halloween

Inside there’s a cop, a nurse, a catholic school girl. All of them with less clothing than the real ones. At the bar, a referee serves beer. In the corner Britney Spears is giving her number to Hannibal Lector. Everywhere you look, somebody is trying to be somebody different. Most of the somebodies want to be sexy. These somebodies, on a normal night, they’d be sent home, they’d be fined. On a normal night, these somebodies would be indecent.

In the bathroom, the crayon is desperately trying to hike up his costume, the vampire is checking his make-up. The D.J is playing Thriller and the somebodies cheer knowing that tomorrow they have to be themselves again.

cable

On cable there’s Jason taking Manhattan with all of the good stuff cut out. The death scenes end before they should, before any blood is shown. When the kids running from Jason get scared, they scream, “oh frick,” and the kids that die after having sex, they don’t have sex. That scene starts as they’re getting dressed. And then Jason almost stabs them. And then it cuts.

letter

There’s a letter on the table and I don’t want to open it. Inside it’s going to start by thanking me and in the next sentence it’s going to break the news. That sentence, it’s going to regret to inform me. Like all the others before it, it’s going to thank me but no thanks me. I’m just an envelope away from a better luck next time. It’s going to go through the figures. It’s going to try to make me feel better. Out of two hundred applicants, only twenty were chosen. They’re regretting telling me that if only it were twenty-one, I would have made it. They’re letting me know that there’s always next year.

ladies night

These women, they don't care what time they go home. Some of these women, they don't care if they go home at all. These aren't the usual happy hour ladies. These ladies are looking for a night of freedom. A night away from work, from home, from their children. These women are good to go. Once a week, these ladies call their girl friends, they nominate a designated driver. These women, they go through their closet looking for anything low cut. They put on eye shadow, lipstick. They crimp their hair. Then the women of ladies night, they wait for a man to buy them a drink. To pay double what women do.

ghost 4

There’s a ghost in my house lives in the basement and follows me up the stairs.

spiders

Every morning, there’s a new bite on my neck. At night, a bug or a spider climbs onto the back of my neck, snuggles right below my hair, and chews. I’ve cleaned my room, under my bed, mopped the floors, and still, every morning, a new bug bite on my neck. Inside of my pillow sheet would make a perfect spider home. It would be cool and dark and just right for a nest. A spider would be lucky to live in my pillow. And at night, there’s a snack, right there, ready.

the salvation army

The woman at the Salvation Army laughs too loud and calls everybody precious. There’s a teenage boy and he’s asking her about an ottoman, about how much it costs and if he could pick it up later and she laughs and hoots and says, “precious I can put a little piece of paper on that and it’ll be here for you when you need it. Okay, dear?” The teenage boy smiles and scratches his head and says thanks. There’s the money exchange and a joke about the price. “It’s three hundred dollars, precious.” She’s only kidding. It’s twenty.

Inside the Salvation Army I’m putting a VHS tape back on the shelf so I don’t have to check out. On the way out, a gray haired lady and a kid with a sucker come in and the woman hoots and says what a big surprise it is, seeing them here. “God bless yins,” she says.

fake laughing

My cheeks hurt from fake laughing all night. My mouth is always in a smile, chuckling at the jokes, the small talk, the stories. The way to make a fake laugh seem like a real laugh is to keep it subtle. Laugh too hard and you give yourself away. Laugh too long you give yourself away. Keep it short, keep it quiet. Snort, wince, knee slap, and you might as well tell them they aren’t funny. Just smile and chuckle and don’t say “good one” and they’ll never know the difference. You’re doing them a favor. They’d thank you if they knew.

nights

These nights, they keep getting longer. The kind of nights where you can’t wait to go to sleep. The kind that you forget about as soon as you wake up. You can’t wait to go to sleep but you just can't sleep. Your eyes can be closed for hours and still, no sleeping. There’s no good programming on television but it doesn’t matter because she took the TV. Radio dramas are unheard of. But the radio is gone anyway. The television, the radio, they both left when she did. She took the couch, the bed, she even took the hangers from the closet.

Books, they work for a while. Until all of them are read. Over and over. Until you know the endings so well you write your own in your head. In my version of Moby Dick, Ahab and the whale move to Massachusetts and get married. In Lord of the Flies, the severed pigs head comes back to life. It sprouts new arms, new legs. The pig, it escapes on the helicopter and leaves the kids behind. In my Scarlet Letter, that “A” is a prize, an award, a pat on the back. They elect her mayor. August 21^st is declared Hester Prynne Day.

pennies

Five thousand two hundred pennies gives you fifty-two dollars if you’re willing to roll it all. What you do is you buy paper glued together in the shape of a tube. Inside of the tube you put a penny then another penny then another penny until there’s fifty pennies. Then you do it again. And again. Until you have one hundred four rolls of pennies. What you do is you make finding pennies your new job. Look under sofas, between cushions, inside vending machines. Sometimes there are pennies on the floor, in old pants pockets, in loafers. If you do this long enough, you’ll never have to work again. Five thousand two hundred pennies gives you fifty-two dollars and a pissed off bank cashier.

dinner

At dinner Dad said to us, “kids, just let Mom cool off for a while.” And he pulled the fork out of his arm.

ghost 3

There's a ghost in my house that turns off the TV and scares the cat.

deep breath

The boy’s legs stick to the rough paper and he’s taking a deep breath. Deep breath. There are paintings on the walls with clowns and kids and Radio Flyers and the doctor asks the boy if he ever had a wagon like the one in the picture. Deep breath. The metal is cold on his chest and the room is cold and the boy is shivering and the rough paper is crumpling beneath it all. The doctor moves the stethoscope to the boy’s back and asks him what his favorite school subject is. Deep breath. The boy is using his shirt as a blanket and is forced to sit up straight and his dad sticks his tongue out and winks and the boy feels better until the nurse hands the doctor the needle and he rubs alcohol on the boy’s arm. Deep breath.

party

These people, they’re happy when their house is dirty. When you throw a party, the way to tell how successful it was is by how filthy the house is. Sticky floors, stained sofa, footprinted walls, that just means more people were there.
The trophy shelf of empty liquor bottles means they've have done this before.
Next year these people will be teachers, will be businessmen, will be assistants. Next year these people will be husbands, will be wives, will be parents.

Everyone is loud and another drink spills on the carpet.

moving

The inside of your trunk can fit three suitcases full of clothes you’ll never wear. Boxes full of shoes, boxes full of towels, of books, of dishes, those can go in the back seat. The front seat is open for your kitty in his Cat Taxi. The floor, that’s where the computer could go. The computer and desk supplies and anything you can squeeze. Everything you need, you can fit into your car. All you have to do is pack.

preacher

There’s a man on the corner preaching to nobody. His eyes search over our heads and all of us walking, we use this opportunity to look over his sweatpants and Portland Trailblazers t-shirt. His face isn’t shaved but he doesn’t have a full beard. Just stubble. His hair is combed and not one piece blows in the wind. He’s holding a book next to his heart and it’s probably fair to assume that it’s some sort of Bible. A woman sits on the curb in front of him with a toddler and a box full of these same Bibles. She sips on something hot and keeps one arm around the kid. He’s wanting to explore but his mother holds him back. As I pass, the man is telling us that he’s offering an incredible opportunity. A chance to live forever. The woman hands the toddler one of the little black books and he sticks the corner of it into his mouth. I’m looking at the ground like I just dropped a quarter so the man or woman or baby doesn’t single me out and want to save me from myself.

“All you have to do,” the man in the sweatpants says, “is admit that you are lost.”

My car is just around the corner.

amoeba

Inside the lake, there’s an amoeba that eats brains. What it does is, it enters your body through your nose, gets to your brain, and then it eats. And like anything that eats brains, it eventually will kill you. This is true. This zombie amoeba, it already killed six people this year. Just boys. What it does is, when it’s eating, it just feels like a headache. Then a neck cramp. Then there’s the brain damage. The hallucinations and changes in behavior like suddenly forgetting how to add or what channel Nickelodeon is on. And then you die. And after you die, that’s when the doctors find the amoeba. During the autopsy, after you’re dead, it’s still eating.

jacobs

Jacobs stops me and smiles. He puts his hand on my shoulder and squeezes hard and asks me where’ve I’ve been. “You missed a hell of a party last week, man,” he says. Jacobs is a rich kid. His family is well off. Very well off. I’ve been to his house. I know. I’ve seen the pillars, the big screen TVs, the china cabinet, the room where nobody is allowed to sit. They’re well off. But Jacobs, this kid grabbing my shoulder too hard, he always wears thrift store clothes. Every t-shirt has a hole in it or a bleach stain. His one pair of jeans, they have frays and slits in the knee and he didn’t buy them like that. Every thing about him smells like moth balls and hand-me-downs and all of it is on purpose. He does this to feel less guilty about being so rich and living in a town so poor.

My hand pats the hand squeezing my shoulder. As a way to say hello but more as a way of telling him it hurts.

ghost 2

There’s a ghost in the house that sleeps on the couch and watches me do laundry.

job

My parents, they’re teachers at the local school system and they’ve been there long enough that our last name means something now. What it means is I can get a job substituting. Easy. My last name would move me right to the top of the list. When a teacher goes on leave for pregnancy or a coach gets hit with sexual assault charges, my last name is the first they’ll see.

her story

This is a true story. A first hand account of a second hand account. This person, she was really there. She saw it happen and told me all about it over dinner and drinks. She told it real straight forward. The way you tell a long distance friend about your day at work. Nothing too exciting. Drinks and dinner and a true story about dying. When she got to the end of it, I was slurring when I told her she should write it all down and sell it to Oprah and she was touching my leg when she said she couldn’t possibly. That’s my skill, she told me. And so I am. This is her story.

party

Inside, a girl stops me and says, “hi how are you” and I remember how I used to see her naked a couple of years ago and I try to picture it but it was a dark room and only happened twice before she said it was too weird because of our friendship and how we shouldn’t anymore so I don’t look at her eyes when I say hi and shoulder through her on my way to the beer.

apartment

My apartment is old and smells like one of those smells you know you know but can’t remember from where. Maybe something from growing up or something from Grandma’s house. You can’t tell. But either way, you like it.

mormons

“Hi I’m Matt, this is my friend Brian, we’re from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We’re going around today letting people in on..."

What he means is he’s a Mormon on a mission. His mission, should he choose to accept it, is to go around to non-Mormons and tell them how wrong they are. And I’m next. And my pizza is due out in five minutes.

“Sorry guys, I don’t have any time right now. I have something in the oven.”

Matt nods his head. Brian smirks. This isn’t an original excuse.

“Okay then, what would be a good time to come back?” This is what they ask me. Even if I wasn’t about to eat a ninety-seven cent frozen pizza, even if my dinner wasn’t minutes from being on the table and in my stomach, even then I still wouldn’t want to stand in my doorway while you tell me that when I reach the gates of heaven, God will only swing the door open if I’m wearing a white shirt and a black tie.

“That’s alright guys, don’t worry about it.”

ghost

There’s a ghost in my house that writes in dust and warns me when Mormons are close.

pimple

I have a pimple on my back that feels like a hundred bee stings. One hundred bees stung me in the exact same spot on my back while I was sleeping. I can’t sit or twist without the pimple stretching and hurting. I’d think it were a tumor if it didn’t grow so fast. It’s the kind of bump that little kids stare at until their mom tells them how rude they are being. The kind of bump that doctors say they’ve found teeth in before. The last remaining evidence of a twin who stopped growing. On my back my unborn twin has decided to get back at me for being the one who lived. That son of a bitch.