Ghost Poets

At around 2 in the morning – when the moon was so large it was a wrecking ball headed for the window – there was a rattling in the living room. The air throughout the apartment was still and the mechanical whir of the refrigerator clicked on. Damon sat up in bed, tossed off his blanket and walked toward the living room. The floor chilled his feet and gripped his ankles. Shadows. Light. There was a movement in the dark – a darker shadow among shadows.

"You again," he said. There was a figure slumping on his sofa, like a weary traveler on a train, its head wrapped in toilet paper. "What now?" asked Damon. "The ephemeral sting of love? The darkening iris of existence? The vernacular of lust?"

"The emptiness of writer's block," said the ghost.

"Go on. Get some sleep," said Damon. The ghost hovered onto it's side and rolled over onto the sofa, facing it's back toward the living room.

Minutes later, as Damon tried to sleep, footsteps made their way down the hallway to the bedroom. A shirt on a hanger fell to the floor. "Oops" said the ghost.

"What is it now?" asked Damon.

"I can't write. I feel like my balls were clipped off."

"They were probably cremated," said Damon to himself.

"Ha. Ha." said the ghost. "Let's see what happens to you when I neuter you in your sleep."

"Okay. I get it," said Damon. "Go to sleep."

The next day the ghost poet was gone. There was a message scrawled out in the margins of the newspaper. "The thing about being a ghost and a poet at the same time, you don't really have access to the things that torment you."

It made sense. That afternoon, Damon created an altar on the kitchen countertop. He pinned up naked pictures of women. He brought out bottles of whiskey, and wine. He organized a spice rack full of pharmaceuticals. He left out a switchblade. Then he urinated onto the items. "That oughta bring it all back," he said to himself.

That night, he went to bed and for the first time in a week, he heard the familiar agony and ecstasy of faint yet fervent typing. It continued for weeks. And then one day, when Damon got back to the apartment, there was a manuscript waiting for him. He flipped through it, "Not bad, spook! Not bad at all."

He submitted the book to Manic D Press, a small publisher for poets and got a check for $5,000. They had printed an image of a skull with candle in it on the cover, which to Damon was a bit on the tacky side.

This was the ghost's third book of poetry, and already the ghost could be heard pacing about, composing stanzas in the darkened hallway at night. Damon could hear the old creaking of the desk chair whenever the phantom's great, invisible weight settled into it.

One night, as the ghost composed it's poems, Damon went into the living room and flicked on the lights. This seemed to startle the ghost, and he vanished, leaving a half written poem rolled in the typewriter. Damon sunk into the sofa and put his feet up onto the glass coffee table. "Get your mojo back?" he asked the room.

The wall opposite of him began to take on a mottled look, the way a page of a paperback novel looked in a light drizzle. Words began to form. "There is a kind of release in laboring humbly all your life, to see only after the end, that you had greatness all along," wrote the ghost. "Hopefully the women will come."

"What are you gonna do? Ghost fuck 'em?" asked Damon.

A low breeze snaked along the walls and sheets of paper erupted from the desktop. "I'd have more luck than you," said the ghost, now a voice coming from the ceiling.

"Poetry is dead, my friend," said Damon. "Dead as you are. What century are you from?"

The window panes rattled.

"Poets. You all are a self absorbed lot. Concerned with the grandiosity of your own feelings. Wanting to shower the world with sad observations. Useless. I'm more of a biography reader. Real people. Real situations. I don't like wasting my time with fiction. Poems. Bullshit."

The typewriter rose into the air and dropped to the floor.

"Go into the light. This world doesn't even concern you anymore. You're like that old kid in the sixth grade who flunked three times. The kid with full-grown facial hair, ruling the basketball courts. Move on."

A pencil on the table stood on its tip and began scribbling erratically onto a corner of an old newspaper. "But I have so much more to write," it read.

"Poetry doesn't sell anymore. People don't bother. Besides, it's only a window into yourself. It's a sad, myopic thing. There's a larger window and a much greater mystery out there. Just pass through, and all of your ideas will seem small in comparison. That is what you want isn't it?"

"Yeah," said the ghost. "I suppose." Damon looked into the glass and saw the figure of a man standing next to him. He looked like a young J.D. Salinger.

"Good. Now get going, before you start resorting to cliches."

There was a bright pulse of light from the ceiling, and the ghost disappeared.

* * *

The next day a young family walked through the door. They greeted Damon cordially, paid him five hundred dollars, thanked him for a job well done and saw him to the door.

Outside, the day brought on new possibilities. There was a haunting down on Hausten Street. It involved a notebook and strange cryptic phrases appearing on the walls and in the mirrors. He believed his to be the ghost of famous poet whom he admired. He was excited and nervous. It had been decades since her last book was published.

He found the apartment and knocked on the door. A young couple answered. They looked tired and fearful. "Hello" smiled Damon. "My name is Damon Weathers. Spirit guide. Literary agent. Ghost poet whisperer. I hear you have a problem."

"That's right," said the man. "This one is of lyrical canon."

"I know," said Damon smiling broadly. "I have all of her books at home."

Alaula

My mind wanders. Even in such a beautiful place as this nursery tucked in a corner along the Koolau mountains, where everything is a lush, untouched green, and dense, wet clouds hang over its peaks like pillows. Everyday, I tend to the ankle biter plants, the 'Ihi, the 'Akulikuli, the 'Ilie'e. Large patches of them receding to a vanishing point. Sprinklers go on and off. On and off. I clear out tracts. I fill in tracts. I plant flowers. Tend to them. I load them into a truck, and plant more. My mind wanders.

My girlfriend, Alaula brings in a new plant. Her name means dawn, or daybreak. In the early days I slipped and called her Dawn, as a nickname. But she grew increasingly offended, and so now I call her Alaula. It's a beautiful name with a beautiful meaning that I wake up next to every morning. The flower she carries looks thugged-out, as if it's made of metal. It has a thick stem with thorns, and a mad serrated spiral of table saw petals. It isn't majestic like the Loulu, with it's fanned out palms. Not a tree or shrub at all. It isn't as innocuous as an 'Ae'ae, with its petite flowers. It is an angry, rugged, tough looking flower. Like some unique Hawaii plants, there may be a story behind it. Maybe some deity interfered with two lovers, and banished them... as usual.

Take the Ohia Lehua tree, a twisted tree with a red spiky flower. The legend goes: Pele, the volcano goddess, fell in love with a warrior named Ohia. She proposed to him and he turned her down. He was in love with another woman named Lehua. Infuriated, as only a volcano goddess could be, Pele turned Ohia into a twisted tree. This broke Lehua's heart, and witnessing this, the other gods felt a smidgen of sympathy for her. So they turned her into a flower. A red blossom now grows on the tree and this means they were conjoined together. So grows Ohia Lehua, the only tree that can actually take root in lava rock. The two lovers grow and bloom in their persecutor's terrain, together forever in spite of her hostility.

Take the naupaka plant. Two versions grow in Hawaii – one along the shorelines, and one high in the mountains. On the shorelines, the flowers that blossom are missing petals from the top half. In the mountains, the flowers are missing the petals along the bottom. A princess fell in love with a commoner, and their love was forbidden by the elite. The gods disapproved, and so the princess tore a naupaka flower in half. She gave her lover one half and clutched the other to her chest. "We can no longer be together. You live by the water, I'll live in the mountains." And in this unhappy ending, the flowers – sentient back then – said "Bummers," and began blooming in half flowers from then on.

Sentient flowers. Who knew? People sing to their flowers. They play music. They lovingly spray their leaves with water. I don't feel that way. This job is not for me. Still, I am drawn sideways to the plants. I know there is power here. That night, Alaula and I sneak back in using my gate key and sleep next to a patch of 'Ilima papa. We feel it buzzing. I feel the entire garden humming with life.

The next day, we wake up, our backs as knotted as a banyan's roots. The entire nursery staff is staring at us. "Morning," I say, still in yesterday's work clothes.

Mr. Kato, the boss, walks up to me and hits me in the jaw. My head snaps back and I'm looking skyward. My feet momentarily rise as if I'm backfloating across time. I hit the dirt with a hollow thud. Alaula rushes to help me. I struggle to get back up like a caterpillar rolled onto it's side. "What? We just... fell asleep is all!" I spit out, but I know that's not what they see. I take a look around and see the entire nursery destroyed as if all of the plants had withered as if they had all been poisoned. I do that in my sleep? Did Alaula? The two of us?

In the corner, however, is that odd flower that she had brought in. In it's center there are now yellow paisleys swirling about in its petals. It is a lone figure of guilt.

"Aye," I say. "It wasn't me. It was that plant. That nameless thing."

Mr. Kato wants to kill me. They all do. We are fired. Alaula is heartbroken. I tell her we'll be okay. We'll work elsewhere. We have a dozen connections.

Still, we swear it was the flower. Somehow, for reasons beyond us, it is responsible. I firmly believe this is true. We don't nurture a world of plants, we are ruled by it. We are the byproducts of plant life – of the love and politics in the realm of petals. We mosey about, thinking they live and die by our sprinklers, but when the sun goes down, some petals fold while others destroy entire nurseries.

Later I hear they've named the strange new flower Alaula, after my girlfriend. And the mystery of its origin deepened. Weeks later, the entire garden had been blanketed by these new flowers. Slowly, they crept across the landscape, choking out all other forms of vegetation. It is the fastest infestation the island has ever experienced.

As months passed, the damage became terminal. It was a rarity to see even a single tree with leaves yet to fall from it's suffocated branches, Alaula flowers growing at their trunks as if they were trying to climb them. The grass across Oahu's yards grew dry and brown as more Alaula sprouted, forming craters of decay around every stem.

By the time the government declared Oahu an ecological disaster zone, the flowers had overtaken our bedroom, and were quietly growing through the plumbing and the walls. Alaula, my girlfriend, had created a small nursery for them and slept under the taller stalks at night.

"Where did you find that first one?" I once asked her.

"Is this all somehow my fault?" she shot back. She took a flower in her hands and placed her delicate fingers along it's stem. The paisleys in its petals swirled and turned from yellow to red as she applied pressure between her fingers. When she snapped the flower's stem its petals turned black instantly, as if it had been unplugged. A milky fluid leaked from the break in the stem and dripped to the soil, where more flowers began sprouting instantly.

She cradled the flower and laid it on its side. "This is a new dawn," she said, noticing a small inscription behind one of the flowers petals.

Quietly, secretively, she began reading.

The Gondolier

In the middle of the Japanese garden was a small house of mirrors. In it were concentric hexagons with sections blocked off as in a maze. Two children went in and were multiplied by a thousand by the mirrors as they walked through. They were quarreling brothers. The older brother said "You shouldn't have told mom about the candy bar, stupid. Now we won't get dessert later." He punched his younger brother in the arm and dashed off. His multiple reflections collided and divided and eventually the kaleidoscope of arms and legs went white.

The older brother ran and found a pole in the center of the maze. It was like a fireman's pole and it went down a floor. He hopped on and slid down. With an onset of panic, he realized that the pole descended deeper than he anticipated. He fell past 3 levels, each with new mirrors, and fell into a pit. There were 6 more doorways, each lined with mirrors. The maze, being larger than he anticipated, grew exponentially. It expanded outward and there was no telling how many directions he could go in. Now it engulfed him and the billions of other selves, and even his reflections seemed to be reflections of other reflections of other reflections. He began running, reaching one dead end after another until he lost his bearing completely.

Outside, the younger brother emerged. He held his hand over his arm where a dark bruise was already brewing under his skin like a tropical depression. This was the moment the younger brother would not forget. He turned his back to his older brother and never saw him again. His parents asked him what happened. The police arrived. Dread chilled the air.

The other way he remembered his older brother's disappearance was set during the fall. They were on a swerving road, with sharp s-curves and slopes rising and falling so steeply that the earth seemed to be heaving. There was a forest on both sides of the car and the air was cool and smelled sweetly of moss.

They pulled over to the side of the road, his father with a large net on the end of a long pole for picking fruit, and his mother with a small, white plastic bucket. They were all going to pick something off the trees. Apples, maybe. Or plums. This was not clear to him.

His brother gave him a small plastic bag and pointed him off to a clearing in the forest. They all stepped off the road and descended into the shadowy gathering of trees. He followed his older brother but his brother held his hand out. "Go your own way," he demanded. Damselflies hovered about. Mosquitos began to take root along his forearm. He slapped at them, leaving bloody smears along his wrist. He looked up and saw his brother bounding deeper into the forest. He could see the yellow shirt and red shorts, and his plastic bag ballooned with the rush of air, leaping and landing. He disappeared behind one tree and reappeared from behind another, bright against the dense green shadows. He disappeared and reappeared until he was no longer visible and he never emerged again.

The older brother ran into the forest until he could no longer see or hear his family. Trees upon trees upon trees. He was surrounded by mud, strange creaking sounds, snapping branches, a strange caw. His pulse flooded his ears.

The younger brother turned his back. It was the last time he saw his older brother. His parents called out for hours with their hands cupped over their mouths and their brows knit furious with worry. They wanted to destroy the forest with their calls, to demolish it flat, but the forest was unyielding. Finally, a police car arrived.

The third way he remembered it was set at the beach.

Waves. They were swimming in the shallows of the kiddie pool, protected by a wall of rocks. They explored the holes under the porous rock formations and chased a small striped eel into a burrow. Waves exploded against the rocks creating cascading waterfalls under which they could hide and vanish. They chased angel fish with nets and threw sand at each other.

The older brother started to swim out past the rocks. He was able to tread water, but the younger brother had yet to learn. "Come back!" he yelled. He slowly waded after him. The water was up to his waist, then up to his chest and the gentle pressure of the water surrounding his neck caused him to panic. He lost the net and swallowed water. He pushed back to regain his footing on the soft bed of sand. He screamed for his older brother, but the waves were too tall, and they obscured his line of vision.

He regained his footing, and started wading back to the shallows behind the rocks. He climbed on, cutting his foot, and started running along the black jagged stone, looking over to the horizon for his older brother. The beach was large, and every small step in the water seemed monumental, and he could not gauge the distance at which his brother left him. Was it over there by the sandbar? Was it right there, just a few feet away? Where did the sand drop off? How far had he waded before he was forced to turn back?

Around him, other children screamed and splashed about. Then his mother called to him "Where is your older brother? Where's Chad?"

Were these dreams, these memories? Was there any solid truth to them?

* * *

Twenty five years later, Levi sat at his office answering a final batch of emails regarding a photo shoot. As the art director of a first year magazine, he was having difficulty setting the visual tone. He had yet to forge a relationship with a single photographer, and he had yet to galvanize his team.

The phone rang, and he answered it with one hand while typing with the other. It was his father. "We found him... your brother," he said. His voice was worn thin, as if he had been crying. He sounded exhausted. His voice sagged and drooped over the line. "Actually, he found us. He's here at my house. But he won't stay long. Come over as soon as you can."

Levi drove 20 miles to his father's house. He pulled up into the gravel driveway and saw that his mother's Pontiac was there as well. He had not seen his parents in the same space since his cousin Charlie's wedding years ago. They had divorced shortly after Chad's disappearance - neither one of them willing to accept blame, nor forgive one another.

He walked up the wooden steps, and his shoes clomped heavily. He walked into the house, and it smelled faintly of lemon. His mother, with her short, silver hair sat on one the end of a flower patterened sofa, and his father, bloated, tired and resigned stood up to greet Levi.

"Come in," he said. "Have a seat." The air was that of a recent death. It was rare that there was ever a ressurrection, who knew if this was a fitting reaction?

On the green recliner sat Chad. He was thirty five now, lean and healthy. He stood up immediately, walked over to Levi and gave him a firm hug. He gripped him along side both arms and held him there. "I remember you," he said brightly.

This shocked Levi. The strangely angled sound of his older brother's voice, now as leveled and matured as his own rattled him and made his heart squirm. He could faintly see his younger/older brother's childhood eyes under the roughened sun damaged skin and fine network of wrinkles. What shocked him more was accent. It was French. Or Italian. He could not be sure. "This is for me, a heart wrenching moment. My brother! Do you remember me?"

"Chadwick," said Levi to himself, as if in remembrance. It was as if that word had been stuck in his throat for decades. "Chad," he said, this time to the world. "It's you."

"Levi," whispered Chad. "You have aged well. My god. I have always wondered of you!"

"Mirrors," repeated Levi. "Do you remember them? The mirrors?"

"Of course of course!" Chad exclaimed, cheerfully now. "The house of mirrors. Such fun. You were terrified!"

They all laughed awkwardly at this hazy memory. "House of mirrors?" asked his mother. "When was that?"

"At the garden. There was a small..." began Levi, but then he stopped. His heart began beating irregularly.

His father wiped the tears from his eyes. "Well," he began. "It was just a knock on the door, like any other day, and there he was. He found me first. It took some explaining, and I still don't understand. But it's him. Chad. Your brother. Our eldest son."

"Is it?" retorted Levi, taking a step back.

"I find father first in phonebook," Chad started. It sounded like a question. It was the way he enunciated and tilted his words. "I find all of you after many years of searching. I come to you from France. From France, then to Venice for past five year, saving money. I inherit a gondola from a distant relative."

"We don't have a distant relative living in Italy," interrupted Levi.

"Ah," Chad responded apologetically. "Distant relative of family I live with for many years. So. I work as gondolier. How funny, that I should find myself there. I save. The city sank a hair every year, I save a hair every year. Then I travel to America to visit. To find you. And I have! But I must return after today."

"Why not stay longer?" asked his mother. She looked at him in disbelief. This was her son. This was not her son. This was her son. Echoes of heartache rippled across her face – a look no son ever wanted to see.

"I must go. Regretfully, it took me longer than expected to find you. I am here three weeks. I have many address and phone number and all of them mistake. I search again on computer in library. Frantically for past few days. I am lucky I find you, even on my last day." he said, sadly.

"Just stay. We'll pay for your ticket back another day. Stay with us," begged his father. He began to sob again. Chad embraced his parents. They wept together, whispering into each other's ears. "Stay longer," his mother pleaded, her voice an erratic violin.

"I am sorry. My family. But I have to go. Of course, I will be back. But for now, I have my obligations back home. I have my life back in Venice. I get married next year. It would be wonderful if you could come. And of course, for us to visit you again."

Levi paced about the room, unwilling to accept anything. "Do you remember the beach?" he asked.

"Of course. Our childhood! Yes!"

"Do you remember the forest?" his lower jaw pulsed.

"Of course! All those summers! The cold, green chill! We love it!"

Levi was filled with rage. "Where the hell have you been?" he screamed. Saliva erupted from his lips and hung down over his chin, his jaw set like a barracuda's. "All these years!"

Chad rose from his parents embrace and fixed the collar on his shirt – a shallow gesture of vanity in such a situation as Levi saw it. "People disappear all the time," said Chad, as if to justify and soften his disappearance as something as cruel and crass as a simple fact of life. "Life is evil. And people are weak to it."

"How dare you," growled Levi.

"He explained everything," his father said. "He was taken."

"He was taken from us, and forced to live with another family," wept his mother.

"Then he was brought to an orphanage," said his father. "He only spoke english. He doesn't remember where he was taken to. He doesn't remember what country."

"I am ashamed to have been so docile," said Chad. "I was afraid. They promised they would let me come home, and lied. They promised me pain if I did not comply. When I outgrew my naivete, it was too late. I was in a dark space. But I was moving. I don't understand how I was taken, from one country to another. But when I saw light, I was in a country that did not understand my cries. I was a prisoner without bars. And the rest, before the orphanage, was murderous and vile. I cannot speak of it. It is. Was. Unspeakable. But I grew. I ran. There was blood on my hands. There was strange policemen. I cannot recall through all this haze in my head. But it was like a dream. I found another family. They loved me. They had no idea. I had gone into a phase of silence. I was broken. I could not speak. Would not speak. They thought me mute. And for a time, I was. But I grew stronger. I find my way back to the living. Still, I could not bring myself to return home. I was afraid. I was afraid of the sorrow. I cause so much sorrow. More years pass by, and finally, I gain courage enough."

His mother rushed over, weeping, and embraced him. His father stood up, his mouth wide open, eyes wet with tears, and held them both. "We thought you were dead," he sobbed.

"I am sorry!" Chad broke down and wailed in sudden, complete devastation. "I am sorry you suffer!" He howled into his father's chest and pounded relentlessly on his shoulder with gnarled, inconsolable gasping. He fell to his knees and held his hands over his head as if he were being beaten. "Forgive me my weakness!" His face gushed with fluids that dribbled down his chin and his cheeks to the floor. His parents fell onto him, their faces gone slack with serenity. "It's not your fault," they whispered. "You're here with us now."

Levi walked over to them and knelt. He could not clearly remember his brother's disappearance, but he would clearly recall this; the return of a brother; the return of a stranger. Soon he would be gone again. Off in a cab, or a limo, or a van. He would keep on disappearing as he had been doing for the duration of Levi's entire life – gone from the beach, from the forest, from his father's living room. At this age, the fourth way his brother disappeared became more complex. It included his return. The way he remembered it – Levi lowered his hand to Chad's shuddering back. Slowly... carefully... as if not to disturb the ashes of the dead, he embraced him.

Diagnostics

Stanton looked deeply into the tunnel of light. It's rays flickered, vanished and a white, puffy face with dark brows came into view. "Well," said Dr. Ling, setting down the opthamlmoscope, "I have some good news, and some bad news." He sat back in his chair and picked up his clipboard. "Let's go with the good news first," said Stanton. "Okay then," said Dr. Ling, "You're not going blind. Your vision is fine. You should still get a more detailed eye exam but as far as I can see, there is nothing wrong with your eyebrows." Dr. Ling leaned forward in his chair and brushed some lint off his knee. "That's a relief," said Stanton. "You have no idea. Now what's the bad news?" Dr. Ling puffed his cheeks, pursed his lips and blew. His face inflated like a life raft. "Well," he began. "You have something incurable. It's a strange disease. I'm afraid it's serious." "Tell me," demanded Stanton. He knew it, he just knew it. "Give it to me, Doc. Pull no punches. To hell with bedside manner, to hell with it all." Dr. Ling nodded. "Very well." He clicked his pen, placed it into his pocket protector and swung his calve over his knee. "Well, it's called being-a-dickhead..." he began...

The Logo

Shay got home from his job interview feeling new. The blank page of this new chapter was waiting to be filled in. This was his first job after graduating with a degree in Marketing and he would start within a week as Marketing Coordinator at Hibiscus Media. This was point A of his upward trajectory, and to celebrate his launch he caught the bus to Foodland and bought himself a bottle of Yellowtail cabernet. It seemed appropriate. In the span of his lifetime, he would develop a more sophisticated taste for the finer things but for now a simple, cheap Yellowtail was what he knew.

When he arrived at his 3 bedroom house in Makiki, his 2 other roommates congratulated him and they all celebrated with a case of beer. At 10pm, the night was over, and Shay, drunk and exhausted went into his bedroom.

Over his bed hung a ghostly logo. It floated directly above his pillow and rotated slowly, like a quarter spinning on its side. It was luminous, yet it cast a shadow. When Shay looked closer, he realized that the hologram was translucent. "Finally," he said. "It's here."

This was Shay's logo. And it felt right. He went to sleep under the apparition, and it spun over him like a small galaxy of lights.

As the years passed, Shay advanced through the company. He became an Account Supervisor and saw to it that his clients were satisfied with the services they were receiving. He was dating a girl named Joyce, a blonde 24 year old media salesperson with a swimmer's body and a way of speaking that seemed as if she were communicating through a television set.

They moved in together after their first year and celebrated their anniversary with a trip to her hometown in Modesto where they stayed with her parents. The room they slept in was her childhood room. Most of the space was taken up by storage boxes but Shay noted the childhood details that still punctuated her room - the small pink dresser, the red lipstick phone, the plush dolls lining the floor next to the closet. Her parents welcomed him warmly and insisted they forego the motels, and so they slept in her room.

All the while the logo spun overhead. He could now make out a small swimmer in it's negative space. "That's you," he said. And they stared at it as if the ceiling had been lifted off like a lid and the moon was shining down on them. "Glad I made the cut," she answered.

More years passed, and Shay and Joyce remained a happy, blushing couple. They smiled at each other over the quiet distances of candlelit landscapes, letting their fingers intermingle at restaurants over cocktails. They ran together in the mornings and enrolled in various weekend classes – cooking, dance, guitar. They amassed entire collection of jazz records and educated each other on their favorite musicians. They bought a two-man kayak and strapped it onto the rooftop of their black Mazda protoge and paddled around the island's shores. They moved in to a larger apartment and bought an entire catalog worth of BoConcept furniture and accents, charged to Shay's Visa.

These were the idyllic early days. And the entire time, over their bed, the logo spun overhead. It followed them to every bed and took on the characteristics of their surroundings. It glowed like a campfire, a red flame over a teepee of three logs when they went camping on the North Shore. It took on the characteristics of a marquee when they took a trip to Las Vegas, appearing over their bed in the MGM. When they traveled to Greece, it adopted the columns of the Pantheon, all while retaining its basic identity system as Shay's logo.

"Why don't I get a logo?" asked Joyce one night.

"Maybe you don't brand yourself enough," Shay answered. He was brushing his teeth.

Joyce removed her glasses and set it down on the black-stained oak night stand. "Maybe I don't believe in branding," she said.

"Oh? What do you believe in?" asked Shay.

"Hmm. I believe in you. And me. I believe in the food we cook. Water. Air. And, sun," she said. She smiled and pushed her feet under the duvet. She was happy.

When Shay turned out the lights, the logo emitted a faint glow that he had not seen before. It was reflecting bliss, he decided.

* * *

Joyce died in an automobile accident on a Sunday evening on the way home from a friend's dinner party in Kaneohe. Shay, feeling under the weather had stayed at home. He insisted on her going to the dinner without him, and ushered her out of their apartment. "You never see them. I'll be fine," he said. On the way home, the car in front of her veered recklessly, slowed and swerved into her and both cars flipped over. She succumbed to her injuries at the hospital an hour later. Shay never stopped blaming himself.

In the years that followed, he became a broken man. He had attempted suicide once at a Waikiki hotel but was thwarted by a security guard. He became an alcoholic, and his work began to decline. Eventually, he was laid off from his job, and he was forced out of his apartment.

As he laid on a floor mattress in the living room at a friend's house, the darkened logo hung over him like a shadowy cloud, and rotated slowly. It had once been a vibrant green, but since Joyce's car accident, it had turned black. It's outlines became brittle and there were empty bottles embedded in its base.

"What do you want?" he growled to it. "I've hit rock bottom. Is that what you wanted to see?You reflect everything in my life, absorbing everything I do. Like some twisted voyeur. Why don't you just leave me alone? Get out of my life. Quit reminding me!" he slurred.

The room spun out of control as he sat himself up to take another long pull from a plastic bottle of vodka. He set the bottle down and pulled on the cord attached to his friend's laptop. He flipped it open and its screen lit up. Slowly, little lines, shapes and text appeared within that blast of white light. When his eyes focused, he saw that he was still logged in to his email and there was a message.

When he clicked on the email, he saw that it was from Logocentral.com and that it had arrived only a few minutes prior. The message read, "Dear Mr. Shay Lensfield, we understand that you are dissatisfied with your logo. We here at Logocentral understand how important it is for a symbol to reflect any company, object, idea or person faithfully while setting it apart from all of the rest. Rest assured that we will take the appropriate measures to update and streamline your logo in a way that you can identify with. Regards."

Shay began typing, "Who are you? Are you some guardian angel? Are you in charge of my life?"

The response came instantly. "No. We merely reflect it. It is every human's desire to claim ownership over all aspects of our lives. Even if it doesn't truly belong to us. Whether you are scrawling your name on a wall, or carving your name into a heart on a tree, or writing your name on a painting. A logo is an extension of these acts. We provide you with an identity by distilling your life into a single symbol. It is up to you what you do with this symbol. You are in control of your own life."

Shay replied. "You saw it happen? Joyce's accident?"

The reply came. "We are reevaluating the mnemonic value of your symbol. We understand it is a painful time for you. Within the current context there are many properties of the current logo that you may be averse to. We are working on this and assure you that there will be no painful reminders of your recent loss."

The bathroom light went on. Shay's friend, Ryan flushed the toilet and stepped out into the living room. "You alright?" he asked. "Man. Your logo's pitch black. Everything okay with you?"

Shay answered over his shoulder. "I'm fine. Just checking some emails," he said. "Thanks."

Ryan lingered in the doorway," Hey man. If you ever wanna talk, don't hesitate. I'm here for you," he said, and lightly hit his chest with his fist.

"Thanks," said Shay, not looking up.

"Get some sleep" said Ryan. He walked heavily and sleepily to his bedroom and closed the door.

Shay tilted another sliver of vodka into his mouth and continued writing.

"Are you God?" he typed.

"Just a designer."

"Who do you work for?"

"You are my primary client."

"Why doesn't everyone have a logo?"

"Not everyone needs one."

"I can't seem to get over Joyce. I feel like giving up. I tried killing myself by jumping off a balcony. I don't know what I'm doing here. I don't know which way is up."

"Shay," the email reply said. "These problems can be addressed. I know that it is normal for a designer to dismiss a client's ideas. It can be very offensive when this happens. I assure you this will not happen here. For example, even if your thoughts of suicide are not relevant to our visual solution, given your unfortunate situation, we will make an extra effort to be considerate of all emotional tripwires. Our process will be a collaborative and delicate process. Regards. "

Shay began sobbing quietly. A teardrop fell on the letter O. The vodka had a firm grip on his senses and it weighed on him heavily. "Will I ever love again?" he wrote.

Minutes passed with no response and Shay felt the correspondence had come to an end. He was about to log out when new reply appeared in his inbox. "This is a very difficult question. Although we will do everything in our power to update your logo in a way that satisfies all of your criteria, the reality is that there is no such thing as a magic logo. No matter how well designed a logo is, it cannot save a poorly conceived enterprise from failing. This is not to say that you yourself are heading such an enterprise, this is just to emphasize that a logo is only one part of an entity's success. Conversely, a good logo will always help a good company, product or person reach its full potential. Rest assured that your new logo will be a good one. How you fare with it is entirely up to you. I'll be in touch with you. Take care."

Shay looked back at his logo and saw that it was now a black cube. It had stopped rotating and was fastened solidly to the air. He crawled back onto his mattress and stared at its black, square undercarriage and drifted off to sleep.

* * *

When Shay awoke the next morning, he noticed that the logo was different. It was bolder and more rounded. It's color palate was muted, but there was potential for new additions to the color scheme. It was a rough draft, he concluded.

He turned on the laptop and saw that there was already an email waiting for him. He clicked on the message. It read, "Hi Shay. New logo draft this morning. There's a lot of room to play. From here, one can only go up. Currently, it's very muted and nondescript. For now, I've omitted all references to your past. In time, we can reintegrate such forms. What we have now is a clean canvas. Things will fill in over time as you continue to live your life. Much luck. Will be in touch."

The logo rotated slowly, waiting for what he would do next. The first thing Shay did was throw out the vodka. He picked up after himself and took a shower. Over time, after many interviews and many disappointments, he found a new job. Occasionally, he dreamed of Joyce. She was usually swimming in a large Olympic pool and he could never get a good glimpse of her face.

He worked. He ate. He slept. He grew older. All the while, the logo hovered overhead, changing as he himself changed and improving as he himself made personal improvements. It went on changing colors. It grew more intricate. Eventually, he fell in love again and it grew in luminosity. He got married to a musician named Margo who played the clarinet for the symphony; who's bright and cheery disposition masked a deeper understanding of life. Together they had two children, Len and Claire who eventually grew up and had children of their own. Thus, his logo grew in scale and brightness. Still he thought of Joyce, and had dreams of her throughout his life. She came to him as a young woman although he himself had aged; haunting and seducing him until he woke up quietly in tears. Margo would pretend not to hear him and the logo incorporated this as well. Increasingly, it grew more and more elaborate and the hieroglyphics of his inner and outer life hung overhead until it took up his entire room and embraced him completely.

Molecular Gastronomy

Food is sex. And by saying that, I am giving myself away as a chef. This is true. Food is sex and I am a purveyor of it. This philosophy renders anyone and everyone around me as a passive, receptive, orafice. I drizzle oils across their tongues. I squeeze crème fraiche into their mouths. I do my best work in the kitchen, but my masterstrokes occur in the dining room...

When my wife slaps me she does it with such vitriol that I feel little bells ringing along my cheek, and a little noosphere of pain buzzing just above my skin. I've gone out and slept with the wrong woman again. She knew too many people. She ate at the restaurant too often. I would do it again.

There is no one around me even when I'm standing in a crowd. No people. Just mouths. This is how I see myself.

Stanley, my new souschef asked me what my first set of knives were like. I fired him on the spot.

I have a tattoo of a cow on my back. Dotted lines delineate the different cuts of meat. Shank. Sirloin. Shoulder. Head.

They say molecular gastronomy is dead but last week I created a popcorn cloud so light and airy that it floated along the air like a dandelion and landed on the tongue of a sweet asian girl half my age. They say foams are passe but she didn't mind.

My wife asked me why I hurt her. She asked me why I hated her so much.

I created a spoonful of chocolate caviar and offered it to her as a truce. She threw it into the trash. She got ill that weekend and disappeared into the bedroom. I made her a spiral of chicken noodle soup. It looked like a roll of fishing line, white and translucent, in a coil on a single white asian soup spoon. "You stick your finger into it like a ring and rest it on top of your tongue," I explained. "Let it dissolve and let the flavors waft through you."

"Why can't you make food that actually nourishes people?" she asked.

I gave her a small bag of olive chips. She crumpled it and threw it onto the floor. "Nothing of substance. You're as vapid and cold as the liquid nitrogen you use to make your stupid frozen heirloom tomato salads with."

For love or for money you should really feed people instead of piquing their curiosities and vanishing like dry ice. Give them a dish they can hang onto.

I don't, of course. But I'm working on it. When my wife tells me she's pregnant, I begin to make a list of possible baby food purees. Spinach. Fish. Carrots. I aim to season them subtly and elegantly. Food is love.

When my wife tells me that the baby is not mine, I throw out the list. I go into my kitchen and create olive oil needles. Liquid ham and blood orange essences. Burnt onions. A mushroom cloud.

The Scanner

Riley Vasquez stood in line at the Lihue Airport feeling fatigued after a long weekend with his parents and a long drive in his father's old, non-air conditioned, Dodge Van. It was a 40 minute ride from Waimea, with a small clip-on fan fastened to the oil-stained sun visor blowing dusty, tart air into his face. He stood in line with dark circles of sweat sagging from his armpits and a wet V sinking down his back.

He had 40 minutes to get to Gate 6, which was right around the corner. The airport was smaller than a strip mall, and it's saving grace was one small bar overlooking the tarmac. Riley would be there in less than 10 minutes with 30 minutes to spare for a drink, and then he would be on Hawaiian Airlines floating home.

The line moved slowly, and the airport workers waved the flyers through slowly. Up front, he noticed a large device that he hadn't seen before. Passengers were stepping onto two large platforms with two walls facing each other. They stood with their feet apart and their arms held wide like Da Vinci's Vetruvian Man. A blast of light later, they were led off the platform and into the terminal.

"What is that?" asked Riley to the man in front of him.

"That's the new scanner. It sees right through your clothes. If you're carrying any contraband you gotta ditch 'em now."

"As in, X-ray?" asked Riley, tiptoeing to get a better look.

"As in, naked. Nude. Balls and all."

"No way."

They watched a woman get onto the scanner and marvelled at the idea that the scanner was seeing through her pleated skirt.

“I wonder if her carpet matches the luggage,” the man said.

“Disgusting,” said the old woman behind them, her lunar complexion growing more ruddled as the line shortened.

"Sign of the times," said the man and stepped forward.

Riley emptied out his pockets into the rectangular plastic bins. Behind him, a woman was complaining. "That is a complete invasion of privacy."

The man in front turned around to Riley and said "They can see birthmarks, tattoos, piercings..."

This got Riley nervous. Back in Waimea, he visited his ex-girlfriend, Kristie. It was routine for them to have a few drinks and fool around while he was at home. Their dissolution was mutual. She had never wanted to leave Kauai. She had never even wanted to leave Waimea. Although she may have appeared to have had a small town mentality, she was never one for convention. Before he left, she gave Riley a small gift. It was a penal ring with feathers and carved wooden daggers hanging from it like charms from a bracelet. Connected to the ring was a panel of feathers held against the base of his shaft and up against his pubis with a hemp string that wrapped around his waist. Behind him, the string was fastened with a small shark's tooth and a loop. She gave him head as she fastened it around him like a necklace. It was like some strange and loopy ritual that she had invented with no true cultural basis and he submitted to it like a rite of passage into a parallel universe. Numerous beads hung from the hemp, which became braided as it led to the thatch of feathers erupting over his pubic hairs. It looked ridiculous but he had left it on. There was nothing detectable anyway. What worried Riley now was the central wooden dagger. It was longer than his penis, and it came to a sharp, realistic point. It also seemed odd that it was serrated. Why would a bit of ornamentation meant to be worn so close to the Corpus spongiosum sport such authentic craftsmanship? "So they see you naked? Your body? Everything?" he asked.

The woman behind him sneered. "Perverts! They see your entire god given body. I bet they're having a ball!"

"Or two," chuckled the man in front. It was his turn next. He stepped up onto the platform and took his stance. "Get an eyeful?" he asked. Then he turned around and stepped off. The guard ushered him back onto the platform. "Can't get enough?" the man snapped, standing still for a few minutes.

When the guard waved him off, he muttered, "definitely no threat here, hop along," with a smirk.

The man lowered his head and walked off quietly.

The guard looked to Riley and waved him on. "Next!"

Riley hesitated.

"Brah. Get up here," bellowed the guard. His fist was the size of a coconut.

"I gotta use the bathroom," he stuttered.

"Batch-room's right pass da scanner. Bruddah, you got something fo' hide?"

"Just my fancy underwear," Riley tried to joke.

"No worries. Unless you strapped," said the guard. Maybe he had seen it all. This eased Riley's nerves slightly.

The image composed by these scanners were known to produce two distinctly different styles of images. The backscatter, which used low-level X-rays produced images that resembled chalk etchings. These were softer-edged and concealed more of the human body. The second method made use of the millimeter wave, which used electromagnetic waves to create vivid black-and-white images that resembled photo negatives. These images were far more detailed and intimate. The scanner that Riley stood on utilized the millimeter wave.

When Riley stood on the platform, the rays bounced off the front and back sides of his body. The images were then composed and transmitted to a guard in a closed room. The image the guard saw was of a man hiding a large serrated knife under his penis, with smaller exacto blades and bullets festooning a leather strap. The feathers looked absolutely warlike, and the shark's tooth gleamed in the negative like a talisman.

The guard quickly picked up the telephone and barked, "We got a freak. Take 'em down. Take 'em down now!"

Three guards jumped on Riley. One guard hit him across the face with his cinder block fist and Riley's legs went slack like pants on a clothesline. Two of the guards stood him up, and the third guard, ignoring protocol, attempted to relieve him of the weapon on site. At first he thought the weapon was concealed on a strap outside of his underwear. Upon further inspection, he realized that it was fastened to his entire waist. He unhooked the shark's tooth from the loop and began tugging. Riley began screaming. Although the hemp string had been undone, the ring was still fitted around the base of his shaft. Riley, sensing that the edge of the wooden dagger, no matter how dull, would also do irreparable damage if the guard were to continue pulling cried "It's stuck! Stuck along my privates! Please!"

The guard, confused, frustrated and unable to make sense of Riley's screaming simply tore Riley's pants off.

The woman behind him screamed. "What in the name of Sweet Jesus!"

The guards, flabbergasted, all howled. "Hoooooly shit! You must know Kristie Kabutan form Waimea!" they laughed. "That girl is crazy!"

Later that day, after the police had filed their reports and everything had been cleared up as a misunderstanding, Riley filed a letter of complaint with TSA. Later that week, two of the guards were let go for misconduct. By week's end, it was discovered that the guard who had been monitoring the scanner's images that day was romantically involved with Kristie. When he saw the X-ray image of Riley wearing the exact same undergarment that he himself had been wearing, he lost his temper, overreacted and exaggerated his findings.

It's a small town after all.

The Garden

One day, Arturo, on his daily rounds within the Kokohead Crater Botanical Garden, discovered a giant amorphophallus titanium, or carrion flower blooming next to a bed of cacti in the Madagascar section. It stood eight feet tall, with a large spathe that wrapped around it's central spadix like an evening gown blown upward, green on the outside and a deep purple on the inside, furrowed and fringed. It's spadix stood ten feet tall, like a giant cow's tongue licking the sky.

"This is disgusting," said Arturo to himself. And then to the flower, he yelled "You know you don't belong here, right?" He covered his nose and mouth with a checkered handkerchief. Flies swarmed all over its little flowers. It had been giving off the scent of dead flesh, and the dry heat only emphasized its rotting, decaying effluvium. It was known that these flowers attracted flies instead of bees to pollinate, and this flower was giving off it's raw pheromones in thick, gaseous waves. "Phew."

An ugly flower, it was. Arturo almost felt a sort of kinship with it. It had been swallowed from one part of the earth and belched up here where it didn't belong. So, too, was Arturo. He had been taken here from the Philippines by his grandmother as a child, and had never known his true parents. The flower was considered ugly by conventional standards, and it's beastly size was considered by many as revolting. Arturo himself was never considered an attractive man, he smoked and drank too much, and ate poorly.

From overhead came a loud buzzing. A shadow the size of a pick up truck gracefully slid across the garden. The buzzing got louder and a whorl of dust kicked up around the carrion flower. It was a giant fly. Arturo removed his navy, sweat-soaked cap and pressed it to his chest. The fly was the size of a trimmed turkey. Its eyes glimmered in the sun, with swirls of light that looked like multicolored rainbows in an oil puddle. Arturo had no camera, and no cell phone with a camera. All he had were his own two eyes and his word. Being a known recluse as well as pathological fabricator, this mattered little, as there was no one in his life to tell, and casual acquaintance who would listen would not believe him anyway. He wanted to run, screaming, to gather as many witnesses as he could, but he was afraid the spectacle would end, so he stayed, his boots frozen in the red dirt.

"Praise God," said Arturo.

He watched in horror as the bulbous fly made love to the flower, rubbing its abdomen all over it's spadix, letting its legs wrap around it like a strippers pole. Arturo was repulsed, yet fascinated. When the fly took off, the flower began to close. The single petal that wrapped around it began closing until it looked like a small head of romaine lettuce. By noon, the flower had withered into nothing more than a gnarled, grey root.

Who would believe him? These flowers were rarities to begin with, and to insist to the public that one had bloomed at the garden outside of it's own natural climate would be to reaffirm his own reputation as a bullshitter. Add to that the giant fly, and well, everything he said would be dismissed as another fanciful and pointless lie. He may have even been slapped.

Arturo staggered to the front gate of the garden where he greeted the visitors. Throughout the day, he passed out folded maps and bit his lower lip as they all entered the park. He wanted to tell them about that fly but he held back. What would have been the point?

For the rest of his days Arturo developed and fostered an obsession for carrion flowers such as the phallic amorphophallus. He also developed a fondness for the red-petaled rafflesia, and the feathery, star-shaped, stapelia, with its gaping mouth and bad breath. When asked why he would start such an expensive hobby using up his lifetime savings growing such repulsive plants, that day would always float back into his consciousness. "I guess, we got something in common. Those putrid plants and me," he would answer. "All flowers, good or bad, pretty or ugly, they got a set of wings flying around just for them. And me, I throw my hat in with these different ones. The dark horses. I always root for the dark horses."

Although no one believed the tale, many supposed this to be the most openly reflective statement he ever made. Although he had an indiscriminate generosity when it came to fabrications, one thing was certain – dark horses were the always the ones to root for.

And he did have bad body odor.

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.