Because Everyone Wants To...

Thank you, Geoff Johns, Shane Davis, and Sandra Hope, for creating the cutest evil in the galaxy!

APE 2008

I've been planning on NOT going to APE this year. I've been to the last five and enjoyed myself, but I knew that a few of my favorite booth people aren't going to be there and there's the whole it's-hard-to-enjoy-life-when-everything-suck thing that's going on with me and work and my general down-ness.

However, now that I know that Jeph Jacques and Jennie Breeden are going to be there, the thought of staying in my apartment all weekend has become less palatable.

Fiction Friday #22

NaNoWriMo Part 5

Well, this is it for the NaNoWriMo thing as an actual NaNoWriMo thing. I failed even more spectacularly this year than last year, but that's okay; I knew it would happen like that. I'll probably come back to this at some point, but there are other bits of fiction I want to write more/first.

Here goes, it's the beginning of a chapter or section called:

Durden

One of the things that Tyler hated were malls. Either they're freshly cleaned and smell of disinfectant or they haven't been cleaned for a while and they stink like too many monkeys in a cage. Some people believed that they were for convenient shopping, but how could that be when there are eight stores, with different names, that sell the exact same clothes and three stores that sold games and all the so called music stores sold the same fifteen new albums and displayed DVD, not CDs, in the windows?

There was no variety at any mall, anywhere.

Tyler saw them only as locations built for too large parking lots where people could go inside and still convince themselves that they were going "out." They weren't out, though. "Out" was someplace more interesting than Forever 21 or Pottery Bar. "Out" was some activity that wasn't all about money. "Out" was some food that wasn't timed by a machine so it was exactly the same as all the other hundreds of convenient locations. "Out" was people talking about more than the thing in the window or what's on sale or what's new or the slowness of the escalator. Most people rarely, if ever, did "out."

And yet, here he was sitting in the food court on the second floor, sucking on a frozen coffee-like drink, in a mall. At least it was the open mall on K Street, so it didn't carry the stink of too many people crammed into too small a place trying to spend money as quickly as they were sweating. Not that he was comfortable there, but the gas heat lamps really kept the chill out of the air.

"Durden!" he heard and looked around him. No one. It had to be for him, though. No one had a nickname as stupid as this one.

"Durden!" he heard again, but still didn't see anyone.

"Down here, fucker!"

Tyler looked down into the kids’ play-pit and saw Krystia. She'd cut her hair short and dyed it some sort of fiery orange since the day before, but she was the only person he knew who would call anyone a fucker in public where little kids were in earshot. Most of his friends would only do that in front of their own kids, but leave the rest of the world's kids to be tormented by their own parents. Krystia never had that problem. She figured that the world was fucked up as it was, so who was she to pretend it wasn't? That was one of the things that Tyler liked best about her. Well, that and how every so often she came over to his place, licked his entire body, and rode him until they both burned off a Thanksgiving dinner, but didn't want anything crazy in return.

He stood up and said, "I'll be right down."

"Hurry up," she said, "or I may have to fuck one of these giant plastic animals! The rhino's horn's getting me hot!"

Tyler hurried, but didn't run, to the nearest way down, real stairs. He could hear Krystia screaming the Sex Pistols's "God Save the Queen" behind him. He smiled. She was always doing shit like this. Some days she got a crowd that thought she was doing some sort of performance art and started tossing money at her feet. Once she stood on a corner outside of Kaiser singing the word "bullshit" to the tune of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" for an hour; she made fifty bucks. Most of the time, though, people just walked a wide path around her. She'd never been arrested for any of it, though. I guess people figured that she was like the homeless guy down the block by The Crest Theater, only she was cleaner, was supposed to have breasts, and was white; those sorts of things always made people more comfortable.

He got to her just as she, with her eyes closed, was screaming, "NO FUTURE FOR YOU! NO FUTURE FOR ME! NO FUTURE! NO FUTURE FOR YOU!"

When she finished, he put his hand on her shoulder. She spun around and took up her generic Bruce Lee stance.

"You want to watch out, little Durden," she said. "I can, very much, kick your ass onto the rhino's horn." He looked at her and raised an eyebrow. She smiled her overly toothy smile and asked, "So, what the fuck am I doing here?"

He led her away from the kids' play pit and said, "Well, you saw what my dad did?"

"Who hasn't? How often do you get to see the fuckin' president have a breakdown? Hell, he's crazier than Regan and Thatcher combine."

"He is."

"So?"

"That's all, really."

"Bullshit," she said, poking his arm. "I call bullshit on you!"

"Ow!"

"You want something." She hit him where she had been poking him.

"Yeah, okay, I do." He tried to fight her off, but it was hard with the drink in his hand.

"What" -- punch! -- "do" -- punch! -- "you" -- punch! punch! -- "want?"

"Help." Tyler backed away from her.

"With what?"

"Shopping?"

"Fuck," she said, and kicked him in the shin.

The things he would put up with to keep his friend with benefits thing going.

Fiction Friday #21

NaNoWriMo Part 4

Didn't get much done this week and what was done is sort of muddled, incomplete sentences and all.

Hell, on the other hand, was what her pre-flight pit stop was supposed to take care of. She got air sick. Not the simple air sick of the movies where a person vomits once into a bag and goes on with the flight, no, she got air sick like most people got sea sick. She started getting queasy when she felt the engines start up. By the time they were barely off the ground, she'd thrown up at least once.

Dramamine.


TV Time

Click --

"The nation is stunned this morning after a shocking speech given by the president yesterday afternoon in which he blamed the people of America for the problems he's been experiencing as president. We go live to Breanne Vanhoose who's in Washington now. Breanne?"

"I'm standing across from the White House on one of the most famous streets in America. But instead of the majestic mansion that's stood for hundreds of years, you'll see only protesters. They're here to voice their anger with the president and the words he spoke yesterday.

"I spoke with a few of the protesters earlier and asked if they knew that the President had gone home for the holiday and all said it didn't matter, they'd be here every day until he came back after the new --"

Click --

"-- the most brilliant thing he's done since he was elected. He's energized the base like no person since Martin Luther King Junior. They're all talking about what he said. They all have an opinion. They all --"

Click --

"-- idiotic move on his part. He's ruined the chances of his party during the next national elections. They're going to loose every seat they gained..."

"Are you suggesting that they made gains in the last election? Because I don't remember that. In fact, I think that President Gandbuth actually brought in up in his statment yesterday


Finishing School, or At Least the Quarter

Gretchen had only one more final and then her first quarter at college would be finished. The final was on a Saturday, though. She wanted to take the person who thought having the last final on a Saturday at three PM, drag him by his short curlies into the quad and let all the students who have ever had a Saturday final give him paper cuts and then pour lemon juice on his bleeding carcas.


Having her two Secret Service agents on campus was annoying, but managable. They lived together in the room next door and, along with Gretchen, shared the bathroom with everyone else on the floor. The Service tried to get her into a building that had suites set up, but her dad insisted that she have a real college experience by sharing her showers and toilettes with sixty other people.

On occasion, she had to attend special school functions and be paraded before the alumni, or parents of alumni, who had money so they'd give the school more. When she didn't want to attend those sorts of things, the president or dean or whoever was quick to remind her of all the compromises the school had to make just to get her Secret Service people into the dorm and wouldn't she like to help repay what would eventually be her alma mater?


At the moment, she was waiting for her father to show up for lunch. The were going to Sophia's for Thai


"Mom here?" she asked, but she already knew the answer.

"Nope, just me," he said, hands in his pockets, strolling toward her.

"Studio?"

"Studio. That okay?" He stopped walking right in front of her.

"It's expected."

"But is it okay?" He took his hands out of his pockets.

"Yeah," she said, pushing her hair out of her eyes and watching a bird start flying behind her dad just with her eyes, "I think it's okay."

"Good." He smiled, his warm, safe smile, one he didn't use on the campagin trail, but saved only for her, and hugged her.

"Hey, Dad." She hugged him back.

"Hey, Gretch."

When they finished, she put her arm though his and they headed off toward lunch.

"So, I caught you're speech on the internet."

He smiled again, "What did you think?"

"It was funny."

"You think?"

"Yeah. So, what's happening now?"

"Larry King called. He said he wanted to go live tonight. Do a special show focusing just on me, like when I was running for President, but this time the softballs the lobbed to me would actually be about the issues instead of that shameful Flock of Seagulls haircut I had when I was a kid."

"And?"

"I told him until I saw him and Ted Turner in a 69, complete with the messy ending, I wouldn't even consider his offer."

Gretchen laughed, "When's the show?"

"Oddly enough, he said no to that, so I suggested the two of them feltching."

Gretchen laughed again.

"He didn't know what that was, so I told him to Google it and be sure to check out some of the pictures and when he was through to get in touch with me." Her dad chuckled. "He hasn't gotten back to me, so far."

Fiction Friday #20

NaNoWriMo Part 3

By the time she got out of the school and into her car, they were running way more than an hour behind schedule and Cindy really had wanted to be at the air force base before her husband got there so they could get off the ground as soon as possible. She wanted to get back home and get to work. It was the only gift she wanted from Marc anymore.

Cindy knew it was odd for a president to leave the White House during Christmas. He was expected to be in Washington right up until Christmas Eve hosting functions and greeting important people from other nations and pardoning turkeys and meeting people who helped buy his way into the Oval Office and also meeting the people who failed to help get people of his party elected everywhere during the last election, and until Marc took office, that's what all the modern Presidents had done.

When Marc had first brought up the possibility of running for President, Cindy made him promise that at least twice each year, for two week stretches, they would spend time at home so she could work in her studio. When he was elected, he tried to talk her out of the promise saying that it was important for the two of them to be at the White House as much as possible because it would reassure the people, since the election had been so close, in the popular vote, at least. He also wanted her in Washington, near him, to show the traditionalists that, as crazy as some of his ideas may seem, being President may be his job, but being a husband and father was his real passion in life, so she couldn't spend most of the year 3000 miles away from him like she did when for the term he spent as a congressman. She stuck to her guns, though. It was bad enough that she'd be away from her studio for so long, but she wasn't going to be away from it all year long and she promised that if he didn't keep his word she would become an embarrassment to his entire administration and possibly for the first time make the American public want a divorced man as heir President. Together, they decided it would be best to take the time around Christmas and Easter since during their first eighteen months in Washington Gretchen would finishing her junior and senior years of high school and they figured since they had uprooted her three thousand miles already, they'd do their best to not disrupt her schooling any more.

A temporary studio was put together for her, complete with tools and a nice electric wheel in the White House because her having a real studio space out in Washington was out of the question, according to the Secret Service, but this temporary studio wasn't the same as the one she had at home or even one she would have set up for herself. The tools were all new and didn't have the same feel as the ones she'd been using at home, some ever since her first clay class her first year of college. The wheel was an electric one; in her studio, she used a kick wheel which gave her precise control over the speed she used to create with. The Secret Service didn't like her mixing glazes at all, let alone at the White House because they couldn't be sure that the powdered mineral and chemicals were actually what they were supposed to be and not something more dangerous, so there was no experiment for new, exciting colors, she could only used pre-mixed things that were shipped in from local colleges and she had to have faith that they wouldn't be awful. She also wasn't allowed to build a high fire kiln, which needed natural gas or propane to get hot enough, so everything she glazed had to be in the same little electric kiln she used to fire the green ware into bisque. What made even this worse was that she wasn't even allowed to Raku, where the potter took the still hot, low fired, glazed pieces and put it in a container full of pine needles or dry grass or paper shreddings (which the White House had plenty of) to create crackled glaze with deep, smoky black lines, or covered it to reduce the oxygen as much as possible to make wonderful iridescent colors, some looked gold, others copper, her favorite looked like oil on the surface of water. If she couldn't use the high fire to give the pottery great strength, she at least wanted to be able to use techniques that made her pottery more beautiful. On occasion, she could take her bisqued pieces to one of the colleges and use their high fire kiln or Raku with the students, but it was always a production that had to be made to look like she was there to teach the students or see what they were learning by sitting in on a class, with cameras around snapping pictures; worst of all, she was always expected to give some bullshit speech about how well the school was doing and how important the arts were for the students to get a well rounded education. And she was rarely allowed to handle anything deemed dangerous, which included hot pieces being moved from the kiln for Raku or even loading her pieces into or removing them from the high fire kiln.

Sometimes, to relieve tension or just to feel the clay between her fingers or to smell the fine dust left behind, she'd go to her White House studio and work. She was never left alone, though. People were always hanging around, watching her or coming in to see if she needed something. If she got up to go to the bathroom or answer a call from one of her kids, when she'd come back she'd often find her tools cleaned and put back in their "place" or if she was sculpting the bits and shavings that she left around her sculpture would be cleaned up and put in the bag with the rest of the clay block. All of this disrupted the whole flow of her ability to create. She needed the bits and shavings close at hand while she was sculpting because the clay had already been warmed and worked and had the same elasticity as the clay in the sculpture. With the tools on the wheel, she had to try and get things back nearly the way they were before she could start again because when she started she'd lay them out in the order she expected to use them as she coaxed the shape into the spinning clay.

The worst thing that ever happened when she had finished for the day, but hadn't finished the pot she was making on the wheel, so she covered it with a garbage bag to keep it moist. When she came back the next morning, she found it accidentally smashed because someone had tried to move it to clean up the wheel for her. She didn't enter the studio for more than a month after that and, for a while, tried to convince her husband to resign and go back to California forever. It didn't happen though and eventually she had to get back to her work because of all the inane photo-ops that were organized for her by the party’s staff.

The best thing about having a studio in Washington, though, was the easy access to a huge variety of different clays she had. All up and down those hills that Easterners called mountains there were clay pits all eager to serve the First Lady. There were several varieties dug up in California, but it was nothing compared to what was dug up from the Mississippi down south to the forests of Vermont and Maine in the north. Wonderful robust clays with a bit a grit perfect for throwing plates, mugs, and bowls that were meant to be used daily by a family or to lend its strength to larger sculptures that stood, dangerously, on thin legs. Fine grained clays that slipped through her fingers like a soap film for making delicate vases and other more artsy pieces, some so thin that she sometimes thought if she held one up to the light she could see though it. Some of the colors were amazing, too. She had one clay sent to her that, when fired into stoneware, was such a deep brown it nearly looked black. She'd had several different clays, coming to several hundred pounds, shipped back to her studio at home, in California, weeks ago so it would be waiting for her to experiment with it. True, she usually preferred to let the clay age for a few years, believing that the micro organisms that grew there helped to break down some of the more rocky components left, but experimenting with the glazes she created couldn't wait. She had to know as soon as possible how well they worked, or didn't work, with the new clays she bought.

The car jostled and they were through the gate. They drove across the tarmac toward Air Force One. Cindy had mixed feelings about this kind of luxury. She liked that she didn't have to deal with commercial airports -- the crowds, the noise, the security -- just to get home, but she didn't like the pomp that the Air Force seemed to think it had to put on when ever her husband used the base. She liked that she could be driven right up to the plane, but she missed having a warm walk from the car to the plane; even when it rained or snowed she had to walk and get wet and an umbrella could only do so much to protect a person when the wind gusted right into his or her face. She liked having a private plane with an amazing kitchen, chef, and staff there to serve her and help her to be more comfortable, but she could help but think that it was an extravagance that wasted tax money, an opinion she'd held since long before her husband seriously thought of running for President. Still, the one thing that had no negative side was not having to deal with other passengers who thought they were better than her. On Air Force One, only her husband was more important than she was, and if she didn't want to deal with the other people on the plane, she could walk away and there was nothing they could do to stop her. That was a luxury she would have paid thousands for on a commercial flight.

The door to the plane was closed, but the stairs were still there, waiting for her. Jan stepped out of the car, first, and took a quick look around to make sure it was safe for the First Lady. Cindy rolled her eyes; she figured that if someone was going to attack her on an air force base it was going to the Air force itself, or one of the other armed forces working with the Air force, and as soon as she was on the base it would be too late and there wouldn't be anything Jan, or any other Secret Service Agent, could do about it. So far, every Air force base had been perfectly safe.

Jan poked her head back into the door way and said, "It looks clear ma'am. You can come out now."

Cindy scooted from her seat to the one that Jan had been sitting on, put her feet out the opened door, grabbed onto the door frame, and pulled herself out of the limo. She straightened and smoothed her suit and took a deep breath to settle herself so she wouldn't try to screw with the young men and women "guarding" the stairs up to the plane. She wanted too, though. She wanted to be like Lucy in England with the tower guards, or whoever those guys with the pipe cleaner hats were called. Sometimes, she thought about stumbling in front of one of them to see if they'd try and catch her, or would they just let her fall like Gerald Ford. It could be fun; painful, but fun.

Before she took her first step on the tarmac, someone put a vice grip on her right arm. She turned and saw that it was her chief of staff, Joclynn Kernel, which had to have been an unfortunate name to grow up with. The name wasn't enough to explain Lynn, though.

Joclynn Kernel was hired simply because she was the youngest and least experienced person who Cindy had interviewed for the job. Lynn came for the interview and she still hadn't finished her Master's Degree, which had been a ballsey move. She also came in as a pretty blank slate. Yes, she'd helped to work on some campaigns and been a Senate page, but she didn't come in to push an agenda on the First Lady. Lynn had wanted to deal with some Take Back the Night things, but she was too young to be very forceful, so whenever she brought an idea or an even to Cindy, it was really easy to knock down with a distraction. Lynn didn't date much, if at all, so Cindy would just change the subject and talk about how well admired Gretchen, her daughter, was at school, always trying to wear some extra cover-up to hide the hickeys on her neck that she got from the boy, or maybe girls, or maybe both, there, then Cindy would ask Lynn how her boyfriend was and act like she forgot that Lynn's ex had dropped out of school and run off to Jamaica with some big titted ditz the summer before their last year in school together, nine months before they were supposed to get married. There were some days that Cindy was afraid that the evasion wouldn't work and she'd have to find another way to crush the younger woman's spirit, but so far, each time, Lynn's face would crunch up and she'd pull her long, dark hair in front of her face, to hide the tears, and start to sob. Cindy would, of course, apologize for the faux pas and hug Lynn back to a tearless state and then offer to leave her for some alone time, to get her thoughts together, and Cindy would leave.

One of Cindy's biggest fears, at least where Lynn was concerned, was that she'd finally go and discover the calming and centering powers of an orgasm, with or without another person's help, and come back to work a driven woman full of the righteous purpose too many of the young people in Washington had before they discovered how the soul sucking system really worked. So far, Lynn hadn't discovered the wonders of meaningless sex or a nice, warm vibrator, so Cindy was still in control.

"Mrs. Gandbuth, we have to talk," said Lynn, pulling on Cindy's arm.

"Cindy, Lynn," said Cindy, trying to free herself from the younger woman’s grip. "You can call me Cindy."

Lynn shook her head and said, "Fine, fine, but we have to talk."

"It can wait, Lynn. I'm getting on a plane. I'm going home. No more bullshit."

"Not bullshit," said Lynn. Cindy looked at the woman because Lynn never cursed. In Lynn's dark eyes was the usual look of uncertainty, but also some fear. "We need to talk. It's about him."

Cindy sighed. "What's the fuck up done today?"

"He... Well, he made an unscheduled speech to the press probably around the time you were getting into the car at the school. He, uh." Her eyes darted around like she was making sure no one was listening.

"Heeeeee, what?"

"He, uh... Well, he blamed the public for everything."

"What the hell does that mean?" Cindy asked, finally shaking Lynn's hand off of her arm.

"It means he stood in the press room and told them that everything that's gone wrong or going wrong with the country is the fault of the regular people out there."

"Shit!"

"And he ended his speech by flipping off the cameras and telling the people to," Lynn's voice dropped to a whisper, "fuck off." Her brown cheeks got even darker when she blushed.

"Okay. Okay." Cindy started to pace along the side of the limo, Lynn following along beside her.

"What are we going to do?"

"So, he ruined his presidency."

"Yeah."

"He's alienated every fucking voter in this nation."

"Yeah."

"He told the truth to the public."

"He did?"

"He's going to have his own party up in arms."

"Yeah."

"People will want to do to him what the French did to Louis the sixteenth."

"Damn."

Cindy stopped her pacing. "It's over," she said, "isn't it?"

"What are we going to do?"

Cindy turned to face Lynn and grabbed the younger woman by her shoulders. "I'd recommend getting your resume all up to date. I mean, even if Marc and I get lynched being the First Lady's Chief of Staff has to mean something, right?" Cindy let go and smiled. "Besides, if we're not killed, I'll see you in about two weeks. I promise."

Lynn took a deep, quavering breath, looked at Cindy with the glassy eyes of a person trying to hold back tears, and nodded.

"Good," said Cindy before she turned toward the plane. "Let's go, Jan. I've got an ass to kick."

Jan walked toward the staircase in her usual long stride, Cindy followed close behind. There was no press to speak of at Andrews today. They were supposed to get dramatic shots of her husband boarding Marine One on the South Lawn surrounded by Christmas decorations that had been around for a long time, some more than a hundred years. Marc had convinced her to go to the stupid school thing because the press on the lawn would be a huge ordeal that she didn't want to go through, and she didn't; she hated dealing with the press. If Lynn was right about the sorts of things her husband had said in the press room, it was probably even worse than usual.

At the stairs, Jan stopped, moved to the side to let Cindy pass, and asked, "You want me to find him for you?"

"Yes," said Cindy, patting her stomach. "I have to make my usual pre-flight pit stop."

"You want us to stay, or take off?"

"Fuck. I want us in the air right away. I'm going home. I'm going to my studio. And no stupid move on my husband’s part is going to stop me. Nothing, short of some sort of rocket could stop me from making this trip."

Jan pulled her sun glasses low on her nose and said, "Don't joke that that, ma'am. It's not funny."

"You're right," said Cindy, stepping up the first stair, "it's not funny. You know where to find me when you find him?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Good."

As she climbed the stairs, Cindy tried to figure out what she was going to say to her husband. She was angry at him in a way she hadn't been angry at him in a long time. Waves of heat worked their way through her body from her feet up and it felt like all the heat was collecting in her throbbing head. She tried hard not the clench and grind her teeth, she did enough of that in her sleep, but it wasn't an easy thing to do. How was she going to deal with this? She wondered if she should just walk up to him and start yelling, or was there a better way to handle it. She figured, though, that no matter how she started, the talk was going to disintegrate into a screaming match for all of Air Force One to hear. She was so happy that this was just a trip home, so there was no press flying with them. She could just imagine her muffled screams being psychoanalyzed on one of those pompous NPR shows by some quack who had never met her.

At the top of the stairs, someone greeted her. She wasn't sure if it was a staff member of someone from the Air Force. She didn't care. She wanted to get out of the cold Virginia December weather and into the warmth of the plane and then get off the ground and in the air heading to her home.

The first thing she did when she stepped through the door was take off her shoes. Her pain in the leg, barely heels. Of all the things she disliked about being a politician's wife, the shoes she had to wear were what she hated the most. When she was a kid, she never wanted to wear heels of any sort. They made it hard to run around and they made walking too much hurt after a little while and they all seemed to pinch in places regular shoes couldn't. The only thing she liked about them was trying to balance herself just on the heel parts when she got bored out of her mind by the wedding or funeral or whatever pointless family event they were at; she'd wobble like a Weeble trying not to fall down. Her mom and aunts and grandma had insisted that she'd get used to them with practice, but Cindy didn't want to practice, so she only wore them when she was forced to. When she finally left home to go to college, she'd stopped wearing them to any sort of function. If people couldn't accept her in decent, clean shoes with soles that totally touched the ground, that was their problem, not hers. When Marc had first gotten into politics, at the city and county level, no one cared about her shoes, but when he got into the state assembly and started getting invited to swanky parties that included lots of important people, her husband's people started hinting to her that it'd be better if she started to wear something that was a bit more appropriate for a woman who was with a man of his rank. So she started wearing them to fancy occasions, again. And as the list of occasions they had to attend started to grow, so did her time out of flats. Now she reveled in those moments that she could put on a worn comfortable pair of Keds and not feel any pain in her calfs. She thought that if there was a heaven, it must feel like a worn comfortable pair of shoes.

Hell, on the other hand, was what her pre-flight pit stop was supposed to take care of. She got air sick. Not the simple air sick of the movies where a person vomits once into a bag and goes on with the flight, no, she got air sick like most people got sea sick. She started getting queasy when she felt the engines start up. By the time they were barely off the ground, she'd thrown up at least once.

Fiction Friday #19

NaNoWriMo Part 2

Marc didn't feel as confident as his smile made him look. His palms were sweating, his heart fluttered, and his stomach was trying to reenact Stomp. He hadn't felt this way making a speech since he was in high school. After that, he had full speech written by him or with someone else or by someone else; sometimes he just had a few notes with him so he would sound more off the cuff and personable; on those rare town hall style occasions where notes would make him look weak, he'd at least have discussed most of the possible topics with his staff before hand. Today, he had nothing. No one knew he was going to do this. His secret service guy for the day, Agent Grant, only knew that the president wanted to go to the press room.

He wiped his hands off on his pants, planted them on the sides of the podium and started to talk to the reporters.

"So, good afternoon everyone, and merry Christmas."

"Merry Christmas, Mr. Presidents," a few of the reporters repeated back. All of them looked surprised. Not one of them had expected Marc to come out here the afternoon before his vacation started. Or maybe they were just surprised to see him in the press room at all. While he preferred to greet crowds of regular people in town hall settings so far, since his election two years ago, he'd only ever given speeches to the press and when he was finished he'd be ushered off by aides or secret service or both before anyone could get a question out.

Marc smiled again. No one in this room knew what they were getting today. This would be fun. His stomach flipped again.

"I know you weren't expecting me here today," he said, hand on either side of the podium. "Hell, I can't remember even being in this room since my family and I took our tour of the White House before I moved in."

Most smiled. A few laughed.

"So, I bet you're all wondering why I'm here, right? What would you think if I told you that I'm here to give you and the rest of the American people the greatest Christmas present, ever? What if I told you that I'm here to tell the truth, the actually truth? Not some bullshit" -- the reporters gasped -- " speech that a committee of aides and speech writers thought you wanted to hear based on polls, but the actual truth?"

"We'd think you were feeding us a load of crap," someone in the back had said; Marc wished that he knew the names of these people, but he didn't. The rest nodded and a few mumbled.

"Yeah, I guess I wouldn't believe me, either. I mean politicians, for thousands of years, have been saying they'll tell the people the truth to gain support, right?" There were some muttered agreements. "So, how about I just talk and you listen, okay? And then, later, when you and your editors are pulling what I said apart to find my 'true' meaning and CNN and MSNBC and Fox News are taking things I said out of context to make me look like more of an asshole than I really am, then you can decide if I'm telling the truth." His palms started sweating and he felt flush. He couldn't remember ever feeling this nervous before, in his life. Not even the first time he got laid.

"I haven't spoken about this with my Chief of Staff or the leadership of my party or anyone in congress or even my wife. So, this is sort of a Christmas surprise for them, too. This isn't going to be like the State of the Union which is just bullshit politics. Can ever of you remember a State of the Union address that didn't start off with 'the state of our union is strong'? I can't. And do you want to know something? The state of our union isn't strong. Our union is weak." His fingers dug into the wood of the podium. He had to hold on tight or he was afraid he'd fall forward.

"It's weak and everyone out there is afraid to say so. They know how close to crumbling our nation is, and they're afraid to tell you. Do you understand that? They're fucking afraid. Hell, I've been afraid of it too. But no more.

"What's worse is they don't know what to do about it because they're afraid to try to fix the problems. They spew out 'facts,'" Marc freed his hands from their death grip on the podium and made air quotes around the word "facts." "They spew out buzz words. They get your fear up by saying immigrants, especially illegal ones, are here to take your jobs from you. They remind you that there are scary people out there who want to attack in the night, and not in the honorable way, but the cowardly way; they want to bomb your local Wal*Mart and you have to keep shopping, 'keep American strong,' right?

"I've done it. Dan was up here doing it just a little while ago. He was throwing out statistics and fact and stories to keep you all distracted from the problems that everyone should really be worried about."

He ticked his fingers off as he said, "Education. National health. Global warming and the environment. Farm subsidies Common sense gun control. Debt, and I'm talking about personal debt, not the deep, black pit the last president dug for us. Social Security money for Social Security benefits rather than another freeway through Nevada.

"Instead, you worry about people saying fuck or shit on TV. You worry about video games where characters can rip the scrotum off other characters." He smiled and shook his head. "You try to keep kids from reading books that they can actually enjoy and then turn around and bitch about how kids don't fucking read. And why should they when you get rid of all the good stuff?

"I'm sure everyone out there knows where I'm going with this. You," Marc pointed at one of the cameras, "are pretty much to blame for all of problems. And I'm talking about every adult out there. I'm talking about those who vote in every election. I'm talking about those who vote only in presidential election. And I'm talking about those of you still don't fucking vote. You are the problem. You vote people like me into office over and over again.

"People like me aren't here to make things better; we're here to make money. We gotta support our families somehow and still get elected the next time our term comes to an end. Do you really think we get paid enough to be able to do those things and not get a little extra on the side? And I'm not even talking about the illegal things. Most of us don't even have to do anything illegal because we make the laws that keep us getting paid."

Marc closed his eyes, stepped back from the podium, and took a deep breath. He stepped forward, opened his eyes, and said, "Let me tell you a story:

"When I was a little kid, I didn't live a horrible life. My parent's made enough money so my life was pretty good, but sometimes we'd go into the city and I'd see the people sitting on the street holding cups and asking for some money. I watched the men and women in suits pretend that they weren't even there, like they didn't exist. When I walked past them with my parents, they put me in between them and tried to keep me from seeing the homeless people. I didn't understand and I didn't ask why. And, like everyone else, I grew up not seeing what was around me, not seeing the things I didn't like.

"Once upon a time, though, I thought I could change this. The day I was elected into this office, this grand office, the office of the most powerful man in the free world, the day I knew I'd be president, for a full minute, I thought that maybe, maybe I could change things. Maybe, I thought, this time things would be different and I'd be able to do things that the guys before me couldn't. I'd be the one to get this country going again, to get it to care again. Then I started the job.

"For some reason, you people out there thought it was a smart thing to split congress between the two parties. 'Let's make the House one party and the Senate the other,' you thought. 'Let's see what our new president can make of that.' I thought that, like me, they'd want to work together to make our nation stronger. That when my first hundred days started counting down.

"I don't know where the idea came from, but for some reason, in this modern time, people think that those first hundred days of a president's term are the ones that will set the tone for the whole damn thing. Do you know what I achieved in those first hundred days? Nothing. Do you know how many bills I tried to get through congress? Something like fifty. Do you know how many came out in the end? None. Do you know how many bills came out during my first year as president? Twenty-eight and that includes the budget that almost didn't happen on time.

"I was called the most ineffectual president since Andrew Johnson. At least he was hated and couldn't accomplish anything because he was trying to put the Union back together in an unpopular way. Shit, he was trying to do something that had never been done before, but me? I was just trying to do my job.

"In time, I realized how useless it was, though and I figured that when the next election came around you people would be as sick of the bullshit as I was and you'd actually elect men and women who wanted to make this place we live better than it is, better than it ever was. You didn't, though. In November, you just elected the exact same people into office. Nothing's changed.

"And what, please tell me, am I supposed to do about it?

"Am I supposed to go about trying to do my job and fail because you people want me to? Maybe, but I thought I should tell all of you what I thought first.

"The truth is a jagged fucking pill to swallow and I hope most of you choke on it. And while you're at it," Marc stepped out from behind the podium and grabbed his crotch, "you can choke on this, too."

He stepped back behind the podium, planted his hands again, and asked, "Any questions?"

The crowd was silent. More than one reporter had their mouths open so wide that birds could build homes in there and raise chirping families. Even the ancient dyke who had been sitting near the front row for half a century looked like a deer frozen in headlights. Marc felt great about that. If he could shock someone who'd been covering presidents since Johnson or Nixon, he couldn't wait to see the reaction the "average" person would have.

They'd want him impeached, or dead.

This was going to be fun. The most fun he'd had over a holiday since he was in grad school and spent spring break in Rio de Janeiro drinking anything handed to him and fucking anyone, man or woman, who was sober enough to say yes or drunk enough to start sucking on his cock without even being asked. Thinking about sucking and fucking under the watchful gaze of that giant Jesus still made him laugh. God, that had been one hell of a week.

"Well," he grinned again feeling better about himself and his career than he had since he left local city and county politics, "I can tell by the looks on your faces that you don't have any questions and I have a plane to California to catch. I look forward to reading and hearing all your reactions tomorrow and in the weeks to come. Enjoy your time off and have a very merry Christmas with your families. Hell, give your moms a big sloppy wet one for me."

He turned away from the podium, and then turned back. "Oh, yeah. One more thing." He flipped off the cameras trying to do his best Nixon impression. "Fuck you, too," he said, laughing.

He turned again and walked away from the podium. He stepped down the two steps and headed to the door.

"Come on, Grant," he said to the Secret Service agent waiting there, "I want get out on the south lawn and onto Marine 1 and be on the way to the airport before this bunch regains consciousness."

"Yes, sir," said Agent Grant. He lifted his wrist up near his mouth and said, "People, Peter Piper's on his way to the market."

Marcus Gandbuth felt so good that he had to keep himself from skipping through the halls and out to the helicopter. The world was a wonderful place and it could only get better.



Flying Back Home

Cindy Gandbuth didn't arrive at Andrews Air Force Base until two hours after Air Force 1 was supposed to take off. It wasn't her fault though. She wasn't one of those First Ladies who had and agenda and she wasn't one of those First Ladies who went out of her way to support matronly causes like schools and poor little orphans. Sometimes, though, she had to go out and do crap like that, for her husband, for his career. When she thought of that she'd sigh. She'd done a lot of things for her husband's career. And today was another one.

While waiting to get onto the base, she sat in the limo, staring blankly out the window, thinking of the day before they finally arrived there.

She went out to some measly ass school somewhere out in Virginia. It was supposed to be near some famous Civil War battle, but she figured that was normal Virginia bullshit since, as far as she could remember, the entire state was covered in "famous" Civil War battles that no one wanted to remember except for the good ole boy assholes who lived near by and the anal retentive Civil War buff assholes who thought living their lives through a war that ended one hundred and fifty years ago is a good way to live their lives. The school was also named for some supposed guy who supposedly died in some supposed battle at some supposed time, but he supposedly grew up in the area and supposedly died a hero's death, so he deserved to have an elementary school named after him. Frankly it should have been called "Too Far From Washington To Matter Much" school since its paint was peeling and the heat in the rooms wasn't working and there wouldn't be any one out to fix the heat problem until after Christmas and the paint problem wouldn't be fixed until it all came off and left the building looking like some sun beat abandoned farm house from the dust bowl.

It was for the kids, she kept reminding herself. She was there to bring a little Christmas cheer by showing up and smiling and sitting in the gym slash auditorium slash cafeteria and watch a bunch of kid sing songs and put on short skits. She was expected to laugh and clap and cheer when appropriate so the kids would have their fragile egos protected rather than learn the truth, that their lack of practice and enthusiasm had made for a terrible time.

Worst of all, the time there went on forever. She got there at eleven and ate lunch with the kids, some sort of chunky turkey juice stuff poured over a lump of flake potatoes in the big rectangle on the tray with a scoop of green beans in cream of mushroom soup in the circle to the left and in the three squares on the top were a little carton of milk, a brick of green Jell-O, and a roll. The food was actually okay, not a five star meal or anything, but really good for a little school that was on the verge of falling in on itself. Cindy ate at a table in the cafeteria with the kid surrounding her, with her current favorite Secret Service Agent Jan Stakenov standing behind her the whole time.

The kids were, well they were kid. They were loud and messy. Some of them thought it was strange having a grown-up sitting at their table eating with them and were shy. Some thought it was funny and whispered to their friends about it. Some simply stared. One little boy even pulled the "see food" gag on her, which struck her as a pretty brave thing for a kid to do to any first lady; she figured that any other first lady would have been shocked and taken aback at such a crass display, but Cindy thought it was ballsy and did it right back at him, then showed the food on her tongue to the whole table. When the blob of mashed potatoes and chewed up green beans fell off her tongue onto her tray, they all started to laugh with her, and when she picked the blob up with her spork and ate it she was treated to lots of kids saying "eeeewww" and then more and even harder laughter. She briefly wondered if any cameras had caught her little food show. It would make for quite a story, but she didn't remember any flashes going off at that time. Part of her wished one of the kids had started a burping contest, and then they would have seen her family award winning performance. The lunch with the kids only took forty five minutes. The pageant started at noon.

During those fifteen minutes, the kids ran to their classrooms to get ready and she watched a couple of women fold all the lunch tables up, roll them to some room behind the little stage, do a quick sweep of the entire floor, and put out mats for the kids to sit on. Later, she found out that the two women also helped in a couple of classrooms as teacher's aides and each drove a bus in the morning and afternoon.

It show was only supposed to last an hour, but it went ninety minutes longer. The principal said that when the kids learned that the first lady was coming they got so excited they kept wanting to do more for her. Cindy wasn't stupid, though, she knew that it was when the teachers found out she was coming they thought they'd show off for her by making the program longer. She wasn't sure, though, if they were trying to show her how much they can accomplish on such a limited budget or if they were just showing her how little they had.

If it had only been an hour, the show would have been fine, but by the third performance of kids singing "Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer," with the echoes -- "LIKE A LIGHTBULB!" "LIKE MONOPOLY!" "LIKE COLUMBUS!" -- shouted by the audience, Cindy was imagining horrible scenarios of men dropping down from the ceiling with huge automatic weapons and firing into the crowd of children an parents while Jan pulled her out of the room into the parking lot. Sometimes, one of the bullets caught her in the head or chest and she fell to the floor laughing. Other times, Cindy would find a machine gun, somewhere, and open fire on the guys coming from the ceiling, and then she'd hop around the room kicking terrorist ass, Batman style. Still the kids sang on and then performed a scene from A Christmas Carol, then sing, then something from "The Gift of the Magi," and then another song. Maybe if they did a scene from Santa Claus Versus the Martian, with the audience doing some MST3K, there would have been something worth watching after the first hour.

When it was finally over and all the children had taken their bows, she stood up and thanked them and lied to them when she told them that they were all wonderful and she hadn't ever seen a performance as good at the one they just put on for her. She clapped at them and then the teachers started clapping at her and, after a few seconds, the kids started clapping and yelling, too. Cindy didn't roll her eyes. She wanted to, but she didn't. Cameras snapped and flashed around her as she stood among the students and teachers and parents who were cheering her. She hoped she looked grateful. It wouldn't help her husband's career if she looked tired and annoyed in a roomful of children.

By the time she got out of the school and into her car, they were running two hours behind schedule.

Fiction Friday #18

The Fiction Friday posts are going to a different for a little while. Instead of me rushing to write about a thousand words of a story I'm going to post what I've written for NaNoWriMo. I'm not going to post the whole thing over and over again, I'm just going to post the new stuff I wrote between Fridays. So, some may start in illogical places and all will probably end without logic. Just deal with it.

This week's is short because it's just what I wrote all day yesterday and today here at work.

This is the way Fiction Friday is going to go until
1. The first Friday after the 30th, which is the first, I think.
2. I finish the 50,000 word and/or the novel.
Or 3. I decide to give up on NaNoWriMo.

Day Zero

Marcus Gandbuth walked into the press room by himself and stood off to the side of the platform. He didn't want to announce his presence just yet. He wanted to get a sense of the room before he let them know he was there.

More or less, it was a normal Friday before a holiday crowd. About half the seats were filled with their usually reporters only halfway listening to what Dan had to say. And he had nothing to say. There were no big bombs to drop on them this week. No hostages. No attack. No overtime basketball games just ending. Beside, most of the reporters in the press room went over the video tapes that were made available afterward. The only reasons any reporters showed up anymore was in the hopes that they could catch Dan, and therefore the entire administration, off guard with a pointed question, but since the Vice President hadn't been caught sucking geezer midget cock this week, Marc didn't think anyone was going to even try. Besides, they all wanted to get on their Christmas break as soon as possible, too.

Marc cleared his throat a little too loudly and stood there watching the reporters. The young guy in front did a double take and was the first to start staring. Slowly, the other people in the room turned to look at him, too. Then one camera, CNN, he thought, turned and then another and then another, like dominoes being knocked over. Not Dan though, he always focused on his notes instead of the actual people and was reading, word for word, some report put out by the Secretary of Agriculture about the restructuring on some farm subsidies they hoped to get through Congress next year.

Actually, it was Dan's sort of incompetence that helped him get the job of Press Secretary. He could hardly remember anything, so he always used notes. When he was asked a questions, he'd rifle through pages of information trying to find an answer. Sometimes he got lucky and the information was in the top couple of pages, but more often it was somewhere in the middle of his stack. When that happened he start searching and if the search took more than a few seconds, he'd ask all the reporters to quiet down, even if they were already quiet, because he needed his concentration and as he looked through the papers he'd mumble to himself, but into the microphone, that everyone needs to keep quiet. But the incompetence was masterful. By the time he found the answer most of the reporters had forgotten the question, so there were no follow-ups. Marc wasn't sure, but he always thought the reporters didn't ask more follow-ups because they were afraid that Dan would have to go through his notes, again. The best way to keep people from getting the information they wanted was to present it in a way they didn't like.

Once, the Chief of Staff, Alan Zimmerman, and Marc made a drinking game out of one of Dan's press conferences. Every time Dan said quiet loud enough for the camera to pick up, they took a shot. Forty minutes into the conference, Zim was a happy drunk, the kind that figures no one else can tell he's drunk and he wants to go around telling everyone how great they are. Marc just sat and focused on the TV so he wouldn't miss a single "quiet." Neither one of them had much memory of the rest of that day; Marc only had flashes of toilette's and grinding rolling chairs and asking people to keep quiet because he and Zim, they were looking for something so everyone had to keep quiet.

It was probably one on Marc's most productive days since he started working with these people.

Marc watched as Dan finally looked up into the half full room to answer the question he had been asked and noticed that no one was looking at him. Dan looked back at his notes and then at the reporters again. Marcus let his grin get huge because he knew that if he tried to hold it back, he'd laugh and Dan never took well to being laughed at. So he waited.

Dan cleared his throat once and then a second time, more forcefully. He opened his mouth, and closed it, then opened it again. He cocked his head to the left and followed everyone's gaze to his right. When he noticed Marc standing there, he closed his mouth with an audible snap.

Marc smiled as warmly as he could and half waved at Dan.

Dan half waved back.

Marc pointed to himself and then to the podium Dan was standing behind and then to himself again and nodded.

Dan straightened up with a jerk, pulled his coat straight, pushed glasses higher on his nose, and leaned toward the microphone. "Uh," he said, "ladies and gentlemen, I, uh, huh, I give you the, uh, the president of the United States of America. Um, Marcus Gandbuth."

Marc climbed the two stairs as the small group of reporters sat in silence and Dan collected his notes in a messy pile from the podium. When Dan turned toward him, Marc shot out his hand and grabbed Dan's and started shaking. Notes flew everywhere.

Dan and Marc both crouched down and started pulling papers into a pile.

"Sorry, Dan," said Marc. "I know how you hate surprises, but I thought it would be nice to come and talk and, maybe, answer a few questions. You know, as a sort of Christmas present."

"It's okay, uh, sir -- Mr. President, sir."

They got the pile of notes together and into Dan's arms. Both men stood up and Marc leaned in close and whispered, "You may want to watch this from your office."

Dan winced, nodded, and scurried down off the lift.

Marc walked over to the podium and smiled the smile his staff told him won the election. A friendly and confident smile, he was told. One that inspired people to flock to his cause. A smile that dentists could put up in their office to show what years of painful orthodontic work and bleach treatments could do for anyone of any age. And having such a big smile and such white teeth nestled in a light box tanned face made it all the better.

Marc didn't feel as confident as his smile made him look. His palms were sweating, his heart fluttered, and his stomach was trying to reenact Stomp. He hadn't felt this way making a speech since he was in high school.

Fiction Friday #16

World's End: Training Wheels

After The End of the World, the people in Shame just sort of stopped worrying about what day it was. And I don't just mean whether it was the 4th or the 29th, but a lot of them quit saying it was Thursday or Monday.

When people started moving into the gym at Meredith Willson High School, the Rileys, a couple who had retired to Shame a few years ago, started a new calendar. They counted the days since The End happened. (I counted their days, once. Seemed to me that they figure the end came when we lost power. I figure it happened a few days before, but I wasn't the one in charge.) They called it AC and said it stood for After the Coming. No one in the gym argued with them and no one in the gym seemed to use the calendar, but there were a few kids who earned a smack or two for asking who it was that came to town.

At the time, I wasn't really worried about the date. I was more concerned with the rising and the setting of the sun and how much could be done before it got too dark. Although, soon after we left town, I wished that I knew the date. Was it just an ordinary day or was it an important day? I never did check the calendar at my place while I was picking up my hiking boots.

There wasn't much else there that I wanted. I grabbed a couple of long sleeve shirts and more clean underwear and I already had my old pocket knife with me, but nothing else would have helped on the trip.

I shouldered the sack and headed out.

Abbot's Sports was a few streets over and one up from where my apartment was, just like everything else within the city limits. The building had been there for as long as anyone could remember and it showed the way the ivy had spread up one wall and anywhere the brick was showing it was crumbling. The Abbots didn't even run the place anymore. The last one in the county had moved out onto a farm to cash in on Ethanol. I guess that didn't quite work out for him.

The store was sort of a catch all for anything that wasn't food. Everything that was sold there could also be rented. Tents and rafts and bikes and sleeping bags for those folks who wanted to see the river or spend some time on it and pretend they were Huck Finn, without the huge black guy, of course.

Trista and Roy weren't there when I looked throughout the shattered windows, but I knew they'd be along soon enough. I headed in and scouted around for the things I thought we'd need.

First were bikes. They seemed like the best way for us to travel. Smallish and pretty damn light, we could ride around any cars and wouldn't have to worry about gas. If we kept up the basic maintenance, we probably wouldn't get much worse than a popped tire or a broken chain, and those were small enough that we could carry lots of extras, and if something worse happened, there were pretty good odds would could find the right tools and stuff in any town we came across. Best of all were the baby carriage things that people used to drag their little kids around in. I figured those things would be great for dragging around extra food and gear for those days we didn't roll on into town.

By the time Roy and Trista showed up, I had already picked out the three bikes we were going to be using and had just finished bolting on the last baby carriage thing.

"Supposed to be using scooters," said Trista, pulling a wad of gum out of her mouth and throwing it over her shoulder. She always was one to care about her community.

"Why's that?" I asked, standing up and stretching.

"Didn't you never read The Stand, Crete?" she asked, coming in close to me. "That's what they all rode into Vegas. Well, that or motorcycles."

"Stephen King must have lived in a place where the gas fell from the sky and all you needed was a funnel to fill a tank." I poked her in the shoulder.

Roy laughed. If his voice had been deeper, I would have called it booming, but it was more like tapping on a snare drum than pounding on a bass drum. To the best of my knowledge, Roy was the only black man who lived in Shame. There were a couple of colored families who owned farms, but Roy actually lived in the city. How he started teaching here instead of some other place, I didn't know, but here he was. He was also gorgeous. Short cut hair. Solid jaw. Huge shoulders and arms. Dark brown eyes that a person could fall into. It was hard to believe he taught math.

"This is how we're going," I said. "Deal with it."

"Fine," she said, dropping her stuff on the ground. "What do you want us to do?"

"We each need a sleeping bags and tents and stuff," I said.

Roy grabbed my arm as I started to head in. "Go on in, honey," he said to Trista. "I want to talk to Crete for a minute."

"'Kay," she said and headed off.

"What do you want?" I asked Roy.

"Uh," he turned away from me, "I don't know how to ride a bike?"

"Really?" I asked.

"Yeah. Never learned."

"Well," I said, "I'm sure we can find some training wheels in there some where. We just have look."

Fiction Friday #12

Rented

There wasn't anything odd about the phone call Ned had received. It was just the voice of a young man on the other end asking about the room above the garage. Ned assumed that he was just another new student going to the arts college in the fall, at least twenty had called since he'd put the add in the paper two weeks ago. A couple had seemed okay when they came to check the place out, but they both said they couldn't afford the deposit until they got their financial aid in two months and Ned wouldn't rent without deposit in hand. The kid on the phone swore that he had the money, now. Ned shrugged to himself and they set up an appointment for the next day.

Noon, the next day, on his lunch hour, Ned pulled into his driveway and saw someone in a black hooded sweatshirt, with the hood pulled up, sitting on the porch.

Must be the kid, he thought. Nice to have one that actually shows up on time.

Ned opened the door and climbed out of the car, using the top of the door to help pull him up. The door groaned and the suspension tilted as he gave it his whole weight. It was getting close to the time he needed a new car, this one just wasn't running the way he thought it should. And the tires on the driver's side kept losing air faster than the passenger's side, giving the car an annoying tilt. That was something the renter was supposed to help provided, a new car.

"Uh, Jasper?" he called to the porch. "Is that you?"

"Yeah," said the kid in a pleasant but bored sounding voice, standing up, hands in the kangaroo pouch. He was wearing black pants and sneakers to go with his sweatshirt.

Ned stared. Maybe it was because he was under the porch, but Jasper's clothes were so black it was hard to see where the sweatshirt ended and the pants began, same at the shoes, like the black of the clothes just ate the shadows. Oddly enough, the sneakers had white tread that looked like it glowed.

"Okay," said Ned, walking to the porch. When he got there, he put out his clammy hand. "I'm Ned. We talked on the phone last night."

"Yeah," said the kid, "I figured." He took a breath, sighed, and said, "Jasper." He pulled a hand from the pocket. It was all white and looked like bones.

Freaky art school kids, thought Ned, taking Jasper's hand.

The hand was cold and hard. Ned wasn't feeling a painted hand or a hand in a glove. No, he was feeling bones. Hard, cold bones. A chill shot up his spine and Ned felt his balls climb up into his stomach to stay safe.

"Uh," said Ned, shaking Jasper's bones. "It's nice to meet you."

"Sure," said Jasper. "You can let go of my hand now."

Ned let go and shook his hand a little, hoping the kid didn't notice. It had to be some trick. He thought that the kid must have slipped a fake hand up his sleeve. Jasper just wanted to freak him out.

"So, the place is back here," said Ned, pointing to the breezeway between the house and the garage. "It's over the garage."

"And it's furnished, right?" asked Jasper, putting his hand back in the pocket.

"Yeah, said Ned, looking into the hood. There was nothing there. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. No hood cast a shadow like that. No hood that he'd ever heard of. Maybe something an astronaut wore so he wouldn't be blinded in space, but there was nothing on earth that could explain the darkness under that hood. Too dark. Dark as those pictures of space. He wondered if it was cold under there. Cold like space. That's what it looked like. A spot of space with nothing in it. Nothing.

"Can I see it?"

"What!" Ned shook his head and blinked his eyes, hard.

"The room," said Jasper, "can I see it?"

"Oh, uh, sure," said Ned, walking away. He didn't hear the kid following him, but he also didn't want to turn around and check. "The first door here," he said, waving his hand, "goes into the garage. This one," he stopped and groped his coat, "goes up to the apartment. I'll show you as soon as I find the... Ah! Here it is." He pulled a key, and a peppermint, from the inside pocket, and unlocked the door.

Ned flicked a switch inside the door way, stepped back, holding the door, and said, "The door at the top is unlocked. Go ahead and go in when you get up there. After you." He bowed a little.

Jasper took the stairs with ease. Ned didn't. He firmly believed that when the contractor built the garage the stairs were built steeper than normal stairs. Every time he took them, by the time he got to the top, Ned was gasping like a fish on the deck of a boat. This climb was no different.

When he got to the landing on the top, Ned put one hand on the wall, leaned into, started breathing deep, and cursed the contractor he hired. Through the open door, he could see Jasper looking around the apartment.

It was basically one long room over the three car garage. the kitchen -- complete with a fridge, a full range, and a split sink -- was separated from the rest of the apartment by a counter and a vinyl floor that also went around the corner into the bathroom, no tub in there, but it didn't feel cramped, even to Ned. The rest of the room was covered in muddy brown carpet and painted in a ivory. Along the long walls, there were two windows, with curtains, not blinds. The far wall, across from the kitchen, had a sliding glass door, with blinds for privacy, that led onto a small, but usable, porch, which was mostly covered by the roof. The room was furnished with the family's old cherry colored couch (Ned thought it had been defective because his normal spot was squishier and lower than the rest of the couch.), his wife's mother's old and stained coffee table, a secondhand cabinet with their old TV on it, the queen-sized be he and Liz used to share (The springs of which had never worked properly, his side was always lower than Liz's side, even when no one was on the mattress.) before they got the king, and the dining room table and chairs, actually made out of cherry, that Ned and Liz got from his parents as a wedding gift. The small closet was near the bathroom.

In many ways, it reminded Ned of the first place he and Liz had lived together. He half sighed and half gasped, remembering their first years together. He wondered, for a second, what happened to the woman he had married.

"So," wheezed Ned, finally stepping into the room, "What do you think?"

"This work?" asked Jasper, pointing at the TV.

"It's a little old, but it works. We had to get a new clicker, though. I wrote the code to the TV on some tape and put the tape in with the batteries so we couldn't rub them off." Ned shrugged, "You probably don't care about that, though."

"Just curious," said Jasper, turning toward the porch.

"So, you going to school out here this fall?" asked Ned, using great care as he sat on one of the dining room chairs.

"No."

"Oh. But you have a job, right?"

"Yeah, I have a job," said Jasper, opening and closing one set of curtains.

"Then you wouldn't have, uh, any trouble paying the rent?"

"No. No trouble paying." Jasper sat on the bed and bounced a little. "You know one side of the bed is lower than the other?"

"Yeah. I think the springs on that side were defective," said Ned.

"Defective," said Jasper, getting up.

"It started slumping like that a few months after we bought it. We didn't mistreat it or anything, though."

"Right. There a dresser?" Jasper asked, opening the closet door and taking a look inside.

"We have a couple in the garage. You could choose one and we could haul it up here before you moved in."

"Parking?"

"You'd have to park on the street. Sorry," said Ned, adding quickly, "but I have all the forms and everything ready to go so you can get a permit so you won't get ticketed."

Jasper nodded.

"What do you think?" asked Ned.

"It'll do."

Jasper pulled his eerie hands out of the large pocket and was holding a large wad of bills. "First." He counted some bills. "Last." He counted some more. "And deposit." He counted a third time and dropped the stack on the table.

Ned searched through his pockets, again, and found the lease and a pen. "It's through next June," he said. "I thought we'd be getting a student."

"Fine," said Jasper, taking the pen from Ned, who shivered when the odd bone like fingers grazed his hand.

Ned counted the cash while Jasper signed. "You can move in on the first, okay?"

"Fine," said Jasper, finishing up.

Ned pulled the copy of the back and handed it and the key to the bottom door over. "The key to the top door is in the drawer by the oven," he said, offering his hand to Jasper.

Jasper took the hand, but didn't shake it, just sort of held it. Ned's balls jumped back up into his stomach and tried to even climb higher.

After a minute that felt like forever to Ned, Jasper let go, grabbed the other key from the drawer, and left. Ned let out a breath that he didn't know he was holding, pushed himself up, and headed down the stairs to his car. Outside, Jasper was no where to be seen, and the hand Ned used to shake with was cold, freezing cold.

As he drove away, Ned groped through the hamburger wrappers on the passenger seat for his phone to call Liz at her job.

"This is Liz," she said after he fought his way through the maze of people who answered the phone.

Ned moved the phone from his right ear to the left and said, "Liz, honey, it's me."

"Uh huh," she said.

"I, uh, I... Well, I rented the apartment?"

"What?"

"The, uh, the apartment. Above the garage?" Ned said. "I rented it to a--"

"You rented it?" asked Liz in her I'm-not-mad voice she used when she was angry. "You rented it, without talking to me first?"

"Yeah, well, I sort of had to."

"You had to?"

"Well, he was... odd. He was dressed all in black. And his hood. And the white on his shoes. And the cold hands."

"His shoes? His hands? Ned," said Liz, "I don't understand."

"He paid in cash, Liz," said Ned, moving the phone from hand, and ear, to the other. "Cash. Who carries that much cash?"

"Ned, we live in a state in the middle of nowhere. Are you trying to tell me that some mobster's kid has come here to learn how to prance around on stage like some San Francisco fairy?"

"What? No. He said he wasn't going to school here."

"Then what's he doing here."

"I don't know, honey. I don't know."

Liz sighed, "Ned, I have to get back to work. We'll talk about this evening."

"But Liz," Ned said into the phone.

"This evening, Ned." And she hung up the phone.

Ned hung up his phone, too, and wondered how he was going to explain to his wife that, starting Sunday, the Grim Reaper was going to be living above their garage.

Fiction Friday #9

Once Upon a Time...

Prince Dairiad knew--knew with a fiery passion that burned from his toes to his bowels to his nose--that he was a fairy tale prince. His father, The King, ruled over a beautiful land from a castle on a hill in the middle of a large, lush, and fertile valley surrounded by a ring of high, snow capped mountains with a large, dark wood to the east, along with his mother, The Queen. Dairiad remembered sunny days, riding through the valley, through forest and farmland, and being greeted by The King's people. When he rode through town, they cheered his arrival and children formed a parade, following his horse to the edge of town, cheering the whole length. Innkeepers always gave him the best room for free, even if they had to move people out of it; the people who had the room already didn't mind, either, after all, they were giving up the room for their prince. And every woman in the land threw herself at the prince and wanted to warm his bed, from the lowliest and comeliest of farm girls, to the most sensible and beautiful merchant women, to the wild and ravishing warrior women, to the most regal and elegant of the noble women.

The land of his father loved him and Dairiad loved the land of his father. He loved the farms and the towns. He loved the forest and the meadows. He loved the castle and the church. He loved the men and the children. And he had loved many of the women in the land.

On his 25th birthday, several hours after the dancing had started, but still before midnight, Prince Dairiad was asked to attend a private audience with The King and The Queen before they retired to their chambers for the night.

"Father, you asked for me," said Dairiad, bending a little at the waist.

The King smiled and nodded his head.

"Yes, we wanted to speak with you," said The Queen. "It's about what you're doing with your life."

"Father," said Dairiad looking at The King, "what is it?"

The King nodded at Dairiad, then at his wife, and then stroked his long, grey beard. He found something in his beard. It was soft and slimy. He put it to his nose and sniffed. There wasn't much of a smell. He put it in his mouth and rolled it around with his tongue. The thing wasn't salty enough to be a booger. Perhaps it was chicken. Yes, a little bit a chicken caught in his beard. The King swallowed. He couldn't remember the last time he ate chicken, before today, that is.

"Son," said The Queen, sweetly, "we need to talk."

"Father?" asked Dairiad, watching The King groom his beard. "What is it? What do you want?"

The Queen sighed and reached beneath her coat. She pulled out the jeweled, silver dagger her husband had given to her the last time he could remember her name. She kissed the sapphire in the pommel, took a deep breath, and grabbed Dairiad by the collar.

"You listen to me, boy," she said, placing the blade to his throat. "We have to talk."

Dairiad nodded a tiny bit.

The King sneezed.

"You're 25. You're father's very old. You can not take his place until you've married."

"But mother," he whined, trying to pull himself out of her grip, "there are no princesses here and all the rest of the noble women are my sisters and cousins and aunts. What can I do?"

"You do what your father did," she said, throwing her son to the floor. "You pick a pass over the mountains and find a wife Outside."

The King pulled a mouse from his beard and started to giggle.

"Leave the valley?" Dairiad asked, standing up and straightening his clothes. "Why would I do that?"

"Because," said his mother, nodding toward the door, "You have no choice."

Two guards grabbed Dairiad's arms and started to push him toward the door. He tried to fight, but it did no good. When he loosened the grip of one, the other still held on tightly. When he stopped walking, they just dragged him though the castle, through the great hall where all his guests were dancing.

"Will none of you help me?" he cried out to the people.

No one did.

The east gate was opened and Prince Dairiad was dropped into the dirt.

"Don't worry, dear." Dairiad looked up to see his mother on the walkway, with his father, above the gate, lit by a torch carried by a guard. "You won't age and you won't die until you find a wife and bring her back. You can be King then."

"Why are you doing this?" he asked, dusting himself off.

"Because we love you dear."

"Fine," he said, turning and walking away from the castle.

"Don't worry, my love," said The Queen to The King, "He'll be just fine."

"Who?" asked The King.

"You're son."

"He's leaving?" asked The King, who looked out over the gate waving and calling, "Good-bye, Dimples!"

Dairiad turned around and did the rudest gesture he could think of at his father.

He followed the road though the night. The next afternoon, he found a farm house he could sleep in and a farm girl he could sleep with.

I could stay here, he thought after he told the girl to leave the room so he could rest. They'd never know. I could be happy being served by a small family. He smiled to himself. That's the sort of life I want to lead. And he drifted off to sleep.

But that sort of life was not to be his.

Two days later, he was woken by pounding on the door. A small regiment of castle guards was waiting for him.

"We are to escort you to the Eastern Pass," said the greasy man, who Dairiad supposed was in charge. "We are to escort you and make sure you enter." Two other guards grabbed Dairiad and pulled him out the door. "We are to make sure you enter and not return with out a wife." Dairiad was dragged outside, the greasy man following. "If you try to enter without a wife, we are to carry you over the pass ourselves." The other guards tied Dairiad to a horse. "If we must carry you over the pass, we will break your feet first." The guards mounted their own horses. "When we break your feet, it will not be fast and it will be fun, for us." All the horses galloped to the east.

Three days of being strapped to a horse later, Dairiad was cut free and pushed to the ground.

"Go that way," said the greasy guard, pointing toward the mountains. "Don't come back alone."

Dairiad climbed to his feet and said, "I won't be long. And when I get back and become King, don't expect to live long." And he trudged into the mountains and out of his valley home.

Fifteen hundred years later, he still wasn't married.

Fiction Friday #8

World's End: Moving

As much as everyone in Shame would deny it, we don't really know when The End of the World happened. We can make some guesses, but no one knows for sure because there wasn't any giant explosion, or flying saucer, or Jesus Christ to announce that The End was here.

The best I can guess is that it happened Thursday night or Friday morning about four and a half weeks ago. I figure it happened then because when I got home Thursday night after drinking with Trista and some of her friends, Sanford and Son was on Nick at Night. I know enough to know that the shows are on some sort of automatic rotation, so they don't have to have someone there to handle everything, but when I came back to my place for lunch on Thursday, just about every channel was dead. Some must have had longer schedules laid out in advance, others, not so much.

When school let out, some parents sort of panicked because their kids couldn't just plop down in front of the TV. Their kids were bored. What were parents to do without TV? Drive to the video store and rent something?

The real panic didn't start until a few days later, when the power and phones cut out. That's when people started heading over to the high school. The insanity didn't set in for about a month, but it came and that's when I knew it was time to leave.

First thing I did was head to my tent and pack up. I stuffed some of the clothes that I brought with me into the knapsack I'd taken from Abbot's Sports. The things I left I left because I thought I could get them newer and better by hitting a few stores on my way out of town. Food and how to carry it was a big problem.

And where was I going to go?

Rumor had it that St. Paul and Minneapolis were okay, and people were still living there, but who in their right mind want's to live there? Maybe a stop over would be okay. Just to check things out.

I grabbed my knapsack and hitched it over my shoulder. I was ready to leave the high school. I left the tent, because it was a cheapie, along with all the blankets and the pillows where they were. I knew that there were plenty of better things I could take with me. After all, I was the first one who went into Abbot's when we all moved in here.

During the fight, I hadn't seen my sister, or Roy, so I walked over to his tent hoping to catch them there. When I walked up, I could hear some rustling and some thrashing, and I smiled. These were the noises I'd heard every night my sister brought a guy back with her before I moved into my own place. Funny how something that drove me crazy when it woke me up two or three times a week sort of made me happy now. Not all the time living with my sister was bad. And during those weeks when she had a steady guy, it was like living by myself, but only paying half the rent.

"Trista," I said as I got closer, "I need to talk to you." I started to hear panting. "Trista, God dammit, I need to talk to you!"

"Shit," I heard her say.

"Who is it?" I heard Roy ask.

"My brother," she said. "Now get off of me."

A little grunting and heavy breathing later, she unzipped the top of their tent, poked her head out, and asked, "The fuck do you want, Crete?"

She wasn't really beautiful, sort of cute with her sort of upturned nose and roundish face, but not beautiful. The rest of her was more round than trim and she was lucky that she wasn't old enough to start drooping. She wasn't one to dress sexy, either. She mostly wore loose shirts and long skirts in miss-matched colors. The reason so many guys liked her was because she liked sex, a lot, and she preferred it sober. She was a cheap, easy lay. Our father never liked that about her, but he didn't like a lot of things about a lot of people.

"Leaving," I said. "You and Roy want to come with, meet me at Abbot's Sports in about an hour and we'll all start there."

"Why an hour?"

"You two'll want to finish up," I said, grinning at her with all my power, "and then you'll want to pack and I gotta go get some stuff from my place."

She looked at me like I was nuts.

"We gotta get out of her, Tris," I said, squatting down so our faces were level. "They're going crazy in there. I just saw Mrs. Harding beat the shit out of Mrs. Greeling over Band-Aids. I don't want to be here when that shit," I pointed at the gym, "explodes and I don't want you here, neither."

"And Roy?"

"He'll keep you happy." I winked at her.

"You shit," she said. "Fine, we'll be there."

"Good," I said as she zipped the tent up.

I stood up and heard Roy ask, "What's going on?"

"First," said Trista, "I'm going to cum. Second, we're going to pack. Third, we're going shopping."

"What?" he asked.

"Shut up," she said and I walked away.

I needed to get to my apartment. I needed my hiking boots because, like everyone knows, you never go on a long hike with new boots, and I figured that there'd more hiking on this trip than I ever wanted to do.

Fiction Friday #5

Lucky Elk: False Bearings

The stupid orientation was all because of the Iranians. And all I could do was worry that I'd be found out.

Three months ago, because they were sick of all the crap going on in Iraq, the guys in charge of Iran decided to send in an army. It wasn't a normal army. No, they decided they didn't want to risk humans, which seems odd, I know. Instead, they sent in an army full of zombies and those wind creatures, eframs, I think they're called.

Suddenly, everyone knew that "creatures of myth," also called "the spiritually enabled," exist.

Thus, orientation.

"Vampires," said the guy in grey suit and had bleached hair, clicking to the next picture, of the word "Vampire", "may be the most dangerous yet discussed."

And I shivered. Not like a normal brrr-type shiver. This one started at the base of my ass, worked its way up my spine, out to the tips of my fingers, and right back to my ass.

See, I'm a vampire. I've been one for a few years now. And, while it's not a bad life, it's not as glamorous as movies, tv shows, and books make it out to be.

The guy clicked something and the picture changed and it was a normal looking chick, with, probably, fake boobs.

"They look like us," he said and clicked again. "They often look better than us."

The vampire on the screen was a shot of Stuart Townsend in Queen of the Damned. His hair, stringy. Blood dripping off his lips. Sexy as hell, sure, but that's not the way it works. And couldn't he have shown Brad Pitt, instead? Now there was a hot vampire.

When I turned, I didn't become any better looking. My hair didn't become fuller or shinier. The layer of full body fat didn't disappear. And I still need my goddamned glasses to see. All of this had to come from movies. They always show vampires slowly seducing people before going for the bite. There are probably some out there like that, but they were probably the kind of people who went to bars and played the slow pick-up game. The kind who enjoyed playing with their sex toy more than the actual sex. Sickos.

"Vampires," he said with another click, "are stronger than us."

The picture was one of some guy in dark clothes standing in front of flames lifting something heavy, a car or a beam or something. There was no way to tell if it was a vampire. And it probably wasn't.

See, I'm a bit faster than I was before I turned, but not the blur movies say we are, and a bit stronger. I guess those things have to come with the territory. We're hunters, right? We hunt humans, right? So, we have to be faster and stronger than them to give us a better chance to catch the runners. Still, though, if I could lift like fifty pounds before I turned and now I can lift like sixty pounds, not a great improvement, is it.

"There are two easy ways to recognize a vampire," said the guy, clicking to a picture of that old black and white Dracula guy. "The first is the fangs." He used a laser pointer and made little circles around the guy's mouth.

I snorted. I couldn't help myself. Fangs retract. If they didn't, would any of us be able to live in cities and stuff after the first time Dracula was made? Way back then, people would have seen our long, pointy teeth and they'd have killed us. Now, if it wasn't such a strain, we could keep 'em out and people would just think they were fake, or that we had our teeth filed, or something like that.

"The second," he clicked again, "is that they don't show up in mirrors, or any other types of reflections."

True. I don't know why, but we don't show up in mirrors. Makes getting ready for work a real bitch, too. We show up on film, though, which is weird. Why one and not the other?

It's easy to avoid mirrors and things, though. And most of the time, people don't even pay attention to things like that. They see it and move on. I guess their brain just fills in the holes.

"If you see one," he said, fiddling with his clicker, "don't try to take care of it. You'll only make things worse. Call the police. They're trained for this."

Click. And the screen went black.

The guy walked to the back of the break room and turned on the lights. "There you have it," he said. "If you're careful" He looked at Juan. "If you're prepared." He looked at Christie. "If you use good judgment." He looked at me, finishing up the people in the back row. "Not one of these creatures of myth will be a threat." He smiled a bleached, capped tooth smile. "Thank you."

A couple of people clapped. They weren't that enthusiastic, though.

Joe, the bar-slash-server supervisor stood up. "Before we leave," he said, "I just want to thank you all for coming and I want thank the management of the Lucky Elk Casino--" he looked up at the security camera and winked "--for this presentation. I know I feel safer already." He grinned; broadly, his teeth weren't capped or bleached. "Now get back to work."

On our way out the door, I said to Juan and Christie, "You know, working in a casino, you sure meet a lot of freaks. Too bad they're all running things.

Fiction Friday #3

World's End: Shame

You know, it's a funny thing. When The End of the World came, the world really didn't come to an end.

Sure, most of the big cities were gone. (Although, from what I've heard St. Paul and Minneapolis are still there. I guess whoever took us all thought Minnesota was just as useless as the rest of the good old US of A did.) Most of the little cities and towns weren't, though.

My parent lived just out side of a town called Shame in the corn fields of Iowa with my older sister, her husband, their baby, one of my younger sisters, and my younger brother. They grew corn. I guess they occasionally switched to soy beans to help the soil get better, but it was mostly corn. Dad was convinced that ethanol was the wave of the future. I hated growing corn. Me and my other younger sister, Trista, lived in town. She worked at the liquor store and slept around a lot. I worked as a clerk in a law office and didn't. I was hoping to save enough money to head off to community college part time and learn to be a paralegal. Didn't happen, though.

When The End came there were probably about 2500 people living in the city limits of Shame. We had one of the two high schools in the county, though.

At first, everything was fine. People were so scared of whatever caused The End of the World that they all worked together. Everyone gathered at the high school and set up cots and sleeping bags in the gym. We got ourselves organized into groups. Some of us went to grocery store to gather canned good and noodles and other things that didn't go bad; you should have seen the smiles when Roy pulled Ho-Hos and Ding-Dongs out of his cart, people looked like they thought everything was going to be okay. Others went to the hardware store to bring back stuff we could use, like flashlight of all sizes and batteries and tools and wood and other building supplies. The drugstore was hit, too, for peroxide and Band-Aids and other things for the scrapes and bruises we were sure to get.

A lot of families went to their homes and gathered up all their extra blankets and towels and camping gear and things without even being asked, which was great. We pitched tents out on football field so people who wanted the privacy could have it. Mostly, they didn't though. In that first month everyone seemed to want to be near people. I guess it set them at ease.

I moved out into a little pup tent that I had swiped from the sports store, the place I volunteered to raid. At the time, it seemed to me that this was the place to find the things we were going to need, seeing that the electricity probably wasn't going to be back any time soon, if at all, and I didn't think anyone was really out there watching the water, making sure it was kept clean, so the purifying pills seemed like a good idea. And if a couple of things that I took decided to stay in my backpack, rather than be handed over to the group of women who were sorting and storing everything, who could blame me? I had me and my sister to look out for.

Trista'd found Roy's tent, and he was all the happier for it.

After a couple of days, the gym started to stink. People weren't shitting in there or anything, they were using the toilettes in the locker rooms, but they weren't really smelling good, either. Water was still running, sort of, since gravity works whether or not the human race is destroyed; it just didn't get hot. Without electricity to pump the water into the big tank outside of town, though, we'd run out eventually and then what would we do? So, a couple of guys got smart. They went out and built a latrine where the baseball dugouts used to be, that way they didn't have to dig as much. And there were already benches there, too. Plus, having two made perfect sense: one for the men and one for the women. Lucky for us, the hardware story had tons of lime so there wouldn't be too much of a stink there.

Into the second week, some of the guys got restless. They wanted to know what was going on in the world outside of Shame and, since the radios weren't picking any thing up, they decided to put together an expedition to see what was what. At first, they were day trips to the nearby farms to make sure the families were okay and to see if any wanted to come back to town with us. No one came. Not even my family.

I was there for that one. Dad refused to come. He was sure that everything was just fine and that the government of the good ole US of A was going to come in soon and tell us what was going on and that everything was a-okay. When my brother-in-law said the he though him, my sister, and their kids ought to come into town, Dad punched him in the jaw and said nobody was taking his baby girl away from him. Dad always was a stubborn, and an ass. He should have stayed in the Marines. Become a sergeant. Boss scared little kids around for a living. Instead, he grew what he was sure was the gold of the 21st century. And while I feel bad that Ma and my brother and sisters and my nephews were stuck there, if they had any balls at all they would have left on their own.

After the local farms were checked on, people started talking about trips to other towns, or even cities. Lots of people wanted to head into Iowa City and, if no one was there, head up to Cedar Rapids. Some thought people should start by going straight to Des Moines. They argued that that's where most people would be heading. They also thought that if there was going to be any news from the government, it'd end up there first. The town voted, and the decision was to head to Des Moines and check in at Albia, Knoxville, and the other towns on the way.

A team of five men left by truck the first day of the third week since The End occurred. It's normally only a three hour drive, but they were stocked with enough food and gas to last them a week, just in case. Most figured that they'd be gone two or three days. To the best of my knowledge, they never came back.

After a week passed, some men wanted to go searching for the ones who went to Des Moines. Others argued that they had to stay to protect the women and children. Trista called them backward rednecks said, "The 'women and children,'" she put up air quotes, "can do just fine with you shitheads and can make better decisions without you around since you won't make decisions with them. Get the fuck out of here if those assholes are more important to you than your families!" Then she stormed out.

I thought she was right. So did some of the other men and women. What had started as a discussion to plan a trip soon turned into a yelling match. After a while, the group tired out and Roy tried to have a real discussion with everyone. But people flared up and then someone would call someone else something and the yelling started all over again.

Nothing was decided. Eventually people started to poop out, or kids came in saying they were hungry, or they just got mad and left.

I thought they were all idiots.

The day after the four week mark, a fight broke out in the gym between two mothers. One accused the other of hoarding Band-Aids. The accused said that the other didn't have to give her son a Band-Aid for every bump, bruise, or little scratch. The accuser pushed the accused. The accused pushed back. The accuser slapped the other. The accused grabbed the hair of the accuser. And it got worse from there. And I know that there are guys out there who think women fighting women is sexy, but let me tell you, it's not. Men, at least seem to have some rules--no nut shots, fists not feet, once one's down it's over--but women don't. Shins were kicked. Hair was ripped out. Scratches bled. They bit and broke the skin. And when one finally went down, the other kicked her in the face for good measure.

"She was hoarding the Band-Aids," said the winner, spitting blood out of her mouth. I couldn't tell you it was hers or if it came from the woman on the floor.

That’s when others started in. "He has a stash of rice!" "They're hoarding cans of beans!" "Well you're saving batteries!" "Who's saving batteries? I need batteries!" "I'm not saving batteries!" "And who has the pillowcases?" "You are!" And on, and on.

I watched this go on for a few minutes and decided to leave.