Take my pills, for instance. No please, take them! Haha, I'm just kidding! Seriously, though, so many people see pills as a big chore that they don't ever think about them, they just throw them down their throats and try and move along. But because of my looking through the fuzziness I started really paying attention to the pills. Before I swallowed them I began rolling them around on my tongue, trying to get to know each individual weight, taste, texture, composition, and reaction, and I noticed something. They changed our pills without telling us. It happened quite a while ago now, and no one noticed but me. It was the mood stabilizer. Same look, same texture, BUT!  Slightly different weight, totally different composition! I think they're testing out something new on us. It's probably a double blind test, which I've learned about here at the pill place. There's a control group, which is given a placebo, and then an observed group (or the out of control group, as I like to call them! Haha!), which gets the new drug. I'm pretty sure I'm in the observed group. Placebos used to be called “sugar pills” because that's what they were, but they had to stop making them out of sugar, I guess because everybody's all fat now. Regardless, they're supposed to be made up to be just like the actual pills, but they never make a truly good replication because they don't think anybody notices. But I do.

              They told me to report any adverse side effects to the medication, but that sort of brings up the question of what's really adverse, right? I think the medication works better than they even realize. It's made my sight so much better. I'm seeing things I've never even thought I could see before. I tried to tell my therapist about it, but he sort of scribbled some notes down in a pad and said “great” and anything that's too outlandish he says I was just dreaming, and that's ok. So I didn't even tell him when I realized this little trick I'm about to tell you. If you look at people real hard, you can take them apart, sort of dismantle them, like? Take off the clothes and the skin and the muscle and the organs, you can whittle everyone down to bones with just your eyes! It's a fantastic simplification. It makes me wonder if I would have done all those things I did that put me in jail if I'd seen everyone as just skeletons. I wonder if I'd have been so upset about my mother dying when I was a kid if she'd just been a skeleton that simply stopped moving? Some days I like to go around looking at everyone's skeletons. Just a bunch of skeletons walking around all day. So many bones! It's like one of those old cartoons where the skeletons are all dancing in a graveyard somewhere. Sometimes the sight of all those skeletons just makes me laugh and laugh and laugh! Once, one of my bosses caught me laughing and asked me what was so funny. I said “farts,” which is true, farts are pretty funny, but it wasn't what I was actually thinking about. However, thinking about skeletons and talking about farts made me think about farting skeletons, and boy did THAT get me laughing! My boss started laughing too, with his big skeleton mouth, and he said “you're all right, buddy,” and then he put his big bony hand on my shoulder. As I was walking away I saw him jot down some notes in a notepad.

              Whatever he wrote, it obviously wasn't too upsetting because the pills are being sent out to market in a couple weeks, which makes me super-happy. One of these days they're going to let me out of here. In my review hearings they say I'm very well behaved, and I'll probably get early release, which is kind of exciting, but it also used to be pretty scary because I was really worried about what it would be like on the outside. It's been a while, you know? But if there's other people like me, other people who can see through the fuzziness, who live among skeletons, I think that would be really exciting. Everything would be so easy and effortless! A world full of skeletons! Sounds like paradise.

Snow Angel

The woman in the large red anorak was fifteen feet behind the monster and gaining. The monster was a large thing with huge limbs that flailed as it ran. It was coated in long yellow fur thickly layered over pink skin. Its face was a broad, flat horror show of wrinkled flesh, horrid teeth, flared nostrils like bullet wounds and large red eyes with deep black centers which were now wild with panic. The creature's hide was mottled and splotched with still-flowing blood coming from the wound made by the arrow sticking out of its lower back.

Were she not chasing a foul creature who had recently changed its diet from caribou to small Inuit children, the woman might have noticed the beauty of the landscape that was hosting this daring chase. The pursuer and the pursued had just torn past the tree line, climbing higher and higher up Mt. Anirniit. The woman knew that if she gave the creature even the slightest advantage it could disappear into any number of caves or tunnels that ran through these mountains. The creature had home field advantage, but the woman was determined to show no mercy.

The creature zigged and zagged with wild abandon, not thinking, only trying to shake the dogged pursuer. The ground was hard and slick from a recent cold snap, and footing was difficult. The creature saw a rise on the distance and made a break for it, hoping that the other side held a slope that would give a moment's respite in a quick slide and maybe even a hiding place.

No such luck. Leaping over the rise, the creature slid a mere twelve feet into a dead end of high walls of ice and rock. The creature stood on its hind legs, its claws searching for some purchase in the rock, some means of escape, but meeting only with slick, unforgiving surfaces. The creature turned around to gauge the possibility of retreat, only to see the woman climb over the rise.

The two stared at each other for a moment. The woman had the sun at her back and new the advantage it gave her. The creature saw only a vague, dark outline of the woman, but it was enough. The creature expanded itself as much as it could, spreading out its limbs and reaching up to its fullest height, then let out a bellow. The woman was unshaken, and with one fluid motion of ease and grace readied her bow, reached into her quiver for an arrow, readied and fired.

The arrow struck the creature above its right breast. The bellow turned into a howl of pain so forceful the woman staggered back a step. She heard the howl echo throughout the many caverns, valleys and walls of the mountain range. Then she heard something else. It was a low rumble that grew louder. It came from a new, unsettled snow fresh from last week's flash blizzard. It came from an onslaught of snow and ice rushing down from the mountain's peak heading directly towards the two combatants.

Briefly distracted by the sound of encroaching danger, the woman and the creature stared at each other again. The panic in the creature's eyes had turned into the narrow focus of desperation and survival instinct. There was only one way out and it was through the woman. She saw this and new that there was no time for another arrow. She dropped the bow and had barely enough time to unsheathe her bowie knife before the creature barreled over her. The force of the impact as beast hit woman threw the woman down the other side of the rise.

Flat on her back the woman saw the creature heading towards her, then past her as it tried to outrun the force of nature coming down from the mountain. As the animal's hind legs passed her she struck out with the knife, digging it deep into the thick meat and muscle of the creature's leg. The creature let out another howl of pain and rage. It forced itself to continue moving forward, but the woman held fast onto the knife, allowing herself to be dragged behind the creature. After a few paces the animal tired of the extra weight and the pain of the knife's serrated edges cutting an increasingly longer gash into its leg. It was time to be done with this.

The creature stopped and turned back towards the woman. He lifted his leg and kicked backwards, its heavy paw connecting with the woman's face, shaking her loose. The creature rose up and bore its teeth. Its fur stood on end. The woman crouched low and prepared for battle.

The creature swung first, a mighty, lumbering blow that the woman easily dodged. She tucked herself into a ball and rolled by the creature's foot, retrieving her knife by extracting it painfully from the monster's hind leg. The monster continued the momentum of its first strike into a complete circle and came around to land a fierce blow against the woman, throwing her off her feet and sending her sprawling. She hopped back up to her feet, but the blow had caused her to lose the bowie knife. She took an arrow from her quiver, figuring that if nothing else if the beast got close enough she could jam the stone tip into its eye. If she jammed it hard enough, she could possibly hit brain.

As the woman assessed the situation, she only then noticed that the rumbling was now an almost deafening roar. She looked past the creature who was positioned up mountain from her and saw behind it a rushing onslaught of white. Within her brain she felt her fight or flight instincts wrestle with themselves, arguing whether to go for the death strike now that it was just her and the beast, or leave it up to nature and run while she still could. She decided to run, figuring that the creature's injuries would surely diminish any chance of surviving an avalanche. Now all she would have to do is survive it herself. She turned and fled.

As she ran she could hear the creature running behind her, panting and growling, its massive form beating a tattoo into the earth as it ran. Then she couldn't hear the creature any longer. She didn't want to look behind her, she knew it was a bad idea to look behind her, but she felt the pinch in the back of her neck urging her to turn, and so she did. Behind her she saw the creature stretched out flat, riding the front of the avalanche like a belly surfer. The creature had its eyes set on the woman and was directing itself towards her on a wave of white.

She knew it was over the minute she turned around. Her chances had been slim to begin with, but the look back had broken her pace and the snow tide was almost on her, as was the creature using it as a shuttle to overtake her. She had maybe twenty yards before she was caught. If this is the way it was going to be, she wasn't running any more. She turned around and faced the avalanche.

The beast was surprised to see her stop, and even more surprised to see her run towards him. It quelled the surprise quickly and bore its teeth, readied its claws. The woman leapt into the air. At the top of her arch she reached into the bag on her side with her climbing gear and pulled out a spike. She landed on the creature's back. The creature turned its head around and snapped its jaws at the woman. When its mouth was wide open to woman shoved the spike inside so it propped open the creature's mouth. For a moment the creature was baffled and panicked, unable to close its mouth or remove the spike from its position. Then it looked at the woman with resiliency in its eyes. It clamped down its jaws with such force that the spike broke through the bottom of its jaw. Now it was the woman's turn to panic.

The creature contorted its body to get at the woman, and its change in surface area broke its position at the head of the avalanche and caused the woman and the creature to be swept over by snow. The woman tossed and toppled in the snow, flailing her arms and legs, attempting to both stay close to the top of the drift and keep loose space and air around her. Finally the snow had washed over them both, covering them in cold, wet whiteness. The woman felt the snow pushing on her from all directions and she felt her mind get thrown by being unable to tell which way was up. Then she remembered a trick the natives had told her. Please let me be right-side up, she thought, as she let loose her bladder. No such luck, as the urine worked its warm trail up her body, past her waste and then she felt her shirt begin to soak. At least she new which way was up. She clawed at the snow until she had righted herself and then worked her way up.

She was relieved to the point of tears when only a few minutes later she broke the surface and crawled out of her premature burial. She sat and took a moment to collect herself. Looking around she saw the slope of the avalanche. It had ended slightly below the tree line. She thanked the heavens that she hadn't run into a tree, seeing some of them that had been overtaken by the avalanche bent by its force, their tops sticking out of the snow at awkward angles.

She stood up and shook herself off. After a moment of taking in the surroundings she had oriented herself and readied for the trip back to town. She leaned against a tree nearby and wondered if there would be anything edible nearby, as she'd lost everything in the events of the day. She heard something first, a rumbling, then felt that the tree was shaking. Then the ground beneath her was shaking. Then there was no ground beneath her. It was pulled aside as the creature pulled itself through the snow, climbing the tree up through the snow.

The woman found herself standing for a brief moment with one foot on the animal's head, the other on its shoulder. The creature looked up and roared at the woman, pulling itself harder and faster out of the snow that surrounded it. The woman jumped onto the tree and shuffled up it with expert ease. She was only about twelve feet above the new ground the creature was pulling itself out of. It would be fully emerged in only a moment. She felt her jacket and pants, hoping for some lost or forgotten item that could possibly be used for a weapon. All she found was some jerky, which would have solved her problem of a moment ago, but was useless now. The creature could certainly climb up the tree after her. If not it could probably just knock the damn thing down. She reached up to the branch above her to see if she could pull herself up any further, but the branch broke off in her hand when she put her weight on it. She held the branch in her hand and looked down the tree.

At the bottom the creature was loosed from the snow. It looked up at the woman and smiled, the bottom of the climbing spike still sticking out of its lower jaw, looking like a strange goatee. It knew that it had her. It made a lazy swipe up at her feet, which she pulled up and avoided the claws by inches. The beast looked up, beat its chest violently and let out a roar of triumph, loud and long. The woman looked down at the creature, filled with a boiling anger that this stupid, brutish beast would overcome her. She was better than this. She shouldn't die this way, with this crude mistake of nature chewing on her flesh that had bathed on some of the most exclusive beaches in the world, tearing at muscle that had defeated some of the greatest fighters alive, swallowing a mind that had made a small fortune hustling chess amongst some of the great military strategists of the age. She grabbed the branch with both hands until she heard the bark crunch, then she bared her own teeth and let out her own roar, a sound of rage and frustration so strong it shook the tree she sat in.

The creature stopped. It looked up at her with confusion. It had obviously won, and yet this pitiful little animal was roaring back? Offering some sort of challenge? The creature enjoyed supplication in its victories, and would certainly not allow this one to be an exception. The creature stood on its hind legs and put its front paws on the tree. It looked up at the woman and let out another mighty roar. It shook the tree with its paws, nearly unseating the woman from her branch. She put one arm around the trunk to steady herself, keeping the broken branch in the other. She looked down at the animal shaking the tree, into its massive open jaws, filled with saliva and teeth. The creature stopped its display of dominance and looked up at the woman in the tree.

The woman was smiling.

"RAAAAAAAAARRRRRR!!!!!" said the woman, bouncing her butt up and down on while holding the broken branch above her head, shaking it triumphantly. "RAAAAAAARRRRRRR!!!!!!!!"

The creature could not believe the arrogance of this mite, this miniscule morsel, this beaten little thing. It would have her trembling if it had to roar so loudly it burst the cursed thing's eardrums. The creature reared back, opened its mouth and set itself to show this troublemaker who ran things around here.

But there was no roar to come. As soon as the creature had opened its mouth the woman had thrust the tree branch into its throat. The creature looked up at the woman, its jaw held comically open. No forcing this through its lower jaw. No biting through. No escape. Its eyes connected with hers. She wanted to discover exactly what was there in that moment. Fear? Resentment? Anger? She believed there was perhaps some pleading in those eyes, some attempt to call for mercy. Something, she imagined, like what had been in the eyes of the Inuit children it had stolen from their mothers for over a month now. She hoped this was there, and she hoped her eyes had the same cold, merciless stare it had inevitably given those children back. She pushed the tree branch further, down into the throat of the monster. Its neck expanded to an unnatural width. Its claws grabbed at the branch, trying to gain some sort of hold and failing. Blood began to pour from the side of the animal's mouth. The woman wrapped her arms around the branch and jumped out of the tree, putting all her weight into the final downward push. The branch slid further into the creature, past the throat, down into its torso. The woman let go of the branch and fell to the ground. She looked at the creature, which was now sitting on the ground, quite straight, its head looking up into the sky and only a couple feet of branch extruding from its mouth. The creature's body let out a small series of shutters and shakes, then was still.

The woman stood up. She'd have to move fast if she was to make it back to civilization before dark. She took out the jerky package from her anorak, released the zip-locked seal and bit off a chunk, chewing it for a moment, relishing the flavor. She looked back at the creature for a moment. She took the rest of the jerky out of the package and put it into one of the anorak's pockets. Returning to the creature she looked at its stiff, lifeless form. Taking off one of her gloves she flexed her fingers for a moment to regain dexterity, then quickly plucked out both of the creature's cold, dead eyes and put them in the bag.

"A little something to remember you by," she said, then sealed the bag and stuck it into her pocket. Town was about seven miles west, and if she hustled she could get back before the boys had left the local tavern for the night. She had a story to tell, and damn if it wasn't a good one. She figured it would be well worth a pint or two.

Tribulation

The day James Tarwood was released from prison the sky was black and the rain fell in thick sheets. He was officially let go as a ward of the state at two in the afternoon, but it had looked like midnight. The bus to take him to Eustis was supposed to arrive at two thirty. It was now six, and James sat on a small wooden bench, a Stetson hat pulled low over his eyes and drops of rain dripping through rust holes in the tin roof above him made little pathways along his brown duster jacket. The entire time he had sat stock still, his hands folded into his lap and his large, muscular frame straight as rail. Rick, the gate manager, stepped outside his booth and lit a cigarette.

"Sorry about this, Jimmy," said Rick, taking a long drag of his cigarette and exhaling a slow puff of smoke. "We tried calling central about that bus, we can't get a hold of anybody." Rick checked his watch. "We don't hear anything in the next half hour or so we're going to send somebody out there."

"Been waiting twenty years," James spoke with a voice gravelly from infrequent use. "Don't mind waiting a few more hours."

"I'll bet," Rick said, grabbing the front of his sky blue correctional facility-issued button up and moving it back and forth to relieve some of the stifling humidity that now permeated his little box. Although he was much better covered than the former inmate sitting on the bench just outside, he appeared more drenched, sweat sticking his oversized clothes to his thin frame. Rick pondered over the recently released man sitting an arm's length away. James had been in this prison over a decade before Rick had even begun working here, which in itself seemed like ages ago, and now here he was, hours after his release, and the poor bastard had only made it a hundred yards outside the prison walls. The guard reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the box of cigarettes, shook them slightly to get one slightly out of the opening and then leaned out the booth's window, offering one to James. The ex con shook his head, then reached into the duffel bag they'd given him which contained all his personal effects. He pulled out a box and opened it, then removed a cigar.

"Could use a light," he said. Rick tossed his lighter to James, who lit the flame and took a few puffs to get the stogie going, then extended his arm and leaned slightly to hand the lighter back to Rick. After taking a few more inhales James took the cigar in his hand and admired it, making sure to keep the burning tip protected under the brim of his hat. "Warden gave this to me. I was saving it. For when I got to the new digs. But what the hell." As James continued smoking there was a crack of lightening across the sky and a loud succession of thunder bursts out towards the west. The two men stared out at the landscape, following the long, two lane side road that ran from the prison to the highway. About four miles down the road there was a hill that hid the rest of the horizon behind it. A strange luminescence was emanating from the land just past the hill, swirling and flickering just behind the torrential rains, strange and distorted like the reflection off some bright metal trinket at the bottom of a stream.

"Weird fucking weather," Rick said, shivering. "Warden thinks that's why the bus ain't showed yet, why we can't reach central. Maybe there's flooding or something's taking out the phone lines or whatever. That light sure is something, though. Had a cousin once in the air force, stationed way out in Alaska, used to tell all about the Northern Lights, sounded something like all this. Course, I don't know what the Northern Lights would be doing in Nebraska."

"Strange," said James.

Rick checked his watch again, sucking on his teeth as he did so. "Well, shit," he muttered. "I'm going to give the warden a call, see what the hell he wants to do about this mess. You sit tight, Jimmy."

Rick went to return to his booth when Jimmy suddenly rose from his seat.

"I said sit tight, Jim. We're gonna get this settled…" James's eyes had narrowed to thin slits and he was staring out to the west, his jaw set so firm the long hollows of his cheeks took on a rigidity that made them look carved from wood.  Rick followed his gaze to the horizon, then felt a sudden shiver pull down from the base of his skull to the small of his back. Standing on the horizon were four giant horses, and atop each horse a rider. Even from a distance it was obvious the men were abnormally large, twelve foot a piece at least. Rick's cigarette fell from his mouth.

"Oh shit," said Rick, turning around and running inside. He picked up the phone to dial inside but got no dial tone. "What the hell?" he said, staring at the phone. "This phone is closed circuit, why am I not…" He looked out the window and saw the horsemen riding towards the prison, trailing the otherworldly light show after them like a bridal train.

The sweat that poured down Rick's back had now taken on an icy coldness. It seemed as though all his weight ran into his feet and he barely had the strength to lift his arms. After the interminable moment of paralysis passed he grabbed an oversized key ring and fumbling through a series of keys. "James, inside!" he yelled as he found the key he was looking for. Rick ran to a small metal door a few feet down the prison's outer wall, unlocked it, and was about to run inside when he noticed James was not behind him. He ran back to find James still standing, unmoved. "Let's go, James! Inside, where it's safe!"

"Ain't going back inside," was all James said. Rick could see there was no use in trying to argue with the man and turned back, running through the door and locking it behind him.

Once he was sure he was alone, James moved, slowly and with purpose, to the guard booth. He gave it the once-over and found what he was looking for in a drawer underneath the desk. A Remington 11-87 shotgun, attached to the underside of the desk by a small latch. James unhooked the gun, threw it over his shoulder and went out to meet the horsemen.

As James walked down the road he pulled his coat tight around him and lowered his head, fighting hard against the rain. In the early days at the prison his fantasies of the day when he'd finally be freed were big and cinematic. Sarah would be there to meet him, waiting outside the gates of that godforsaken penitentiary in one of those pretty sun dresses he'd always liked to watch her put on, just about as much as he liked watching her take them off. That scarred-up Judas of a partner Milton would be there, too, giving him his due both in credit for sticking out the sentence on his own and of whatever remained of the take. Then, of course, there was the most vivid part of the dream. Freedom. Open expanse and the ability to move through it, possibly in a convertible car with the top down. Going somewhere, anywhere, far away from any place that had you marked down as some kind of number, then stowed away and peered at like some kind of moth pinned down to a kid's insect collection. That dream had died slowly, like most do after years inside. Sarah had stopped writing years ago, said all the waiting and worrying was too painful for her, which he supposed he could understand. It certainly hadn't been a picnic for him, either. He hadn't heard word one from Milton the whole time he'd been in, so the prospect of getting his due had seemed untenable for a long while. He now considered himself a fool for ever even thinking it. No one got what they deserved. All he'd allowed himself to hope for now was merely the smallest bit of movement. A nice, leisurely ride to Scottsbluff. Actually watching the scenery change outside a window instead of seeing the same static image outside the same rueful, barred hole every shitty, solitary day. He'd eat a meal in a restaurant. He'd turn out the lights when he wanted to. He'd sleep in a real bed. And these fuckers had ruined it.

James stopped and stood in the center of the road. He placed his legs shoulder length apart and took the shotgun down, holding it at his side. He bent the brim of his hat to let the rain slide off to the side so that he could get a good look at the four horsemen who stood before him. On a white horse rode a man carrying a longbow with arrows that had no arrowheads. On a black horse was a man carrying scales with wheat on one side and gold on the other in equal measure. The rider on the red horse carried a glowing sword. The rider out in front, the leader, rode on a pale green horse, in his hand was a long, slender scythe that he pointed straight at James.

"Stand aside, mortal." James could feel the rider's voice drumming in his gut. "We ride towards the Armageddon. Judgment Day approaches!"

"Don't think so," James said. He took the cigar out of his mouth and flicked it at the lead horsemen, who reflexively swatted it away in an inelegant panic before regaining his composure. The man on the white horse let out a small burst of laughter, prompting the lead horseman to turn sharply, chiding him with an explosion of green flames igniting from his eyes. The white horse's rider collected himself and shamefacedly begin picking at the hide-wrapped grip of his bow.       

"We have many miles to travel and much to do," the lead horseman said. "We bring the message of the world's end!"

"Not today, you don't," said James. He gave the shotgun a quick toss and grabbed it by the barrel, then swung it like a baseball bat, connecting the stock with the front legs of the lead rider's horse. With an audible crack the legs snapped out from underneath the horse and the lead rider toppled to the ground, pinned underneath his steed. The rider on the red horse raised his sword, but before he could strike James flipped the gun back around and released a shot straight into the red horseman's torso. The rider flew backwards off his mount, his sword flying from his hand. The rider on the white horse began shaking with intense anxiety. He grabbed for his arrows but fumbled them in his hands and dropped them to the ground. While the horseman searched his packs for some other form of weaponry James grabbed the bow itself from out of the horseman's hands and hooked his head between the stock and the string and yanked the rider off his horse, giving him a few solid kicks to the face to keep him down.

James walked back over to the red rider, who was beginning to come to. The rider stared down at his torso, poked it tenderly for a moment, then looked at James with incredulity. "What stupid insolence to believe you could actually harm one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse with one of your silly little toys!"

"I figured as much," said James. He reached down to the ground beside the red horseman and picked up the glowing sword that had fallen from his hands in the impact of the gunshot. "So maybe I'll give this toy a try." James held the sword tentatively in his hand, testing its weight and movement.

"No!" said the red horseman. "Impossible! What devilry is--" James cut off his words by bringing down the sword straight down upon the red horseman's throat. The rider gurgled and spat, silver shining liquid dribbled out of the opening in his neck. Then he was silent.

"How dare you!" shouted the black horseman. He gave his horse two sharp kicks in the side, spurring him into a charge. James turned around, bent down in a lineman's pose, and charged right back at the horse. Startled, the horse reigned back onto its hind legs and James plunged the sword into the horse's belly, cutting a line straight down the underside of the horse and releasing a torrent of blood and viscera. He dodged to the side as the horse collapsed, its rider tumbling off to avoid being trapped. As the black horseman struggled to regain his footing James came up behind him, quick and quiet, and swung the sword in a long arch that separated the rider's head from his body.

James then walked back over to the horseman still trapped underneath his pale green steed. "You have no idea what you've done," the horseman gasped between short, belabored breaths.

"And you do?" asked James. The horseman was silent. James studied the rider, noted his look of bewilderment and saw within the ethereal warrior the terrifying realization that things had irreversibly strayed far, far away from the plan.

"Which one are you, anyways?"

The horseman smiled. "Death," he replied, then coughed out a broken laugh.

James smiled back. He had to admire a man with a sense of humor. Then he raised the sword and ran it through the horseman's throat.

With one knee firmly planted on the white horseman's chest James reached down and grabbed the rider's right ear and then twisted it sharply. The horseman moved slow and groggily, then suddenly bucked and squirmed with pain.

"Ow! You accursed human, unhand me!" cried the horseman, grabbing feebly at the hand that held his ear until he felt the cold metal of the sword at his throat. His hands fell slowly to his sides and he stared up at James with a look of fear and resentment.

"I don't care who you are," said James. "I don't care what side you work for, I don't care what some book somewhere tells you you gotta do. I want you to go back and tell whoever the asshole was that sent you that this ain't happening today. It ain't happening tomorrow, it ain't happening for a long goddamn time yet, comprende?"

"They'll come after you," said the horseman. "Both sides. A transgression like this will not be tolerated."

"You just go and make your report, and you let them know that if I see any of you big men again, coming around thinking you've got the right to run smooth over a man's life, I will put this sword straight through their neck. No hesitation. Now," James rose to his feet and kept the sword trained at the white horseman. "Get."

The horseman rose and began to move towards his white horse. "Nah-uh," said James. "No horsey for you. Walk." The horseman turned to protest, but James held fast with the sword still raised at neck level. The rider began walking.

James looked at the two horses left standing. "Like it's even a question," he laughed to himself. He picked up the shotgun, put the sword in sheath on the saddle and mounted the white horse. He sat for a moment, listening to the rain thump against his hat. He looked down the road towards the highway. Somehow, Eustis didn't possess the same meager appeal it had only a short time before. Maybe Mexico, James thought. He turned the horse to face south, and as he began to ride the storm began to break and small rays of light burst through the clouds like buckshot against tin siding.

The Shirt

The shirt had fit last year. Not only that, it had fit comfortably. Nigel stared aghast at the shirt in the mirror as it hugged his frame so tight it turned every bit of excess weight into its own exhibit in the Nigel Museum of Failure. It has been a bad year, he'd known this, but he hadn't realized the affect it had had on his body, which, as he thought about it, was even more pathetic. How could he not have realized this? Was he so out of touch with his own body, had he so given up on even contemplating the idea of attracting a mate that he had slipped this far without being at all cognizant of it? Perhaps it had shrunk in the wash, he thought, although he knew it wasn't true. Dammit.

His mom had made the shirts for the whole family last year for Christmas. The day after Christmas they had all gone to Amish Country. They were cheap t-shirts with iron-ons that said "I'm a Holcomb" in big ugly bubble letters. She was always doing something like this, buying the entire family some sort of uniform, as if they all needed reminding that they were joined together by the unbreakable ties of genes and being confined to the same home for years. Like they were all members of a godawful sports team. Team Reject. The Holcombs were unsuccessful. Generation by generation they were a family of failures. Which, of course, hadn't stopped each generation from putting undue pressure on the ones after it to break the cycle. Nigel's father had put the screws into him young, telling Nigel he had all the advantages that his father hadn't, which seeing as how Nigel's father had never starved and had as much education as Nigel had, the only real difference between their childhoods was the presence of television, which frankly hadn't been much of a help to Nigel at all.

He was going in to work, where he would bring his suitcase with him and then go straight from work to his plane, which would take him back home for Thanksgiving. His mother had told him to wear the shirt when he came, and she would meet him at the airport with his father and brother, all wearing the same shirt. "Won't that be great?" she'd said to him on the phone. No, it wouldn't be great, it would kill him, slowly, from the inside out. His heart would die and he would lose all will to live.

He couldn't wear this shirt to work. Not because he would look like any of the other guys there, but that he probably would. He worked administration at a plumbing company and one of the small victories in life that stopped him from going insane and killing all the neighborhood pets was that he didn't look anything like those overweight, slobby, poorly dressed bastards who came in and out of the office every day. He would change at the airport.

At work he sat at his desk with his small carry-on suitcase sitting right beside him. All he could think about was the shirt, the red, size L soul trap waiting for him inside the luggage. After everything that had happened this year, the break-up, the job issues, all the construction on the apartment, deciding to go back to school and then not getting accepted, even to his back-up, after all of that this shirt had to come around and kick him in the nuts. Of course he'd gained weight, all the stress he'd been under. Why wouldn't he have? He certainly hadn't been exercising very much, never played any sports, and Janine certainly wasn't there to cook for him anymore. He'd been eating out a lot. He'd have to stop that, he told himself. Learn to cook. Maybe he'd buy some cookbooks or something when he got back, get one of those George Forman burn-off-the-fat grills, there were probably classes at The Learning Annex he could take. You don't have to apply for The Learning Annex, do you? Nigel thought to himself. No, of course you didn't. But could they expel you?

"How's the work treating you there, Nigel?" Nigel's boss, Don Schreiber, ambled over to his desk. "Getting everything squared away before the holiday?"

"Oh yeah. Sure," said Nigel.

"Good lad! Don't want any unfinished business hanging over my head on turkey day! An upset mind yields an upset stomach, Nigel."

"Yes, of course it does," Nigel agreed.

"You're going home, ain't ya?" Don asked. Nigel nodded. "Nothing better than home cooking! Going to have to add a couple extra holes to the ole belt, right?" Don stuck out his stomach, causing his button-up shirt to rise above his undershirt, and rubbed his stomach. Nigel could only nod again, thankful that today Don had decided to wear an undershirt and not expose his hideous belly as he usually did. He must be going somewhere nice after work, like Applebee's.

"Whelp, finish up here and then check out when you're done. We're not going to be watching the clock too close today." Don winked at Nigel and then walked off.

Suddenly it occurred to Nigel that, damn it all, he WAS going home for a nice home cooked meal. A meal prepared by his mother, who doused everything with salt and butter and cooked nothing but starches and meat. If he was overweight now, in four days it was only going to be worse. A lot worse. Shit. He'd have to join a gym or an intramural baseball team or something to work this off.

Nigel finished his work and hopped in his car to drive to the airport. Long term parking at the airport had gone up in price and Nigel cursed inflation under his breath and wished he knew more about how it worked in that prices for things kept going up but he didn't seem to be making any more money, which is what inflation was supposed to mean, right?

It wasn't a long ride and Nigel got to the airport about three hours before his flight took off. He sat in the waiting area looking at everyone else waiting with their families or reading some big novel or listening to their i-pods. Nigel wished he had an i-pod. They seemed so cool. Everyone looked cooler when they were flipping through their i-pods, shuffling through songs or playlists or whatever. Maybe if he got a bonus this year that would be his Christmas present to himself. He'd go and sit in the park and listen to Glenn Miller. Maybe he'd listen to it while jogging. That would be the deal he'd make with himself. He'd buy himself an i-pod if he swore to himself that he'd use it while jogging. Nigel had brought a book to read, a collection of ghost stories written by some pretty famous authors whose names Nigel vaguely recalled from high school English class. He took the book out of his bag but didn't open it. Instead he stared at the cute girl sitting down the row from him, listening to her i-pod and reading a book called Kafka on the Shore by some guy whose name Nigel didn't trust himself to try and pronounce. It had a pretty cover on it and a bunch of quotes on the back about what a great book it was. Nigel wanted to point out to the girl that the book he was reading had stories in it by Edgar Allen Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne and a whole bunch of other pretty smart people, but he figured he wouldn't really be able to approach her, and all she'd see was the cover, which had a really terrible picture of an old man in pajamas and an old-style lamp being scared by some stupid-looking ghost with the title Spooky Stories! written in big goofy letters across the top. He thought about buying, but when he went up to the newsstand nothing really interested him so he bought a soda and a Snickers Bar. He was half way through his Snickers and was just about to crack open his soda when he remembered the t-shirt waiting for him in his suitcase. He looked down at his gut and sighed, then threw away the candy and soda. He didn't have any more pocket change and didn't want to use his bank card just to get a magazine, so he figured there was nothing left to do but change into the shirt and then wait.

Nigel dragged the suitcase into the bathroom and waited for an empty stall. Finally one opened up and he crammed himself and his suitcase inside. Once in Nigel took of the shirt he had one and exchanged it for the t-shirt. He stood there with the shirt in his hand, looking down at both it and the roll of flesh that was hanging out over his belt line. Maybe it wasn't as bad as he remembered it. So he'd put on some extra weight, so what? Everyone's weight fluctuates, nobody really notices. Surely the guys at work must have gained or lost some what, but Nigel hadn't noticed, so no one had probably noticed his. No big deal at all. Nigel put on the shirt and stepped out of the stall and checked himself out in the mirrors. And there it was. Just like before, only it seemed worse now. He could only see the other guys from work. He thought about the cute girl reading the smart-looking book. He thought about his family waiting for him at the airport wearing the same stupid shirts, only his looked like someone crammed a walrus into a leotard. Nigel ran back into the stall and took off the shirt. He shoved it back in his bag and put his other shirt back on. It wouldn't be that big a deal if he showed up without the shirt on, right? His mom couldn't care that much, could she? It was just a shirt. He'll say he lost it, or maybe that it was in the laundry and he'd just dropped it off without thinking about it because he wears it all the time. Maybe that would work.

Nigel left the bathroom and sat back down in his chair. He looked at the girl and she looked back. Nigel gave her a little smile and a nod, and she smiled back. "Good," thought Nigel. "If I'd been wearing that damn shirt she'd have thrown up. Now I got a smile from a cute girl. Good. Good for me."

The flight was uneventful. As the plane began to taxi Nigel felt guilty. Maybe he should have put the shirt on and just sucked it up. But no, it was ridiculous, he wasn't going to sell out his self-image just for some dumb family shirt. It'd be fine. They'd buy his excuse, he'd pick up an extra shirt from an outlet store or something and it'd all be fine. He'd lose some weight and wear the shirt for Christmas, maybe, after it was miraculously found in a drawer or something.

Nigel pulled his suitcase down the corridor past the security checkpoint. Then he saw them, all the family lined up, mama bear, papa bear, baby bear. All wearing their shirts.

"Hello, Nigel!" his mother said, running up and giving him a hug and peck on the cheek. "Oh no. Where's your shirt?"

"Yeah, gee, wouldn't you know, I couldn't find it?" Nigel said, hearing his voice come out forced and questioning. He was a terrible liar. "I think it might be in some laundry I sent out. Maybe next time."

"Oh. Ok," said his mother.

His father looked skeptical. "Looks like you put on a little weight there, son," he said.

"Oh shush!" his mother chided. "He looks fine."

"He's going to have cholesterol problems," said father. "I've got cholesterol problems and I was a good thirty pounds lighter than he is when I was his age. And I played ball. You getting any exercise, boy?"

"Some," shrugged Nigel.

"Some," repeated father, rolling his eyes. "Hand me your bag, princess. Wouldn't want you to get winded."

At dinner that night Nigel barely touched his food. His mother asked if he was feeling all right. Nigel shrugged. His father speechified about the hard work his mother had put into that roast and how excited she had been to be cooking for her two boys again, and how in the days of the Old Testament it was legal to stone children to death for such impudence. Nigel wasn't really listening. He was concentrating on his stomach, trying to feel the hunger he was driving himself towards, hoping that the uncomfortable ache in his stomach meant that he was burning fat.

Later in the evening when Nigel passed on dessert his mother began to get worried. "You've never turned down apple turnover before," she said, clucking her tongue and putting the back of her hand on his forehead. "Are you sure you're feeling all right?" Nigel brushed her hand away and tried not to get annoyed. She was just being mom, after all.

"No, ma. I'm fine."

Nigel went to his room to get ready for bed. He opened his suitcase and took out his pajamas. After he had changed he sat on the edge of his old bed and looked down at the shirt. It seemed to sum up life for Nigel at that moment. A little too small, a bad fit. Nigel threw the shirt on the floor. "Goddamnit," he muttered.

Just then his mother opened the door. "Hey sweetie, just wanted to tell you before you go to bed..." Nigel started. In a panic he grabbed the shirt and stuffed it in the suitcase, which only too late occurred to him was the surest admittance of guilt.

There was silence for a moment, then Nigel stuttered out, "Gee, mom, you scared me. Hey, so, I found the shirt, apparently I, I guess I packed it, then I forgot I packed it and, geez, I guess I totally goofed on that. You know me, if my head wasn't attached I'd lose it, right?"

"Sure," said his mom. She began backing out of the room.

"Weren't you going to tell me something, mom?" Nigel asked.

"Oh, I just, we're going out to breakfast at Maude's Café, so wake up early, I..." his mom closed the door. Nigel collapsed back on the bed. That pretty much nailed it. He'd never hear the end of this now. There goes Thanksgiving. There goes Christmas. There goes family time for the next couple years at least. He knew it instantly, saw it when his mother started doing that breathing-through-her-nose thing she did when she was really upset. She'd tell father, and boy he wouldn't be happy.

Nigel curled up in the bed and drew the covers over his head. He felt ashamed, but didn't know exactly why. He remembered when his mom had caught him looking at porn when he was eleven. He remembered that look of disappointment. He had cried that night, telling his mom that he was sure he was going to Hell. His mom had rubbed his back and told him that she didn't think he was going to Hell, she knew that it was a temptation a lot of young boys fell prey to. She had just thought that her boy was better than that. It seemed to Nigel at the time that that was worse than Hell. He wanted to be better than that. He wanted to be better than some sleazy kid who looked at porn, or some jerk who got too fat and too ashamed to wear a t-shirt his mom had given him. Nigel found himself crying again, in the same position on the same bed that he had when he was eleven years old. Only this time, his mother wasn't there to rub his back.

The next morning Nigel got up early. He showered, he brushed his teeth and straightened his hair. He went into his room to get dressed. He put on his pants, his socks, his shoes. Then he stood in front of the mirror and looked at himself. He put on the red t-shirt. There it was. Still too small, still stretched like the skin of a drum. He noticed for the first time that he could actually see his belly button the shirt was so small.

Oh well, thought Nigel. Why not? What's the use? He trudged downstairs. This is what life was now, wasn't it? Compromise. Sacrifice. Putting family before self. Coming down the stairs he saw them, all three of them, sitting around the family table. His father, reading the stock page although Nigel knew for certain the old man didn't understand a damn thing about it other than arrows pointing up or down, didn't even own a damn stock a day in his life. Then there was his brother, reading the funnies. Then mom. Drinking her orange juice and reading the Style section, commenting on this and that celebrity, as though she knew them. Judging outfits as though she had a degree from the Fashion Institute. Mom. She looked up and saw him. She smiled, a soft smile, a conciliatory smile.

"Look what I found," said Nigel. "I packed it and forgot about it, so..."

Nigel's father looked up over the paper. "Jesus, son, you look like Baby Huey."

"Oh, come now!" said Nigel's mother.

"Whelp, we better get moving," said Nigel's father, putting down the paper and rising towards the door. "Everybody pile into the van."

Nigel headed towards the front door when his mother grabbed his arm with her hand, cold and smooth like marble. "My boy," she whispered into his ear.