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October 19, 2005

Volume 7, Issue 19

Why are you so tense?

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D: Chill Pill

You're driving me frickin' crazy. The rent's due, the repos are on my ass about the car, we gots to eat and you want a pony? A pony? What the frick are we gonna do with a pony? We gonna dump the car and ride around town all day getting groceries we can't afford, to feed another mouth at the end of the day? Why can't you think? Just like your mother with her stoopid ideas, let’s have a baby, let’s get a Lexus, let’s try this radical new drugs testing regime where we make $1,000 a week

Frickin' pony.

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The Eschatologist: The Fugitive

"Quit following me, Jack. I mean it!"

"The truth can't be hidden anymore, Doctor."

"If you don't stop... Look, I can't be responsible for my own actions."

"And why is that, Doctor?"

"I..."

"Exactly. Your secret's out. You can't avoid the law anymore. I believe you when you say you didn't kill that scientist. Accidents happen. But everything still leads me to you and this alter ego of yours."

"Stop! I can't listen anymore!"

"David, you couldn't save your wife, and you couldn't save your friend..."

"Please. Don't make me angry, Mr. McGee. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry."

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Stacy: Self Aware

"Tense? Why am I tense?"

"Yeah. You've been making me nuts all day, what's wrong with you?"

"Hm. Let's see. Why could I be tense? Could it be...and I'm just spitballing here...that you're FUCKING MY BROTHER??!?!"

"There's no need to yell..."

"THERE'S EVERY NEED TO YELL! YOU'RE FUCKING MY BROTHER!!!"

"Well, it's just this thing you know? We met, sparks flew..."

"We've been married for less than a month, and YOU'RE FUCKING MY BROTHER!!!"

"Would you calm down please? It was only that one time."

"I swear, woman, you are so lucky today’s theme isn’t 'write about a justified homicide'."

Read more from Stacy's .

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Ted: On Schedule

For three nights now, right at 4:13, the noise starts. It lasts until 4:26. Thirteen minutes. Thirteen. Why? I don't know why, hell I don't even know 'what?'. I wake up and can't get back to sleep before dawn. I took a sick day today and sure as shit at 4:13 P.M. it started again. My wife never hears the sound. Never hears the screams or the machines or the steam whistle. Never notices the charnel house smell.

Yeah, I asked around. No one could tell me anything. Nothing ever happened to haunt the place.

I think I'm going crazy.

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Michele: Down in a Hole

My skin is walking off my bones. I’m uptight. Restless. I rub the skin on my arms until it flakes but it still feels like it’s crawling away.

I pace. Forward five. Turn. Back five. Five is all I can go in these shackles. I want to go ten, twenty, five hundred, home. I can’t.

It’s dark and damp and every sound is amplified. This place is cavernous. Yet I feel like I’m in a mousehole.

I hear footsteps, going away. A door slams, my heart jumps, my stomach drops.

I wonder when he’ll come back.

I pace forward five

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From the Comments - By David

People tell me I’m living in the past, that I can’t move forward because I keep looking back. But it isn’t true. I look to the future, maybe more than anyone. I’m very forward-thinking. Other people tell me that I am in fact too visionary, that I consider the future so much that I ignore the present.

I stopped listening long ago. What was, what is, and what will be are all just points on this grand continuum called life. Past, present, and future are almost meaningless to me now, in my enlightenment.

But other people can be so tense.

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