Irrational Fears

Have neglected this thing, haven't I?  Well, my writing inspiration has been taken up by videogame fan fiction.  I'm actually in the process of writing an odd but serious crossover. Yeah, wastes of time, wastes of life, but oh so fun. 

Anyway, Halloween is coming up.  I don't really celebrate as I don't have kids, no one comes to my residence (despite the fact that I live near a cool, spooky graveyard), and I'm not social enough for the adult party scene.  Speaking of that graveyard, I've discovered something very interesting about people, or at least myself...

I've spoken before about how I totally like taking evening walks in that place.  The gates are always open and the only "wall" is a hedge. It's patrolled by police from time to time, but rarely and having had a cop car pass by me at sunset there, as well as meeting people walking their dogs there (at night)! I suspect that everyone in the neighborhood is trusted not to be a potential vandal and people are cool with cemetary-walks at whatever time you want to take them. 

I once had an online / AIM friend who was a rationalist, skeptic, did not believe in ghosts, gods or anything - was open to the possibility that she might find out she was wrong when she died, but really didn't think so. I told her about going into my local cemetary at night to investigate the cool little solar garden lights people leave on graves there.  She told me she wouldn't do that (go into a cemetary alone at night, even without fears of the local police even giving a crap) because "Ooh, spooky, I'd be so creeped out!"  - At this point, I pointed out to her  that she was the rational skeptic while I was the slightly more superstitious person who leans more toward belief in the possibilty of a spirit-world and the idea that *maybe* I'd get haunted by something or some kind of residual energy if I'd disturbed something sufficently.  In short, I don't really *know* if there's anything more than the subjective flickerings of the near-death brain beyond this life, but I really *hope* so, which makes me "believe in it a little more" than people more "rational" than I am, yet I rationally consider that the only things to be afraid of in a graveyard are open-pit graves being prepared for funerals (don't mess around them, you could fall and hurt yourself) and old, large tombstones (like those that occasionally kill people - mostly children - who "play" with them). 

There is no rational reason for fear there, yet... last night I made a fun Halloween topic on a fun entertainment board I go to asking anyone if they've ever seen ghosts.  It was inspired by reading an article by one of those "Ghost Adventures" TV-people. (You know, the guys who spend the show screaming at air and trying to convince you that background noises they pick up on tape recorder are angry spirits).  I've never had any kind of paranormal experience - and am mildly jealous of those who do, if for nothing more than they have a "bit of crazy" in their lives that they aren't ashamed of. (While having a mundane emotional disorder makes me feel ashamed of my very existence much of the time). One of the board's well-known rationalists answered simply (perhaps smugly?) "I've never seen a ghost and do not believe in them."  So, I pressed him - I asked him if he was like my other friend who, despite believing there "ain't no such thing as ghosts" if they would feel creeped out (more than I do) about walking around a cemetary at night.  And, bingo.  The excuse was "spooky setting." 

I told him not to feel bad, because psychological studies have found bits of irrationality in otherwise rational people, even those who pride themselves on that aspect of their minds.  It's a part of being human. 


While I'm unafraid of spooky settings, like nightttime graveyards, I can tell you that I'm deeply afraid of "perfectly safe" experiences that trigger fear response in me.  --- I don't think I have ridden a roller coaster since I was 9 or 10 years old.  Disneyland was my first and last experience with the things.  And, yes, I did go on more than one and confirmed "BIG NO!" for the rest of my life.  It does not matter than coasters have a saftety bar and a mostly good safety record. I do not care that riding that suspended in the air funky "Batman" ride is probably safter, statistically, than me driving and riding in cars like I do almost every day... NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!  It's the "sensation of falling" that I do not like.  That dropping feeling you get in your stomach that rides like that thrive on... it inspired a phobic response in me so that anything even remotely like that sensation is my "aboslutely not" moment.  

Because of this, I don't care how safe bungee jumping is supposed to be - it would probably kill me via anxiety-inspired heart attack on the way down. 

I wonder if we admitted to our own irrationalities, big and small, fears included, if we might... not look down other people / each other quite so much.  I realize that I have some stupid fears that have no relation to logic.  And I think "that's okay."  I don't think it's possible for people to ever become beings of pure logic because that would be the moment we stop being warm, squishy mammals with warm, squishy brains and the instant we become robots.  Maybe we should learn to acknowledge and even celebrate our raw emotions and instinctual reactions a little more.  It's what the Halloween season is all about, isn't it?


 

Perhaps I should only speak in fiction anymore...

 Perhaps I should only speak in fiction anymore…

People seem to like the fiction that I write and the art that I create (particularly fan work)… it’s not perfect and I am glad for people who point out flaws and things that could be better.  (I have, at times, been smacked out of doing stuff that was really stupid when talking fiction-writing with people. It’s a good thing).  Yet, I seem to be increasingly aware of a hard truth in my life:  When I write a story – I get called a good writer.  When I actually express opinions and stray thoughts outside of fiction – on or offline the reaction is “Oh, my God, she’s crazy! Run away!” 

I’m serious.  I mean, I post stuff on this blog and hear crickets.  Okay, so some people do enjoy talking with me – they tend to be as crazy as I am, or even more nuts.  (Oh, the little stories my guy comes up with on drives when we see something interesting on the side of the road!  A recent trip involved “ice-cream disappointment!” and a fictional man who lived in a firehouse and refused to wear pants).  0_o  (It gets even weirder when my guy’s nephew is involved.  I love our car trips). As for more serious topics, hey, I occasionally chat with some longtime AIM-friends and on the shoutbox with folks at a fandom board… but, even there… I’ve learned to hold back.  I have learned to hold back because it seems like whenever I expose my heart to anyone or any group, it gets torn out and I walk away feeling myself devalued. 

I know it’s my own damn fault, too, even when I’m not entirely sure what I did wrong. When did I let a fart? Don’t hint at me. Tell me.

There was a serious spiritual-issues type blog that I went to for a very long time.  (Some of my few watchers were originally met on there).  I commented there, conversed there and felt very well at home – which probably should have been my sign: When I feel comfortable, I get a little too free with my expression and inevitably, well… “fart.”  When I found recently that all my commentary was moderated by default when it never had been before and no one else’s seemed to be moderated (to the point of  not only seeing contention but seeing a known troll getting through on recent threads)… I kind of decided to take the hint.  I know I said a couple of inflammatory things that annoyed the blogger a couple of times (not anything worse than I’ve seen other regulars give him in the ways of criticism or not “getting” something, IMHO), but I was pretty sure I’d long ago apologized and was forgiven…  Otherwise, I do think I know the problem:  It’s not something I do on purpose, it’s just probably my tendency to be verbose, to share a lot of personal stuff I should probably “leave at home” and the like.   

I think that some people, as nice and genuinely caring as they may be – do *not* know how to deal with me.  Things are like that for everybody.  If you were to ask me to watch a severely mentally challenged child or an elderly person with severe dementia for a day, I would be ringing my hands not knowing what to do.  I wouldn’t bear any ill-will, it’s just “I’m not trained for this and it’s outside of my experience.”  I’m like that for a lot of people with my… um… mental “hilarity.”  Something written in a bipolar depression of doomy-dooms or a mania of “I’m typing a mile a minute and cannot stop myself and ooh, there’s the send button!” – my two default states, even medicated – well, I’m sure I just outright *scare* a lot of people. 

Or maybe I really did something really wrong and “should” know what I did but am too damn stupid to. My brain… sucks.

I’m used to this kind of thing – or at least I should be.  My childhood-into-teenhood was filled with friends and cousins “growing away from me,” leaving me wondering why people with whom I used to have slumber parties seemingly-suddenly wanted nothing to do with me, even treating me like I was a stain on their new clothes… I had an online friend whom I haven’t spoken with in almost two years. The last I saw her she was having computer problems, but since she never got back to me and at the time I was being especially neurotic with her, I suspect she just cut me off.  I’d like to know if she’s alive… not to contact her, but just because I’ve been worried…

I am officially Disabled now… can’t keep a normal, job… this plays into it, too.   I’ve experienced job-place discrimination over issues I have with stress even when I’ve informed employers of them ahead of time, and of course, pre-diagnosis, I had a fast food job that I kept for a year where the new management that came after I was hired seemed to be “afraid to fire me” either because of my “seniority” or being afraid of seeing me get emotional, as everyone there knew I was “sensitive.” I, uh, took the hint when my hours were reduced to three hours one day a week that cost me more in gas and time to keep the job than to quit.  I only kept it in that state as long as I did (a couple of months on the low hours) because it was a college-job and I didn’t want to disappoint my parents by quitting instead of sticking it out until things got better.  Once my dad told me what he thought was happening and that he didn’t mind if I quit, I felt free to.

I don’t know. I sometimes feel like maybe I have no business being on this planet, in my species or in existence because it seems like I’m always doing something wrong and no one is willing or able to tell me what it is.  (Or they’re telling me and I’m too dumb and scatterbrained to get it). 

Eh, as for the blog I felt rejection from… I’m sad because the guy who runs it gives so much good advice to people who email him, with a lot of compassion and… now I feel like I will not be able to ask advice from him if I ever run into a situation when I might need it.  I’m pretty sure I’ve been labeled a “troll” or something worse in his mind.   

Everyone bothering to read this:  I don’t have a habit of trolling. I really *am* this crazy.

Posting this because: No one reads this blog – or hardly anyone.  I don’t think I’ve posted anything here that anyone can blackmail or betray me with. I hope not.   

  

Zed.

A short, atmospheric piece.  Also, it's as dark and bitter as boiled black coffee. 

The last human survivor of some unclear end of the world event determines himself to bury as many of the dead as he can. 

Why? Becuase I'm weird. That's why.

_________________________________________________

Zed.

The world had finally become more honest. 

Zed had always wanted more honesty in the world.  He couldn’t fathom that the result would leave him the last person to survive in it. 

How many times had he witnessed arguments between people only to keep the secret sentiment that if some were truly put out by the simple existence of some folks that they should stop pretending to be “generous” and act?  It was a cruel and dangerous thought, but one he had often when he saw the heat of spoken hatreds.  The old man knew that idle complaining and indignation were the favorite pastimes of many, many people.  The majority of his countrymen could have made it the national sport if they had not already had a beloved “national pastime.”   

At the same time, all the complaints he’d heard that “the world will be a better place,” once people of one broad kind or another were gone grew tiresome.  Even when it was proposed in a “kind” way – “No one wants to kill you, you’ll just die out eventually” – it struck him as obnoxious.  As far as he was concerned, people who had too much pride could find all kinds of creative ways to refuse to admit to themselves how cruel or condescending they were. It seemed to be a problem however people saw the world.   If there were as many versions of the truth, in the end, as there were people, Zed figured that he was finally the Emperor of Right.  It had come with a price, though, even as he’d taken no active part in making the world he now ruled happen.  He did not want his empire, no matter how free it made him feel.

“Is it a better world now?” he muttered ruefully as he looked down at a body. 

In his time, Zed thought that he was more equitable.  He was sure the world would be better if there were fewer people in it.  He did not focus his ideas of a die-off to any particular “kind.”  His thoughts of potential extermination were not directed at any race, creed, culture, and class, level of skill or intelligence.  He just thought the population couldn’t get much higher for the planet to sustain and had something of a phobia of crowds.   

He, however, did not want to live in a post-plague world, nor in a ruined post-war one. 

You don’t always get what you want in life.

Zed put the blade of his shovel into the moist earth.  He stroked his beard before digging in.  Everyone needed a purpose in life, even if one wasn’t entirely sure what one’s purpose was supposed to be.  If a man found no meaning in life, he had to make one.  Humans were obsessed with such things by their nature.  As the last human (at least the last human that he knew of), Zed had set himself to a purpose.  It was not to search for other survivors.  Zed did not care to find any, as he was fed up with his species by now.  Zed’s purpose now was to bury the dead.

He walked barren fields littered with corpses.  Closer to the target-centers, all flesh had been destroyed.  Even now, the poisons left from the Ultimate War were seeping into his system.  Even though Zed knew that he would not have the honor of a proper burial, he could give it to others.  It was easy to have respect for the dead where one lacked it for the living. 

He dug deep and wiped the sweat from his brow.  He looked to the well-dressed corpse behind him.  “You lived fine, mighty fine, didn’t you?” he said before resuming his labor.  “Mighty fine, mighty fine,” he clucked, almost singing the words.    

After Zed finished the rich person’s grave, he rested and walked some more, paying no mind to scavenging dogs that panted and staggered.  They were affected by the lingering shadow of the war, as well. 

Everything in the past world had been “kill the poor” and “eat the rich.”  The poor dogs were left to eat everything that was left. 

Zed smiled a wicked yet warm smile when he saw a man and a woman holding hands.  He’d known these people personally in life – not well, but they’d been his neighbors.  He couldn’t muster a profound sense of grief over them, but that may have been a simple matter of his sorrow having been already sapped past its limit.

He’d always found a point when he was laughing when he’d start crying.  It seems he’d found a point in crying when he’d start laughing.  Zed did not know if the amused bitterness with which he was regarding everything now was a sign that he was desperately keeping sane or if it meant he had no sanity left.

Dead fingers were intertwined in an embrace Zed would never have seen in life between the two.

The old woman wore a gold-plated pendant around her neck that was in the shape of a cross.  Zed’s a-religious aunt used to wear a big turquoise cross with a star-shape around it because she’d bought it on a trip to the American Southwest for the sake of beauty. The symbolism of the piece neither was meaningful to her nor offensive, because it merely symbolized the Southwest for her.  Zed knew, however, that unlike his aunt, that the old neighbor-woman’s adornment had been very meaningful to her, a tribal identifying mark and a bit of soul-devotion.   He’d met her at his door with literature from time to time.  He learned to pretend to be in the bath whenever he heard her distinctive three-rap knock.

As for the man, not much younger than the woman was, his obsessions had run counter to hers.  The dead man, in life, had been arrested for vandalism for the time he’d placed padlocks on all the doors of the local church.  He could not change what was in people’s hearts as much as he may have wanted to, but he could inconvenience and frustrate people he didn’t like and make his general protest known.  At least he didn’t go door-to-door…but he had gotten into a conversation with Zed once at a local café’ that Zed had just gotten bored with and walked away from.  

The two had seen the end coming and held hands.  The obnoxious clucking hen and the crashing bore were together as cold flesh.  Zed looked down at then and laughed.  “Where’s the pride now?” he asked.  “So proud of your big brain?  The same goop as hers.  So proud of your big heart?  Rotting in a still chest just like his.” 

Zed set to digging again.  Perhaps it would be just to bury them together since they had reconciled so sweetly? 

Ol’ Zed was just too cynical to be a humanist or a true humanitarian.  It seemed to him that whenever he talked to people who’d claimed to have love and cuddles for all Humankind, that “certain kinds of people” were always left out of the human family.  He’d found that people who talked big about their own equal-mindedness were inclined to include those they disliked as worthy of “love” only on the grounds of the idea that “those people can change.”  Zed had wondered if the “You’re are worthy of living or just being left alone because you might someday become like me” model was really the love, cuddles and equity that people seemed to think they were so great for crowing about.  Even when the most idealistic of persons was confronted with the idea of forgiveness and understanding issued to criminals and sociopaths… oh, it was fun to watch those smug smiles turn into constipated frowns! 

In all honesty, the people of the world had wanted each other gone for far less serious matters than criminality.  Zed had a few relatives who would smile and be polite to everyone they met on shopping trips and the like only to let their racist ideas slip out among “safe” company.  Having become quite familiar with this, he suspected that this kind of thing went on in every household on the planet, save for a few particularly idealistic families.  People always seemed to slip out of the masks they wore whenever they felt safe.  Conversely, some people felt free to let their bile flow free only when they were safely behind a mask. 

Zed sat beneath a blighted tree.  Its skeletal remains provided no shade, but he was strangely comforted by it, nonetheless.  He stretched his hurting back against its flaking bark.  People and pieces were scattered over the ashen hills before him. 

Zed had really not much cared for people.  He’d found them too irritable and too proud.

The world was pretty quiet now.  He couldn’t complain about his life as long as he had something meaningful to do.  He held the handle of shovel across his knees. 

END.  

 

To Join the Sea of Electrons...

I was poking around TV Tropes http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage  last night prompted not by boredom (as I usually am) but by someone giving me (and a blog I was on in general) a recommendation for a fan fiction for a fandom I'm not in but have read listed around the 'net.  (Apparently, it's pretty popular.  If I were a reader of the books it was based on and not just a casual watcher of the movies who forgets most of their content, I might give the fic a shot)...  Anyhow, since it's been Troped, I was clicking links from it about the author and such, as what happens when one browses TV Tropes, and wound up round-about reading about Transhumanism and the scientific quest for immortality...

... I remembered a PBS special I saw a long while ago that was narrated by astronomer/physicist Degrasse, I think... all about this thing and and shaking my head at one guy who was trying to extend his life by taking hundreds of vitamins and supplements every day to ward off aging and thinking "That guy's gonna get hit by a car."

Yes, I'm a stupid dumb-dumb non-scientist and a bit of a cynical bitch. Live with it.

Anyway, the special had all kinds of other physical immortality bids, including brain-uploading to software.  This very thing has been explored in some of the animes I've watched and loved. The title of this post is a reference to an episode of "Cowboy Bebop"   http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Anime/CowboyBebop?from=Main.CowboyBebop  .  One I've seen that takes it to 11 is Kaiba http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Anime/Kaiba?from=Main.Kaiba  (Linked from Tropes rather than main Wiki because I have the window open and it's handy). 

In addition to that, I remember recently reading a couple of articles about this stuff  (half news, half opinion) on Huffington Post regarding scientists thinking we are on the very cusp of just this sort of thing.  It's a pretty interesting idea, but I can't say I'm not a bit suspicious of the "Singularity" just because I can see it being the domain of the privileged that leaves out the disadvantaged (This was a major theme in "Kaiba" listed above.  I recall there being a revolutionary group dedicated to killing the physical souls/memories of the dead that existed in that universe just to get rid of the inequality of the rich abusing the system.  Death may be a bitch, but at least it's equal). 

My thoughts on the subject of death are rather weird... I *do* want to live forever, in a way,  but I trust a divine hand/spiritual matters for that more than I'll ever trust even the smartest of humans or machines. Even if the divine/spiritual does not exist, mankind has hurt me too much to have a lot of trust for it (yes, if it came down to it, I can easily see myself trusting in Nothing more than Humanity, especially since I suspect "eternity" might be subjective/a matter of perception, anyway).. Machines, well... I can't even trust those with my art files:  http://shadsie.deviantart.com/#/d5d09x9 Also, yesterday, I accidentally overwrote my awesome maxed-out I-can-climb-the-impossible-tower! save-file on "Shadow of the Colossus" because I wasn't paying attention, so.... trust my consciousness to a computer or to people running one?  Urgh!   Anyway, I probably don't deserve to live forever,  anyway.  I'm one of those cracked/insane people they'd weed out of the program real early...

That said, if I ever get the IQ-boost I need to write a decent fiction story on such a complex and genius-philosophy subject, I'm tempted to write something in which we're all minds uploaded into a massive computer-database or free-floating on the Internet or in the "sea of electrons"  and since we're all immortal and cannot kill each other anymore, we've achieved an unprecedented level of peace until... 

A million-year-long flamewar breaks out about whether or not Smurfs lay eggs. 

Or people's entertainment preferences. 

Or people get so bored that the collective computer consciousness starts increasingly becoming composed of  people doing nothing but sharing videos of cats and the occasional cat-brain that's been uploaded interrupting peoples' free-floating philosophy-sessions with plaintive cries of "Tuna!" or "Ear itchy! Scratch now!" (It doesn't matter if the cat has no body and no ears anymore... cats are cats).  



... Yeah. I'm too dumb and nuts to deserve to have my mind live forever in the material / electronic world. I sometimes think even self-awareness itself for me may be more of a curse than a blessing. 

Stories to Never Tell

I guess that every writer is like me in that the ideas one gets for stories vs. the stories that actually get written constitute a far greater number than anyone on the outside would guess.  We all know that some ideas just aren't very good, and then there are those that just kind of stick with you for a while and whine at your brain that maybe you should write them, but you refuse for whatever reason. 

I actually have an idea that's been with me for years that I might write - if I get into a close enough relationship with the right people and get their support. As it is, I'm actually afraid of hurting people with my ignorance if I attempt it.  It deals with sexuality and religion (but moreover about personal sacrifice and how it can backfire) and I think you know right with those words why it's been on the back burner of my brain for the last five or six years now, never actually penned. This is the "never-written story" that's stayed with me the longest, which means it might get written if I ever luck into what I feel would be the proper research needed for it to live. 

A story idea that I've come up with more recently is even trickier:  It deals with my love of fantasy - of impossible things, of wonders happening to people, whether they want them to or not.  If you read the stories posted on my blog, you know my predilections.  The idea was first sparked when I was thinking about The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.  It's, to date, the most recent game in the Legend of Zelda game series - a 25-years strong videogaming franchise that will never die, but I don't want it to because I'm in mad love with these games... I was thinking of making a post on one of the message boards for the series I go to about the "discovery of impossible" things that run through this series. 

Skyward Sword has something of a joke on an earlier title, Twilight Princess in that TP had a researcher character who was scoffed at by his peers for his belief in a City in the Sky, which you *find* in the game.  Skyward Sword is the reverse of that:  A prequel in the ur-mythology of the series that has Link (player character) having been born and raised in a city in the sky and the Surface, even as it plays a role in the society's religious mythology, is seen as something only eccentric people believe in.  They still believe in their patron Goddess, but fail to believe in a key part of their origin myth because no one has seen it and it seems impossible to them that anything might exist beneath the Sea of Clouds...  Thinking about this bit of interesting mythos, something in my brain went "Hey! Link discovering the Surface in his world is kind of like if someone in our world found out that Ken Ham was right!" 

Just an utterly impossible thing.  After getting into a conversation-thread Slacktivist about Ken Ham and Young Earth Creationism (for those of you who don't know who Ken Ham is - look him up... or don't.  He's a vocal advocate for trying to force science into an absolutely literal reading of the first chapters of the Bible).... After that and after viewing today a video by Bill Nye (The Science Guy)* telling Creationist parents to please not pass their beliefs onto their children and quietly die off (okay, so he didn't say it so harshly and he was stressing the importance of evolution to an understanding of life-science for our future doctors and inventors), well... it brought up my fantasy idea again. 

I think polls about American attitudes are skewed on this subject, or, at least there are probably more people who believe in mainstream science who say they don't because they don't want to be kicked out of their churches... Do pollsters ambush people as services are letting out or something?  I flirted with the YEC thing myself when I was teen-aged and stupid, convinced by elders and TV people (but strangely enough, not my parents) that I had to give up science and sense to follow what my heart wanted to follow.  That was all I'd ever heard: "If you want to follow Jesus / believe in Christianity / not go to Hell, you have to believe God created the world in six days."  I believed in "God" before - in a sort of "something out there," but not within a specific religious structure before. Thankfully, my teen / adult Sunday School teacher was a Theistic Evolutionist and that put a crack in the idea of un-science and brought me full-circle into a person who doesn't think having spiritual beliefs means one abandons science.  He didn't "preach" though - to the YECs in the church. He figured "We're all brothers/sisters here" and felt no need to preach his ideas on God and science to them.  I don't know if he was being gracious and polite, or if this was unbelievably sad.

In any case, just like the guy in the Zelda game who tells you to pray for good luck and protection a one of the bird-shrines around the sky-island (it's a game-save system), and clearly hopes the Goddess is smiling upon him -- who later jaws on about how he's never believed in the Surface... There are tons of people who believe the "substance of the myths" without believing them literally when it comes to popular religion.  Therefore...

I think writing a fantasy tale about someone discovering something that proves the YECs right just to shake up and screw with the brains of everyone in the world would be a neat thing to write.  As a fantasy.  An archaeologist discovers dinosaur-saddles or something.  Time-travel happens and people go to the past and see stupid stuff.  The crazy stuff that not even a lot of religious people who treasure the myths believe in anymore being true? WTF?  Whoa!  Part of me wants to get my research on and get out a pen and just scrawl down weirdness, but... no...

No, just no.

There is *no way* I could write a wild fantasy like this without it being mistaken for propaganda even if I go out of my way to *make fun.* 

You see, a fantasy author can write a story about a bunch of kids discovering a dragon in our world, or a forest full of unicorns, or real and present practical magic.  I vaguely remember a film from my childhood that was about a family adopting a Bigfoot.  You can do stuff like that in fantasy - people discovering impossible things. 

But other things that would make for awesome fantasy?  It doesn't seem like such ideas *can* come without politics and other damaging things. 

I find it sad to find my creative spirit hobbled like this, but maybe stupidity is as good a restraining bolt as any to keep stupid things from being created.

Anyone brave or foolish enough to want to try to co-write an extremely controversial fantasy novel with me?



*I grew up watching Bill Nye.  It is a tragedy that his show is no longer on the air. It was quirky, funny, and man, I learned stuff from it!  I learned about rods and cones in the eye from that show and about the mesosphere... I may not have become an important scientist or engineer, but common-knowledge is always good and I'm sure the show inspired people to get into science careers.  I remember it as one of the best kidutainment shows ever.   

The Isolated Mind

Very often, I think I just live in a different world than other people. 

Physically, I share space with the physical things of this world, including other people, but my mind feels…isolated.  I am pretty sure that no one thinks exactly like I do, and instead of meaning that in a fluffy “Mr. Rodgers” you-are-special-for-just-being-you way, I mean it in a “I’m just crazy,” way. 

Today, I commented on a favorite blog only to come back later and see my comment deleted without explanation.  It’s happened a few times there.  I have no idea if the blog’s owner thinks I’ve been insulting him somehow – I certainly didn’t mean to – but I do know I went way off topic.  He posted a cute story with a lesson, and I go off on a (happy) tangent about the usage of certain elements in fiction.  I’m pretty sure “way off topic” was the reason for the deletion and that it was nothing personal, but, the fact is that I seem to do that *all the time* and not just to this blogger… (I’ve been talking casually to friends about ideas I have and whatnot only to have them go “Huh?” at me. Yes, even online friends of mine who’d describe themselves as “weird.”) 

I wonder if this is common to people who enjoy writing speculative fiction as a hobby, or if it’s a problem that people who are creative in general face (oftentimes, even in talking with other creative people).  Then again, I do live with a man who was, through our creative-joking sessions, was largely responsible for the “Princess Poo-Poo” entry, so maybe I’m not as isolated as I think. 

We saw the film “Paranorman” the other evening.  We’re both grown-ups who like “kid’s movies,” especially ones with beautiful animation.  I found the protagonist particularly relatable… he’s a kid who can see ghosts and everyone in his town treats him as a freak for it (except his buddy, who’s teased for being fat).  In the end, it is one of those many films with a fantasy-flavor and an important message that I know is going to get largely ignored just because I grew up on film after film where “respecting difference” was the main message and the protagonists were “freaks” and never enjoyed the respect or even reprieve of my peers who saw the same films.  Sometimes, I think fiction can tell great truths, but sometimes, I don’t think those truths stick. 

In any case, I related to the protagonist because, even though I do not see spirits or anything (it seems, as emotionally-nutty as I am, my senses are firmly trapped in material reality), I thought to how the kid’s perceptions made him live in an entirely different world than the rest of the people around him.  A lot of people think that they’re “different” without knowing how popular and basically normal they are.  I know I wasn’t as bullied growing up as a lot of people and that I have it better than a lot of people. I know I’m saner than some unfortunates out there who have worse conditions than I am.  I still feel like I’m in a different world, though.  The manic-style thoughts, the running off on tangents, thinking of things that no one apparently thinks of and / or thinks are strange…Living in that all the time…  

Sure, my “weirdness” gives me the ability to think up stories about a man trying to live “life as a litch” after waking up from ten years gone, a person living happily in a world where everyone has vanished, or a selectively cannibalistic culture of otherworld vulture-people, but my mind is something that apparently offends people if I don’t keep it in check or tell it to shut up every once in a while. 

World, I’m sorry I’m not like you, but in the end, I’m not sure I want to be.  I’ll probably just be quieter from now on.  That seems to be my reaction… just getting quieter and quieter, choosing to largely speak in fiction.   

Absense

A Fantasy/ Urban Fantasy/ Magical Realism story.  A story set in the modern "real" world with a single fantastic element. 

A man experiences a miracle.  A miracle is not always a good thing.

Absence

S.E. Nordwall

It was being called “Spontaneous Cellular Regeneration” and by a few other “science-y” sounding names that he couldn’t quite wrap his tongue around so as to avoid the inherent religiosity of the term “resurrection.”  There were some terms he found insulting and, thankfully, only a few people in the media used them before getting the idea that they should stop.  It didn’t matter what anybody called it, the fact that it had yet to be explained remained to frustrate everyone involved, not the least of which was its subject.

Alfred Stiff (and that was his real name) rubbed his left arm where blood had been taken as he walked the pleasant paths of a sunny cemetery.  It was close to the hospital – a few blocks over.  The man had not needed to drive, which was a good thing, as he had yet to get his license back. 

“At least it wasn’t bone this time,” Mr. Stiff muttered to himself.  Why the staff had to use huge horse-needles on him, he did not know.  It was then that it occurred to him that he’d seen a horse being given veterinary treatment once and the vet had used very tiny and delicate needles on the animal.  Lucky beast.

Alfred walked to the plot where his own grave lay.  It had yellow police-tape staked up around it.  The tombstone reading “A. Stiff” was still there.  If nothing else, Alfred thought, his family had a sense of humor that came in a lovely shade of black.  The grave had been kept separate on the request of people who were investigating his case.   

The man vaguely remembered clawing his way through dirt.  He had no idea how he broke the seal on his coffin.  According to investigators, it had popped loose on its own somehow, but a busted coffin was hardly the miracle here.   

Alfred Stiff had been alive just about a year now.  Before that, he’d been dead for ten years.  He was being called the “Great American Zombie.”  Most of the country seemed to regard him as a huckster even though he’d had very little, if any monetary gain from his adventure and his status had brought him enough suffering to make him wish he’d stayed dead.  Alfred really wasn’t a zombie, though.  He may have been one in the most technical sense and that is where he preferred to the term “resurrect,” even as his doctors were trying to find some other term for him. 

His body was currently healthy.  If he were a “zombie,” he would be rotting, or at least not be in possession of his own, sharp mind.  He was inexplicably healthy for someone who’d been pumped full of embalming chemicals and buried.  If there had been no witnesses to his “wakeup” or said witnesses had not been confirmed as mentally sound, what had happened to him would not have been believed by anyone.  As it was now, accusations of a hoax and of severe mental illness ran rampant. 

Mr. Stiff felt profoundly sorry for his witnesses.  Because of the accusations of mental illness, they were considered by many to be even less “human” than he was for being a freak.  He’d had some trouble with that.  His legal status was “deceased” – since there was no precedent for someone in his situation. 

Alfred sat on the edge of the trail and looked at the sky.  “Wish I could remember Heaven,” he said to himself.  “Maybe it would be easier.  Hmm. Maybe it would just make things more complicated.” 

Mr. Stiff did not remember anything between his falling and rising.  He remembered dying, yet he had not fully registered what it was at the time.  After that was the sensation of cool fresh air, the feeling of dirt under his fingernails, and after that, the discomfort of people poking and prodding him on a hospital bed.  It was all vague, but he didn’t remember a misty Heaven, a fiery Hell, or a life spent reincarnated as a squirrel or whatever else was supposed to have happened to him.  He greatly annoyed disbelievers in those sorts of things as well, on account that he did not dismiss the possibility that his spirit went somewhere and that he simply did not remember it.  “We all sleep.  Not all of us remember our dreams,” he’d say. 

Mr. Stiff had quite a time when he was on one of those cheesy talk shows.  He’d been hesitant to appear on one of those things that served, in his eyes, to perpetuate the stereotype that people who watched daytime network television were idiots.  The spiritual guru that had been on the show had pressed Alfred intensely on the subject of the afterlife and of spiritual “awakening.”  Mr. Stiff had felt sorry for him, or something along the lines of “almost sorry” simply because he’d always found it hard to feel much for the rude and the way the guy leaned into his personal space was something he found creepy. 

He’d had nothing to give the guy, having decided to remain honest.  No light, no peace – not even darkness or a “void,” to disappoint some members of the studio audience as well as the strawman skeptic that had been brought on the show, who’d apparently hoped to hear that his experience had been like deep sleep – maybe not the “death” part, but the “dying” part.  From feeling a “punch” and realizing he’d been shot in the chest, to the sensation of falling to the floor, to the vagaries of “waking up” – for all that was in between, Time had not existed for him.  He’d let the skeptic down mightily when he’d failed to see his “lack of time or anything” as proof that there was definitely no afterlife.  As far as Alfred was concerned, his experience wasn’t proof or disproof of anything at all.  He was letting people of science try to figure out why his body was alive again, but all he could give them was his body. 

That was the way those talk shows worked:  They put two people of opposing views on along with a main guest because not only does debate get going, the studio audience gets riled up into a frothy mass.  Conflict attracts viewership, and if the truth lies somewhere in-between, the truth be damned for the ratings.  This was one of the reasons why Alfred saw them as television for idiots and only made an appearance because of the money that was offered for his upkeep and to his family. Still, he outright refused the televangelist that had come to him.  Morons and sensationalists he would work with while cringing just a little, crooks he would not work with at all. 

“What’s wrong with a cross on your tombstone?” Anne said as they stood before Alfred’s grave. 

“Nothing, really, but…” Mr. Stiff answered his sister. 

“You are not lacking for company,” Anne suggested, “and you always believed in your own way, even though none of us have been active in the church for a long time.” 

“It’s not bad in and of itself,” Alfred answered, “It is what you thought I would have wanted.  I do not find it an offensive symbol; I just fear others might someday” 

“You fear others might someday...?” 

Alfred sighed.  “I think that sometimes symbols are more important to people than reality… or actual people.  With the way the world’s going and all of the bad stuff we hear about hypocrites and criminals in the churches, well… along with a lot of other unfortunate associations… I just fear that someday our world will change enough that people in the future will see crosses like we see swastikas today.  The stupider ones will raid graveyards like this, knocking over the headstones in hopes of desecrating the memories of folks they don’t think deserve to be remembered… not that it will really hurt them, being already dead, but still…”

“That’s a harsh vision.”

“Even swastikas weren’t originally and always evil,” Alfred muttered, “They’re symbolic of fortune and suchlike in some cultures – some Far East luck-symbol, at least before the West got a hold of it.  Most folk think in the negative, I suppose – Easier to gain a bad association than a good one.  A little bad use or bad press can wipe out thousands of years of good fortune.”

“So, you’re saying you don’t want people to assume things about you.” 

“Exactly,” Alfred said with a smile.  “The cross is not a bad symbol; it’s just that it has both good and bad associations.  As long as I have breath to speak, I can justify whatever I happen to be associated with.  I can explain why I follow the good parts of something and reject the bad.  Maybe people won’t believe me, but at least I can have my say.  I am powerless when I have no breath, though.  I know that better than anyone alive today.”

Alfred Stiff had moved in with his sister and her family shortly after the media storm had begun to die down and the hospital released him.  Anne had to procure him lawyers to win that right.  Having been deemed a subject valuable to science and having legally given up the rights due to the living upon his death, his general personhood was something that had to be earned for him in court. 

There was mention of vivisection and even dissection after “killing him again” to get a thorough look at all aspects of his body and brain early on.  The individuals that suggested these things had been quickly dismissed from the project.  The team that worked with Alfred in trying to figure out what had happened to him and what was going on with his body, for the most part, cared about his welfare and happiness – if for nothing else than the fact that a happy, cooperative subject was the easiest kind of subject to work with. 

They had not wanted to release him to begin his life anew, preferring that he live at the hospital twenty-four-seven, but that was most of Mr. Stiff’s contention with the main team.  He came to the hospital as a study subject to a job now.  He had eight-hour days with two days off per week.  Their tests and sample-taking often hurt, sometimes, quite a bit, but the man knew his value to science and hoped that study on him would help people someday.  In the keeping of a willing subject, giving Alfred Stiff his freedom and basic rights helped his morale, but he was still glad that his sister got lawyers involved and that it was down on paper and in record that people like the mad-scientist idiots who’d first observed him couldn’t get their way without ramifications.  As he saw it, no one in the world ever had rights that didn’t have to be fought for. 

For his part, Alfred’s hope was that knowledge gleaned from the studies would save people near death or bring back people lost to sudden tragedy.  He hated to be selfish, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to see everyone in the world resurrected as he was – at least with the world as it presently existed.  

He sat in a chair in a clean room decked out in tones of white, blue and machine-chic  watching a favorite old television series on a laptop resting on a desk before him. 

“Oh, I love this episode!” one of his doctors said.  The red-haired woman leaned over his shoulder to watch. 

“It’s a bit mind-trippy,” Alfred replied.  “I’m not sure physics would actually work that way on the ship, even in the weirder depths of space.”

“Not to mention the giant space-octopus.” 

“That, too.” 

“You really like space operas, don’t you?  They’re all I’ve see you watch while you’ve been here.” 

“Better than talk shows.  You haven’t seen me watch the couple of cooking shows I like.  I figure that’s our future.  Not the space octopi, but the stars…”

“I bet you wanted to be an astronaut as a kid.”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

“I was always more interested in biology than astrophysics.” 

“Well,” said Alfred, “If you crack me, figure me out… I’m… kind of hoping the world will save the widespread resurrecting until we reach the stars and find some planets to terraform and all that good stuff. Some might say that we need a ‘new heavens and new Earth’ for such a change in the dynamics of life.  We might need a really big heaven and lots of ‘Earths.’  Think about it.  If we bring people back willy-nilly, folks will have to stop making babies to make…Earth…work.  As it is, I still get hungry and need to breathe and, of course, I take up space.  I don’t think I’m immortal, just…returned. We’d glut up the planet real quick if everyone who died got brought back as a normal thing.” 

“Have you ever wanted children?  It would appear to be possible for you, given that all of your systems seem to be intact.” 

“My ex-wife and I thought of it when we were first married, but held off actively trying until the time was right.  Good thing, too, since we didn’t last long.”

“She hasn’t come to visit you.  I’d think she would, Miracle Man.”

“Eh. The breakup was ugly and so was she.” 

“Such an evil grin!  ‘Miracle’ or not, I guess we can’t call you a saint.”

“Don’t you even dare.”

Alfred Stiff decided at once point or another that people were more or less fictional to each other.  He didn’t think that reality was a subjective matter or that human beings did not actually exist or anything as overreaching as that.  What he concluded from his observations was that people had a tendency to create their own narratives concerning others.  People made guesses as to what a given other person was like, what their motivations were and their thoughts based upon appearance, position and a few mannerisms. 

Since there was no way of knowing what and how a given individual thinks apart from what they chose to share with others, this shorthand and the little narratives that came with it were, in Stiff’s reckoning, the best mere mortals could do.

If everyone’s mind was like his own, the world was made up of people living complicated inner lives that they’d never share with even those closest to them, not just out of privacy but out of sheer complexity.

This was apparent in a study of history.  It seemed that when a person had made themselves some fame and were long-dead, everyone quoted them.  If they were vindicated by history and people thought of them as “good,” their every speech-quote and scrap of writing that they left behind were used as evidence of being on a group’s side.  If a person was infamous, their every quote was analyzed and used to connect them to their enemies. 

Alfred hadn’t made much use of the Internet ten years ago, but his sister had a fast connection and several household computers – some old and scavenged, one expensive and new.  Alfred had read that the name for a particularly popular phenomenon on some of the forums he’d take a look at was “Godwin’s Law.”  He wondered if there was some kind of positive form for it, a “Jefferson’s Law,” considering how often the quotes of Thomas Jefferson were used by people of every political party as supposed support for their more-often-than-not purely modern agendas. 

The longer you were dead, the longer you were “nice and safe,” and moreover, useful. 

It was a little more unsettling when it came to the rewritten memories of people who knew and a deceased person in life.  After a while, those could become distorted, too – “absence makes the heart grow fonder” as was the common saying.  Alfred learned this intimately in regards to his own life, his own death and his own family.    In the case of his ex-wife, who bothered to meet him once after his “awakening,” he’d become more demonized over the years in her personal narrative of him.  For his part, he felt sorry for her new husband.

Dealings with his sister were more distressing in that she had never stopped loving him, but had changed him slightly in her mind. He found that she was surprised and offended by some of his little mannerisms.  Alfred cursed rather causally, for example, except around her two boys.  It wasn’t anything novel that had come about after his awakening – he’d always remembered firing off an expletive every once in a while when something wasn’t working right, when he was untangling electrical cords or had received a particularly annoying bill in the mail.  (He asked Anne how his dept collectors got word that he was alive again.  Her response was that they’d never acted as if he’d died.  They just forwarded bills to next of kin, addressed to him, for the entirety of the decade.  The same thing happened with requests to re-subscribe to magazines).    

“Could you tone it down?” She’d asked him when he was trying to fix the hinges on the screen-door of the family porch. 

“I dropped a screw.  They’re hard to see, the little buggers.  The boys are at school, what’s it matter what I say?” 

“You never used to be like that.”

“Hmm?  I don’t recall ever doing anything different…” 

Anne stood still for a moment. 

“Something wrong with you?”

“I just realized something.”

“Hmm?” 

“You’re right.  I guess… I just didn’t remember how you spoke in the little moments…”

“What are you talking about, Anne?” 

She began weeping.  “After you d-died…” she whispered… “I forgot…It seems like I just forgot so many little things about you.”

“I’ll watch my language for you if you really want.”

“No!  Please, be yourself! It’s just… this whole business is weird.” 

“I know,” Alfred said, stepping over to his sister and wrapping an arm around her.  “What’s happened to me is something that hasn’t happened since the time of myths. I wonder, like everyone else, if it really happened at all…”

“I don’t believe in collective hallucinations,” Anne replied, “And I know you weren’t a twin. I saw you in an open casket after being done up.” 

“When a thing happens that everyone tells you shouldn’t have happened, you begin to doubt it and doubt yourself.  It is okay, Anne, don’t cry.  Maybe some would rather I stayed dead than gotten lucky so as not to disturb what’s ‘supposed to be,’ but I know that you aren’t one of them. You’re my little sister and nothing’s going to change that.

“Has your medical team figured out hide or hair of it?” Anne asked. “It’d be nice to have some explanation beyond it just being a ‘miracle.” 

“Eh,” her brother said, separating from her and picking his screwdriver up again.  “Maybe I was revived by a fairy or someone, somewhere made a pact with a shadow-demon that can bring people back from the Land of the Dead.”

Anne laughed.  “Dylan and Francis will have to show you the little game-room they have set up.  Compared to the games we used to play, the graphics on theirs will blow you away.” 

“I never asked what you did with my old consoles.” 

“We kept them. They’re also in the game room, though the 1980’s- beast is up in the attic.”

“Have the boys ever played with that one?”

“Nope. The old games are with it, though in an old crate.”

“I shall have to dust it off and bring it down and school them,” Alfred said with a grin.

“This is all we could get,” Francis said as he showed off a game-case of some title that “Uncle Al” had never heard of.  “It’s from a few years ago, outdated…”

“But the used stuff is cheaper, anyway,” Dylan finished for him.  “I like used games better – that way I can read reviews online so we don’t waste our money on lame-ass crap.”

“Your mother shouldn’t hear you say that,” Alfred scolded. 

“We say worse!” Francis said, sticking his tongue out at his older brother. “The trick is to listen for her at the door when we’re playing one of the fighters so she doesn’t hear us…” 

“I bet you come up with some creative insults for each other,” Alfred said.

“Play with us, Uncle Al! We’ll play whatever you want to play first!”

“Yeah, and maybe next week, you can talk Mom into taking us to the game store in the city.  They were going to build a Lana’s Castle a couple of blocks from here, but…”

“But?”

“When you… what mom said… you know…” Dylan struggled.

“What he means to say,” Francis butted in, “is that there was this big protest from the town council and people, since the guy who killed you liked videogames.” 

“Oh, that…” Alfred said, biting his thumbnail. 

“We’re lucky Mom even lets us play stuff,” Dylan explained.  “She doesn’t let us play the really cool stuff, though, nothing really bloody and awesome.” 

Among the game-cases, “Uncle Al” found an old favorite of his.  He and Dylan sat side-by-side on the carpeted floor with controllers playing a player-versus-player swordfighting title.  Francis watched, eager to play the winner, but cheering on his uncle.

Mr. Stiff had known Dylan.  The child was two years old when he’d embarked on his adventures in coffin-stuffing.  Francis was new to him, born a year after his murder.  It warmed his heart that the children had an appreciation for some things that he did not think they’d have an appreciation of.  Videogames were expected, but not the titles he knew.  Though the game he was playing at the moment had a roster of characters with fierce and sometimes improbable-looking blades, the carnage was bloodless, with damage shown in light-flares and effects to the character’s hit-point bars. 

The man thought, as he played, to the young man who’d killed him.  He had not remembered his face very well from the incident.  Most of what he knew came from news article archives he’d read.  The kid had been twenty-two years old and had been an ex-employee of Steve’s Market, a small grocery store that Alfred had stopped off to in the evening after work. 

Alfred did remember the contents of his shopping basket that night: There was a frozen chicken-fried steak dinner because he didn’t feel like cooking anything for himself that night, nor picking up another burger from sack made transparent by the grease.  There was a box of nasal-decongestant pills because he could feel himself coming down with a minor cold, and he’d grabbed a bottle of some cheap off-brand cola.   He’d walked to one of two staffed registers (Steve’s had yet to install a do-it-yourself scanner station) when the kid had come in – dark, messy hair, black denim jacket and white tennis-shoes that were falling apart (Alfred had no idea why he remembered that).  The next thing he knew, the kid had pulled something from his coat and there were several sharp popping sounds, some screams, and something that felt like a mule-kick to his chest. 

He felt wetness before he felt pain, but he suddenly could not breathe.  He looked down to see red splats on the floor, felt his knees buckle and that was just about all he remembered before the sensations of cold grave-dirt on his fingers and some doctor shining a light in his eyes.

According to what he’d been told and what he’d been able to see in news video and article archives, he was one of four people killed in the rampage, including the gunman. There had been very few people in the little market at the time.  One other man who was a customer of the store was shot in the head.  A little girl had taken a body-shot and died at the hospital.  Her mother was wounded as well as the clerk at one of the registers.  The young assailant had, after seeing what he’d wrought, eaten his gun before police even arrived.   

Alfred Stiff had visited the graves other than his own, including the grave of the murderer.  From what he’d read, the boy had been very troubled, not that it was an excuse in any way for what he’d done, but the man felt more a sense of sorrow over the whole ordeal than a desire for revenge.  He did not hope for a Hell for the boy.  If he carried any anger, it was over the dead little girl and the random man he never knew rather than for himself.    

He had inexplicably “gotten better,” after all.  He thought the little girl should have “gotten better,” not him.  If it was the whim of a God, perhaps a dark sense of humor or trickery was involved. Perhaps his fate was the doing of a capricious writer.  Maybe the little girl was very happy in a Heaven he couldn’t remember and wishing her back wasn’t something she’d want anyone to do.  Maybe nothing was involved save some bizarre quirk of biology and there was no one to blame or to beg a different outcome of.  All he could do was to leave some flowers beside the headstone of the girl he never knew and move on. 

And play videogames with his nephews, who were glad to have an Uncle Al.

Reports on the young killer noted, among other things, that he had been quite an extensive videogame hobbyist and a few of the kid’s favorites - according to his relatives and what had been found in his home that had been listed in one article - were some of Alfred’s own favorites.  There was a title or two he’d never heard of and a few he’d avoided (although an adult gamer, he generally found himself much more fond games featuring swords and sorcery rather than gun-filled historical simulators or gritty things that were supposed to be set in real-world locations).  Still, to keep a gaming store – something he would have welcomed in the community – out even partially “in his name” seemed a little harsh. 

The articles also had what he felt was a disturbing emphasis on the killer being a “loner.”  Alfred wondered just why, whenever someone who was gregarious did a notable mass-murder or attack with that as an intent, the news media would print and do sound bytes proclaiming how “appalling” it was that such a normal, social person would act out like that, but whenever someone who happened to be an introvert flipped their pancake for whatever reason, their introversion was portrayed “normal for unstable people.”   Alfred was living under the care of his sister’s family at present, but in his previous life, he’d lived alone and liked it.  He’d tried the marriage-thing, and it hadn’t worked out.  He’d enjoyed his solitude and, like friends of his he rarely saw because they also enjoyed their solitude – he’d stockpiled books in his apartment, not guns.

Being an unwilling and unwarranted “martyr” for keeping gaming culture out of the neighborhood wasn’t as bad as being used as an unwitting shill for other things, but it still annoyed him. 

It was another reminder of how powerless the dead were.  He assumed he’d be in that state again eventually.  Given basic mammalian survival-instinct, inevitability had always bothered him, but now it bothered him even more.  His “name” could be used for or against damn near anything.  

Perhaps he’d request to have a symbol from a game-universe etched on his new eventual tombstone instead of a cross.  He knew of a harmonious arrangement of triangles that could be nice…

The memories had deepened to an extent he never could have predicted. 

Alfred found himself hugging his sobbing sister again.  This seemed to be happening on an ever-more-frequent basis.  Some little mannerism would set her off either because she’d remembered it from their youth together or because it seemed, somehow, out of character only for the woman to be given a reminder that it wasn’t. 

More than that, Anne had constructed memories of her brother that never were, because they never could be.  She had so many scenarios for which he’d been absent that she’d imagined “If Alfred was here” for.  By his off-hand comments and the small actions of his day-to-day living, he’d been shattering her illusions without even meaning to. 

“When did you change politics?”  “You never liked shows like that.”  “The Al I knew wouldn’t put up with that garbage they’re doing to you at the hospital – you were always so defiant, what happened to that?”

“Ssssh,” the big brother told his little sister, rubbing her back.  “Isn’t it natural for people to change?”

“But…” Anne said with a tiny choke, “You haven’t… you really haven’t.  It’s only my mind that’s changed you!  I feel like… I don’t even know you anymore sometimes, but it’s not your fault.  You do something unexpected, then suddenly my mind tells me I should have expected it, that it’s my addled mind to blame.”

“Your mind isn’t addled.  It’s just human.” 

“I-I…I’m worried that I cherish the memory of you more than I cherish… you. You, Alfred.  It’s almost like…”

“You wish I’d stayed in the ground…”

“No! Never that!” 

“The dead are supposed to stay that way… you said your goodbyes. You had closure. Then I had to wake up and mess it all up. I reopened all of your wounds and I can’t even be the person your mind wrote me to be, what your heart really wants me to be…”

“Al…” 

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder and distorts the memory.”

“I can make new memories of you.”

Alfred sighed.  “I received a miracle I never asked anyone for, but that doesn’t mean a miracle was a good thing.”  

A. Stiff looked at the grave with the marker that read “A. Stiff.”   He plucked a small wildflower from the path-side and placed it before the marker, bending down past the police tape.  The man smiled at the thought of laying a flower on his own grave. 

In some ways, existence itself was just a kick in the pants, but it had its bright spots, too.  He’d been made a stranger in his own world, a foreigner to his own life.   He was largely out of the news now, his “miracle” having become mundane – it wasn’t that it had been replicated in any way or even figured out, it’s just that life went on.  News would be a breakthrough on his case or another one like it occurring.  For now, he was relatively free.   

He was not sure that the miracle he’d suffered was a good thing, but for the time being, he’d make the most of it. 

END.