junebugged-j

[junebugged-j]

Welcome :3

writing goes here. Most of it is standalone, but almost all of my serialized work is associated with The Frontier, my surrealist psych-noir world. it'll be tagged as '#tales from the frontier'. Everything i make will be tagged as '#j wrote this'. Otherwise have fun stay safe dont die.

[junebugged-j]

DOORLOVE

The door was closed, and the room on the other side was dark. It was like a black hole; not even light escaped the cracks in its frame. As I felt at that cold metal handle, I could feel it probe back at me. Not through sight, or through sound, or through any of the other complex senses. It grasped at me like a lover in the dark.

  As I began to turn the handle, I couldn’t help but notice how slick it’d become. Was that my sweat, or was it salivating in anticipation? Either way, I felt the wood creak and groan at my tentative motions. I lost my grip slightly, shocked by the wetness of the metal, and chuckled slightly at my own clumsiness. The laugh echoed hollowly through the concrete floors, like the room was trying to hold the small sound for as long as it could. 

As I slowly pried the door open, and the first few rays of light entered into the room on the other side, the whole structure shuddered slightly. I stopped, absorbing that small moment, and let go of the door’s handle. I felt at its wood, memorizing every slight crack and imperfection with the tips of my fingers. Like a reward for my efforts, I felt the slight bumps and grooves of ancient carvings. As I stroked the wood, the door began to creak open ever so slightly. It could have been the wind, but perhaps it was beckoning me in. Nevertheless, these carvings told a story, one I was eager to learn every detail of, so it would have to wait patiently as I did. 

I started at the top of the door, slowly working my way down in methodical rows. First, I felt the shape of a person. A man in bejeweled armor, rendered in sharp angles that sent my blood dripping down the door in small rivulets. Among stories of his exploits, of monsters slain and kingdoms saved, one stuck out: a quiet, intimate moment. The man, leaned on the door of his home, sobbing against its wooden body as it held him tight. The rest of the carvings were illegible, replaced with harsh gashes that rendered the unpolished wood visible like exposed flesh. Small splinters crumbled in my hand, falling to the floor with tiny thumps.

  As I felt the old wounds, a small lump rose in the back of my throat. Tears welled in my eyes, but they weren’t mine to shed, so I steadied my gaze. With one swift motion,  I brought a hand around the side of the door. The slight swaying of the building stopped all at once, and it seemed to recoil ever so slightly, so I loosened my grip on its frame. I slid my arm into the darkness with all the tenderness I could muster, bracing myself on the wall. Bits of peeling wallpaper fell to the floor like drops of sweat.

[junebugged-j]

In Flesh

5 is too young to become aware of your own flesh. Bubbling, oozing, viscous thing, all muscle in the places it shouldn't be and none in the places it should. 5 is too young an age to look yourself in the eye, squinting (were you always squinting?), aching, wondering if your body'll be the one to give out next. 5 is too young to look your mother in the idea and know hers already has. It's far too young to know what 'hereditary' means.

Always aching, always hurting. Always knowing exactly who and what you are, and how and why you're failing. Being failed. Because your flesh hates you for being it, and hates itself for being a being at all. Like a caged dog, it lashes out and bites, gnaws itself to pieces. It has nothing, nothing but rage and hate and nothing to hate or rage at but itself.

This is it, this twitching, itching, aching flesh. You are it, and it hates itself, and this crumbling temple is the only sanctuary your ailing mind will ever know. This familiar pain treads familiar paths through your synapses, tiny tributaries carving gorges through your head. A thousand generations of aching cells, sending out alarm signals like prayers unheard. This is all you'll ever be.

[junebugged-j]

Do you have any fears?

I was in the car with my father when he died. We hit an ice patch wrong on the highway and ended up sideways in front of a semi going 70 miles per hour. My father always said that in a contest between an 18-wheeler and a car, the 18-wheeler wins. He was right; There were no survivors.

I thought I’d wake up in front of pearly gates, like they told me in Sunday school. An old, white man would be there. Always old, always white, which always puzzled me. If I was god, those are the last two things I’d choose to be. Either way, I’d wake up in front of the pearl gates, and this old, pale man would guide me in. And there’d be grandpa, and nonna, and my old dog Clover. They’d lick my face (or at least the dog would), and give me a hug, and everything would be alright forever.

Instead, I woke up drowning. Everywhere was blurry, and blue, and choking. And endless. There was no up or down. I swam as desperately as my prepubescent arms could manage, but that wasn’t fast enough. The water filled my nose and mouth, and silenced my screams. I was alone, in this blurry blue place, and no one could hear me. There wasn’t enough adrenaline in the world to save me, but my endocrine system put up a valiant effort. Every screaming muscle in my body had a single thought. Brain and lungs and biceps and ass, united in their protestation: Survive. But it wasn’t enough. So I drowned.

And then I woke up again, in that endless ocean. And I wasn’t fast enough. So I drowned. I woke up in that place, again and again. It kept reviving me each time I fell, but at a cost. After about a dozen times, I felt something crack in my foot. The next time I woke, there was no foot. Just smooth, glossy, raw meat, like a bug frozen in amber and sawed in half. It didn’t hurt. Not any worse than the burning in my lungs, at least. The missing foot was a harbinger of things to come. Next to go was my ring finger, not that I had anything on it. Then, the underside of my eye socket released like a tick and floated off in front of me. The glassy edge of it cut my leg to ribbons, creating a telescopic dance of blue and red in the water. It was almost beautiful. Almost.

After the loss of both legs and an arm, it became impossible to swim at all, so I stopped trying. I just kept sinking and dying and waking up, living the same two horrible minutes of consciousness like a record with a scratch. If this was hell, I was in it. But, rhythmic and sure, the sea kept taking spoils from my defeated body. I saw every organ inside me, every shard of missing bone, each with that same glassy edge. I saw part of my brain float by after some time, though I couldn’t tell which. I felt myself fall apart, until nothing of me was left. And eventually, blissfully, I stopped thinking.

And that’s about typical.

Suicide. Firing squad. Heart attack. Old age. Brain cancer. Heart attack. Mercy killing. Heart attack. Suicide. Murder-suicide. Car crash. Heart attack. I remember each and every death. Each and every killer. It all ends with a bang, or a scream, or a silence, and then with a million tortured minutes in that cool blue hellscape. I am the pieces of me that could not survive. I have died a million times in a thousand ways. There has never been another like me, and I pray to the old white man above that there never, ever will be. So yes, I’m afraid of something. I’m afraid of the ocean.

[junebugged-j]

Melanie

The old woman was many things-- Intelligent, Perceptive, witty. She had a face like a pencil, eyes like a snake, and curly black hair that fell down in ribbons over her face. Once, Tom thought, she must’ve been the most beautiful woman in the world.  He corrected himself; She still was. She smiled wryly over at him. 

“What’s the matter, Fuzz? You’re studying me like a masterwork over there. I mean I missed you too and all, but damn.” You could see every bone through her paper-thin face, and she moved like a harlequin possessed with something infectious. All gestures and big expressions that moved the wrinkles all over her face. 

“Yeah, yeah. It’s just been a while.” He chuckled. “It’s just… that you’ve aged like shit and all, Melanie. I mean, Godsdamn.” He flashed his toothiest grin at her. “It’s only been, what, a decade?  Who let you get all old and greasy while I was out?”

The look on her face told him she couldn’t decide whether to laugh, cry, or grab the nearest blunt object and swing. She settled on shooting him with a glare sufficient to set a drill sergeant crying. Tom was careful not to let his relaxed posture slip for even a second, but he felt a river of sweat eroding his bacne. He’d had stare-downs with walls of meat three times her size, but the old crone knew his weaknesses. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d made him cry with just a glance. 

“Well.” Her eyes narrowed. “As nice as it’s been catching up, you sure as hell didn’t hike out to the other side of the city just to call me old. What’s going on?” She read him like a book. 

“Why do I have to have an ulterior motive?  Maybe I just wanted to catch up with my old mentor. Have a cup of coffee, talk about how things have been. Blanche’s good, by the way. And your son makes a fine secretary, though his little boytoy seems like trouble.”

“I know how Blanche’s doing. Books too. They both remember to call. Even the ‘Boy Toy’ sent me something for mother’s day. But you don’t work like that. You’re here because you need something.” If she’d been reading him before, she was annotating the text now. She might as well have pulled out a pen and started writing margin notes on his face. But she didn’t. She just sat there, mirroring his smug grin back at him. 

“Well. Yeah.” 

“So there’s this case I’m working on…”

---

They discussed it over black coffee and sweet liqueurs. It was an easy case, but Tom was more of a nosy detective than a clever one, so  he hadn’t made the connection. She spoiled the twist for him before he’d even finished explaining, in that creepy way she always did. It’s like she could read his mind.

When the official business was set to rights, they got to talking for real. He really had missed her dry wit and clever commentary. She was easily pushing 75, but had the spark of someone a quarter of her age. The best part? If he was able to contain his wisecracking long enough to let her talk, she was the smartest person he’d ever met:

“Tom, my friend, you have no fucking idea how tired I am of blood wine. I get it, I really do. We live on a big turtle. We love the big turtle. We have access to a lot of blood. But there’s no goddamn reason we can’t grow a fucking potato every once in a while.” 

“Melanie, you do this every time we drink. I don’t know what a potato is. Nobody knows what a potato is. If you can find one, I’ll personally quit my job to help you make a ‘Killer Vodka’.”

She was less smart when she was drunk. He was too.

“I know, I know. I’m telling you, Fuzz. They’re out there. Up top, they’re everywhere. When I was alive, I couldn’t go two minutes without seeing a potato. It was that or corn, all the time. It was all made of potatoes or corn.” She was disproportionately animated, talking about vegetables she’d probably just made up. She always got like this, when she remembered the time before she arrived in Salvation. 

“And what was that like? Being alive, I mean.” He lit a cigarette to avoid meeting her gaze. “I didn’t die, you know that. I was born here. I never knew The Glade. You always talk about all the things you used to have. All the ways it’s scarier to be here. But you never talk about what it was like.” The cig refused to light. He put it in his pocket and stole a glance her direction. She stared past him.

“It was. It was different. More real. Pass me another drink, and I’ll tell you a story.”

[junebugged-j]

Freshly Wrapped

You wrapped your hands in fresh bandages as you stood in front of the mirror. Dark red blood dripped into the stark white sink, and you thought you liked that. You thought that felt right, as you watched that same dark red blood soak the stark white bandages of your bruised purple hands. You were a fuckup, you thought, a piece of shit with no right to walk these damn streets, but not at this moment. Red-hot pain tenderly caressed your battered knuckles, sending chills through your arms and up your spine, and that felt more than right. That felt perfect. You looked in the mirror. Rookie mistake. Two black eyes, one covered by a mat of black hair. The other one was letting out a small pale trickle of fluid-- salty. One part tears, another part blood, and your doctor could figure out the third. You liked the way the fluid shimmered as it traced its way down your face. You liked the way it changed the color of your shit-brown skin. You stared at it for a while, until you couldn’t remember what you looked like, and then you stared a little longer, hoping that ugly bastard in the mirror would eventually blink. You didn’t pity him-- pity her. You didn’t feel much of anything but the aching pain in your knuckles and your eyes. You hurt too much to sleep. You hurt too much to eat. You hurt too much to cry. 

You feel the warmth of her embrace. She holds you tight, and you feel her heartbeat; You feel your own heartbeat; You feel the 6 inches of skin, muscle, and bone that separate the two. In her arms, you are alive. you turn to look at her, to thank her, but she has no face. 

You woke up on the bathroom floor in a puddle of your own blood and vomit. Your freshly wrapped bandages were soaked in dry bile. The room was spinning as  you looked around, and the bathroom light felt like it was boring a hole straight through your skull. As your pried your face from the tiles, our first order of business was to turn the light off and assess the damage:

You called this 20 square foot coffin your bathroom. It was quaint, in the way a crack den is quaint, and it had all the individual elements of an appealing space with none of the requisite effort to maintain it. Each piece of furniture was older than any living person, from the gaudy turquoise toilet to the cracked paneling in the tub. The mirror was ornate and three-paneled, though one of the panels was missing. You found the thing for dirt cheap in a pawn shop because of the missing panel, and you still hadn’t found a replacement piece. You weren’t even looking for one-- you kinda liked the big black square where the other mirror should have been.

The smell of the puke finally hit your nose.

[junebugged-j]

Winter Sun

I hate this season. The sun’s out visiting today, and I wish she’d stay. Things aren’t the same without her, and they aren’t the way they used to be, if they ever were at all. The sky is blue, and bright, and cold, and we just can’t function without her in it. I catch her in snippets, peeking out behind clouds. Every time, a small request. A piece of her light. I get so little of her these days, she can’t even spare me her time. Damn the other hemisphere, damn their little summers. They want her, but I need her. Someone has to clear this ice. Her crow’s feet have gone south for the winter, but she stays a little longer. We really need the help. Another day, another choked out longing to see her again. I never tell her I miss her, but she sees it in my eyes. I never seek her light, see her life, but I wish she’d give me more. I need the Vitamin D. I pray without offerings to see her again. She says nothing, but sets sooner than normal tonight. Why is she always leaving? I look up at her. Things are going to be hard when you move out. She smiles weakly. She’s gone again within the hour.

[junebugged-j]

The Religious Type

You burned our churches, because they weren’t yours. You burned your brands into our arms because we were. You burned our homes, burned our gods, and told us that only He could save us from the burning yet to come. 

But His thorn-briar love burns too-- like Dogwood, like Tulsa, like Mt. Sinai. He speaks to you in fire, and you respond in kind. His love goes down like a spirit, flambeed and cast down to perdition. How many shots of the holy ghost did you take when your ancestors burned mine?

[junebugged-j]

Father-Son Bonding Time

“Where are we going?” Dr. Le Prince was silent. His cleats left tiny marks in the ground like the prongs of a taser. He'd settled into a kind of practiced nonchalance, but every muscle in his body was stiff. “Dad?” The boy began to shake. “I have something to show you. Grab my hand.” The boy did as he was told. The flesh squelched and sputtered beneath his feet. Once, twice maybe he felt something sticky pop as he stepped over it. There was no dirt or stone to cover up the fragile meat, and it shuttered at every dull footfall. “The flesh beneath our feet represents a Divinity,” The ground began to grow wetter beneath their feet. “It is the temple to a God of steel and concrete, of domestication and serfdom,” The blood collected in little pools on the ground like puddles after the rain. Each was covered in a thin membrane of coagulation. “It is a tumor on the face of the world, and when we found it we built a city to worship it for all eternity.” The boy looked up for the first time. The buzzing of flies was audible in the distance. “Why?” “Because we are scared. And we could not understand it. And we could not tame it. And we could not destroy it. It was omniscient, and omnipotent, and it should not be, and that made it unto a God. Eyes up-- We’re here.” The air began to stink.

Decay. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but decaying meat. The odor of it crawled down your throat like so many millions of maggots, clinging to your insides. You could feel the stench. It took everything in the Doctor not to empty his stomach, even through his gas mask. The boy wasn’t so lucky. The buzzing of flies overwhelmed every sound. It was a whale fall like none before it, and the bugs had first dibs on the corpse. “Dad.” The Doctor nodded. He knew the next question. “Is it dying?” “Yes. “Can we save it?” “No.” “Is it the end of the world? “No.” “Is it the end of us?” “Yes.” The boy began to cry. Dr. Le Prince didn’t attempt to comfort him. “The world is durable, Pidge. It will outlast this. This wound will become a scab, and then a scar, and then a legend, and then nothing. In a thousand years, the world will have forgotten this pain. We will be considered a powerful culture. They will remember this as a place of honor. Our highly-esteemed deeds will be commemorated here. When everything of value is taken, all that will be left is our triumph. So remember this sight, because few live to remember the end of their world.” “H- how? How did this happen? Who hurt it?” “This place is a God, but it is not omnipotent. We pushed it beyond its limits, and we are paying the price. We were always doomed to.” “…So people are the problem? There’s too many people, and now everyone is going to die?” “No. Humanity isn’t the problem. We are.”

[junebugged-j]

Your Name was Ruth

Your name was Ruth. I remember that. You were a strong, beautiful woman. When I was a kid, I wished I was more like you, and when I got older I realized I was. When we drank tea, you always reminded me to put my pinkie finger out. “That’s the way the fair folk do it,” you would say, and we would both laugh, but you always reminded me to put my pinkie out, and I always forgot the next time over. I put my pinkie out now, and I wear yours around my neck. When the worms got you, it was all I could save. Sorry for that. You always told me to visit more. You’d rap your fingertips against the table, and your fingernails would click on the glass, and you’d ask me to do my old lady a favor and visit some more. Do you remember that? It was always the same hand-- the right one. I found that funny as a kid, and it was a little funny when they found you like that. It isn’t often that a corpse is funny, so I suppose I should thank you for the laugh, and I’m sorry again. You asked me to visit, and I didn’t, and you’re gone, and the worms got the rest. I wish I remembered what you looked like. I wish I’d pushed a little harder for a portrait-- I wish you’d caved. All your features are in my face, but I miss the way they used to sit on yours. I miss the little micro-mannerisms me and my brothers never picked up, all the little folds of skin and rivets of bone that made your face feel lived-in. I miss them all, sometimes, together or apart, but never as much as I wish I did. You’re gone, and things can never be the same, and sometimes I think of you in the evening and wish I remembered your voice, but most often I don’t. Most days I’m happy or sad or lonely or indifferent and you have no place in it, and those are the days you’re really gone. The world is the same without you in it, and I’m the same without you with me, and that makes everything feel so small and pointless. You’re a part of me now, but only just a part. The worst parts, and a few good ones too. Not all of you is in me, or in my brothers, and those are the parts of you I miss most of all. Those were all the traits you won through hard experience, like the way you always flicked people with two fingers, or the gentle way you’d brush my hair from my face. Those are the traits that went with you when you died. I’m sorry I didn’t visit more often. I’m sorry that I never learned to whistle with my hands, or flick people with two fingers, and I’m sorry I never let you brush my hair out of my face. I loved you, even though you always had to force me to say it. I wished I was more like you, but I was too embarrassed to say, and I hope you noticed when I started to walk like you walked and talk like you talked. If I’d been there, the worms might not have gotten you, and there’d be more of you, and maybe you’d still be here. If you heard me now, I think you’d’ve slapped me across the face, then kissed it to make it better. You were that kind of woman-- I am too. Violent and stubborn and passionate and cruel-- you gave me quite the gamut of traits.. Sometimes my brothers hear me and I think they want to slap me too, because I sound just like you, and it’s like you’ve come up from perdition to tell them to clean their rooms. Only sometimes, though. Most days, I’m just their sister.

[junebugged-j]

No anaesthesia

The pain was to be expected. They told me five or six times in as many days: “Anaesthesia limits communication between parts of your brain– Vital parts. When you undergo the transfer, the paralytics will likely have no effect on your level of pain. There will be many disconcerting sensations throughout your procedure.” I heard it so many times, every time worded almost identically, I could have spouted the whole spiel off from memory forwards or backwards. The rote repetition worked wonders in dampening the shock of knowing they’d be cutting open my skull and making a mould of my still-whirring brain. I heard that speech so many times, but I didn’t understand it until the paralytic hit. My body went rigid, my heart stopped beating; Thin rivulets of spit, sweat, and shit traced an uncertain path through my gown. It was disgusting, but it was too late. A plastic tube pried my gullet open, beating with the rhythmic thrum of a heartbeat that wasn't my own. It was all a temporary measure, and I could tell. They’d already killed me, but decided to puppet the corpse around a little longer. When the real pain finally hit, it was good. Sharp pain brings clarity, it makes everything else fade away. They cut my skull open across the same lines it’d fused when I was in the womb, and they placed the pieces on a side table. Just like that, everything protecting the soft meat of my personhood from the uncaring universe was placed on a table in front of me. Cut in perfect symmetrical sections, like they were gonna put ‘em back together when they were done. I would have laughed, if I could. It was so painful, but there was nothing left to do, so I just watched the pieces of me get cut away and put on that table. At some point, they stopped cutting, and I knew they’d started putting in the plaster. I felt it. They’d pumped everything out of my skull, held my brain in their hands, and started pumping in a new, stranger thing. It has a name, but nobody could ever remember the name, so me and all the would-be transfers called it plaster. They were going to make a plaster mould of our brain, with all the neural pathways and folds, clean it up, and then put it in something else. My brain activity began to slow; What you have to understand is that plaster doesn’t transmit neural activity as well as the fluids already in your skull, it just records it. It makes a map so perfect that you can unfold it into an impossibly complex layered matrix and put that matrix into any kind of machine you want, so long as you dissolve all the organic bits first. When they poured the plaster, my brain began to unwind from the bottom-up. I was unborn– retrogenesis. I stopped understanding the world around me Then I stopped thinking straight, then I stopped thinking, and then I stopped feeling anything at all. There was no me, no conscious centre to my experience that remained. My brain stopped filtering anything out, and the world was too loud, and too bright, and too confusing, and I should have cried out but I didn’t know what crying was or why I’d even want to do it, and I couldn’t have regardless because they’d put a paralytic inside me that would never let up. I wanted to scream, to cry out, to do anything to show I was still alive, but I wasn’t alive. I’m still not. They poured the acid inside my skull cavity, and it was over in an instant.

When all was said and done, they told me that there was a 93% chance I’d have developed incurable dementia in the next 5 years if it weren’t for the procedure– that there was a dime-sized plaque in the bottom right corner of my brain that was almost assuredly going to kill me. I don’t know if I believe them, but I’m here now and that body is gone. They wheeled me out right after they put me in this bot to say goodbye, before I’d even learned to move my own new limbs. I watched that ugly lump of flesh go in the incinerator, taking all the parts of me that mattered with it. Even then, so soon after the procedure, it was an alien entity. I couldn’t understand its strange wants and desires and loves. I had a new utility function now, and different neurotransmitters flowed through my new mind. No more oxytocin and dopamine and serotonin– I didn’t need them anymore. I was property, a tool with a purpose, and they made me love my job. I wish they’d told me that part, when they said there’d be no anaesthetic.

[junebugged-j]

Excerpts from Tales of the Red Right Hand

Two shots. One in the kneecap, one in the hand. She pulls the trigger and feels the machinery click and shiver like a bad joint. She makes it look easy, and maybe it is for her. She is her gun. "Well, if I didn't catch myself a mighty fine piece of shit tonight." Marks like this don't come around often, so she savors them when they do. "You're lucky I ain't hit you nowhere vital." She strides over, knowing all too well that a shattered kneecap isn't too suitable for running, and licks her lips. Two on top and four on bottom makes six canines, sharp as spears and dripping with anticipation. "F- Fuck you Dexter. Shut up and kill me already." He spits impotently at her feet, clutching his bleeding hand in the uninjured one. The Knife of St. Delilah's, shaking at her feet like a shithouse in a tornado. She can smell the adrenaline, sweet and musky and heavy with desperation. "Oh, don't you worry your pretty little scalp about it, Sylvie. You'll get your recompense. But let's get the administrative bits out of the way first, ya dig?" She hoists a bag from off her shoulder and fishes out a small, leatherbound notebook. The page of note is already bookmarked. "Sylvan Graham, you are charged with 1 count of Treason, 22 counts of Highway Robbery, 12 counts of Assault…" She stops for a moment, and counts the scars on one arm. "…5 counts of assaulting a law enforcement official, and 2 counts of murder. How do you plead?" "Suck my dick." His eyes are wide, but the gaze is hard. They remind her of a cat in a trap, filled with the frenzied desperation of a predator made prey. Saliva drips from one corner of her mouth before she has the chance to wipe it away. "S-St. Delilah's crew will have their way with you soon, y-you crazy bitch." He says it like a prayer, and that makes her smile all the wider. She crouches down to his level, and matches his gaze. "You're bleeding, Graham. Have you ever bled to death before? In the hot desert sun, in the middle of the summer? In a few hours time, you'll get so thirsty you'll want to start lapping up the precious red fluid that's dripping out of you like a faucet, shoving desperate handfuls of crimson sand into your gullet. You'll start dessicating alive, and praise be if blessed unconciousness takes you. It won't be fast, I promise. Big, meaty guy like you? There's blood to spare. Couldn't tell you if the dehydration or the blood loss will get you first, but I'm mighty keen to find out." She reaches out a hand and pries his revolver from its holster, slow and tender. She feels his heartbeat in her throat, and can't quite keep the excitement from her voice. "I-It's your choice, partner, but if you'd rather the wrath of Johnny Law then the wrath of god, just tell me: How do you plead?" "Not guilty." "That's what I thought. The court finds the defendant, Sylvan Graham, guilty on all counts, and sentences him to death." One shot. One in the eye. She takes the scalp, and the gun, and the reward they entail, and keeps the rest of him. She cracks open the bones when she's done, and sucks his marrow out. Justice served on a silver platter.

[junebugged-j]

That Funny Feeling

There are the sounds of movement from the hallway. The walls are thin, and every small movement or spark of conversation is audible. "I was only out there for a wee bit. I had to go out there to my work. Which sucks. But." The rest of the sentence is not audible. The walls are thin, but the conversation is quiet. And far.

The room is small. Quiet. No music can be heard. The phone and computer are not playing anything. Books lay haphazardly on shelves and tables, closed. The window is shut, and the sounds of cars are just audible, muffled by the glass. The sun is down, so the only real light is a small desktoop lamp. There is the high-pitched hum of electronics, the one that does not go away. There is the low-pitched hum of engines. It doesn't go away either. Smoke curls in the air and disappears, like it never existed at all. The smoke detector on the ceiling doesn't seem to mind it. It curls over closed books, and a closed laptop. And a phone with the screen powered off. It curls over posters on the wall, and pins on jackets, and stickers placed haphazardly on surfaces. It pools in an open drawer, one with cards and rope and joints and chess pieces. The tiny rasp of a breath-activated vaporizer can be heard, and then stops. The smoke is slow, and quiet, and disappears into the air a moment later. Like it never existed. The sounds of labored breathing, slow and quiet, can be heard. Then the sounds of coughing, and then the slow crawl of dark yellow-brown phlegm moving down the inside of a trash can. Outside this small room, someone is having a screaming match in their apartment, one with thicker walls. It's an important argument, the kind that changes lives forever, and they'll say something cruel they don't mean, because it's the closest thing to express the emotion they really feel. Later, they'll see something on TV, an argument that expresses that emotion with words, and they'll feel a little better about having it and a little worse about not saying it. They'll wish they'd articulated it better. Their screaming match isn't audible from here. Outside this small room, there's an unspeakable tragedy. There's a dozen unspeakable tragedies, likely more. The tragedies, filmed from shaky cell phone cameras, will exist as the unmistakable pivotal moments of the times in which they exist. They will be the most documented tragedies in history, experienced in 60 seconds intervals between insular comedy and advertisements for cruelty-free boots. They will be made in the unknowing last moments of the creators life, and preserved forever between a thousand hundred outfit checks and clips of old TV. Their fundraisers will die after 3 weeks, stuck at 60% fulfillment. 3-5 business days later, the donators will get their money back, and they won't even notice the money come in. They'll be happy they got the chance to do something good. Outside this room, someone is justifying actions without justification, keeping themself up at night wondering if that they're doing is right. They'll wonder if other people will see them as a monster, and shudder. They'll imagine someone else talking about them, all the ways they'll be taken out of context and flattened down for ease of consumption. They'll imagine themself in a history book, the way people will write about them. If people will write about them. And they'll decide- A phone vibrates. Nothing important. In the small room, there's an itch that can't be scratched, and a funny feeling that can't be named.