What the Fuck is this Shit?

This better be good, is the first thing anyone thinks when reading a story, and I can assure you, this is not a good story. It starts in a coffee shop, which is not well described, because it is a boring, everyday coffee shop, where two people, who are equally boring, sit and talk. They have had an argument – you just missed it – and they are now both sitting without speaking, trying to think how they got to this point. So the story starts at a denouement. Awful. This must be the work of an MFA student, you think. It seems awfully experimental. Why aren't there any wizards?


Which is the problem you see, aside from the fact they’re not wizards, is that they never even existed before this point, before the first words at the top of this page. They're not even real. I could tell – er, show – that they are real. Describing them adeptly, various little nuances you might not have thought of before, the way the man wipes at a cut on his chin he gave himself when shaving this morning in a hurry to see the woman who now sits across from him.


Ideally, there’d be some action soon.


The man – shaggy hair, his eyes a bit uneven, but good looking all the same, strong square jaw, chin, nose, whatever floats your boat – looks at the woman – who is, in his estimation, smokin' hot – says, “I'm sorry. I'm sorry I yelled.”


She takes his hand and presses his knuckles. Smiling her buttery lips, she says, “I'm sorry, too.”


Buttery? Well, she's eating a scone, not coated, but literally drenched in butter. There is so much, it puddles on the plate. Delicious.


The scone is actually not that good. She thinks it must have been just de-thawed. What kind of place freezes their scones?


Well, they made up. That's great. Now there's really no story.


Wait. Someone is screaming. Oh, it's just the barista and his coffee maker, who is making a latte while thinking about how much longer he has until his shift is over and he can go home to his new girlfriend and fuck her. She has a big round ass and a soft, pale face; her porcelain features cradle large eyes that sparkle like emeralds. A real-life doll. He met her in his film studies class, sitting together in the back, in the dark, trying not to laugh at the crying woman in Battleship Potemkin. They just started dating. It's going well. Their sex is good and unlike his last girlfriend she eats with her mouth closed.

Anyway, that's not the point.


The couple, they're still fine. No screaming. Almost had a moment of excitement there. This cannot go on much longer. TV is pretty exciting these days and you are contemplating whether you should watch it. I hear there are new shows on Netflix. Twitter beckons. You consider closing this and tweeting about that thing you saw at the bus stop the other day. No, I should call my mom, you (the agitated reader) think. When did you last do that?


Ugh. I need a shower, I think, not you, me, the writer. It's already 12, and I'm disgusting, but it’s also my day off, so whatever. Fuck you.


I'm sorry. I should not have said that. You have to respect your reader.


This is definitely an MFA project, you think. (I'm not in an MFA program or anything. I do have a BFA, however, but in Art, not Writing.) Well, you think, that explains it! I hate your type, you think. Why can’t you just write a nice story about wizards?


Let's get back to it. The man, who is an idiot – well, you can't just say he's an idiot. Have to show that. Ugh... This is exhausting. This is why they film movies.


Okay, trying again. The man says, “I am right, though, you know. About what I said.”


There. He's an idiot.


His wife – no, mistress slash lover, girlfriend, sex slave, object of desire, female plot device – is upset by this. She scoffs, spits out some scone crumbs, then says, “I can't believe you! I cannot!”


She cannot believe him.


When she scoffs, her face reminds him of their last tryst; face muscles melting into relaxation, mouth pouring forth such sweet moans of euphoria, lips of circular symmetry, a repeated expression marking the passage of time with every meaningful thrust. And make no mistake, he did mean them.


An old man sitting at a nearby table who has no bearing on this story other than background decoration, shushes them. He is trying to enjoy a game of checkers with his grandson, who keeps glancing at the woman of the story, checking her breasts out, which push against the fabric of a tight fitting t-shirt.


In the checkers match, the old man is dominating his grandson, taking great pleasure in crushing the little shit. The grandson, still staring at the woman, trying to imagine her nipples, at a mere 12 years of age has seen more naked women than his grandfather has seen in 80 years, but not in person, on the screen of his iPhone, which he stares at constantly, especially at night, under the covers, his eyes consuming various acts of fornication, the light washing out his cherubic features, the painted women obliterating his brief innocence with fake cries of passion; an approximation of what men want, a facsimile of love. The little shit has already seen over fifty gang bangs and two hundred deep throats and, having grown bored of that, has started searching for rape.


He has not read a book in his life.


He will never read a book, ever, and consider his lack of reading an accomplishment, which he will announce to people at strange and off-putting moments, such as during a disastrous first date or during his English class where upon announcing this the Korean exchange student sitting across the room will roll her eyes and wonder why she can’t meet a man who loves to read, imagining how they could read together in bed between violent fuck sessions; her being a budding S and M enthusiast, she’d like nothing more than to be slapped around a bit, but also intellectually stimulated, she's never sure which she needs more of on any given day.


Not only will the grandson miss out on this young woman, (not that he ever had a chance) but he will also miss out on novels like Germinal, 1984, Tess of d’Urbervilles, Egan’s Goon Squad, David Sedaris, In Cold Blood, and so many other stories. His life will be completely hollow and devoid of meaning other than how many kills he gets in his video games, which are more murder simulators, but don’t call them that, because the internet nerds will get up in arms and bombard your Twitter with obnoxious screaming


At the age of 35, he will scream at the television while he plays Call of Duty and scratch himself between slurps from his Mountain Dew and do fuck all with his life, eventually dying in a terrible car accident, he drunk, the other driver, not drunk, sober, a graduate student with great potential studying a rare disease, tragically taken from her parents, who will wonder if there is a novel that will be able to soothe the pain they cannot get rid of, and lucky for them, there are many, and they will read them, and feel somewhat better, but not much better, because that kind of tragedy is never really resolved outside of digging up the fucker’s grave who killed your daughter, reviving him and blowing his brains out.


That last sentence was 132 words too long. And you're bored.


“Fuck your grandson!” shouts the man with the shaving injury, who as you can now see is definitely an idiot.


The woman sitting across from him pulls her hand away from his, gasps and says, “Don’t talk that way to the poor pervert child!”


The grandson guffaws, finding the exchange to be quite unexpected and hilarious. He is not offended at all. Nothing offends him. His mind is already cracked. On the internet, he’s seen a young woman’s face torn off and laughed. The result of a terrible car accident. What difference does it make to him? None of these people are real.


In the car crash that kills him, he’ll be decapitated, photographed, and then passed around the darker parts of the internet as a macabre punch-line. They will laugh at him. They being angry white males on message boards dedicated to wasting time who complain about women and minorities while they stew in their body's unwashed filth. They who see themselves as victims of a society who has turned against them, not accepting their way of life, which is to not live, to not love, to certainly not exercise, and to basically wait until they are dead. These men also do not read, but they are full of ideas, which are verified by others just like them, who similarly do not read and have never had an original thought of their own, and stew in their bodily fluids, spilled lattes, flatulence, body hair, and shit-stained undergarments. In a world without wisdom, empathy, or pause for self-contemplation, only the most shocking ideas gain traction, and these men are full of them.


Years later, the grandson, sometime between dominating the Call of Duty leader boards and killing a promising grad student with his car, will find himself under the covers of his fouled bed, frantically jerking off, desperately trying to make himself feel something. For material, he will think back to the Korean girl in his English class, which will make the coming easier. However, when he goes to sleep, she will have her revenge in a terrifying nightmare in which she cuts his dick off, and he will wake up with a start, and then, checking to see if it were a dream or not, find that in the place of his dick is a bloody stump.


He will scream, and the light will come on, and standing above him will be that same Korean girl, who will be laughing, knife in one hand, bloody severed dick in the other.


Naturally, he’ll wake up from this dream too, though that’s up to you.


The smokin’ hot woman with the tight t-shirt, in a moment of clarity, agency, and self-actualization, flees; after four pages finally understanding that this has all been a terrible mistake, and she wants no part of it.


I – and you – agree, and so move on, both deciding to take a shower if only to take a break from all this shit around us. Whatever the fuck it is.

Stories

Gamer

Being held back four years in high school isn't a big deal. A lot of kids in this country are still in high school at my age. I saw it on the news. When the report came on the TV, my mom, an incredibly obese woman who received 700 dollars checks every month from the government, yelled at me in her labored voice, huffing and screaming, “Billy! Come down! There's someone dumb as you in Alabama!”

I went downstairs to catch the last bit of it. The newscaster, an alluring Japanese woman with ruby red lips I yearned to smooch, shook her head and said, “That poor stupid overgrown child.”

“Momma, I ain't nothing like that man. I am intelligent and well-read.”

“No you ain't, boy. You's a god damned idiot! I sure wished I had that abortion.”

“Whatever, MOM! At least I don't weigh, like, six hundred fucking pounds!”

Momma began crying profusely at this cutting and insightful jab. I often commented on how fat she was only to watch her cry. Satisfied with myself, I went back upstairs to play some more DoTA 2. DOTA 2 is an incredibly complex video game created by several of the greatest minds of our century. It requires the most intelligent types of minds to excel. I am currently one of the highest ranked players, I'll have you know. Which means my brain capacity is enormous and that I have an IQ of at least 190.

I yelled some stupid shit at the screen that you wouldn't understand, because the concepts and strategies of DOTA 2 are all well beyond your feeble grasp, dumb reader. I had been put on a team of morons, so we lost by a ton. Irate that I would be wronged so deeply, I closed the game, and went to their forums, where I could voice my dissent that subhumans would attempt to play this game. Two hours later, I had crafted a truly earth shattering diatribe.

It was 3 AM and Momma yelled at me to go to bed, as I had school tomorrow.

“Shut up, Mom! You're not my boss!”

I finally went to sleep at 5 AM, but only after watching several hours of DOTA 2 videos and arguing on Reddit about DOTA 2. If it were not for this video game to fill the hours of my pointless life, I do not know what I would do.

Sometimes at night when I think about all the video games I had played, I wondered if I had not made a terrible mistake. Certainly being a 20 year old 11^th grader could somehow be connected to this, I thought, but fortunately I am always able to dash these thoughts out of my mind and get some solid shut eye. When I slept, I had a dream. It was of a girl I knew from the local video game store. She has huge honkin' tits.

In the morning I ate cereal and had some beer, even though Momma did not want me to.

On the bus, some freshman girls made fun of me for being 20 years old, but I ignored them by staring out the window and counting how many fast food restaurants we passed. Eight, to be exact, and everyday, my mom eats at all of them.

At school, I pissed myself.

Political Ad

Wide shot of me, in cowboy hat, on horse standing in open prairie.

Cut to close up on face. Face is to right side of screen. Plains behind.

Now, I talk to camera and say: "Fellow Americans, my candidate is a really nice guy. In fact, if I were not running for congress, I would choose him, except I am running for congress, so I must choose me. In addition to being a nice guy, my opponent is a loving father and has made wise decisions about several bills which I would agree with. In addition, he is much better looking than myself and he is better at several sports than I am. Did you know that he volunteers his time to visit the sick and elderly, it's true. He is a man of character and he has my vote, or he would, but I am running against him and considering that I would like to win, I suggest you vote for me, as I will do when November 2nd comes. Thank you for your time and if you see my opponent walking the streets, please shake his hand and ask how his daughter is doing. I understand she has recently broken her leg. Very sad."

Words, words, words!!!

One Chair

She stared at the chair for a long time. She couldn't believe it, the chair only had three legs. Three! She snatched the catalog off her bed to double check, and sure enough, comparing the chair's image and the actual chair sitting before her, she saw that, in the catalog -- the ideal version, the chair had four legs, not three. Or maybe not? She looked closer at the photo. She assumed that there was a fourth leg but the photo's angle obscured the fourth leg, which apparently, as she could clearly see now, never existed at all. Wait, no, impossible! All chairs had four legs. She wondered what kind of company would sell a three legged chair anyway.

She had looked forward to getting this chair for two whole agonizing weeks. Yes, agony is what the wait was like. Everyday she drove home as fast as she could to see if her new chair had arrived. She had the lone chair for so long. This addition was key but now, after so much waiting, pining, she still only had one chair. Well, one and three-fourths chairs to be precise. This would not do. It would not do at all. She had been planning on having guests, or at least one guest, a very special guest -- the checkout girl. She would sit in the old chair and her guest, the girl with the pretty eyes from the checkout, would sit in the new chair, and she would say to her, "Do you like my new chair?"

The checkout girl would respond politely and say, "Yes, this is a good chair." Or something like that, she didn't know her all that well really. The checkout girl only ever asked her how her day was going and smiled while ringing up the groceries. She once commented on how nice her sweater was but she knew it was ridiculous to assume that it was anything more than her being a nice checkout girl.

How could she invite anyone over and expect them to sit in a three legged chair? She grabbed the phone. She needed to talk to someone. A customer service representative, that was it. After pressing the corresponding buttons to reach the correct area of support she was greeted by a soft spoken but generally helpful sounding man.

Studying the four legged chair in the catalog, trying to spot that fourth leg, she said, "Hi, hello, your chair, the one I bought out of your catalog. It only has three legs."

"Does it? Well that won't do."

"Yes, only three. I need another leg. Could you send it to me please?"

"Well, can I get your first and last name, the product code, serial number, and the date of purchase?"

Her heart sunk when she heard these words. She had already tossed the packaging into the trash incinerator down the hall. It was gone, irretrievable. "I don't have those things. I burned them."

"Well, I'm sorry to hear that ma'am, but I need these items before I can send you the fourth leg."

She sat down in her old chair. It was red and dusty. It had been with her for seven years. Picking at the fraying fibers on the arm of the chair she said, "Well, can I just describe the chair to you?"

"I'm sorry, I need more information than that. You can send the chair back, well, no you can't, you burned the box."

"This chair was very important to me and you don't care."

"Oh, I'm sure it was and I do care. I have a chair of my own and I often think of it fondly."

"Are you mocking me?"

"No ma'am, my first child was born in that chair."

"Oh, that's, well, that's fine. Congratulations."

"Well, it was ten years ago, but thank you."

There was a pause as she tried to come up with a way to wrangle a fourth leg out of this conversation but she knew it was hopeless. She glanced at her new chair, where it sat lamely on the floor, unable to perform the one simple task expected of it. She thought about the checkout girl sitting in the chair, it seemed ridiculous now. How was she going to pose the question anyway? "Want to come over to my house and sit in my new chair?" Absurd! Clearly, she had not thought this through. She had not thought about it reasonably, no checkout girl ever wanted to be asked such things, to be put in such an awkward position. Thankfully, receiving this useless chair had given her reason to pause and consider her actions, sparing her the embarrassment. Despite the loss of $65.99, she recognized the blessing, and knew it was for the best. This chair was meant to have three legs, just as the checkout girl was meant to ask her how her day was, and she, at least for now, was meant to sit at home alone with her single chair.

The customer rep said, "Is there anything else?"

"Um, no, forget it." She hung up and sat, trying to decide what to do about the chair. She thought about going to the supermarket to buy some eggs, but she didn't need any more eggs. She already had five cartons. With no chair there would be no special guest. It was time to put her fantasies of checkout girls in new chairs and conversations about chairs to an end.

She stood up, grabbed the three legged chair, walked out of her apartment, down the hall, and into the trash room. The room was dimly lit and the floor was coated in a thin layer of gritty dust. The smell of uneaten pizza lingered in the air. She lifted the chair above her head and smashed it against the floor until all of the legs had broken off. Then she tossed the pieces down the chute, into the incinerator, forever ridding herself of the useless object and the notion of a visiting checkout girl with it. She went back to her apartment, sat down in her old chair, that, despite being old, was quite comfortable.

It's September.

The Man who Said Nothing

He was belligerent, irrational, idiotic.

"Orwell is dead and no one cares about him!"

Everyone stopped to stare at him, not one of them said a word, not out of shock toward this statement, but out of the hope that if no one responded, this obnoxious man would, quite simply, shut the fuck up. He had been saying things like this all night and everyone was tired of it. They just wanted to have a nice peaceful, semi-intoxicated evening, perhaps play some video games. The last thing on anyone's agenda was to have a drawn out discussion on the merits of literature because really, who cares about that shit? Who!? Apparently this man did, and far too much it seemed. Sure they appreciated the discussion of literature now and then but people -- fraudulent people -- often brought up literature out of some misguided desire for acceptance or self-validation rather than the desire to discuss one of the world's finest, most honest forms of art, and this, this self serving, intellectual masturbation, this desire to discuss purely for the advancement of one's own image was painfully evident in the way this man spoke. Yeah, Saul Bellow wrote some great books and you read them, but what difference does it make to anyone other than yourself?

No one knew who he belonged to or who brought him to this party. He just seemed to have shown up on his own accord, or rather stumbled upon, considering how drunk he was. One of the women nodded slightly though she did not know why. A reflex perhaps? The woman was beautiful but she spent a lot of time worrying about her looks, perhaps a desire to be prettier? Granted her nose was a tad large but most people easily overlooked this as it was simply a character flaw, a deviation from beauty, rather than a deal breaking disfigurement.

Aside from this woman's simple gesture the group stayed quiet, hoping, praying, that this unwanted, unshaven, balding, unattractive, bad minded, generally distasteful man would walk away and bring his inane ideas with him. When he spoke he blasted you with the scent of a rotting corpse in a late summer afternoon. The scent matched his ideas in quality.

The unwanted man continued once more, "No one reads books anymore! Doesn't anyone care!?"

"Prove it!" said one young man, quite a bit better dressed than everyone else. You might even have said he was god damned gorgeous. He had no girlfriend to speak of but would likely have one before the night was through. You could tell, just by glancing at him, that he was confident, self assured, mentally stable -- at least superficially. He licked his lips because they had remnants of chocolate pudding on them. People often said he had a heart of gold, so kind he was, like a knight. The words of kindness flowed forth out of him and everyone loved him for it. In any situation, if there was a right thing to say you can be sure he said it. Perhaps, at this moment, his best feature was that he had no qualms challenging a drunken moron.

The man was slow to answer but when he finally did, he said, "Prove it? I...what? Prove it!? Well, I...I can't prove it. I just know these things. I know many things! I read them in a book!"

Four Hundred and Eighty Two...

Happy thoughts!

Four Hundred and Thirty Five...

Excerpt

Coach indignantly ripped the mike out of Powers hand and, turning to his audience, said, "If you want to go to a basketball game then go to a basketball game, if you want to stay home and eat potato chips, then do that. Actually don't do that. I've noticed a lot of students in this school have become quite fat lately and I think it's important we take a moment to appreciate sports not for the chanting and popularity but for the fact it keeps you from turning into a lard ass. You know, I really have to wonder sometimes what your parents feed you. God damn, eat a vegetable. Now-"

Powers was grasping at the mike but Coach planted a hand on his face and pushed him away.

"What are you doing Powers? Stop it I'm giving my speech, you'll have your turn. As I was saying...dammit, lost my train of thought... Fuck it, now, I want to talk about video games. I hear about these video games all the damn time and I'm getting sick of it. Humans were not meant to sit in front of a screen vegetating away controlling fake characters racking up fake points, we're humans, we're animals – if Darwin is to be believed – and I think it's time we start living like animals, not as vegetables. Eat vegetables, don't live-"

"Ah, thanks for that rousing spee-"

Coach snatched the mike back and said, "I'm not done. As I was saying, don't live as a vegetable, you won't be young forever and someday you'll look up from your high score and be old, bloated, and ugly and you'll wonder, you'll wonder to yourself where the time went and you'll wish you knew what living in the real world was like." Coach scratched his head for a moment, thinking of what other things he needed to say. "Now I've also noticed that kids are spending far too much time in the hallway during lunch time, you kids need to get outside and run around and stop blocking my hall way. Go get some exercise it burns fat. I tripped over a girl the other day as many of you know. I kicked her in the head, knocking her out for several minutes. Now I didn't mean to but I did and I think it would help if you kids went outside at lunch instead of taking naps in the middle of the floor. I'm just saying. Well, what else? Our basketball team sucks and we'll probably lose but we play hard and love the game. If you want to watch kids who have fun doing what they love, come and watch my basketball team, if you want to root for a team because they're winning – fair weather fans as their known – then go to the football games, I don't really care either way, I'm drunk."

Coach tossed the mike to Powers and walked off the court, marched up the stands, and squeezed half his butt back onto his small portion of bench.

Three Hundred and Thirty...

A Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich

"The creation of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is quite simple and can sometimes be fun. George would you hand me the bread?"

George reached into the cupboard and pulled out a bag of Wonder Bread. He tossed it to me and I caught it.

"Thank you George. Now, we'll open the bag and pull out two slices of bread and lay them face down on the counter." I placed the pieces of bread gently on the counter.

"Now, George, retrieve for me the peanut butter from the cupboard."

George stared at me for a moment. He looked confused.

"The cupboard, George."

George spun in a circle, stopped, grasped the cupboard, threw it open, and pulled out a jar of Smucker's Raspberry Jelly. He placed it in my hand.

"Is the peanut butter in the fridge again?"

He nodded solemnly.

"Get the peanut butter out of the fridge!"

He swung the fridge open and tossed the peanut butter to me. I caught it and set it next to the jelly. Unsealing the lid of the peanut butter, I took a knife and stuck it into the jar, the peanut butter was hard and resisted my knifing, but I managed to liberate a fair amount. I placed it on the bread and began to spread it. The hardened peanut butter clung to the bread and tore it slightly.

I looked at George, "Do you see this!? Do you see what happens when you put the peanut butter in the fridge?"

George nodded and hung his head.

The peanut butter was applied. I replaced the cap on the peanut butter and moved to open the jelly. The lid would not budge. Damn the safety seal.

"George, open this for me."

George took the jar and forcefully turned the lid. He gritted his teeth and strained, twisting with all his might, blood vessels bulged in his neck, but the jar was stubborn and would not come open. He lifted it above his head and slammed it on the counter.

"Stop! What are you doing!? Stop doing that George!"

He continued slamming the jar until it shattered into a mess of glass and jelly. He looked at me and shrugged. I shook my head, this would have to do. Taking my knife, I reached over and carefully scooped up some jelly off the counter. George pulled the fridge open and began to dig through it, pulling items out and placing them on the counter. Cheese, pickles, salami, whip cream, ham, a bottle of grape juice, syrup, everything it seemed.

"The sandwich is complete George, there are no more ingredients," I reminded him, concentrating on balancing the jelly on my knife. I reached the bread without any spillage and plopped the chunky red substance onto the peanut butter which sat atop the bread.

"There! Now we-

George eased a thin slice of ham atop the sandwich.

"George! Stop it! That's not right!"

George had a pickle in his hand now and he set this on top of the ham. My jaw dropped. Before I could think to push him away, George had spread Nutella over everything. I wanted to stop this but I felt helpless, everything seemed to move in slow motion as I watched my creation be destroyed before my very eyes.

"Stop it! Stop! This is not correct!"

George spread half a bottle of horse radish on the sandwich, then he added three slices of cheese.

"No! What are you doing!? This is not correct! Put away the mustard! Where did you get the roast beef George! I am so upset with you right now George! Grape juice!? A fish! I did not know...now, why would you put that-"

George ignored me.

"Oh for fuck sakes! Everything is wrong!"

He now held the Cool Whip. He turned it over and dumped the entirety of it on top of the sandwich, burying it under a mountain of frothy cream. He grabbed the bottle of ketchup and squirted out a generous dose of the red liquid.

"This is not right, George! Are you listening to me George!? This is wrong! This is wrong! You're doing it wrong, George! Very wrong! Wrong, wrong, wrong!"

He poured on some salsa and then scooped out some tuna fish, plopping it atop the heap of ingredients. The sandwich reached critical mass and spilled over the counter and onto the floor, a complete disaster. This was by far the worst peanut butter and jelly and horseradish and tuna fish and whip cream and cheese and pickles and grape juice and syrup and ham and salami and fish and roast beef and Nutella and ketchup sandwich ever created.

Four Hundred and Twenty Eight...

Complete Shit

And time, and time, and writing and then they stopped and then and then and then... George peeled back the covers and found his wife but she was not his wife, she was not. And soon, the minutes, and time, and a spaceship, and...something else, there was always another thing, it sat on the periphery of whatever it was he was supposed to do. Something forgotten, written down but gone and he began to wonder why he needed to write anything down in the first place. Was he forgetting things? What did he forget, would he remember it if he had forgotten it? The stairs, there were twenty of them, and he took them slowly. So slowly as though he were cherishing each and every one, a two story house, made of wood, and nothing else than wooden trees. A minute passed and he was still the same person.

The door bell, always the door bell, he grabbed a book and threw it at the door. It hit the door but fell to the floor, it did not go through. The door was made of mahogany and four inches thick, he would need a large book. He found another book and threw it at the door. The door bell rang again mocking him. There was a voice, from the door, or his head he could not say. He went to the window and tucked the blinds back, peeking to see who was at the door. There was no one, he looked behind him, the TV, that's all just the TV. Someone had come to visit someone on the TV.

Why did no one ever think to visit him? His TV spent much of it's life in the on position. He sat down to watch it but hated the show, he stood back up. He pulled every drawer open, slowly, one by one, admiring the wood paneling and marble counter top. He set his face on the counter to feel the cold surface. Could he hear the ocean in this counter top? Or was that just sea shells. Sea shells, a minute passed, and he was the same person he was two minutes ago. He thought to go outside, get fresh air, that's what mother told him to do.

He had known what he wanted when he woke up that morning. He had known it. What was it now? Where? He searched the cupboards once more, pulling out everything and piling it on the floor. Piece by piece, taking stock of his things. A large kitchen knife. Pancake mix. Almonds. White bread. Spoons. Forks. A cheese grater. Another spoon. Another cheese grater, why? Why two? A bowl, plates, bowl, apples, breaks, teeth, dentistry, health care, politics, money. He had to write this down in the future. Finally, in the pile he found a small box of sugar.

There were footsteps on the stairs, twenty steps, slowly following the other. He looked up and froze. He grabbed the sugar and poured it down the sink, they ate too much sugar, too much sugar, makes you fat, don't get fat, health care, don't smoke, don't drink, don't do drugs. Don't eat sugar. Too much sugar, makes you fat. The sugar congealed in the drops of water at the base of the sink.

There were footsteps, behind him, light, a woman's. He turned, there she was, a woman, his wife, his lover, his enemy, who? When did she arrive?

"Do you want to watch the TV with me?" she said.

Four Hundred and Twenty Six...

I UN-FRIEND ALL OF YOU -- IN REAL LIFE.

A conversation between two people who have no brain.

"Blurghduh duh udh!!!" said the moron with no brain.

"Dfdu fd ollwlw dblll...." said the other moron with no brain.

The conversation went on like this for several hours but it is better if we summarize what they said through exposition as they actually said nothing worth noting. See? Now we have skipped over several hours of pointless conversation through condensing it into only a few sentences and can move on with the second part of the story where they are both hit by a large truck.

Four Hundred and Twelve...

Remember That Time When Yesterday But Now?

George was walking in through the front door of store and he began to said, "Hey Suzie!" and after he say that he sat down at the counter and think about things that happened just now. He began frowning and is sad.

Suzie rotates her body and turns around with a smiling face, happily, began to says, "What has happened within the last time I saw you George?"

George think for a time and then when he is ready he looked up and he start to said, "Not much Suzie."

"Do you like to have some free cheese cake today after you give me money?" She smiling right now.

George does not give answer to question but pulls out a piece of paper and wrote something down on the piece of paper, then he hand it into Suzie's hand and he says, "I wrote this for you just now but earlier than."

Suzie gasped and then she start to smile and begin laughing. She laughed because she has never had anyone began to write something for her before this time.

In the next day George is sitting at the table and he began to think about something that had happened to him the day before this one, which he thought he had to do something important. He scratches his head and thought hard. In the next moment he was sitting in his house and he began to picking up the phone but before he had began to pick up the phone he decided it was better to begin cooking dinner. Suddenly, as if instantaneously, the phone rings loud and he suddenly, like a bullet out of a gun, turning his head in the direction of the ringing sound and then is looking at phone before he began to start dinner. His dinner has began to start boiling and was boiling before this time after he turned on the heat.

After he picked up the phone he say, "Hello I am talking now."

It is Suzie from cheese cake store and she saying, "Hi George I am also on the phone and I am talking to you."

George began to become nervous because he never had talked to Suzie on the phone ever before this time except when he was talking to her just now but not further. He swallowing hard and sweat is now on him and then suddenly he is instantaneously saying, "Hi, Soozie."

"I thank you for note you give me before this time when we talk on phone."

"It was nice thing I do," says George and he begin to start to smile happily, happier than before in this time, which was not as happy.

"Do you want to go with me to dating event?" she asking.

"Oh, I do, I do want to do a date event tomorrow," George began to say and then he says it just now, suddenly. He is smiling.

The date in the next day happens and it is not good because it fucking sucks. George smile and glad to become free of Suzie from after this time forever.

End