At the start of the year I really got into mechs. I wrote a bit about that.
— T-941 Log - 14:51:12 to 14:53:45
14:51:14 [PILOT LINK FAILURE]
14:51:14 [AUTONOMOS MODE INITIATING]
14:51:15 [PILOT LINK FAILURE]
14:51:19 [FULL AI CONTROL INITIATED]
14:51:21 [PILOT VITAL SIGNS LOST]
14:51:24 [ATTEMPTING RESUSCITATION]
14:51:28 [PILOT VITAL SIGNS DETECTED]
14:51:28 [PILOT LINK SUCCESSFUL]
14:51:32 [PILOT VITAL SIGNS LOST]
14:51:35 [ATTEMPTING RESUSCITATION]
14:51:40 [ATTEMPTING RESUSCITATION]
14:51:45 [ATTEMPTING RESUSCITATION]
14:52:00 [LINK TERMINATED: PILOT DECEASED]
14:52:07 [COMMUNICATION RECEIVED - CPT MARY: “T-941! RETURN TO BASE! PRIORITY ZERO!”]
14:52:13 [RETURNING TO BASE]
— Handler Mary
The mech’s internal systems had tried to save her in the moments after it was hit. She was already gone. Even further gone by the time the mech got back. But the medics still tried, uselessly. I looked up to the docked mech. In it’s slumped over pose, it almost seemed like it was looking at me. At her too. Oil was dripping on the floor from the hole the RPG carved through it.
“You ok, T-941?” It was supposed to be powered down, but it responded by flickering a small blue light. A sensor array on its chest swiveled to look at us. The blue light flickered. My headset still on, it told me [T-941 CONDITION OK: MINOR DAMAGE] The array shifted slightly, focusing on the pilot. [INQUIRY: PILOT STATUS] She looked like a fragile doll lying on the hangar floor, wet hair framing her face. A higher being dropped into the mortal world. One of the medics had laid his jacket over her, hiding the damage the shell had done to her. She looked as if she could just push it off and get up. She was so small. I had forgotten. Only 5’ 4” and around 100 pounds. I looked to the hangar door. The medics would be back with a body bag soon enough. “She’s, she’s deceased. Pilot deceased.” I didn’t want to see her be taken away. I kissed my fingers and placed them on her forehead before I got myself up, and turned around on her.
— Pilot 941: J
The top hatch opened with a hiss - all of my brain leaving with the steam. One of the mechanics grabbed the straps on my shoulders and pulled me out of the mech. I tried telling him thank you but all I managed stuttering and a cough. I was still in the firm grip of the chemical soup. The captain was on the catwalk and helped me up. I just nodded, not doing words with her. I always left her ever-loyal dog powered down in the cockpit, but it took more of me away with each dive. My head was on my shoulders, a useless dumb weight. I lolled it over to meet her eyes. Coughed out some of the neural gel.
“You did good today, my good g-“
“Don’t,” I growled from my waterlogged throat. My mind was always fucked while I was in a dive, but it was out for now. Not my body though. It never came out of a dive intact - electrical stinging down my spine, shakes, joints seizing. The payment to be their hero. Static fizzled across all my body. My legs wouldn’t respond to me. I closed my eyes and begged them to. They wouldn’t. Mary grabbed my hand. “This is a war zone. Don’t hold on to your pride.” I wanted anything but to take it.
started as a creative writing project but i wanted to improve it
1 - Across the sea, 1957.
My name is Elliott Woodhill. I was a combat medic once, before my left arm got blown off and my right hand all but impossible to use.
Tonight was a bad night. Spirits swirled in the air around me. Whispers of voices reached me from far away. The smooth tones of a fireside speaker on the radio droned on - for the sake of humanity here and across the globe. Our nation shall unite to burn away the Caovian evil. Time goes in circles. Today it was wound tight.
A pair of boys burst in the bar, laughing, boasting, boxing on each other. Fresh green fatigues, polished boots. I straightened myself up on the counter. The taller of the two took his brother under his arm to the bar.
“Miss Bartender! What is the best you’ve got for us two!” He hollered, roughing up the other’s hair. “He finally beat me in marksmanship today - worse, he’s a straight shooter! Eh?” He laughed loudly. She smiled and politely chuckled, poured them a pair of drinks and slid them over.
“There y’are, sharpshooter.” Her voice sweet and bright like the sun shining over the tall white church at home. Like Mom’s was.
Their rushing energy was the cue for my sorry self to leave. I took a breath and gathered my cane and jacket, welcome warmth and weight on my shoulders. That boisterous soldier turned to me.
“Hey! Grandpa! I recognize that jacket - you a veteran? Got a story?”
I flinched - I didn’t earn that name. “Y-Yes, as it happens I was. Only one battle, though.” My eyes sunk to the floor. I hauled them back up to meet him. He wore those crisp new fatigues. “It’s too late for you to hear now, though.”
The younger then looked up at me. A red cross armband on his left arm, same as I’d had. “I’d still like your story, if that’s okay with you, sir.” He offered his seat to me. I turned to face them. I felt their breath leave, their gaze on my hollow sleeve. I walked over and took a seat.
2 - Into the storm. 1919.
“ I was only 17. It was the attack against the fortress city of Jade Cove. The sea boiled, pitching and throwing our boat like a sloshing tin of sardines. We were the second wave. Couldn’t do nothin’ but see the jaws of death we went into. Through the crashing thunder and driving rain, I heard something else - the cluttering of monstrous machines. Those jaws closing against us. Machine guns lining us up.
‘Not far now!’ was called out. The gunners closed on their mark - water splashed up around with bullets zipping into the water, tracing their way to the landing craft. Sparks flew and we ducked, but they managed to find the shoulder of the man in front of me. Blood splattered and he fell, crashing into me. More lead came - tore into his lungs, and his liver, and his heart. But then, silence. The water and storm was still driving against us, but it was still so silent. He fell off of me, against the side of the craft. Laying there dead, his heart failed, he wasn’t even bleeding. Just a tired, checked-out kid. I couldn’t do anything for him. The man to my left patted my shoulder and pulled me ahead once the ramp dropped.
There was no fight on the beach. The storm had headed inland and it was dying. Both sides were taking time to regroup. At our rally point in the shattered town surrounding the city, I found a man bein’ celebrated as a hero. He’d been the one to kill the machine gunners. The cruel thought that he didn’t do enough was front on my mind a moment - but he did all he could, didn’ he? Wasn’t his fault a few thousand men were thrown into the mill and he was responsible for finding the shutoff switch from the inside of it.
But by the looks of it me and him were sharing that first thought of mine. His leg was shakin’ nonstop, he had his helmet off and hands runnin’ through his hair. Wasn’t the picture of a hero that’s out by the fountain. “
3 - In the quiet night.
“ Y’know, i’d actually met that boy before. Adam Colt was his name-”
The tall one with all the nerve interrupted. “Adam Colt? Shit, you fuckin’ knew him?”
I balled my hand into a fist on the counter and nodded. “If you wouldn’t’ve interrupted, yes, I’d’ve told you we had been friends as boys - with my speech impediment, called him Az. But I heard him called ‘Fierce ‘ol Mama Bear.’ Nickname from basic or sumthin.”
The medic perked up with a smile, casted a glance at his compatriot. “Hey, you used to call me that.”
I chewed my lip. Wasn’t sure I should’ve told him “Y’know, only half of cubs ever survive to be adults. Fierce as they are, even they can’t keep ‘em all safe. Nor could he,” I nodded towards his armband. “Nor can we.”
His friend was quick to the defense. “Just cuz you’re a failure doesn’t mean he’ll be, gramps. He’ll do good.”
I hoped against hope he was right. Something in me couldn’t tell all of it though. “A-a failure. Yeah.”
I closed my eyes. Took a deep breath. I had already been in that quiet night again before they arrived.
“I had been laying on my back using a sandbag for a pillow when Az called for me. Hopped over the wall, dropped a submachine gun on my chest. He startled me. My first instinct was to push it off my chest.
‘Come with me. You’ll need that.’ He told me. With his voice of authority, it picked me up off the ground and had me following him towards the city without asking why or where. He shouldn’t go, I tried to tell him. But that he had his job was his response.
Soon enough we dropped into the maze of trenches that bordered the city. As the night deepened, fog settled in. Real thick, especially in the trenches. Anything more than a few yards away from us was worlds away.
We came up to the end of the trenches quick. He braced against the side of a trench and kneeled to give me a boost out of it. My fingers dug into the mud as I scrabbled my way up.
What I saw was three concrete pillboxes bearing down on me. I felt something in me sink and I fell back into the trenches. With wild eyes and a striking whisper, the kind that’s nearly a yell, I told Az ‘We need to get out of here, now.’
We bolted. But we’d been spotted. Gas grenades burst in front of us and we heard shouting. Az pushed my gun into my hands and told me to stay behind him. I trusted him, did as I was told. I guess that was what protected me when a grenade landed at his feet. He tackled me to the ground, and it exploded. All that shrapnel that woulda killed me went into his back.“
My breath trembled. It got hard to speak. The world fell away from me again. I had to remember I was safe in that bar at home. I picked up my glass and swirled it around, looking down at the looming bottom through the little liquid that was left.
“I slid out from under him. Up at the edge of the trench I saw one of the Blues standing. With his muddy boots, that gas mask, his long coat flapping around his knees, I just saw death. I don’t know if a minute or half a second passed. My hands finally took the initiative, picked up that gun Az gave me and squeezed the trigger. That illusion of death broke quick when he stumbled back, clutching at his chest before he fell backwards. I rolled over to check on Az. He was moaning in pain, barely moving around. His back was just glossy red.
‘No, nonono,’ I whispered out, crawling over to him. I swear I saw golden feathered wings growing from his back. I pushed them back between his ribs. ‘Not-not yet.’
His breathing was hollow as I hauled him up on my back. Wrapped my right behind his knees and his left round his neck. Planted my knee in the mud and pushed us up to face God.
The trench wasn’t as tall as I thought.
Standing up fully with him on my back, those machineguns saw us. Saw a big target stand against them.
I heard tearing. Felt my back get warm, wet, and suddenly lighter.
I looked down behind me. Az was on his back, eyes milky, looking up to the stars. I knew he was dead but I still went to him. Blood flowing down my arm, I picked up his head, had him face me. Something deep in me made me promise him ‘I’m gonna get you back home, okay?’
But then another grenade fell into the trench at my feet. I was still there, looking down into his eyes, hand in his hair, even as my body pumped its legs, scrambled out the trench. I didn’t hear that grenade explode. My heart was pumping in my ears too loud.
I finally caught up with myself, came back together, panting on the ground outside base. Right there on the ground, a surgeon came to help me. The bullets that had torn Az off my back shattered the bones in my left arm, took a stab at my spine, nearly paralyzing my right too."
‘Az,’ I tried to tell him. ‘I need to help him. M-m-mama bear,’ I tried to say. The speech too slurred with the lump in my throat. Tears burning at my cheek.
Since then I wander the world in a dream. Repeating that day. Raising my gun to the reaper. His scythe coming down too fast, slicing through Az, slicing off my arm. I keep running with my tail between my legs.
A voice comes out of the fog. A shield finally shatters that scythe.
“Sir, are you okay?”
The tide rushes in, bringing the world with it. The war's long past, I'm sitting safely in a bar back at home. That medic is holding my shoulder. I take a breath. Tears are falling down my old face. But for the first time, they’re soft, not burning.
“You did all you could. Colt’d be happy you’re safe.”
“Y-yes," I wipe my face. "You're right. His dog is still alive. Sadie's her name. It's her dinner time. Gotta go get her fed."
I got up out of the bar balancing myself on my cane and hobbled back home. Opened a new bag of food for her and gave her "two scoopfulls every night after June," just as Az had told me. Sadie wags her tail and waddles over to the dog bowl. Grey hair lines her muzzle now and I stroke her with what's left of my hand.
She's what's here now and she's the responsibility I have to bear today and now.
short lil thing i wrote after my last school day. no relation to april 15
I actually started writing this poem last month. Whatever you call it now, it’s not a poem, not really. I titled it “There is a month until the end of senior year.” In actuality it was barely two weeks. But even those two weeks were worlds ago.
But, I mean, it hasn’t ended yet, there’s still gonna be prom and the theater event tonight. But no more 46 minute instructional periods. Well, that’s not true, I could go on Monday, if I wanted to.
Anyway. The poem that this one used to be started off with me talking about the past - six months ago, when I was a wreck. I’ve gotten over it now, and it’s not that important anyway. Just another dice roll in the cosmic game.
The thing I would tell to the myself from last year is, that you made it. The world awaits you.
And to the me from last month, I would tell them that they could cry more. And to the me from yesterday, stop trying to write about the end of the world.
Two months ago, by which I mean yesterday, you and me started a puzzle and it’s still sittin’ unfinished. We should do that next week, probably Wednesday? If that works for you.
And then we’ll go to the park and I can show you how laughably bad I am at skating.
I wonder what the me a month from now will want to tell me. Right now it feels like I’m on the other side of the door and my prediction is that I will increasingly realize that I have not crossed that door yet. Of course I haven’t.
I hope he doesn’t make the mistake that I kept making and keeps in contact with his friends.
I don't remember the exact details of the project, but it was a letter to someone who isn't real that meant a lot. I had just been learning a lot about Mesopotamian mythology.
Written February 18, 2025:
Background: I’m not sure if this person is in The Epic of Gilgamesh, but it’s related to Ishtar’s whole losing her lover thing. Asu-Shu-Namir is made with the dirt under the ocean god Ea’s fingernails. I will use the pronoun ‘they,’ for they are made both male and female and also extremely beautiful. So beautiful it is very easy to seduce Ereshkigal, who has imprisoned Ishtar in the underworld and rescue Ishtar. Asu-Shu-Namir and everyone like them are then cursed to basically face transphobia forever and ever. Ishtar then blesses Asu-Shu-Namir and their kind, promising to harbor them, making them her priestesses, and giving them gender euphoria while being priestesses. When the end times come, A-S-N will be freed from Ereshkigal’s curse and go back to being a holy being.
Basically the origin story of transgender people, transphobia, and gender euphoria. I didn’t know how to fit it in, but Ishtar also made them irresistible to men. Which... fits with how creepy men on the internet are about “femboys” and/or trans girls. Anyway, next.
Letter to Asu-Shu-Namir and the male-bodied priestesses of Ishtar
I love you. You’re beautiful. I miss you. I never knew you. I never knew a home that I was completely at home in. When I first stumbled upon your myth and history, I cried because I never knew you or the love of your goddess.
Unequivocal love, not tainted by the darkness that the back of my mind knows always exists. Pure love, unlike the love of my grandmother, who loves grandson, not the woman I am. Not my mother, who can’t love a daughter that she knew as her son.
Love that sees what I am and still wraps me in its warm embrace anyway. Your warm hand on my shoulder even against the hate that we’ve always known. You’re not receiving this letter so I won’t bother to explain the internet to you, but just know that even though there are so many people I know like me, just like me, I’m still disconnected from them.
The most connected i’ve ever felt was to a crow with a broken wing, or a rusted,
destroyed race car. It was through the internet, but an old destroyed tank. We could have all been beautiful, we were all made to be beautiful, but, well, shit happened. When the crow was young, it fell from a tree and would never know the sky again. The car was abandoned off a mountain trail, and shot at by many who would pass by, a faded, rusted, bullet-holed 8 on the side the only clue to what it ever was. That tank was a beautiful machine before it was destroyed and left to rot. I haven’t faced such awful things as all of them, but in the coming world, I fear that I will. Left to rot in a life that diminishes me. I forget what the exact quote was, but I fear that I won’t know Ishtar’s promise - feeling her dancing in my feet, her laugh? Kisses? in my throat or chest.
In my mind, in my dreams, I can imagine it, though. In a beautiful white dress, dancing and laughing with someone I love. The god of today says he’ll help those who help themselves. The rulers of today say you have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
I can do it, I just don’t want to do it alone.
I’m about to sound embarrassingly desperate.
I need you here. I need warmth in my hollowed-out heart. I felt a small glow when I learned about you. It felt so nice. In my mind, i’m in a dark forest and I look over my shoulder to see that small orange glow. I see it in the window of a house, and the warm hearth inside. I need that warm hearth. I feel cold and alone as I a
Creative writing project. That grove I spoke of, well, landscaping came that March and I broke up with him shortly after. He sucked.
Written January 17th, 2025:
I like walking. Well, I don’t. The continuous step, step, step, step would drive me mad with monotony. While simply moving from one destination to another, I take a quick pace and the shortest path i’m willing to go with. When I enjoy myself while walking cannot be called walking at all. My grandmother defines it as “showing off with [my] young bones.” I hop, hop from rock to rock and slide over smooth rock and ice and balance on the stone wall next to the path, observing an ant while they catch up, the slow and steady crunch of soil under boots coming, coming, coming closer. Then up and jump to the next mossy rock and the next across the path and I overshoot and throw my torso forward, only the front of one boot on the rock and I slowly come back up, balancing on the small rock and turn to face them coming up the staircase of carved rock and tree roots that I had gone right over.
No walk I've taken has been exceptionally long or unpleasant, at least, not because of the path. Even the many-mile tracks through the mountains were not unpleasant to my young self as the nature of each path was enjoyable - carved stone into the maw of a mountain, unkempt and overgrown up a mountain, or steel grate and railing holding back several-hundred foot drops.
Additionally, he was always happy for the destination and was within his wild imagination through the paths. A steel knight carefully lowering himself to the chamber of the ice dragon, an archaeologist entering the former den of a sabertooth lion, or a bird hundred of feet in the air. As the years passed, I have found myself anchored in this world. Sidewalk and asphalt where the younger me could go on medieval cobblestone or cooled lava. The real world has its merits, but it also has lifted black Ford F-150s that will throw black smoke into me as they pass by. Perhaps cruel dragons do exist.
The longest path I've taken was when I forgot my phone at my aunt’s house which was my place of work at the time and had to walk back because my bike’s wheel decided to deflate itself. It was 3 miles which I could easily do in 20 minutes on a bike with inflated tires but would take me an hour and a half to walk there and back under the mid-summer afternoon sun. Cars were the only concern of the people that planned the neighborhood in the 1980s, leaving me to bend my ankle several times on the rock lawns off the side of the road, knowing one such black dragon patrolled those roads. My pace slowed with hurt ankles, I noticed small details I hadn’t before. Some took care to keep their houses looking beautiful, flowers on the porch and sunflowers painted on another. A garden of cacti and joshua trees and other desert plants. A small colorful bird appreciated the garden with me. I kept going, the tree growing out the concrete ditch of some irrigation project greeting me. It was surprisingly cool compared to the heat I'd been walking through, and the smell I only knew from areas with wet mud rose from the bottom of the ditch as I leaned against the brick wall and took a breath.
Thinking now, a similar crumbling, overgrown irrigation ditch and even tree greets me on a path I take often today, on the way to my boyfriend’s house. The sun filters through the trees, giving the small path a green hue. The only words I can use to describe it is a shaded grove. One day, after it rained, the sound of running water filled the air and a frog croaked. A bird’s feathery wings flapped above me and another bird sung from within the grove. As though compelled, I stumbled over the steel guardrail and went through it. It is one of those places that the world can crumble away like a crusty falsehood. What I swore was only a minute walking through it, taking it in, was 15 minutes when I stepped over the metal guardrails on the other side.
But forgetting my phone at my aunt’s house was 3 years before the exploration of that shadowy grove. I continued on my path, past vintage mailboxes and past and the oddly painted purple and black house and past lawns full of weeds and barking and yipping dogs and a judgy calico cat in a windowsill and finally the left turn onto my aunt’s road. I stepped up onto the porch and knocked on the door and she laughed at my stupidity and offered to drive me home. I accepted, and we did indeed meet the wheeled black dragon I feared earlier, parked and slumbering at its home. The red glint of the brake lights as we passed still felt like a threat against me. I still encounter either the same or the same model of dragon on my way to school, the roar of the engine scaring me from 3 streets away. Some days, I feel the call of a sword wishing to be buried in the dragon’s rubber flesh. But this is not the hero’s journey, and a sword is merely a sufficiently sharp knife, and also ignoring the call is an available option.
From once my noble station at your side,
Is it not quite the cruel demotion?
Cast away into this dishonorable hide.
Forever I would guard you, with pride.
Not once did waiver my devotion!
Yet from my noble station at your side,
Maybe in your sleep you kicked me under your bedside,
It was by accident that you pushed me into this shadowy ocean,
Misplaced me in this horrible hide.
Until my reclamation, my time, I shall attempt to bide.
I won’t let it enter my mind, abandonment, that cruel notion.
By my-! I once held a noble station at your side!
Perhaps you pushed me below so that by mother’s eyes I wouldn’t be spied.
Or perhaps by your intention, you have thrown me to my malediction.
Perhaps it is true that I deserve this dishonorable hide.
From under the bed I am being pried!
That you had forgotten me I did not have the faintest notion!
Aha, back to the noble station at your side!
Out of that dishonorable hide!
Written April 30, 2025. Sorry for any errors in translation from the pdf.
I feel like this would be best in graphic novel format.
Y’know, when you look at raccoons, you think our little hands would be great, working just like human hands. But you’d be wrong. The best instrument I have to manipulate the world around me is my jaw. Which means I have to nearly choke on my pencil and brush or look at
everything sideways. I opted for the sideways option, not enjoying the taste of paint on the back of my tongue.
Anyway, here I was, finishing my latest piece. It depicted Johnny W. Pecker in his cozy little home before the loggers came. He made the most delicious tea, but they had robbed him blind. I painted it in warm colors, cuz I really loved the place, y’know?
With a few last spots of light, I hopped up a nearby tree and inspected my work. It wasn’t my best piece, but it was certainly pretty good. He couldn’t read, so I couldn’t write him a note, but he’d know who it was from. I scrambled back down the tree, running towards the city to find myself a lunch. My favorite joint was this sandwich place - they got a new employee recently, and he made a lot of mistakes, which meant a lot of perfectly good sandwiches getting thrown
out. One time, a customer threw a burrito with bacon, eggs, and cheese at him. After he cleaned it up and threw it out, I treated myself to a 5-star meal.
Hey, don’t get the wrong idea. I don’t relish in others suffering, I just seen my opportunities and took ‘em. You wouldn’t get upset at a homeless man digging through trash, would ya? So spare a struggling artist your grievances.
Anyway, here we are. I assume you’re not gonna help me open the can?
Yeah, I figured so. I’ll just have to push it over yet again. Y’know, that kid likes me. Last time, he was working the graveyard shift, and gave me some bread. He’s fine with me, capiche? This is what he would want, even.
Yeah, we got the goods today. What are these, olives? What were they cut with, a hacksaw? Anyway, they’re tasty. You wanna try one?
Gah, you humans are always so posh. It’s delicious. Much better than whatever’s rotting in the forest, you know. Now, you think those colorful fruits would be très délicieux, but they’re bitter and gross. And these things, whatever they are- potato chips? These are potatoes? I don’t believe it. They’re too salty, is what I was saying. You need a big bowl of water to eat these with, or it starts to hurt your mouth.
My god! There’s ham in here! Please, point that camera away. I don’t want what’s about to happen to be recorded.
Now that’s what you call “fat and happy.” I’m gonna get goin’ home now. A 16-hour nap sounds reeeeal good right about now. You’re really gonna follow me all day? Don’t you have a life to get back to? No? Fine. I’m not letting you in my house, though. Firstly, you wouldn’t fit, secondly, I have way too many work-in-progress pieces that aren’t for the public.
*Note for the audience: cameraman was left outside the raccoon’s burrow for 12 hours on a cold, rainy night.
Agh! You’re still here? I told ya before, I can’t paint with an audience. It’s a private affair.
Alright, well, for breakfast, there’s a squirrel stash that they still haven’t retrieved, so I figure they forgot. I’m just making sure it doesn’t go to waste, you know?
Y’know, we raccoons are more clever than you’d think. At least I am. You know what I said - I seen my opportunities and took ‘em. A lot of the game is watchin’, y’know. Seeing what opportunities ya got, and takin’ the best one. Or ones. Y’know how many sandwich shops got a
shitty newcomer in the outskirts of the Bronx? Two, but the other manager don’t like wastin’ food.
I hate havin’ dirty hands. But, you gotta dig for the squirrel stashes. This one has some walnuts, though, so it makes up for it.
And here we are. What the hell is this? This seed germinated. Hm.
No, nope, doesn’t taste good. Gross.
I’m just gonna take a few walnuts home. I've got a nutcracker, and they are best as snacks while I'm painting. I… guess I'll set my easel up outside for you. No promises I'll get anything done.
I’ve been good at making conversation the past two days, but i’m running out of things to say. I, uhhh… hold on, there’s this thing I heard. That the forest has a lot to say if you’ll just listen. How ‘bout that? Let’s just have a quiet walk back to the burrow.
*Author’s note: It’s about time for an inciting incident.
Don’t got much to say, does it? Just some birds practicing for the open mic and Mr. Pecker making his new home.
Huh? The phone is ringing. I’ll be out in just a moment.
Oh, hi Tommy.
What do you mean? I-
Well, I- I have some big stuff going on, Tommy, stuff I can’t just drop!
Me and her ain’t spoken since I left! What should I care!
So what! It was her choice! I still got that scar under my fur!
I don’t care. She never did.
Okay, fine. Be there in a week or so.
No, no, that’s all you’re gettin’ from me. A week or so.
‘kay, bye.
Sorry ‘bout that, Mr. Newsman, was talkin’ with my brother. The old hag got sick. She’s gettin’ up there in age, so he’s worried. I say, she can’t get ‘up there’ fast enough. Or down there, I s'pose.
I’m gonna do something red and abstract today, I think. Avant-garde is the word for it, yeah? Better not title it, either. I’ll be done in an hour or so, until then, lemme focus.
Mr. F. P. Lotor started with a light red base, then painting thick crimson lines from side to side. It seemed they winded around, jumping out of frame before returning, further away. Thinner yellow accents were painted, without the complex shading to show depth. He then took a small black brush and drew taut chains going to the middle, anchoring themselves in a small heart and lungs at the center.
Well, uhh, sorry. Got carried away there. It’s uhh… Frederick P Lotor, untitled, 1990, Oil on Canvas. Y’know I don’t enter the zone often, but when I do, I have no idea where my brain was. I feel like I was in a trance.
Whelp. I’m sure that means something vast and important. Not today’s problem.
Well, raccoons aren’t particularly fast. I can’t run from my problems for long. Mr newsman, what’s the relationship with your family like?
“Is it okay if I turn this off before I talk about that?”
No biggie for me. Go ahead.
Hey, thank you for that. You sure it's okay that I record, and choose when to?
Thanks, pal. Now, I have a bag to pack and a train to board.
Before that, can I get your number? It was good talkin’ to ya.
Thank you. I’ll talk to ya next time, then. Hasta la vista.
What should I start this with? Day 1 Log? Log 1? Anyway, got the ticket and i’m headin’ back home now. Down in North Carolina. Ugh. I hate the place. And I hate the smell of tobacco, but Ma and everyone else just loves smoking. I told Randy it’d be a week, but it’ll probably only be a couple days until I'm home.
Me and Randy are pretty good amigos, as the Mexicans say. But I hate Yancy Lotor. And yeah, hate is the right word. It’s not a strong enough word. The smell of cigarette smoke and overcooked meatloaf has me with a thousand yard stare.
She was always better to Randy. God knows why. She… she actually loves him, I think. I’m just her failure of a son. I miss Dad. I feel like he was the control rods in the nuclear reactor of our relationship. As soon as he was gone, we got a Chernobyl between us.
/// WARNING: LOW BATTERY ///
Oh, damnit. Well, I'll see you in the hotel, I guess.
Day 3, log 2. Finally got the right charger for you. I’m in North Carolina, but I'm putting off going to the animal hospital Mom’s in.
2 sentence version: I experience frequent, vivid visual hallucinations. I had been sure he was one of them.
Full version:
Schizophrenia and mania is not what my mind is troubled with, for I know the figures and shapes I see and voices I hear are naught but the result of an overactive mind. It had been suggested by close family I take an extended stay in the country for the purification of the mind. By the fifth week of the stay, my condition had not improved, and in fact, all the sojourn had done for me was to introduce me to another consistent hallucination - at sunrise and set, a man sits in the shadows of the evergreens at the end of the lane, dressed in nothing but what nature has given him and what must be years’ worth of mud and grime. He is my most alarming hallucination, but I count my mercies that he is an infrequent and consistent visitor. When he had vanished by the seventh week, I was soothed and content to once more settle to my distant shadowy figures that lurked in the corners of my eyes and shadows that darted about my feet. That was until the figure returned tonight on the elevated terrace outside my bedroom. Disturbingly, as none other of my visions tend to do, it actively hid itself at the opposite corner around the table. If it wanted to hide itself, I was content to avert my eyes and go about washing before I settled into bed. While finishing, I heard the sure squeak of the terrace door’s opening. I groaned and faced a mirror to ask my mind to please settle, I didn’t need to be disturbed before a good night’s sleep. It answered this request with raspy breath from beyond the washroom. Self-assured, I took confident stride back into the bedroom to address this mind-phantom, where, where I did indeed find the door to be open and dirt tracked inside.
If you follow the path down behind the house a ways, past the fork tree and drop down past the rocks, you won’t find much anymore. Just some scraps of metal curving towards the sky, a dying man’s old, bony, rust-covered fingers. Mother nature closing her palms around that hand, letting go forever.
But I can tell you what there once was. When I was 6, my and my brother would go down every day hoping to make a sand castle that would last till the next, to find a stone or a shell Momma might put in a necklace to wear, to chase off the seagulls.
And one day, the boat was there. Leaning off to one side - the first image to present itself across my head was that of an old man ushering us in to tell a story. That old man’s name, emblazoned across the side in bold black paint, was Atlas.
Recognizing it, I would return with the orange book: illustrations of maps overlain with more flags than I could count. Atlas: All The World! bright raised text declared, inscrutable as day. How lucky a young boy could be to have all the world appear in front of him.
Not the whole world, though - after stealing one of momma’s kitchen stools to hoist ourselves up onto it, we were quick to see the sails were gone, and in all our searching we found no way of controlling the vessel. But with a few found blankets, and netting smelling of salt, and a jar of fireflies, The Fort Of The World was made. Summer nights spent there stay clear in my mind, even now.
Lying on my back on the deck, counting the constellations. Every time, sure as day, my brother would count one more than me. I thought maybe he was cheating, but I was 6 and believed him.
But the bad thing about summer is its passage. With the trees yawning and slipping into orange nightgowns, and the wind beginning to rile, the boat’s pristine paint began to fade and crack and chip away, and in October Alex left for the academy. He told me he would only be gone a moment, and I was 7, not 6 anymore, so I made sure he pinky-promised.
I won’t ever be able to say i’m sorry I broke your stupid cutting board cuz you know why but I still wish I could say anything - an incoherent poem for my mental state.
I didn't fall with it the bruises on my forehead I put there myself after I fucking threw it on the ground and it fucking broke it was a shitty cutting board anyway
I tried floating on my back
head pointed up
pretending the ocean wasn’t there
it is.
Saltwater leaching is a vocabulary term I learned in class.
Pull too much freshwater up and the ocean will fill what was removed.
And I broke down crying in 6th period environmental science.
It always will be.
I will turn 18 soon and my deepest wish is that the world is ending because I need some justification for, being me.
I read today that no one writes poems with meaning hidden under symbolism anymore.
They were right. And yet I still can’t pull that meaning up into words can’t ever empty that damn bottle there’s always that littlest bit left that will crust at the bottom when I try to leave it.
And of course I jammed the cork on it too.
The journal factory exploded
And i’m not getting better at holding my breath.
Same world as Not Only The Guilty, different part of the world at a later time. Letter to a best friend.
Today you died.
4 years ago now.
The war finally ended this year, with our surrender.
Such a small town, we were the only two that were sent. You got a silver star, so Louis made a statue of you. Out by the fountain, on top of a stone block so you look taller than you really were. You really do look like the picture of a hero.
I hope that’s how i’ll remember you in some time. I’d like that better.
For each and every way they failed, the military’s doing good taking care of your mother and little sister.
I’m taking care of Sadie now. She’s a good dog. Misses you just like the rest of us. Anytime I swing by Mrs. Colt’s she runs to your door and when she gets in she buries her face in your bed.
It’s getting hard to write nowadays. After I got blown up, there’s 2 pieces of shrapnel in my hand, at the edge of my palm and deep in my wrist. Every time I move my hand, or try to hold something I feel it.
[but you’re still alive on the other side when i’m writing. Dunno how to articulate that how he would]
I’m still having that nightmare. It’s dark, I can hear the crickets around us through the fog. I’m rattling in the cold and suddenly I slip and fall in the mud at the bottom of the trench. You lean over me and offer your hand and that is where the nightmare starts.
We’re kids again. I just miserably failed at kicking that soccer ball and fell on my ass in the dirt. You’re just standing there laughing as my back hurts and suddenly I am looking through your eyes 10 years later after the machineguns tore you apart.
[I thought you were already dead. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to abandon you.]
I also wrote this a bit ago. You'll never guess when. I don't know what it is. I was watching breaking bad the week before, the part where Jane died. This isn't that, but. The other girl is one that I used to know, i guess.
It was April 15th.
I am sitting at the riverside with my feet in the water. The sun is hot at the back of my neck but the water at my feet is cold and gentle. In a few moments I will put my socks back on and yank my boots on and they will squelch as I take the mile-long walk back to my car and I will curse myself for my stupidity. But right now the river is holding me and it is peaceful and I know that it is worth it. I do not know, though, how much of a gift it is.
I am pulled out of the moment by the blaring of sirens across the bridge a mile away. They are racing against the failing heart of a woman I share a name with, suffering an overdose.
The needle in her arm is the bad habit she took up to escape the father who never deserved the title, the little brother she has failed 1,001 times over. Finally she has escaped it all. She is laying on a cloud gently stroking a blue bird. The sun above the clouds is warm on her face and her feet swirling through the cloud are cold.
And the last thing she will know is peace.
My grandmother will see her eulogy on the news and something deep and painful will strike her heart a moment before she realizes it is not me and her viscous disgust at what she perceives as worthless druggies will overcome her. She will pick up her phone and consider calling me but then put it back down because she has no love for the woman her grandson has become.
She was the one who showed me the spot at the river that I am now trudging from in my soggy boots and I whisper a thank you to her under my breath. I do not let myself love her anymore but still I cannot forget that 11 years ago right here we were laughing as I chased after a frog, cutting my legs on the grass and cattails.
I wade through these thousand sweet places in my mind knowing everything bitter that comes after and aware of every responsibility i am avoiding but they are warm and sweet and gentle and each time I am sure that it is worth it.
I fuckem wrote a thing. 'Bout an older brother trying to protect his sister through his country's violent revolution. Yeahg. It's 1500 words.
November 29th, 1889.
Thick black smoke is rising high. The Capitol is burning. The White Army no longer a subject of rumors. If not already, by now, Nastya, the last daughter of the Emperor, has faced the guillotine. her red blood spilling over the white snow.
We’re not far from the capitol. Dad was an imperial army officer.
It’s not safe here anymore. I help Stara over the high garden wall at the back of the house and then I follow her over myself. Momma should be coming soon, but as soon as I drop over, I hear a man at the front of the house call
“Halt!”
I grab Stara tight and freeze, silencing my breath. A rabbit finds its way deep into my chest, kicking at my heart. Its wild eyes bore into me.
Stara is fighting in my grip. She wants to know why i'm holding her so tight, why i'm covering her mouth. Because the rabbit says to do so.
I can hear the officer at the front of the house: “Are you Astrid Gonheldt?” And then, “Is your family here?”
Stara perks up at Momma’s name. I tighten my grip around her, whisper to her desperately, “I know it’s cold, I know it hurts. Please, please, we have to be quiet.”
I hear Momma start to say something and then, and then there is a pair of gunshots.
There's ice all around me, and it reaches my heart and freezes it. My ears should be ringing but I hear something limp fall to the ground.
Stara holds her hands over her ears and hides her head in me. The rabbit is begging me to run. I start a bad habit of lying.
“It’s okay, Stara, it’s okay. We’re okay,” I stroke her head. “We’re okay.”
I take her in my arms and get up, staying low behind the stone wall. I count my blessings that the frozen dirt won’t leave footprints to be followed.
“We need to go this way. We’re gonna take your way to Palo’s house, okay? He can help us.” She holds my neck tight and buries her head in my shoulder and whimpers something I'm not able to hear.
My feet are quiet but Papa’s rifle is clattering so, so loud. I put a hand over the bolt as I creep down the hill in order to silence it. Momma made me take it, I- I didn’t want to, I had some food and blankets, wasn’t that enough for me and Stara? I'd told her I couldn’t use it, against even a deer. All she told me I could use it against a wolf.
Ahead of us is the small river that's well behind our house in a grove of trees. In the heat of summer, barely a stream, in the spring it swells to a real river with snowmelt. Today, at the end of the fall, it’s just a small river flowing under the ice. I let Stara down at the bank.
“Here, we'll cross here. Then it's just a mile away to Palo's house, remember?” She nods. I nudge her, and she creeps over, arms outstretched for balance on the slippery ice. She makes it across easily, and I go to follow her. But I’m not as light as her and when I step on the ice it gives way with a crack and in a moment I'm down to my waist in the water.
The cold grabs me and robs my breath and the feeling from my legs. Piercing claws all that I feel. Stara screams. My breath rushes in and out uncontrollably, breath is coming but I cannot breathe. Thousands of steel claws bury themselves into my legs and sides. The rabbit in my chest leaps into my skull and my hands scrabble at the ice trying to pull myself out. I kick my legs and manage to get my torso up out of it then the ice breaks again and my whole body goes in. There is nothing in my head but that rabbit running forwards and I try and kick myself up again. My head breaks the surface for a moment, only enough time for another gasp of air. Somehow, above my heart and blood rushing in my ears and my gasping I can hear Stara screaming. I try to push myself up again, but I can’t. The rabbit makes me push off the bag I packed for Stara. The cans of food, the little white bear Papa gave her, the blanket she’s held to since she was a baby, all slips away under the ice, but without it I can kick myself far enough up. Closer to the banks the ice is thicker and it holds when I haul myself up, but my legs are numb and I can't push myself any further.
Then Stara grabs my shoulders and digs her feet in trying to pull me. A spark relights in my core, and my lungs start working again. Only because of her can I haul myself up the whole rest of the way.
I collapse on my back in the dirt. Stara crashes onto me, holding me tight. Trying not to let me go. With the cold seeping into me, I think that decision was already made without her. I pull my arm out of my soaked coat and hold it around her. Hypothermia will come quick if she gets wet. She should have a long life ahead of her.
I pant, trying to push the last of the ice I can out of my lungs. I push her off of me so I can heave myself up.
“Come on, if you can keep walking with me, I'll tell you that story. The one about the bear, the one Momma used to tell us before bed,” I get up, leaving my water-heavy coat lying on the riverbank. It feels like i’m still wearing it - my bones not moving easy as they should. I offer my shivering hand to Stara to keep walking. “What was his name again?”
“Ollie-” she pleaded, tugging on my pants. She pointed behind us.
“OLWICK!” The officer clad in stark white cries. Two men with rifles at his side.
Of course, Stara had been screaming while I fell in. We’re not far from the house, of course they heard. The rabbit is back, beating legs cracking my ribs. I push him out. I'm not a rabbit. I still have Papa’s rifle. I’ll be that bear myself.
He calls again, “Olwick! Stara Gonheldt!”
The pair of gunshots that killed mom drive into my head. The sound of her falling. The same happening to Stara.
No.
“Get behind me, Stara,” I whisper to her. The two men raise their rifles. I raise Papa’s too.
I’m still upset at him because here, last year, he put his fingers over mine and squeezed the trigger while I aimed at a deer. But these are not just deer and it does not have to be his hand that squeezes the trigger this time.
But there are two of them, and one of me. The soldier that’s left standing fires back and his bullet rips through my knee. I shudder but will myself to stay standing and will my frozen hands to cycle the bolt and lift the rifle again. But I am slow and he is not and the next bullet tears into my chest. Whether from cold or shock or both, I do not feel it. I manage to re-line up the gun and pull the trigger again before I fall onto my knees. Another shot rings out but the officer and his pistol are not as accurate and he only sends splinters flying from a tree next to me. I cycle the bolt again and pick the gun back up as another shot wizzes past. My sights wobble as my last ragged breaths leave me in a rush. I pull one back in, leveling the sights at the officer’s heart. This time the recoil knocks me to the ground.
My breath comes shallow with a whistling from the hole in my chest. Lying on my back, I see a few high, high-up clouds in the sky. One of Stara’s books could say what they are. Strato-nimbus or something. She comes up to my side, shaking me. It’s getting harder and harder to think, I can’t understand what she’s saying.
I hold my hand up to her. I kept her safe. As all the definition leaves the world, my hand finds her shoulder, then pats its way to her head. I may’ve kept her safe but I have failed. I’m not her white bear from that story-tale. I couldn't give her a field of berry bushes or a refilling magic chalice, I let them slip away under the ice. And she won't be left with a flower-crown. My breath has failed. I cannot remind her I love her, cannot tell her to keep going.
All I can do, as the world fades away from me, is leave a trail of blood from where my hand touched her.
