OLD: Excuse me, sir, did I just overhear you use the phrase, “cut and run?”

YOUNG: Uh, yeah. So?
OLD: I am wondering what exactly you meant with those words.
YOUNG: It’s an expression.
OLD: An expression?
YOUNG: Something people say. You know, to make big ideas, um, smaller.
OLD: I know of this practice, but not in this instance. Do continue.
YOUNG: Nah, it’s cool, buddy. I’m just gonna go sit somewhere else.
OLD: Oh, but I truly must know. I am deeply interested. If you could spare but one more precious moment I would be forever grateful.
YOUNG: …
OLD: I could pay you five dollars.
YOUNG: Deal.
OLD: Oh joy! Now, “cut and run.” Please explain how you meant it.
YOUNG: It means, like, get out of here, I guess. I don’t know. Like, stop what you’re doin’ and just leave? I’m bad at explaining things.
OLD: So it is about the running?
YOUNG: What?
OLD: Well, you are saying that the phrase, by nature, places more emphasis on the “run” than the “cut”, am I correct?
YOUNG: Yeah. Yes. It’s just a phrase.
OLD: But a very labyrinthian one. A maze of twists and turns in those words.
YOUNG: It’s just three words, man.
OLD: It’s a maze! Now, if one were to just say “run” instead of “cut and run”, would it make a difference?
YOUNG: I don’t know. Depends.
OLD: On what, exactly? Please be specific.
YOUNG: I don’t even know what you’re talking about anymore.
OLD: Is running the same thing as cutting and running? It really is quite simple. Would you feel comfortable boiling the phrase down to its bare essentials by omitting the first half?
YOUNG: I don’t like that you were eavesdropping on my conversation, pops.
OLD: “Pops!” Another illuminating choice of words. Do these simple words that we say matter? Does it matter if I leave one word out? Put one word in?
YOUNG: Like the Hokey Pokey.
OLD: I am not familiar.
YOUNG: Whatever, man. Why do you care so much about this?
OLD: Well, you see, it deeply upset me when I heard you use the phrase “cut and run” and I am trying to ascertain how I could ever use such a phrase and not want to induce vomiting.
YOUNG: I don’t know.
OLD: My son looked a lot like you. He had the same curled locks…
YOUNG: Don’t touch my hair.
OLD: I’m sorry, but my son, he used to have a problem with pain. He was a deeply troubled boy who bottled up all of his feelings until he could no longer handle the raw emotion. He needed to find a way to let these emotions out, by any means possible. That is when he discovered my knife collection.
YOUNG: …
OLD: He played with the knives. Cutting himself here and there, a violent and masochistic act to release the pain from his tortured soul.
YOUNG: My God, how old was he?
OLD: Six. I took him to counselors, psychologists, psychiatrists, even a veterinarian. But it was hopeless. Eventually his pee-wee football coach got through to him and he began to run as a way to escape the pain. He ran night and day, so hard that he would sometimes pass out in the middle of a sprint. He lost thirty-seven pounds in one week.
YOUNG: I think my phone is gonna ring soon. I should go.
OLD: It was at this same time that my dear wife, Abby, decided to leave us. I knew my son would be devastated, so I withheld the information until after his birthday. For his seventh birthday I bought him the biggest, most magnificent chocolate cake. He absolutely adored chocolate cake. But of course, the cake had to be cut. And so I sang my son “Happy Birthday”, blew out the candles for him since he no longer had any strength left in his lungs, and cut him the biggest slice of cake he had ever seen. I chose this unfortunate moment to tell him of my separation from Abby. He ate his cake in silence. Then, without warning, he grabbed the carving knife and disappeared into the night. The police found him later that evening at the recreation field running circles on the track, cutting away. Cutting and running.
YOUNG: …
OLD: So now you see why I am so inquisitive about this phrase you throw about with reckless abandon.

YOUNG: …can I have my five dollars?

On this day, the bus arrived early. Yes, you read correctly, even the undead take public transportation. We unlive in desperate times. I boarded the sparsely crowded bus feeling less than myself. Despair settled upon my countenance and try as I might, I could not clear it away. It was nearly an hour later before I felt like myself again. Immediately following a conversation with the wardrobe department, a stint in the makeup chair to darken my eyes to the black shade of death, and a hearty red breakfast, I donned my top hat. “Hey, you there! Tophat!” rang a voice. It was a production assistant. I turned and glowered at him. “Yes?” He directed me towards the stage in which I would be held. They gather us like cattle. They tend to keep us vampires far away from The Importants for fear we might suck them dry.

Unfortunately, the only sucking that I experienced all day was from a plastic martini glass full of corn syrup and food coloring. A truly awful concoction, but as I was hired to appear to enjoy the taste, I did just that. After a little time sitting with loud, interesting, and vastly ignorant humans, I was ushered into a bar that looked much more realistic than it was. People praised, shunned, and gawked at my top hat. Like a demonic Mad Hatter I strutted proudly through the faux bar with a scowl on my face. I was given prime placement in front of the glass and metal recorders, and then promptly shoved to the back of the room like yesterday’s victims. Hear this, gentle reader, it was an atrocity that one so stunning and magnificent should be likened to a wall hanging. I was right angry about it, but I stewed in silence while sipping my horrendous blood martini.

I understood why I had been relocated when one of The Importants arrived. She was a wisp of a thing, maybe the height of a great dane but with long, blonde hair. The dainty creature had a spat with one of my brethren, an elder vampire with a celery stalk waist hidden behind a black corset, and a battle ensued. The dainty one was thrown to the ground, and then responded in a way no one expected: she focused a beam of raw energy upon the vampire. My eyes would have bulged out of my head if my muscles were still functional and eye-bulging were a physical possibility. The string-cheese vampire was hurled against the wall, caught in an invisible gail. She wobbled to her feet and stumbled forward, cursing us as the tiny one absconded from the building. Why must pouty blonde women torment my kind?

A bell rang and moments later I found myself sandwiched between a great mansion and a torture chamber. Bored and tired and lacking sustenance, I wandered through our holding pen. This portion of The Studio sat unused on the day. It housed the settings of a dark and ancient dungeon built for sex and bloodletting, as well as the Southern mansion of one of The Importants. During my exploration, I encountered a pale, redheaded creature with whom I shared a common siring location: the country’s Middle. Her name was Diana, which I thought to be a terrible name for a vampire. It turned out she was a human. I decided to attempt my first vampire-human friendship (that did not involve feeding). As coincidence would have it, she informed me that I shared the same name as her male counterpart. What a curious thing, that two people should be named Tophat!

I must warn you, gentle reader, that the next part of this tale both shocked and offended me. Make of it what you will. Hours upon hours later, a small group of combined undead and humans were ushered back to the faux bar to once more take up space in front of the recorders and behind The Importants. Diana and I were part of this group. However, a third party soon became privy to our location and decided to join us. She was a feisty sprite of a creature, with shocks of pink in her hair and a wild-eyed nature that warned of distrust. Her voice reflected a lazy drawl of those from the country’s South. In between bouts of laughing, the sprite sang a song entitled “Janie’s Got a Gun” by some modern pop band. There was much screeching and wailing and it generally sounded nothing at all like Chopin. While Diana and I gazed on in astonishment, the girl described life in her home town as “a place to drink Budweiser and sit on someone’s back porch while two naked girls all covered in mud beat each other up.” Surely, the creature was jesting, I thought.

It was at this point that the sprite turned all of her attention to the admiration and discussion of female mammary glands. She wanted to sleep on them, touch them, and drink the life from what she claimed were “beautiful, nourishing gifts from God.” Now, as a vampire, this should strike a certain chord with me, but the vulgarity pushed past the limits of my fiendish comfort zones. A poor human girl in front of us became her subject, as she crouched down and stared at the girl’s backside from a distance of barely ten inches. Barks and pantomimed slaps followed, after which the sprite proceeded to stroke the human’s mane and ask if she would like to be fondled. Gentle reader, this is behavior I would expect from a homeless adolescent male or a demon from the realm of Zyiastor, but from a human female it was more frightening than you could possibly imagine. I was half-tempted to bite her just to make her cease the incessant chatter, but we were under close surveillance by beings of power with unkempt beards and walkie-talkies.

Not a minute later, the sprite grew weary of the other human and shifted her focus to Diana. At first, my new accomplice took it with good nature, making self-deprecating jokes and laughing it off. But the tide quickly turned and the sprite grew forceful. She attempted to rub the other girl’s back, starting with the lower portion. Diana was unamused. I made a motion to step between the two. Yes, even vampires can be gallant. Then I heard, “Hey! Tophat!” I spun around. The leader of The Importants, the one with headphones and a clipboard, had summoned me. “Yes?” I responded. She looked at me and my top hat, smiled and said, “Come with me.” I apologized to Diana and watched as the sprite covered my abandoned ground in a single step. The leader led me to the front of the bar.

“You’re gonna cross right in front of her when I say go.” I looked at the “her” in question, and it was the Important celery waist vampire from earlier in the day. The glass and metal recorders were going to focus on me! Or, more realistically, my top hat. Now, gentle readers, I could lie and say that I did not care about being handed such a task, but I did. It was invigorating to have a specific job and I look forward to one day seeing myself reflected on the other side of the glass. Enchanting music was played and my name was called. I walked. I sauntered with determination. I oozed vampireness. I walked twice and then it was over. I was sent back to my group, where I quickly noticed that the inappropriate situation had escalated.

The sprite was doing everything she could to get closer to Diana, who did not enjoy the attention. So with a throaty vampire clearing of my vampire throat, I interspersed myself between the two humans once more. Another bell was rung and the last thing I heard from the sprite before we made a mission of avoiding her was, “A girl can’t really rape another girl!” And thus was the event that ended the day. Fourteen hours had passed since I arrived that morning under cover of darkness, and luckily for me, darkness had fallen again. Diana sprinted to her car and the sprite was seemingly sucked back into the pile of ooze from which she was born. I removed my top hat and returned it to the wardrobe department. As hesitant as I was to return my head gear, the time had come. The top hat was reclaimed and I was set free into the night. A curious feeling overtook me as I left The Studio. The strange and curious events of my day seemed so distant. My experiences washed away in a fleeting second. I could breathe. I felt different. I felt alive! I was hungry, but hungry for cooked food, not human blood. As I walked to the public transportation, I caught a reflection of myself in a mirror! That is when I knew that my day of unlife had ended.

Greetings From Henryville!

It’s rather sunny here. I know how dark it can get in the
shadow of the capitol building. Please take care!

There was a buzz on the intercom that sounded like a fly in the brain, bouncing off the temporal lobe and laying eggs along the cerebral cortex. Jackson Panic pressed the little red button on the little grey speaker box and his head felt a million times better.

“What?”
“Good morning, Mr. Panic,” chimed a perky female voice. “My, aren’t you in the office early today, Mr. Panic!”
“Jackson.”
“That is your name! Good to know you are not deaf and dumb today, Mr. Panic.”

The Mayor of Sol grunted and slammed his fist on the desk. “I’ve told you a thousand times to call me Jackson, Mayor Jackson, or, hell, Mr. Jackson if you can’t get the niceties out of your head. Now get me my coffee.”

“Coming right up, Mr. Panic,” said the voice before the speaker fuzzed out. Jackson stared at the intercom for a moment, too annoyed to smile. He turned in his chair to face the wall of glass behind his desk. The windows were Jackson’s eyeballs, keeping vigilant watch over his city. And right now those eyes needed a pair of shades. He stood up and squinted as he approached the window. The early morning sun shone off of his slick white hair.

The postcard in his hand felt heavy. He turned it over and read it again, finding nothing new. There was no signature, no return address, not even a stamp. Under normal circumstances a piece of post would be no bother, but a piece of post hadn’t come out of Henryville in over fifty years. Of course, it was probably some poor fellow’s attempt at a prank. People just get dumber every day, Jackson thought. My people.

He stared out the window for what seemed like hours, but was probably only a couple of minutes, before drawing the blinds closed. The room was nearly pitch black. Jackson let out his grief and gloom with a heavy sigh. He switched on a desk lamp, illuminating a cup of coffee. He buzzed the intercom.

“Lila?”
“Yes, Mr. Panic?” she said.
“Where did this coffee come from?”
“I brought it to you. Over three hours ago.”

Jackson paused, his finger remaining hard pressed on the intercom. “That’s not possible, Lila. I haven’t been here that long.”

“I do think I am correct, Mr. Panic. Let me check,” Lila chirped. There was a long pause during which Jackson sipped from the coffee. It was stone cold. “Yes, sir, according to my notes I entered with your coffee three hours and seventeen minutes ago. You were staring out the window. I told you I would set it on your desk. You said, and I quote, ‘that’s fine,’ and then I left.”

“I don’t remember,” Jackson said.

“Sure you do, Mr. Panic. I also asked you to sign off on the demolition release for the West end of Rardrick’s Lows and you ordered me to forge your signature. Since I have told you since day one that I am not the kind of girl who plays with fire, I filed it in my Morally Questionable Documents file.”

Jackson cut her off, “Lila, you’re giving me a headache.”
“Sorry, Mr. Panic.”

It had been a rough night and he was prone to daydreaming, but Jackson found it hard to believe that he could forget an entire segment of the morning. He took another sip of his coffee and buzzed the intercom again. “Lila, this coffee’s not even warm. And make it sweeter.”

“I can make it both hotter and sweeter, Mr. Panic,” said the woman’s voice.
“I’ll bet you can, darling,” he said, but the speaker was already off.

~

The afternoon call girls were always the prettiest because they knew the score: working the day shift brought in the high-powered, high-paying business clients who can only schedule a tussle in between leaving the office and arriving home. With countless time restrictions running the show, there was no reason for the girls to work late. They made twice the money as the other girls and were twice as beautiful. Most late night male callers had impaired taste anyway. Today was an early visit for Jackson, however, and his favorite girl was unavailable. He asked for his second favorite and was shot down again.

The next hour was spent with third-favorite Terri in the Library Room, a bedroom stacked high with history and warfare tomes. She smelled like heaven, he remembered that, but Jackson Panic couldn’t recall much else when he woke up. The whole act seemed like one big blur. He tried to pull out certain images or sensations from his memory, but nothing surfaced. When he opened his eyes, he saw Terri sitting near the window smoking a cigarette with one black-stockinged leg pulled up to cover her bare chest. “There’s my stallion,” she purred.

“More of a pinto these days.”
“You are looking patchy,” said Terri.
“Gotta cover the holes somehow,” Jackson whispered. He ran a hand through his silver hair. “How long was I out?”
“A couple hours. I was gonna wake you, but a working gal needs a breather some times,” she said, blowing a cloud of smoke through the gated window.
“You could have woken me,” Jackson replied.
Terri shrugged. “Could have. But this way, you get charged extra and I make a good impression on the boss.”
“I am the boss.”
Terri laughed and took another drag from her cigarette. “Yes, you are, you big, strong man, you.”

Panic grunted, got out of bed, and made a beeline for the bathroom. He splashed himself with cold water, trying to wake up. The postcard on the mirror was a solid wake up call.

Greetings from Henryville!

No one’s going to blame you. You did the best you could.
No matter what they say: it wasn’t your fault.

It was taped to the mirror. He reached up and ripped it off the glass and stormed into the next room. “Did you do this?”
Terri jumped to her feet, dropping her cigarette on the floor. “Shit!”
“Did you do this?” Jackson marched towards her with the card and grabbed her as she tried to pick up the cigarette butt. She jerked to break free. “Did you do this?”
Terri stared at the card and spat back, “I’ve never seen it. What the hell’s your problem?”
Jackson studied her eyes. She wasn’t lying.
“You got no class, Panic. That’s no way to treat your favorite girl,” Terri said.
Jackson pulled on the rest of clothes, snatched his overcoat and hat, and headed for the exit. “You’re not my favorite, sweetheart,” he said, but the door was already closed.

~

When he got home his wife was dead. Maria Francesca Panic, the Mayor of Sol’s fourth wife, was sprawled on the kitchen floor with a knife in her heart. From the looks of things, she had been cooking a steak dinner. Two hunks of meat were burnt to a crisp on the stove. There appeared to be no struggle. Nothing stolen but a knife that disappeared from the silverware drawer and reappeared in Mrs. Panic’s aorta. Jackson vomited. He turned off the flame on the stove. The smell of meat and blood was ripe enough to choke a rat. He couldn’t even call the police, he just sat down and watched her not move.

A breeze rustled in through the kitchen window. It took the stench away for a second. Jackson breathed it in and tried to drown out the sound of his throbbing head. He couldn’t think. He could barely breathe. His legs weren’t working well enough to stand. He crawled to the front door, stopping only once to look back at Maria’s body.

I didn’t hold her. I didn’t even touch her. What if she’s still alive? Panic thought.

The knife stuck straight up out of her chest. Maria wasn’t twitching. There was no hope, and Jackson knew it. He hauled himself off the linoleum, using the door handle to balance. He wretched and almost vomited again, but managed to turn the handle and fling the front door open. Jackson made it to his car in what seemed like an hour. The walk from the porch to the driveway felt like a lucid fever dream. He poured himself into the seat of his shiny black car and almost had a heart attack.

Greetings from Henryville!

You’re lost on the journey. But there are worse places to be lost,
like the end of the journey. Don’t ever be lost there.

Another note was taped to the steering wheel, mocking Jackson with each cruel swoop of cursive lettering. He ripped it off, held it up to his blue eyes. His gaze held so much fire the paper could have been kindling. He threw the car into reverse. Jackson thought about going back inside one more time, but he knew that the house was already empty.

~

The lights were off at the capitol building. Jackson ripped like a tornado past the secretarial suite and towards his massive oak desk, turning on every lamp in his wake. Night had fallen and the blinds covering the wall of glass were pulled open. Jackson paced in front of the window, his silver hair gleaming in the moonlight. He cursed. He grunted. He turned up his mouth into a wolfish, maniacal grin as he flipped through the postcards. The intercom buzzed. Jackson froze. He moved towards the intercom and hesitantly pressed the red button.

“Are you alright, Mr. Panic?” asked Lila from the other room.
Jackson looked at the speaker with suspicion. “Lila?”
“Yes, sir?”
“You weren’t here a minute ago,” he choked out.
“I certainly was, Mr. Panic. You rang me last hour and had me come down to take a look at some strange postcards.” She paused. “Are you well, Mr. Panic?”
“Come in here and look at these papers, Lila,” Jackson said.

There was a long pause. “I’ll stay out here, Mr. Panic. I’ve already seen them five times and frankly, you’re beginning to frighten me.”
“What do you think of the evidence?” Jackson became furiously annoyed.
“Sir? Surely you heard me the first five times,” she said.
“Go over it again, dammit!” he yelled. Jackson sat down and held the postcards closer to his face.
The woman sighed calmly. “To my untrained eyes, Mr. Panic, it looks as though you’ve written yourself perplexing notes. For some reason you find it amusing to mention Henryville, which is simply in poor taste considering the rumors…”

Jackson’s heart skipped a beat or two. He traced his finger along the swoops of the L’s and dots of the I’s. If there was only one thing Jackson Panic knew at that moment, it was that his secretary wasn’t lying. He knew liars. The handwriting had meant nothing to him before, his blurry sight and tired brain processed only the words, not the penmanship. All three notes were very clearly written by the Mayor of Sol himself.

“Mr. Panic?” asked Lila. Jackson folded the postcards and shoved them in his pocket as he stood. He turned off the lamp on his desk, calmly removed the lightbulb, and raised the brass fixture over his head. “Mr. Panic?” Lila supposedly asked again, but the intercom was already smashed into a hundred bits.

~

There was no door at the entrance to Henryville. There wasn’t even a real entrance to Henryville; there was just a wall. But Jackson Panic knew his city, and the city within his city. Henry Gainsborough, founder of the wretched town, refused annexation by Sol many years ago and had since created his own strange community of miscreants and ghosts, sealed in by a seemingly insurmountable slab of concrete.

The Mayor of Sol knew his way around a wall. A tunnel took him from the Healthy Cooking section of the Greater Sol Library into the heart of Henryville, though he couldn’t be sure where he ended up on the other side. When he emerged from the tunnel he noticed only one thing: it was dark. Very dark. It felt like someone had thrown a black bag over his head. It felt this way because someone had indeed thrown a black bag over his head and was dragging Jackson down what felt like a hallway, but could just as easily have been a sidewalk.

It seemed like hours before the bag was removed. Jackson gulped a breath of fresh air. The room he knelt in was dark and damp, one single light streaming in from a window high up on the wall. A man spoke. “It’s not very often we get such distinguished guests here in Henryville,” said the scratchy, worn-out voice.

There was no body to match the voice, but Jackson could make out the direction of the sound. About ten feet in front of him there was a leather booth surrounding a wooden table. A red tea light burned idly on the surface, like in the pictures of the old world dive bars. It was too dark for Jackson to make out any of the facial features of the man sitting in the booth.

“What the hell is this?” Jackson asked.
The man laughed uproariously. “I’m afraid,” he paused, “that you’re afraid, my dear boy.”
“Gainsborough?”
“Oh, words. Names. They’re useless, don’t you see?” the voice responded.
“I’m not afraid. I’m confused. I need to know who’s been sending me these damn postcards!” Jackson yelled. One of the men who had presumably kidnapped Jackson set the three cards on the table in front of his master.
“How hard the mighty do fall,” said the voice.
“My wife is dead!” Jackson yelped.
“It’s a pity. I heard she was a lovely woman.”
Jackson sprang to his feet and lunged towards the voice in anger, but a pair of hands slammed him back to his knees. He struggled for a moment, but was held firmly in place. “Why? Tell me why!”

There was a long pause. Jackson smelled smoke in the air. “Mayor Panic, how long has it been since your last election?”
“One month,” Jackson said.
“And the city of Sol?” the voice asked.
“What do you mean?”
“How is your city, Mayor?”

Jackson stopped for a moment. He was so caught up in paper work and reorganizing his cabinet that he hadn’t given it any serious thought. “Depressed. Economy is shot, The Lows are spreading further into the decent neighborhoods. Sol is…in transition.”

The voice grunted. “You’ve been losing time,” he stated calmly.
“How did you know?” Jackson gasped.
“Because you’ve been sitting here for an hour and only started talking two minutes ago.”
“I don’t believe this,” Jackson said.
The room was silent for another pregnant second. “You are losing your mind,” said the man in the shadows.

Flashes of light struck Jackson like gut punches. He saw himself outside of himself, he heard his own words floating in the ether, but he couldn’t make sense of anything. He distinctly remembered pulling a knife out of the kitchen drawer.

The shadows cleared their throat. “Sol is alive. It will drain even the best of men.”
“I’ve been Mayor of this damned city for sixteen years!” Jackson seethed.
“Ah, not this city. You could learn a thing or two from this city. You have been the mayor of Sol, and you have another eight years before you are free. Do you not think that your empire has taken its toll on your psyche, Mr. Mayor?”

In a flash, Jackson jammed a knife into Maria’s heart. He winced in pain. “I don’t know,” he choked out.

“You have begun to separate action from thought, from sense. Soon you won’t even remember what you ate for dinner.”
Jackson attempted another lunge at the man, but was shoved back to the floor again. This time he keeled over, his nose brushing the dust before rising back up to lock eyes with no one. “I’m responsible for the state of my city,” Jackson said.
“Yes,” said the voice.
“I can’t fix everything.”
“No,” said the voice.
Jackson looked down at the dusty floor and took a deep breath. “I killed my wife,” he said.

The man in the shadows waited. “You’re a powerful man, Jackson Panic, but you’re a coward. The best thing for you, for your own mental health, would be to distance yourself completely from the public eye. Resign. Perhaps stay here. Henryville could use a man like you.”
Jackson was silent for a moment. “I have to try,” he said.
“You will fail.”
Jackson ignored the voice. He bit his lip. “Paper.”
“Excuse me?” the shadows asked.
“Give. Me. Paper,” demanded Jackson.

One of the men disappeared for an instant and returned with a slip of paper and a pen. Jackson took it and scrawled “Greetings from Henryville!” across the top. He scribbled a small note and folded the paper. Jackson gazed at the two men on either side of him and gave them a nod of peace. He rose from the floor and staggered to the edge of the booth.

“Send me this in eight years,” he said, and dropped the paper next to the tiny candle. A hand reached out and grabbed the paper. The man in the shadows read the words. He wished to ask the Mayor of Sol to reconsider, but Jackson Panic had already disappeared from Henryville.

~~~~~~~

This is the true story of this one time that I was on an airplane. I knew that if I told the world about my story, I would be able to live free and not carry around this weight in my chest forever. That is why this story about this one time that I was on an airplane is important and also the reason people will like it. 

This one time I was on an airplane. I was not new to airplanes but this time was special because this time I was on it for real. It was a 737 model airplane that only had two rows of seats and one level. All my life I wondered what it would be like to ride on an airplane with two levels and spiral staircases, but I have never been able to ride on such an airplane. The pilots were both male. They were older gentlemen and seemed very at ease behind the wheel of this giant airplane. One of the pilots looked like my father, and then I thought of my father.

About halfway through the flight, there was some turbulence and the whole airplane shook. Riding on the airplane at that moment was very scary. I felt like I might fall at any minute! You can only imagine how great I felt when the airplane stopped shaking. I was able to catch my heart and it was no longer stuck in my throat. Everyone in the airplane seemed to be quite relieved, too. They all looked at each other in relief and this is how I could tell that they were no longer afraid.

The sky was beautiful, I remember that most of all because it was right in front me the entire flight! I felt just like a bird as I looked out across the clouds. The clouds changed color often. They were sometimes white, sometimes pink, sometimes blue, and sometimes even orange! I thought that it might be the sun hiding behind the clouds that made the clouds orange. Right after I thought this, the sun came out from behind a cloud and blinded me so bad! I had to put up a hand to block my eyes from the sun because it was blinding me. Eventually the sun hid behind another cloud, painted it orange, and I could see out of my eyes again.

Airplanes are loud and so is the wind. I noticed this while riding on the airplane this one time. The wings of the plane shook and fought with the wind because they were made of metal. The metal looked very shiny, I remember that. At the tip of each wing was a small light that I did not see until the sun went down and it was night time. The light was bright and white and it made the airplane look like it was painted. The people in the airplane looked out and stared at the ground all the time, and they looked surprised. Their faces were either happy or sad or neither.

This was the only time I had been on an airplane where there were no movies being played, or at least no movies being played that I could see. Smaller children that were smaller than me were not happy because they liked movies and wanted to watch them. I saw the children in the airplane crying because they could not watch movies. I thought it might be a good idea if the parents gave the children gum, because that always made me stop crying when I was a smaller child.

The clouds got thicker and thicker as we came close to landing. They were so thick that I could eat one! It tasted like air. When we finally landed, the important people at the airport were very surprised to see me riding on the airplane. The people in the airplane looked confused as they exited and asked was I okay and did I need to see a doctor? I was taken off of the roof and told that this should be the only time I ever ride on an airplane.

~~~~~~~

It’s really that simple, just have a moment.

Everyone does this every day without thinking. If you are anything like a human (which, granted, everyone is not), you probably have some pretty special moments now and then. If you don’t know what I’m talking about at all, I am very sorry and I sincerely hope Modern Warfare online is going well for you.

During a special moment, there are a lot of things to consider and take in:

- what you are doing
- why you are doing whatever it is you are doing
- how you feel about it
- what you’re thinking at the time
- etc.

That’s a really short list, by the way. There’s probably fifty things that can be experienced while having a moment (all of which I feel are sufficiently represented by “etc.”). The experience of the moment itself is what life is all about. Without special moments life really isn’t worth living.

All of these moments, these small gems of humanity’s essence (Humanity’s Essence, the world’s first pseudo-intellectual zen cologne), are what make up who you are. They make up your life story. The narrative of each individual life is built up of plot points, these special moments. Good or bad, moments are what set up everything to come and fulfill everything that came before.

The best thing about this is community: if you have a moment with others, you are all creating your own plot point. A shared moment becomes a point in the story of everyone involved. To think that ten years down the line multiple people will reflect on their life and recount the same incident is a beautiful thing, a shared narrative of who we are. Of course, each moment will be up to the interpretation of the teller and thus certain details will always differ. But the inciting incident remains the same.

Going one step more personal, and more complicated, takes us to shared moments experienced as a unit. I don’t just mean a group, I mean multiple people experiencing something as one entity. This also happens often, the most obvious example being sex and the least obvious example being a mosquito biting a toddler chewing on a penny (though some might argue this is two different moments, the toddler chewing and the mosquito biting). If you have ever been in a relationship you probably know what it is like to share a moment with someone else, but as one whole. It’s a level that transcends simple experience: you look at that person next to you and know that they are having the exact same moment as you, because you are in tune with each other. If you’re still thinking about sex at this point, best to stop: chances are that shared moment you’re thinking about isn’t actually shared (ask her/him later).

On a larger scale, these shared moments can eventually lead to a shared life narrative. But at what point does this happen? When two (or more) people begin to function as one, operating as a well-oiled machine using one another as mere extensions of themselves without thought. Two stories can become one. Is there a specific time and place for this? Is this what soul mates are for? Is my story unfilled if I end up alone? Is God real? In sequence: no, maybe, it depends what type of endings you enjoy, if you think He is.

No one knows whether we’re meant for anything, but we might be. There might be only one human being in the whole world who can ever experience something in the same way and truly be in the same moment as us. There might be ten. There might be none. But it’s not about trying to find that person, or that group, and it’s not about trying to share what you haven’t even experienced yet. This goes against experience in general. The best moments are always unplanned, that’s just a fact. Yes, you may have set up an elaborate scheme for one reason or another, but as your scheme is carried out you will find that the things you remember are the details: a certain smell, a trick of the light, a smile that changes everything.

So pay attention. Seek out experience. If you are with others, cherish that experience. It makes you who you are. Be observant. You’ll need to remember these things when you are telling the story in the future. And who knows, maybe you’ll be telling it with someone by your side who knows exactly what happened and can guess your words before they roll off your tongue. But forget about that for now, because if it happens, it happens.

Just have a moment.

Musings, dreams, and wonderings in short stories and simple scenes. This is a place of reflection, reaction, distraction, and entertainment.

What you will find here: short stories, scenes, dialogues, poems, lyrics, and the occasional wandering thought bubble. Content may be inspired by real events, but my purpose is to explore different story possibilities through fictionalization.

What you will not find here: political commentary, tangential emotional rants, celebrity gossip, food critiques, sarcastic videos, or pictures-of-the-day.

I’m Brett Knickerbocker and I’m here to find the fiction in reality.