Death. Well deserved, at last, the few last serene moments in the wet grass as the world fades to black and I draw my last shivering breaths, laying down into the earth’s warm embrace, finding peace like an infant in its mother’s arms.

I put it all away: doubt, Now, I let IT feed me, the hands of the wind itself, Now, tell me that truth which I knew once as magic, and, sing me to sleep no more for this moon will not have lullabies for supper but bright symphonies for breakfast at Dawn, singing my self back to Life with the birds, fat on the honey-butter of Sun, you Know, I once came down this way, and you Know, I once knew my Name, so, I put it all away: doubt, and now choose to sing and not say what I have Found once again and after The Play I play I let there be silence and let there be the ringing of cedars and let there be the ding dinging of Bells, I put it all away: doubt, so don’t ask me what I know, Now, for I AM only beginning, which is to say, Living! like us all in the centre of a Mystery that does not end...

After air drop into an unfamiliar city, the sky was filled with long red strips like martial arts belts holding coats closed. Remaining outside by the pool, I nearly fell from the cheapest seats to discover it was unequaled for malicious pursuance. We bought tickets and embarked upon a bus and, so you could send a cheap gift anonymously via mail for a contractually mutually obliging arrangement wherein I supply a copy of my household unit income receipt for reimbursement for objects found around my house, thus ensuring my online reject cracked chocolate egg business not under any further scrutiny. My secret? Condensed milk! "That's just all come out wrong!" he complained to the police whilst making his confession. Few lived to tell of their experiences on 'Sentient Banana Island'. I knew I wished I hadn't. There really was no going back.

After sleeping for too long one afternoon the transformation became permanent, leaving him a goldfish within a sideshow attendant's prize, tied, clear plastic bag, filled with water and realising it was being carried by a hand on the end of an arm through a city full of air breathers. It's been raining and someone's listening carefully to the sound. It's too late to back out now. Every time I fell asleep he gained the upper hand in our game, one verging on the virtual expiration of myself. A complex dental hygiene related situation to which her only response was in hiding all of her family's cadavers in the soft sand at the back of the beach and my forfeiture to her of my part in their inheritances which made for a deal wholly unattractive to my sensibilities. The only known method by which we might extinguish the influence of these, recently uncovered witchcraft spell-imbued artifacts over our lives was to note, via photograph, the length of each other's hair, (as seen from behind) and then to compare. We could find no reason to go back and even less to stay, as over my shoulder I threw back in a lit match.

Not long after I lay down to sleep did they come in and start making noise, playing records and boisterously talking, muffled after doors closed; then again came silence from their end of the house.

It was as I drifted off to sleep that I recalled living alone.

As I returned to my seat I noticed through a cabin window, two airline pilot uniform wearing parachutists, quite obviously recently ejected from our plane through a pair of still open emergency exit doors, followed by a disconcertingly squealed message from a befuddled air hostess through the plane's intercom, requesting anyone on board with even the most rudimentary of flight training skills to, "Please assemble beside the cockpit door hatch".

I think there is a problem with my eyes. Wherever I turn, they seem to be searching. Always searching, always seeking, that familiar black hair, those mesmerizing brown eyes, that charming smile. Always wondering when they will get to see you again, to soak in your presence, to bask in your brilliance.

I think there is a problem with my ears. Wherever I go, they seem to be listening. Always listening, ever so keenly, for that familiar voice, that silky smooth tone, those captivating words. Always wondering when they will get to hear you again, to drink in your speech, to relish in your words.

I think there is a problem with my head. Wherever whenever, lost in thought, in fantasies, in delusions of you. Always thinking, always dreaming of you. Only you.

I think there is a problem with me. Wherever whenever, I can’t stop myself from looking for you. Can’t stop myself from scanning the crowd in hopes for finding you. Can’t stop myself from smiling every time I think of you. Can’t stop or won’t stop, I am not sure. But there is one thing I’m certain of. I’m certain that there is something wrong with me and it is all because of you.

"The problem is not doubt," he said over the sound of the wind. "I'd dearly love to feel any kind of doubt." The rest of them backed away from the bow as the waves broke over the railing with increasing violence. None of us knew how long the thing would remain seaworthy, how long we had, only that it was not going to be long enough. But he was the expert, hired to get us across in safety, and now that it seemed impossible all he could do was explain why he was never wrong, could never be wrong. The young ones didn't cry, but some of their parents did. All he could do was stare into the horizon, at the approaching whirlwind, and try to find doubt.

"I like the sound of the flute, but not the sound of the price" he said with a grin. "I'm wondering if there is any wiggle room here." The man shook his head in sadness. No, he said, the price is the price. If you pay less you'll never love the instrument. He didn't actually say that of course, nobody ever does, but that was the message nonetheless. A lot of people were paying attention to the seller, and the flute player that could not afford the flute. You might think that that at least one of them, having enjoyed the music he made so much, would speak up in his behalf. But nobody did. They waited in silence for something else, someone else to resolve the problem. Maybe they were waiting on you.

Imagine thousands of mosquitoes in your veins ingurgitating your blood slowly until there’s none left and you die from blood loss. But when you enter your next life you become a mosquito and you are then forced to usurp the veins of your loved ones from your previous life just like the mosquitoes that killed you before.

After I finished my story she said "I'm nothing like her." She held her hand up, palm toward me, as if to punctuate her point. "I would never accuse you, or even talk to you like that." Her hand began to wiggle, making "never" in the air. I didn't say anything right away, and that was probably my mistake. I saw her face darken, the growing resentment pricking up in lines on her forehead. "What, are you implying something? Just say it, then. Just say it." I didn't. I knew how this worked from years and years of experience. I just needed her to tire, to fade, to allow her other to emerge. Then the argument would be the other way around.

We joke online about “first-world problems,” but we really have become victims of our own success. Stress-related health issues, anxiety disorders, and cases of depression have skyrocketed over the past thirty years, despite the fact that everyone has a flat-screen TV and can have their groceries delivered. Our crisis is no longer material; it’s existential, it’s spiritual. We have so much fucking stuff and so many opportunities that we don’t even know what to give a fuck about anymore. Because there’s an infinite amount of things we can now see or know, there are also an infinite number of ways we can discover that we don’t measure up, that we’re not good enough, that things aren’t as great as they could be. And this rips us apart inside.

The playground was a wild cacophany of violence. These were the children that had suvived the first attacks, and thus were the strongest of all. The horizon glowed purple with ionization and the air smelled like metal. They had, as children do, segregated themselves into genders. The boys jostled for control while the girls made plans. There was no supervision anymore, of course, and they knew it. There was no question what was about to happen, only a matter of sequence and velocity. The hopeless world waited on the outcome. This was the final generation, the end of history. In a few moments someone would begin.

How grand it would be to sit all alone under the expansive sky and watch the clouds of possibilities go by and by without a care in the world beyond the rich passing of time, bathed in rays of sunshine like armor made but only for this very moment. Towering summit, face growing old in glorious panoramic, shrink the distance between us to something negligible if you can. Please, by all means, take your time tracing each of our paths through the valley of the shadow of your rearview mirror, for we can only watch and wait in stitches of wonder.

He took a backpack and walked aimlessly: he sought to find his emotions. All day he walked, and most of the nights too. The moon's beauty, the view from the bridge, the streets' musicians none gifted him the power to feel. On his journey he thought writing on a journal would help him find what he wanted most, but his verses had the taste of paper, and his mind remained mute. He became weaker and weaker as the days went by. Now the pain in his legs mocked his quest. The silence he was in often made him doubt he still had a voice. Years went by he became an old looking man. His face saw so many beautiful things, and he travelled many lives worth of times. But nowhere, physical or mental, did he find something to feel. He returned to the city he bid farewell to long time ago. His only valuable treasure was his journal, which like a chest contained his life. It was only on the last time he would suffer climbing stairs that it occurred to him he did feel. All he ever felt was deep sadness, he sketched a quick smile on his face reached to his treasure chest to write his conclusion.But the exhaustion of climbing struck his chest and the heart in it. All that was left were the pages he wrote on, from these someone took the words and made many tears fall all around the world.

The man who lived next door when I was 7 rarely left his house any farther than the curb. Deiter. His mailbox had no name on it, so Deiter was all we knew. My mother would shade my eyes when he went to check the mail because he always did it in his tightie whities, which did little to contain his bulbous scrotum. He looked so old to me, but then all adults do when you're 7. The day that Deiter stopped checking that mailbox turned out to be the day he died, and my father called the authorities after two days to check on him. The looks on their faces when they came back out of his house still haunts me to this day. That, and the smell that emerged when they left his front door open.

The sun reaches over the bleak horizon, barren and unforgiving. A man pulls his mask off to reveal a mournful expression with the slight glimmer of hope at the rising sun, as heat washes over him he smiles and basks in its light, the shock waves rippling through his flesh and the gusts of violent and destructive wind wash away all that is left. There is no more, everything that defined this world, this reality that this man had lived in and struggled to continue in for so long a mere speck of dust on the ground. what next can only be described as the bliss of silence, the echoes of nothing, the deafening roar of a world held still. The fat man stands up and brushes the dust off of his shorts.

I plunged deep into the sea. Down into the abyss to find beauty. To find rich haunting depths. I sank deeper into the breaches of hollowed alien waters. Confidently, i fell, trusting my count, my heading, my hoses. Secured the gear myself; It didn't matter. It only showed me clearly who's fault it was when the gauges fell and the tank began to bleed. I froze in fear that gave way to panic. An accelerated burn. A fire in the lungs. And I kick now desperately toward the light above. Toward air, wishing I even knew how to swim.

Bonnies billboard,“Bonnie’s big blunt business”, bolted below bills billboard,“bills broad branch bank” began being belittled by bellowing businesses. Bosses believed Bonnie’s billboard brought bills bank bad business

The tumor, a treacherous torment of true terror trembling throughout Tim’s tonsils, turned terminal Tuesday

Carl courageously, carefully, and collectively called a cab cause casual conversations created certain circumstances circling his cranium causing a catastrophic collapse of Carl’s conscious.

 "The End," said the book I was reading. I flipped the page over, reading the About the Author and the Synopsis on the back, thinking "that can't possibly be how it ends. I've been reading this book for months and it doesn't answer any questions." I read the last paragraph over and over again looking for clues, or answers, only to find nothing. With disgust I closed the hard covered novel.

A recurring feature of daily life here is the resolution of conflicts through ritualized mock violence. Today I saw two men settle an argument over who was first in line at a food cart by having a "sword fight" using "swords" fashioned from lengths of dried cornstalk (which all the men and most of the women carry with them in the city as a matter of routine.) At the conclusion of the fight, both participants enjoyed a hearty laugh, and the loser dutifully moved to the back of the queue, ostentatiously clutching his "wound". The winner sang one of the popular Victory Songs (with, as is traditional, lyrics partially improvised to fit the situation at hand) for the benefit of the crowd of passersby who had stopped to watch, which included several delighted children. My guide reminded me that as recently as fifty years ago, the same procedure would have been carried out using actual swords. It occurred to me that I had not seen a proper sword (or gun, or bow, or battle-axe) since arriving here. It is impossible for me to judge how well the two warriors I saw today would have acquitted themselves if they had been properly armed, but one thing I am certain of is that if any of the nations to the South should invade again, they won't be carrying cornstalks.

From long ago, an over spill of concrete concealed by purple-headed Scotch thistles at the edge of an expanding suburbia, devoid of personage on a grey plane-skied, thundering afternoon, darkening, but without a single falling drop of rain. She permeates dreams where you're angry about some injustice and seek to take revenge, always arriving to explain she's already enacted your revengeful task beforehand. Little dogs frightened by the thunder. A lost signet ring reappeared at the bottom of a staircase to be stepped over, unnoticed. Afternoon break at the discount brand dog food factory. We all at once remembered and fell silent.

When I sabotaged the bridge an hour ago I had felt no guilt, or remorse. The train that would be coming over the tracks up top was a freight. It would come with a skeleton crew of operators and signalmen, and a number of armed men. They would kill me if I tried to take what I wanted and I wanted what they were guarding real bad. It had taken an hour to get down the hill to the corpse of the train. Now that I stood and took in the wreckage I figured I did not have to worry about armed men. I could see a large group of wolves sniffing for a way into the engine car. I smiled, and wished them luck. I turned. Somewhere in this train was the car carrying the lead urn which contained my heart. Months and years and even decades of effort had finally paid off.

The train sheared off of and away from the tracks so cleanly that for one weightless moment I thought my eyes must be the thing that were in error. Then the noise hit me. It was so loud that loud is not a word anyone would ever use to describe it. A crash like Gods own hand had fell on the land, and then a roaring, tearing, screech as it thrashed its way into the valley. The sight of it reminded me of a snake with a broken back that i had seen once. A whole lot of badness twisting trails in the land about it.

In a faraway town located where, on the horizon, sun and the moon appear simultaneously for a soupçon of time, and where a copper wall has been erected to dissuade the inhabitants from departing, has been experiencing anthropomorphism of objects & chremamorphism of humans.

One of the locals, who has been licking the wall in the hopes of moistening and ultimately carving a gorge through it says that since the last forty days a mystifying event has been occurring; humans are developing features akin to that of mundane objects and mundane objects are becoming more anthropoid.

“The outré occurring was first observed when one of my acquaintances, who used to, alongside with me, lick the wall, but because of excessive licking developed a condition that led to occasional crystallization of the tongue, came one morning disquieted and demonstrated that the skin on his arms had metamorphosed into a plastic like material and that he had to use alcohol, apple cider vinegar and bicarb soda while douching to cleanse it.”

Another local, who claims to have spent thirty-three days beneath the waters by way of meditation and learnt the language of fishes, says that one of his chairs, built from bones of fishes he collected while he was meditating beneath the waters, has grown human skin and that in hot and humid temperatures the chair even precipitates.

“It happened overnight, when the moon was full and the silver effulgence of the moon enshrouded each and every object that existed in the town. At the dayspring, when the incandescence was smooth and purplish, I saw that the surface of the chair had been transmogrified into something similar human skin, and when upon touching, I could palpably feel that the surface of the chair was moisture-laden and that it even had hairs, the texture of which was akin to that of human netherhair.”

According to the senior citizenry of the town one of the reasons as to why the town is experiencing an event as bizarre this is that humans have forsaken the Transcendent, and therefore the Transcendent has forsaken them, and that they have abandoned the ancient adage that humans are in this world but not of this world. The corollary of which is that the idiosyncrasy which made humans what they are is gradually being transubstantiated, and the manifestation of this is that the humans in the town are ceasing to be humanoid, and they will eventually become mundane, quotidian and banausic objects that will be left to putrefy first existentially, and then materially.

We came down in Plaster City. The helicopters kicked up debris as they touched down on the dried lake bed, and we piled out into the heat. I had the med satchel, and everyone took note of where I was as I moved through the victims. Each was curled up like a shrimp, fingers extended like they were reaching for a pen, but they didn't move. We danced around them, looking for anyone that might still be breathing, and every EMT continued to glance my way. They knew I had the drugs. They wanted to know what to do. I was methodical, I was precise, I turned again and again as the whipping wind pressed against us. There was no pattern that I could see, even though we were told there would be one. The only question was long how to stay, how long to pretend. We came down in Plaster City.

"I didn't think I was following her, but I guess I was," he said to the police. She was down on the ground, but he didn't see any blood on her. He remembered the game, the kids running around stabbing at the ball with their legs, and the screaming parents shaking their fists at the referees. Lots of blood on those knees, lots of violence in those screams. The cops went along with their process, gathering bits of him and her into bags using their blue-gloved hands, but they didn't really say anything or even look at him. He was the guy, he was guilty, and the machine had started to run. There was no stopping it.