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.

Sandpaper

By Jem Morgenstern

Our skin was raw and dirty, rubbed down by the vicious sand winds, thoroughly dried by the endless sunlight; every inch was aching and every uncovered portion left completely unprotected from the natural sting of sun and sand was torn and tanned like the many leather chairs found in the crumbling home of the mostly untouched North Ruin. None of us enjoyed this section of our journey - the birds, as always, were especially negative - making the giddy warmth these memories extract from our well-fed emotional paunches unexpected. That was the case with most of the horrible things we endured. The one exception to that being the day we were attacked by a truly violent and terrible clan of Dust Raiders. Most Dust Raiders are nothing more than bullies, who would only go as far to leave you with a few bruises or take a small portion of a traveller’s supplies. Some encounters can be pleasant; they’re not always on pillaging duty, and they’re very loving and welcoming during those times. When we saw the vicious dust raiders coming our way, we did run, but our previous encounters with Dust Raiders didn’t motivate us to make our run anything more than a playful jog. They caught up to us without effort and when they were near enough to us, we could feel an air of aggression, we could feel their passion for unsurmounted violence snaking its way up our spines, and we could smell the death they carried with them. Even before they engulfed our inexperienced group of couriers, we knew to regret our entirely fabricated attempt to outrun them. They only chose one of us - a purposeful darling, who rode the sweetest wildebeest I would ever meet and reminded me of myself - and we were lucky that one was all they wanted. When they roped her steed and thrust the bone-tipped spear through her spine, we kept moving. We left her behind. All we could save of hers were the staining memories of her deep red blood, the cracking of her bones, the tearing of her flesh, and the haunting yells she managed to throw from her lungs that we ignored and tried so hard to push out of our heads. When anyone mentions that trip, we feel those brutal memories slipping back up from the depths and we ignore that, too. We never talk about that day. If that day never happened, the rest of the memories we have of unpleasant times might not make us laugh, but having that experience knocking on the floorboards makes every complaint feel silly.

Before Midnight

By Late Night Writings

The pungent odor of the bodies wafted from one side of the room to the other, into the vent and upwards through the entire ventilation system, filling the cliffside estate with the putrid scent of his rotting corpse. The windows were barred and the doors were somehow completely impenetrable. The one potential exit that remained was off the widow’s walk, where Thomas had attempted to climb down, but quickly and unfortunately discovered that the heavy downpour and harsh sea winds had made that route of escape far too dangerous. Mangled in the thorns and covered by soggy dead leaves in the garden below, his body reminded the few people who remained that escaping was not an option. In the three days they had been there, it seemed that they hadn’t come any closer to unmasking Doctor Horn’s killer. Hanging from an elk’s antlers mounted above the fireplace, his dead eyes stared down at the home’s guests. The house who lured its suspects inside and promised to open its doors to whoever uncovered the identity of its lover’s murderer. The guests who sat down, who gave up after frantically searching for anything that could lead them to the truth, and accepted their reality - that their careers in finance and marketing were no help in this scenario and that they would be killed by a house in less than four hours. They would not find Doctor Horn’s killer before the fourth midnight.

Reality Discontinued

By Jem Morgenstern

With all that was done to prevent it, the fall of the universe was still inevitable. Existence was conquered by a force with no form - a nothing from beyond matter. By the time it was discovered, it was too late. It was understandably difficult to comprehend or analyze and understandably impossible to defeat. By the time the universe ceased to exist, our understanding of the nothingness was just that. That it didn’t exist, but that it was somehow bending reality and invisibly sucking the physical form and the entire concept of the universe out of reality. With such little understanding of the force that was ending us, we didn’t have any chance of survival. Our efforts were mostly trying to exist harder. Besides that, a few people built domes from pure matter, which was basically the complete opposite of complete non-existence, so those people were almost certain that their domes would completely reflect the nothingness. We didn’t understand pure matter at the time; it was discovered only a short time before the nothingness warped us outside of reality. All that we understood of it was that it was essential complete concentrated existence in material form. Given our understanding of it, I do understand why people would had thought that it could have potentially saved them from non-existence. Though I think they overlooked the fact that they themselves weren’t pure matter and that the nothingness wasn’t flooding inwards, so they couldn’t have possibly evaded its reach. The nothingness, really, was everywhere already. It was there. It was in them. My theory is that all things were some proportionally adequate combination of nothing and something that allowed them to be. Having some nothing in things is required for some reason that I have not yet thought of. This does conflict with the existence of pure matter, I realize, but I do have an explanation for that. Nothingness appearing precisely after we created pure matter is not a coincidence, I believe. I firmly hold the belief that creating pure matter threw reality out of balance. I think the universe only has so much allotted space for existence. As soon as we began manufacturing concentrated existence, the universe had to begin extracting existence from previously existing things to compensate. We did produce an incredibly selfish quantity of pure matter, so I wouldn’t be whatsoever surprised if that amount would have required the universe to completely remove everything else in existence to allow our stockpiles of pure matter to continue in reality. If that’s not the case, I’m also willing to believe that our expedited production of pure matter crashed the universe’s system - we were creating so much pure matter so quickly that the universe broke and it was stuck with its (metaphorical) finger on the the delete button. Either way, I would like to place the blame on humanity. Even more, I would like to place the blame on myself because I really do enjoy feeling sorry. I’m a bit of a sadomasochist and the extermination of the universe is the biggest punch in the face I could land on myself. You see, I’m the one who discovered pure matter and I’m the one who monopolized on the industry, completely blowing its production out of the water. Sure, pure matter is a wonderful construction material - it basically does whatever it’s meant to do and there’s a zero percent chance of it failing, but there’s no reason to have absolutely everything made from it. I did enjoy having all the money, when the concept of money still meant anything, but I do miss physicality and knowing what that actually means.  

Sly Key: Part II

Malcolm Morgan
By Jem Morgenstern

Malcolm Morgan was impressive, although less than he himself thought. He willed himself to power with his words and built his fortune on a vague promise. Even in the lives in which he was loved, Malcolm was somehow insignificant. By his standards, he was unimportant. By any other person’s standards, he was unimportant. In the most dangerous way, this allowed him to become whatever he could imagine, unseen and unbothered by anyone standing beside him. Malcolm Morgan gently brushed through his obstacles. Now, he stands with an empire behind him: forever loyal, powerful, and willing. With all that he would want available at his demand, there wasn’t much left to be desired, which turned his sights towards time and its finite availability. Although he didn’t fear death or mind the inevitability, Malcolm was struck with a desire for immortality. With this desire, his crusades began.

They began with simple teams excavating, exploring, and investigating, but they were never meant to stay that way. From the beginning, Malcolm intended for them to become an aggressive invading force, which they now are. Before this, his followers had been ordinary people: average skills, average strength, average minds. As his crusades evolved, those followers vanished and were slowly replaced with brutes, unethical archaeologists, and thieves.

Despite being the leader of an evil empire, Malcolm was still an average person with an average mind. He was surrounded by mindless drones and found himself to be very lonely. Out of desperation for connection and companionship, he adopted a white persian longhair, which had yet to be named and never would be. During particularly difficult meetings with his pawns that might involve detailing punishment or the relaying of bad news, Malcolm would have his cat sitting on his lap because this would relieve him of at least some of the stress that came from these meetings. No matter how many years Malcolm spent leading, he never became comfortable confronting people. He rarely met with any of his underlings, which did good for his image in some ways. It created a cloud of mystery. Besides the few slightly more intelligent brutes who Malcolm shoved his leadership responsibilities onto, none of his followers were quite sure who he was or what he was like. This allowed any image of him bred in the minds of his followers to become his true image.

He sat comfortably on his throne-like chair, behind his desk at the end of the long, concrete room. He faced the window, eyeing the expanse of nothing, as if it were everything. The cat sat with him and relished the gentle petting and stroking of its fur. The door on the other end of the room opened. Four men stood at the entrance; two standing behind two others, who were being forcibly guided towards Malcolm’s desk. They were all dressed the same: heavy boots, sturdy coats, black. The arms of the two men in front were restrained by the two standing behind them and their faces were bruised and bleeding. Malcolm turned his chair to face the visitors, slowly. He wasn’t in the mood to handle any external issues and was hoping that the slow turn of his chair would come off as passive-aggressive, but it didn’t. The slow turning of the chair and the displeased expression on his face came off as intimidating and powerful. All four of the men were afraid of what might happen. A few feet in front of his desk, the men behind pushed the bruised ones down to their knees and held their heads in place by the roots of their hair, so that they were forced to look directly at Malcolm.

Malcolm looked at them with a forced expression of discontent, holding back the worry and guilt he felt inside. He wasn’t sure what the two had done, but he knew that he would have to order their execution. As the men with the accusations explained what the other two had done, Malcolm began building up the courage he needed to order the deaths of two men he truly felt shouldn’t need to die. He constantly regrets choosing to lead by fear, because of the terrible things he’s forced to do in order to maintain his merciless reputation. The accusing men finished their story and asked their great leader what to do with the two who had now been labeled traitors. Before Malcolm could answer, he had to turn himself back towards the window, so none of them could pick up on the miniscule expressions of discomfort that would surely appear. He took a brief pause to find his voice, unintentionally building tension. This time with a slight unease in their voice, the men repeated their question. Malcolm took a deep breath, and answered them with the most displeased and monotonous voice he could, ordering them to leave the traitors far out in the wilderness without so much as a thong to keep them warm. He knew their chances of survival would still be slim, but this was the closest he could get to letting them live without damaging his reputation.

Unexpectedly, the traitors were stripped immediately. The traitors were entirely cooperative, allowing the men whose accusations brought them to their banishment to undress them gently. The boots came off first, then their jackets and shirts. As they came to the belts, there was a brief pause, but the undressing resumed within seconds. With this happening so often, Malcolm could now expertly hide his curious interest. At first, many of his underlings were put off by the abundance of nude punishments ordered, but it has since become a part of their mundane routine and prisoners escorted around the fortress in their bare, raw masculinity aren’t given a second glance (with the exception of ones who are particularly eye-catching). As soon as the traitors were completely disrobed, they were escorted out of Malcolm’s concrete lair and he sat alone once again.

An hour passed. His door opened again. Two new guards escorted a singular prisoner towards his desk. The guard to prisoner ratio was unusual. It was almost always one guard for one prisoner. The fact that this one prisoner required two guards for its escort excited Malcolm to a small extent. Malcolm turned his chair again, to face them and listen to their accusations. The lifted the prisoner’s head by its hair to face Malcolm, as is the customary procedure. Malcolm recognized this face and his initial realization of the familiarity nearly threw a surprised gasp from beneath his cold facade.

The Dim

By Jem Morgenstern

I was lost in the Desert of Midden Men. The Dust Raiders had chased the rest of my troupe away and I had been left behind. The sun was setting and the other sun was rising, putting an end to the day and bringing to me yet another dim. I still don’t understand how The Architects made the mistake of building a second sun instead of a new moon. The news of the moon’s dissipation was etched into every news rock and was scrawled onto every single one of the few paper news prints around and I’m sure the commissioners were very clear with their instructions to The Architects. Still, there was confusion somewhere in the process and now we’ve got a dimly glowing artificial sun instead of a fresh moon and a day and a dim instead of a day and a night. After finding myself alone in the dim, I was very grateful for their mistake. I’ve imagined how terrifying it would have been to find myself wandering that desert under a dark night sky with the nocturnal creatures roaming the sands, taking peeks at my flesh and licking their cushy lips (none of those animals exist anymore, obviously, since there’s no night for them to exist in). I knew that I needed to head West, but I wasn’t sure which direction West was, so I chose a direction and stuck with it. After a week of walking in that direction, I found that I had been walking Northward and not Westward, as I had hoped. Instead of walking directly Southward back to where I had started, I cleverly figured that walking Southwestward would save me a lot of time, so that’s what I did. About two days into walking Southwestward, I noticed that I was being followed. At first, I was worried that it might be a Dust Raider, but I was able to put myself at ease after realizing that the character wasn’t dressed in Dust Raider rags and was clearly not as tanned and musculicious as a Dust Raider would be. Inspecting the figure further, staring harder, squinting with unmatched intensity, I was finally able to identify him as a Klein. Their bromidic drab and unnoteworthy disposition makes it difficult to distinguish them from the nameless bodies in the backgrounds of memories. The only Klein anybody would be able to recognize is Hungry, who writes a monthly column of The Northern Rockface News Rock and isn’t actually a Klein. Knowing my follower was only a Klein and couldn’t possibly do me any harm, I wasn’t worried. He stuck around for a couple days and then strayed from my path, finding his own way to his own destination. With his departure, there was an odd sensation of abandonment, despite not having cared for him in the slightest and not having any interaction with him at all. That Klein was my stalker and I lost him. I lost something that was mine. Then a few hours passed and I got over it. Out of habit, I tried to evoke the emotion back from its pits because I do enjoy pitying myself, but I wasn’t able to fish even one sliver of it out of my emotional intestines. I had already shat it out of my system. Eventually, I was able to catch up with my troupe, just as they were leaving Los Angeles. Just in time to join them for the trip back home.

Ten Reasons Why I Love My Dog More Than Most Humans

By Leiani Brown

Number one: my dog's name is Gooby.
Do you know any humans named Gooby? I rest my case.
Number two: he doesn't talk and I don't have to.
The majority of human interaction centers around conversation. When a human meets another human, there is either a) a mutual understanding that talking will commence or b) one human expects talking to commence, either by their own uncomfortableness with silence or their counterpart's. Thus, either talking or awkward silence with the desperation for talking is inevitable. Frequent topics include, but are not limited to: the weather, sports, food, local news, music, social media, anything worthy of complaint, and so forth. Why humans are so insistent upon saying anything for the sake of saying something at the fear of saying nothing—even to the point of speaking in utter trivialities all of their lives—is beyond me. Gooby has never once spoken a word to me, neither of unimportant matters nor profound subjects, and yet, we get along just fine.
Number three: he doesn't abide by rules.
If Gooby wants to pee on my carpet, he pees on my carpet. Regardless of how badly it will stink, or how angry my mother will get if she finds out. If he wants to lick that person's foot even when it's old and somewhat yellow and smelly and definitely dirty, he'll lick that person's foot. And enjoy it too. Too many of the humans I have come to dislike—including parts of myself—are too afraid of angry mothers or smelly carpets that they don't relieve themselves when they honestly probably should. Those humans have come to look at the world as ruled by other humans. Those humans have seen that other humans walk in a certain way, say certain things in certain ways at certain times, act a certain way even if said certain way contradicts natural instinct, and have decided that such certainty is the only certain way to exist. But clearly, one can exist—and be happy—with a peeing-on-the-carpet mentality. Gooby is one of the happiest things in existence; he shakes his tail to show his excitement, and because his frail frame is far thinner than is probably healthy, his whole body shakes too. Not many humans can do that. (Granted, not many humans have tails).
Number four: he doesn't cling to stupid mistakes.
I confess, one time I accidentally hit him with my tennis racket. I was in the backyard practicing my serve because I was bored and angry and needed somewhere to channel my useless energy. It all happened so quickly. He had been watching me, but apparently I hadn't been watching him because as I swung down, the racket landed right on his head. I still can't forgive myself for doing such a horrible thing, and yet Gooby loves me still.
Number five: he doesn't wear his "heart on his sleeve."
I had heard this term a lot, but never understood it until high school. My father and I have a good relationship, or so I like to think. Most of it is composed of me chattering about all my qualms regarding society and the people around me, while he patiently listens, occasionally interjecting. I was describing to him (in long, parenthetical detail) that my friend told me everything she went through all the time. She told me every detail of her relationship with her parents, her boyfriend, the status of her grades and homework and how everything was always crashing and falling apart at the seams. All this she told with such intensity and loudness as to evoke a sense of pity and empathy from me or whichever fortunate soul happened to be nearby, giving the listener no time to question the minority and minuteness of the problems themselves.
"She wears her heart on her sleeve," my dad said simply.
Some humans carry their pain like a badge of honor stitched into their smile. Like war stories they must tell to top those of their peers. Some humans want every other human to know what every human already knows: life is an ugly, sucky mess. It hurts, it sucks, it's unfair. I get it.
Gooby isn't constantly telling me how much it sucks to be him, although I'm sure at times it does—especially with me as his "owner" (I hate the word owner; I don't own him, but I suppose I do own his collar... I hate that). It probably sucks that people are always saying he's ugly, that my roommate's boyfriend mistook him for a raccoon—something I'm still bitter about—it probably sucks that he can't go wherever he wants whenever he wants to, but he doesn't broadcast the suckiness.
Number six: he doesn't expect much from me.
That other human is alive. I hate that. That other human has wants, wishes, goals, hopes, needs. I hate that. I hate that I might interfere with them or otherwise that I might not understand them or that I might not even care. That other human has thoughts, and I hate that I might be in them. I hate that I might not. That other human expects me to talk, expects me to be something, expects me to somehow understand everything about them—where they're coming from and why they breathe in the specific pattern that they do—all in a matter of minutes. I hate that they expect that and hate even more that I can't satisfy their expectations. Gooby expects some food, an occasional treat, frequent walks, and a spot next to me. Admittedly, there's no way of knowing if he expects anything more, and rarely ever can I even fulfill those expectations, but the difference is I don't feel the pressure to do anything momentous. I don't feel the pressure to be or do or say anything or anyone but a hand to run through his coarse fur or dump food into his metallic bowl or grip tightly a leash that links the two of us together.
Number seven: he doesn't separate the people around him into various categories and treat them as such.
As a child, my Samoan mother tells me, I would frequently tell her to take a shower, that she was dirty, that somehow her brown skin equated to filth. Other humans have posited the same, on a much more globalized scale, allowing these convenient perspectives to align with their agendas and influence their actions, attitudes, and treatment of fellow humans.
I used to think words like "Austin" and "awesome" were spelled with an "o." I used to (and still) spell out words in my mind to understand their meaning. So when I first heard the word "autism" I thought it began with "o" in the same way that "odd" spelled out my cousin. He is a year younger than I, and more ambitious and hopeful and loving than I could ever hope to pretend to be. But then one human coined the term "autistic," setting him into a whole new category of existence. I didn't know the hatred of a child until I saw the way girls spat at him, and the way boys laughed at him, often times incited by his older brother, placing him on the pedestal of "freak" and "weirdo" because it was funny and he didn't understand that even if he was laughing too, they were still laughing at him and not with him. I didn't know the hatred of a child until I saw it in myself—watching him being alienated, snickered at, ridiculed—wanting to punch my tiny fists into their useless skulls.
Humans have a way of categorizing their hate, making it cut and dry and neat, giving it names or acronyms or pictures. Humans have a way of identifying what tiny inconsequential thing is not like the others, and reiterating, emphasizing, and highlighting that tiny inconsequential thing until it is all any human sees when they see that other human.
Number eight: he doesn't force his body onto others to satisfy his own sexual hunger, and then shift the blame because surely they were asking for it.
I remember the first time I learned the word “rape.” It was grade school, and I knew very little of the outside world. The class clown was a boy with long blonde hair, a vulgar mouth, and no respect for authority; everything I learned, I learned from him. We were partnered up for some grammar exercise because despite being a complete slacker, he was the only student in the class who shared my natural knack for spelling and grammar. It was simple: we were given a list of words missing key letters, which we then had to identify. As we approached what was supposed to be “grape,” my partner, whose eyes and ears had been exposed to the world far more than my sheltered existence, whispered to me in shocked, hushed tones, “I can’t believe they would put that word in here.” Confusion struck as I looked down at a word one consonant away from being my favorite purple fruit. “That’s not even a word,” I argued stubbornly. He wouldn’t explain what it meant to me, but his tone said enough.

I didn’t know for a while what it meant. Didn’t know that a human could and had before physically robbed another human of their innocence, forced their existence into that other human's body, and seen nothing amiss with that practice. That a human could and had done it on the basis of religion, to the same human, on multiple occasions in one day, declaring their actions commanded and therefore condoned, even pleasing, to God or deity or whatever maker, creator, or higher power they believe in. That some humans are not only physically forced, but psychologically and emotionally, into silence.

Number nine: he doesn't bring death to masses of people, innocent and not, young and old.
Humans have cited a plethora of reasons for killing other humans: for sport, for political reasons, for justice, for order, for victory. I remember the first time I saw a dead body not sitting in a casket. Someone had shot a guy in the head, then left him in a parked car on a street in my neighborhood. Our neighbor found the body the next Sunday while walking his little girls to church. I sat in the back seat of our car staring at the body in the car next to us, listening to our neighbor tell my dad that the man in the car had a bullet hole in his head. All humans are born sure of really only one thing: every second from then on is a second nearer to their death. Sometimes I like to think I've come to terms with and accepted that fact, but finding out that said death could come at the hand of another human, possibly one they loved at one point and time, for reasons that really don't make sense, is no comforting realization.
Number ten: I can't think of a tenth reason.
Well, I probably could. Like the way some humans have exploited other humans' homelands to gain a monetary profit for themselves then told them they need to participate in the greed or they'll be crushed, but before the money, those humans would have had no say. Like the way some humans whip out their phones to take a picture they'll probably never look at again of some breathtaking view they could otherwise experience with their eyes, a brilliant human technology that doesn't usually cost as much money, but is quickly losing popularity. Like the way some humans declare their existence of car exhaust and plastic so loud that it squeezes the life out of everything around them. I could go on.
But I don't want you to think of this as me just railing on human existence, so much as it's just me really loving my dog. My dog who, yeah, looks a bit like an old man mixed with a piranha mixed with a rat—not a raccoon!—but whose existence has always brought me joy. From the time I first returned from camping and found out my sibling had somehow got hold of a creature (yet another) and brought him home to our already cat-filled house, to the time my friends were so in love with him that they spent the whole visit petting and loving him but completely ignoring me. My dog who has his own Twitter account. My dog whose upper lip sometimes curls to reveal his overbite in the most adorable way. My dog who can't be described in any other way than "such a Goob."

I often tell people that my dog is the most adorably ugly creature you'll ever meet. I say it confidently as if his ugliness is part of the reason to love him. I suppose in this way I'm a hypocrite: I could never love the ugly in human the way I love the ugly in Gooby. But two people just passed by me, who left me smiling. There goes a third. And every time I think of Gooby, it is accompanied with a memory of who he made smile. My mother, with her wide glimmering row of perfectly straight teeth. My brother with his goofy dimples. That short, Edna-from-The-Incredibles look-alike who called him "Mr. Happy-Happy," and couldn't keep herself from beaming. So really it's not that I think so lowly of the human race, or even that I think so highly of my four-legged friend. More so it is that I love it when people smile—why can't we do that more?

Suitable

By Late Night Writings

Letter One: Looks
I never liked you for your mind, your personality, or talents, but you're pretty hot, so I figured "hey, I may as well settle for this." I do like you, don't worry about that. I just like you for reasons that I don't particularly care about. Your looks aren't all that you have, either. You're so tolerable and I don't mind spending time with you. I could see myself not minding spending the rest of my life with you. Your flaws are very easy to look away from and you are really hot. Besides, I couldn't get Jude Law no matter what I tried, but at least you have similar cheekbones.

Letter Two: Personality
You have a wonderful personality and I can't find a reason to like you beyond that. You are such a nice person and I love that about you. You're not the cutest or the smartest, but you are genuinely the most kind of all my suitors. Why shouldn't I choose to be with someone like you? You would never hurt me or lie to me. It's just a flat roller coaster with a nice scenery. Although the scenery is a bit lacking here and there. The point is that you won't complicate things and that's worth having.

Letter Three: Smarts
At times, I can't even believe how smart you are. I've never found anyone else who I can go on and on with about the most profound topics. I deeply enjoy the conversations we share. I'm impressed - very impressed - so please stop trying to impress me. You've already got me hooked! You are so smart, yes, I know. You must know something about dating, beyond theories and trivia. You must have some actual how-to after reading so much Jane Austen. It's time to tie me down! Get to it!

Courier Troupe Ten

By Jem Morgenstern

There I was, riding my buffalo into the ocean with my companions close behind me on their varied steeds. My favorite - apart from my own - was Theodore’s; a giant pitbull imported from China. When my buffalo’s first hoof hit the water, I could sense his worry. His teeth were chattering, hairs sprung up, pace slowed to a cautious slink. I did my best to reassure him, but he would stay that way for about the whole way through the Pacific. He was far from being the only of our animals to be so worried. That pitbull stubbornly sat at the shoreline for a good two minutes before she would be coaxed into diving down. The birds were especially put-off, for reasons that you can certainly imagine. Although its surreal nature was so intimidating, walking under the ocean was likely the easiest part of our journey. Under there, the Dust Raiders were nowhere to be seen, the Gullmen never dove deeper than six feet into the water, and the Horrible Centipedes had lost our scent miles before. The one thing we had to worry about were the regular creatures you would find in that part of the ocean, which are mostly non-intelligent and harmless. We did have an interesting encounter with an octopus hybrid about halfway to our destination, which is just about the only noteworthy thing to have happened during our ocean travels. I’ve described the details of that encounter to a dozen people before, but I’ve gauged from their reactions to the tale that most people are clearly not interested in hearing it. A few miles away from there, we did catch a glimpse of some sort of shark, which was mildly exciting, considering they’re so rare these days. We hadn’t accounted for the fact that trudging through water would so noticeably slow us down, so we were a little short on supplies near the end of our journey, but we made do with what we had. In about two weeks, we finally arrived at our intended destination, Los Angeles. We were able to finish our business ahead of schedule and the rest of our week there was spent relaxing, as if we were on vacation. Then, we stocked up on supplies and another journey began. Six more months of walking, but we would know what to expect and we would be prepared.

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.