Minutes on Asphalt (DRAFT)

By Jem Ashton

In the second month of a new relationship while on a weekend road trip to a small town in the desert - one that’s more of a byproduct of tourism than an earnestly charming podunk - my then-new boyfriend dragged me to the one bar in town where fags might not get stared down. That weekend, fags were actively welcomed, actually. The local queers put a bare-armed effort into staging a full-fledged Pride Festival that drew queers in from all over the region. It also lured in some queers who intended to “just pass through town” but couldn’t resist the timeless charm of pop music barely audible through amped up bass and rowdy, drunk homosexuals. 

One was a rugged man with gray hair, tanned skin, and a beard that reached his sternal notch - bare, only hidden by the same chest hair that would guide your eye down to a vertex held together by a shirtbutton below his chest. He said we - me and my then-new boyfriend - fit the vibe for his company, which was looking for models. We should consider modeling, he said. He didn’t say what his company was and we didn’t ask, but we enjoyed his company enough to make him our friend for the evening. We kept talking and he stood behind me during the long wait for drinks at the crowded bar. He was passing through town with his husband, who was somewhere else in the crowd, and they caught wind of the party. They liked road-tripping on their motorcycles, they liked meeting new people. He liked our look - or maybe or looks, as distinct and separate as they are. 

He brushed his rough, asphalt hand along my wiry forearm and I shifted my weight back to lean fractionally closer to the affectionate man standing behind me at the bar. With the gentle movement of our bodies - shifting to drink or make way for the flowing crowd - his belt pressed into me. His body pressed against mine. My fraction of a step became whole and I pressed myself against him, signaling I welcomed his belt, his body. Signaling I welcomed his body pressing into me. 

He asked for my number, saying he wanted my number to keep in touch about the modeling suggestion, but I caught a glimpse of a more familiar invitation in his eye. His cheeks were rosy with lust and beer. His eyes were heavy like ripe fruit, plump and ready with visions of seeding fertile earth. 

I gave him a fake, because I wasn’t sure I wasn’t crossing the boundaries of my then-new relationship. Would my boyfriend mind my minute flirtation with this stranger? I both cared and didn’t. My fake phone number felt like the middle ground. 

I was saying “yes.” 

I was saying “no.” 

I was getting what I wanted and I was giving it up.

Because I took the lazy way out of a tricky situation, that was the end of the road.

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.

Conceptual Piece Two

By Late Night Writings

Light echoed off the walls of the dimly lit cave, shadows hid in the crevices between the rocks. Complete silence, not even the beating ring that comes with the lack of noise. No movement but the lights creeping forward to the entrance of the cave. There was a lingering sense that too much time had passed. Each minute that passed seemed like only seconds; each one wasted. Then, a footstep rustled the dirt, and another. As they drew nearer, time’s pace quickened and returned to its regular flow. Sound returned, but it was still quiet. A shadow crept up the wall of the cave and grew with each step. The light inched out of the cave, it was bright and made it difficult to see in. A figure now stood at the cave’s mouth, made into a silhouette by the blinding light. It said nothing and did nothing but stand and look outwards. Even though it couldn’t be seen, it was obvious that the figure was evaluating the situation and was thoroughly disappointed.

Conceptual Piece One

By Late Night Writings

Like each day before, I sat there with my eyes scanning the contents of the toilet bowl, intent on catching a hopeful glint of shining gold. As a once wealthy man, I had grown accustomed to shit spotted - as if decorated and designed by the finest craftsmen - with jewels and precious metals. I came from a family so rich that in just one meal, we would eat a poor man’s income of a year. Our meals weren’t fuller or bigger, but they were finer and dressed in coin. It was my own family who decided to throw me down the hatch. It was in my family’s own prison that I came to cherish the wealth I now miss. I spent a month in that cell and it had not once crossed my mind to scavenge the wealth expelled from my body. That shit-stained silver, gold, gems, and every bit I could have held onto would have done a lot of good for me now. With each day, my innards became less valuable, which led what came out of them to run dry of wealth along with. I’ve been out of that hole for three months now and I still hope for the smallest crumb of gold to pass along through. Even one as small as a fine pebble would help me get by for a long while. Though it looks that my shit is now only as brown as earth’s dirt and there’s no buried treasure to be found under its muddy surface.

Sly Key: Part I

Beau Train

By Jem Morgenstern

Beau Train was unquestionably the most pathetic character in xer own life, but only by xer own standards. By another person’s standards, xe might have been the second most pathetic character, only nearly pathetic, or not pathetic at all. Xer drab sense of reality was likely a result of xer heightened expectations of life that came with a childhood filled with exploration and adventure. Beau’s parents were international explorative pirates who crossed lands and oceans without a crew’s assistance. They were beyond measurable credibility. Beau’s life after childhood had been nothing but credible. It was depressing.

By the time xe learned to walk, Beau had discovered four lost lands: Paititi, Ys, Shangri-La, and Mu. Of course, xe wasn’t aware of why these places mattered and only has brief memories of these places from xer parent’s final world tour in which they visited each of their favorite places one more time before retiring from piracy. However, this tour only inspired them to leave Beau with xer grandmother as they continued their career without the pressure of keeping a child safe.

Beau Train has since thirsted for the return to a life of exploration and constant danger. This is why xe now stood on top of a speeding armored train going across the Trans-Siberian Railway with misaimed bullets threatening xer life as xe shot some back in their direction. The wind was blinding, deafening, cold. The next railcar had a rooftop hatch. Inching closer, watching xer steps as closely as xe watched the ill-trained pawns of corporate villainy inch their way closer, too. Exciting, dangerous, heart pounding, childhood renewed: this is what Beau had wanted. Xe went three steps closer to the hatch and opened it with a relieving but disappointing ease. Beau was in.

The interior was elegant and perfectly crafted, aching with the essence of wealth. Spotless tables and chairs crafted from zitan wood, garnet red curtains, pearl white rug flowing down the aisle with no marks or stains. This sort of brilliance was only ever found in the lost worlds and the property of evil. Beau questioned their need for luxury, often. The grace and delicacy served no purpose and was a needless expense. Every notable villain xe had met and heard of in xer parents’ stories were keen on grandeur and presenting themselves as nobility, however, it would be more opportunistic for them to spend more on protecting their investment in capital greed - as xe had always thought they should do.

The train shook and a man fell from the top of the train. His cry for help sounded like the countless others Beau had heard in xer life. Work as a pawn in the scheme of evil corporations seemed to attract a specific kind of person. A very specific kind of person: same build, same height, same vocals, same disrespect for the historical and architectural significance of ancient cities. These people are found nowhere else. They don’t exist beyond the villainy. This made it somewhat easier for Beau to live with the fact that xe is responsible for the deaths of possibly hundreds of these people. Even with it right in front of xer eyes, this life still felt like a dream. Reality waited in the past.

Heavy soles pounded the car roof as the militarized pawns rushed towards the hatch. Beau passed the wasted elegance, towards the door to the next car. The train shook again; another man fell with a near identical cry for help. Xe opened the door and looked down at the tracks: rocks and dirt, metal and wood, speed and danger. Xe hopped to the next car, but its door was locked. Weaponized heavy-clad men now stood in the magnificence of the previous car, staining the white rug with their unwashed boots. Beau was at a dead end. The men took aim and stood in that idle formation for what seemed to be a few seconds. Just before they had the chance to tear through xer with their copper and lead, xe swung onto the side of the speeding train.

These last-minute escapes litter the trails to lost worlds and bountiful treasures. Without them, a true explorer would know they are going the wrong way. The struggles, complications, and obstacles mark the path.

Only seconds ahead, a tunnel waited for the train, with Beau still hanging on its side. Hand by hand and foot by foot, xe made xer way towards the lonely window at the center of the car. When at the window, xe bashed against its glass with the hilt of xer gun. It began to crack, but wouldn’t break. The train still sped quickly towards the tunnel ahead; Beau took a glance. Xe hit the window glass harder, until it began to shatter. Piece by piece, the window broke apart. With the window gone, Beau could climb inside.

The interior of this car was much different, compared to the last: less windows, no needless elegance, no pack of weaponized mercenaries. Besides a few wooden shipping crates, it was empty. Beau broke them open with a sturdy kick from the heel of xer boot. The crates were hardly at capacity, each had either one item or less. In all, xe found only two cases of bullets and a simple medical kit.

The mercenaries were now trying to get in. The small platform outside the door allowed for only one of them to slam his shoulder against the door’s solid wood. Beau made xer way to the door at the other end of the car, somewhat expecting it to open without challenge. It wouldn’t budge. Anger and frustration washed over xer, then worry. Xe knew escaping through the window again wasn’t an option; the tunnel passage was uncomfortably narrow. This door was the only exit. Xe tried breaking it open with the force of xer entire body, shot at the door’s handles and hinges, pushed and pulled. Nothing helped. The door wouldn’t move. Xe stopped the strenuous effort to open the door and took deep breaths, thinking. The meager calmness was interrupted by a loud crack at the other door. The mercenaries were getting in. Xe tried ramming into xer own door with xer body again, again, and again. Four times more until the  door at the other end tore open.

Beau looked back, knowing but not wanting to believe that xe had less than seconds to escape. Xer mind went blank and xer body stiffened. The mercenaries walked towards xer. Every sound they made was amplified by fear: their heavy footsteps, ruffling of their clothes, clacking of their guns. By the time xe regained xer sense to survive, it felt as if minutes had passed. Xe glanced over every foot of the car for way to escape. Feeling the thuds of the footsteps as they pressed closer. Xe could feel the energy build inside, as xer body readied itself to flee. It was too late for that. The mercenaries were within an arm’s distance. Beau focused xer attention on one of the menacing figures and felt the vivid memory form in xer mind. A terrible pain shook the side of xer head and xe felt ximself fall to the floor.

An ocean of green water meets the edge of a white-sanded beach. The sounds of the rolling waves stir with the rustles of wind through the trees. The sky is covered by greying clouds, with a bright blue seeping through the cracks. Rain begins to fall, slowly and gently. A strong gust of wind drags fallen leaves and loose twigs across the ground. Scents of heavy wood and iodine coalesce, inducing the air with the smell of salty oak. The clouds darken and the blue becomes less apparent with each second. Thunder intermittently drowns the sounds of waves and wind, despite the both of them increasing greatly in power as the storm twists the tranquility of the beach. Gusts of wind bend the trees and tear leaves from their limbs.  Waves crash, instead of gently flowing up and down the slope of sand. The ocean darkens with the sky.

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.