I rise through the ceiling. It is impossible, yet I do it.

There is no feeling, but I can see my hands in front of me , solid as ever.

The night sky has no temperature, very little light.

Above me I see only the distant stars.

Then I am in a corridor.

I float face up, yet I can see ahead and behind as well.

A curious smell saturates the air, yet the odor reminds me of music. 

Emotions course through me without cause or effect, like paint on a canvas.

I am wholly alone, yet we are all together.

 

Our miller’s transgressions were so slight that but for the circumstances he would have evaded detection, though it is true that God sees everything and surely would have condemned his soul when he came to Judgment.

It was the girl who found him out, of course. The angels that whisper the secret knowledge of our doings spoke yet again, came to her in the night and showed her the thieving Miller. Upon waking, she ran to Father Gilles to denounce him. He denied everything, of course.

Father Gilles decreed to let the punishment fit the crime. Burn the mill after.

 

I woke up with a mouth full of blood. Lying on my side, the hard curb cutting into my hip. I could feel my watch was gone, my wallet. The sons of bitches even took my shoes.

My fault. Everybody told me that District 2 is the most dangerous section of Ho Chi Minh City, that I should stay away from it. But that was where I had to go, because that was where he was.

I still had the postcard he sent Mom in my pocket. At least they had left me that.

I had to find out for myself.

 

Some truckers are psychopaths. Not in  the cut-off-your-arms-and-leave-you-in-the-desert way. That’s just hitchhiker lore, same as the ghost rider and all that shit. No, I mean a guy that picks you up and then holds you captive for six hundred miles while he does a number on you, asks insinuating questions, plays good cop and bad cop at the same time. By the time we rolled into Paterson I was in tears. He’d just pulled his rig into the parking lot when I bolted into the diner and locked myself in the bathroom. I avoided looking in the mirror. Damn him.

 

The blizzard hit before we could get to Badger Bob’s cabin. The bullet in Roy’s leg pained him, but the cold soon took care of that, the blood freezing his trousers to the saddle so he couldn’t fall out.

Lord, it was cold. The north wind blew down that long plain with never a tree nor hill to stop it, drifts piled high as your shoulder. We was all snowblind by the third day and might have missed the cabin altogether had not Badger Bob seen us coming and fired his rifle.

He was especially happy to see our horses.

 

 

 

Dearest Omari,

This is not the New York our father spoke of. Many things he told us have proven to be true, but he was wrong about the city itself. He attributed his success here to hard work and what I will call moral authority, that feeling that he would not be denied.

I have brought both to my work here, but it has not helped. It is a cold place, uncaring. How can one man make an impression when there are thousands standing behind him, waiting to take his place?

Even the boldest action will not pierce the indifference.

 

Friday Fictioneers

So, like, you won’t believe this shit. Seriously. My mom found a joint in my bag. It wasn’t even mine. Sufjan asked me to hold it for him.  Anyway, she had a total meltdown. Said I was “on drugs” and a bunch of other retarded bullshit. We got into it, and I went to my room.

Yesterday morning I got woken up by these two dudes in khaki who shoved me in a van and drove me to this godforsaken wasteland. They wouldn’t tell me anything. 

So I am stranded here for the duration. Outward Bound.

Fuck my life. Seriously.

Every bridge and castle has the same story of some luckless sod  buried in the pilings, having fallen in during construction or otherwise come to harm.

We prefer to believe that places are haunted. It’s better than the alternative, which is that when we die we are simply gone forever and before too much time has passed will be forgotten by everyone.

Even we masons are not immune, for though we build monuments of eternal stone we become disconnected from them in the long chain of time. Our names are never spoken, our stories never heard.

Better a ghost, then.

 

Günter took his cello case and walked up the stairs into a city he did not recognize, a city no more. The air raid sirens had begin screaming late the previous afternoon, and he had dutifully gone down to the cellar to await the all clear as he had many times before. This time it never sounded.

The cold air smelled of burned meat, acrid wood, powdered plaster. No buildings remained standing. The Frauenkirche was gone, the Royal Library, the Kirchewald Apartments.

In the streets lay blackened logs. He could see they’d once been people.

Mozart’s Requiem, he thought. Perfect.