Obake Story

It is Kalaheo Elementary School's yearly 5th grade camping trip to the Kilauea Military Camp in Hilo, the culmination of a semester's worth of fundraising. The class had raised enough money for roundtrip tickets, 3 cottages for its students and a small on-base apartment for the teachers and chaperones. Among the activities packed into the 5 day excursion were tours of Volcano Observatory, Rainbow Falls, lava fields and tropical forests, and various farmers markets.

At the observatory, it had been mentioned by a tour guide that many of the tourists who had illegally removed lava rocks from the premises had been stricken with bad luck. Gravely, he allowed his hand to lead the student's eyes to a glass display case that looked like a transparent mailbox for letters. These were letters of apology – not to the State of Hawaii, or to the observatory, but to the mythical spirit goddess, Pele herself. Having removed the rocks and returned home, many of these families had become afflicted with a domino effect of such bad luck that they were compelled to mailed the rocks back with letters begging forgiveness. "So check your shoes when you get back on that bus," said the tour guide, a chipper red-headed woman in her early forties. "Pele makes no exceptions." The students shuffled on.

Ghosts and spirits remained on their minds for the rest of the tour, and on the fourth and final night before the class would return home, the tired yet willing group of students and their teacher Mr. Harano gathered in one the cottages, turned off all of the lights, passed around three flashlights, and told ghost stories.

"Turn off all of your cell phones," Mr. Harano said, sitting cross-legged on the carpet. The ring of student's tightened around him, piling onto each other, shoulders touching, giddy with suspense. "Glenda, if you want to listen to your mp3's you'll have to leave the room. It breaks the spell."

"Fine," said Glenda, and put away her mp3 player.

"Good," said Mr Harano. His voice lowering. "Now we can start."

And so the stories began. Mr. Harano started by weaving a spell of strange coincidences involving a mysterious family heirloom during his childhood, about how he saw a strange man standing next to it one night, and how that same man turned out to be his late great grandfather. He told stories of his family living in Kona, about how at one point or another, they heard the mysterious Hawaiian chanting coming from the ocean. He told stories about old schools that were once hospitals and clinics during World War Two, how custodians working late at night could hear voices coming from outside the windows – whispers coming from the branches of the trees, where it was reported that a distraught nurse had hung herself. He recounted the story of the bundle of blankets floating down a darkened stairway, something breathing inside. He even told them of Mokapu beach, where crying babies could be heard wailing in the dark. "That's where ancient Hawaiian ancestors used to take their deformed babies to die. Listen carefully, and you can hear them crying."

Strangely, his students remained unaffected by those stories. Glenda lied on her back and lifted her feet to the air to examine her toes. Joshua restlessly fidgeted with the pillow he was sitting on. Kenneth shot a rubber band across the room, where it landed in Holly's hair. Outside it was dark. The trees were rustling. The air was cold enough to frost everyone's breath.

"Tellin' ghost stories?" a voice whispered from the window. The students flinched. It was Mr. Beck, one of the cafeteria chefs on the base that everyone had gotten to know.

"Yeah, but most of em stay old. Heard em before," said Skyler from under a blanket.

"Well," Mr. Beck opened the door and stepped inside. The wind rushed in. "I've got one."

"They better be scarier than the ones Mr. Harano was telling," said Kimo.

Mr. Harano shrugged. "The stage is all yours," he said. "Take the stage. Tough crowd. Too many scary movies numbed out these kids sensibilities."

"Do my best," said Mr. Beck. He remained in the corner by the doorway and all of the children turned to face him. He rubbed his hands together slowly and methodically as if trying to warm the room. "Tell me. what happens when a bee dies," he began.

"Oh no. Environmental message," said Skyler.

"No no. This is a ghost story," explained Mr. Beck. "What happens when the bees all die?"

"They die," said Holly, flatly.

"What disappears along with them?"

"Honey," said Skyler.

"Yes. What else?"

"Cheerios," said Kimo. Everyone laughed.

"That too. But what else?"

"We give up."

"Us. We go. No bees. No pollination. No plants. No fruits. No food for herbivores. They die. That means no food for the Carnivores. And they die. And then at the very top of the food chain. There's us. Eventually, we go extinct. Get it? we run out of food and starve."

"So?" asked Joshua. "That's like in a thousand years."

"Maybe," said Mr. Beck. He crouched down to the children's level. Flashlight beams crisscrossed over his face. He squinted and smiled patiently.

"What's so scary about that?" asked Holly.

"Well. You see," said Mr. Beck. "That's exactly what happened. We died."

"Shoots then," said Skyler.

Mr. Harano smiled and shrugged from across the room.

Mr. Beck smiled back, then cast a serious gaze upon the small group of children. "No. Really. We died a billion years ago," he said softly. "The human race is an extinct race. The bees disappeared and then a thousand years later, the last human being went the way of the dinosaur. It took a long time for it too happen. And there were other factors that contributed to the extinction of our kind. Wars. Natural disasters. Man made disasters. Storms. Climate shifts. Asteroids. It took a while, but it happened," he said, his voice grew quieter. "Very slowly, with long stretches of suffering and despair, with glints of hope scattered in between. We slowly died. You and me. And now here we are – ghosts telling ghost stories."

"How are we here and dead? what kind of story is this?" asked Holly.

Mr. Harano crossed his arms.

"Now," Mr. Beck continued. "It takes a long time for everything to disappear. Eventually, trees started growing again and they grew right out of the windows of the empty buildings. Cities turned to rust, and collapsed very slowly. Plants overtook the buildings, and they died, and then grew again, and died and soon, dirt and sediment covered those roads. All man made structures were buried by the shifting soil. It took millions of years. Nothing but time and silence. It's a long time to wait."

"Like the end of the world. The Apocalypse," said Kimo.

Mr. Beck nodded gravely and continued. "New organisms began to evolve. And those organisms evolved into different animals and insects. Not like the kind you're used to seeing. All new ones."

"Like what?" asked Skyler.

"Well, like a warblerfly."

"What's that?"

"It's an insect with 8 sets of wings. Imagine an airplane with 8 wings from head to tail, and all the little windows along the sides are eyes."

"Weird."

"Yes, they were. Those too went extinct as the ecosystem evolved. Another million years passed. Soon, inevitably, there was intelligence. Now, there were those pixie-like creatures, winged insects with dexterous hands. The size of a hummingbird. They created fire. Small fires. They ate smaller insects and evolved and grew bigger. They formed colonies. They burrowed underground for shelter. And eventually, they came across something unexpected."

"What was it?" asked Joshua.

"It was... it was a time capsule" said Mr. Beck. "You see, here's the interesting thing. When humans evolved, we had no one to guide us. All of our mistakes were original. We developed our own language and art and science and created our own destiny, dark as it may have been. With these new evolved creatures, they discover that a whole sophisticated race of beings had preceded them. Imagine a caveman discovering an iphone. Imagine that. All of our literature was preserved, and as time went along, as these intelligent beings evolved, and learned to read our many languages, as well as creating their own, they assessed us as a failed race. Our remnants were like textbooks for life, basically. What to do. What not to do."

"And then what?" asked Skyler. He crossed his legs and leaned forward.

"A million more years pass by. This new civilization has evolved. All of the old world's preserved literature is contained in a single universal database. At this point, these creatures are advanced beyond anything humans could ever dream of. They've studied all of us. We're more in the science books than history. We are their cautionary tale."

"This is, what, billion years from now, right?" asked Glenda, a concerned look over her face.

"No. This is now."

The class giggled. Mr. Harano watched on, his arms folded, waiting for some punchline.

Mr. Beck continued in a whisper as if a secret were being let out. "They've created machines, like computers, only without any physical components. Strange, crazy things. And they've recreated earth, how it was at every point in history. So there are different earths at different time periods. One earth for each minute. These beings are god. You see, you look at me and touch me, but I'm not real. If you look through a microscope at me you'll see that I'm made of nothing but light. Same goes for all of you. We are all dead. We're ghosts. Like our mothers. Our fathers. We're in a computer created by godlike beings, walking around like characters in a video game."

The children remained hushed. Joshua pinched himself. Everyone shifted uncomfortably.

Mr. Beck began tearing. "We've been gone a long time," he began to sob.

Mr. Harano grew alarmed. He cleared his throat and stepped back in front of the children. "Well. That was a good story. How about some ice cream?"

The children all watched Mr. Beck cry. Something was wrong. Mr. Harano tried to usher Mr. Beck out of the room as the kids all stood up, concerned and confused. "Let's all thank Mr. Beck for coming by tonight," Mr. Harano said.

Through a tear-smattered face, Mr. Beck emitted a strange smile. His eyes seemed inverted. Holly jumped back at the new and strange expression on his face. The kids all clustered together. "Mr. Beck," said Mr. Harano sternly. "Time to go," he said, reaching out his hand to usher him out but it was too late. Mr. Beck's edges grew jagged, his face became a pattern of strange mosaic tiles, his entire body became a stack of small squares, and he dematerialized and vanished in front of their very eyes.

Showdown at 24

His name was Bud, and he talked to himself while lifting weights. At 340 pounds, his constant babbling was a breach of conduct according to gym membership rules. But what could everyone do but avert their eyes and plant a pair of earbuds deep into their auditory canals? Bud babbled. He rambled and stammered and rabbled and yammered. He was 6 feet tall and 340 pounds. He bench pressed four hundred pounds and he couldn't keep his mouth shut. In a gym, a factory of clanging machinery, optically expanded by mirrors, every corner duplicated and reflected elsewhere, he couldn't be missed. Through the haze of sweat and spit and rust, one would often see him squat the equivalent of a car as if raising a child onto his shoulders – all the while saying things like "there's no way he could have have got her pregnant on purpose! No way! To put her on the spot? To force her into marriage? No friggin' way!" He would grunt and howl and do extended countdowns "Five! Four! Three! Two! One!" and then he would emit a gutteral growl while offering two burnished, 100 pound dumb bells toward the heavens. "No friggin' way!" he would continue. "But how about a Lemon Meringue Pie? How's about that? Whisk the shit outta the eggs. Sugar. Flour. Cornstarch. Lemons! Come one, let's do this! Five! Four! Three! Two! One!" The gym rats ignored him. He could bench, squat and curl more than any of them. They were sure he had the liquid ferocity of anabolic steroids coursing through his veins, and surely, his larynx. Any confrontation would lead to a verbal and physical pummeling. He was a creatine snorting, muscle milk guzzling madman. It was better to leave him be.

Not for Skinny Dix, also known as Dixon Jones. 120 pounds of clothing and bones. His socks hung loosely around his ankles. He skulked throughout the gym like a malnourished hyenna, slipping between the sated lions, scavenging for scant ten pound iron plates for his wrist curls. He wore a headband to hide his receding hairline and wrist braces for support along his forearms. "Hey Skinny Dix," others called out "You on roids?" Skinny Dix scowled, "You maybe! Not me!" And he would go on benching a naked 40 pound bar, curling 10 pound dumb bells and doing 5 pound tricep raises, all with the intensity of a body building competitor.

The more Bud spoke to himself, the more Dixon became agitated. Through a set of his calve raises, tip toeing through fifty pounds, he could hear Bud's meaningless blather. "Red state. Blue state. Bipartisanship. Sinking ship. Come on. Five. Four. Three. Two. One."

One day, Bud moaned and growled his way through a 500 pound dead lift. It was more of a struggle than usual, perhaps due to his verbose monologue "All the world extinct, a post human intelligence is curious about its ancestors. This post human being recreates the universe in an advanced super computer — an ancestral simulator program. All our world is a pixelated simulacrum. Pixeleted by way of molecules. Governed by a set of predetermined rules. Math. Science. It all falls into step. Think of the implications. Man, what to do if it were true. Come on. Five. Four. Three. Two—"

"Shut the hell up for a minute!" a lone voice sailed over the rows of cybex machines. Instantly, the clatter of the weight room vanished. All of its plates, bars and dumb bells were securely returned to their places. All the surrounding machines went idle and the space around the source of the lone complaint cleared out.

"Thank you!" Dixon called from the preacher bench, two ten pound weights on each end of a bar. He began his curls, huffing and puffing quietly as if he were blowing out a succession of single birthday candles.

Bud dropped the weights to the floor, and its impact could be felt throughout the weight room. He turned around to face Dixon. "Who tell me to shut up?" He asked himself. "No friggin way."

"That was me," said Skinny Dixon. "You talk too much. It's annoying."

Everyone braced for the worst. The intensity in Bud's eyes was enough to bend a spoon. He could have collapsed the gym like a black hole. Instead, Bud turned back around and continued with his set. "I guess I was bein' inconsiderate to my neighbors," he said over his shoulder. "I never realized I rambled so much. It's just a nervous tic, see. Just something to get me pumped up. I apologize." He powered the 500 pounds over his head, then dropped it to the floor again. All of the loose weights in the gym rattled. Dust fell from the light fixtures. "But you didn't have to be so rude about it," said Bud. He never said another word after that.

The next day, Dixon Jones had his membership revoked and he was blacklisted at all the other gyms on the island. He is now 10 pounds overweight. He does 100 jumping jacks a day at home.

The Warehouse

Birds dream. When a young bird is learning to sing, it uses the song of an adult bird as a template. These songs are absorbed, and when the younger bird sleeps, it dreams of them. The auditory information it was exposed to during the day is reactivated and replayed and rehearsed. It is a way of learning. The song birds dream of singing to perfect their melodies.

Noah does not know what brown pelicans dream of. He stands in a warehouse, a cleaning facility where hundreds of oil-slicked pelicans are quietly sleeping. They are larger than he expected. Their beaks are the length of his forearm. They are quiet and inert, a black grouping of question marks, sick and huddled together for warmth.

Days ago, a batch of 62 pelicans was released into a wildlife refuge in Texas. They were cleaned with hoses, soaked with vegetable oil, shampooed gently with dish soap, and fed charcoal tablets in an effort to damper the absorption of ingested oil. They were then flown via coast guard and released into the air.

Noah believes they should be euthanized, that human efforts only prolong their suffering. Yet he helps with the efforts alongside his girlfriend, Vita, who believes that humans have a responsibility to keep them alive for as long as possible. He's watching her and two others run a shower massager through a bird's feathers. She steps away from the washtub for a minute, removes her yellow kitchen gloves and begins to cry. After a few minutes, she regains composure and blankly stares at the rows of wooden crates for a moment before returning to the tub. She is tired.

A representative from the dish soap company is visiting. A few of Noah's colleagues are showing him the cleaned pelicans, and the man seems genuinely surprised at how well they have been cleansed and nursed. His company is donating thousands of bottles of dish soap to help with the cleaning.

Noah thinks about the ordeal from a pelican's perspective. A pelican dives into the water, and when it emerges, its feathers fail and coldness seeps through. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong, but as the bird moves about and attempts to take flight again, it flips over. It's wings drag along the water like the soaked wings of a paper airplane. Each movement brings about a confusing result. Still, the pelican is not alarmed. It struggles to stay afloat, unaware of it's plight. There is no yesterday, there is no tomorrow, only this momentary disruption. It sits in a completely passive state. Water begins to seep in under its feathers and it begins to shiver. Its body temperature drops. After a while, it sees figures approaching on a boat. It kicks and flaps its wings feebly. It is picked up and handled, at the mercy of something it cannot fathom. Its beak is opened then closed, its feathers are scrubbed, it is left to shiver in the cold, and then it is held in a pen to recover. It sleeps. It dreams. It dies.

Thousands of birds have died in captivity. More will die after being seemingly rehabilitated. The birds will succumb to the toxins already in their bodies. They will be flown far away, released from their cages – those past events still a mystery – and they will die from the stress and trauma of being handled and held in wooden crates for days on end. At least that is how Noah sees it. Vita is compassionate and hopeful about their recovery. He can see the tenderness in her eyes when she is rinsing the oil from their wings.

The man from Proctor and Gamble shakes the hands of the volunteer workers. He shakes his head in sympathy and promises more aid. They all wave goodbye as they leave the warehouse.

There are 65 more boxes filled with pelicans. Their heads are folded against their necks like black hairpins. It costs $15,000 to clean a single bird. The company will donate 7,000 more bottles of dish soap. There are more birds found daily.

Vita walks over to Noah. "Wanna take a break?" she asks.

"What do you think they dream of, these birds?" Noah asks her.

Vita removes her gloves and throws them into a sink basin. "They dream of you, with a scoop net, standing on the bow of a motorboat," she pauses for a moment, then adds "Naked."

"Just one more reason for them to live," Noah says.

"You're a thing of beauty, a moral being," quips Vita.

They exit the warehouse and a warm breeze blows over them. Vita's hair is suddenly dazzled to life, and it flows with the air. Noah stops walking and lights a cigarette. He looks back at the warehouse, at the sun setting behind its stark silhouette, and the dim figures moving about in the dark. The lights within the warehouse flicker on. Volunteers are working tirelessly. Suddenly Noah feels unstable and homicidal toward the birds. He feels the urge to burn the warehouse to the ground. He wants to put those hundreds of huddled waterfowl out of their collective misery. It happens often. As he cleans an individual – its head hanging weakly, its neck limp like a wet rope – he feels an urge to end its life as an act of mercy. It is a symptom of stress and fatigue – his mind going dark. "I don't think I can do this anymore," he says to Vita.

As the sun sets on them. "If you quit, you're quitting us," she says.

"You know how I feel about this. It's with the same kind of compassion you feel. I just don't believe that this is the right solution. It's just something we do because that's what feels right. But just because it feels right doesn't make it so," he says.

Vita takes the cigarette from Noah's lips and inhales deeply. "But we do it anyway," she says, and returns the cigarette. She takes a long, searching look into his eyes, her eyes shifting left to right, her brow slightly pinched, then puts her hand on his shoulder. "See you around," she says and walks off.

Whatever birds dream of, it doesn't involve us. They fly, they eat, they sleep and they perfect their songs, although they never for a moment wonder if their songs are flawed. If we touch them, we ruin them. If we introduce them to nightmares, there is no saving them. At least that is how Noah sees it.

The Long and Sleepless Night

Pete is sending an email in his sleep. His wife, Anne, sits up in bed and watches him type onto his blackberry. The city is sleeping behind him, all smeared colored pencil lines on black paper. The red lights along the skyline pulse slowly. She leans over to get a better look at the screen as his thumbs dexterously hop around the keypad. His eyes are half-closed and elsewhere, and she can see the exposed slivers of his irises slowly turning in their sockets.

"Where are you? I miss you, baby," he writes.

Anne slaps the Blackberry out of his hands, then slaps him on the forehead with just enough force to stun a dozing fly.

"Hmmmm?" He hums groggily, "Wha?"

"Who were you dreaming about?" she asks him. She retrieves the Blackberry from the floor. Her pale legs are all aflutter as she spins them off the bed and onto the floor – two white blurs in the dark. She holds the blackberry to his face. "What's this?"

Pete's eyes adjust. Two glowing rectangles merge into one. "Just another dream," he says. "I can't remember. Go back to bed." he rolls over and takes most of the blanket. He is a giant, stuffed burrito.

She falls asleep and purposely dreams about sixty male models carrying her across a meadow on a four post wood bed. When she wakes up, it is only 3:30 in the morning. Pet snores as if there is a miniature weed-wacker stuffed up his nose. Anne can hear something else. She hears it from under the covers. Clickety clack. A soft glow is coming from under the covers, as if his body were metamorphosing into a luminous angel under the sheets. She throws the covers open and sees that he is typing an email on his laptop.

"I really want to see you. Please. I love you," he writes. The recipient field is blank.

Anne gets up and snaps the laptop shut on his fingers. "Ow!" Pete screams. His jolts up, and holds his fingers up. "Wha?"

"What was that message all about?" asks Anne. Pete's own head casts a shadow on her face but her eyes are opened wide enough to catch a glint of the moon from outside.

"Mmmph! What message?" he asks.

"That email your were sending. About me knowing something?"

Pete put his hands over his face. "I was asleep. I must have been, you know, sleep messaging. You know how it is! It's not like it's the first time."

Anne takes the laptop away from him and sets it on the night stand. "But you usually type nonsense! Like, I am a blue god. Or there are monkeys typing. No letters of yearning."

"Those are just dreams! How can you be upset! It's all still nonsense! No matter how real it may seem. Can you please just let me go back to sleep?" Pete rolls over again.

Anne shuts her eyes. She is furious. When she drifts off to sleep she intentionally dreams of sleeping with her ex-boyfriend from high school. They are driving in a car down a long, dark road and they pull over at a motel. There is a bag of money in the trunk and they are both on the run – an old fantasy of theirs. They have sex and she makes no effort to be quiet. She is as loud as she can be, knowing that in reality, she is moaning in bed next to Pete. She hopes she wakes him. She makes sure she properly moans her ex-boyfriends name, each syllable a dagger she hopes to penetrate deep into her husband's own slumber.

She rolls off of her ex-boyfriend, breathing hard, and lights a cigarette. It is the first smoke she's had in years. She takes a deep breath and exhales toward the static ceiling fan. Outside a car drives up, its tires crunching the gravel. The beams from its headlights grope the walls. She can hear two men talking. They walk around the perimeter and then one of them gets back into the car and drives away. The rest of the night is uneventful. Her ex-boyfriend, Leland snores lightly.

When the sun comes up, the desert outside the motel is illuminated. Anne steps outside and breaths in the cool air. It smells of wet grass, although there is hardly any grass on the flat and infinite landscape. A thin road stretches from east to west.

When she comes back into the motel room, Leland is sitting up in bed. "I really winked out last night," he says. "Everything okay?"

Anne slides under the covers next to him. "There was someone here last night. I could hear him asking questions about the guests here. I'm not sure if he was asking about us exactly, but he was asking. He walked around the area, then he got in his car and left. It was about 4 in morning."

Leland gets up. "We'd better get moving then," he says, then locks himself in the bathroom. She can hear him brushing his teeth. She gathers their belongings and lays back in bed. She checks her purse and pulls out her Blackberry. There's a message.

"Where are you? I miss you, baby," it says. She checks the second message. It reads "I really want to see you. Please. I love you."

Spam mail, she thinks, and deletes them. Outside, the air is starting to warm up, and the road ahead is long.

Glue Man

Deep underground at the end of a series of winding corridors beneath the University of Hawaii at Manoa, there was an accident in a lab. Hyun-Su Chun had become enveloped in a green cloud that whirled around him like a tornado. When the mist disappeared he was nothing more than a giant globule of jelly. Upon testing the material, his colleagues determined the substance to be glue – a very strong, honey-colored glue. Upon further testing, they determined that Hyun-Su was still alive.

He was a a ball of gel; an amber globule, with a square of reflected light warped along his body. He had the consistency of melting jello, wet and sticky to the touch. Occasionally, along his delicate surface, a ripple would make it's way along his sides like a wave across an ocean seen from a great distance.

Although the scientists were not aware of it, his physiology being an anomoly of the highest degree, he was in fact aware of their presences. His entire body had become conducive to light and sound, acting as both retina and timpanic membrane. His visual and aural senses intermingled in a synesthesia, and in this regard, he was in a childlike state of constant amusement.

Bodies made their way in and across his field of vision the way the world reflected would bend around a glass marble. If he were outdoors, the grass would form an outer perimeter, and the sky would appear as a blue orb in the center of his vision. Birds would make their way across the azure field, never traversing the edges, only growing nearer, flipping over, then receding farther in the Daliesque canvas that was his sight.

He remained enclosed within a glass cube and one day, when he sensed he was in need he sprang out. The edgeless globule reformed itself, and he became Glue Man.

Most of the time, he assisted construction workers. When potentially catastrophic mishaps would occur – a falling beam, or imbalanced equipment – he would be there, using his touch to fasten items securely and safely. Then he would bound off, tying the hands of would be thieves and burglars behind their backs, pasting them against a wall for the authorities.

He was also an imp. In the same fell swoop as capturing an escaped convict, Glue Man would stealthily glue a police officer's gun to it's holster. Or he would glue the Honolulu police chief's badge to his desk. "Uh, thanks, Glue Man," they would say half-heartedly, their hats stuck to their heads.

So it went, on and off, crime fighting and childish mischief. A man saved from a boulder careening down a mountain would trip because his shoelaces were glued together. A couple saved from a collapsing rooftop would later realize that all of their dishes were glued to the table. "You look like a giant Aunt Jemima bottle!" they shouted after him.

Soon, his assistant grew concerned about his public image. "Why don't you go an help with the crisis in the Gulf? Why not plug up that whole oil leak?" she asked one day when he returned to his secret laboratory. "I don't work well underwater. Have you ever tried gluing two things together in a bathtub?" he answered. "This is our secret. If anyone found out about my achilles heel, I'd be done for," he said and melted into an orb for bed. His assistant would lovingly sprinkle flakes of food into him and watch them break through his thin outer membrane, dissolving into the clear viscous liquid. Then she would replace the glass casing that kept him safe. "It is important to keep the glass case over me at all times when I am in repose," he instructed. "Flies and ants," he explained.

One day, after having captured a trio of bank robbers at the American Savings on Beretenia, Glue Man disappeared for a day. HPD found no sign of him. They were grateful and relieved, for it was a job well done, minus the puckish pranks.

His assistant grew worried. She left his glass case open and slept in the lab. The next morning she saw him, miniscule, climbing onto the pedestal. "Where were you?" she asked.

"I thought I would regenerate. But... I can't. I had to walk two miles here from Beretenia. Look at me, I'm only six inches tall. That was a long walk. I'm exhausted."

"Don't you usually regenerate instantly?"

"Maybe I'm too old. My time has come. I'm out of glue. I struggle to even maintain human form," he said and then his body collapsed and he was an orb again.

"Glue Man!" his assistant cried.

In the days that followed, Oahu mourned the loss of one it's more eccentric heroes. There was a big ceremony and a scattered crowd. The liquified remains of his body were presented to his assistant, and tearfully she used what remained of his legacy to put together a bookshelf or something.

@Boutique

Two women in their thirties are standing in a small boutique in Kahala called @Boutique. Tasha is the owner of the store, and the other woman is her old friend Julia. Tasha has stepped out from behind the counter and the two women are shopping for themselves. With their conflicting schedules, it is the only way the two of them can shop together.

"If only I had more time in the day," say's Julia, holding up a green cardigan. "Shopping is soo time consuming. It seems like I'm shopping daily. For one thing or another."

Her friend, Tasha smiles, squints her eyes at the cardigan, then shakes her head. "Not your color," then adds. "I have all the time in the world. Maybe too much time. Different problem."

Julia picks up a yellow cardigan. "How's this?"

"No. Maybe it's the cardigan itself."

"Ok. Let's move on." The two women move to the rear section of the boutique. Julia laughs and says "I can't believe I'm shopping for myself. I'm supposed to be shopping for Tyler's boss's son. Screw it."

"Well I'm shopping for me and this is my store!" says Tasha. "Who the heck is that little runt anyway? Just buy em a little race car and be done with it. You gotta put yourself first once in a while." Tasha eyes a white blouse with a constellation of eyelets along it's fringes. "What do you call those. The good sons of bosses? Is there a term? Like nephew? Niece? Boss's son?"

"I just call em the little S-O-B. Son of a boss," says Julia.

Tasha laughs. "Do you like this?" she asks, holding the white blouse up by the hook of the hanger.

"Pretty."

Tasha turns to a mirror and holds it out in front of her. "My skin color is too dark for this. I wish my skin were lighter, like yours. You have pretty, fair skin."

"Don't be silly," says Julia. "I hate my complexion. So mottled. Like an octopus." She flips through the hangers and they squeak against the rack. "It's funny, how time is compressed for me and how you say it's so dilated for you. I mean, you're a business owner! Still, we live along different timelines. It's like astronauts being sent out to the farthest reaches of our solar system. They boomerang and come back and it only takes em, what, four years. For people on earth, it's fifty. I feel like the next time we see each other, I'll be an old woman, and you'll look just the same."

"They say time moves a split second faster at the top of the empire state building," says Tasha.

"Time moves a split second faster in my 12th story apartment. Christmas is around the corner, and I'm not talking this Christmas, I'm talking the next."

Tasha laughs. "The grass is always greener on the other side of the clothing rack. At least you're married. You have two great little boys. How old are they now, nine and ten?"

"Eight and ten."

"And you're still young enough to run around with them. By the time I get married and have kids I'll be too tired to do anything. I may not even have kids. I may not even find anyone that I'd want to settle down with!" She places the blouse back onto the rack. "I don't like the capped sleeves."

Julia shrugs. "Don't get me wrong. I'm happy. But I wish I could still look forward to some of the things I never got to. Now, for me, it's like, easier to forget about it. Or I'll just get depressed," she says. She is now onto a teal, peasant tunic.

Tasha absent-mindedly picks up the same tunic. "I mean, it's all about the have and have not's. I'm trapped in this extended adolescence – my mom's words. I'm not complaining. But my mom is always at my throat to settle down. She says her generation wasn't like that. That our generation is too self-centered, too self absorbed, that we feel entitled to have it all. That I won't realize it until it's too late."

"Don't listen to her," says Julia. "Enjoy yourself," she adds, a touch ruefully. "Do the things you want to do. I wish I had. I never had that period of... what... self discovery. I never traveled the world. Never... well. Look at you. You went back to school. Your business is taking off. I never even figured out what I wanted to do with my life. I just work a plain job I could care less about. I work, go home, cook rice... and pau."

"But that's great!" Says Tasha. "Nothing wrong with that. I know it's a cliche to say this, but we gotta stop focusing on the things we don't have."

"What about that skirt? You don't have that," says Julia.

"That's nice. Too bad I have the legs of an ostrich."

"No you don't! What does that even mean?"

Tasha eyes the skirt for a while. She runs her fingers along its delicate ruffles running diagonally along the front. "Maybe I will buy this for myself," she says.

"I'm thinking of leaving Tyler and the boys," says Julia, abruptly.

"What?" Tasha drops the skirt, picks it up, dusts it off and places it back on the rack. "What happened? You're not serious. Are you serious? No way."

"I want it all back. My life. I'm still young enough to have a remainder of a youth."

"You do have a youth, stupid! You're in it right now. Don't do it. Julia. Seriously. You'll ruin everything. You'll regret it. I promise you. How can you even consider that?"

Julia picks up the skirt. "Okay, I won't. But that means I get to buy the skirt."

Tasha clenches her jaw and holds her hands open at Julia's throat. "I wanna choke you. You scared me! Were you serious? Jesus."

"Tasha. This adds a whole new meaning to the term shop therapy. I love this store. I could spend hours, even days here. Time always just floats by when I'm perusing. I hope it's the same for all your customers. You'll do really well for yourself. I hope this all just takes off and you expand and open up more shops... This is just really inspiring. I'm in awe. Really," says Julia.

"Okay stop stroking my feathers. My only best customer. I wish I could just close down the store and go with you."

"I know, me too," Julia looks at her watch. "But, I'd better get going. I gotta pick up the kids in half an hour. Then Tyler gets home and we have to go to that stupid S-O-B's birthday party. I hate to run. But I'll take the skirt."

"Take it. It's yours!"

"I can't do that. Don't be silly. Here. Run my card."

Tasha runs her card, and places the skirt in a bright red paper bag. "Thank you, come again," she smiles.

They hug and kiss and Julia leaves the boutique. The store is empty after she leaves and Tasha begins organizing her latest shipment. Two minutes later, her iphone is ringing. She picks it up and looks at who is calling. She is on the verge of answering. She bites her lower lip and puts the phone back down and looks outside. Quickly, she locks up and runs out into the parking lot.

Like The Wind

I walked into a convenient store and bought some po-tay-to chips and a ba-na-na. Then I went to the beverage aisle and tried to buy a drink that had a pretty picture of blue-berries. There were words on the label. Organic, something. This wording was written at a 9.5th grade reading level. Way too high. They've been trying to raise the bar on us. There were unfortunate phrases like "your health means more to you than..." and on and on about "anti-ox-idents... cardio-vascular... free-radicals..." All too complex. So I bought me some milk. The copy on the label was written at an 8th grade level. I was happy. I went home and turned on the telly. The President was giving a speech. It was written at a 10th grade reading level. Wow. 10th grade was such a long time ago for me, so I failed to connect with the material. At least that's what the experts will say tomorrow. Then my phone rang. "Hullo?" I answered. "Dr. Spires! It's incredible!" said a voice. "I'm not Dr. Spires. You have the wrong number," I said but the voice marched on. "We're all at the lab!" I put the phone to my good ear, curious now. "Slow down," I said. "What's going on?" I asked. I could hear the others in the background cheering. "It's mind boggling! But we've done it. Mr. Pitts..." He trailed off. "Who's Mr. Pitts?" I asked. "The ape we've been messing with at the lab! Mr. Pitts!" I paused and then said "Oh, right. I thought you said something else. What about Mr. Pitts?" I asked. "He's... He's typing!" the man on the line answered. "He's writing! He's writing really well! He went off on modern poetry and now he's writing a book of poems called The Darkening Ecliptic." My heart skipped a beat. "What..." I said softly, bracing myself against the wall. "What... grade level is he writing at?" More cheers erupted in the background. I heard a champagne cork pop. "12th grade. Maybe even college level! Get over here as soon as you can!" And then he hung up. Last week, on TV, an elephant painted the entire American alphabet as well as its punctuation marks. Now this. I was going to call back, but I didn't have the number to that lab. So I sat there and tried real hard to grasp what the President was saying. But those words – they slipped past me like the wind.

Misdirection

I was walking down South King one weekend hungry as hell so I went into the Maunakea Market to look for something to eat, something light, to tide me over until a dinner party in the early evening. So I walked past the pig heads, past the basins of frozen, glassy-eyed trout and cat fish, and picked out an apple. Then I stepped outside and waited for the bus. Outside, an old man in a wheelchair approached me. "You get dollah?" he asked. I did, I reached into my pockets and extracted two quarters, and four dimes and two nickels. He furrowed his brow – they looked like the dry ripples along a sand dune in the desert. He had the flaking skin of a molting reptile and the teeth of large herbivorous mammal. "No mo dollah bills?" he asked, squinting. "Nope," I said. "Sorry." He stared at me incredulously and asked "What. You ten years old?" and then he wheeled away. Just then, a tall man in crutches popped up as if his crutches were a mile high and he had just taken a single bound all the way from Dillingham Blvd. Whoosh. He came out of nowhere, and fast. He fumbled about and pulled out his wallet. The man in the wheelchair rolled up to him, his fine hair - thin and wispy –streamed in the wind like a plume of white smoke leaking from a crack in his cranium. "You get dollah?" he asked. The man in the crutches took out a crisp dollar bill and dropped it onto the ground. "Whoops," he said. He struggled to bend over. He leaned a crutch against a mailbox and reached with his fingers. "This is my longer arm," he joked. His head was a foot away from the man in the wheelchair, and I could see that he was surreptitiously surveying the man's legs. "Hey. You know, you got some pretty thick calves. They look pretty young and healthy," the tall man said. The man in the wheelchair slunk back. "I no can believe you said dat to me," he snarled and folded his arms. "Seriously, old man, you got healthy sprinter's legs," said the tall man. "You wouldn't be faking your condition, would you?" The man in the wheelchair rolled his eyes, "You know what?" he snapped, and in a split second kicked the man in the crutches. Hard. It sent the tall, spindly guy sailing through the air, his crutches spinning like batons. The man in the wheelchair got up, picked up his ride and threw it along the sidewalk. The tall man – on his own two legs now – nimbly got onto his own feet it and they both went sprinting off toward River street. I stood there dumbfounded. I was pretty sure I had missed my bus. I was about to take the first bite of my apple but then I realized it was gone. My palm was open and facing upward, but the apple had vanished. I took that open palm and slapped it hard against my own sweaty forehead. I had just fallen for the oldest trick in the book.

Down To Da Wire

There is a small editorial team writing frantically on one computer. Two are fact checking and one is typing madly. It's nearly 5pm and the production department is getting ready to upload the files to the printer in Kapolei. The entire paper is on hold for one story.

"Braddah! You wen fact check? was what? M81?" asks the one typing.

"Uh. 82 I tink," answers the one on the cell phone.

The writer stops and spins his black leather chair around.

"81, 82 or eighty-tree?"

The one on the landline hangs up and yells over his shoulder. "81!"

"Dumb ass. I give you 81 cracks." says the writer. He spins back around and begins typing madly again. "We running outta time. Production holding our spot fo' dis, and if we no get um tru, they going plop in one in-house ad!"

The landline man gets back on the phone. "Ho!" he shouts when someone picks up on the other line. "You know what? Was twelve million or was sevenee million?"

The writer stops again and stomps his feet, he flips his keyboard over and spins around to face the two other men. "You lolo heads! We cannot even get one simple story pau? Braddahs, you get me dis story in one piece I buy you guys one coors each. We mess up and I break the coors bottle on both yo ulus!"

"Cheee! No get yo panties tied up in one knot!" says the guy on the cell phone.

"Why, I get yo maddah's panty tied in one knot. Take couple days, fo tie um. But I tie um up anyway. And if you no shaddup..."

"Both you pussies! Suck um up and work!" says the man on the landline.

"So what, den?" asks the man on the computer. He is perched and ready, his fingers hover over the keyboard. "Get um? twelve o seventy?"

"First twelve, then seventy."

The man begins typing furiously.

The man on the cell phone barks out "Chandra X-ray observatory! Like me spell um?"

The man typing retorts "Brah, like me spell yo' face? With my fists?" He begins mumbling to himself. "m81. 12 million. 70 million. Chandra X Ray. Telescope. Dining. X-rays. Light curves..."

The two men look at the clock, the second hand is winding down to the deadline. The man on the cell phone is sweating profusely. The man on the landline stands up and starts tapping his foot. "Come on, come on, you fucka. Where you when learn fo' type?"

"Eh, shaddup!"

"Where you when learn for type, skoo fo' da blind?"

"Done! Select da fucka. Cut da fucka. Paste da fucka. Send da fucka."

They all yell in unison "Hooooooooooo!!!"

"Fuckin' made um!"

"Fucka, every time down to da wire!"

"Next time no come late!"

"Das what yo' maddah said."

"Eh. no make la dat. Who buying da beers?"

"I buy you fly."

"Shooooots!"

"Aight guys. Good job. Pau hana!"

The Next Day:

Black Holes All Eat the Same Way

By Noah Swinton, Waipuna Lau, and "Stix" Cabellero.

Black holes are often described as voracious and monstrous, with sloppy eating habits that cause X-rays to be coughed up and spat out willy nilly.

Pushing the dietary analogy a bit further, scientists now say that regardless of where black holes dine, they have the same culinary habits.

Supermassive black holes, which anchor many galaxies, feed just like smaller "stellar" black holes, the researchers announced last week. The finding supports some implications of Einstein's relativity theory that black holes of all sizes have similar properties.

The conclusion comes from a large observing campaign of the spiral galaxy M81, which is about 12 million light-years from Earth. In the center of M81 is a black hole about 70 million times more massive than the sun. It pulls gas from the central region of the galaxy inward at high speed.

Stellar mass black holes typically weigh just a few solar masses and have a different source of food. They pull gas from an orbiting companion star.

In both cases, when black holes dine, material spirals inward and becomes superheated, giving off X-rays and other forms of radiation.

Researchers wondered if they'd have the same feeding mechanism. A study of the X-rays, optical light and radio waves emitted from the jowls of both black hole varieties suggests they do.

Scientists used the Chandra X-ray Observatory and multiple ground-based telescopes to take detailed observations of the huge black hole at the center of the M81 galaxy, and compared these to observations of smaller black holes. They found that while the total energy coming out of the massive black hole was larger, the relative amounts of energy being emitted at different wavelengths — from radio to infrared to X-ray light — were roughly the same.

"The shape of the light curves looks very much the same," said researcher Michael Nowak of MIT. "The only difference is the total energy coming out. The characteristic energy of the matter and the speeds of the jets all seem to work the same way. It's just that big black holes have more matter."

Even the material falling onto the black hole seems to travel at the same speed, regardless of the black hole's size. But since a more massive black hole has a wider event horizon, or distance within which matter cannot escape, it takes material longer to fall in.

"Everything around this huge black hole looks just the same except it's almost 10 million times bigger," Nowak said.

The findings help scientists understand how black holes work on a fundamental level.

"I think what this is really doing is helping us see the connection between different kinds of black holes," Nowak told SPACE.com. "The more we can say that big and small black holes are analogous to each other, it gives us a better idea to understand how black holes eat matter and eject matter."

And because large black holes are thought to play an important role in galaxy formation and evolution, by learning more about black holes scientists can better understand how galaxies came to be, he said.

The findings will be detailed in the Astrophysical Journal.

–––

Story fo dis one, came from one brainstorm with Jeff Sanner.

The actual news article was written by Robert Roy Brit and Clara Moskowitz.

So The Story Goes Like This...

There was a growing resentment toward Lana. Actually, the entire Kahala neighborhood despised her, or recognized her type as the type to be despised. Even those who didn't know the full story knew halfway through its telling that, yeah, this woman was crazy. This woman was bad news. So when Brian Takeshi married her, everyone wondered why such a well-mannered, good-hearted person would take her side at the altar. "It was for the money," Brian confided to his drinking buddy, Kane one Saturday afternoon at the beach after paddling practice. Now Kane was upset. He couldn't believe that someone he had grown up with and knew so closely would stoop to such a level. They argued a bit and eventually, Kane's eyes clouded over. He stormed off, slamming his beer bottle against the side of one of the canoes. Coach, Uncle Taka got pissed off about that. Both he and Kory both took damned good care of those canoes and to see Kane slam his beer bottle against it without so much as a thought about how cherished those canoes were, well, it really pissed them off. So Kane was kicked of the team. He stopped paddling and just decided to continue drinking. He drank daily after work. He drank and surfed and once in a while, he took a one man canoe out to sea. One day he was at the Charthouse and he was mouthing off about all this nonsense to some other locals and they all got into a fight and messed him up and threw him into the Ala Wai harbor. He got sick and was hospitalized from the polluted water and didn't make it past a week. He succumbed to his injuries on a Sunday. It stormed pretty hard that Sunday. Thunder showers, everything. Yeah, remember Diamond Head had a giant mudslide from all the rain? Road was closed for months. There was a big mountain of dirt right on the street. Yeah, it was during that time. Well, a bunch of Kane's friends heard about this and eventually tracked down those fools and beat the living daylights out of them. And then friends of those guys beat the other guys into one big pulp, burned their bodies and scattered their ashes all around the island. They just drove aimlessly and poured the ashes at all of the ugliest sites they saw. One of the messed up things about this was that this elderly lady, Tina Yim, was walking home one day from the bus stop when someone drove by and threw those ashes out their window. Big mistake. She was a nice, old lady, but people who knew her knew better than to throw ashes of the deceased into her face. So it gets crazy. Those ashes stung her eyes and her body suddenly exploded into million selves and all the anger in her body flew up with the wind and covered the island as one giant cloud. Her husband, Danny, super pissed, sent vengeful vibes into the air as well. And now here's the thing. The vibes eventually found a current of guilt and it all led back to Lana! So it was Lana, then! That girl was trouble. People knew it. Somehow all of this is traced back to her. But, by the time Lana self-propagated into a thousand seething eyes the island was surrounded by a blinding, sulferic vog that purportedly came from some new and hidden volcanic vent. Now, Pele, even when dormant, has a hot temper. She didn't like Lana either. You know how hot blooded she can get. Anyway, when all the smoke and darkness clears, I hope we can get back to getting some real work done because I'm just over it, and I don't wanna get caught in the middle.

Hello Goodbye.

Trenton saw his older sister from across the street one afternoon while walking along Beretenia to the Moilili Public Library. She had been dead for six years now. The night before he had unearthed an old photo album and let his eyes grieve every photo. Now, on the street, in the glare of the afternoon sun, its rays all caught and tangled in between his eyelashes, he saw his sister. She looked just like she had six years ago. Although he is older than she ever was, by two years, he still thought of her as an older sister. She was waving at him as she had when he was younger, when at old family gatherings, among the roasted pork, and poi and sashimi, from across the rows of paper-lined picnic tables in a garage, she would wave him over from across the room to say hello to an aunt or uncle. On the street, just in front of the library entrance, she smiled, tipped her chin up to the sun, and waved him over. The moment coursed quickly through his veins and stifled his heartbeat. She smiled again, "Yeah you! Come over here" she seemed to be saying. She waved him over and he took a step off the curb and onto the crosswalk. He crossed the street and held his gaze downward. He walked past the woman waving and went into the Library. It still hits him, from time to time, especially since he never got to say goodbye, and his idea of the best way to have said it is revised day to day.

The Hatchling

There is an office with walls so white you would think that it didn't exist as anything else but absence. There are some posters framed on the walls – vintage industrial revolution posters from 1939 as well as newer posters by Allen Hori and Bruce Mau. Two pristine Macs are positioned facing each other. Two designers are working.

The first designer says "That logo is too small."

The other replies, "That's because it's reversed."

"Oh."

They continue working. Mouse clicks were blacklisted when the new Magic Mouse was released by Apple. Now they click in silence, like people wearing socks tapping their feet on a wooden floor.

The walls are white, the posters are white, their screens are white.

Then they both hear something. Something wet and squishy has plopped onto the floor behind them. It sounds like a large, soaked mop. When they turn, they are confronted by a large blob, oozing mud from within itself and swallowing its own fluids. It's brown, and as it moves it leaves a trail.

Leaves begin sprouting. Branches erupt out of it's body, creaking as they twist and elongate. It is as if a tree had just hatched.

"What the?"

Quickly, the designers turn to their computers and begin searching the web. One types in "Brown tree creature" and the other types in "A clump of soil with trees erupting from within."

The google search is hopeless. Bing brings up nothing that pertains to the current situation. They turn around to deal with the monster but it is too late.

For the first time in the history of civilization, a forest wins.

So Long and Thanks for all the Crude

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The Creature from the Darkened Coast

2 men are sitting in a bar at 4pm on a Tuesday. The news is on the television set overlooking the otherwise empty countertop and the bartender is wiping down his glasses. The first man, Carl, a heavyset man with large potato for a head complains about the economy. The second man, Stan, a slighty shorter version of carl, also with a large potato for a head is nodding solemnly. "It's a bitch bein' unemployed but it sure has it's perks," says Carl.

Just then another man walks in. The door swings open and the bright, outer world tries to come in with him, but then is ushered back out gently by the door. He carries an inhuman air about him. Although it is hot as hell outside, he is wearing a frayed jacket with the collar turned up. He takes a seat at the counter and looks up at the news - a segment about how to bring your credit score up.

"What'll it be?" asks the bartender.

"O'douls. Or anything nonalcoholic," says the man.

Carl and Stan both eye him from behind the thick awnings of their eyebrows. Carl continues on about being unemployed. "I got three more months and then I got to file for an extension. But even then, things are still looking bleak."

Stan chimes in,"I still have to pay for my boat repairs. I had to let go that kid, Payton yesterday. British Petroleum only gave us 5 grand and that's already gone. They say more's coming but I doubt it. And there they are, running million dollar PR commercials to ease their conscience."

"Damn criminals," says Carl.

The third man raises the collar up around his neck and zips up his jacket. "You in the fishing business?" he asks without looking up.

"That's right. Out of work. Both of us. Hit hard by the times. How about yourself there, Mr. O'douls? You workin'?"

"Yeah," says the third man. "Overtime."

"What's with the non alcoholic beverage?"

"I felt I needed a drink, but my nerves are too frayed. This is comfort enough. I take a drink, my arms fall off, basically," said the third man.

Carl finishes his boilermaker. "Well, you're working. That's good."

On the news, there was a segment about weddings all along the gulf shores being canceled because of the oil. Wedding planners were seeing their business disappearing. Everyone in the industry, from photographers to caterers were feeling the pinch.

"Mind changing the channel?" says the third man to the bartender. There is a tremor in his voice. His eyes remain downcast. His collar is now a protective shield.

"Hey. What's the problem there?" asks Stan.

"You don't wanna hear about the BP disaster? Tell me about it! God damed criminals!" shouts Carl. "Gimme another boilermaker!"

The third man seems to be withering under weather all his own. He pulls his sleeves out past his hands as if he is freezing.

"So what do you do?" asks Stan.

"I work for... Them... The criminals..."

"What's that?"

"I work for British Petroleum. I've been working non stop for weeks."

"Son of a bitch," breaths Carl. "You son's of bitches. What is it that you do, exactly?"

"Well," says the third man. He wipes the sweat out from around his eyes. "I'm a part of the team that's spraying corexit. Worked a three week shift, and now I'm off a few days. Then I go right back out."

"You muther fuckers just about ruined the entire community."

"I know," said the third man. "It's plain as day. We're doing our best."

"My ass!" shouts Stan. "You guys gonna make good on reimbursing the businesses that are suffering? Hell no! Crooks! Liars! Your priorities are your god dammed shareholders, that's it!"

The bartender speaks up, "Take it outside, fellas!"

"Gladly," says Stan. He slams his fist onto the countertop and a single peanut rattles in its bowl.

"Easy," says Carl. "Take it easy. Look at the guy. He's fried. 'Sides, he ain't nothing but a spoke on a wheel. A fucked up wheel on a fucked up unicycle."

Stan calms down, but new veins are coursing along his forehead like rivulets of rain on a window pane.

"Look. I'm sorry," says the third man. He is trembling. He covers his eyes with his hands. "You don't think I know all this? It's on the news twenty four seven. We haul ass, burning out at the edges, and nothing we do is good. No job well done. We all feel like a modern day Sisyphus..."

"A what?" asks Carl, gritting his teeth menacingly.

"Greek mythology, a greedy and corrupt king was punished in the afterlife by having to roll a huge boulder up a hill, only to have to watch it roll back down and start over for all eternity."

"Don't go feelin' sorry for yourself. And you ain't gettin' no sympathy from us," says Stan.

"I know it," says the third man. "I lost my best friend in that blast on that rig. I got friends falling ill. I got oil in my blood, in my pores I can't get out. Won't ever get out. My best friend's family is suffering. Thousands of families are suffering. There's nothing we can do. We do our best, but it's worthless. Oil keeps bleeding out. We spray chemicals we don't have enough research on. Whatever we do, we come back to this," The third man points to the television. Balls of tar and a dead dolphin graces the screen.

Carl points out to the ocean. "You belong out there," he says. "You don't belong here anymore. You don't belong anywhere anymore. You belong out at sea. For good."

The third man finishes his O'douls. "The community is suffering, you know? But what if civilization were more advanced. What if every human being were collectively hardwired to help with any crisis, with any cataclysm? Instead of watching the news and shaking their heads, what if everyone just got on a plane and helped. What if everyone in the world wrote a check for ten dollars. Like a collective fever trying to fight off a cold. Worldwide. Then instead of a few businesses going out hundreds of thousands of dollars, we got everyone in the world just out ten bucks."

"Kumbaya, fucker," says Carl."The worlds got bigger problems beyond our own. You slimy fuck."

"Maybe I will take a real drink," says the third man. He begins to sob. "How's about a whiskey?"

"I don't think so," says the bartender.

"Yeah, we don't think so," says Stan.

"Time for you to leave. You're upsetting my customers," says the bartender.

"Of course," says the third man. "I understand. We all gotta blame somebody." He gets up and walks over to the door, and pulls his collar up over him as he steps out into the light. He hunches over as if it's raining – stormy weather all his own.

Outside the air is so dry it could even be flammable.

OIL

Lee dreamed that something was approaching from across the horizon; a leviathan dragging itself across the ocean floor, it's entire body coated with black oil and pin points for eyes gleaming in the darkness. When she awoke, it was already there. It was week nine of the BP disaster, and new plumes of oil were found leaking from the cracked earth along the gulf coast. The news was not optimistic. Lee dragged herself out of bed and took a look out the window. Although the oil disaster was oceans away, the casualties were now at her midtown window. The sky seemed jaundiced with pollution. The ocean was grey and darkening – a giant body of teflon. There was a knock on the door, and when Lee answered, it was her boyfriend. Bertram stepped in and his entire body had been caked with the bubbled, gnarled, black matter. Flecks of twigs and leaves were stuck to his sides like glitter glued to construction paper. His face was shrouded, as if his entire body wore a globulous, black cloak. He opened his mouth and more crude oozed out. Lee reached out and wiped two trails around his eyes until she could see them. "How was the surf?" she asked. "Good," he said. "Mind if I take a shower?"

Uncle Nate

When Al turned twenty three, his Uncle Nate offered to take him to dinner at Uncle Bo's. He wanted to eat some poke, limu, onion and drink beer. Also, there was something very important he wanted to tell him. It was something about Al's parents, their history, and why he hadn't been around when Al was growing up. Al, now a young, assertive, opinionated and very stubborn man, declined. When he told his parents, they're reaction was to lean into each other, as if to comfort and console one another. "Maybe you should go," they said. Al refused. "I don't really care to see him. Couldn't care less about what he wants to clear up. To purge the big white elephants in his conscience." Instead, Al went out with his friends, got drunk, and in the middle of the night, decided to get a tattoo. He and his friends all decided to get statements tattooed along their upper backs. The letters he had arching over his trapezius composed a simple statement. "Fuck Uncle Nate," it said. It was a statement born of alcohol, anger, and intense loyalty to his parents. Later that week, Al's father, upon seeing his son's angry, hate-filled tattoo shook his head and asked. "We've told you that all was forgiven years ago. We told you to go to dinner with him so that he could make amends with you. How did you become this way?" Al had no answer, and went into a period of intense introspection. He eventually had the tattoo removed using repeated laser therapy. The tattoo's removal was more painful than its creation, and it left his back badly scarred, which was more damage that Uncle Nate had ever done. Eventually, Al grew up and became a devoted husband and father. He named his daughter Penelope. And he named his younger son Nate.

The Incredible Shrinking City

For a while our town had been shrinking. The economy was drying out like the exoskeleton of a crab decomposing on the rocks. Thousands upon thousands had been losing their jobs. Popular landmarks that had been around for decades shut down. Businesses collapsed as newer business models redefined our landscape. Our city on the sea was shrinking. We knew this, but the major shock was still to come. As travelers flew out of town, they realized that upon landing, their planes were smaller than the others. The jetways at every outside airport were not able to connect our own 747's. The probing esophagal hallways towered over our planes. The mobile stairways that were driven to the exits were also too tall. Therefore, baffled travelers were only able to exit using the yellow inflatable slides that blew out from under the thresholds of the entrances. They slid down onto the tarmac, and walked out into much larger cities, at half their original size. Those were the lucky ones. Our city is still shrinking. More companies are folding. We are now a single broadsheet newspaper town, and our paper is now the size of an average business card. Our planes can no longer traverse the pacific. They are too small, and can carry only a few pints of fuel. The weather demolishes any plane that attempts to take flight. Our planes our blown over by the wind like abandoned paper cups in a park. They are dragged across the tarmacs and are thrown into the ocean. Large cargo ships can no longer dock, and goods are shipped in on smaller cruisers, where a single worker gently places a shoebox onto our shores. One day the waves will wash over us. Until then we have only each other.