Brandon, OR/ID: Part VII

Suspended Pinks
By Jem Morgenstern

A cello sits quietly in the corner of the room. Its dark body stands out against the blushing pink walls. The wooden floors are similarly dark. Anne is sitting on a yellow chair. This is a room she hasn’t been in before. The cello in the corner is a stranger to her - a distant relative to her own cello. She is staring at its peg box. The head of each peg is parallel to the others - an impossibility that leads Anne to ask questions that she doesn’t intend to answer or vocalize. She wonders if the cello is tuned properly. She wonders why it wouldn’t be. She wonders if the cello’s cellist has a method of tuning the cello in a way that keeps the pegs perfectly aligned with each other. An impossibility.

She stands. Her shoes are between the doorway and the wardrobe. The left side of her left shoe is parallel to the right side of the wardrobe, the right side of her right shoe is exposed to the air flowing in through the doorway, the heels of both shoes are against the wall behind them. Their laces are undone. Each time she looks at the shoes, she is bothered by the end of the lace on the right shoe that is frayed. She is planning to replace the laces soon, because she is trying to minimize the number of small details in her daily life that make her uncomfortable. The next pair of laces will be the fourth pair of laces that have been on these shoes. She replaced the first pair because they were a particular shade of blue that didn’t match well with the peachy yellow of the shoes’ bodies. She still has this pair of laces stored in the bottommost left drawer of her own dresser at home. She has considered lacing that pair onto the shoes rather than buying a new pair, but she decided the combination of colors would cause the same amount of discomfort as the frayed end that she is attempting to ignore now. The shoes are now on her feet and she is walking down the stairs. The stairs are steep - otherwise, her pace would be quicker.

There is a long hallway at the bottom of the staircase. The walls are bare, likely because it is hard to pair artwork with the intricate wallpaper. The floors of the hallway are the same as they are in the room with the cello. There is a small decorative table near one of the doorways. Nothing is on the table. The rooms in the house are wide and spacious, but this corridor is suffocating.

The tiles in the kitchen are a muted white that is similar to the tile on the countertops, the cupboards and walls are a heavy blue. On the countertop near the sink, which is below a wide window, there is a wooden cutting board. There is a column of drawers next to the white fridge - two cutting boards that are identical to the one on the counter are in the middle drawer. The knives are all kept in the drawer above the cutting boards. The drawer below the cutting boards contains miscellaneous tools that are not used often. None of the handles to the cupboards or drawers are matching. There is an asparagus green kettle on the stove and Anne hears it begin to whistle. Two teacups are set next to the cutting board on the counter. Something is placed on the cutting board - Anne is unable to identify what it might be by just the sound of its heavy body landing on the wooden board. She enters the kitchen and does not look at the cutting board.

“I have to go. Are you busy later this week?”

Anne knows that he is busy later this week, but she feels that asking this question makes her unexpected exit seem more polite. Her question and presence in the kitchen are met with a concerned expression.

“Yeah, the rest of this week will be kinda busy, but I can see if I can find some time. Is everything okay?”

She knows that ignoring his question might spark some suspicion, but she chooses to anyway.

“I’ll text you later. Let me know if you can find time.”

She can tell he isn’t satisfied with this response. They talk for another short amount of time before she is able to leave. She’s glad that she decided to leave before he was further into the lunch-making process. They both exit the kitchen and walk down the narrow hallway towards the front door. There is a table next to the door with a stack of small books. Anne glances at the titles and finds that they are almost all contemporary christian fiction. She’s glad that she decided to leave before she was further into the romanticizing process.

It has been two hours. Anne is walking through the mall to a store she believes will have shoelaces. The mall is crowded and she worries for the unsupervised kids who are chasing each other around the always ignored mechanical rocking horses. She thinks about coming to the mall with her parents - she is surprised by the lack of change and she experiences a mild sensation of loss while thinking about the things that have changed. She wonders if the children understand how temporary childhood is - though she then hopes that they don’t, because she doesn’t want them to worry about the impermanence of their childhood freedoms. She doesn’t want the pleasure of childhood to be spoiled by the aggressive reality of temporality. Her thoughts sway between the consideration of childhood as a concept and memories of her own childhood. She remembers the excitement she felt when her parents gave in to her begging for a ride on a mechanical rocking horse and the dry embarrassment she felt when she got on the horse and discovered it wasn’t as fun as she had imagined. She tries to pinpoint the exact moment her childhood ended, but eventually determines that the loss of childhood is a gradual process of it being torn away rather than a single moment.

The store’s shoelace options are more limited than she had imagined. There is white, black, off-white variations, and a small group of neons. None of them are particularly attractive to her. She takes a few off the rack and holds them against her shoes. A sedated blue, a muted yellow, a pristine white, a violent neon pink. She puts the neon pink and the white back on the rack. She holds the blue and yellow against her shoes again. She puts the blue back on the rack.

At home, she replaces the laces on her shoes. The old ones are placed in the garbage bin. She feels like throwing them away is a waste, but she knows that keeping them around will do no good. With the new laces on her shoes, she is relieved that she won’t be bothered by frayed laces again until these ones are also worn to their limit. This small chore was the only activity Anne had planned for her day. A moment of stillness follows the completion of this one goal as the embrace of her achievement loosens. The stillness is a midpoint between her short pride in her small accomplishment and the inevitably approaching fear that the empty hours following will be filled with nothing but the questioning of what to do next. Anne is ashamed of her ruthless habit of killing time - the guilt of idling while time passes overwhelms her before the time she is afraid of wasting has begun to pass. There is some dirt on the rug in her bedroom, she thinks, so she decides to vacuum. She knows this will only occupy a small portion of the time to follow, but she is happy that the few minutes it takes will be spent in a way that she considers productive. With the vacuum on and the bedroom door closed, Anne doesn’t hear the knocking at her door. She would never know there was a knocking at the door and she would never know why.

Anne is able to occupy the rest of her day with small activities similar to vacuuming the rug in her bedroom. She finds a short time to play her cello, but she hasn’t yet forgiven her talent for the work it created when she was invited to perform at the Philadelphus Lewisii Music Hall nightly each day of the previous week. She punishes herself for the stress she has caused herself. At this time, playing her cello evokes the same stress her practice sessions had before, which is unpleasant. Overall, she is satisfied with how she spent her time.

She receives a text from the date she abandoned. He has found some free time later in the week and wants to know if this time aligns with her schedule, because he would like to see her again. Anne isn’t sure if she wants to see him again. She doesn’t respond.

Anne’s shoes are in the hallway. Her left shoe is on the right side of her right shoe - the toe is against the wall and its heel is against nothing. Her right shoe is pointed in the opposite direction. Her socks are still on her feet. She is sitting at the kitchen table in silence. There is an empty floral white bowl on the table in front of her. The head of her spoon is resting in the bottom of the bowl. There is a matching plate to the right of the bowl. On the plate, there is a small portion left of the bread she cut herself from the loaf she bought the day before at a supposedly French bakery. The texture of the bread isn’t as satisfying as it was the day before. Anne hasn’t yet decided if she will finish eating the bread. With the potential for love and the bread on her mind, she’s reminded of one of the many Johns she has known throughout her life. His absence doesn’t darken her mood. She wonders what he might be doing with his life now - she knows he’s no longer a gardener and she knows the friends they shared haven’t heard from him for a long time. Although she doesn’t care about him, she hopes that he is doing well.

Brandon, OR/ID: Part VI

Wet and Yellowed Denim

By Jem Morgenstern

The music began and the audience’s quivers of anticipation settled. Their bodies gave into the hum of the cello, letting it fill their pores with the scent of vibrating spruce and maple. While Scott’s ears followed the melodies, his eyes wandered the aisles of the music hall: stopping to memorize every seated figure, taking advantage of the music’s sensory captivation, familiarizing himself with their bodies and the assumed identities he could yield from their appearance. There was a woman in her mid-forties, who wore a midnight blue cotton blouse with an imperial collar that was a close-enough match to the sapphire studs she wore in the holes in her ears. Her hair was slicked back into a neatly wound bun that sat just below the centerpoint of where a crown would sit. For all he knew, she wasn’t wearing any pants; he could only see the portion of her body above her shoulder blades. She either came alone or wasn’t close to the ones she came with. If she did come with others and they were the audience members sitting next to her, they weren’t emotionally close. If she did come with others and they were elsewhere in the pool of bodies, they were simply not within a personal proximity of physical distance. She and the bodies surrounding her - together - did not radiate a feeling of warmth, like most friends do when they are sharing an experience within a personal proximity. There was a man in his early thirties, who wore an outfit that (in Scott’s opinion) was too casual for this event. This judgement was, of course, only made from the pieces of the outfit that Scott could see, which was all from the shoulder blades and above. For all he knew, he could have been wearing very fancy pants. However, in this instance of reaching a conclusion without having been provided all necessary evidence to reach a definite determination, Scott was correct; the man in his early thirties was dressed in an outfit that was too casual for this event. The man in his early thirties was not wearing very fancy pants. This man’s attendance was mandated by the other man in his early thirties, who was sitting next to him. This other man wore an outfit that was entirely reasonable for this event. This led Scott to have a more favorable opinion of the other man than the one that the other man brought with him. Scott decided that, if he were to ever interact with the two men in their early thirties, he would appear amiable towards both, but his internal gratitude would very much be shifted towards the other one. There was a man wearing a denim button-up and ornate brass earrings. After first landing on a mostly negative opinion of this man’s choice of attire, Scott’s opinion shifted towards an applauding appraisal. Throughout the four hour performance, the denim-clad man continuously captured Scott’s attention. The scent of his personality was magnetic. Even halfway through, when everyone began squeezing their legs together and sweating due to straining their internal controls, which is a scene that would generally break his intense optical invasion, Scott’s eyes were locked onto the man in denim. While (nearly) everyone else shook in their seats, the man in denim remained steady and intent on the performance - his stillness in the shifting sea of bodies made it even more difficult for Scott to look away. He found the man after the performance.

Three days later, the man in denim can now be called Daniel. Daniel’s desk is cluttered, with an indiscernible but apparent organizational system. Its surface is stained by droplets of ink that were ignored for too long. Some of the spots could probably be cleaned away, if Daniel cared enough to do so, but he did not care enough to do so. They are tangled together on the bed, nesting their bodies together like two spoons. Scott has been waiting for Daniel, whose arms are tightly wound around his body, to wake up. He doesn’t want to move, because he doesn’t want to wake Daniel up before he’s ready. While he waits, he clings onto the intimacy of the moment and stares at the desk, which he now feels he has become more familiar with than his own. Scott, like most people in this city, rarely used his desk. He used it most often for leaning on, while staring out the window above it. On occasion, he would pull his journal from beneath his bed to write about the scenes outside and his recent obsessions. Those occasions were infrequent. While writing in that journal, he would most often sit at his kitchen table. He didn’t like to spend too much time in his bedroom, the room in which his desk is located, despite its welcoming warmth. He could never place the source, but there was something in his bedroom that he described to himself as maddening. He spends as little time in his bedroom as possible. Daniel, however, spends an obscene amount of time in his bedroom and, unlike most people in this city, used his desk almost daily.

Three more days later, Scott is sitting in his bedroom at his desk with his journal of obsessions open to a blank page.The subtle warmth of the beige walls, deep red blankets, Eastern Red Cedar desk, and African Rosewood bed frame endow the room with a welcoming glow. The complex floral carvings in the sideboard of the frame, the cleanliness, and the well-kept collection of friendly letters suggest gentility and a kind femininity. He presses the tip of a pen against the paper and writes about the window, the view from the window, the cravings the window instilled. Above the desk, a window offers a longing temptation to strip the exceedingly lavish decor from the exterior and interior walls of The Property. Above the bed, a mirror reflects the window’s view, embedding an obsession with The Family’s wealth. His journal reflects that obsession. He has compiled every notable detail he has been able to ensare from his view of the massive estate. The lanterns in The Property’s gardens were illuminated, as the the city’s face was turned away from the sun, highlighting the immensity of their gardens, acting as another burdening indication of The Family’s excessive prosperity. The dawn brought an immemorable sunset with dusty browns and fading blues. Crickets scraped their instrumental wings together. As traffic dissipated, its bellowing was replaced by the sound of wind in leaves. In the dim garden lights, Scott could see a figure. The Gardener was still working: trimming the rose bushes, plucking blades of grass the mower missed, inspecting every other detail of the sprawling yards to make sure everything was as perfect as The Family wanted it to be. This gardener, Scott realized, knew every immaculate crevice on The Property. The longing temptation to strip the wealth from The Family’s walls, floors, drawers, ceilings, pockets, knuckles, bushes, fridges, doors, and closets became something more. After this realization, Scott began to stitch together a plan.

From his window, he watched The Gardener. He absorbed every detail that could possibly be significant. Scott familiarized himself completely with The Gardener’s work. The daisies were always kept at an even number - if one grew, one would have to be chopped; if one died unexpectedly, another one would have to be sacrificed. The Northeast lawn was mowed on Tuesdays, the Southwest on Wednesdays, the Southeast on Thursdays, and there was no grass in the Northwest portion of the gardens. The rose bushes were trimmed obsessively. Sandpaper was used to scratch off the smallest flaws. Their height was kept perfectly aligned with the bottom of the window above them. The Gardener would often spend dozens of minutes staring at the border between rose and window to ensure the alignment was perfect, Scott thought. That staring, however, revealed itself to be something else. Weeks into his spying, Scott bought binoculars. Spying with the use of only his eyes had been difficult. Because of his frugal tendencies, he attempted to make it work, but it had become enough of a hinderance that he decided the use of additional tools would be beneficial. While considering the purchasing of binoculars, he also had a thought questioning his need for all the wealth of The Property. Scott, as indicated by the use of the word ‘frugal’ not so long ago, doesn’t spend a lot of money. He makes enough money to meet all his needs. He makes enough money to build an admirable amount of savings. He doesn’t need more money. This sparked a self-discovery session in which Scott analyzed his cravings. Eventually, he settled on this rationalization: he feels as though he could never have enough money to feel confident he could make-do in an extreme crisis and he feels deeply unsettled by that fact, so acquiring a grotesque amount of money would allow him to feel comfortable about his chances of making it through an extreme crisis, therefore, he would never have to worry about anything reliant on his monetary resources again and he could be truly happy. He felt good about buying the binoculars. With those binoculars, while watching The Gardener stare at the rose bush alignment, he noticed a longing expression. This expression made it clear that The Gardener wasn’t staring at the rose bush alignment. He was longing for whatever it was he could see through the window. He was obsessively desperate. Scott knew this could be used to his own advantage. This could be his key to recruiting The Gardener.

Brandon, OR/ID: Part V

Black Road
By Jem Morgenstern

Due to the city’s location, the usual 911 emergency number isn’t available to its residents, which led to the establishment of the Emergency Dispatch Hotline. The number for the hotline, 896-2335 with no area code, is less catchy than the more common 911. City officials have commissioned local musicians to create a cheery melody to go with the numbers, which would potentially aid residents in its memorization. After multiple attempts at creating that melody, musicians and city officials gave up on its creation. 896-2335 isn’t an easy combination of numbers to create a melody for. Their plans for a simple mnemonic tune failed, so they went with their backup plan to have the number presented by very memorable voices and fonts. This led to the establishment of Emergency Dispatch Hotline Squad 7, which consists of three members. Their only responsibilities include using their memorable voices for 896-2335 awareness commercials and using their artistic talents to design 896-2335 awareness billboards. The current Emergency Dispatch Hotline Squad 7, which is the third Emergency Dispatch Hotline Squad 7, has failed miserably. Only 78% of the city’s residents are aware of 896-2335 and 23% of the residents who are aware of 896-2335 are unaware of the purpose of 896-2335. The number exists to them as an extra phone number they have memorized, but has no purpose. Because of the failing Emergency Dispatch Hotline Squad 7, Emergency Dispatch Hotline Squad 8 was formed to increase the publicity of 896-2335 with other means. The plan was to collect a squad of attractive youth, push them through training, and use them for a new poster campaign advertising the Emergency Dispatch Hotline. The squad wasn’t ever meant to be deployed to handle emergencies. In fact, Emergency Dispatch Hotline Squad 7 and Emergency Dispatch Hotline Squad 2 (the squad responsible for answering calls) were more qualified than Emergency Dispatch Hotline Squad 8 for handling emergencies.

Today, with the exception of Emergency Hotline Squad 8, all squads had been deployed shortly after sunrise. Squad 7 had been sent out to handle a house fire and Squad 2 was tasked with handling a car crash. Squad 2 soon received a phone call from an old woman whose words were unclear, but her voice sounded stressed enough for Squad 2 to worry. Squad 2 called Squad 8. Squad 8 deployed for the first time. The old woman lives two miles away from the Emergency Dispatch Hotline Center, but Squad 8 took an extra mile to get there because they didn’t know of a more direct route to her home. This was, however, the quickest way they knew to get to that area, so they were trying their best.

The old woman was sitting on her porch. Her face wore an impatient and worried expression, but her effort to relax wasn’t unnoticeable. Squad 8 approached the porch, ready to lead her through the standard list of questions, but the old woman interrupted their questioning before they could even move their lips.

The old woman had been extremely protective of her home, since the day an intruder snuck in through a window and hung her husband over the clothes line outside to bleed dry. She didn’t have much of a reason to worry though because events like that one were rare in this city. It had been twenty years and one day and not one murder had been carried out or planned since then and just one murder had been carried out in the twenty years prior to the day her husband was murdered, which was uncoincidentally exactly twenty years before. The city was on a twenty-year murder cycle with one gruesome murder every twenty years.  The murder forty years and one day ago (the one before this old woman’s husband) took place inside of an orphanage, which left thirty orphaned children traumatized. Ten of those traumatized orphans are currently employed by the Emergency Dispatch Hotline Center. Three of those ten are on Squad 2. The other seven are on Squad 4, the squad reserved for would-be-vigilantes hardened by the struggles of life. The other twenty children went on to various other fields of study and professions. For this reason (her distrust of strangers entering her home), the first words she said to Squad 8 were, “I don’t want you going in my house.”

One member of Squad 8 replied with, “we understand, ma’am, and we’ll keep that in mind. Could you tell us what’s wrong?”

She went on to explain why she didn’t want them going into her home. Of course, this wasn’t the answer to the question they meant to ask, but the story kept them entertained, so they didn’t regret sending her on this tangent. When she finished, they all acknowledged her story, asked her a few more questions about it, and then respectfully brought the conversation where they meant to bring it in the first place with the classic line, “what’s your emergency?”

Her grandson had gone out the morning before to pick up some bread from his favorite bakery. He would come by thrice a week to help her clean her house and do the work that her frail, stuttering movement kept her from doing herself. Each day he would come over, they would cook dinner together. That night, they were keeping it simple: salad, casserole, and leftover pulled pork. Her grandson thought bread would make a nice addition to their peasant meal, so he sent himself off to get some. He still hadn’t come back with the bread.

Squad 8 continued questioning her. They gathered the information they needed and some that they didn’t. His name was John (a very common name in this city), his hair was brown, he worked outside often enough to maintain a decent tan, and his grandmother didn’t know which bakery he would have gone to. He was wearing jeans, a non-descript casual button-up shirt, and brown shoes. His car was black and there was a small scrape on the bumper. His favorite color was blue and he enjoyed listening to the cello. His childhood pet’s name was Annie. Done asking questions, Squad 8 told the old woman not to worry, and they went back to the Emergency Dispatch Hotline Center.

There was nothing about him in their records. There wasn’t a lot about him in the city records. Squad 8 couldn’t find anything that could lead them to his whereabouts. They checked with the morgue, but the only body in there was an unidentifiable heap of stringy flesh and a pair of legs. They knocked on his door. Predictably, nobody answered. It was time to hang posters.

Squad 8 borrowed a few members from other squads to help them go around town stapling posters to telephone poles and taping them to telephone booths (they wanted to get the importance of calling in to report sightings of John across).

Months went by and they hadn’t received any calls. They kept the old woman updated on their search. At first, the discouraging reports would bring a frown to her face, but they came to be expected and the frowns became ingenuine and hollow. More months went by. They stopped visiting the old woman. She stopped expecting him to come back. She grieved. She moved on. Squad 8’s focus had to be put elsewhere. For a while, the missing grandson would float back up in their thoughts, but enough time eventually passed for them to forget about him completely. They picked up new cases involving missing people that were much more hopeful. Those people were found. The positivity and certainty of these cases pulled their attention. The grandson was gone. The pile of tattered flesh was thrown into the cremator with its matching pair of legs, never identified. The grandson was gone.

Brandon, OR/ID: Part IV

Liquid Evergreen
By Jem Morgenstern

The desk is littered with ink bottles, neatly organized by color and by shade. The drawers are filled with pens and pencils, meticulously arranged to look beautifully cluttered. A small silk blanket is draped over wooden chair that sits next to the window. The feining sunrays highlight the dust in the air and land on a large chest across the room, which is filled with spare blankets of various materials, weights, and sizes. One of the more regularly used spare blankets sits neatly folded on top of the chest. Another lays sprawled at the foot of the bed with a corner draping over the edge, nearly touching the floor. A small pillow rests next to that blanket, for the dog that sometimes wanders in for a change of scenery after a long day of lounging on the armchair in the next room over.  In that room, along with the armchair, there are three identical bookshelves that are all mostly filled with books (not all of which have been read), two small tables (one holds a lamp and the other holds a vase of dried eucalyptus and miniature roses), another armchair, and an intricate rug that is vacuumed every Tuesday and Thursday. The rest of the house doesn’t follow the same studious theme. There are three rooms besides those two: the kitchen, living room, and bathroom. The kitchen is large enough to fit everything a cooking hobbyist would need and enough storage space for a casual wine enthusiast to keep a fair supply. The fridge is currently stocked only with the basics, besides the small plate of pulled pork that will be fed to the dog in two nights. The living room has a small couch, a glass coffee table, and a television with a thin silver frame. The bathroom has a classic blue color scheme and is well-stocked with any toiletries a person may need. Daniel (the third most popular name in this city - behind John and Jon) is sitting on the small couch in the living room, sipping from a glass of a disappointing-but-not-bad glass of madeira, and watching a show that only interests him a little, but he enjoys watching it anyway because he forces himself to. His dog lays next to him.

Back in the bedroom, two tickets have been casually set next to the ink bottles. Rather than being two tickets for two to attend the same event, they are two tickets for a singular person to attend two events. Daniel doesn’t know anybody else who would share an interest in attending either of these events, so he has no choice but to go alone. This is despite how peculiarly common these interests are in this city. One, in fact, has inspired a dedicated structure that wouldn’t be found in any other city. Of course, it is used for many other things besides the purpose it is named and built for, and hosts a variety of events that are similar to or not similar at all to the personal interest from which it is named. Daniel is primarily going to the event for what is implied and all else the event entails, but the other aspect of the event (which for most others would be the primary reason for attendance) also intrigues him. While he only considers himself to be a casual why-not sort in regards to that specific interest, others may consider any interest in it at all to be extreme and many do consider his interest in it to be extreme (because he does have more than a casual interest in it, no matter how he tries to deny it). The other event he plans to attend is more widely accepted and the venue in which it will be hosted is no less common in cities outside of this one, however, the design of it is much less practical than most you would find elsewhere. Although an interest in events such as this one are common in most places, it is slightly more common in this city. In Daniel’s small pool of friends and acquaintances, there is not one who shares this incredibly common interest; a nearly supernatural oddity, considering 99.5% of the established social circles within the city’s boundaries contain at least three people who share this interest and 80% of the remaining .5% contain at least two people who share this interest.

Since Daniel had been sitting on the small couch in his living room, five hours have passed. He was very pleased by the first event of the night and he plans to attend more events hosted in that rare venue of entertainment in the future. He is now sitting comfortably at the second event. It has been one hour since it began: the person sitting to his right has his legs crossed and is shaking his foot, the person sitting on his left has her knees pressed against each other and is clutching her thighs in mild discomfort. He recognizes several audience members from earlier that night. Three more hours pass and it is now time for the audience to leave. Seeing that the crowd seemed so rushed and knowing that he had no reason to hurry, Daniel kindly let the others leave before him. He was the last to turn his back to the stage.

One hour later, Daniel found himself on an impromptu date with a man he met outside of the building of the second event. It’s uncommon for Daniel to speak to strangers, especially to this extent, but here he is - answering the typical questions to be asked, asking those same questions, and listening to the answers:

“If you have one, what’s your favorite color?”

I don’t really know. I kind of like most of them. All but orange, maybe. What about you?

“Same here, but with yellows in addition to oranges.”

Yeah, I’m picky about my yellows. Sometimes I like yellow, but not usually.

“What do you like to do?”

Oh, I don’t know. I like to do a lot of things. What about you?

“There has to be something you like to do. What do you do with your free time?”

Not a lot, honestly. I like music, art, movies.

“What kind of music do you like?”

A pretty big variety. It depends on my mood. You?

“I have terrible taste.”

That last answer evoked Daniel’s lips to curve slightly upwards into a mellow smile. He was thoroughly enjoying his time with his new acquaintance. Already, he excitedly looked forward to spending more time with him. He was also very pleased with the food they were eating and he was excited to have a new place to suggest to his friends and brag about having been. Their conversation continued. Although it never grew from its mundanity, it was intensely pleasant. More time passed, Daniel’s smile became a prominent feature on his face, and the stranger’s warm personality began filling the cracks and crevices in Daniel’s skin and bones. They left the restaurant, continuing their conversation until it was time for them to part ways with each other’s names and numbers in hand.

Forty minutes later, Daniel found himself back on the couch in his living room. The uninteresting show was playing again on the screen and Daniel was paying less attention to it than he ever had before, with all his thoughts on Scott (the fourth most popular name in this city - behind John, Jon, and Daniel). The last thing on his mind that night would be Scott, and the first thought in his mind the following morning would be the same. That day, everything had gone as well as it possibly could have. He was in love with that day more than any he could remember and he was in no hurry to let it end, pushing him to stay awake hours later than he usually would, basking in that temporary, precious, and wonderful feeling. The mediocre madeira was down the sink and a new bottle was opened, a polished lambrusco with complex floral notes. The dog trudged through a tired slog into the bedroom, lept onto the bed, pawed at the sheets until they were maladjusted to her content, and curled into sleeping position: tail tucked away, jowls hanging limply, eyelids gradually closing. In two more hours, Daniel would fall asleep on the couch, despite how strongly he dislikes sleeping there. The bright television screen will continue to illuminate his face throughout the night and the sounds will seep into his subconscious, provoking unusual dreams.

Seven hours later, Daniel is awake. He feels rested and is looking forward to his day, although he has no plans to look forward to.

Brandon, OR/ID: Part III

The Noted Palace

By Jem Morgenstern

She walked onto the stage. The audience remained completely silent and listened to the click of her heels, as she sauntered to the cello that stood waiting for her in the center of the stage. John watched, like a dog presented with a plate of pulled pork, intently and excitedly with a heart readying itself for impending joy. John listened, as if her heels knocking against the stage were the music they had been waiting to hear. Although she hadn’t started playing, he could already feel the vibrations of the music that he had become so familiar with in the weeks and months of listening to her practice. He was as excited to see her perform, as she was to play. The clicking of her heels stopped, she sat on the chair, and she looked out into the audience for what seemed to her like many seconds, but it was really just a few. She felt nervous, but she wasn’t. She knew she could do this and she had no worry that she might make a mistake. The auditorium was completely silent, except for the echo of stillness and quiet. The walls anticipated the long, deep bellows of her cello.

The Philadelphus Lewisii Music Hall was built to stage massive musical performances with hundreds of people playing on the stage at once. Structurally, it was very unique. Instead of being built with depth, so that musicians could be placed row behind row behind row, it was built so that one-thousand musicians would fit on the stage with only two very wide rows and enough space between the individuals for each player to be comfortable in their skin and have the space for the instruments themselves and the movements required to play them. The architects paid no mind to the effect the arrangement would have on the sound emanating from the orchestra’s instruments; their goal was to design the most aesthetically intriguing display within the city, rather than the most technically profound orchestral stage. Because of its width, the music would always sound less harmonized and synchronous than it would on a regular stage. After the construction was complete, the architects realized this and advertised the less-than-perfect stage as a modern artwork with supposed commentary on how a person’s physical location affects the way they perceive events and time, how one person will experience an event one way and another the other way, and how a person could experience something once and then return to experience it again from a slightly different perspective and find themselves witnessing something that is completely different to what they had experienced before (this would help drive their argument that everyone should come see each performance at least twice, which would greatly increase their monetary gain for some time). Their brilliance in marketing their ineptitude as exceptional intellect paved the way for a few of these architects to move to careers in advertising.

The length of the stage made the woman’s walk to the center more exciting than it would have been, if she had walked across a regular stage. She didn’t want to seem rushed, nor did she want to take up too much time with her walking, so she practiced for hours to find the perfect measure between a brisk walk and an elegant saunter. The walk was as much of a performance as the music she would play. Her walk would preemptively define her character and personality, affecting the way her music would touch the audience’s ears. If her walk radiated confidence, it would be beautiful and subtly erotic, which is what she had hoped for (she had caught a glimpse of the audience beforehand and hoped her gentle sashay would land a few dozen scraps of paper in her dressing room, leading to more scraps of paper, plastic, and rubber in the coming nights of the week, which would be disposed of pridefully in each of the following mornings). If she reverted back to her most well-known form, a delicate arch, her music would only result in mediocre reviews and sympathetic thank-yous from women in their mid-forties, who would be reminded of themselves by the gentle innocence of a gifted and unconfident young woman (who they all feel they once were).

Still, the walls anticipated the bellowing voice of her cello. She was still sitting and in three seconds, the lights flood the stage, as had been rehearsed. She could feel the heat and the eyes latching onto her, now unobstructed by a wall of shadows. His eyes pierced her skin and she felt that, too. She barricaded herself with a deep breath, clutched the neck of her cello, and took the bow across the strings - a heavy moan. This wasn’t the song that he had heard her play before. The same notes, order, length, and tempo, but the intent had changed. It didn’t exist for him, as he felt it did while listening to her practice. She consciously made the decision to ignore his presence, which resulted in the creation of a miniscule, yet soul-altering void in his chest. Like a rash that ate away his positivity, it spread upwards and downwards, slaughtering the energetic tingling that came with his excitement to see her play her song in front of a begging audience for the first time and replacing it with an aching pulsation of worry, anxiety, and a hollow hopelessness. With the decision to disinvite his gaze, she radiated a confidence that warmed the room.

Fours hours later - no intermission between them, no pauses, and no interruptions - the music finally ended. Originally, the performance had only been set to go for two hours, but she was so pleased with how well she had been playing that she made an independent decision to extend the performance’s time by two hours. The audience, of course, was confused, but they sat still and graciously endured the additional two hours of singular-cello orchestral music because they didn’t want to seem rude. Not once during the performance did anyone leave their seat, out of respect for the confident young musician on stage. Anyone who needed to pee held it in, no matter how badly they needed to. Considering that at least half of the attendees went to the performance directly after attending the Kamen Drinking Water Convention, during which they drank a grand multitude of the booths’ samples, and that another large portion came directly from the grand opening event of the Archimedes Artisanal Water Bar next door, there was an understandable amount of uncomfortable shuffling that started about one hour into the performance and lasted for the entirety of the remaining three hours. The only audience members who didn’t seem to be in dire need of urinating were those who came directly from the event at the Bravo Watersports Arena across town. After five minutes of heavy applause, the audience shuffled their way towards the rows’ ends, into the aisles, and out the doors. She stood at the center of the stage until the last person turned their back, and then she made her exit.

She stood in the connecting hallway and buried her lungs in a deep breath. In her mind, she was rapidly pacing back and forth but - although beginning to wilt - her figure was still. Her confidence was beginning to dim and bleed into the air, but she vacuumed it all back in through her wide nostrils and pushed it back into her body, letting it spread into each corner of her body, like cotton filling the deflated skin of a stuffed animal.

She used this moment to say to herself, “Anne, it’s not going to work,” a sentence she had been hiding from herself. She knew this moment of self-honesty would dissipate and that she had to take advantage of it. It took four seconds longer than it should have for her to find her coat and bag. Luckily, her phone was lying dormant in the first pocket she checked, which saved her an indeterminate (because of the multitude of possible search-and-not-find scenarios) amount of time. It had grown cold in the hours it spent without the heat of her body keeping it warm, but it wouldn’t take long for it and her hand to rekindle their friendly bond. With only fifteen swipes of her finger, her life had changed for the undeniable better and her mood had sprouted from a horrific seed into a flourishing bouquet. A pleasant smile grew from the corners of her lips and her eyes rose from sunken pits. The string connecting him and her was cut.

A small paper - only two inches wide and one inch tall -  laid on the rug; like a primitive business card, it displayed a handwritten name and phone number. Its surface was unscathed by anything but the pristinely black ink in which the letters and numbers were written. The handwriting was nearly perfect: pronounced curves, sharp angles, and calculated length, yet it was uniquely human. It caught her attention the same way a particularly attractive ghost might. She picked it up from the floor and slipped it into the pocket of her coat, along with her phone. She left her dressing room, and The Philadelphus Lewisii Music Hall, and returned to The Property. Pushed by her excitement and general impatience, the fourteen minute drive only took her eight.

Brandon, OR/ID: Part I

A Baguette Shouldn’t have a Name

By Jem Morgenstern

This story begins in a not-actually-French French bakery in a not-quite-suburban division of a not-quite-recognizable city directly on the border of Oregon and Idaho. Neither state wants to claim the city for no reason other than its reputation. The city isn’t scathed with rampant crime, infestations, or insurmountable poverty. Really, claiming the city wouldn’t be burdensome in any way, but the place is so inexplicably unextraordinary that neither state wants to claim it. Residents aren’t taxed by either state, so they’re only taxed by the city and the national government, which allows the city to raise taxes by quite a bit without any complaints from residents. Because of their increased taxes, the city has been able to become quite beautiful, but still unseen and unheard of by anyone besides the residents living there. The city’s residents never feel the need to move away from the city, unless temporarily relocating for schooling or just vacation. People living outside of the city never feel the need to move into the city (people are only interested in cities they’ve already heard of and don’t care to hear about anything “near Idaho”).  There are only two difficulties for a city with no state, really. One is that people who still send mail are never sure which state to put on their envelopes and the employees of the USPS are never quite sure how this city could be here and there, but they’ve learned not to question it and they sort the mail that goes to the same city that is somehow in different states in its own category. The second is that residents don’t know which state is their “home” and don’t know which state to have pride for. Some residents decide to show no pride for either possible home state and some choose to show pride for both, but the second of which is often too much work and is the less common of the two. In smaller portions of the community, the confusion caused by having no state goes further to where they question if they even have a country or which country they belong to, which is the only explanation as to why the not-actually-French French bakery in a not-quite-suburban division of the city claims to be French while having been run by not-actually-French Americans since it was established twenty years ago.

This day’s sunrise seemed to last longer than the average sunrise, which had caught the eye of the single baker who showed up to work that day and the single customer who had begun driving to the bakery just as the sun’s cantaloupe light leaked through the outlines of his neighborhood’s rooftops and treetops. The sun rose with a certain gentility that slowed the pace of the hour, neutralized worry for the seemingly elongated passage of time, and warmed the mellow chill of the air. For the baker and the customer, the time they spent alone that morning was for each of them one of those undefinable moments that are so appreciated and then easily forgotten by the next hour. As the baker stood in reverie without disruptive thought, a piercing chime rung in the kitchen and pulled his ear towards the baking bread. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to leave his position quite yet because he knew this would result in the loss of this immaterial moment of comfort, but he had to for the sake of the not-actually-French French bakery’s reputation. He took a deep breath to say goodbye to his lull. Then, he walked into the kitchen and passed the counters topped with flour and flavorless yet decorative seeds. The baker pulled a pan of seven baguettes from the oven. The bell dangling from the door’s hinge jingled as the customer, who took a deep breath to say goodbye to his lull before he left his car, walked into the not-actually-French French bakery. This was the only bakery where he would buy breads despite it being a twenty minute drive from his home and that there were several other bakeries within a considerably closer distance. The customer had always felt like this specific bakery was more authentic than the others despite it being pseudo-French. What truly appealed to him wasn’t the bakery’s authenticity. If he had cared about authenticity, his favorite would most likely be the actually Albanian bakery just fifteen minutes away from his home. The customer actually cared about which bakery made bread the way he imagines bread should feel, smell, and taste. With the exception of their bethmännchen (which is German, not French), this not-actually-French French bakery closest fit the standards of his idealized bread.

While the customer has come to recognize the baker because of his frequent visits to the bakery over the years, the baker has yet to register the customer as a recognizable figure. The customer always feels somewhat disappointed when that baker fails to recognize him, which hasn’t gone unnoticed by the baker. The customer’s disappointment is made obvious through teeny expressions and vocalizations imperceivable by himself, but seen by bystanders and misinterpreted by those bystanders as off-standish traits that make the customer feel even more like a stranger than he should at this point with his history of customer loyalty. The baker’s inability to recognize this customer or any of the other regulars is somewhat negligent, but excusable because of his tendency to focus on the insentient instead of the living. Because many of the bakery’s regular customers give off-standish vibes of imperceivable disappointment at this baker’s inability to recognize their loyalty, the baker comes across many off-standish strangers in his line of work although they aren’t actually strangers or even off-standish.

The customer bought one of the seven baguettes and left the baker and the bakery without any exchange of words beyond the standard employee-customer conversation.

“What can I get for you today?”

Just a baguette.

“Okay. Is that all?”

Yes.

“Two dollars, please.” (Bread isn’t taxed in this city.)

Thank you.

“Thank you.”

Goodbye.

“Have a good day.” (It had been, but it soon wouldn’t be.)

The baguette was in a brown paper bag, shuffling around in the passenger seat of the customer’s car as he drove the twenty minutes back home without the witchlike sunrise illuminating his middle-class car’s worn surface. Six minutes into the drive, the customer’s car was struck by another much heavier car. The customer then died. The owner of the heavier car wasn’t unphased by the strike, but he was still in the same condition as he was before (physically, but possibly scarred mentally). The survivor looked around the intersection. There weren’t stop signs on either of the intersecting roads and the speed limit for both was 45. This hazard had simply been overlooked by anyone and the owner of the heavier car, in the end, would not be blamed for the fatal accident. Then, the survivor took his cellphone from his pocket and called the emergency dispatch hotline. The emergency dispatch hotline squad arrived shortly afterwards. The squad pried the door of the customer’s car off its hinges and onto the ground. They were actually unsure of that to do next, since this particular emergency dispatch hotline squad was composed entirely of recently trained officers who hadn’t paid much attention to the boring parts of the training process. They stood at the pried entrance of the crippled middle-class car and stared at the most brutally mangled corpse any of them had ever seen (some had seen mangled corpses before). The squad looked to the survivor, stupidly, as if he would know what to do in this situation. The survivor looked back at the emergency dispatch hotline squad. The baguette stood still in its brown paper bag, unscathed. The survivor realized the squad was staring him down for answers.

“Pull out,” he said to them with stern certainty without noticing that he forgot to say “him” between the two words he had said. The squad hadn’t noticed either, so they pulled him out.

Most of him. His stringy torso slipped out from beneath the seat and the wheel with a surprisingly low level of effort, but his waist and legs stayed put. The squad wasn’t sure how to react. They knew these were the remnants of a person, but it wouldn’t have been easy to identify as a former human without the context. They ignored the mass of boney pulled pork they just flung onto the ground and frisked the pockets. They found his cellphone, which had a chip on one of its corners, but there was no evidence showing that the accident caused the damage. The customer had always been trusting of his company and felt no need to protect his phone with a password, which made things a lot easier for the emergency dispatch hotline squad. The baguette rolled just a bit because of the squad’s interference in the car. The squad opened the phone’s list of contacts, opened the tab of recently contacted contacts, and found Anne(GF) at the top. They scrolled down a little more and found several other Annes with explanatory labels in parentheses next to them with no spaces. Anne is an incredibly common name in this city. They decided to contact Anne(GF) first. They called and she didn’t sound worried despite what they had just told her. She hadn’t actually heard most of what they had told her and she filled in the blanks with what made the most sense to her, which shouldn’t have made any sense at all. The scenario that Anne(GF) had made up to steamroll over the blanks in the conversation was that John (she knows several Johns because it’s an incredibly common name in this city) got into a car accident and they needed her to collect some items. What the emergency dispatch hotline squad had actually said to her was that some guy got into a car accident and they needed her to help identify his unrecognizable body. Anne(GF) got to the scene in twelve minutes.

“Anne,” the squad never would learn how to greet soon-to-be-scarred identifiers of corpses.

Where is it?

“In the front seat,” slightly surprised by her hurried reference to him as it.

Anne(GF) noticed the legs in the driver’s seat and figured that wouldn’t be the front seat the squad was referring to (she was still under the impression that she was collecting John’s items). She walked to the other side of the car and opened the front passenger’s door. She saw the baguette. She took the baguette.

Is that all?

“What do you mean?”

Is this all there is to take?

“We’re not sure if you’re supposed to take anything. What is it?”

Anne(GF) didn’t understand any of what they said. She decided that they must have asked what the guy’s name is, which she thought was odd because they were the first ones to mention his name. After some thought, she came to the conclusion that they were just testing her to see if she was really the Anne they called to collect the items (now item).

John.

“What is that?”

John.

The squad stared at Anne(GF) and Anne(GF) stared back at the squad. She got into her car and drove off with the baguette in her passenger seat. She was home in ten minutes.