Of "The Walking Dead"

“bow down before the one you serve

you’re going to get what you deserve”

-Nine Inch Nails

As I watch the episodes unfold of the dramatic, horrific, and extremely popular show, The Walking Dead, I am left, more and more, with the feeling that their world is hopeless.  As a recent episode made clear, it has gotten to a point where the people who are still living are worse than the walkers (or zombies if you aren’t in tune).  The heroes of the story are doing horrible things, but the writers have done an amazing job of making us believe that they had no other choice.  In the same circumstances we would do the same- or else we would already be dead.  Yet, I can’t stop watching it.  I still expect a happy ending.  Some how.  I'm ignoring the fact that modern fiction has been revealing more and more often that there are stories without happy endings.  The best storytellers will keep us hoping until the end.

What makes a show like that so popular?  I’m not talking about dissecting the characters, plot and so on.  Further than that.  What makes a culture crave such extreme fiction?  Such a wild escape?  What makes me ask?

It’s been building for years.  The understanding that the world is not right.  We are craving a change, a big change, and its been brought on by a tremendous overall dissatisfaction and disappointment with life.  There is too much control and not enough joy.  Too much money and not enough love.  Its gotten bad enough that secretly we crave the apocalypse.  And it is satisfying to chop away at a zombie, because that zombie represents_______________...

This is Halloween

Richard took a long look at the neighborhood before nailing the last board over the window.  He wasn’t the only wrapping up the preparations for Halloween.  Two doors down, Jeff was stretching cottony webbing between the bannisters of his porch just in front of the life-size plastic coffin that was a Drac-in-a-box when the kids came for the candy.   The Masons had a giant inflatable ghost in the yard with Boo written across its midsection like a misplaced thought-bubble.  From Richard’s partial window view, orange spheres lined up in a neat row at the right hand corner of each home’s porch.  Precisely perched pumpkins- so cute.  Nearly everyone obeyed.  Richard had one, too, though he had carved it in such a hurry that the mismatched eye holes and wavy grin made it look more comical than spooky.  His jack-o-lantern looked like Charlie Brown with an eyepatch.  

But, even that seems kind of creepy when you’re in the place Richard is in.  I didn’t ask for any of this, he assures us, driving in the final nail.  The oak slats divided up the sunbeam into blades that stabbed across the room.  They cut the opposite wall at it’s base spilling light onto the floor.  

Light would not be a problem, though.  Not like last year.  A circle of flood lamps hung from the ceiling, three halogen work-lights stood on steel tripods along one wall, and a homemade circuit of LED spotted lamps made a grid opposite that.  Each plugged into outlets that has been individually wired to its own place on the breaker panel.  An alternate set of plugs runs to an exterior generator that can be started by remote control.  In case all of that fails, the floor under the bed is storage for the batteries.  Six car batteries,   fourteen 12 volts, a case of 24 D cells, a sack of ten flashlights, thirty-six AAA, twelve pen-lights, and a hundred and forty-four glow sticks.  A set of twenty solar lights charges in driveway and Richard plans to bring them in at sundown.  He keeps a careful inventory list, making three circles beside each item so that he can check it thrice.   He didn’t even trust the list to paper, rather it is written in red permanent marker on the wall behind the door and it is as tall as he is.

Matches.  He put a checkmark in the second circle.  Matches had found its way on and off the list a half-a-dozen times.  He still is not sure.  Fire is most certainly a very very, last, last resort.  He knew if it came down to that, then… well, that would be very bad.  He skimmed the life sized list and thought of the months worth of preparation and planning;  If it came down to striking a match, then it was already bad.  But at least it wouldn’t be dark.  Not the kind that of darkness that is so heavy it weighs you to the ground.  Not the kind of darkness were the sound of screams coagulate.  Not the kind that is so thick it fills your lungs and suffocates you.  Because if it came to that after all his preparation, then the only option would be the needle.  

He had considered a gun, but there were two problems.  Would it even fire in a darkness seemingly void of oxygen?  Secondly, he wasn’t sure he could do it.  Even in the darkness, he wasn’t sure he could pull the trigger feeling the cold steel on his temple.  Even in the darkness.  Especially in the darkness.  If he died in the darkness, well then it would be dark forever.

Richard shook his head to clear it until his cheeks flapped.   He thought of the tombstones down the road.  Here lies dear old Uncle Jake, he hit the gas instead of the brake.  Yuk, yuk.  The Millers.  They had a dozen wooden tombstones scattered here and there in the yard.  Some had rubber spiders or glow-in-the-dark bones decorating the graves.  One had a pair of spattered gloves reaching out from the ground.   Yesterday Richard watched Mr. Miller and his grandson making a new one.  Mr. Miller cut the shape from a piece of plywood and the kid slapped at it with a brush full of gray paint.  After it dried and was inscribed, the two giggled.  Richard could tell by the way Mr. Miller’s head lifted up then dropped as he doubled over and slapped at his knee.   The boy fell to the ground and rolled.  Must be a good one.  Richard couldn’t read it, even with the binoculars, because of the angle.  Maybe if he had some time after checking his list, he might take a walk and check it out.   Last year the Millers made two additions:  Here lies Jonathon Yeast, please excuse him for not rising  and another that Richard could not quite remember.  Something about someone whose life was full until they tried to milk a bull.

Yes, that’s the Halloween he used to love and sorely missed.  Halloween is supposed to be fun, isn’t it?  Trick or treating for candy.  Once when he was nine, he had gone with the bigger kids in the neighborhood all night and filled up an entire trash bag.  We’re not talking about apples and crap, either.   Candy and tons of it.   They bigger kids took half of it, but it was still a monster haul for little Ricky, as his mother called him for the first twelve years.    Her eyes were wide as he dumped it onto the kitchen table so that they could check it for pins and razor blades.  That was tradition, too.  The hilarious and sad tradition of checking kids’ candy for the tampering of the evil.  The local hospital used to run it through the x-ray machine for free.  Thats the kind of stuff that opens the gates of Hell.  Just a little at a time, and some don’t even realize when it envelops them.

Richard shook his head again.  Hard.  He turned to the radio for distraction.  Of course the radio would have to go before lock-up time.  It is no secret that the dead can talk through those frequencies, and he has no interest in what they might have to say.  And do they say some bizarre things.  He thought back to the Halloween before last when he heard them.  And what he heard was perfectly clear………………………..

Silverlocks

I'm gonna keep my sheep suit on

Until I'm sure that you've been shown

That I can be trusted walking with you alone

- Wolfman Jack, ”Lil Red Riding Hood”

eventually we all have silver locks because the only alternative is death.

Once upon a time in a place that was more green than anything, there was a road.  Now, in this place, the grass outnumbered the concrete a thousand to one.  This is where the bugs lived.  You rarely saw them, but they sang all of the time.  The sound was incessant and inviting, like the song of the siren.  The bugs weren’t alone, oh no.   The animals scattered their homes about, here and there, willy-nilly and haphazard.   Or so it seemed.   Some wove homes into the vegetation, some burrowed in the earth, some found places up in the trees and down in the rocks.  When it was time, new ones were born and old ones passed on.  Some hunted and some scavenged.   And, left to their own, they grew quite large.  In fact, some of the were as large as their skylines allowed.   The cycle was undisturbed, because one who lived among them had dominion and he was fair and just.  Nevermind terrifying.

But back to the road.  As it left the city, it stretched for unknown miles twisting through the wilderness. The only other concrete made up occasional walkways along the scattered houses.  Sometimes they were simple concrete circles a stride or so apart that connected homes to gravel like a dot-to-dot on an elementary worksheet.  That gravel connected to the road, as several others did here and there, but mostly, the road was alone.  That is why the music man liked it so much.  He liked to look at the trees.  In fact, he liked to look at the trees until he could no longer see the forest.  He would muse that the road brought him from the concrete jungles “back to where I belong”.  And whenever he dwelled on it, the leafy branches that  grew out and over the road would reach down and out as if to  claim him as their own.

He pedalled fast to cover the ground between his apartment and the road, but geared down with a flick of his thumb and let the bike coast when he arrived.  His ride was about the destination as much as the ride.   He sat upright and released the strap at his chin, riding with no hands--a feat that used to amaze him as a kid.

They make you wear these things in the city, he thought to no one but the forest.  In fact he had once been ticketed for not wearing a helmet in city limits.  Seventy-five smackeroos, clams, bucks, greenbacks.

Before taxes.

But not here.  No such rules on the road, no rules at all, save the ones which nature imposes.

And so he relieved himself of the burden of the helmet, and the warm breeze was cool along his forehead and through his hair.  His hair was getting long and on its way to longer, nearing  that length in which he must soon choose:  cut it back to tame, or let it go to time and nature.  He secretly hoped he choose time and nature although he knew he probably would cut it.  Time and Nature, after all, cannot be trusted.  They had already begun to turn steaks of his dark hair gray.   Some liked to call it silver, as though it has value.  Others tried to soften the blow by equating it to wisdom.   Some joked that they earned every single one of those grays.  The Bible calls it a crown of spendor.   Every silver lining has a touch of grey, so says the Grateful Dead.  However you color it, the simple truth is the hair is dying.  A sure-fire, no-two-ways-about-it, fo-shizzle-my-nizzle sign of aging is dying.  Sometimes the hair goes first.

He had one bicycle route and he never strayed from it.  There was no reason to; it had everything.  Once outside the city limits, the road ran past a line of ranch style brick homes on one side, while the other was farmed field all the way to the river.   A thin but leafy tree line grew around on old wire fence and puzzled the view of the field and its giant round hay bales.   This went on until the neighborhoods took back over on both sides.  The road was perfect for morning biking.  It was heavily shaded,  the asphalt was smooth, and traffic was rare.  When a vehicle did pass it left behind a friendly wave and a belching breeze of warm fumes.  Thankfully they, too became as scarce as other signs of human progress further down the road.

He circled a couple of times in the gravel parking lot of the country store waiting for a gap in traffic to cross the highway where the road would disappear down a hill and be swallowed by the trees.

On the other side, he didn’t pedal at all for a while, or sometimes backwards because he liked the sound the chain and gears made- the reverse ticking.  The sound of unwinding, like maybe you could set time back.  Perhaps just a wee bit.  He stretched his arms to the sky to pay homage to the cooler air.  The light dimmed through the leafy filter and on hot days, the temperature drop was drastic.  He coasted down the bowl and up the other side and let himself slow until it was either pedal or topple over.

The trees thinned and homes sprang up again on one side, but it was different.   Occasional newly constructed brick homes neighbored faded single-wide trailers who had claimed the land back when no one else knew about it.   The yards were long enough to support a football game should the need arise.  The opposite side of the road became lined with a white boarded fence that rolled on and on with the bumps and hills of the land.  Sometimes the cows would be grazing near the fence, sometimes off in the distance, and there were days like today, when they were no where in sight.

Where the fence line turned, nature took over once again, and the sound of insects grew.  Grew in fact, to overpower the music from his earbuds.  He tugged them from his ears and Tom Petty sang into his shirt, with no one heeding “you don’t!  have!  to live like a refugee”.  

The sun reappeared, and the descending road dissected an expanse of what could only be described as a swamp.  Green foliage topped with stems of tiny white and pink balls disguised the water as land along the edges.  Tell-tale glints of sunlight gave it away until it opened up.  Near the centers on both sides, wide leaves floated on the water providing islands for dragonflies and frogs.  Wire-legged things skimmed the surface.  Here and there a polished and mossed burl of a stump broke through, making a potential perch for long birds with long beaks.  This section of road would flood every spring, and he would ride right through it.

As abruptly as it started, the swampland ended, and the hill led up to another miniature neighborhood.  The houses were similar to one another, but spread out and a little haphazard in their facings.  Each one distinct.  One had a basketball court, another had a tire swing.  One had a giant silver propane tank, another, a stack of firewood.  One had a pickup truck with a fishing boat in tow, the next, a Buick sedan and a crotch rocket.  The last house on the left before the road became lost in the forest, was farther alone than the others, not quite overgrown,... but well vegitated.  It had four flag poles attached to the house and yard: one Old Glory, one Confederate, one POW MIA, and a  Don’t Tread On Me flapped, advertising the identity of the occupant.  A man in a rocking chair and red cap nodded him a two finger salute, and he fired it right back careful not to look too long.  It was their daily ritual, and usually the point where the music man would increase the volume in his headphones, and and his momentum.  It was his turn-about point.  Time to head back, back toward the other world.

Usually.

But, the gears were clicking today and he had a hard time relaxing in spite of the surrounding serenity.  His bicycle kept going straight.   He had ignored his screaming mind as long as he could, but Bruce Springsteen egged him on, “tramps like us, baby we were born to run!”  He pumped the pedals hard.

We gotta get out before its too late, Bruce sang to him.

Is it already too late?  The oldest is now in college, the youngest in elementary, and the middle one is having an identity crisis.  There’s a stiff mortgage and two cars, one of them upside down.  Fifty plus hours a week at the grind where his bosses’ bosses were millionaires.  His wife loves wine a little too much.  And riding his bike was the best part of his day.

Still, it wasn’t all bad- not by a longshot.  He discovered he minded less and less.  minded less and less, minded less, mindless.

After all, it could be worse.  One neighbor lost his job.  The vacancy sign popped up in the yard of apartment complex he lived in.  A guy at work was going through a divorce and his eyes were always red.  The music man rode a thousand dollar bicycle.

It could be much worse.

There’s the danger.  The trap,   The stuff that makes slavery possible.

because “tramps like us, baby we were born to-”

What the-?

Something just moved back there. Not a rabbit either, something big.

He braked gently and swung the bike around in a u-turn, staring into the forest.  His head and   eyes darted to pierce past the limbs and leaves deeper into the dimmer parts.

Somewhere back there the darkness moved again-this time deftly.

He felt a spidery skitter up his back and neck.  When he decided to pedal, the creature stopped hiding.

There was a crash of snapping twigs and stuttering popping of pulled vines ripped from their roots and for a moment the thing that moved was recognizable as a silhouette.  An inflated frame of muscle and fur. Wolf he thought and he pedaled hard, maxing out the gears in moments,  Wolf! A big f-

He actually felt the thing hit the pavement behind him, it’s nails, claws, clapped like an army drummer drumming.  There were four legs a leaping and only two wheels a spinning.  The music man pedaled the chain right off the gears, but the stab of fear only lasted a second.  The rear tire was bumped hard enough to pick it up and turn the entire bicycle and rider sideways, airborne for a very long split second where the music man was facing the beast.  It was huge and mostly jaw, hot and red inside between two rows of foamy fangs. The black and pink lips curled on themselves like a burned window blind releasing a snarling growl.  The sound was solid matter that touched the man’s entire head and left behind thick warm drool.  Time to face the music, he thought, without knowing why.

The wheel regained contact with the pavement with a flipping jerk that dumped the man skidding on his back.  His head hit and sent merciful stars to blot his vision.  The haircut question was answered for him by concrete clippers snatching out tufts with scalp chunks still attached.  His sliding changed to a roll which ended abruptly in the bottom of the weedy ditch with his legs above him and his lungs burning

He had no time to adjust to a face full of dirt and grass before he was dragged back onto the pavement.  He barely felt it when the jaws clamped his ankle, being preoccupied with the sudden searing headache that deafened him, amplified light,  and locked his mouth in a scream.  He couldn’t tell if he made any sound and it didn’t matter.  Then something matched the pain  and even overpowered it; The animal bit through his thigh and tore out the muscle with a few shakes of its head.  The music man cried, screamed, cursed, and begged all in one long sound that set the birds to flight.  The pain exploded and became all there was until it engulfed itself and sent the man’s mind outside looking in.  

There was disbelief that this could really be happening.  There was disgust at the savage gnashing.  The animal raised its head to chew once or twice before throwing back a wad of flesh.  Bloody strings spattered the immediate area and painted the fur of its chin.  Shock sent him away, but he watched the beast shake the limp body like a ragdoll while ripping out chunks of bloody meat.   There was fear at the realization that this is it.  This is how it ends.  Would you take an effing look at that?  

Just die already so it will be over, he told himself.  

Ghastly and grisly are inadequate adjectives for the show he watched.  His starring role, his five minutes of fame.  His exit stage left.

A shot cracked the air and the animal froze, snarled, then bolted, disappearing back into the forest.

The man from down the road stepped into view holding a rifle.  The veteran.  He looked down at the music man, wrinkled his nose, and gave the familiar two-finger salute.  

The veteran adjusted the brim of his cap while he surveyed the situation.  He pulled a toothpick out of his shirt pocket and pointed it at the music man and spoke like he was scolding.

“Whatchu’ve been doin’,... you cain’t do no more.”

He stuck the toothpick in his mouth and rolled it around before continuing.

“You wanna know why?”

He nodded to the treeline.

“‘Cause he just bit your leg off...

They got a song for that?”

Good Times

“You’re so bad

Best thing I ever had

In a world gone mad

you’re so bad”

-Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

There are people out there that have never been in a fight.

That was immediately evident during our first altercation.

There are people out there that cover their mouths when they cuss.

People out there that have never bought a pack of smokes.

That have never tried pot.

Never been drunk.

or woke up naked, or paid for a hooker, or drove 100 miles per hour, or shot a gun, or been in jail, or set something on fire, even.  

How do you make it to adulthood like that?

I tried to hate Clark, but I felt sorry for him.  It seems like he never had a good time in his life.

Clark was a pansy, but must have been sent to karate classes as a kid.  Maybe, I’ll give him a chance.  After all, he needs a guy like me around.  He won’t make it far on his own.

There are people out there that have never had a true friend.

That was immediately evident during our first altercation.

There are people out there that have never been in love.

People out there that have never bought a bouquet of flowers.

That have never had a pet.

Never been to church.

or held a baby, or smelled a bandaid, or been to camp, or played in the rain, or had wine with dinner, or even enjoyed a good book.

How do you make it to adulthood like that?

I tried to hate Dave, but it seems like he never had a good time in his life.

Dave was a bully, but he could back it up.  Maybe, I should give him a chance.  After all, he needs a guy like me around.  He won’t make it far on his own.

At the same time the two put the fingertips of a flattened palm into the other in the universal “time-out” sign.  Dave was sitting in broken glass propped on one elbow.  Clark’s back was arched in response to the broken coffee table underneath him.  Both had bloody noses and swollen knuckles.  But just like that, the fight was over and their  hands clasped yin to the yang and one pulled the other to his feet.  

“C’mon, let’s go grab a-”  they told one another at the same time,

“-beer.”  Dave said.

“-soda.” Clark said.

“Whatever.  You’re buying.”

“Water, then.”

The sudden realization that they were not alone.  Standing in the doorway__________...

Prophet Margin

"You singers are spineless

as you sing your senseless

songs to the mindless"

-Public Enemy

I am a prophet.

Of God.

I am not boasting, because frankly, I’m terrible at it.  In the “real world” I would have been fired almost immediately.  

Worst job I ever had.

Ok, I take that back. Kinda.  It’s also the best job ever.  But it is terribly demanding.  Everyday is a struggle not to feel inadequate.  That does sound terrible, doesn’t it?

There is a whole lot more to it than that, though.  The highs are infinitely better...and more permanent, more consistent.

And you do improve in time.  Sometimes it feels like that anyway, like maybe it gets easier.  But hey, I am still considered the ‘new guy’.

Seventy-three years old and I’m the new guy.

No, I haven’t been a prophet for seventy-three years.  Maybe five or so.  It’s hard to tell when it really started, because I only realized it yesterday.

It’s true, though.  A minor prophet, for sure, and I don’t know if its a permanent position or not.  I’m trying to hold on to it, but like I said, my work ethic is not what it used to be.  And I’m old enough that being stubborn is a reflex.

But I am also old enough to have met myself and therefore aware of my own quirks.

See, part of my problem with being a prophet is this:

God will give me a nugget, and instead of using it wisely, or sometimes in addition to trying to use it wisely, I’ll climb up on a higher horse, and start looking down instead of across. Sometimes just a little bit so it takes me some time to identify it, but eventually, I always throw my ignorance out there for everyone to see, and off runs the horse without me.

Also, I have a tendency to take the nugget and mess with it so much, and over-analyze it until its bent and faded version of its original majesty.  Its like playing telephone- that game where you whisper to one person who tells the next, who tells the next, and so on.  By the end you can often no longer recognize the original message.

The quest for wisdom is tough for an idiot like me.  I’ll bet it’s worse for them smart fellas.  At my age, thats all thats left, if you’re lucky.  Both knees are shot, left hip is no longer human, but some synthetic plastic ball that makes me limp as a constant reminder.  I can’t see much past the length of my arm, and nothing closer than my elbow.  I’ve heard a few people say my hearing is going, but I don’t think so.  After all, I heard them say that, right?

I don’t mean to complain, but I can barely help it.  Wait and see.

Scratch that last.  Conduct unbecoming of a prophet, penalty, first down.

By the way, God is hilarious.  Sometimes its not funny at all.  Maybe it will be in a few years, I don’t know.

Also, my faith is wavy at best.  And sometimes when I receive an epiphany to share with the world, I later find out it was common sense.  That’ll cause you to doubt your prophet-ness every time.  So, I haven’t completely ruled out that I am utterly and completely full of shit.

Another problem with people like me is that we think we understand that the ego is undesirable, and so we pretend to ignore it.  The act itself has the opposite effect, and actually feeds the ego.  The truth of the matter is that we are incredibly self-centered.  So much so that we will do anything to justify our own existence and often believe that we are destined for greatness.

Naturally, that line of thought also keeps me questioning the sanity of my claim to be a prophet.  So there I am, back at the beginning, circling over and over.  It is my hope that all of life’s rings of paradox will knit together into a tapestry that reveals the truth.

I’m expecting a comic strip.

Year before last, I was on a roll.  It got to a point that whenever I asked for answers, I got them.  Sometimes I didn’t like them.  Most of the time they made me uncomfortable.  And when I found out what He had in mind for me, I lost it.

I tried to quit;  I was hellbent on a cycle of self destruction.  Way old enough to know better, but that didn’t matter.  Actually, I think it made it worse because I was old enough to get away with being crazy.   For instance, one time I...

Final Decision?

“You left your tired family grieving

and you think they’re sad because you’re leaving,

but didn’t you see the jealousy in the eyes

of the ones who had to stay behind”

-The Smiths

“You’ll do it, won’t you?”

That was the last thing he heard her say, and it was a struggle.  That was the last thing she had the strength to say to him or to anyone, and she had known it.  He wondered how carefully she had chosen those words, and why she had said them to him.

Her hands gnarled and the lines in her face deepened.  The pain is returning.  The pain never really left and had been there for years and years to some degree.  Now it racked the brittle body sunken into the dip of the worn mattress.  She was covered with an afghan she had knitted herself thirty years prior.  A relic of the past well on its way to becoming a memory.

The staticky light from the television gave the skin of her face a transluscence.  Bones draped loosely in flesh.  She looked like she could be dead already if not for the squirming mask of pain.  It held on to her, prolonging the inevitable with torture.

That’s a hell of a way to go, he thought, loosening and tightening his grasp of the pillow.

His eyes suddenly swelled and tears streamed over his cheeks and off of his chin.  Some dripped onto her face and the pain melted for a second.  She almost smiled.  He gasped automatically and choked out, I love you, grandma.

He held his breath and held the pillow.  For a moment he shared the place where she was: a teetering place exactly halfway between clinging to life and letting go.  It didn’t seem that there could be an in-between.  It was one or the other.  It came down to this most final decision.   And he helped her,  Just let go, grandma.   And she did.  He felt her let go- he hoped into a peaceful place that she had not known in a long time.   It didn’t take long for her hand to relax, and he fell back into the chair that had been his home.   

The world snapped back:  the chair was hard, the room was cold, a moonbeam fell through the curtain, the television flicked at the darkness, and there was an awful sound.

He clamped his mouth closed in realization that the stuttering squeaky wail came from the back of his throat.  

He cried into the pillow for a long time and woke up the next morning with a stiff neck.

Prior to today, Kyle was only vaguely aware that the Funeral home building had been there since he was a kid and probably long before.  It sat inconspicuous in the background as an ominous reminder- largely ignored.  That is, until you were forced to go.  Then it crept under-skin, never to be forgotten.  

In spite of its age, the interior was brand new, spotless with crisp lines and soft accents.  The air was floral antiseptic, and although the spaces were wide and open, you knew it was a vault.  Chairs seemed to keep appearing as the crowd grew.  Twice, Kyle had to switch seats as new back rows materialized behind him.  It seems grandma was loved.  Or at least, heard of.  

Where were all of these people during her last weeks? he wondered.

The service was unremarkable.  People mulled about within small groups and without aim, sometimes reacting to one another.  The mood might have been controlled by a man behind a curtain who piped in loose melodies in low octaves and low volumes.  He had switches and dimmers for lighting and temperature.  He was the wizard of death.   In his house, anything above a forced smile and nod made you feel guilty.  

So why was it that the woman in the hat with plastic flowers on it was allowed to continue.  She bounced from group to individual, a little too loud, and a little too happy.  She was too generous with hugs and blissfully unaware that the static cling was causing her skirt to stick to her substantial frame in awkward ways.  The black suits at the entrance had her in their sites as she headed his direction.

“Kyle?  Well, you have grown into a handsome young man, haven’t you?”

He turned to face lady-cling, who froze into a comedic statue actually waiting for an answer.

None came and so she continued, “How is college?  You have just one more year, right?”

What?!  Who is this woman?  Maybe he’d might have met her once before.  One of those ladies who was everyone’s aunt.

“S-school?”  he stuttered, his eyes narrowing and lips flattening.

Who gives a crap?!  I gave my grandma a pillow sandwich! he wanted to say,  but instead he just pointed to the box in the front of the room and replied, “My grandma just died.”

She looked toward the casket in slow motion, “Of course she did, dear.”  Before he could act, she had him in the clutches of one of her hugs.

Her breath was tepid, “Of course she did.  Oh, but she’s in a better place.”

Kyle went limp into the invasive hug.  Is she? He had heard that from at least a dozen people- she is in a better place.  Like them, he had grown up believing that when people die, they go to heaven.  But, as he sat across from grandma’s bed that final night, he had to be sure.  He had to know she would be alright.  However, some quick research on the web revealed__________________             

Tamon hadn’t been away for long, but he had gone very far, about as far away from this place as you could get.  Where he went, the waters were a soft green and the skies were huge and the kind of blue you can only find in a crayon around here.  Where he went, the forests were thick and lush and filled with amazing creatures, the mountains were sharp and it was hot at the bottom and cold on top, and the land met the ocean in soft places.  

Sand...kids know enough to crave it.  The sand here shares a big plastic bin with die-cast cars and clumps the cat left.  Tamon said the sand there was perfectly smooth and white here and there.

When Tamon returned, he didn’t bring his whole self back.  His mother would say that his mind was a million miles away when he’d sit on that lumpy couch and stare out the window.  I’m not sure if the window had anything to do with it or not.  Maybe he just stared that direction because that’s where the sun was.  He always smiled at the light and frowned at the darkness.

His mind wasn’t all he left in that beautiful place.  The tip of his index finger was gone.  It shocked his friends and family when they first noticed, and thier reactions surprised Tamon, as though they were mentioning a haircut he had forgotten about.  He waved his nub and smiled, shrugging.  What can you do?

There were no doctors in the family, but it didn’t take one to see that the cut hadn’t been a clean one.  It was ugly and discolored.  Burned so that the small scar ridges overlapped.  When it heals it might resemble a tiny brain at the end of his knuckle.

Whenever anyone asked what happened, it was the same, “A small sacrifice.” he would reply, and change the subject. Often the subject was____