Vegetarian

Photo Credit: Lost Tulsa (Flickr.com)

“Come on, Betty,” said Roger. “Try some.”

He held up a fork with a piece of his steak on it, red and dripping with bloody juices. Betty moved her garden salad out of the way and gave him a sharp look.

“I know what steak tastes like,” she hissed. “Don’t shove it in my face.”

Roger shrugged and popped the fork in his mouth. He gave a contented sigh, smiled and sunk into his seat  a bit. “So good,” he moaned, and then picked up his knife, plunged his fork into the steak and eagerly began cutting another bite.

“I should have never let you talk me into eating here,” Betty said.

“Well, it’s your own fault you don’t eat meat,” Roger replied. “The rest of us don’t have to suffer.”

“You say it like I have a disease or something,” Betty said.

“It seems pretty sick to me, yeah,” he said, and then popped another piece into his mouth and began to chew. “Nature designed us to eat meat. What’s the big deal?”

Betty frowned. “I didn’t realize it was your turn to be the meat evangelist,” she said. “Was that the whole point in bringing me here? To throw all this in my face?”

Roger shook his head as he cut another piece. “Nope,” he said. “We came here because they serve a great steak, and steak was what I was craving. Simple as that.”

Betty decided to begin eating her salad, and the conversation lulled for a moment. Finally, she said, “I don’t think you realize what a temptation this is for me.”

“Oh?” Roger said. “You can have a bite. I won’t tell anyone.”

“No, it’s just that…” she sighed. “I used to love meat. If you’d have told me that I would become a vegetarian a couple of years ago, I would have told you that you were crazy. But the more I looked into it, the more I learned about what they do to those poor animals, the more I realized that I couldn’t keep eating meat unless I was willing to kill it myself. And you know, I wasn’t. So what other choice did I have?”

“Well, Jesus ate meat, so I think it’s OK,” said Roger. “Animals don’t have feelings like we do, you know.”

Betty sighed. “You say that, but I don’t think it’s true,” she said. “My cats definitely have feelings. So does your dog.”

“Well, kind of,” Roger said. “But that’s not really the same as, you know, cows and pigs and chickens. They’re not too bright.”

“Chickens aren’t,” said Betty. “Cows are pretty much all about eating. But pigs are smart. They’re one of the smartest types of animals there are.”

“Pigs? Really?” asked Roger. “Well, too bad. I’m not giving up bacon.”

“Not that it should matter how smart they are anyway,” said Betty. “We don’t eat animals because they’re smart. We eat them because we can grow them up to get really fat and then produce a bunch of unhealthy meat.  And then, we have so much meat that we wind up throwing a lot of it away, or using the by-products for all sorts of terrible things. It’s a horrible thing to do. We don’t show any respect to the animals, we torture them and butcher them, and then we package their pieces up so they don’t even look like animal parts anymore.”

Roger shrugged. “Yeah, but they wouldn’t even be around if we weren’t eating them,” he said. “We give them life so they can be food. The ecosystem can’t sustain them unless we’re out there feeding them and taking care of them.”

“Well, and that’s another problem,” Betty said. “Cattle farming is really bad for the environment. It puts a lot of methane gas into the air, it creates bad ecosystems where bacteria and viruses thrive, which means it can spread disease.”

Roger polished off his steak. “Yeah, well,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not giving up meat.”

“I know,” Betty said. And she went back to her salad.

Discrimination

Photo Credit: Litmuse (Flickr.com)

“Hey fatty, hit the gym!” someone shouted at me as a car blasted by.

I rolled my eyes. Stupid frat boys. They were just dumb enough, and just drunk enough, to find something like that funny.

I’ve always been fat. Not overweight, but fat. Really fat. Like Garfield in his first year fat. And no matter what I’ve tried, I’ve never been able to be anything but fat.

Honestly, it’s never really bothered me, and it wasn’t about to start bothering me then. Every now and then, I’ve found myself feeling a little insecure, sure. It’s hard to live in a world that obsesses over freakish women and feel like a normal person when you’re on the opposite end of the distribution.

I continued walking down the street, undaunted. It was a hot day, and I wished I could be wearing shorts. Unfortunately, I’ve got to wear two layers when I go out on walks — the world’s biggest pair of spandex shorts and a part of jeans to cover them. Ironically, the spandex shorts don’t do much to slim me down, but they do help keep my thighs from brushing together and getting rubbed raw by my jeans. It’s a real problem when you’re fat, though I’ve often wondered if skinny people suffer from it too. I could wear loose-fitting shorts, but then people see the horrible bulges hanging off my legs and tend to stare at them. I’m not self-conscious, but I’m smart enough to know that the more I cover up, the less I look like a spectacle.

I’m actually quite fashionable for a fat person. It used to be difficult to find clothes, but lately, with Americans getting fatter, there are more plus-size stores selling more stylish things. On that particular day, I was wearing blue jeans, a white shirt, and a loose black shawl made of thin fabric that was draped over my shoulders. They say you should wear vertical stripes to cut down on your horizontal curves, but I don’t like looking like a watermelon. I stick to solid colors, and wear clothes that fit well and that drape over my roundest parts. I also make sure to get my hair done regularly and wear plenty of makeup and jewelry. All of these things help detract from my shape. Just because you’re fat doesn’t mean you can’t embrace it.

I continued down the street, stopping at the building where my interview was going to be held. The potential job was at an office tucked inside an old shopping center, but I noticed that there were three places to eat within 100 feet of the store. That made me sigh a bit in frustration. I knew it was self-conscious to think along these lines, but I hoped it wouldn’t come up in the interview.

I went inside, introduced myself to the receptionist (who must have been a temp or about to quit, because that was the job I was applying for) and sat down next to a girl who looked like what I can only describe as a Barbie doll. She was blond, and thin, and pretty, with perfect teeth and a large bust.

“I’m Amy,” I said. “Are you here to interview too?”

“Yeah,” she said distantly, as if she wasn’t paying that close of attention to me. She didn’t provide any further discussion, such as her name or any pleasantries or anything of the sort. Pretty people tend to do that to fat people. It’s almost like an unconscious reaction, like they know they don’t need to try around us.

“Um…” I said. “So, are you from around here?”

“Yeah,” she said again, and looked down at her cell phone. She started fiddling with it, clearly set on ignoring me. I decided to abandon any attempt at communication with her and flipped through a magazine instead — not People or Us, which were both in the lobby, but the copy of National Geographic I’d brought with me.

Finally, the receptionist looked up. “Amy?” she asked, looking at the pretty girl. I stood up. “Oh,” she said. “I thought you were Agatha.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “Because I don’t look like an Amy.”

The receptionist smiled. “Exactly,” she said. “Come on, I’ll take you back.”

I was escorted to a small conference room, where two men in suits were sitting. The receptionist introduced me to them — Alan was the older of the two, sporting a ridiculous gray mustache and a plump belly tucked beneath his ugly red tie and worn gray suit. Joseph was the younger man, and he was quite striking in his red turban and navy blue suit. I assumed he was a Sikh, which was not so unusual for a college town.

I sat down, put on my best personality, and answered all of their questions. I knew that I had to make a good impression before they saw the Barbie doll sitting in the lobby, and I felt like I was doing so. As I stood up to leave, they seemed pretty happy with me overall. “We’ll be in touch,” Alan said, and Joseph nodded as he said it.

I didn’t expect to hear back from the firm right away, and it’s a good thing, because it was nearly a week before I got a call from the receptionist. Not the woman who had been there the day I’d interviewed, of course, but a bored, disinterested voice that seemed to be reading as she said, “Alan asked me to thank you for him and to let you know that while he enjoyed meeting you, we had another applicant who was more qualified.”

I sighed. It can be hard to be fat. It’s the one type of discrimination that’s still legal.

Virtually Better

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My phone keeps ringing. Whoever is calling it must really want to get through; they’ve ignored the instructions on my voicemail several times.

“Hi, you’ve reached Jerry,” it says. “I don’t check my voicemail, so don’t leave a message. Send me a text, shoot me an e-mail, or leave a comment on my blog, and I’ll get back to you.”

Simple instructions, right? But whoever this idiot is can’t follow them. So, with a deep sigh to remind myself how exasperated I am by the whole thing, I pause my game and take the call.

“Talk to me!” I say in the most obnoxious, game-show-host-er-iffic voice possible. “You’re on with Jerry! Make it snappy!’

“Uh, hi, Jerry,” a female voice says at the other end. “This is, uh, Trudy, from, you know, work…”

On a scale of 1 to 10, Trudy’s maybe a 6, and her shyness makes her more like a 3. But she’s getting divorced, she’s got no kids, and she’s lonely; that’s got to count for something. I guess I can make a little time for her. “Yeah, hey,” I say. “I don’t usually answer my phone because it’s just telemarketers. What’s up?”

“I, uh…” she says, and just leaves some dead air between us. I plug in my headset and resume my game while I wait for her to spit it out. “Uh, what are you doing?” she finally asks.

“Playing a game,” I said. “Halls of the Mountain King. Ever heard of it?”

“No,” she said. “Like, a board game?”

I sigh. “No, Trudy, it’s a computer game,” I say. “Probably the best game there is right now.”

“Oh,” she says. “I don’t really play a lot of video games. Just, you know, the sports one, and that Guitar Band Hero thing.”

“Well, I do play a lot of games,” I say. “Pretty much every moment I get, in fact.”‘

“Oh,” she says. “Well, um, I was wondering if maybe tomorrow you might want to go see a movie or something.”

I roll my eyes. “And pay, what, $10 a person plus another $15 for sodas and popcorn?” I say. “No thanks. I’ve got a sweet setup here, and I can get any movie I want to see off the ‘net. Plus, I don’t really watch movies that much anyway. I’d rather be playing games.”

“Oh,” she says. “Well, if money’s a problem, I don’t mind paying. I…” she pauses. I once again decide to let her spit out her thought as I continue playing my game. “…I guess I just need to get out of the house.”

“It’s not just the money commitment,” I say. “It’s the time. Two hours on a movie I probably don’t want to see. Another hour getting back and forth, and then, you know, all that sitting and waiting for the movie to start. No thanks. Not worth it.”

She sort of laughed and sighed in a really nervous way. “You, um, understand that I’m trying to ask you out for a date here, right?” she says.

I hadn’t realized that, but it sort of makes sense. Still, I’m not really interested in a movie. “Well, tomorrow’s not that great,” I say. “I play this other game, Mists of Moria, and my guild’s got a raid scheduled. So I really probably shouldn’t bail on them at the last minute, you know?”

“Is that really all you do?” she asks. “Play computer games all night and all weekend?”

“Pretty much,” I say.

She pauses. “I guess… I don’t really know a lot about them, but that just seems sad,” she says. “Don’t you ever want to get out and, you know, spend time with real people?”

Suddenly, Trudy is reminding me a lot of my mom. “You know, I’m not persuaded that it’s any better to be around real people,” I say. “These games are great. You can do lots of things in games you can’t do in real life, you know? And you never get bored. I mean, you out to see the one I’m playing now. It’s this huge, vast, fantasy world where you can pretty much do anything you want. To me, that’s a lot more fun than having to go stand in line behind a bunch of morons at the movie theater who’re just there to see things go boom. In my games, if things go boom, it’s because I made them do it.”

“So is that all you’re willing to do?” she asks. “I mean, I guess I could come over and you could teach me how to play. Do I need to bring my laptop?”

“Only if you’ve got a computer with a good enough graphics card to play it,” I say. “And if it’s a laptop, probably not.”

“Maybe we could take turns?” she asks.

“You’d have no idea how to play.” I say. “I guess you could watch me play, if you really want to.”

She sighs deeply. “You know… no, I’m sorry, but I don’t really want to, Jerry,” she says. “I was hoping we could go out, but you know, you’ve got to meet me halfway or this is never going to work.”

I wait to see if she’s got anything else to say. It sort of sounds like she’s crying on the other end. Women.

“All right, well,” I finally say. “I guess if you want to come over tomorrow, that’s cool, and if not, that’s cool too. I’ll be here either way.”

I hear her choking back a sob. “Go to hell, Jerry,” she says, and hangs up angrily.

I shrug to myself as I yank the headset out of my ear. “Her loss,” I say, and get back to my game.

Routine

Photo Credit: Wallyg (Flickr.com)

Every day, it’s the same. Get up, pee, have some coffee, read a little, do some stretches, shower, change, and then sit in my living room and build things. Some days, it’s wood, some days, it’s metal, some days, it’s plastic, and some days, it’s a mixture of the three. There aren’t any directions about what to build, or any indications about why I should build them; the materials show up in the morning, I build all day, and leave everything there when I go to bed at night. When I wake up, what I built is usually gone, and more materials are waiting for me.

Sometimes, another man or a woman will come into the living room and build things with me. One man, who looked fairly old, built a hammock in the corner, and they spent every day after laying in it and swinging back and forth while he read. He disappeared one day; we never knew what happened to him. He and I had spoken a few times, but it was always cryptic, as if he understood something I didn’t and wasn’t willing to explain it to me.

I tried to talk to some of the others once, but they don’t speak my language. One of the women who’s brought in is pale white, with silvery hair and smooth blue eyes. She used to talk to me, shouting at me in her strange tongue to do things. I was afraid of her at first; in my homeland, everyone had dark skin and short black hair with brown eyes. She looked very strange in comparison. But she, like me, was a prisoner of this place, and when she realized her shouting got her nowhere, she started sulking quietly and building things on her own.

I learned a little bit of carpentry and welding in my old life, and I always enjoyed putting things together. One day, I built a small doghouse. We don’t have dogs here in the house; they don’t allow them. But it made me happy to remember the dog I used to have, and the house I had built for him. I hoped that the doghouse would stay, but it was gone the next morning. That was the way things worked around here. I had come to accept that.

Some days, the routine would be different. There was a small hidden door leading into the house that would open up into a strange place. I would follow the smells of food and find myself walking into a hallway that looked very different from my house — full of strange curves and interesting carvings in the metal walls. At the end of this hallway, a strange thing would be waiting for me, a many-armed disc  floating quietly above the floor. In one of its arms, it would be holding a small object with a pointy end that it would jab into me. Then, the disk would float away, and a bright light would come on, driving me back down the hallway until I returned to my home.

I often wonder what is outside my home. I used to go out there quite a bit and stare at the landscape, but when I have tried to walk out of my yard, I’ve felt a hard surface, like I’m walking into an invisible wall. It’s strange, because there doesn’t appear to be a wall there. But yet, something is keeping me from moving forward.

Before the old man disappeared, he did something curious. One day, he trapped a beetle under a glass on the table, and he pointed to it.

“This is what we are living,” he said. “Just creatures trapped beneath a glass, being watched from above by things we cannot see nor comprehend.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “The bug is clearly trapped, and will die if we don’t set him free. He will run out of air, or food, and his life will end. But we live here, and we live well. We have things to build, and food to eat… how are we like the bug?”

“Our basic needs are met, because this is a special place,” he said. “A zoo, for beings that reside in another dimension. We can’t see them, but believe me… they are watching everything we do. And their children are laughing at the silliness of your building and my napping, and their adults are commenting about how much we are like them… and yet how inferior we truly are.”

This was all very confusing to me, and so I shrugged and smiled. “I just like to build things,” I said.

“Of course you do,” he sighed. “Because you were bred to. But I… I lived in the wild world once, and I remember what it was like to be free.”

Every day since, I have wondered about his words. Perhaps there is more to life than building… more to life than routine. But though the old man believed there was, I cannot conceive of a life that is any different from my own.

Time Pod

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It was disorienting, waking up in a cold gel, realizing I’d been sleeping for some period of time I couldn’t recall, sensing that I couldn’t move (or even remember how to move) while I was plugged in to the machine. But eventually, the pod opened up, and the goo oozed out, and there I was, lying mostly naked in a puddle on the floor, and the forms of the people of the future stood around me, looking down, trying to figure out what they’d found.

As it turned out, my pod was the only one that had been found so far. The future people had excavated the cryo facility where I’d been stored, and they’d pushed the button to release me. Thankfully, my pod was a self-contained system that was powered by an extremely efficient mini-reactor, or else I would have perished like everyone else from my time.

The future people were surprised to find me, and I quickly became something of a celebrity in their world. I was surprised at how much like us they were, to some degree; they had arisen out of some sort of apocalyptic dark ages and were just beginning to realize the scientific achievements our civilization had made. They had advanced beyond us in some regards, but seemed to have missed other things we’d found obvious, like air travel.  We were, to them, what the ancient Greeks and Romans were to us; a mysterious culture that was largely regarded as being filled with civilized savages. Media, on the other hand, was an advancement they’d made long before they developed a centralized computer network; as a result, media was a much more boring and dull thing than it had ever been in our own culture. These people preferred public theatre, where communities could gather and see their own members performing.

It took me some time to learn the language of these future people; their tongue was long and flowing, with few breaks between words. It was a language that was quite incompatible with our own, and when they had stumbled upon old examples of our media, they had been baffled by it. It was interesting, because their stories were quite different from our own in structure and purpose. The future people did not like realism in their stories; they preferred tales full of twists and turns, delighting the audience with magic without necessarily having a coherent structure or continuity to them. It was like watching dreams unfold on stage.

I was invited to one of these shows about a year after my emergence from the time pod. The director was particularly interested in the mythology of our era, and she thought it would be amusing to have me see her production and offer some critiques on its authenticity. I was more than pleased to do so, and wondered what mythology she might have found.

I knew that it was going to be a difficult show when the pantheon of the gods first appeared. The great and terrible god Coca-Cola had begun a global war with his arch-rival, Pepsi-Cola. This entire scene was presently with no hint of irony and, I suspect, no understanding of what these icons truly meant. A masked man dressed in black represented the terrible wrath of Coca-Cola’s red power; when he pulled out a red sword made of light, I realized that he was supposed to be Darth Vader, though his name had been adapted to simply mean “the Evil One” in the tongue of the future people. His henchman was an evil clown clad in red and yellow, though the future people seemed to have no idea of what a clown truly was. The two fought against a brave cast of animal warriors — characters I eventually identified as various Disney and Looney Toons characters. It was interesting to see human characters such as Superman and mechanical creatures such as the Transformers fighting on the side of Coca-Cola while the characters with more animalistic names, like Batman, Catwoman and Spider-Man were on the side of Pepsi-Cola, all based upon the animals they were named after. (Oddly, Wolverine was on the human side, the animal being long extinct in this future world.)

The whole miserable, wretched affair went on for four hours, taking great liberties with the characters and ultimately resulting in the characters triggering the dark ages. The crowd was triumphant; it had been an amazing stage show, and the story had been to their liking. The director asked me to come up on stage and share my views.

I stood there, not sure what to say as everyone watched in rapt attention. Finally, I said, “As one who lived through the Cola Wars, this production brings a tear to my eye as I remember all I endured.” That was taken as a great compliment, and the audience erupted into a cheer.

I left the stage, and went for a walk. It was terrifying to think that the future people could look back on our time and get so much so wrong. They truly had no understanding of our daily lives, or our intelligence, or our great culture. In their minds, theirs was better, and our time was an unenlightened era. And that thought brought a smile to my face, for how often had our culture looked back on people in previous places and eras and done exactly the same?

Oracle

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The general was nervous. He knew that his duty, as a good Roman, was to consult oracles before battle. He knew that he needed the gods on his side.

But as the old man tore apart the sheep’s bladder to look inside it, the general found himself starting to wonder why the gods couldn’t be a little more direct.

“Fortune favors you,” said the old man after a moment. “A shining path lies ahead. You will take it, and lead the legions to a great conquest for Rome.”

“I find that a little hard to believe,” the general said. “My forces are only half those of my opponent. I expect that we will resist them, but to move on to conquest? That seems a bit presumptuous.”

“That is your oracle,” the old man said. “The gods have chosen you.”

The general rolled his eyes. “The gods are fickle, then,” he said. “On my last three battles, they have chosen the other side, despite their good intentions.”

The old man raised an eyebrow. “A doubter?” he asked. “You doubt the word of the gods?”

“I doubt the ability to discern their word in such a manner, yes,” said the general. “I do this for my men, so the believe that the gods are on their side. I, myself, am not so certain.”

The old man laughed. “Then you understand the gods better than most,” he said. “Do you understand why the gods are fickle?”

“I would love to know,” said the general.

“Because you do not believe,” said the old man. “Not that belief  makes much difference in terms of the gods. Oh, I wonder sometimes if they are even there. No, because belief makes a difference in your own actions.”

“That seems like nonsense,” said the general. “Whether I believe or not, my actions will be the same.”

“But will they?” asked the old man. “If you believe that you are fated for victory, you will take bolder chances, place the lives of your men on the line more carelessly, because you will believe that they are fated to prevail against the odds.”

“You’re saying that my belief makes me a madman, then, and I am inclined to agree,” said the general. “I would much rather save the lives of my men than be a reckless fool.”

“But you miss the subtlety of all of this,” said the old man. “For if you were this reckless fool, as you say, your victories would be more assured, your troops’ morale higher, your legions’ dominance more powerful. Your men would be galvanized under the illusion that they were the chosen forces of the gods. And every victory would make them more and more certain of that fact.”

“Until their false confidence brought them down,” said the general. “I have seen that happen before, and I would not wish it on my men.”

The old man shook his head. “You think that their confidence was ever truly in the gods! Feh!” he spat. “It was in their general, the one who was favored, and who was wise, and who suddenly, began to believe the lie, began to throw their lives away carelessly. You should know better than that. You are clearly wise enough to question.”

The general was intrigued by this. “So you say that I should believe the lie for the sake of my men, but retain my doubts privately in times of great confidence,” he said. “And if I somehow can keep this double-minded way, I will be victorious in all that I do.”

“Precisely,” said the old man.

The general sighed. “You ask far too much of a man heading into battle,” he said, and turned and left.

The old man shrugged, and got back to his meditations. Let the man believe what he wanted. The message was still the same.

Elevator Pitch

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“What floor?” Kevin asked as the fat tourist stepped in to the elevator.

“17,” the tourist said, and then did a double take. “Oh my god,” he said. “Are you Kevin Sears?”

“Um, yeah,” Kevin said as the doors closed.

“All right, look,” said the tourist excitedly. The elevator begin to ascend. “So, imagine that there’s this planet, right, where humans touch down, and they start this space colony, and they’re trying to make the place, you know, livable. And the whole time, they keep searching for alien life by cutting through these thick branches in these woods that cover the whole planet, right. Except, they find out at the end of the movie that they’re not branches at all; they’re neurons in a giant, planet-wide brain, and it’s actually God. But they’ve destroyed the part of the brain that has any sort of compassion, and so the planet destroys them. And then… and then! There’s a sequel where the people back on Earth have to wait and be judged while God returns to destroy them for what happened.”

“What, is that, like, a book you’re reading or something?” Kevin asked.

“No, that’s my elevator pitch,” said the tourist. “What do you think?”

The door dinged. “17th floor,” said Kevin. “Your stop, right?”

The tourist moved towards the door, but sort of leaned his back up against it to keep it from closing. “So, c’mon, what do you think?” he asked. “Is that something you’d want to be in?”

“Honestly?” asked Kevin. “I just want to go to bed, man.”

“But…” the tourist said. The door started to close, but he pushed on it with his back, and it went back in. “I mean, this thing could make a lot of money with you directing it. I’ve got some great ideas for casting, too.”

Kevin yawned. “Sorry, man,” he said. “I’ve got my own projects, you know? But good luck with yours, though.”

An alarm went off. The tourist stepped back into the elevator.

“I’ll ride up with you,” he said. “Let me give you my contact information or something.”

Kevin shook his head and pushed the “open door” button. “Look, man, I’m kind of sick right now,” he said. “There’s this big party going on downstairs, and it was just too much, and I sort of need to just call it a night, you know?”

The tourist was silent for a moment, and then nodded. “All right, I understand, Mr. Sears,” he said. “Tell you what… I’ll leave a packet for you at the front desk, and you can pick it up when you check out, OK?”

“Sounds great,” Kevin said. “Take care.”

******

Kevin woke up with a start. His phone was ringing.

“Yeah?” he said into it. He felt terrible. This illness was really coming on strong.

“Hey Kevin,” said his agent. “Look, I know you weren’t feeling well, but you’ve gotta be more careful about sneaking out like that without taking someone with you. This guy you ran into on your way up is down here killing the party, man.”

“Fat guy, looks like a tourist?” Kevin asked.

“Yeah, you know who I mean,” said his agent. “He got in saying he was a friend of yours. Gave them your room number and everything.”

“I don’t know him,” said Kevin. “He gave me some lame elevator pitch.”

“Oh yeah. He’s tried to give it to everybody here, too,” said the agent. “Most of the people down here are so wasted they’re just sort of looking at him.”

“Well, have security get him out of there,” said Kevin.

“I’m going to to. Just wanted to make sure he wasn’t actually a friend,” said the agent. “You think I should have him thrown out of the hotel, too?”

“Yeah, sure,” said Kevin. “I don’t want to have to see him again.

*****

The tabloids had a field day with the story — Kevin Sears, famous director, banned a fan from his hotel just for having the nerve to talk to him. Kevin sighed as he put down the National Enquirer. It was too much. Why did these people feel entitled to treat him badly just because he was a celebrity?

He sat there thinking about it for awhile, and suddenly, an idea struck him. Not about a brain planet or anything stupid like that. No, a documentary about a hapless man who had a dumb idea for a film and who made nothing but enemies by talking about it. A cautionary tale about how not to work your way into the film industry.

Smiling, Kevin picked up the phone to call his agent. This fat tourist was going to get way more than he’d bargained for.

He Snores

Photo Credit: Jamelah (Flickr.com)

Jane didn’t know what she thought marriage would be like.

But as she lay awake in bed, listening to her husband snoring, she realized she’d never expected for it to be so dull.

Jane knew the movies she’d seen and the books she’s read weren’t real; they always made relationships look like they were so easy and effortless once you found that special person. And Jane and her husband had found things easy at first; their marriage had started off well, and they’d quickly adjusted to sleeping in the same bed and sharing the same house.

But what those stories didn’t tell you was the aftermath. There were some nights — and tonight was one of them — where Jane felt terribly alone, even with her husband sleeping beside her and snoring loudly. He’d fallen asleep at 9:00. There had been no time for cuddling, no time for sharing intimate stories or wishing each other a good night. She hadn’t even realized he’d been asleep. And when she’d tried to hug him, he’d yelled at her and went back to sleep.

Jane sighed loudly. It didn’t seem to bother him in the slightest. She looked over, and saw his eyelids shuddering. He was dreaming. She wondered about what… or who. She found herself wondering if she ever even appeared in his subconscious.

Her friends had warned her that even a good mariage was hard. She’d thanked them and told them she believed them, but secretly, she’d believed that they’d be different.

But they weren’t. And Jane knew that she, too, would be telling her unmarried friends the same sad story when they secretly believed that they were different.

Heaven or Hell?

Photo Credit: Jiggs Images (Flickr.com)

“I don’t really understand this arrangement, Dad,” said Jacob as he pushed his father’s wheelchair down the hallway. “But I suppose it’s a little late to be asking questions, huh?”

Isaac said nothing. He just sort of drooled and looked ahead with a glassy stare in his eye. He’d been doing that a lot since he got here.

“I mean, you always took care of me,” Jacob continued. “So I’m really thrilled to be taking care of you, now. I mean, I am, Dad. You have no idea.”

Isaac gave a sort of grunt. Jacob wasn’t sure if it was in protest or agreement. Not that it mattered; what had happened had happened. It was a little too late to worry if Isaac was OK with it or not.

“The stroke was a little bit of a surprise, I’ll grant you,” said Jacob. “I wish it could have worked out differently. I wish Mom had been around to take care of you, still. I talked to her the other day, you know… found out what happened to her, why she disappeared when I was a kid. I really had no idea you two had gone through so much together.”

Isaac grunted again. Jacob wiped some drool off his chin.

“I mean, to think that I was at the root of all your arguments,” he said, and laughed. “They always tell kids not to blame themselves. But this is one of those crazy situations where the kid really was to blame, huh?”

“I’m not bitter or anything,” he continued. “I mean, things worked out the way they did, and I’m fine with it, Dad, really. And for what it’s worth, Mom’s happy now, too. You’ll never believe it, but she sort of turned her life around after she left. Got involved in a church, started reading the Bible, even became a Sunday School teacher for awhile.” Jacob laughed again. “I mean, can you imagine mom teaching Sunday school after all those drugs the two of you used to do? You’d think she’d have had enough of religious experiences.”

Isaac flinched a bit. Jacob wasn’t sure if it was intentional or not, but he put his hand on his father’s shoulders all the same to steady him and show support.

“You know, it’s interesting, Dad,” Jacob continued. “People spend their entire lives trying to be good and get into heaven, and all God wants is a little bit of humility… just a sliver of admitting that you’re wrong and that you want to be forgiven. That’s all He asks. Why is that so hard for people?”

They were approaching a doorway. A uniformed man stood outside of it, looking bored. There were some words written above it in chiseled print, but they were hard to read from too far back.

“I mean…” Jacob felt some tears welling up now. “Why was it so hard for you?”

Isaac said nothing. Jacob continued pushing him forward as he wiped away a tear with a white sleeve. They were nearing the door now, its simple structure belying its complex meaning. Jacob often wondered how such a small and remarkable door could be a gateway to such a place of isolation and suffering. He looked up at the words above it.

“Abandon all hope ye who enter here,” he read. “Is that what it’s like, Dad? Because I’ll tell you, when things were reversed, and you were pushing me around… I never felt that, not once. I always felt loved.”

He sighed, and turned to the man by the door. “Checking my dad back in,” he said. “I’ll be back for visiting hours tomorrow.”

The man nodded.

Jacob knelt down next to his father and stared into the man’s vacant eyes. “I never would have imagined that Heaven would be like this,” he said. “We all feel the loss, and we all want to help. It’s so empty up there, because everyone’s in Hell tending to those in need.” He sighed. “I wish I could take you up there one day, Dad. But even if I can’t, I’ll get you as close as I can every day for the rest of eternity.”

Jacob stood and walked away.”See you tomorrow,” he said to the man.

“Yep,” said the man. “See you then.”

First Step on an Unknown World

Photo Credit: WisDoc (Flickr.com)

I don’t know what we were expecting.

We’d all been through Space Corps training on the colony ship, and we knew what we’d find. But some of us — I think the younger and more romantic of us, the ones whose only perceptions of Earth were shaped by the entertainment vids we had stored onboard the ship computer — were expecting the place to be lush and full of alien life. Flora, at the very least, and hopefully some interesting fauna.

But as we exited the colony ship, it was clear that this place was just a giant hunk of rock sitting atop a lifeless ocean of water. We couldn’t breathe the air, of course; with no plant life, there was no reason for oxygen to be in the atmosphere. But I think that some of us hoped we’d find something like the stories about the unspoiled wilds of the Earth — a sprawling forest, or a magnificent prairie, or a tree line atop a deep blue mountain ridge cutting into the horizon.

But no. This place had none of that. The sky was a deep purple, and the sand was red and rust-colored. This place had been selected for colonization because it was like the young Earth, the Earth no human being had ever known. We were seeing, in a way, our own genesis. And yet as we stood outside the colony ship and stared out at this alien, barren place, we knew that though this was meant to be our new home, it would be hundreds or thousands of years before it ever truly felt like it.