The Book Says

You are to wear a tie at all times and loafers to dinner. Please tip your waitresses.

[thebooksays]

Welcome to Ground Control: Ziggy Stardust Will Be With You In a Moment

Sometimes we tell stories that we later on realize to be completely inappropriate at the time of the telling. It may be the people, the situation, the circumstances surrounding the story, the timing, the manner. Sometimes you tell a story and you realize that you’ve ruined what might have been a lovely occasion or dinner or first meeting. This story, I’ve never told probably because it’s not particularly interesting or probably because parts of it are embarrassing or probably because I’ve just had no reason to tap back into the events that occurred the night that I decided to paint a small room that had recently been bug bombed with the windows shut while blasting David Bowie’s, “Space Oddity.”

This story which I have never had a reason to title is now titled “Welcome to Ground Control.”

1170 probably should have been condemned. Honestly, the outside of the house looked like it had survived hurricanes on hurricanes on hurricanes. It’s greenery around the dusty parking lot was less trees and more stalks of bamboo smashing against each other and growing too close to the gate so that sometimes it was difficult to actually open the automatic gate. The kitchen had appliances that hadn’t been updated in years. Shelves in cabinets that desperately clung to the wall trying to prove that they were indeed shelves. The living room walls were covered in peeling paint and a faux fireplace affixed itself to a wall littered with shards of mirror from floor to the ceiling. 

The bedrooms themselves were actually all quite comfortable in size with the exception of one: mine.

My room had been converted from additional porch space into a bedroom. If you lay me down on the ground, it would be 1 1/3rd Katie wide (A Katie standing at 5′7″ from bottom of feet to top of head) x 1 7/8ths Katie long. In short, it was small. Another notable feature beyond it’s compactness was that, it being at one point porch, it stood a step below the rest of the house - something that you’d always tend to forget halfway into any party we threw. 

Normally, I’d dive into the days prior to the actual event that this story is about. So you’d get to hear about waking up with itchy bite marks all over many of us in the house, trying to get the landlord to do something about, failing to get him to do anything, hiring an exterminator who explains that we actually have fleas and if they use their exterminator concoctions it will kill the family of kittens that we contracted the fleas from that live under our house, getting store bought bug bombs, setting them off in each of the affected rooms and then deciding that “Wait 48 hours before returning into the bombed room” was just a suggestion. But I’d rather just get to the story. 

So, just keep in mind that we had just bug bombed our place. And keep in mind the dimensions of my room.

I have always liked to personalize my room usually by pinning up sketches I’ve drawn that are usually not great everywhere, hanging lights, painting the room an outstanding color, writing poems on the ceiling, letting people doodle on the walls, you know, something a little different from most rooms you happen to walk into on a regular basis. This small porch room was going to be no exception. 

I had gone to Home Depot. I hadn’t picked color chips or swatches like any normal human does. I just grabbed a can of bright green paint, a can of white paint and a can of black, chalkboard paint. I had those paint rollers (the good ones), a few sizes of paintbrushes and a bunch of paint troughs. 

Yes, I forgot to get the painters tape. Yes, I forgot to get a tarp to put on the floor. Trimmings, trappings, who needs them. Who says I’ll mess up.

Opening the door to the room was not unlike opening the door to a sauna only instead of being hit with a wave of heat, I was hit with a wave of fog that smelled like burning nose hair. Squinting my eyes, I set about laying out some newspaper that I had found outside of the house, below the wall I wanted to start on: Green Wall #1.

See, I wanted to paint three of the walls with the green paint, accented with white and black sort of like something out of Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends. Little did I know just how close the paint job would come to reflecting that. 

I was aware with how strong the room smelled of pyrethrin. Unfortunately the insecticides had already started their work dulling the synapses that would have made me do anything smart like put something over my nose and mouth or open the window. No, my worry was like a gentle haze that gave the room a nice smokey 70s feel to it. 

I popped the cans of paint, all of them, and I dumped out some of the green into one of the tin troughs. I dipped one of the small paintbrushes into the green and slopped “Katie Meyer” on the wall in cursive. I’d like to think that my first thought was, “groovy,” which is something that I hardly ever think and it might have been because that paint was pretty groovy. But that paint, I would later realize was a shade impossibly close to chroma-key green - in other words, green screen green - in other other words, a shade of green that would make it incredibly difficult to fall asleep next to. But at that point it was, “groovy.”

It was around 5:30 in the afternoon, a little late to have just started painting my room but just about the perfect time to convince the people that were currently in the house to do a shot. So we did. We had beat the bugs. We had moved in. We were about to start our Junior Year. I say SHOTS ALL AROUND. A FEW SHOTS ALL AROUND.

At this point in my story, you might be able to infer what’s about to happen. A bug bombed room, an unopened window, 3+ cans of paint, a few shots and a little something called a exhaustion. Oh, right, and David Bowie.

If you were friends with me that year and you happened to ever pregame with us at 1170, you will know what I constantly played three different songs: We are Beautiful, We are Doomed by Los Campesinos, Oh My God by Ida Maria and Space Oddity by David Bowie. So it was no surprise that that was exactly the music I started to play from Gus, my 2007 macbook pro (which was retired only this past year, RetireIP Guster).

Painting a room takes some time and I knew that I would have to do yet another coat the next day. So, I wasn’t exactly graceful with my brush and roller strokes that night. However, I do remember, as I heard the “Here am I sitting in a tin can,” thinking to myself how graceful painting was and how it felt like dancing. And, yes, this was when I began to slip.

I don’t remember putting Space Oddity on repeat. I don’t remember deciding to start painting the Chalkboard Wall. I really don’t remember shutting the door to my room and why I did. I also don’t remember where I got the chalk.

Here’s what I do remember:

I remember sitting on my windowsill, which was opened, and watching as a bright light begin to descend from a space right below the moon. The light was almost blinding and in no real rhythm kept changing its color from a red to a green to a blue. As it got closer, it made a ringing noise like a Chinese Meridian Ball until it alighted on the ground next to my window.

Almost like a cryo-chamber, this bright object opened up, fog spilled from the opening and out steps Ziggy Stardust with wings and an almost butler-esque top hat and tails type outfit. But this is Ziggy Stardust so it wasn’t exactly something you’d expect Alfred to be wearing, instead the tails hit the ground and never stopped swaying in an unknown breeze. His bowtie was two pieces of a lightning bolt and were constantly making static noises and seemed to be powering the rest of his outfit which like the descending capsule in which he arrived kept changing from red to green to blue.

He asked me for a glass of water which I remember getting him before inviting him into my room. I remember explaining that I wanted to put a Chalkboard Wall in my room so that people could draw on it and it would constantly look slightly different. He nodded and asked, “Everything is always changing, why not walls?” I agreed.

The conversation that we had wasn’t terribly interesting because I think that even in this insecticide fever dream, I was aware that it wasn’t really happening but didn’t want to let it go by trying to make it be any more than it was. Who really knows. In the end, it was just Ziggy needing some water and checking on the wall.

After feeding him some of the Cheese Puffs I had bought (he didn’t want to get any on his shirt, fake cheese reacts funny with electricity apparently) and giving him a shot for his return journey, he patted me on the head and said, “Don’t stop changing, doll.” He then receded into his glowing transportation vessel and left.

I awoke on my floor next to a bucket of paint, a thing of half eaten Cheese Puffs and to a computer still playing Space Oddity (the play count was up to 73). I had completed two Green Walls and the Chalkboard Wall. Most of the paint was still wet with one exception, the area at the top of the Chalkboard Wall. And written on the Chalkboard wall in chalk was, “Ground Control.”

My head hurt from sleeping in a fume filled room so I opened the window, slightly opened the door, turned off the light and lay back on the floor. I turned the music down but let Space Oddity keep playing and I stared at the Ground Control written on the wall until I fell asleep.

[thebooksays]

Tapp’t

Have you ever been anxious? Have you ever been scared that something might not go your way? Have you ever tried to avoid a fight with a spouse, with a parent, with a friend? Or rather, have you ever just wanted something to be over? Move to the consequences?

Have you ever thought, I’m not the right person for this job? This job being living my life just for this second. Maybe I just need a Tap Out.

Tappt’ is the newest technology from DeusDeaux founders of Emolean, SaevSite and BRUCE. Much like our other technologies, Tapp’t is a built in device paired with your personality. It allows for our top-Taps to jump into those terrible moments for you and resume the activities as if it was you.

Upon upload, our Taps will be given full access to your history via your DeusDeaux profile. So, given the certain situations, you will be paired with the perfect Tap who will be able to mimic or even enhance your ability to get through even the most anxious of times.

What happens to you while you are tapped? You have two options - you may choose to IDLETAP which allows you to hear the frequencies of the room around you and you will be alerted of when the situation is over. Or you may FULLTAP which allows our Tap to control the situation and immediately bring you up to speed when the moment has passed.

How are they able to do this to complete accuracy? With the information that they are given before they tap our, our top-engineers have worked with our top-Tap Emotional Specialists to figure out when to bring you back in and how to give you the direct read outs of the situation you Tapped Out for.

There are Two Tiers of Tapp’t.

The Basic Tier uses each and every one of our specialists to be privy to your life and you, for each situation, will be assigned a Tap. There are areas that our Taps specialize in that will take care of your situation as best they can.

The Premium Tier uses the one on one technique. This process takes slightly longer. The Tap will Idle in your body to understand the way that you interact with people, actually feel out your situation. No, you will have no direct interaction with your Tap other than by written assessments of the moments in which you utilize Tapp’t. This helps to avoid any sort of biased or relationship outside of Tapp’t between the Tappers and the Taps. After a month, you can then utilize your Tap.

Taps will never tap you out without your permission. They are incapable of doing anything to interfere with your life unless they are called on to do so. This way everyone is kept safe and everyone can live their own lives.

Would you like to install Tapp’t now?

[thebooksays]

Air printing

Breaths in the silence of night sound like wolf howls. The streets have stopped screaming, the trains screech less and less, the birds stopped yapping, the people are nowhere. But here you are in the middle of the street breathing. You’re causing the commotion. You and your life force being is the disruption.

You could be the most insignificant drone at work. A cog, as they say and you still break the silence. You’ve done something no one else has done right there at that moment.

Your intake takes, your exhale takes.

This makes you significant, in the night, in that day that had occurred you did something to break the silence. You rocked the world that second. You.

You.

You were noticed. You meant something. You created chaos. You created change. In the middle of the night, we’re all world shapers.

You won’t remember it in the morning. You’ll go about your day maybe feeling that you don’t contribute, feeling small, feeling stupid. But then another late night while you’re walking alone, you’ll breathe and you’ll remember. The air sure does.

[thebooksays]

The Cockatiel.

I was given a cockatiel in a box. How? What? Why? But there it was  a cockatiel. It was alive. It was breathing. It was a cockatiel. It stared, it squawked, it was a bird. Love? Sure. Maybe. Yes. No. I don’t know.

It was a cockatiel.

Cockatiel was a cockatiel was a cockatiel. The language. The words. They all meant the same. It’s just a bird. And now owned a bird.

When I sat and I looked at it, yes, it was adorable. Yes it was familiar. We all have birds. Right. Left. Wrong. Right. We all have them, we know them.

I looked at it and I thought of pigeons. New York Pigeons that don’t care if you’re crossing the street, don’t care if you’re car or human or child. They are there. They were just apart of life. They didn’t care whether or not you were rich or poor they’d be there. Always. Pecking. Eating. Starving.

New York was always like that. Sometimes you were the Pigeon. Sometimes you were the human crossing the street. Life was hard. Always. For either. The Pigeon would think, “Where do I get my next meal?” The New Yorker would think, “Where do I get my next meal?”

We’ve never been much different, Pigeon, eh?

Our lives revolve around ourselves. When we are “down and out” and we only have what we know. Ourselves. Is that all there is? Is this all we have? Is this all we know?

The cockatiel knew otherwise. I looked at him and I saw truth.

Here in this other land I saw things I saw through the cockatiel's eyes. Life is here. Life is here in your hands. You are here and you are to take care of me. You aren’t here for you. You are here for the rest.

I loved it. Immediately.

It saw all the things I wanted to see. The gifts you get from the animals that we all are. Here is a place where you learn to see. When you get away, you’re given the sight. It’s not just you. It’s everything. And that’s all of us. We are everything.

[thebooksays]

The Equation to happiness

In math, algebra, statistics, calculus... they never warm you that you should never try to add up your secrets.

Her secrets, his secrets.

You know. You both keep them. You have them. You do them right under each other’s noses. Yeah. You are right. They are none of the other person’s business.

She needs to know what she needs to know. He needs to know what he needs to know.

We do this for a reason, right? Don’t we all need to be kept a bit at arms legnth. We get to close and we start to hate ourselves? I mean, we already hate ourselves but why should we force another human who we share our lives with to be apart of the hating ourselves part?

That’s love, right? Letting a person in, in on everything... but not the other parts that suck...? Isn’t it?

He has his, “I kissed a girl at a party the week after we met.” She has her, “I was still fucking my ex-boyfriend a month until we got married.” He has his, “I still think about pretty much everyone other than you whenever we’re having sex.” She has her, “so do I.” Then she gets her, “I’m lying when I tell you I still don’t keep in touch with my last long term boyfriend.” Then he gets his, “I can’t deal with all of this, I’m not ready for this.” Then she gets her, “Fine, if you can’t deal with this, I can’t deal with this.”

Then you realize.

You’re both right. You were never ready for this. But you settle.

You both never lied when you said that you loved each other. But both of you weren’t ready for the secrets. Both of you weren’t ready for this.

So off you go, into corners, into just masturbating alone and pretending like neither of you do it, lying about it, pretending like, “No... what...? No... never...” You go lying about where you go, who you’ve been with that night, why you never returned.

Isn’t that love, though, you both think to yourselves? Isn’t it? Keeping secrets... they all do that... don’t they? Everyone? They do. I know it. They do.

Right?

[thebooksays]

How golf saved my relationship

“The clanking of change was what always got me or maybe it was the way he always had to shake out his keys before he put them in the door. Some sound was what it was. The jingly cling clanging like the world always needed to acknowledge his presence. He’d die if people didn’t turn their heads to see who was making that high pitched constant noise, which I guess is true. The noise stopped and he died. Or rather he died and then the noise stopped.

I always sort of wondered if had told him, “Jake, honey, you are about to die,” if he’d empty his pockets and drop his keys just to prepare himself.

Something on his horrified but very dead face said, “Yes.” He was probably making that slack-jawed but terrified face because he, in fact, had not gotten to do that. That or the image of his fiance coming at him with his own 9 Iron, top speed. Nah. That’s not that scary. You see that shit in TV procedurals all the time.

Wife goes crazy, wife grabs golf club, wife kills husband. Bing bang bong.

The scary thing is leaving the world doing the one thing that kept you afloat all your life and forgetting to stop doing it thus choosing your own time of death.

It’s tricky. Murder is tricky, I suspect - for the victim. One minute you’re alive, one minute you’re dead. You hadn’t the faintest. You hadn’t an inkling.

That’s what makes it so fun, though. Wouldn’t you suspect?

No one wants to go through life: day after day same this, same that. You want to spice it up. What’s the ultimate way to spice it up? Dying.

Dying changes everything.

Jake had complained and complained about how mundane he felt we were becoming. How we were just going to become one of those old, boring married couples. He wasn’t wrong: 

Morning Coffee, Off to Work, Jack Off Break Before Lunch, Lunch, More Work, Drink with his Buddies, Clinging and Clanging Back Home, Watch TV, Eat Dinner his Fiance, Watch Jon Stewart, Have Sex (I’m kidding that rarely happened anymore), Sleep. Then wake up and get ready to do it all again.

I didn’t want him to think like that. I also didn’t want to listen to that stupid sound of his keys opening the door or his coins clang every time he sat down, every time he took of his pants before bed or when he was too hot to wear them to dinner.

So. I decided. If he wasn’t going to do anything about it, I would. And I did. He wouldn’t be able to deny that I did. I shook it up. I made it interesting. No more mundane Jake and Carolyn. The ultimate “un-mundane” couple.

Look. I guess what I’m trying to say is I plead insanity.”

[thebooksays]

My Kind of Savior

A bottle of red, two bottles of white and an empty container of Newports sat in a worn dip on the couch.

The wine tasted like the probably rotten grapes that grew on a vineyard named Prue Hills, not that it mattered. Two bottles in and the stuff just tasted like taking a breath in the middle of a double at work. A TV remote sat in my lap looking like I intended to turn it on. Everything on TV at 4AM in the morning left a taste in my mouth worse than the foul wine I was sipping (or rather, gulping). Whatever. Maybe I’d turn it on after this glass. I could hear the rocking and creaking of the bed in the adjacent apartment. Young couple. Nice enough. But not nice enough to not advertise the exact position and entry point of their little night games. 

I guess I was jealous. The two toothbrushes, boxers still laying on the bathroom floor suggested that, yes, that was exactly what I was.

That, yes, was exactly what I was when these things happen. People always seem to be pushed towards jealousy and denial. Two things that are really just lying to yourself and hatred of yourself.

In my case, I had a strong tendency toward faking a smile and hiding a bottle in my desk: work whiskey was like popping Tums all day before going home and chugging a bottle of Pepto. Except instead of chalky pills and pink slime to help with your IBS, I had strong rye liquid and a 6 pack of fermented grapes to help me deal with my problems.

The worst part was the sad fact that part of me enjoyed this, this misery and self-mediation. Like I deserved to feel like this and I deserved to make my body as unhealthy as my mind. 

Two weeks ago if I was drinking like this on this couch, I would have been content, happy. The worn dip would have been occupied by my partner and best friend. The TV would be on, we’d be watching the trash that just makes me feel like vomiting all over myself. I haven’t even begun to think that things will get better, because they probably won’t. 

Great attitude, right? You have your methods. I have mine.

I won’t stop you from eating ice-cream with your gals and talking about the next steps and the future, you don’t stop me from finishing off these bottles and smoking and entire goddamn pack. Sometimes recovery is just taking a step closer to this happening all over again.

So. 

If you wanna talk, bring the booze. You know where you can find me.

[thebooksays]

Icarus Returns to Pruitt Igoe

Falling through sky, chunks of atmosphere smacking your cheeks, light piercing your retinas, the scream of the vacuum pushing you at the ground, toward some kind of hope or some kind of death.

Duty drives you to find hope, duty drives you to outlive death, but only brings you back to a place littered with bodies, memories. 

I couldn't help but remember, plummeting toward the surface, the sunlight and warmth of arms around my waist as I looked across the once thriving city. Corinthia: a city of light, the city of hope, the city of the future. Minds always aflutter, inventions with every blink, human life born and loved by all those who came in contact with their baby smiles and baby cries. The womb of the universe. Where plant-life remained green, flowers bloomed with edible nectars, where animals seemed to know that they needed to die to make way for the small but beautiful family dinner.

Corinthia was a haven for everyone except people like me. The people who fled. The people who survived. The people who are made to return to world they could only remember as a comfortable one, now shattered into jagged wastes. 

Though, I guess, wastes are more comfortable for people like me.

As routine as the breach is into near breathable air, the pulse, the ringing always hurts. Count to 40. Open chute. Open mask. Inject anti-rads. Deploy hi-freq, infrared glasses. Count to 20. Find a place to land.

The coordinates set before the drop led me back home. An old three story condo which now looked like some sort of retro bomb shelter. Essentially, it was a bomb shelter. Rust colored clay covered the garage door, the once vibrant graffiti Cole and I had lazed around spraying on early afternoons after a long day of training smeared, unseeable. 

Despite the ash and coating, the backyard still looked like I remembered it. "A piece of shit that you'll never get anything to grow in," as Cole's kind mother Amanda unceasingly pointed out. The soldier, the survivor always responded the same way: glib sarcasm rolling off the tongue about trigger fingers instead of green thumbs. But the inside always wanting her to leave and return to a flourish of flower and green like the rest of the planet.

One of the many flowerless pots remained still unbroken. Lifting it, I remembered buying the metal pot. I scraped off the dirt, revealing a key pad. 0721. Like I could ever forget that, covered in white, covered in smiles, covered in hope. A bright silver key emerged from the center of the pot where the flowers would have perched.

The garage didn't open into that: a garage, but into a 50' studio. Here the colors, undisturbed by dust, by webs, only by the new coloration of the sky and the sun itself. 

I guess Cole and I knew I'd always return. Always hoped I'd return. Always thought I was fool to fly off, to fly away into the uncharted when we didn't know whether or not anything would go wrong. The Icarus mission, he called it. 

But unlike Icarus, we weren't burnt when we flew too high. Instead, we returned to the burnt land from which we escaped with the hopes that some of the real fools remained. The fallen angels returned home to see if their dead were still alive.

[thebooksays]

Why do you care? What does it matter? I, guess long term, it doesn't, does it? You knew that. Don't act surprised, you idiot. What made you think that this mattered? Baby, you are normal. You aren't something different. Baby, you're life is the normal story of a normal person. Just know. Just know. Just stop. Please. Please, baby. Please just stop this. Stop these ideas. Stop them all. Stop them. I want you to know that you're normal. Why is that not okay? WHY!? People everyday strive to this. And yet you are here. You just don't want it. I don't understand. This is what you wanted, no? This is what you've always talked about, right? So, why? It's OK. I get it. I do. I always will. Do you?

[thebooksays]

Win, Lose, Draw, Brother

It's basically like they don't want you starting. They just want you stopping. And it's not just them. It's the people. You wait until they decide to move. Til they continue on so that you can also continue on. But still it's not just them or them you battle with it's battling with the basic innards you were given. They want to move. But do they want to try? There was a time, there must have been a time when they wanted to. I mean, you're here. And you haven't always been here. For god sakes, you were there with them once. Your voice was loud, your cares were low, your body ready for anything then came the avalanche. You know, they kill people - more than you'd think - each year... Avalanches, that is. Maybe you didn't survive, which is plain fucking bullshit because you did and now you're here. Voices surround you, humans who survived, humans who've never been there, phantom voices telling you directions but telling you nothing. Sitting gives you no pleasure, you long to feel the strained ligaments just doing what they always want to do. So. Will you go? Will you stay? Will you leave? Win. Lose. Draw, Brother. Here, There, Somewhere, Sister. Doors close one way or another. Theres go here. Heres stay. Who even are you?

[thebooksays]

Naked Grapes and Lucky Charms

Sure it took longer than it needed to. It ate into her morning routine before she got to. But Ellie liked peeled grapes more than grapes with the skins on them. Didn't care it they were red grapes, black grapes, green grapes. Once she bought champagne grapes on a whim... worst idea. Half of them exploded in her fingers as she tried to slightly puncture the skin to peel it back.

When she was a kid, she ate a bowl of Lucky Charms. Every morning. She hated fruit. The sight of it made her skin crawl. Goosebumps up and down her back. 

She supposed that as a kid she figured it was her right to eat all the sugar. All the time. Nothing else. Skittles, starbursts, airheads, baby bottle pops. She had more cavities than she'd eaten green things that weren't purely crafted from sucrose in large factories in bad towns only a few miles from her beautifully sculpted lawn and three story house.

Her parents cars were waxed daily. Her father had a study on the second floor of the house. It was his private library. He had first editions on his walls. They were color coordinated as well as alphabetical. It was beautiful every time she got to see the shelves, which was almost never. Her father's mustache was groomed to perfection, the ends never getting grey to her knowledge. His skin was even more beautiful than the paintings that hung almost musically in their hallways. Her mother was the same story. Ellie thought her mother looked like the dolls in her older sister's room. Hair done every week, nails done every day. Her closet was the portrait of what Ellie considered to be perfection. Anyone would have considered perfection. 

She wasn't an only child but she may as well have been. Her four older siblings were already out of her house by the time she was speaking. They were like these mythical creatures, and she didn't just think that because her oldest brother's name was Griffin. Because she rarely saw them, she imagined them driving old-timey cars to and from their magical jobs in castles in the middle of the cities they ruled: Griffin in London, John in Chicago, Catherine in San Francisco, Elizabeth in New York. 

Then there was Ellie. She didn't have a long, complicated, meaningful first name like the rest of her siblings. Ellie. For ages she'd convinced herself that she was named after Eleanor Roosevelt. She wasn't. She was just an Ellie. Ellie grew up in a big room, toys everywhere. More things than she knew what to do with. She had dogs to keep her company because her parents were too busy divorcing and keeping up with the rest of their children to spend any time with her.

She went to private school, but a different private school than the rest of her siblings. This was a newer age school where they didn't grade the students. They had long talks with teachers that they called by the first names. They went on walks in the woods. Ellie never properly learned how to do fractions. Not that it mattered any more. Ellie was a mother of three. Triplets.

Her house was messy. Her life was complicated. Her husband was unemployed. Her children were loud. Her family lived in a much to small house. Most of the flowers in her front yard were dead. Their were piles of leaves that instead of cleaning up or hiring someone to clean, they'd jump in. They made forts. They ate dinner together every night. Her children had to eat fruits and vegetables. And she thinks they actually like it.

But every morning when her kids went off to school, when her husband went out to help out his friend Dave and his construction business, she looked at the fruit on the table and it still made her skin crawl. Every time Ellie scraped the skin away, the naked grapes looked a thousand times more appetizing. But she still never finished more than four or five of them before she poured herself a bowl of Lucky Charms.

[thebooksays]

Bottom-Feeders

3AM. Dark room. Bodies everywhere. Moving. Touching. Lights. Blink blink blink. Thump thump thump. Rhythm pulsing through the thick scum of air, the thick scum of people dancing to it.

Brittany wore a glove of a dress. Red with paint stains on it. All kinds of stains on it. She was always pleasantly surprised that there wasn't a black light in this place or at home.

Third night in a row in Dark Room. She was equally surprised that she didn't recognize anyone at this point. Even the DJ. He might have been there every night for the past three, she didn't recognize him. She didn't recognize his music. But she did recognize this feeling coursing through her scum stained veins. It was thicker than self-hatred, it was thinner than regret, something kinda like complacency. 

Michael wore a thin pair of boxers, pair of glasses, light beer. He was getting used to the sound of the TV lulling him off to that bright place commonly referred to sleep. Dream Land kinda like living on a cloud. 

He missed the body next to him, not missed but longed for, sort of pined for. It was okay. He wasn't worried. He understood her work. Plus, he had the soft voices of late night talk show hosts there. He now recognized their voices. Even as he drifted, he could distinguish when it went from one to another like they were friends on a three way call. He liked it. It was a little less than like, something kinda like being content.

There were no lies between them. She didn't expect him to understand that what she was doing wasn't lying to him. In her head, this wasn't even her. This was some dumb slut in a red dress without a ring, without a home, without any sort of direction. She'd never been that girl.

She'd been the girl at home. The girl with someone. The girl who was content. The girl who sneared at scum on the streets. The girl who glared at nightclubs. The girl who picked a safe guy. A guy who would sleep next to her. The guy who would watch romantic movies with her. The guy who would never want this stupid bitch. Wouldn't even know what to say to her. So, it wasn't lying. It was someone else. Someone she didn't even recognize. But someone who knew how to lie, how to do all of those things. How to dance in a Dark Room in a red dress thriving in scum.

[thebooksays]

I trust everyone. It's the devil inside them I don't trust.

[thebooksays]

Off the bone

Peel all the skin off of the bone.

Chomp. Chomp. Chomp. Chomp it all the fuck off.

It’s okay. The bone doesn’t care. She sits there with the delicious meat leaking off of her skeleton. It never matters to them . All it is is just skin.

Humans. Humans, all they think to themselves is me. Me. Me. Me. 

Tell me what i missed. Tell me how they feel. Tell me how it is.

They have to know. They all have to understand what it was. What things are. 

No person should understand the entire world. No one should get it. No one should get to get how we work.

We’re all just skin off the bone. (and who wants to get that)

[thebooksays]

There is no present or future, only the past, happening over and over again, now.

Winter chill, rain droplets, stiff and stale air swirling around throwing tangles into everyone stupid enough to not have a hood on their jackets, everyone standing in the middle of a storm wearing nothing but a nine year old Star Wars t-shirt and cutoff jeans.

She could feel the cold coming on, lymph nodes beginning to grow, nose beginning to tickle, throat scratchy. She would take a cold over this any day. You force yourself to sit in bed, you take care of yourself, you choose whether or not to improv in health, to stay the same, to get worse. Once Erika had gotten herself so sick she'd spent two weeks in a hospital with self-induced pneumonia. 

Dan, close cropped hair, low cheek bones, jutted chin and eyes that seemed to look right at you while at nothing at all. His hands were large, his voice was soft. He was the perfect attending. He took care of her every day. He checked in with her, they talked about their pasts, they talked about their futures, they talked about which Star Trek TV Series was best. He was a Picard man. She was a Kirk girl. They both loved Sulu. They played Battleship (she always cheated). They listened to Luther Vandross late into the night. He made her some specialty soup his mother used to make him when he was sick as a child. 

Three weeks later they were at Palazzo Medici for a late, candlelit dinner. The next night they went to see Edge of Tomorrow together. Coffee and a debate about the fundamentals of the movie. He hated it, she loved it. She stayed at his beautiful condo on the river in Georgetown. Not quite the PH, but the floor below. 

His bed was soft. His pillows were soft. He was soft just as she'd expected. They ate breakfast every beautiful morning on the terrace outside of his bedroom window. Sometimes they wore pajamas, sometimes they wore robes, sometimes they wore nothing at all. Egg whites, turkey bacon, spinach, homemade smoothies, espresso. They kissed goodbye. He went to work. She went to work. 

Three months later, she had a key. She had a closet. She had all of her things mixed in with his things. They were their things.

Three months later. He didn't come home. And he didn't come home that morning. She sat on the soft bed surrounded by his and hers pillows, duvet covers waiting. When the door opened, she rushed to the front door. Dan's usual expression was nowhere to be found, replaced by the look a puppy gives you when it's done something wrong and knows it was wrong. Maybe he ate your new pair of shoes you bought at that boutique, the last of its kind. Maybe he pooped everywhere. Maybe he knocked the trash over and your kitchen now smells precisely like raw chicken, coffee grounds and rotten pasta sauce.

She knew the look. She knew exactly what this was. She didn't have to listen to the words. She simply grabbed her bag, which she'd kept packed in the back of her closet because she knew exactly how this would end, how it always ended.

She wasn't the least bit surprised when she stepped out of the apartment building and it was raining. She welcomed it. She shed her jacket. She shed her sweater and she walked the long road back to her apartment in the center of the District praying she'd get a cold.

[thebooksays]

Golden Slumbers: The Beatles Themed Survival Video Game

Have you ever wondered what the end the end of the world looks like? After your life has come crashing down around you. After everything you had, all of your family is gone. Dead. Vanished. Wiped off the map. Even the map is gone. Have you ever wondered what it would be like if you were the last person alive? I didn’t.

But now I know.

Or I thought I knew until I found out I wasn’t the only survivor. One of many. One of thousands who also lost everything.

For a long time the biggest threat to humanity was man. Well, when humanity is long gone, what is there to fear?

Unfortunately, it’s the exact thing as when humanity existed. Man. The man with nothing. The men with nothing looking for something. Looking for someone. Looking for anything to grasp, to believe in with nothing to lose.

We found that in Golden Enterprises tower. Home of Golden Industries, the world’s leader in nuclear and biochemical technology, resource of most of the world’s “clean” electrical energy and where my oldest daughter, Lucy had worked as a senior research assistant.

Golden Isles, CEO, renown nuclear physicist, and fellow survivor of the end of the world took it upon himself to rebuild society. His tower, located directly on Lake Michigan provided shelter, safety, security, company. He called it Golden Slumbers.

21 Men. 14 Women. 9 Children. No couples. No parents.

We all looked to Golden to help us integrate, help us live, help us thrive, help us survive. He delegated tasks, jobs, gave incentives for doing your daily work. We were cooks, maids, janitors, hall monitors, guards, teachers. I was assigned to the search faction. We were a group of former military, police, bounty hunters and athletes who went out in search of rations, medicine, survivors. Compliant survivors.

We usually came back with a few cans of tomatoes, cream of onion soups, she she noodles and maybe a bottle of ibuprofen if we were lucky. Never really what we were looking for, what I was looking for.

And then one day, searching one of Golden’s Facilities, I found it.

[thebooksays]

Crawl.

“Dyer, coach’s office.”

He’d missed 5 critical shots in this crucial national qualifying game. There were scouts in the audience. He counted them. There were five of them. Duke, GT, UCLA, Michigan, Tennessee. Dan, Steve, Steve, Ralph, Andrew. He’d met them all last year. His freshman year. The year that he decided that he wanted to play basketball. The year he first touched a regulation basketball. The smooth with slightly raised bumps was a sensation he’d never felt before.

Since then all he ever wanted to touch was a basketball. Feel it vibrate after he smacked it down onto the meticulously cleaned slatted floor. The rubber lines running down the sides of it, meeting at the air pump hole. The Golden NBA label that made him shiver whenever he spun the ball and it landed in front of his face before he tossed it into the air.

White. 6’6”. Big feet. Sweepingly beautiful hair. Sunken brown eyes. Vaguely foreign looking. Speed: unmatched. Passion: basketball. Missed FTs in his Sophomore Year: 12. Games Played in his Sophomore Year: 10.

He could feel the disappointment building with every missed shot. He saw it in the eyes of Hiller High’s fans. He heard it in the “Next Time, Big Guys” from his assistant coach. He felt it when his dad clapped his back at the end of the game. He knew. Toweling off the back of his neck, he could sense it in the air between all of his teammates. They said nothing. They definitely didn’t have to. He definitely didn’t want them to. Or maybe he did. Maybe he wanted to fucking scream at them to scream at him about his fuckups. Maybe he wanted them to throw water bottles at him. Maybe he wanted JJ Leeds to throw him into his locker, pound his face until his torn up lip bled, he lost his front left canine then ripped his baggy shorts off, leaned him over and just fucked him in a silent rage for everyone to see. Or maybe he needed the silence.

Everyone says that the walk to death row is the longest walk of their life. For a 6’6 guy with long legs, it was four strides and it felt like less.

Black. 6’2”. Big Feet. Balding but beautifully. Prominent brown eyes. Vaguely Tom Thibideau looking. Years Playing Basketball: 17. Career Endings ACL/MCL/LCL Injury: 1. Years Coaching: 9. Wins to Losses in Career: 120 Wins to 33 Losses.

Coach Vaughn wasn’t one to side step issues on his team. He’d thrown Jimmy Blunt off the team for getting into a fight with their medic. He heard the yelling, came into the locker room, grabbed Jimmy’s bag in his locker, tossed it at him and threw him off the team. “Get out of here. You’re never playing basketball on this team or in this gym ever again.” His team was his life.

Emmett scratched at the back of his neck as Vaughn, who was making notes in the game book as he gestured with two fingers for Dyer to have a seat. The pencil scraping on the old pages of plays was deafening. He longed for the clock over the door to still work so that he could distract himself with the ticking of the second hand. The eraser was worse. The blunt pink, sticky-tac feeling butt of the pencil leaving little pieces of itself on the page where a play once existed. Vaughn knocking the pieces off to the side which made vomit push up into Emmett’s throat despite not having eaten since lunch during third period. But it wasn’t the waiting that hurt Emmett. It was the minute Vaughn placed his pencil down next to the book, closed the binder, and looked up at Emmett.

“Dyer, I want to have a little talk with you.”

The last time he’d heard a sentence like that was 5 months ago when his girlfriend Ciara had called him in tears. She’d been cheating on him with most of the football team. The Captain, The Kicker, The Left and Right Tackle, Kick Returner. Ellis, David, Steve, Steve, Jason. All of which were seniors. He’d played for a season his freshman year and quit it the second he felt up his first regulation basketball.

She had been his first girlfriend. Other than the girl who kissed him after sneaking into American Wedding in 6th grade. She was controlling, which he wasn’t sure whether he liked or not. She was a hot-head which reminded him of his mother, which he also wasn’t sure whether he liked or not - usually he chose to ignore it. She always called him “boo,” which he knew he didn’t like. But she had perfectly smooth skin. Her tiny body felt nice in his overly large hands despite rarely wanting to be held. 

Dominican. 5’1”. Small feet. Curly overwhelming hair. Big brown eyes. Extremely bitchy looking. Number of Hearts Broken: unknown. Men Slept With: unknown. Boyfriend: Emmett. Men Slept With While Dating Emmett: 5+.

This was nine hundred times worse than hearing that your teammates had been in the same person he’d been in. The words falling out of his coaches mouth felt like punches. All over his already worn out body. Coach was honest. Honest was not at all what Emmett wanted to hear especially considering he already knew all of it.

The hairs on the back of his neck felt like grass right after a 20 degree night. He wanted to scream. He wanted to beat the fuck out of Vaughn. He wanted to jump out the window at the top of the stands on the home team’s side and land directly on the wooden shards of boards they used to cover a large pothole in the parking lot. He wanted to take the gun out of coaches desk, shoot coach, shoot Tyrrel Knight then shoot himself. He wanted coach to just stop talking. He wanted to quit so that coach couldn’t have the satisfaction. Not that there was really any satisfaction to be had.

It’s natural to want to be blunt and honest with a kid especially when delivering bad news. Like a bandaid. But coach went against the grain and dragged it out like a long, slow gut shot.

Black. 6’4”. Normal feet. A semi flat-top hair cut. Cutting blue eyes. Vaguely resembling Scottie Pippen. Speed: average. Passion: Jesus. Baskets Hit Since Emmett Joined: 4. Year: Senior. Games Played in Senior Year: 2.

It was like something he’d never felt before. Pangs of hurt vibrated through his skull. His fingers sunk into the plush chair like he was trying to force himself into it’s insides. He couldn’t bare to look away from Coach. He knew what would happen if he did. So he stared. He stared like he stared the first time Coach told him he’d be starting. He stared like he stared the time he had to confront Tyrell after taking his spot. He stared like he stared when he made his first game winning shot, and when he looked away, back at Coach the tears came. So he kept staring.

He knew that he’d hit a career slump but never wanted to acknowledge it. He could hear the whispers from a few of his teammates in the locker room after he would pack up and leave. Jason, Darren, JJ, Lester, Tyrell. He’d let them all down. He’d let scouts down. He’d let Coach down. He’d let himself down.

A million thoughts usually go through a person’s head when they’re told something heartbreaking, something life changing. But all Emmett could think about was how he never should have touched that first basketball.