(I wrote this for a piece of art by Avery Collins. Basically, she showed me her piece and said "write a story about this," so I did.)

Cindy Cartwright had been anticipating her first mission since she had first learned of space flight at the age of seven. She had lucked into the current mission, expected to be the single most important exploration mission in the history of mankind, surpassing the New World explorers and the first lunar landing in terms of significance. She had only been included on the mission because the return flight would require a minimum of seven crew members in case of communication failure with Houston, and she was one of nine astronauts physically prepared for a launch, and the only one with adequate medical training. The mission was surface exploration of Earth’s second moon. The moon had appeared two weeks prior to Cindy’s scheduled launch. The term “appeared” is the only appropriate word, as all witnesses and video evidence described the phenomena as “blinking into existence.” The moon physically realized itself instantaneously, its perceived existence taking no time. There was no materialization or growth, not trajectory or visible approach; one instant it wasn’t, the next it was. The moon seemed to have no gravity, as it had not affected the tides or the orbit of the Earth or Luna. All satellite or telescopic pictures of the surface of the new moon were exasperatingly inconclusive, as a dim brown haze clouded the atmosphere. Cindy and her team were part of an emergency explorative mission, their sole purpose being to clarify whether there was an immediate threat to the planet or not. If the moon was to be deemed safe for the time-being, the crew was to return immediately so a more experienced crew could investigate further. The shuttle was on the launch-pad, seconds away from takeoff. 30, 29. Cindy’s breath quickened, her heart a sporadic stampede. 23, 22. A lifetime. That was what Cindy had spent to reach this very point, a decades-long climb to touch this ultimate pinnacle. 12, 11. She looked at the rest of the crew, all of whom had spaceflight experience. She recognized the restless serenity she had seen on the faces of the not-quite-grizzled veterans while assisting in the control room in Houston. It was surreal to her that she was about to become a peer to them, their colleague. Blastoff.

The brown cloud surrounding the moon was discovered to be comprised of mostly methane and various unidentifiable gaseous substances. None of the crew had any solid expectations pertaining to the appearance of the actual surface of the new moon, but what they saw upon breaching the cloud mass was subconsciously strictly unexpected in the minds of them all. It looked like a bastardized version of Earth, a crude model one-tenth the size. The color of the oceans was too flat, the coastlines lacked detail, looking as if a child attempted to draw the world map from memory. They shifted their flight path so the shuttle would land in the imitation Gulf of Mexico, and shortly splashed down. A quick analysis of the atmosphere showed Cindy that the air was unbreathable, giving the crew less than five hours for surface exploration. They directed the ship towards the nearest landmass, what would have been the coastline of Texas. When within sight of the shore, the crew noticed thousands of figures dotting the landscape, information they quickly relayed back to the original Earth. Upon reaching the beach, the crew studied the lifeforms using the outboard cameras in order to discern whether they were hostile or docile. Cindy and the others had been instructed to use extreme caution in event of an extraterrestrial presence. They were also under firm instruction to capture both male and female specimens, dead or alive.

The shock felt upon first sight of the familiar surface was replicated triplicate when the crew first saw the figures in detail. They were all the size of sixth-graders, and shared the same awkward similarity to humankind as the moon they inhabited. They seemed to be wearing identical clothing: high-waisted blue jeans, long-sleeved red, black, and grey plaid shirts, brown leather belts with oversized belt buckles, brown cowboy boots and black cowboy hats. They seemed to be mocking a stereotype of a Texan. Their faces were also vaguely human, the only perceptible difference being the creatures’ noses: they had one larger nostril instead of two. The crew began preparations for surface exploration, as their cursory examination of the creatures found no weapons or hostile intent. They donned their suits and received their orders one last time: study the area and the extraterrestrials for three hours, capture at least one specimen of each sex, stay within one hour’s travel of the shuttle, and return home.

Cindy was now face-to-face with the first confirmed extraterrestrial life-forms known to present mankind. She had lucked out again: her two jobs for the extent of the mission were communications (with the crew, home base, and any intelligent life encountered) and the presiding physician for the crew. The first oddity she noticed when faced with the creatures was their clothes, or lack thereof. What the crew had thought was clothing was actually their skin, colored as clothing. The hats’ brims were the only addition to their selves, as the bodies of the hats appeared to be severely elongated craniums, the brims attached. Another anomaly was the eyes. Each eye had three pupils, which were triangular in shape, arranged to form a larger equilateral triangle. They also had two extra eyes, which were covered with patches of flesh-colored material. Then she noticed their skin. Although the skin tone matched the majority of her countrymen, it was unnatural to them. They coated all “bare” areas with a strange substance that, upon further inspection, seemed to be moving, as if it consisted of millions of microorganisms. This dim movement covered their entire bodies, lending Cindy to believe that the organisms provided the illusion of clothing. The creatures were not the only things on the new moon masquerading as Earthly. The surface analyst had been testing the water and soil and told Cindy to relay his findings to home base. He had been testing what they thought was water, only to find an unidentifiable substance with a gel-like substance floating on top, lending him to believe that it was meant to only look like water. He then attempted to take a soil sample, but found that the ground also consisted of the same microorganisms that coated the skin of the creatures. The layer of organisms ran six inches deep before the analyst hit a dark, smooth, solid metal layer wherever he tested, a substance that apparently comprised the surface of the moon. Cindy stepped in front of the crew and slowly approached who she assumed was the leader of the creatures, for it was standing proud in front of the line, a beaming smile molded on its face. She approached cautiously, her arms by her side, palms outward in what she desperately hoped was a truly universal gesture of docility. She had intended to be the first to breach the silence, but the alien leader encroached upon her intentions. It spoke a broken form of English, akin to a sitcom caricature of a Middle-Eastern immigrant. Its voice was odd, sounding with a deep, simultaneous echo that sent chills down the spines of the crew. “Welcome for our Earth, travelers weary!” The creature then darted forward, trapping Cindy in an amazingly strong embrace, nearly causing catastrophic failure to her breathing apparatus. Cindy pushed her affectionate assailant away from her and bowed her head as a sign of respect. “I name be Jimothy, do how you do?” The creature declared with gusto. Cindy managed to stammer out an introduction, much to her amazement. “Come us with, we want to show all you our city!” The crew was then herded towards a large sedan-like vehicle, as if somebody designed the Honda Accord to be fifty feet long and twenty feet tall. The inside of the strange vehicle was a typical early 20^th century American den, complete with a couch, chair, fireplace, and radio. The crew sat in mostly silence, the only sounds being Cindy’s constant narrative with her superiors back on Earth. They were alone in the odd car, and were too stunned to speak to each other, and they heard no sound from outside. They were in the vehicle for only a few minutes when the door opened and another of the same creatures came in and introduced himself as Jimothy before shuffling them out of the door. “Is this the city of ours!,” the creature exclaimed emphatically. What Cindy saw barely resembled a city. There were certainly tall buildings, and roads, and bustling activity (complete with very strange aircraft that seemed to be suspended on cables), but it was a diorama of decimation. All of the activity seemed to be the creatures’ rebuilding the skyscrapers, as they were all in shambles, as if the city streets played host to an intense battlefield. “Ah yes, beauty the war!” their new host said with much pride. “Come, to battlefield!” They were then reloaded into the shuttle and whisked another few minutes away to the most horrific sight Cindy could imagine: thousands of the creatures slaughtering each other in a mixture of bloody anachronisms. There were “soldiers” from seemingly every era of weaponry, from medieval knights to stealth bombers. The only thing they all had in common was their expressions. They were all euphoric. They were enjoying themselves, even those being slaughtered died with grins on their faces. Cindy realized that these creatures idolized the human race, and wanted to shape their lives and their selves to be akin to her kind. She pleaded with the nearest creature to bring her and her crew back to her ship, a request quickly granted, as the creatures all revered her and hung on her every sound and motion. The crew initiated their return trip as soon as they reached their shuttle.

World leaders, upon learning of the creatures and their behavior, decided to destroy the new moon, releasing statements to the press that the moon was highly radioactive and could potentially poison the Earth’s atmosphere. However, all attempts to destroy it were fruitless. After decades of attempts, the moon disappeared as silently and swiftly as it had arrived. No notion of the creatures was heard or seen again.

The Man and the woman

When The Man first awoke in the curious place, he found he could not move. More specifically, he could barely control his movements. He also realized that he had lost all of his personal memories. He still had the universal memories regarding speech, gesticulation, and overall general knowledge. For instance, he had no idea if he had any siblings or not, but he knew what the word “sibling” meant. He looked around his self as well as he was capable, only to discover nothing. Every direction he looked, there was only whiteness. It was not bright or blinding, or even unpleasant, it just was. The Man had a sneaking suspicion that this place had always appeared in this manner, and always would. He realized that, not only was there nothing but white, but there was no horizon. There was no perspective in this affable, barren world, as no lines of any sort could be discerned. He felt as if he were lying upon a smooth, solid surface, yet he could not see it when he turned his head to place his cheek adjacent to the invisible plane. He subconsciously expected it to be cool to the touch, but it did not seem to have any temperature at all. After taking in his meager surroundings, The Man tried to study his own body. When he looked at his hands, he was greeted with those of a newborn. His body was a virgin to this world, so it took on a form. The Man then realized that, due to the absence of everything, he had lost all perspective of time. He had no idea how long he had been there, prone upon the ethereal ground. Time was of no importance in this place; it’s meandering passage akin to a mortally wounded animal: desultory, arbitrary, and desperately lingering. The maturity of The Man’s body flicked through the ages that comprise the life of the common man: one instant The Man was a trembling elderly figure prone upon the vaporous floor, the next a curious infant with eyes like plates, the next an adolescent form wallowing in it’s own pubescence. Eventually The Man learned to control the fleeting rhythm of time by counting seconds in his mind, changing his own perception of time’s passage. This mental metronome resulted in The Man’s body taking the shape of a middle-aged human male. He drew himself up to his new height in order to gain some bearings in this alabaster desert, only to be reaffirmed that there were no bearings to be had here. He tried walking, but found this automatic task to be perceptually onerous, as he could not see where to place his next step. The entire process resembled the unexpected stomp accompanying the miscalculation of the number of steps one must climb. As with the problem of time-fluctuation, The Man grew accustomed to the issue of walking, and began what would become a trek that would have circumvented the planet Earth twelve times over and lasted countless years. This fact went unnoticed by The Man, as he soon realized that he did not tire or require sustenance in this place. The Man was employing a similar tactic to those lost in a desert or ocean with no sense of self-placement or direction and no hope of rescue: move in a straight line until something changes. Near the end of his oblivious journey, The Man noticed a subtle change in the landscape: a nearly imperceptible speck became visible where the horizon would be. This was the first evidence he had that he was actually moving at all. He continued walking toward the speck for what seemed, for the first time in this place, to him to be eons. He finally had a goal, a purpose in this pointless realm, and the thought of such thrilled him. The Man had something to strive for, a solid plan. Eventually, this newfound goal drove him to the brink of insanity. Like Tantalus in Hades, what he desired most seemed beyond his grasp, as the speck seemingly never changed in size. His gait quickened, and the engine driving his lust pushed to the threshold of chaos. He had regressed to a mindless animal, his entire existence predicated upon this mystery speck in this mystery world. This fervor continued for what would have been 50 years on Earth, absorbing his self with insatiable fire. At long last, The Man saw the speck grow at a torpid rate, but grew it did. This only pushed The Man even farther. Now the speck was the size of a dime, now a penny, now a quarter. He could discern that the speck was shaped like a person, for he could see blotchy limbs and a blurred silhouette. The figure seemed to be sitting, but upon what was invisible to The Man. He assumed this was because of the vast distance that still separated the two life forms, but came to realize the reason for the lack of seating assistance: there was none. This new figure seemed to know how to work the environment to its will. This revelation lead The Man to believe this stranger to have the answers to his heretofore unasked questions. This pushed him further yet, and the rest of his journey was a dead sprint, which brought on a curious sensation. He was moving faster than he had ever thought possible, yet he was not tiring. He was not even straining. So he ran faster, and faster, and faster, until he was but a color smear on a white canvas. He stopped moving his legs, but convinced his mind that his body was still running, and he moved faster still. He rotated his body all around, but he knew he was still zooming toward the other figure. He was flying without wings or machine, the first human to achieve this feat. He lapsed into a period of joyous oblivion at this point, flitting back and forth as a hummingbird upon first flight. He soon re-realized his task, and turned to face his objective with a newfound calm. While standing stock-still, he had himself moved to the figure in an instant, and in mere moments was standing right next to the figure, which had become a young woman with an air of boredom about her. She did not notice him, as he was over her slumped right shoulder, and her head was resting in her right hand with her elbow upon her right knee. The Man cleared his throat to announce his presence, and the woman lifted herself up soundlessly to face him. Her face was graced with a distant curiosity, and her eyes gleamed with obvious age, despite her youthful appearance. The first words The Man heard in his new existence were: “So that’s what humans look like. I’ve always wondered.” The Man realized that, although her mouth was moving, he was not hearing her voice with his ears, but rather in his head, as if her words were his own thoughts. In lieu of arbitrary proclamations of wonder, The Man worded his inquiries with great care, as he had a distinct feeling of reverence in regards to this new woman. “What do you mean? You yourself are human, you must know what you look like.”

Her response was instilled with a detached coldness, as if she were speaking to her unwanted child: “I am no human. I am nothing.”

“You can’t be nothing, I can see you in front of me, so you must be real.”

“You see what your mind wants to see. You were alone in a different place, and you wanted to see another human. I only appear to you as a female because you are selfish. But your selfishness can not be blamed upon you; all human flaws are my own doing.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I created you. Your universe, I mean, not just you.”

The Man, being a tentative Catholic in his previous existence, did what most loose believers would in the presence and undeniable existence of what they believe to be God: he collapsed to his knees, clutching at his creator’s feet, and wept. “My God, I can not believe I am finally in your presence, I can not believe I ever doubted your existence, I beg your forgiveness, my Lor-,“ a curt thrashing of the woman’s leg cut The Man’s groveling, and he now kneeled as low as he could and stared at her feet, not daring to look into her face. “I am not your lord or your god,” she spat at him, this time not bothering to move her mouth. Her denouncement was steeped in venom; purely contemptuous at the very idea he put forth. “I made you, I do not rule over you, and I do not want your worship. Only a vain fool demands reverence from their creations. Your god is a cowardly ideal ingrained within your race by meek-minded men. I have pitied your race more than any other I have created, and that pity is the reason I decided to end your universe and begin anew. The only reason I left you here is to see my mistakes firsthand, so they may not be repeated.”

The Man lay crying at her feet for what would have been days in his previous existence, her revelations weighing upon him like so many dashed hopes and dreams. No human felt the torment like this one man, for the fallacy that was the entire human race was laid upon this one man’s shoulders. Atlas himself would pity the sheer weight pressed upon The Man’s body. The Man lay prone upon a ground that was not there, as he did when he first existed in this plane. He was stricken with absolute despair, and he wanted to die. His one remaining goal was death, and he immediately regressed into the primal fervor he was afflicted when he first noticed the other figure. “You can not die here,” was the woman’s curt interjection, cold and indifferent. “Death requires the recognition of time, and time has no dominion here. That is why you do not hunger or tire. You will stay here for as long as I deem necessary, and then you will not exist. Your universe was the product of my own boredom, and my lackadaisical attitude towards its creation attributed to your race’s hideous misconstruction. That indolence is a blunder I do not plan on repeating.” She began moving her body in a circle around the pathetic form at her feet, studying his trembling frame as a biologist studies an unidentified carcass. The Man’s tremors quickened as he changed from inquisitor to lab rat, his quivers emanating not from desire, but of nervous fear. “How could such putrescence reside within such a beautiful shell?” Her tone was one of discord with tinges of regret and awe. She lowered her self in order to examine his body with more scrutiny. She picked his handout from under him, picking through his fingers as if she were perusing her prized record collection, caressing each with a gentle reverence reserved for the newest of mothers. “The greatest atrocity of man is the utter desecration of such a perfect base form. I spent many of your eons perfecting your races physical forms. There are countless planets littering your universe that house hideous abominations of your basic physical structure; so many experiments of mine that were discarded as refuse. And the sad truth is that they have achieved so much more with their presence in your plane of reality, fantastical marvels of science and imagination that even your greatest story-weavers would scoff at and pass off as irrational garbage. I have developed a theory on your race’s inner repulsiveness and absolute egotism. I think it spurns from vanity. If that is the case, then it is my own doing, as evidenced by my many “failures” of the human form. I was so focused on the outward beauty of my creations, and allowed the inside to fester as a fetid boil on the visage of a prospective prom queen: the only imperfection on an otherwise beauteous masterpiece. And it sickens me to think that such an outright travesty could render the beauty of the outer body a prideful façade. The human form as become a stranger to its own body, the meticulously manicured front lawn of a house that contains a drunken, abusive bundle of bigotry and filth.” Her mood changed from subdued awe to vindictive disgust. She raised herself up to be above the still-cowering Man. “Get up, you sniveling fool, you must answer my questions, then I will finish your reality.” The Man retched out several more sobs, then seemed to compose himself enough to raise his body, and seemed to fill himself with veiled pride. “I will now ask you a series of questions, and you will answer them. I will not force you, and I will not punish you, but you will answer me, for there is nothing else for you to do. If you leave, I will follow, if you stay mute, I will wait.” She began moving in a slow arc around The Man, gearing herself up for what she has anticipated for centuries: the interview with a base human. The silence persisted, growing heavier and heavier until The Man could not take the oppressive calm any longer. “Well, do what you must do, you so-called ‘creator,’ ask away.” Her response was “Why did you exist? What was the purpose of your existence on your former plane of reality? What was the point?” The Man seemed slightly perturbed by her inquiry. He went through all that he did, the torment, the near insanity; just so this woman who claims to have created him and everything he knew (and all that he didn’t) could pester him with this nuisance of a question. “I existed because I was born,” spat The Man, almost as if he were explaining the most common of knowledge to a perceived intellectual. A silence overcame the pair of figures for what would have been a few minutes before the woman let out a peal of laughter of such a genuine nature that it had no equal in the history of any reality. As genuine as her laughter was, it was not infectious. The Man was stricken with a firm embarrassment and suffered a mortally wounded pride. Were The Man asked to explain why one woman’s laughter could have such an effect upon his psyche, he would be even more speechless than in his current predicament. He was defeated. It was then that he subconsciously subverted himself to the woman, that he answered each question only after much deliberation and honesty. This was the most important moment for all humanities past and present: it changed The Man’s perspective from one of self-preservation to the defense of his entire race, and would shape all realities the woman would make henceforth. The woman’s laughter did not die out or fizzle to an end, it just stopped. “That is no answer, that is an excuse, an excuse for proper thought, a way to skirt the question. You are afraid to answer my question, for it is not one you have a default answer for. I will wait for as long as it takes, as long as you desire, but be warned: ponder the question until you are certain you have a complete response, or suffer. Bear in mind that you are my creation, and I can do with you what I want. I can turn you inside out, flatten you, cause your bones to outgrow your own skin, set you eternally ablaze, and you will not die. You will feel everything, but you will not die, and you can not escape.” Sadness then overwhelmed The Man, but not a desperate or paralyzing sadness, but a dour of acceptance. “Answer some of my questions first, if you will. If I must submit my will unto you, I would like my curiosity to be placated.” The woman seemed on the precipice of laughter again, but she seemed to respect The Man on some level. “If my acquiescence spurns your honesty, then I will whet your appetite for useless knowledge, although I do not see the point.” The Man was then faced with a dilemma. He had countless questions, some he was not even aware of and could not form coherently, but did not know which select few to choose. “How do you exist? Who created you, how long have you been toying with realities or universes or whatever you call your little experiments? When will you die, and know what it feels like to face your end, and finally become aware of the torture you have thrust upon us, your toys?” The woman seemed satisfied with The Man’s renewed ardor, anger- and hatred-fueled as it was. “I have no creator, and I will have no death. In order for something to have a death, it must first have a birth; there can be no ending if there was never a beginning. I have no age, I have just always been. Nothing existed until I decided; I am the master of all space and time. Your third question is utterly impossible to answer, as no questions concerning the concept of ‘time’ concern me, as it does not apply to me. And my response to your final question is thus: everything I have ever created is a part of me, and I feel what they feel. I have felt infinite deaths, infinite births, infinite sorrow, infinite anger, and infinite joy. I felt the euphoria you felt at the birth of your son, I felt the fury you felt when you discovered his sexuality, the shock and depression you felt after you beat him to death, and I felt your suicide.” The Man, having no memory of his past existence, ignored the last of her statement, as he did not believe himself capable of such an atrocity. “If you must undergo the torment and pain of your creations, then why did you even create them at all? Why knowingly put yourself through that?” The woman dwelled upon this question for what would have been some time. She had never been asked of her motives, despite her own thoughts on the subject, and was hesitant to voice them. “Why did you put yourself through the emotional torment of raising a child? The answer is simple: love. I first created on a whim, but continued out of love. I could not explain the way I felt when I first molded an utterly new universe. I relished that feeling so much that I instilled its potential within every being of my fabrication. That is, however, not the only reason, I realize.” A deep sadness came across the image of the woman, and her presence seemed to falter and nearly flicker out altogether. “As a sentient being with no hopes of a death, I needed to feel something. There is no life without the possibility of a death. Before I envisioned the creation of any other reality other than this, I had felt nothing for eternity. Eventually, I felt the first emotion anything had ever felt: desire. I longed for feeling, both physical and emotional. That’s why I created. I am a part of every being in every universe, and they a part of me. That link allowed me to feel every feeling imaginable, and all those unfathomable. I felt the ultimate anguish and the pinnacle of ecstasy simultaneously. I came to crave it, so I continued creating. For each universe, every deformed race of being before your own, that feeling became compounded, to the point that I was unable to cease.” The Man took this revelation as it was: a long-recognized but ignored seed of disturbance within the conscience of the woman. “Now, tell me what causes the selfish destruction seen every day of the human race.” It was not a question. “Well, simply, Pride. Pride is the root of all emotions, and emotion breeds dissent and destruction. We subconsciously hold all others to an unmatchable standard: what we view our own selves to be. We fear all that is different from us individually, and that fear leads to hatred. That fear also stems from Pride; we only qualify the difference of others due to our own sense of self-importance. As for procreation, we only have two reasons for succumbing to that whim. One is the survival of the human race, a primal instinct to continue our legacy. We only want our race to continue because we believe it to be worthy of infinity, because of Pride. The other reason is personal Pride. We hold ourselves to such high esteem that we feel the need to create bastardized versions of ourselves. I believe Pride to be your only mistake.” The woman pondered this for a few moments, with seemingly little consternation or deliberation. “Okay then, no more Pride. I’ll keep the survival bit, though. All right, you’re done.” The Man was no more. The woman dissipated her human front, and began creating anew.

The End.

It sounded like bullshit.

My "best" friend's insistence on going first is troublesome yet comforting. I wish I could have emotional connections to others. I'm not even sure I could wish, we don't exactly have wells here. The silliness of her seriousness negates my heartfelt attempts of discussing my issue. Why do people have to be so dang human? Humans...pfff. "Mark I's" they are just as useless as I, a little less forgetful, but whatever. The new models are nice, though. I wish I was as sexy as them. The meds are wearing off, my lip hurts and I miss you. I've almost forgotten you, but I still keep the yoyo in my pocket to remember us by. I wish the past still existed. They say time is cyclical, but that's just a heaping pile of shit. Once the minute has passed I can no longer remember. I keep things to tell me. I count seconds. Seventy-six seconds ago I found this ticket stub in our pocket. I wonder where I went? Probably a Knicks game.

False Nomenclature.

(Me and Avery again.)

This chair is comfortable, I can't stop picking at the paint on the tips of my fingers, revealing the microscopic crop circles on them. Almost makes me feel human. I hope this meeting doesn't result in my termination, I'd like to maintain a linear reality. I guess one can call lying on my back linear. Where the hell is this guy the paint is almost gone. A pantsuit-ensconced woman enters, informing me of a reschedule. This day and age, and we androids are still treated like less than filth. We aren't waiting again, fuck John I always knew he was a prick. No use in fighting though. Despite the fact that I have perfectly dysfunctional emotions and am currently thinking thoughts, Humanity Law classifies me as "Sub-human Mark II," disallowing me most freedoms. I'm not even allowed a name. I almost regret opening that door, I almost regret walking through. I'm not trying to be demeaning, but you made that choice. Why did you shut it behind us. (exhale) At least god has a name.

Another Untitled Ramble.

(This one started off as me and Avery Collins, but Kneesmith butted in halfway through and Avery was offended out of it.)

I don't want to start this. How many times will this pen run out before I forget. Butter, milk, and eggs. Only three goddamn things. I hate my brain.
These bullets continue to taunt me..."to-do"..."to-do"...who the hell writes these things down? Lists are merely excuses to have feeble minds. Feeble minds feed common indecency. Feeble minds, feeble bodies, feeble hearts. We are-- man fuck "we," they, they are weak... I denounce my humanity, and will hereby be classified merely as a "Timothy," first and last of my race, and I will not tolerate any discrimination. I want to make some changes around this place, as such an important individual I must do important things...maybe a pb&j? We Timothys have always been fond of pb&j. I should take my newfound special classification to Congress, I deserve benefits for the rarity of my race. Based on how much land given Native Americans, I should get Minnesota or something. Or at least a Timothy day or maybe even some sort of badge. ha. This is too much for me. This is taking me forever to finish and I'm still starving. Maybe I could cut the mold out of the bread and scrounge up those tomatoes Shirley bought me last week. Or was it two weeks ago? No, no that was Kate. She's nice, but Frank swears she's manic depressive. I suspect orangutan tits under those loose blouses. bitch. I need to get this shopping done, but that would require some sort of human mingling, and I don't play that shit. I look at the clock, it's been four hours since I first sat down at the kitchen table with this notepad and pen. And they say no one ever starved to death from ADD. This is starting to feel just like some twisted dream. I stopped taking my meds weeks ago, people keep telling me to start doping again. That's all they are, really. Just fancy dope. And then gears started to turn inside his head, dust was shaken from his eyelids as they widened to the rhythm of what alcoholics commonly refer to as "a moment of clarity." He reached for the phone muttering that jingle he knew all too well, "Tuesday two for one/Eatin pizza, havin fun." That place has some shitty-ass pizza. Too much sauce, not enough crust. And they're known to slip anchovies in different orders from time to time.

(No, all my posts won't be these things, I'm working on two longer stories right now, but they will probably take a while.)

This one doesn't have a title.

(Another alternating narrative, this one just me and Kneesmith.)

I swore it would be the last time. But I just couldn't help myself. Teasing me with a tempting glare, I realized giving in would be inevitable. I'm not too proud of my pitiful acquiescence, but what can I say? DDR just calls to me, with all the sinister temptation of a high-class prostitute. "Tic-tack, Joe Jack, tic-tack, if you think of going closer take another step back, tic-tack, Joe Jack, tick tack" was the failed nursery rhyme, stuck in my head, the therapist told me to say in times like these. I find myself creeping ever closer, feel the slow trickle of sweat on my spine. I finally begin to give in. I'm a master, of course, I don't even look at the screen yet I'm perfect. They all cheer me on, but don't understand, can't understand. Won't understand. Why no one ever dances beside me. This game isn't about dancing, fun, or looking cool, I just want someone beside me. And that's when she joined me. She was ugly, fat, and ten years too old for me. She wasn't even good.