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Cake day: January 26th, 2024

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  • At first I saw something silhouetted on a card table. Then Action entered the story and I had to choose an adventure after being asked what happened.

    I figured how it rolls might depend on who pushed it, and I already knew that. Kevin. Why he did it was less clear. Muscle memory placed us at a table in the canteen. Sitting across from him on any ordinary day, some rolled up piece of napkin or a wad of garbage paper might present itself as a projectile to reach him across the plates and glass between us.

    Tonight we were in my kitchen, together there for the first time. I’d moved the table into the corner with both leaves open to make extra space for snacks for the party. We pushed the pretzels and empties aside and sat facing each other off the edge of the table, knees nearly interlocked.

    My chin was on my hand and my heart was on the ceiling. We were laughing about something when I noticed the toy baseball on the table. The stairs creaked and the sound of background chatter crept in like a breeze that chilled my spine. He flicked the ball, and it rolled fast off the edge then fell to the floor with a flat thud.

    The phone on the wall behind him rang, and I clicked to review the test questions.







  • I’m on board with the complementarity objective, but dividing society by collar color is a means for distributing things less. Time barriers reinforce worker segmentation by industry. Different rituals and religious traditions evolve on either side, and Romeo and Juliet are lost in their respective crowds. Convinced their problem is too much work, Four Day Workweek Jesus arrives to champion a revolution towards a three day week, and Four Day Workweek Satan points out that arranging and organizing other people’s lives (for free!) has always been in support of the same capitalists that the bleeding heart Christians seem so upset about.





  • They called themselves the Kool Kids but we knew them as the Terror Twins, the Masonic Menace. They’d force their way into any bit of joy or loss, a trail of rubble and scars bolstering their smothering presence, the moon’s the only force strong enough to pull them away.

    At least that’s what some say happened the night Kool-Aid Man landed on the rocks. Everybody has their say on how he got there, but the facts of the matter are he did get there, the tides were shifting when he did, the moon was full and the sky was clear, and a group of yutes had just started a fire for a clam bake near where shards of glass were later found. All the king’s horses and men gathered to put him together again, but with one piece lost in the sand he bled out entirely.

    The coroner informed Warm-Hinder, who froze in place. A sudden strong gust cracked his icy joints in half, sending his upper parts rolling down 95. When he finally thawed out somewhere near Maryland he dragged himself to the woods, to the remotest cabin of the least connected mountain in all of Appalachia.

    Out front sat Marge and Paddy, who offered a refill to the dehydrated tumbler and pointed to the trail of sweet tears leading to the stranger on their porch. He drank deep then reached for a horseshoe on the ground near his foot, hurling it at the hosts’ hearts. A cloud shifted as he did, and a ray of light caught the glass in the old couple’s hands. A rainbow fired from between them blinding the guest, who fell to the floor grasping at his eyes.

    “I can’t see, I can’t see!” he cried scrambling on all fours, kicking up dust and throwing what rocks his fingers could find.

    “What is it you can’t face?” asked Marge.

    “I thought if I tried hard enough,” he trailed.

    Paddy chuckled through the break in the noise and shared a slice of moldy bread.

    The two sat sipping in silence where they had been and where they’ll stay rocking. The one watched as the rain fell and the sea filled with boiling fire, and the earth pulled in closer still. He heard rhythm in his frantic breathing and saw seedlings sprouting out of softened soil. The beating of his heart filled his feet and he began to dance.

    Night had fallen by then but the forest was bright and the path was clear. So he danced with the gravity pulling him through forest and flood and ocean until daybreak. And when he arrived home he saw the gates and gears of the city lifting and turning, and a river of Red 40 flowing through.