Dissolution

“So what are your resolutions going to be for this year?” Janie asked me, sitting at the breakfast counter with her knees pulled up beneath her chin.

I leaned against the other side of the island and tried to figure out how to say out loud what I had been thinking about this past week.  “I’m not making any resolutions this year.  I seriously suck at self-discipline.  Like, as soon as I get all gung ho, yeah I’m gonna quit doing this and start doing this, my brain sabotages me and I screw it up the first chance I get.”  I sighed.  “I hate it; it makes me feel weak and lazy.  Like I’m just gonna keep running around in stupid circles, doing the same shit over and over and over again.  All my days anymore just feel like one long day, with shitty naps thrown in here and there.”

Janie laughed.  “Um, okay.  That does sound sucky.  To be blunt.”  She let her long legs dangle towards the floor, batted her eyelashes at me.  “Know what my resolution’s going to be?”

“To not be such a blunt asshole that always turns the conversation towards herself?”  I ducked under the spatula she grabbed off the counter and threw at my head, laughing.  “Ha ha.  I really don’t know, Janie.  You seem to be in a pretty decent place right now.”

She shrugged, a pretty little gesture of insouciance.  “I have no idea what it’s going to be.  I figured since you know me better than anyone does except James that you’d tell me straight up what flaws you see in me.”

“It’s not like you need to trick me into being a blunt asshole along with you, I’m well familiar with the territory.”  I tippety-tapped my fingers on the cheap counter top veneer.  “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, maybe you could try it too, if you wanted.  I’m not sure you have the raw material, though.”  Janie must’ve been born under an auspicious sign; she had grown up in a loving and comfortable two parent household, she was pretty without being obnoxious about it, intelligent and funny and giving.  Janie had been gifted from all the gods, and never forgot to be thankful for it.  Life is never perfect for anyone, and no one is perfect in and of themselves, but Janie embodied all the best things about human beings that I had come to treasure over the past ten years.

Powder blue eyes slitted, Janie cocked her head and pretended to debate whether or not she should be insulted.  “What the hell does that mean?”

“What it means, cranky pants, is that this year I’m going to try dissolution instead of resolution.  I’m going to meditate, to pray and ask that the things that hold me down and hold me back let go of my heart once and for all.  I feel like I won’t ever be able to move forward, to fully commit to actually living a life, until I can purge all this blech that weighs me down.  Every year, right now, all of it comes back and I wake up every morning wondering what form the bad is going to take.”

“Is this still about what happened to Billy, then?  You don’t really talk about it anymore, and I never know if I should bring it up.  I’m really sorry, if that is what you’re talking about.  I didn’t know it still bothered you that much.”

It was my turn to shrug.  “That one moment of stupidity has, in one way or another, defined my life for the past three years.  I can’t take it anymore, I seriously can’t.  I’m ready to freak the hell out on Trevor for like two weeks out of every year because the whole time I think he’s about to wallow or have a panic attack, or slide right back into that depression that almost cost him his family.  I hate it.  I hate it!”  The instant rage that has grown to be my companion over the holiday season bubbled up and out, and for the first time, knowing Janie would keep me safe, I let it out.

I smashed a coffee cup against the wall.  I screamed every blunt asshole honest truth that I had wanted to scream at Trevor over the past three years and never had, because the thing that people forget to mention about honesty is that truth can be hurtful, and sometimes you can’t see that line you don’t want to cross, so you don’t open your mouth at all for fear of being an emotional harridan.  I have empathy in spades, at least for kids and animals and true victims, but I never did sign up for that sensitivity training course.

The pragmatic truth of the situation is this.  Trevor’s friend got drunk as a skunk on Christmas Eve Eve.  He drove, like he did all the other times where he ended up in the hospital or, on one memorable occasion, halfway through someone’s house.  Somehow the car slid out and flipped a guardrail, catapulting Billy out of the car as it rolled and tumbled to the bottom of a hill.  He lasted in a coma without waking for a few days and died right before New Year’s Eve.  This is the heartbreaking reality.

I loved Billy too.  He was how I met Trevor in the first place.  Billy was going to kill someone else or end up in jail for DUI, eventually.  When people cried and asked, why, why did this have to happen, he was so young and he had a family, why did this happen, I felt like I was the only one who honest with myself.  If you choose to believe that there is a God, and that things happen for a reason, does grief make you blind to the fact that God gave Billy warning sign after big ass flashing warning sign?  That he allowed him to live through so many accidents to give him a chance to get his shit together, and when it became apparent that the only thing that would stop Billy from being a habitual drunk driver was his death or someone else’s, God decided to spare the innocent?

I don’t know how to see it any other way.  I don’t understand why grief can’t be honest, like you have to justify shedding tears for someone who was less than perfect instead of shedding tears for the man that was.

This shadow has dogged my footsteps every day.  The downward spiral that Trevor went through for the year following Billy’s death was almost the destruction of our family.  The depths of his depression and his inability to cope with his survivor’s guilt lasted so long, was so illogically out of proportion, that I had no idea how to deal with it.  Eventually my patience broke, but hurting Trevor feels like kicking a sad eyed puppy.  So still I tiptoe, still I wake up on December 23^rd every year with the anxious sense that something wicked this way comes.  If I was granted a wish by a tricky jinn, my wish would be that Billy’s death and all of its long term ramifications had never happened.  Which means that I could be condemning an innocent to death if Billy didn’t change his ways, and the fact that I would do it anyways because I cannot take this toothache in my heart any longer is completely selfish.  I accept this.

The lovely and patient Janie had taken refuge on the side of the refrigerator to wait out my temper tantrum.  As my curse words faded into ragged breathing and the tinkling of broken glass slowed, she peeked her head around and smiled through tears.  “I want to hug you but I’m not sure if that’s what you need right now.  You look like a bloody homeless meth addict.”

I gasped out a laugh and wrapped a dishtowel around a slice in the meaty part of my palm.  “S’okay,” I managed, “S’ good.”

“Oohhhkaaaay,” she said.  “Well, let’s go dissolve some shit.  Or dissolute it.  Is that a word?  Let’s start our dissolution now.  Um, you can go first.”  With giggles that bordered on the hysterical we stumbled towards the living room, me because I felt drunk and Janie because I dragged her along in my wake.

As we settled cross legged on the floor I felt calmer.  My brain tuned itself from the emotional channel to the practical station.  Here there is only room for honesty, no qualifications, no dissemination, only my truth as I see it.

I felt Janie’s anchoring presence beside me as I closed my eyes and let my hands fold and drift into my lap.  I didn’t have a name to pray to, a deity to surrender to.  I had only the universe and a desperate need for intervention.

“I humbly ask to be released from this fear and anxiety.  Help me to understand the way to deal with this that does no harm.  Allow me to find a way to remove these shackles from my heart and be one with my life again.  Help me to be present for myself and for my family, and to find my joy again.  Please help me.  Please release me.”  My head bowed, and I cried slow sad silent tears.  “I can’t take myself anymore.”

Janie let loose a high pitched shriek at that moment and my eyes snapped open, swung around towards where she had been.

A woman stood there, a beautiful and terrifying pitch black woman with a tongue so red I thought that it was bloody poking out from between her lips.  As she undulated towards me I realized that she had the wrong number of arms waving hypnotically at her sides, but I was distracted from counting them by the necklace of human skulls that dangled over naked and impressive breasts.

“You wished to be freed, daughter,” she said, in a voice like the purr of a thousand cats.  “I am here to free you from your enslavement.”

I spared a glance from the glaring brilliance of the woman’s eyes to search for Janie, finding her backed into a corner and trying to climb right through the wall.  From the way her throat was working, I think that she was still screaming but nothing was coming out.  A hand strong enough to move mountains cupped my chin and turned my face back around.

“Your friend asked for nothing, she will be given nothing.  She is already unfettered.”

“Her mind maybe, I’m pretty sure you broke it….”  I trailed off in the wake of a fearsome smile of pointed teeth and pouty lips.  “I have to say that you are a very scary answer to a prayer.”

The smile widened.  “I am no answer to a prayer, daughter.  I am an answer to a summons.  I shall free you from the shackles that hold your heart.”

So saying, the hand that had so gently held my face reached directly through the skin and muscle of my stomach with no more effort than one would have made to reach through a waterfall and grabbed a rib, snapping it off and pulling it out, sticking it into her belt between two severed hands.  The pain burned like liquid fire full of acid and shrapnel and my gurgling screams joined Janie’s silent ones.  Another snap, and another, before she moved to the other side.  Six ribs in all were given pride of place on her belt, and a red miasma floated over my eyes.

Hands reached down and grasped my mangled breastbone.  I couldn’t draw breath any longer, was amazed that I was even slightly coherent as I watched in horrified painful fascination as my chest was rent open.  Delicately, with no hesitation, a fist wrapped around my beating heart and pulled it into the air, held it before me to see in the moments before my eyes closed for the last.

A kiss, with the sting of pointy teeth, pressed into my forehead.  A whisper in my ear.  “Good sleep, my daughter.  I have removed the shackles and freed your heart.”

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This story quite probably has a lot of typos, but I’m just going to have to live with it because I don’t think I’ll ever read this one over again.

The Origin of the Squeaky Wheel

For the past few weeks, my imagination has been silent.  I mean cricket chirping in the background of a bleak landscape silent.  Also?  I can’t read.  Let that sink in.  For the first time in my life that I can remember, I cannot focus on a book.  It’s killing me.  Well, you know, it’s not killing me but I do feel like I’m missing a part of me, and I am not happy about it at all.  So, in the hopes of at least getting the hamster wheel in my brain spinning again, I figured I would write a true story and see if putting any old words down will get the rest flowing again.  Otherwise?  Eeeeeek.

When I was pretty little my grandpa would call me the squeaky wheel, or sometimes a maverick.  While my grandpa loved me, to be sure, these were not terms of endearment.  I questioned everything, all the time.  I could never go along to get along.  I am an information girl – I have to understand, and if it doesn’t make sense to me I want you to not get frustrated but to keep explaining and answering my questions until I get it.

I cannot keep my mouth shut when I feel that there’s discrimination or ignorance being served up on a platter.  I cannot keep my mouth shut when people don’t make sense.  I can’t smile and nod at passive / aggressive or manipulative people.  I can’t fake.  I can’t get along.

These tendencies have caused me no little strife in my life.  I wouldn’t have it any other way.

This is also why I have always been drawn to the magical, the heroic, the epic.  There’s not much black and white in a hero’s landscape.  The peasants revolt, the farmer leads the oppressed to overthrow the tyrant.  The knight fights the evil wizard and frees the princess from the spell.  The Monster Hunter takes up her father’s mantle and protects the world from evil.  The Winchester’s hop in the Impala and stop demons from ending the world.  This is a simplistic synopsis, and I fully understand that these tales are also often used to mirror humanity’s quest for understanding and balance within themselves, couched within the mythic.  But the simplistic is what drew me.  The details are what drew my dreams with them.

The job that I have right now is an environment that breeds on poor decision making by unqualified people who basically demand a smile and nod mentality, and those without it are treated like pariahs while still being given an over abundant work load.  I understand that I am not universally unique in disliking my job, and that there are many companies out there that are just no good, or full of people who are petty and small and rude.  Of course, I’m grateful for a paycheck every 2 weeks and there are a handful of people who are awesome human beings.  Still….

I have worked for this company for too long.  I have been unhappy almost from the get go.  The work that I was hired to do was supposed to veer in a different direction and I have been treated and talked to like a recalcitrant pet for seven and a half years.  So why have I held on for so long, let myself be broken down and stressed out to the point where my dude gave me the ultimatum of either going to a shrink or finding a new job?  Grasping.

I was unemployed for about a year and a half before I started there.  The company that I had worked for previously, making very comfortable money in an interesting position working for good people, was bought out and moved to California.  Right after I got a promotion and a fat raise.  Oops.  In a one parent household with a 5 year old, unemployment does not go very far.  I remember having to borrow money to buy Shrek for the kid for Christmas as one of my lowest moments.  Or sitting in the car in the grocery store parking lot in the middle of the day, not wanting to go in, like I would stick out among the housewives as one of the unfortunates who had stay at home motherhood thrust upon them as opposed to choosing it.

So time passed.  And passed.  And I swallowed more shit from people than I ever have before in my life.  I stopped talking out loud very much, stopped putting forth ideas or standing up for myself.  It’s not like I lost my self confidence as a human being, I still sport a very healthy sense of ego, but what’s the point became my new mantra.  All because I didn’t ever want to be dependent on anyone for security and survival again.  This may be a noble notion, but not viable in the long run.

When you oil the squeaky wheel, it becomes very boring indeed, rolling down a path that is not of its own choosing.  This is why my imagination is shutting down on me.  My brain is forcing me to stop going along and to make choices instead, on purpose and with purpose.

This post is all over the place.  Ha, at least I sat down and wrote something.  It can only get better….

 

 

The Art of Winning An Argument With Yourself

 

 

 

 

The great revelations of my adult life began with the shouts of a lost soul in my neighborhood breakfast joint. I couldn’t see what was happening, what with my head hovering an inch or so above the coffee cup clasped between my hands. I could hear plenty.

One voice, rising and falling in plaintive wails. A beg for help, a screech for mercy, this guy was all over the place. There was the definitive sound of snot being sucked up as racking sobs collapsed him into himself, a soul with some new cracks in it, if it wasn’t completely broken apart.

The contradictory voices inside had a split second collision as they shoved each other aside to get to the forefront. Seeing as it wasn’t a question of whether or not they would get their say, their incessant need to play tug of war inside my head was infuriating and exhausting. The only conclusion their cacophony ever accomplished was lethargy anyways, so what was the goddamn point. That’s what I never could figure out.

The inner dialogue had blocked out the sounds of a waitress walking over to the man. As the real world filtered back in, I heard a genuinely empathic voice ask the man if there was anything that she could do. “Even if it’s just a glass of water, hon, I’d like to do something for you.”

The snickety voice snarked out. “Really? A glass of water. Crazy helpful, waitress lady, that’ll solve all the world’s problems. If that’s really the best you have why would you even say anything? Just leave the dude alone, if he actually wanted help he wouldn’t be sitting around with a bunch of people he doesn’t even know.”

A softer voice murmured, no less strong for its quieter tone. “It’s another human being in obvious distress. Why would you not try to help? Maybe just the kindness itself is what he needs. Or maybe he wants a fucking glass of water. How would you know if you didn’t ask? What in the world could it possibly cost you to ask him if he needs help?”

“Well, but what if you asked him if he needed help and he needs, like, a ride somewhere far away? Or what if he needs money? Or what if something really awful just happened to him and he wants to talk about it?” Fretting and fussy, worried. “I never know what to say when people are like um, I have cancer, or, or my mom just died, then I look like an idiot, I don’t want to look like an asshole just because I don’t have the right thing to say, I can’t help with anything like that!”

The softer voice came back a little stronger, with a touch of exasperation now, a mom whose toddler did not listen to Samuel L. Jackson and shut the fuck up and go to sleep. “How in the world are you supposed to know what the man might need if you never ask him? If someone was lying on the ground bleeding out in front of you would you what-if him to death before helping him?”

Snarkasm jumped back into the fray with a scoff. “Please, that’s a life and death thing. You know damn well we do fine in crisis situations. That’s Logic and Practicality, that shit’s easy. This guy is freaking out, who knows, he’s probably crazy. Who the hell else is going to come in for breakfast and a meltdown? So let him freak out, someone will kick him out or call the cops or something, it’ll get handled.”

A grey voice threaded through the fray, hardly noticeable at first, until you couldn’t notice anything else. “It’s possible that this man will lose his mind and pull out a gun. Or a knife. Or go insane. It’s possible that there may be a mob looking for a door in a minute, so I suggest you notice viable exit routes. The man may pick up a fork and stab it right into his eye. Are you aware of the awful potential outcomes this situation has? I suggest that you drag your nose out of your coffee cup and go home.”

The other voices fell into a stunned silence. You never realized how long the insidious grey voice had held the mic until you were listening in rapt and horrified fascination to his stories, rooted and rotted in place.

Logic puffed up his chest and muscled his way to the front, prepared to end the debate. “Everything that you said is not only ridiculous but highly unlikely given the current circumstances. God, you’re such a dick, seriously. Why do you do that?”

Huffy now, the grey voice retorted snottily. “I’m not doing anything but trying to make sure that all possibilities are taken into consideration. No one wants to be caught unawares; you have to be prepared for any eventuality.”

“Not for a fork in the eye, you don’t. I’m pretty sure that we can safely leave that one in the don’t worry about it category. Anyways, all of this is merely academic, seeing as we don’t even have a situation anymore. The man is gone.”

I swung away from the counter and looked behind me. It was once again a quiet diner, a couple people eating some breakfast, reading the paper, conversations in booths maybe a little more intense than they had been before. I had no idea what had happened.

I waved vaguely at the same waitress who had offered the man a glass of water. “What happened to the guy that was just here, the one who was freaking out?”

She looked at me with a hint of disdain. “He wouldn’t tell me what was wrong, but he wrote down a number for me, so I called his son and got him to come pick him up about twenty minutes ago.”

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I was honored with the choice of the Master Class prompt this week, and while I originally reallyreallyreally wanted to use something of Guy Gavriel Kay’s I found that all of his first lines belong solely to him. So I went in a completely different direction with Peter Straub’s A Dark Matter.

I swear in real life. A lot. I get that some writer’s use curse words as a tool. I use them when it’s what I hear. It’s not to make a point, or to try to be cutting edge, it’s just how I talk. Not all stories are conducive to them, so they don’t come out, but when they do I use them. To me, they’re still just words that were made up like all the other ones, and just because someone once decided to call them bad doesn’t make them so. In my opinion 😉 I also realize there is some disparity in the ‘voices’, that some of them have names and some don’t. Some don’t deserve to be named, ha. Dirty little rats…

Written in tune with Lungs, Florence and the Machine

Thanks Anyways

 

Thanks Anyways…

The house stood on a slight rise just at the edge of the village. Behind the house there was a slightly rickety deck that boasted wooden lawn furniture pieced together from curb shopping in the fancier part of town and a view that boasted not much more than dirt.

A woman sat on one the chairs in a ratty bathrobe that jarred with the rest of her appearance. She clutched a tiny and grimy striped towel in her left hand like she was trying to wring its terry cloth neck. The battered Ford parked on the gravel to her right belonged to the Prefect of the local coven. It was not normally in their nature to have a Prefect and the title was made up and presumptuous, but it fed the man’s ego enough to keep him around to teach them what he knew, which was everything. He had promised them the ultimate answers, to life, the universe, everything.

As the woman raised the towel to dab at the corner of her mouth, the weak sunlight hit a swelling bruise on the side of her face and the towel added a drop of blood to the rest of its stains. She pulled her legs up underneath herself, smiled a smile that brought a twinge of pain, and hummed a tuneless little song as her mind roamed out and into the cosmos.

At a noise behind her she turned. A man stood in the back doorway to the house, leaning against the doorjamb with a sense of satiated self-congratulation. “I told you resistance was useless” he told the woman, who was called Tricia although she wasn’t very fond of it.

“Yes, Marvin, you are a veritable satyr of the glen. Being with you, one would almost think that you had a third arm and a second mouth and a brain the size of a planet to bring such creativity to the carnal pleasures of life.” She cut off with a giggle as he pounced on her, a mock roar as he nudged into the chair next to her.

“Your sarcastic hyperbole drives me crazy,” he muttered, nuzzling into her sweet smelling neck and breathing deep. “I am really sorry about your face though, beautiful. Not that I minded where you were headed but you surprised the shit out of me. So, ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for good thinking.”

“Yeah, well, next time don’t panic,” she muttered, still half giggling as his fingers danced the robe off of one bare shoulder. “What do you want to do today? I don’t have to work until four, so I’d like to enjoy some of the day first.” Her giggles hitched as his teeth grazed her skin and she shoved his head away. “No, you idiot, I want to enjoy outside today, it’s gorgeous and it’s perfect for you to show me that scrying spell you were talking about last week.”

Marvin stood with a good natured grumble, his own bathrobe in a slight sense of disarray that had nothing to do with his maneuvering on the chaise. “Blah blah blah! What’s the point of being a sexy bastard when all they want you for is your mind? Fine, go get dressed, five minutes or you’re gonna be undressed.”

“Sir, yes sir!” she snapped a smart salute and stood to follow him back inside. The house cats, Magra and Thea, came bounding up the deck stairs from wherever their nighttime ramblings had taken them and twined about her legs, almost sending her crashing down. “I swear to god, you idiots want to murder me don’t you?” She scratched each one of them between their ears and shoved them off. “Seriously, if you try to trip me on the stairs I’ll make kitschy little purses out of your hides.”

Marvin overheard the exchange as he came out of the bathroom and laughed. “You have yourself a heart of gold Tricia, truly. No wonder your spirit guide is an animal.” The cats ran over to him and meowed until he picked them both up and nuzzled their fur the same way he had just nuzzled Tricia’s neck moments ago. The smile on his face was genuine; cats might be assholes but when they loved you it was without reservation. At least until they get hungry and as their mewling turned plaintive he carried them off towards the kitchen.

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The sun dappled river bank was calm and the water sluggish. Overhanging branches provided both shade and obstacles as they made their way further into the quiet valley. Marvin held his hand out to stop Tricia’s movement and stood still for a moment. He closed his eyes, tilted his head back to face the sky and took a deep breath, holding it in his belly. As he let it out slowly, his hand dropped to his side and he folded gracefully to the ground, kneeling. “Here, this is perfect,” he said happily, and tugged Tricia down to kneel beside him.

From the laughing and loving man of this morning Marvin segued into the teacher, the lecturer, the Elder. At only 42, he was the youngest of the initiates and quite possibly the one with the most promise in centuries. If he could bring an apprentice along with him on his rise, he greatly wished for it to be Tricia. First, of course, there was a test to determine whether or not she could even sense the ether, let alone attempt to understand or direct it.

Filled with a complicated mixture of elation and gravity, Tricia knelt calmly and watched as Marvin’s fingers began to describe a series of complicated motions in the air before him. She felt a frisson of almost erotic excitement as she saw a faint disturbance around his hands, almost as if the symbols he was drawing on nothing were being written in the very air. She smiled openly as the hair on her arms stood up. Already she knew, she could see the ether, she could feel it. She had already passed the first test and only had to wait for Marvin to finish and see.

Marvin turned to her, ready to begin his instruction, and fell backwards as he gaped. “Tricia!” He righted himself and stared at her, disbelieving. It had to be impossible, or at the very least highly improbable. He felt his power pulling itself like invisible threads from every molecule in his body. Finite threads twisting and stranding into coiled ropes that started to flow into his fingertips and collect, coagulate. The ether around Tricia thickened until he was seeing her through a wavering distorted mist, could barely see the uncertain but smiling visage through the streams of power.

“You’re a Kavula!” Marvin screamed, trying to penetrate through the mist that seemed to be circling him, looking for a way in. Tricia’s head cocked, she pointed to her ear and shrugged. “You’re a Kavula, you must get away from me, now! You will kill me!”

Tricia tried to stand up, had to place a palm flat on the ground for assistance, gravity felt like it was working overtime to keep her in place. She couldn’t hear a word that Marvin was saying but from the stricken look on his face he obviously needed her help. Why wouldn’t her damn legs work? A tingling sensation had started in her feet, and her fingertips and her scalp, not unpleasant but somehow invasive. “What are you saying?” she yelled in frustration. “What are you saying?”

With so much of his power now housed in his extremities making any sort of purposeful motion look like a bag of skin that had no bones blowing in the wind, Marvin spelled the word in the air. The shimmering aftermath left behind now looked to Tricia like words written in fire. K.A.V.U.L.A.

“Oh, no, no, nonononononono!” she shrieked, trying to back away. The power was having none of it though, bursting through Marvin’s pores like sprays of sweat and blood and diving for Tricia. There was no pain, just sensations, filling her to the brim and beyond with an aura that overtook any essence that had belonged to Tricia alone. She wept, silently, as all that Marvin had taught her about Kavula’s was remembered. She wept as she killed him.

The Kavula were an ancient race, possibly the ancient race. It was said that working spells used to be as common as working the fields, and just as natural. Born with the source of all essential magics inside them, they were a peaceful people, rulers who did not hold themselves above those without. As life moved forward, as times got hard or the earth grew fallow, the Kavula decided to share their magic with carefully selected people. The apprenticeship training was hard and had many levels; generally only one out of five survived the first few levels. The ones that survived were imbued with a diluted source of magic, a gift freely given to those who had earned it.

The more the well of power was spread out, the less Kavula there were. Eventually there was one born maybe every century or two. It was possible for a Kavula to be born to unsuspecting parents and live out a completely normal lifespan and die just like anyone else. However, if one happened to be around a skilled Elder, or Prefect or Sage, the magic would recognize this original source and flee its bindings to inhabit its vessel once again. This procedure did not bode well for its current resident, who without fail did not survive.

Amidst of maelstrom of crackling energy, Tricia was finally able to move forward and lean down to kiss Marvin’s brow. A tear dripped from the tip of her nose onto his handsome face. “So long,” she whispered, “and thanks for all the tricks.”

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The Master Class prompt this week was chosen by David at the Scholarly Scribe. The fact that he chose the first line from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy made me like him even more than I already did. Douglas Adams is one of my all-time favorite authors that I can read and re-read countless times. The man was an intelligent hysterical comedic genius. I used as many references as I possibly could, and pulled some lines directly because they were my favorites, and this story is nothing but homage to his brilliance. Ha, one of the references I didn’t even realize I made at the time, and when I re-read it I admit my nerd sense tingled with my self-perceived cleverness (kind of like a spidey sense but with less sticky stuff).

Story powered by 1200 Micrograms, Live in Brazil. I’m pretty sure they’re aliens.