It was late January, 1943, and Jürgen Heidelbaum was lying around, not really doing much of anything.

In fact, it was his goal to do as little as possible at the moment. The sniper’s bullet had missed him by about two feet, and he cowered behind a piece of rubble for cover. There, he lay in complete stillness with his legs drawn to his chest, waiting for another shot to ring out in the silence.

In other words, he was essentially just lazing about.

He wasn’t alone. All over the town of Stalingrad, men like him were huddled together behind heaps of debris, blown out buildings, and ravaged war machinery. Milling around. Dawdling. Loitering, if you want to be cruel. The Russian winter swirled gently around them, a soft but frigid breeze that whistled quietly through the paneless windows and empty streets, lit golden by the setting sun. Hard to imagine a more tranquil scene.

Admittedly, things had been slightly less peaceful a few hours earlier.

Late that morning, a Russian platoon had attacked, materializing out of the urban sprawl like ravenous wolves, eager to rip apart their German invaders. Jürgen was manning an MG 32 heavy machine gun at the time (which is to say, he was laying prone on the ground behind it, occasionally moving his finger over the trigger to squeeze off a shot — really, not much effort, when you think about it). The fierce but poorly-trained Russian soldiers died easy. Some of them didn’t even have rifles of their own, and had to scavenge from their dead compatriots as Jürgen rained steel fury upon them. It only took seconds for them to die, and after four hours, the Red Army had lost too much blood to maintain its offensive charge. The Russians retreated back into their labyrinth of crumbling stone and broken glass, and all was quiet again, save for the occasional opportunistic pot shot from a sniper’s lair.

Four hours out of twenty four.

A measly sixth.

You don’t need a math genius to tell you it was a mostly peaceful day.

This was par for the course in Stalingrad. The battle had technically been raging for over six months, but that was only if you completely disregarded the actual data. Even though hundreds of thousands of people had been killed and nearly every building destroyed, one couldn’t deny that on average there was hardly any violence happening on any particular square foot of the city at any particular time of day. Jürgen couldn’t appreciate this mathematical reality as he cringed behind the rubble, but if he’d just taken a moment to consider the facts, he’d have realized that, statistically, he was in a pretty good spot.

Across from Jürgen, on the shelled remains of the city street, sat a Panzer tank, cold and lifeless. It had run out of diesel fuel weeks ago and was more like a great metal sculpture than a killing machine. Even now, in his perilous predicament, Jürgen had to admire the artistry in its engineering. If he could just make it across the street behind the tank, he’d be safe. Well…safer, anyway. Technically, he was already quite safe, considering he hadn’t actually been hit by any bullets from the Russian sniper. But Jürgen was the kind of guy who enjoyed the excesses of life, so he resolved to make a dash for the tank anyway.

In a flash of pure adrenaline, he uncurled himself from the fetal position, sprang to his feet, and lunged towards the steel monstrosity. He felt the shockwave of another bullet whizzing past him before the crack of the rifle even registered, but it might as well have happened a thousand miles away. The sniper’s shot missed wide, just like every other bullet that had been lobbed at him during this so-called war, and Jürgen flung himself into the safe cover of the frozen tank, unharmed.

Peace continued its reign.

From there, Jürgen was able to slip past the tank and behind the wall of a ruined factory, back into territory held by his German counterparts. The sniper was unlikely to follow, so he was safe as long as he kept his head down. A little ways up the street, he saw a few of his fellow soldiers huddled together in the remains of a department store, listening to a radio broadcast. He couldn’t make out what was being said but he could tell it was in German, and the male speaker’s tenor was solemn and serious. Jürgen preferred music to the Nazi leadership’s stultifying speeches, but as clearly demonstrated, there wasn’t much else going on, so he figured he might as well join them for a listen.

Hunched over, he scrambled across the street, through the ragged hole in the wall where the department store’s front door had once been, and took a seat next to his emaciated compatriots. They shushed him as he greeted them and turned up the volume.

Just a bunch of guys, hanging out, listening to the radio.

Jürgen recognized the voice of Hermann Göring, one of Hitler’s high command, waxing poetic to a German public back in Berlin about defeat, about sacrifice, about the 300 Spartan warriors at Thermopylae who’d bravely fought Xerxes’ hordes to their deaths. Jürgen should’ve been happy. The study of mythology was one of his favorite pastimes on holiday, when there was time to laze about and think upon loftier subjects, but he knew Göring wasn’t actually talking about the doomed Spartans of millennia past. He was talking about the doomed German 6th Army today, encircled not by invading Persians but rather Slavic natives whose Motherland lay smoldering and ravaged around them. He was talking about Jürgen.

Jürgen stood up and turned the radio off before walking back into the street. The other men remained seated, staring at the quiet radio, saying nothing. A peaceful silence descended once again as Jürgen trudged down the muddy road.

It hardly seemed fair that he should have to forfeit his own life to the savage untermensch massing their strength just a few blocks over. He’d barely done anything to them! His march to Stalingrad from Berlin had been just that — a brisk walk across the steppes. A hike, really. Perhaps a train ride or two, not unlike the holidays he’d taken to the countryside as a young boy. Sure, there’d been a village or two burned, some peasants executed every once in a while. Jews, Gypsies, and Bolsheviks. But these were minorities, all of them! Fractions of fractions! Their sufferings accounted for mere days out of entire years.

How many mornings had the spring birds sang their songs even as gunfire and shells exploded in the distance? How many summer afternoons passed lazily by, like clouds of smoke and ash riding a gentle, easterly breeze? How many autumn leaves fell unremarked upon, to rot back into the earth by their millions and make fertile the ground of the chosen, as has always been the just and natural order?

Jürgen was too tired and hungry to cry or be angry or do much of anything except continue his trudge down the ruined boulevard — not dissimilar to a fatigued vacationer, groggily wandering the streets of some foreign locale after a long night on an expired visa. But what did he have to be so melancholy about in that moment? His war was over. This evening stroll represented the height of his responsibilities. Sure, there was still some paperwork needed to officiate his once-proud army’s surrender, but for all intents and purposes, he was already living in peacetime.

Once again, the sniper’s bullet came faster than the sound of its departure from the rifle.

Only this time, it found its target. Jürgen didn’t even have time to feel it before it tore through his skull and ejected his brains onto the thoroughfare. No pain, no suffering, no lingering in the foggy mist between life and death. Not even an awareness of how close death had been the whole time. The teenage Jew he’d executed last spring had known his rifle was pointed at her and felt the cold steel of its barrel against the back of her neck. But Jürgen felt nothing of the sort. He died more peacefully than even his sweet old grandmother, whose fevered demise went on for weeks.

The Russian sniper was among the greatest humanitarians in Stalingrad that day.

Having satisfied his mission to humanely dispatch the Nazi invader, the Russian sniper sat up and leaned his back against the wall of the frozen apartment in which he’d taken up position. Even though he’d really just been sitting on his ass all day, watching Jürgen through his rifle’s scope, the sniper decided now was as good a time as any for a smoke break, and lit his last cigarette. As he peered out into the quiet evening, he thought about how little violence had been needed to end Jürgen’s life. Only three bullets, each traveling faster than the speed of sound. The final shot had taken less than a second to reach its destination.

Jürgen’s body lay in the street with a quiet stillness the sniper could only dream of inhabiting. For him, life would go on, perhaps for many more decades. Or perhaps not. He wondered if death would find him as agreeably as it had found Jürgen. He wondered how long it would stalk him, and if he’d see its shadow lingering in his peripheries. He wondered if, when death finally caught him, they’d put that old Catholic command on his tombstone…

“Rest in peace.”

If you follow Star Wars, you’ll have heard about THAT scene in Andor Season 2, in which (spoilers) an Imperial officer attempts to rape a character named Bix.

It was shocking to lots of fans, and for the past week they’ve been arguing whether the scene should’ve been scrapped.

Opinions fall roughly into two camps:

1. CAMP 1: Star Wars is mostly a lighthearted space fantasy that’s typically aimed at a family audience, therefore sexual assault doesn’t belong

2. CAMP 2: Star Wars has always explored dark themes, and Andor is aimed at adults, therefore sexual assault shouldn’t be out-of-bounds.

Both of these arguments miss the real reason the scene is so off-putting in modern Star Wars (aside, of course, from the inherent unpleasantness of sexual assault).

Modern Star Wars tried to pretend sex doesn’t exist until now.

As crotchety reviewer, Mr. Plinkett, notes in his review of The Force Awakens, modern Star Wars is missing the sex appeal that undergirded the original trilogy and some of the prequels.

The sexual tension between Han Solo and Princess Leia is palpable throughout the whole series. Han spends most of the first film with his shirt almost all the way unbuttoned. Leia plays off his romantic rivalry with Luke (until they realize they’re related…whoops). And, of course, there’s Padme’s dominatrix outfit in Attack of the Clones…

Yes, darker sexual themes are also explored, such as Jabba’s Twi’lek dancer who gets fed to the rancor and the “slave Leia” costume. But these feel more natural in the narrative because it’s not the first time we’re encountering sex in the story — and cruelty isn’t the only framing by which we’re allowed to encounter it.

You need the light side of sex if you’re going to explore its dark side in Star Wars.

[NOTE: I wrote this before Episodes 4–6 released, but the criticism still stands, given the order in which this story was told.]

Andor, and the rest of modern Star Wars, is completely devoid of any sex, save for a cringey scene in The Acolyte.

It’s completely sterilized in terms of romantic tension. There’s no love, no overt attraction — nothing to make us feel these characters have any biological impulses. It’s more like everyone’s a congenial office colleague who’s just taken the workplace harassment training and couldn’t get horny anyway because they’re on too many antidepressants.

That’s why a primal, aggressive sexual assault scene feels so gratuitous, exploitative, and shocking.

Modern Star Wars goes out of its way to stop us from enjoying sex as a positive force in the universe, but then it allows us to be entertained by its worst incarnation. In this show, Bix and Andor clearly have some lingering attraction to each other, but all we get to see of it is some longing looks and a forehead bump. Meanwhile, her brutal assault gets an explicit, drawn-out scene all to itself.

No.

Sorry, Star Wars. You didn’t earn the right to use sex in that way.

Don’t play with sexual assault in your story unless you work hard to earn it.

Even if you think sexual assault has a narrative place in a darker, more serious Star Wars, it doesn’t negate the necessity of good storytelling to get there.

That’s true no matter what story you’re telling.

Sexual assault is powerful and meaningful because it happens all the time in real life, so if you’re going to introduce it into your whimsical space fantasy, it has to be done very skillfully.

Unfortunately, that’s not what happened here, and THAT’s why everyone feels wrong about it.

Shitting your pants over Trump’s erratic tariff game?

I’ve read dozens of opinions on the matter, informed and otherwise, and all I’ve managed to come up with are dozens of competing and incompatible declarations about what’s definitely, certainly, obviously going to happen. I imagine it’s been a similar experience for you (unless you’re willfully excluding opinions you don’t want to hear).

Is our strong and glorious economy about to fall off an economic cliff? Or is it dogshit wrapped in fancy paper that won’t actually change very much when the veneer gets torn away? Is history’s most insane tariff gambit actually a masterful stroke of 4D chess that will steward in a new Golden Age?

Nobody really knows what’s going to happen in the long run, so don’t believe anyone who says they do.

Maybe shitting your pants truly is the correct response, but while you head out for new underwear, take a moment to consider that pretty much every public-facing part of economics is a lie.

Nobody is working with real data anymore.

At least, not in the professional pundit or politico class — and certainly not in the doomscrolling section of the social media sewer.

The stock market is overvalued and high on hype from the same people who think Fartcoin is truly worth three-quarters of a billion dollars (as of this writing). The Consumer Price Index is manipulated into near meaninglessness to hide inflation and price gouging. Nobel-winning economists confidently proclaim that food, shelter, and energy are unimportant variables in economic forecasts.

In short, nobody sees the real picture. It’s obscured by bullshit. The entire information space in general is a cesspool of lies and marketing spin masquerading as reliable data.

Nowhere is this truer than at the intersection of economics and politics.

Consider the ultimate hot potato of economic bullshit: unemployment statistics.

When I first started paying attention to politics back during George W. Bush’s term, I learned that Republicans were juicing the unemployment statistics by not counting people who’d given up looking for work.

Dropping entirely out of the workforce due to lack of opportunity seemed to me like the purest definition of “unemployed,” but those rightwingers were like, “Uhhhh…actually…that doesn’t count.” Then, Barack Obama got elected and the script flipped. Then, it was the Democrats painting rosy pictures with gussied-up employment statistics, while Republicans pointed out the sleights-of-hand.

Cue the same cycle for Trump Season 1 and Biden after him.

Or consider the lead up to 2008’s housing market crash.

Remember how the ratings agencies gave AAA status to bundles of the riskiest mortgages imaginable so Wall Street traders could keep inflating a bubble based on imaginary spreadsheet data?

And remember how predatory lenders kept this system alive by selling the pipedream of prosperity-via-homeownership to America’s hollowed-out working class?

Remember how, when it all came crashing down, the “experts” and analysts and politicians said the only correct response was to give the architects of this failure huge bonuses and let them continue running the world?

(Seriously, look up how many of 2008’s star players found cabinet positions and other critical jobs in every single administration since, including the current one.)

“It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.” —George Carlin

The “respectable,” “responsible” people in our media and politics have led us into disaster after disaster and faced no consequences.

Their whole careers are one giant participation trophy. In the end, they usually get better jobs and more power. It’s quite impressive, really.

Maximum effort is always made to maintain the status quo, no matter how much it fucks normal losers like you and me, and thick layers of protective bullshit are slathered around it like convulsive armor to discourage us from questioning the vaunted wisdom of the bovine fecalists.

Now, we’re at another inflection point where the general public is asking, “what the fuck’s happening,” and everyone who was wrong or lied about everything is quick to say, “Here’s exactly how it’s going to be.”

And the biggest liar of them all is the President

Lest anyone think I’m in the MAGA crowd for daring to criticize the doomsayers, let me say that President Trump is the most prolific bullshitter of our time, lying most often about his financial success.

His resume is littered with failed businesses, bankruptcies, and lawsuits. His original allure and celebrity were fabricated out of New York City in-crowd culture, not true financial prowess. His current allure is made from spite for the very same cultural elites who created him in the first place along with a bizarre new conventional wisdom in America which claims that anyone who can do a decent standup act is worth taking seriously.

So, the bullshit goes all the way to the top.

But in a weird way, it’s sort of comforting.

It means nobody has the authority to say there isn’t hope.

So why not hope, at least some of the time, anyway?

We’re in a period of massive change not unlike similar periods in history, where the old ways of thinking don’t work like they used to. The 20th century world and its order are falling apart as new ideas and technologies take hold. Inevitably, there will be disaster, as there was at the turn of the last century. But there is also great opportunity.

So shit your pants if you must, but make sure you also invest in some sort of spiritual bidet as well.

The other week, I wrote about how attempts to silence people on speech-centered grounds just makes their positions more popular.

Then the Trump administration went after Mahmoud Khalil, a relatively unknown anti-Israel protester whose face is now plastered all over the internet and every news outlet.

Nicely done, guys.

Who is Mahmoud Khalil? Exactly.

Depending on who you ask, Khalil is either an arch-terrorist responsible for masterminding harassment campaigns of Jewish students or a pacifist scapegoat censored by hypocritical “free speech” Republicans (who may or may not be taking orders from AIPAC/Mossad/Your Local Jewish Deli Owner/Etc.) It doesn’t really matter for the purpose of my argument about censorship’s futility. It holds whether Khalil is an asshole or not.

The point is, you probably never heard of Khalil until a couple weeks ago.

The war in Gaza has been raging for almost a year-and-a-half now, with protests against Israel starting mere moments after the events of October 7. Since then, there’s been some celebrity endorsement of the anti-Israel cause and some support from expected Democrats like AOC and Rashid Tlaib, but for the most part, the identities of the actual protestors have gone without names or faces — often literally, since so many of them wear masks. This has made it easier to characterize them as an ominous mob of ruffians, and thus easier to dismiss.

Now, we can put a name and a face to their cause.

“History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”

Mark Twain is supposed to have said that, and it’s hard to argue here.

Trump’s team blundered Khalil’s case from the outset by framing his arrest in terms of “anti-semitism” and “national security,” which should sound familiar if you read my recent piece on Hitler. The administration then quickly tried to reframe the issue in terms of immigration law, terrorism, and whether or not the United States is obligated to offer residence to non-citizens who espouse certain viewpoints. Perhaps they have a case somewhere in there, but it doesn’t negate the weakness of their opening argument.

By starting with vague offenses that could easily be construed as protected speech, Trump’s team gave critics a perfect opportunity to make a martyr of Khalil.

Now, the administration is forced to fight a two front battle on both legal and public relation grounds, and it’s difficult to see any conditions for a satisfying victory in either arena.

Stupid Mistake or 4D Chess?

Trump’s supporters love to interpret his actions as part of an elaborate web of galaxy-brained scheming in which every move, no matter how stupid seeming, is actually a calculated outmaneuver.

Such an interpretation is being attempted right now.

The theory goes that Khalil was chosen specifically to bait Democrats into defending unpopular territory. Despite what you see on social media, the general public is fairly sympathetic to Israel, and they’re definitely not impressed by some of the antics employed by anti-Israel protestors on campus. It’s unclear to what degree Khalil was truly involved with the worst elements of this, and as of this writing, he’s yet to be charged with an actual crime, but his association with the movement is enough for some people to assume guilt.

It’s also an easy assumption that whatever Trump is for, the left will be reflexively against, so if Trump comes out against an “America-hating terrorist sympathizer,” the Democrats will make supporting him their cause célèbre.

If that was the plan, then bravo, I guess. But I suspect not.

It’s much likelier Trump’s team ran afoul of the same hubristic trap that so many other leaders have fallen into throughout history — the idea that it’s both easy and wise to shut up inconvenient people. It’s not and never will be, no matter what level of tyranny the ruling class is willing to exert in the effort.

Again I ask how many times we have to learn this lesson.

If Khalil is guilty of actual crimes, then he should be charged with them and punished. That should’ve been the plan all along. Sure, his defenders would probably still attempt to claim persecution on grounds of free expression, but they’d have less ammunition to work with and fewer allies. And Trump wouldn’t have sullied his reputation with people who would otherwise have been on his side but who fear the precedent that could be set by these actions.

So even if this is 4D chess, it’s still a weak move.

When I think of Nazi Germany, “free-wheeling marketplace of ideas” isn’t the first thing that springs to mind.

And yet, last week Face the Nation’s Margaret Brennan, in her relentless quest to surrender as much of CBS’s credibility as possible, claimed the Third Reich was a place where “free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide.” This astonishing statement was followed by a 60 Minutes segment covering German police efforts to tackle hate speech and misinformation online. The piece approvingly documented raids by armed German police officers of the houses of German citizens found guilty of offensive tweets and memes.

Yes, that’s right. Uniformed men with guns kicked down doors to arrest people for things they’d written. But it’s the memesters who are supposed to remind us of Nazis.

Believe it if you can, dear reader.

You know who else liked free speech…?

The not-so-subtly implied takeaway from both pieces and others like them is that free expression, whether tweets from German shitposters or speeches by the Vice President of the United States, is a slippery slope that leads directly to Hitler.

It’s a tragically ignorant thing to believe when you look at the facts, as I will soon demonstrate. But it’s downright sinister when promoted by representatives of the supposedly free press, who should (and probably do) know better. The whole thing drips with authoritarian condescension, so let’s put this myth to rest with extreme prejudice.

Free speech absolutely did NOT bring the Nazis to power, nor was it championed by them once they were in power.

The truth is almost the exact inverse.

Censorship and speech restriction were instrumental to the Nazis’ rise as well as their reign of terror.

Don’t fall for the Weimar Fallacy

It’s often suggested that if only the German government had tamped down on the Nazis when they were a fledgling political movement, Hitler would never have come to power.

This is called the Weimar Fallacy (because Germany’s government was called the Weimar Republic at the time) and it’s completely ahistorical. Germany did have laws limiting speech on a number of issues, including antisemitism, and the Weimar government frequently used those laws to crackdown on Nazis. They’d disrupt Nazi events, deplatform speakers, and even imprison prominent party members, such as Julius Streicher, founder of the racist, antisemitic newspaper, Der Stürmer.

All this did was make the Nazis more popular.

It allowed them to portray themselves as victims of a tyrannical government which despised its own loyal citizens. This resonated deeply with many Germans in the 1920s and 30s, who also felt betrayed by their government after its capitulation in the First World War. Foreign boots had never touched German soil the entire war, and yet ordinary Germans were subjected to harsh sanctions and humiliating poverty as though they were an occupied nation. Mismanagement and bad economic policy furthered the suffering of average people, who felt they had no true representation in their government.

Hitler attributed this degraded state of affairs to systemic corruption by conspiratorial forces, and the fact that the system kept conspiring to silence him only strengthened his case.

Assume your opponent will one day have access to your weapons

Once in power, the Nazis used the very same censorship laws they suffered under to oppress their opposition.

The original speech codes were designed to stamp out radicalism, so all the Nazis had to do was define their opponents as radicals. Then they could justify their own brutal crackdowns as matters of national safety. Cue uniformed policemen kicking down doors and burning books in the town square.

Even in Hitler’s inner circle, a culture of censorship prevailed.

He’d fire military experts and policymakers when their observations about reality didn’t line up with his preferences. A constant fear of saying the wrong thing permeated amongst his most trusted advisors, until only sycophants and yes-men remained. Ultimately, Hitler’s severance from objective truth led to catastrophic strategic blunders that unraveled the Third Reich at the cost of millions of German lives (and tens of millions of non-German lives).

So, no. Free speech wasn’t involved in any part of this.

Fear isn’t a good reason to accept bad arguments

One has to wonder why anyone would even attempt to argue such a ridiculous and easily disproved point.

Undoubtedly fear has something to do with the answer.

I know lots of people are unsettled by the shameful rhetoric that’s thrown around these days. Many are also disconcerted by the rapid decentralization of information that’s occurred over the past decade, making it easier than ever for unscrupulous actors to gain audiences and influence. Many also see one-too-many reminders of the not-so-distant past.

Hitler’s era was also one of massive technological change and radical populism.

But if you really believe, as many do, that we’re living in a similar time, it might be wise to consider what really happened back then. What was tried? What failed? What should we learn from one of the darkest eras of human existence?

And why should we listen to those who refuse to learn?

Weird Lit Magazine published another short story of mine in their Winter Issue and also interviewed me. Apparently, I’m weird enough to be their featured author. It’s a great honor, I hope you’ll agree.

My story is called The Scan, and they had this to say about it:

The most effectual dystopian fiction is both believable and disturbing, and Jon Swihart’s short story “The Scan” harnesses both qualities comfortably. Invoking deep questions about the far reaches of technology, patriarchy, intimacy, and reality, it feels a little too easy to read, and, importantly, still hard to digest.

— Fawn, Senior Editor

Intriguing? I should think so.

Please go read The Scan and support the independent literary scene.

Check out my interview with Senior Editor Dina Dwyer here.

And as always, thank you for your support.

One of the biggest post-election Ls for liberals has been the embargo lifting on public support for Trump, particularly among celebrities and athletes.

It used to be career suicide to express anything but hysterical contempt for the Orange Man. God help you if you said something even tepidly positive. Now, NFL players wear MAGA hats on the field and do the “Trump Dance” in between downs.  

You’ve seen the Trump Dance, right?

It’s the half-assed, geriatric shimmy Trump does at rallies to the tune of “YMCA.” It’s become cultural shorthand to show support for the President-elect, and it’s popping up all over the place, most notably in athletics. From football to soccer to the UFC, it’s the end zone dance of a newly energized American right.  

Hey, that was our thing!

“Hypocrisy much?” liberals shout at their conservative peers.

Not long ago, conservatives were the ones decrying the politicization of sports by leftwing causes such as Black Lives Matter. Right-wingers booed when players took the knee during the National Anthem, following Colin Kaepernick’s lead. They complained that ESPN had become the sportsball wing of MSNBC. They chafed at the Black National Anthem and told LeBron James to “shut up and dribble.”

“We just want to watch the game,” conservatives said then. Now, they cheer for blatant displays of partisanship from players on “their” side.

For many liberals, the takeaway is simply that conservatives never had any principles to begin with. For conservatives, it’s a sort of national coming out party. Maybe they’re both right.

But perhaps there’s a more important lesson to be learned.

Whatever weapon you give yourself will eventually be used against you.

The Trump Dance cultural phenomenon is a great example of the old axiom about power’s fleeting nature.

For the better part of two decades, liberals completely dominated every corner of entertainment outside of Fox News, and seemed to believe this state of affairs would go on forever. They interpreted their cultural hegemony as a mandate to overturn old norms regarding when and where political agitation was appropriate. Late night comedy programs, morning shows, award ceremonies, and even commercials became fair game for partisan tut-tutting.

And then there was sports.

Americans traditionally had a handshake agreement that sporting arenas were neutral territory, safe from political sermonizing (save for boilerplate patriotism, military reverence, and all things 9/11). But the left decided this state of affairs was no longer acceptable. Everything was political, whether you wanted to acknowledge it or not. No escapism allowed. “The things we have to say are too important, so you’re just going to have to deal with it,” was the attitude.

The implicit assumption was that this would only apply to one side of the conversation.

Trump’s blowout election and the subsequent gloating by public figures shows that conservatism has more cultural power than previously thought. Whether that’s good or bad is a discussion for another time. The point is you should never assume the status quo will remain forever — especially when you’re thinking about demolishing norms and traditions meant to safeguard everyone.

You never know when you’ll lose the throne.

Democrats ought to remember this cultural vibe shift when advocating for censorship.

Political cheerleading at sporting events is one thing, but there’s a much more important battle going on within the left over the righteousness and necessity of censorship.

Politicians, news organizations, and academics of the left have ratcheted up calls for speech suppression in recent years, citing rises in things like “hate” and “misinformation.” Their targets include everything from social media posts to media personalities to TV shows. And it’s all done from a position of perceived dominance in these arenas.

Just listen to the way they talk.

“If you don’t police your platforms, we’re going to hold you accountable,” Kamala Harris said during her 2019 presidential run regarding content on social media (and this was before Elon bought Twitter). Her running mate, Tim Walz, said numerous times this year that the First Amendment doesn’t protect “hate” and “misinformation.” (It does.) Hillary Clinton said, “If [social media platforms] don’t moderate and monitor content, we lose total control.” And let’s not forget the Biden-Harris administration’s failed attempt to create an Orwellian Disinformation Governance Board within the Department of Homeland Security, helmed by a woman guilty of spreading disinformation herself.

This is the stuff of parody and satire, the kind of lunacy you can’t believe people fall for in fiction, but it’s happening in real life.

The rot is cultural, not just political.

Savvy readers will, of course, note that terms like “hate” and “misinformation” are entirely subjective and can be redefined by whoever is in “control.”

Actually, that’s a lie. You don’t have to be savvy to understand this concept. It’s pretty fucking basic. And while you can expect politicians to capitalize on shallow vagaries, you’d think our self-proclaimed intellectual betters in media, academia, and journalism would see the obvious pitfalls.

You’d be wrong.

It’s not just politicians calling for more power to regulate what the rest of us can say or consume. Outlets like The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and the New York Times, which profit from the free flow of ideas, have also implied a need for more restriction on speech. So too have countless academics and students at universities supposedly founded on the pursuit of truth — in fact, a recent study suggests the majority of college students now think professors with “offensive” opinions should be reported (even if those opinions are supported by data).  

Are people just pretending not to see the danger in this or are we really that dumb?

America is one amendment away from institutionalized thought crime.

In the United States, we have the luxury of toying with censorship because our Constitution mostly prohibits the police from getting involved. Mostly.

Thanks to the First Amendment, our would-be censors have to resort to extrajudicial tactics to shut people up. They do things like pressure media companies into removing undesirable content and users, or bully advertisers into boycotts of sites like X, where unacceptable speech is said to thrive. Other times, they try peer-pressure campaigns and reputation destruction against influential voices like “horse paste eating” Joe Rogan.

But across the pond, the UK offers a much more troubling example of where calls for censorship inevitably lead.

Police in Britain will show up at your door for tweets they don't like, and normal, working class people are currently in prison for lengthier stays than pedophiles and rapists for posts on the internet. This at a time when Britain is actually releasing convicted criminals because the prisons are too crowded. There’s also the “non-crime hate incident” which allows police to create official records of people who have not committed any crime but have reportedly expressed “ill-will,” “ill-feeling,” or “dislike” towards another.

It's amazing the society that produced Orwell and Milton and Rawls could fail to see the short-sightedness of all this.

It’s only a matter of time before the censor becomes the censored.

Aside from debate over the morality of censorship, there’s an insurmountable tactical problem.

The parameters of acceptable speech are vague and will always need to be defined and policed by somebody. The pro-censorship position depends entirely on the belief that you and your allies will be the ones in charge, always and forever. It assumes your opponents will never take the reins of power and use the tools of suppression against you. It’s a bad assumption, as any glance at a history book will tell you. That’s why a neutral norm that protects free expression for all is much better and worth defending.

Which leads us back to the Trump Dance.

Liberals in America got rid of a norm that kept sports relatively neutral. Now, Trump supporters are using the Trump Dance to exploit the vacuum where that norm once existed, and it’s been very effective at amplifying conservatives’ cultural cachet. Why wouldn’t we expect a similar sort of turnabout to happen in the realm of censorship too?

In fact, you can already see how something like that might play out.

When conservatives assume power, will it become “misinformation” to say trans women are women, as Rep. Nancy Mace would have it? Will it be “hate” to tweet about abortion rights? Will “fact checkers” pressure Elon Musk to ban left-leaning X users who questioned voter turnout numbers during this election?

I sure hope not. But the door has been left wide open.

As a satire writer who’s tired of losing great premises to reality, I beg everyone not to walk through it.

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FORWARD

This is my first attempt a horror story, and it was a lot harder to write than I expected.

Unless your only goal is camp, jump-scare, or gore porn, there’s an important balance that must be maintained in horror between logic and absurdity. Veer to close to logic, and you lose the element of fantasy that underscores our fears, particularly of the unknown. Indulge in too much absurdity, and you lose all the stakes that ground your worldbuilding and underpin tension.

It’s a difficult balance because fear, the bedrock of horror, comes from logic but expresses itself in absurdity only to feedback on itself over and over again until you’re not sure whether a character’s motivation comes from reason or madness. I’ll leave it to you to decide if that balance was achieved here.

All I can say is that I had a lot of fun writing this story, and I’d be glad to write more.

Listen to the whole thing at once. (1hr, 24 min)

Or listen chapter by chapter below.

CHAPTER ONE

The creature in my basement appeared when I was 13 years old, long after most kids stop believing in that kind of thing.

I thought I was done believing in it too.

The novelty of simple terror wears off once you’ve seen a few scary movies and taken a few science courses, and slowly but surely, the imagination that once brought your deepest fears into such sharp relief dulls. You stop bothering to look in the dark corners of your life except to have a little fun every now and then.

But that’s just part of the trick.

I didn’t tell anyone about the monster, of course. Not voluntarily. Nobody would’ve believed me anyway. For one thing, the creature only appeared at night, which was a little on-the-nose. You rarely hear about creepy monsters appearing in the daytime. Zombies and aliens can be around during the day, sure. But ghosts and vampires and monsters? They have to wait for night.

If my monster had appeared during the day, people might’ve said, “Well, now that’s something,” but since it appeared at night, they’d only have said, “Way to be original, champ.” They wouldn’t have been too thrilled about the monster appearing in the basement either. I guess what I’m saying is people crave too much novelty these days. That’s a shame because evil is so boring. It’s one of the reasons it’s able to get away with so much.

 So, anyway, this boring, tragically unoriginal monster waited until around 2:45 a.m. to reveal itself to me. You’re going to roll your eyes when I describe the encounter to you. I had just finished playing videogames on my desktop PC, which was setup on a desk tucked away in the little nook under the staircase. Maybe if I’d been allowed to have my computer in my room, none of this would’ve happened, but my parents knew I would stay up all night gaming so it was forbidden.

This was a Friday night, however (technically Saturday morning), so my parents’ logic flipped — on weekends, if I stayed up all night gaming, it meant I wasn’t out drinking and having sex (although, I think if they had seen some of the degenerate things my GPU had rendered in the small hours of the night, they’d have preferred alcoholism and teen pregnancy). I’d just shut down the computer and the desk lamp, and was about to hit the overhead light switch when I heard a rustle down the hall.

The basement was partially finished, with a large den and a bedroom off to the right, and a bathroom to the left but at the end of the hall was the unfinished storage room where we kept the washer and dryer, the furnace, and a cluttered mess of boxes and old furniture my parents had inherited from my grandmother when she died. That’s where the rustling came from. Usually, the door was kept shut but when I flipped the switch for the hall light, I saw it was slightly ajar, with about a foot’s worth of darkness peering back at me.

A gray hand gripped the door just beneath the knob, its fingers larger than a grown man’s, with jagged, broken nails encrusted in some dark, dried filth. I froze and felt my pulse quicken. The hand tensed and relaxed its grip several time, as if riddled with anticipation, and then threw the door all the way open. I didn’t get a good look at the creature as I turned to run up the stairs but I made out that it was tall, lanky, and humanoid in construction, bounding towards me on all four limbs, which were each an unsettlingly long length. Also, I was pretty certain it was naked, but I’m not sure if that made it more or less frightening. Probably more.

In my haste, I reflexively hit the light switch like I always did when I left the basement, darkening the hall as I scrambled up the stairs. I swear I felt the creature’s cold hand graze my bare foot. When I reached the landing I turned and saw that the monster had halted its pursuit at the bottom of the stairs and stood halfway in the darkness peering up at me. Its smiling, toothy grin was too big for its face and it leered up at me with gaping eye cavities that seemed deeper than the thing’s head could accommodate. A few strands of wet black hair fell over its face, and it didn’t seem to have a nose.

This depiction sounds disturbing but if I’m being honest, just looking at the creature made me slightly less afraid of it. So much of fear is uncertainty. Now I knew what the thing looked like so my imagination didn’t have to get involved.

I was still uncertain about what it wanted, though.

A moment ago, it seemed like it wanted to kill me but now it just stood there, panting and watching, clutching the side wall, tensing and relaxing its hands. My instincts screamed for me to run — run to my room for my old baseball bat, to the knife block in the kitchen, to the closet where Dad kept the pistol I wasn’t supposed to know about — but the rest of me was overcome by curiosity and doubt.

This couldn’t possibly be happening. A monster from the basement that chased me up the stairs? Come on. It had to be a dream.

“You’re not real,” I said, remembering something I’d read about lucid dreaming. All I had to do was acknowledge this was a dream and I could bend it to my will. “I could turn you into a cat or a hot anime chick or something.”

“Kill…Brother,” it said, its voice a raspy, barely audible whisper that seemed to require great effort to generate. “Kill. Bro..uh..the..her,” it managed to say again.

“You want me to kill my brother?”

It made a noise I interpreted as laughter and pointed at itself with its long, gray finger.

“You want to kill my brother?”

Its smile grew a little wider.

“Why?” I asked.  

It gasped a few inaudible syllables and then held up four fingers.

“Four?”

Then it pointed its index finger towards me.

“Me?” I asked. “You want to kill my brother for me?”

 “Youuuuu.”

The word trailed off into a raspy breath, and then, without hurry, it slinked back into the darkness out of my sight. A few moments later, I heard the storage room door shut down the hall. I’m not sure how long I stood there on the landing, listening for the creature to return, wondering if I’d really seen it at all, but eventually I took a timid step away from the staircase and another. It took all my courage to look back around the corner again and down the stairs but all that looked back at me was the darkness.

My head hurt and my eyes ached and fatigue rushed through my body, which was the way I often felt after a long night behind the computer. I’m just more tired than I expected, I thought to myself. I’m hallucinating. I just need to go to bed.

I walked backwards down the hall to the living room, keeping an eye on the entrance to the basement until I reached the staircase leading to the second floor where my room was. The second floor was dark, so I turned on my phone’s flashlight and tip-toed to my door. Once there, I turned on the light, shut the door, and searched my closet and the space beneath my bed to make sure nothing was there.

Already the image of the monster was beginning to blur in my mind. Head still pounding, I sat upon my bed and replayed my interaction with the creature, trying to piece together which influences my imagination had used to conjure it up. Which games or movies were the likeliest culprit? As I browsed my mental catalogue, my thoughts became harder to hold together and fatigue finally got the better of me.

The morning sunlight was only a few hours away but I spent them shivering atop my bed, fully clothed, with the lights on.

CHAPTER TWO

“That will be lovely!” I heard Mom saying to no one as I crept down the stairs the next day. “We’ll meet you at Arrivals. Which airline?”

I say next day and not next morning because it was nearly four o’clock in the afternoon. I’d slept almost eleven hours. Most parents would’ve woken their kids up by noon and scolded them for being lazy bums but my mom was a pediatrician and knew that sleep was one of the most important things for my adolescent development. As long as I got my homework done, I could sleep in as long as I wanted on the weekends. Usually, this was something I appreciated but today I felt a great sense of loss at the sight of the low golden sun and its long, dark shadows. In two hours, it’d be night again.

“Guess who’s coming to town for the week,” Mom said when I walked into the kitchen where she was preparing dinner. She didn’t wait for my groggy answer. “Michel!”

My older brother, Michel, away at college. The pride of the family. My parents had actually named him Michelangelo, if that was any indicator. He, however, told everyone his name was just Mike. Mom settled for Michel as a compromise because she couldn’t bear such a pedestrian truncation. Nor should she have. Michel was anything but pedestrian. He was only twenty-one but already he’d finished his degree in biology and been accepted to Duke’s medical program.

His shadow was even longer than the rapidly lengthening ones outside but I never minded living in it. Michel was one of the kindest, humblest young men on the planet and even though we were nearly seven years apart, I felt a strong kinship with him, almost as though we’d been twins. He never made me feel like the accident I obviously was.

To be fair, neither did my parents. Not on purpose. They loved me with all their hearts. It’s just that they didn’t seem to know what to do with me. Everything about Michel was going to plan. He’d be a prestigious doctor in no time, just as he’d been groomed, and I…well… Maybe computer science? That was respectable enough. Good pay. I didn’t yet have the heart to tell them I wanted to build videogames for a living.

“Michel’s in town for a conference on memory and neuroplasticity,” Mom said, “and he’ll be here all week.”

“Kind of last-minute notice, huh?” I said.

“Oh, you know how busy he is,” she said.

“Is he staying here?” I asked and began making myself some eggs and toast.

“Well, of course, sweetie,” Mom said. “Your father’s straightening up his room and then we’re going to pick him up at the airport later this evening.” She diced an onion and shoved it into the slow cooker. “So, you better eat up now because dinner will be late.”

“Dad’s downstairs?” I asked, and dropped an egg.

I didn’t wait for Mom to answer. I rushed over to the basement’s entrance and looked down the stairs. All the lights were on and I could hear a familiar rustling. Heart pounding, I crept down the stairs and into the den. The door to Michel’s room was wide open but so was the door to the storage room. That was where the rustling was coming from. I stood still a moment listening, trying to determine whether the sounds indicated any violence but as far as I could tell, it was just boxes scraping against each other and an occasional grunt.

Slowly, I started down the hall, stopping at my brother’s room to peek inside. It was a spacious room with its own bathroom and adorned with tasteful furniture from Crate & Barrel, which I later learned was an expensive designer store even though the name made it seem like it was just stuff somebody found on an old boat. Michel liked expensive stuff and Mom and Dad liked to buy it for him.

Aside from a few boxes my parents had stored in there, all my brother’s leftover belongings were arranged neatly where he’d left them years ago, covered in a thin layer of dust. However, the bed looked slightly amess, as if someone had lain atop it recently. There were indentations in the pillow and comforter of a roughly humanoid shape. Maybe Dad just took a rest on it, I thought.

I continued down the hall towards the storage room and could hear the faint sound of music. Dad had his headphones on but I could still tell it was Soundgarden. It was amazing he could hear anything these days. He certainly didn’t hear me come into the storage room.

He was picking through a plastic bin amidst a stack of boxes of Christmas decorations, old clothes, and toys my parents were saving for when one of us — probably Michel — had children of their own. The bin he was looking in was full of CD jewel cases. He’d taken a few out to look through the liners, tossing the bin’s plastic lid aside. I noticed a large, streaked handprint on the dusty lid, far too big to have been Dad’s. I wondered if he'd noticed.

“Jesus Christ, son, you scared the shit out of me,” he said when he finally turned around and yelped at the sight of my presence. He took off his earphones and stepped away from the bin, chuckling at his fright. “Have you been poking around in here?” he asked. It wasn’t so much accusatory as it was hopeful. Dad was forever holding out that I’d give up on drum-and-bass and come over to the side of “real” music, the best of which just so happened to be conveniently located in this bin of his old CDs.

“No, I only come in here to do laundry,” I said.

“Oh, well, maybe your mom was scrounging around down here,” he said. “Everything’s out of place. Can’t seem to find anything.”

I looked at the stack of boxes again and noticed a slight but unmistakable pattern to the disarray, as though someone or something had pushed a pathway through the clutter. To where, though? The path led only to a bare concrete wall.

“Oh well,” Dad said. “I’m supposed to be putting stuff away, not taking it out.” He put the jewel cases back in the bin and placed it haphazardly atop a cardboard box full of Michel’s old textbooks. “Come and help me clear out the rest of the stuff in your brother’s room. Mom told you he’s coming tonight, right?”

I mumbled an affirmation, still looking at the subtle path through the stack of boxes. Dad went back to Michel’s room, still talking to me, but I wasn’t listening. Trembling, I pushed my way through the boxes towards the wall to see where the path led. I noticed faint streaks of a sickly black liquid streaked across many of the boxes, as if by long fingers, which got darker as I got closer to the wall.

Leaned up against the wall was an old rucksack for Michel’s paraglider that Dad had bought him but which Mom had forced him to give up for fear his life would end early in the rather pointless pursuit of fun. To be fair, Michel did seem to become a daredevil with a death wish when using it. Dad agreed to keep it around and give it back when Michel moved out but his studies left little room for recreation. There was an unmistakable large, black handprint on the rucksack.

I moved the bag aside and saw that it was covering a small drain, no bigger than 10” in diameter. Its grate was sealed by a thick layer of grime and corrosion and looked as though it hadn’t been opened since the house was built in the 60s. As I bent down to look into the drain, a carboard box began to rustle next to me. I jumped with fright and backed away but the box continued to rustle, as if something inside was shifting its weight back and forth. It’s probably just a mouse, I thought to myself, trying to sum up the courage to look inside. When I finally got up the nerve, I lunged at the box and tore it open and discovered I was more correct than I thought. The box was full of old action figures but also a big, brown rat. I shrieked and dropped the box, which spilled over on the side, dumping its contents, including the rat, which scampered away into the maze of boxes.

“Everything all right in here?” Dad poked his head back into the room.

“Rats,” was all I could manage over my heavy breathing. “I saw…a rat.”

“Goddammit,” Dad said with a grimace. “I’ll have to get some traps tomorrow. Where’d he go?”

I pointed in the direction where the rat scurried off and Dad began picking his way through the boxes looking for it. Meanwhile, I started putting the action figures back in the box. Then I saw something hidden among the Luke Skywalkers and Captain Americas and Batmen: The creature, but in plastic form.

It looked like any other action figure, its plastic limbs frozen in a single gesture, moveable only at the shoulders and hips. My heart pounded as I tried to decide whether this was a good discovery or evidence of my madness. It’s just a toy, I thought to myself. I must’ve resurfaced the memory of it. Except I couldn’t remember ever seeing this toy before or what franchise it was from. Maybe that was explainable too, though. This was a box of Michel’s old toys, not mine.

“Dad, do you know what this action figure is supposed to be?” I asked.

“How the hell should I know?” he said without looking.

“I just don’t remember it.”

Dad turned to look, clearly annoyed, but when he saw the toy his face became somber. He took it from me, looked it over, and handed it back.

“Sorry, son, I don’t remember every toy you and your brother played with,” he said, and turned back to his rat hunt. “Sure is ugly, though.”

He began picking through the boxes at a quicker rate, and I thought it was odd he didn’t mention all the black smudges all over the place. I pocketed the toy so I could ask Michel about it when he got home and was about to go back upstairs to finish making my very late breakfast when Dad said, “You know, I was thinking…” He stood up and looked at me.

“You spend a lot of time down here on your computer, and Michel is probably never going to live at home again.” He frowned, having made himself sad with that thought but then pushed through. “So it doesn’t really make sense for Michel’s room to be down here and yours to be upstairs. I know your mom doesn’t want you spending all your time playing videogames but you’re a young man now. You can be responsible, right? So, when Michel goes back to school, let’s get you set up in his room. You can have the whole run of the place.” He gestured to indicate the entire basement. “What do you say?”

“Uh…well…,” I stammered.

This had been my goal ever since Michel went off to school — his room was so much bigger and nicer and more private — but now the last thing I wanted was to be in the basement after dark. I wondered why Dad was bringing it up now and he seemed puzzled that I didn’t immediately accept. “Maybe Mom’s right,” I said. “I can get a little carried away with the gaming if left to my own devices.”

Dad grinned. “Well, you’re more responsible than I was,” he said. “When I was your age, I was hooked on Quake. You ever play? It’s a classic. I’d blow up monsters for hours and hours but…” He shook his head. “I have to admit, I’d let my imagination get away with me afterwards thinking about what it’d be like if the monsters were real.” He chuckled. “But Quake’s tame compared to the shit you kids play today. I’m sure you’re desensitized to everything.” He turned back to the boxes. “Anyway, if you want to move, let me know and I’ll help you.”

“Thanks,” I said, and excused myself back upstairs.

Mom was just finishing cleaning up the egg I’d dropped on the floor and she wasn’t happy about it.

“I’m not your maid, you know,” she said. “What’s the matter with you anyway?” I fumbled for an answer but couldn’t create any actual words before mom noticed the lump in my pajama pants pocket. “What’s that?” I took the monster figure out and showed it to her. She feigned revulsion and surprise but not fast enough to hide the brief flicker of recognition I saw in her eyes. “You had some strange toys,” she said, her demeanor colder but less hostile.

“It wasn’t mine,” I said. “I think it was Mike’s.”

“Michel wouldn’t play with something like that,” Mom said and changed the subject to things she wanted to do with Michel while he was in town.

I finished making my breakfast, scarfed it, and hurried upstairs to take a shower before it got dark. For some reason, I thought it would be safer to shower in daylight. I guess it’s just a human thing to think nonsensical thoughts like that.

Most of our scary stories happen at night but most of our actual atrocities happen during the day. Even morning isn’t safe. There’s a passage in Man’s Search for Meaning where Viktor Frankl talks about observing a beautiful sunrise at Auschwitz. So you see? Any time can be terrifying.

Luckily for me, I got through the shower without incident. The monster toy was still sitting on the sink where I left it and I stared at it with curiosity while I toweled off.

“We’re on our way out,” I heard Mom yell from downstairs.

“Now?” I yelled back with alarm.

 “Your father and I are going to pick up a few things at the store and then head to the airport to get Michel,” she said.

“Hold up, I’ll come with. I’m almost dressed,” I said, and barreled out of the shower.

“I don’t think so, mister,” Mom said. “I know someone who stayed up all night gaming and slept in all day. There’s no way your homework is done.”

“But —” I said.

“Just do it now and you’ll be done by the time Michel gets home,” Mom said.

“But I don’t —” I said again.

“It’s not a discussion,” Mom said in a pleasant, singsong voice as she opened the door.

“Bye son,” Dad helpfully yelled up, and then shut the door behind him.

And then I was alone in the house, watching the sunset through my bedroom window.

CHAPTER THREE

A big problem with my homework was that I had to do it at all. There are a few studies that show it doesn’t help students learn better. Unfortunately, since I’d already done my statistics homework for the week, I knew those studies weren’t very good. What a bullshit elective.

The other problem with my homework was that it often required my computer, which, as already discussed, was in the basement. If only I wasn’t such a fucking nerd I could’ve gotten a laptop like all the other kids and done my homework anywhere, but you couldn’t put the kind of graphics card I needed in a laptop. In fairness, I wasn’t expecting creepy basement monsters to be part of the calculus. (I might’ve still gone with the desktop, anyway.)

I still wasn’t sure whether what I’d seen last night was real or not but I didn’t want to find out alone. My solution was to wait for Michel to get home. He’d be down in his room, so at least I’d have company. Maybe he’d know what to do. They had to be teaching him something at college.

I spent the next couple hours in my upstairs bedroom messing with the figure of the creature and trying to do research on my phone. The weird thing was that the figure seemed to fluctuate in size every time I looked away. Not by much, but enough to notice. Also, once, when I stepped out to use the bathroom, I came back to find it standing upright on my desk, and I was pretty sure I hadn’t left it that way.

I took a photo of the figure and did a reverse image search but it only returned irrelevant results — or so I thought. I was about to stop scrolling through the pictures when a small, low-resolution image caught my eye. It looked like the picture hadn’t quite loaded all the way but there was something familiar about the pattern of the pixelated colors that caused a sinking sensation in my stomach.

I tapped to enlarge and a few more pixels loaded in, enough for me to realize it was an image of the creature standing at the bottom of my staircase last night, as if I’d snapped a photograph from my exact perspective at the main floor landing. That got the old heart racing. It didn’t help that the image continued loading to higher and higher resolutions. After a few seconds, I could zoom all the way into the creature’s hideous face, and I nearly jumped out of my clothes when its toothy smile suddenly grew wider. Must have been a GIF.

I regained my composure and tapped the associated link to see where the image came from. It took me to an unformatted webpage that contained only a few lines of text.

He who goes first was first, is first, will be first.

He who follows falls hollow.

Click here to kill Michel.

I wasn’t in the habit of clicking strange links on strange websites but since everything else about my life was diverting from convention, I figured what the hell. When I tapped the link, it took me to another unformatted page featuring only the image of Michelangelo’s David, but instead of David’s face, it was my brother’s, and there was a knife stuck in his heart. Bright red blood trickled down the white marble.

Then, without warning, the website crashed and a notification popped up to tell me I no longer had a Wi-Fi connection. The music I’d been playing for comfort cut out as well, leaving me in the cold quiet of the fading dusk.

A split second later, there was a clang of metal on the hardwood downstairs in the kitchen, the sound of a knife falling on the floor, which seemed a little cliched to me but was nonetheless frightening. Slowly, I reached over to my desk to pick up Dad’s pistol, which I’d taken from the closet shortly after my parents left, and sat silently with it pointed at my bedroom door, cracked open a couple inches. The figurine of the creature was still on my desk, and I put it in my pocket just to be sure it didn’t try any bullshit.

Then I heard uneven but heavy footsteps on the hardwood below. Whatever was making the footsteps ambled around the kitchen and living room, stopping every few moments, and then renewing its pacing with slightly more urgency. This went on for several minutes until I heard the creak of the basement door opening, and then the footsteps got quieter and quieter until I couldn’t hear them anymore.

Then the power went out.

Our house was situated in one of the more forested areas of the city, a small suburb for middle-class strivers like my parents, out of the way and isolated but not so secluded that we didn’t have neighbors. We weren’t doing that well. And good thing too, because it meant I could see that the lights were still on in the other houses. The creature must’ve done something to our house exclusively. I was pretty sure the breaker box was in the basement but there was no way I was going to go find it.  

I didn’t even want to turn on my phone’s flashlight because the creature might see it and know I was still in the house. But then I heard something pushing at the metal heating grate in the corner of my room so I turned on the flashlight and pointed it in that direction. The grate popped up out of its housing in the floor and the creature’s gray hand reached up out of it. I aimed the pistol and squeezed the trigger but nothing happened. I hadn’t chambered a round yet.

You’d think with all the shooters I played I’d have had some idea how to operate a firearm but it turns out clicking a mouse button isn’t a translatable skill. I wished Dad had taken me to the range like he’d taken Michel so many times and a flash of resentful anger shot through me.

“Maybe when you’re a little older,” Dad had said, “when your hand-eye coordination gets a little better.”

He hadn’t actually said that last part but I knew he was thinking it. I’d been a disappointment on the physical front, a fact I was reminded of as I struggled to pull back the pistol’s slide. I’d seen James Bond do it, so I knew it had something to do with making the pistol work, but it was heavy and resistant, and I wasn’t sure if I was doing it right.

My hands were shaking pretty bad and by the time I actually managed to rack a round, the creature had spaghettied half its body out of the vent, like an extrusion of fucked up Play-Doh. It stretched its arm out to swat the gun away.

Well, at least I know it’s afraid of guns now, I thought as I watched the pistol clatter across the floor a few feet away.

As the creature pulled the rest of its body out of the great, I attempted to make a dash for the door, but it caught me by the arm and held me fast. Its skin was so cold I could feel it through my hooded sweatshirt, and the gaping holes of its eyes were mesmerizing to look into because I kept expecting to see some glint of bone or flesh at the back of the empty cavities but there was only endless darkness. Its teeth on the other hand were recognizable as human, only larger to match its size, crooked, and rotting.

Once the thing was all the way out of the vent it stood a good eight feet upright. The strange thing was that, like the previous night, I felt less afraid now that it was out in the open despite its hideousness. I even felt bad for it in a small way because of how terrible it smelled. It can’t have had much luck on the apps. Not that I knew anything about that either.

“Please don’t kill me,” I said as I shrunk away from it.

Its blue-black lips pulled into a wide smile.

“To…morrow” it croaked, with slightly more definition in its tone than when we’d last spoke.

“I’d really prefer not to die any day,” I said.

“Kill…bro…ther,” it said.

“No!” I shouted.

“For you…”

Outside, I saw the headlights of my parents car swing into the lane. So did the creature. It wheezed what might have been a chuckle and pulled me out of the room by the arm. I tried to resist but the creature was too strong and eventually my feet gave out. The creature dragged me down to the living room and then towards the basement. I flailed impotently, hitting and kicking at it.

When it dragged me past the end table at the foot of the living room staircase, I was able to grab a heavy decorative candlestick holder, which I then used to beat it with. Bruises and cuts opened up on the creature’s skin with each hit of the candlestick holder and dark liquid trickled from the wounds but the creature didn’t seem to mind.

Down we went into the basement. I’d run out of stamina and all I could do now was shout for help and hope my family would get to the door in time to hear but my hope diminished the farther I was dragged into the basement. It was completely dark but it seemed like we were going in the direction of the storage room. All I could hear besides my own resistance was the creature’s labored breathing, a raspy wheeze that came in irregular intervals, until at last, when I felt the cold concrete of the storage room beneath me, the creature spoke again.

“Light…on,” it said and let go of me.

I heard the metal creak of the breaker box being opened across the room and the heavy clunk of the breakers being flipped back into position. In an instant, the lights came back on and the electric furnace in the corner of the storage room rumbled back to life. When I looked over to the breaker box, the creature was not there. I jumped up off the floor and attempted to escape back upstairs but when I turned to run, I saw the creature waiting in the hallway just outside Michel’s room, blocking my way, smiling. There was something nonaggressive about its posture, which put me strangely at ease. It didn’t seem to want to kill me — not right now, anyway. It wanted something. But what?

“If you were just going to turn the lights back on, why’d you turn them off in the first place?” I asked.

“Show…you.”

“Show me what?”

“Here…rest.”

“What are you?”

“Sleeeeeepy…” it said and went into Michel’s room.

I followed but when I entered, I saw the monster had shrunk to normal human size, about six feet tall, and laid itself down on Michel’s bed. Patches of its dark blood stained the comforter, as well as the carpet all the way down the hallway. I was still clutching the candlestick holder, which also dripped with its blood. I thought now might be a good time to attack it again, since it was lying down and not as big as before, but something about the way it seemed so comfortably at peace made me hesitate.

Its raspy, irregular breathing pattern had evened out into a slow, smooth rhythm and it lay on its side, with one hand under the pillow and the other on its chest, expanding and deflating with each breath. Despite the strength I’d witnessed just moments ago, I now saw the creature as defenseless and I was having trouble summoning the courage to attack it. This was as infuriating as it was confusing.

Upstairs, the garage door opened, the shock of which nearly sent me into cardiac arrest.

I reflexively turned towards the staircase and when I looked back into the bedroom the creature was gone. So too were the dark bloody patches on the comforter, although I could still see a vaguely humanoid-shaped indentation where it had lain. I frantically looked all around me but saw no other sign of the creature. Upstairs, however, I heard two sets of footsteps, one from where my family was entering in the garage, and another on the opposite side of the house, walking quickly to intercept.

I broke into a sprint and ran up the stairs, hoping to beat the second set of footsteps before it reached my family but when I emerged from the basement, I only saw Mom, Dad, and Michel coming through the garage door. Michel seemed to have shrunk a bit since I’d last seen him, and he seemed exhausted, but he still managed to hold himself with athletic poise. When he saw me running up the stairs, he broke out into a huge smile and put down his suitcase to give me a hug. I looked into his face, a handsomer, more refined version of my own, beaming its kindness at me, and all the fear and confusion and sadness inside me became a wellspring of tears that I tried to dam up behind my eyes. A few got away and trickled down my cheeks as I embraced him.

“Geez, son, if I’d known you were that excited to see Michel, we’d have let you come with us,” Dad said, but Mom told him to shut up. Her eyes were tearing up too.

“Never mind all that,” Michel said as he let go of me. “It’s so good to see all of you. Let me just go put my bags in my room and we can talk.”

“No!” I shouted. They all gave me a bewildered look. “I mean…” I stammered, trying to think of a reason to prevent Michel from going downstairs that wouldn’t seem absolutely insane. “I…uh…”

Then I remembered the figurine of the creature still up in my bedroom. If Michel could tell me what it really was it might convince me that there was nothing to worry about and that I was simply going insane. What a relief that would be!

“I need to show you something first,” I said. “Up in my room. Please, it’s important.”

 Michel’s warm smile cooled and a knowing look came into his tired eyes. “I know,” he said.

CHAPTER FOUR

“I think it might be some sort of Wendigo,” Michel said as he examined the figurine of the creature.

“Is that, like, from a movie or something?” I asked.

“Folklore,” Michel said. “Wendigos are found in a few native cultures. They usually have something to do with cannibalism or possession, although this one doesn’t quite fit the typical description. But then again, our records of native knowledge are…shall we say…incomplete.”

 “So, did you get this thing on a field trip or…?” I asked, still unsure whether Michel was talking about the figurine or the actual monster it represented.

“I’ve never seen this toy before today,” Michel said, “but I have seen George in real life.”

“George?”

“That’s what I named him,” Michel said. “It made him less scary. Instead of an unknowable monster, he’s just George.” Michel chuckled. “It’s actually kind of funny how not scary he is sometimes.”

“So it…George…is real?” I asked.

“Apparently,” Michel said.

“Mike, you’re not making any sense.”

“I used to think he was just a really powerful hallucination that my brain made up a long time ago in order to explain…” Michel trailed off.

 “Explain what?” I said, but he didn’t answer.

“George wants you to kill me, right?” he asked instead.

“How did you know?”

Michel sat at the foot of my bed and put his head in his hands. He let out a long, labored sigh and stared at the floor for a few moments until finally looking back up at me. The circles of fatigue around his eyes seemed to grow deeper and darker.

“I need to show you something,” he said, and stood up. “Downstairs.”

“But…”

“We’ll be okay,” he said, “as long as you keep your head on straight.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means if you see George, don’t agree to anything,” he said. “Now, let’s go.”

I insisted on going down the basement stairs first but Michel wouldn’t let me. He wasn’t scared for some reason I couldn’t comprehend. I, on the other hand, was shaking. I had Dad’s gun with me even though Michel said it wouldn’t be necessary. Neither of us were sure if it would do anything to George but it made me feel better to have it.

Michel had only his suitcase with him and we made a stop off at his room so he could toss it on the bed. When I pointed out the indentation on the comforter, he nodded and made a joke about having to wash the sheets. Then, we went into the storage room.

Michel picked his way through the boxes and furniture to the storm drain and bent down towards it. He pressed his fingers through the grate and felt around in the black gunk until he found something — an old key. Not a super old key like you’d see in a pirate movie. Just a normal key for a padlock or deadbolt. It was fastened to the drain’s grate by a small jewelry chain so it wouldn’t get washed into the sewer. Michel undid the clasp on the chain, cleaned the gunk off the key, and told me to follow him back to his room.

Once there, he took a small screwdriver out of his desk drawer and went into the bathroom, where he unscrewed the cover of the bathroom fan. He also removed the fan blade so he could reach up into the vent and take something out that was hidden there. It was a small metal box covered in dust, sealed with a padlock.

“Haven’t you ever noticed we don’t have a lot of pictures of the family from before you were born?” he asked.

“I never really thought about it,” I said.

Now, however, the fact seemed rather odd. I was born in 2010, well into the smartphone and digital camera era, so there should’ve been hundreds if not thousands of photos of my family. I guess I just assumed they were tucked away on some old hard drive or memory stick and that most of them weren’t good enough to print out and hang up around the house. God knows I wouldn’t frame 99% of the photos on my phone. But when I thought about the few photos that did make it up on the wall, they only showed one or two family members at a time, never everyone all together, and none of the photos were staged like a typical family portrait. They were all candid shots. It wasn’t until well after I was born that the family portraits started to appear, and in much greater numbers.

“Now take a look at this,” Michel said, and handed me the box and key. “Open it.”

I put the gun on the sink and opened the lock. It was stiff from years of disuse but after a few jiggles I was able to release the lock arm. Inside the box was a plastic sandwich baggy full of 4x6” photos, a manilla envelope, and a USB memory stick. I looked at the photos first. They’d been taken with a disposable camera and the orange numbers in the corner of each shot showed a date range between 1996 and 2003. They were family photos. My family’s photos. There was Mom and Dad and a strange boy who looked familiar, with Mom’s nose and Dad’s jawline.

“Who is that?” I asked.

“You don’t remember David, do you,” Michel said. “Our brother.”

“We don’t have a brother,” I said.

“I forgot about him too until I found these pictures.” Michel smiled. “You want to know what the most frightening thing in the world is?” He tapped his temple with his index finger. “Memory.”

“Memory?”

“It never matches reality,” Michel said. “There’s always a distortion or omission at the heart of every memory and we base our entire existences off of the lie.”

“Yeah, but this isn’t, like, misremembering a line in a TV show or getting someone’s name wrong,” I said. “This is a whole-ass person! A sibling.”

“Sometimes it’s just easier to forget,” he said. “Sometimes you’re not supposed to remember.”

“What the hell are you talking about, Mike?” I asked. “You’re scaring me.”

“You know how in a video game, if you’re doing poorly you can just load an earlier save file and make different choices?”

“Yeah. I do it all the time.”

“But the record of the original playthrough is still there, even though you’re not playing it anymore.”

“Sure, unless you overwrite it.”

“It’s something like that.”

“You’re saying our brother, David, is from an old save file of our lives?”

“In a way.” He pointed to the manilla envelope. “Look in there.”

The envelope was old and smelled musty. Inside was a stack of folded up papers, which I opened and skimmed. There were medical documents that said things like:

Date: 9/8/1999

Patient: David Whitman

Age: 30 months

Notes: Patient exhibits markers for epilepsy and schizophrenia. Disorganized speech. Potential hallucinations. Very behind in emotional and cognitive development.

And letters from school authorities that read:

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Whitman,

While I can certainly appreciate the difficulties of raising a child with psychological challenges, I’m afraid David has become too disruptive to the learning of other students. He requires educational alternatives that our faculty is not equipped to provide. I’ve attached a list of potential options along with resources for financial aid, should you need it.

Sincerely,

Principal Meghan Dunham, M.Ed.

One of the papers was a torn-out page from a school yearbook. There was a portrait of David, when he was about my age, looking glum and despondent while all the other kids’ were the smiling images of hopeful youth. It shocked me how much he looked like both Michel and me.

“I wish I had more,” Michel said, “but by the time I thought to start saving his memories there weren’t many left.”  

“What happened to him?” I asked.

Michel grabbed one of the photos and gazed at it.

“I killed him,” he said, “Well, sort of. I got George to do it.”   

My head was spinning at that point. You can only take so much damage to your personal reality before things start to get a little difficult to process. In the span of a few minutes I’d learned that monsters were real, I had another brother, and that Michel wasn’t the angel I’d thought he was. It was a lot to believe. Too much, really. That’s why I decided not to.

“You’re lying,” I said. “This is some kind of prank. Don’t get me wrong, it’s really well done, but you could’ve photoshopped all this stuff — and it would take an AI like five seconds to invent a brother for us. All you’d have to do is feed it a few reference images. It did a pretty good job, I’ll admit. You even got it to show David wearing some of the hand-me-downs you and I both had. Nice touch. Haha, you got me.” I forced a laugh. “So, now that I’m in on the joke, tell me what’s really going on here.”

Michel wasn’t listening. He just stared into one of the photos of David.

“I was only seven,” he said, “but I’d known David wasn’t right since before I could talk. I felt bad for him — and I felt bad for Mom and Dad too. It was costing them so much to take care of him. They were so young back then. Just a little older than I am now. Who knows what little money they were making? I remember sneaking out of my room at night to listen to them argue about finances in the kitchen when they thought we were asleep. I didn’t really understand what the problem was, aside from the fact that we didn’t have enough, but I kept hearing one word over and over. ‘David…David…David.’ I noticed David kept going to new schools and getting new tutors and special computer programs but my toys stayed the same and Mom always wore her jacket with the holes in the sleeves and Dad was always getting stuck somewhere because the car broke down. I remember them telling me I couldn’t go to the fancy school for smart kids with my friends from kindergarten.” Michel gestured to the house. “This place was a lot more rundown back then too. You never got to see it. When you were born, things got even worse,” he said. “Dad was mad all the time. Mom was too tired to have any emotions. David could tell they were upset with him, even though they didn’t want to be. ‘They can’t help it,’ he used to tell me. ‘Someday you’ll hate me too.’” Michel frowned. “Then one night, George started coming to visit.”

The mention of the creature made the hair on my arms tingle and I glanced towards the doorway to make sure he wasn’t out in the hall eavesdropping.

“I first saw him in the storage room,” Michel said. “Scared the shit out of me.”

“That’s where I first saw him too!” I said.

“I thought I was dreaming but he kept visiting me night after night. He’d come up to my room — your room now — and wake me up. I’d tell Mom and Dad the next day but they just thought I was having little kid nightmares. Can’t really blame them, I guess. Eventually, I realized George wasn’t trying to kill me, so I stopped telling them about his visits — I think they were starting to worry I had mental problems too — but he was still scary so I decided to call him George because I thought it was a funny name for a monster. I’d say, ‘Oh, hi George,’ when he’d show up. That’s when he started talking to me.”

“He talks to me a little,” I said, “but I can barely understand him.”

“Does he tell you to kill me?”

“He says he wants to do it for me.”

“That’s what he told me too.” Michel sighed and trudged out of the bathroom to go sit on his bed, holding his head in his hands. “I was just a kid, okay?” he said, and I could see tears in his eyes. “I didn’t understand consequences. I just thought if David was gone then we’d all be better. Even him. He was so miserable all the time.” Michel looked back at the photo in his hand. “I didn’t think I’d forget him.”

“Did Mom and Dad forget too?” I asked.

“Not at first,” he said. “At first everything was about how you’d expect. They were the ones who found his mangled corpse. George told me where it would be so I wouldn’t stumble upon it. Out in the woods behind the yard. Everyone was so confused. They thought it was an animal attack or something. The police were here for days. Mom cried a lot. Dad just stopped talking altogether. I felt terrible and I was scared someone would find out what I did.”

Michel shook his head. “But then the police stopped showing up. And the local reporters moved on to other stories.” He looked over to me with his tired eyes. “We didn’t even have a funeral. The police took David’s body for examination and we never saw it again. I asked Mom and Dad if we were going to bury him in the backyard but they said he’d been cremated, and when I asked for the ashes they said I was too young to worry about that kind of thing. Mom stopped crying. Dad started talking again. The neighbors smiled and waved whenever we drove by. I got enrolled in the fancy school.”

Michel laid down on the bed, right in the indentation George had left. “Everything was getting better, just like George said it would but I didn’t feel better. I just wanted to see David again and tell him I was sorry. But pictures of him kept going missing and the stuff in his room started disappearing. Then one day, I looked out my bedroom window and saw Mom standing behind the house where David had been found. She was just staring into the woods. I watched her for a long time. She kept setting something on fire with a cigarette lighter, and when I finally went down to her, I saw that it was photos of David. She didn’t even realize she was doing it.”

Michel gestured to the metal box of David’s memories. “That’s when I started collecting whatever evidence was left of him — photos and documents and that kind of stuff.”

I picked up the memory stick from the box. “What’s on here?”

“Some pictures from the digital camera, mostly of me and David playing together,” he said, and then sighed. “It still wasn’t enough to keep me from forgetting too, eventually.”

Before I could ask him anymore questions, Mom called down to see what we were doing and ask if we were ready for dinner. We could hear her coming down the stairs. Michel quickly shoved the photos and documents back in the box and I put the memory stick in my pocket, even though I wasn’t sure why we were hiding this stuff from Mom. Surely, she’d want to know about the son she forgot.

“The gun!” Michel whispered.

I grabbed it off the bathroom counter and shoved it underneath one of Michel’s pillows just as Mom entered the room.

“What are you boys doing in here?” she asked, aware that we were up to something.

“Nothing,” I said but Mom looked to Michel for the truth.

“It’s really nothing, Mom,” he said.

“Listen, Michel, you don’t raise two boys without learning how to tell when they’re up to something,” Mom said. “You two have been acting strange ever since you got home.”

“You’re going to be sad,” Michel said, with a sheepish grin.

“Why?” Mom asked, concern creeping onto her face.

“We were talking about me giving up my room,” he lied. “Since…since I don’t live here anymore.”

Michel was right. That did make Mom sad. Her eyes got all watery and she threw her arms around him.

“It does make me sad to have you gone,” she said, “but every mother has to give up her child eventually.” She let go of him and put on a smile. “But I’m so proud of the man you’ve become.” Then she looked at me. “Besides, I’ve still got this one for a few more years, so I’m only down half a set.”

“I love you, Mom,” Michel said.

“Oh, you’re going to make me cry!” Mom said. “Now, get your butts upstairs for dinner before I really lose it.”

“Okay, we’re coming,” Michel said. He started out the door after Mom and nodded for me to follow. “We’ll talk more after dinner,” he mumbled when Mom was far enough up the stairs.

“What about George?” I asked.

“I’m looking forward to seeing George again,” Michel said, raising his voice, as if he thought the creature might be nearby listening.

We went up the stairs, and just as I hit the landing, I thought I heard the sound of the storage room door opening.  

CHAPTER FIVE

All throughout dinner, Michel acted strangely, which in and of itself was not strange considering the situation we were dealing with — it’s just that Michel was usually pretty good at acting like he was in perfect control even when he wasn’t. It was one of the things I admired most about him.

That night, however, he was unable to focus. Mom and Dad would ask him questions about the conference he was in town for and it would take him a while to come up with specific details. He also excused himself to the bathroom a couple times, which I thought was risky. There was no way I was going to be alone anywhere in the house that night. But my parents just chalked it up to fatigue.

“I wasn’t even supposed to go to the conference,” Michel said, “but my professor had to cancel at the last minute and gave his ticket to me, so it’s just been rush, rush, rush ever since.”

Mom and Dad seemed to buy that.

After dinner, we went up to my room instead of back down to the basement, even though my room was not safe from George either (as I’d learned earlier). It still felt like the better option. Maybe because there were more escape routes. I wished I’d been able to sneak the gun upstairs. All I had for protection was my baseball bat. It was better than nothing but I kept the door open so Mom and Dad could hear us if George showed up, not that I thought they could do anything to help.

“I’m so tired,” Michel said as he collapsed on my bed. He smelled funny, a scent I couldn’t quite place, but then realized was booze when he took a nearly-empty flask of vodka from his pocket and took a swig. “I don’t know how much more I can take of all this.”

“You’re drinking?” I asked, a little heartbroken. Michel was my idol. He wasn’t supposed to succumb to anything, especially not something as boring as booze.

“Ever since I started remembering David,” he said. “I just needed something to cope.”

“When was that?”

“A few months ago,” he said. “I was trying to find a file on an old memory stick and I came across a picture of him. It all came flooding back. Suddenly everything made sense.” Michel took another swig. “You want to know why I work so hard? Why I’m such a great student? Why I never take a single second to stop and look around? It’s guilt. I’ve always had this terrible sense that everything about me is wrong and the only way I’ve been able to ignore it is by working and studying. I never knew why. Then I saw the picture and remembered what I’d done. For a while, I wasn’t sure what to do. It was all I could think about and I just felt so sad and ashamed. I wanted to kill myself. I stopped seeing friends and going to class. I let my projects fall apart and failed a bunch of tests. It’s only a matter of time before they kick me out.”

“But what about the conference?” I asked. “Your professor liked you enough to give you his ticket.”

Michel smiled and took another swig. “There is no conference,” he said. “It was just a story I told Mom and Dad. I couldn’t exactly say I was coming back to deal with a monster in the basement, could I?” He put the bottle back in his pocket. “They’ll find out soon enough. It’s all part of the plan.”

“Well, whatever your plan is, we’d better do it quick because George could show up any minute,” I said.

Michel nodded and brought out the metal lockbox, which he’d taken up from the basement before dinner. He opened it, spread the photos on the bed, and began taking pictures of them with his phone camera.

“I think I know how we can try to fix all this,” he said as he snapped the photos. “The key is memory — our memories. We’ve all forgotten David, right? So we just need to remember, and then David will exist in our minds again. Hand me those documents, will you?” I handed him the papers from the lockbox and he began capturing those too. “We’ll start with you and me and Mom and Dad but we’ll need other people’s help too. The more that remember, the stronger the memory. So we post everything on the internet where everyone can see it. We tell his story. We spread the word on a true crime podcast or something. We don’t stop talking until someone listens.”

“How’s that going to help?” I asked. “And what about George?”

“We can’t be the only family George has done this to,” Michel said. “Somebody out there has to know something. Maybe David’s story will jog their memory. We have to try.” Tears began welling up in his eyes again. “I can’t live with myself if I don’t try.” His tears turned to anger as he tapped furiously on his phone. “Why can’t I upload these? The internet’s not working.”

“Oh, no,” I said.

And then the power went out again.

We waited in silence to see what would happen next but there was nothing except the sound of conversation between Mom and Dad, who were downstairs in the living room.

“I’ll go see if the neighbors still have power,” Mom said, and walked out the front door.

“I’ll check the circuit breaker,” Dad said.

“We’ve got to stop him!” Michel said, and then yelled “Dad, wait!” before taking off down the stairs.

I grabbed the baseball bat and rushed after Michel to the main floor over to the basement stairs but Dad had already gone down by the time we got to the landing. Michel took the bat from me in one hand and held his phone flashlight in the other, and rushed down the stairs. “Dad, are you okay?” he yelled but there was no response.

I followed with my own phone flashlight lit but I was in such a hurry that I tripped and went tumbling down the staircase. My world spun into darkness and I lost my grip on the phone. When I came to a stop at the bottom of the staircase, I saw it lying a few feet away, flashlight pointing upwards so that it illuminated the room with its ghostly white glow. Michel was too far ahead of me and by the time I regained my footing, he was gone too.

But where?

I picked up my phone and swept the flashlight beam across the basement looking for Dad and Michel but they were nowhere to be seen. Or heard. The only sound was my own heavy breathing, which I could barely hear over my pounding heart.

“Mike? Dad?” I called but there was no response.

When I shone my light down the basement hallway, I saw that the door to Michel’s room and the bathroom were closed. The storage room door, however, was wide open. It was too dark to see anything other than the gaping black chasm that lie beyond but I could sense that something awful lay in wait. I froze, unable to go farther down the hall but unwilling to run and leave Dad and Michel behind.

Then, behind me to the right, my computer turned itself on in its nook under the stairs. The fan whirred to life and the screen blinked on, although it was facing away from me so I couldn’t see what it displayed. I half-expected George to be sitting at it but the chair was empty, which was actually more unnerving than if he’d just been there. At least we could’ve gotten it over with. It also didn’t help my nerves that the rest of the house was still without power and that there was no reason my computer should’ve been able to boot up.

Cautiously, I went around to the nook, alternating the sweep of my flashlight beam between it and the open storage room door. When I got to the computer, I saw that it had loaded up a video game menu screen. The game was called Michelangelo’s House and the menu screen was an exterior shot of my house at night, as if rendered by an old graphics engine from the early 00s. Only it was how my house had looked seven years ago. There was still the large dying oak tree in the front yard, looming precariously over the house, and my dad’s old pickup truck was still in the driveway, which he’d tearfully sold years ago when its frequent maintenance became too expensive.

The words “Start Your Only Playthrough” blinked at the bottom of the screen, and I could see silhouettes of people moving around in the illuminated windows. I moved the mouse curser over the blinking text and hovered there for a moment while I checked the storage room door again. There was still nothing but darkness so I sat down in the chair and started the game.

I’ve always been borderline addicted to games, so the feeling of getting absorbed by one was not unusual. This game, however, felt like it became my reality. My peripheral vision didn’t register anything outside the screen and I could almost feel and smell the environment when the game loaded up. For all intents and purposes, I was no longer a member of the real world.

The game was played from a first-person perspective and began in my bedroom, which looked as it did when I was a little kid. Star Wars, Marvel, and Lego toys were all over the place, and my old Minecraft poster was still on the wall. Clothes and colorful drawings littered the floor but when I took a closer look, the colors seemed to fade into dull shades of red, as if the whole world was illuminated by some dying, rusty sun. The game let me look around the room for a moment before giving me my first instruction.

Sneak downstairs without getting caught.

A stealth meter appeared in the corner of the screen to indicate how much my presence had been detected by entities in the game.

Slowly, I crept out of the room. The lights were out except for a nightlight plugged into the wall to illuminate the hallway, and as I moved closer to the staircase, I could see that the lights in the living room below were also off. Just as I was about to reach the staircase, I began to hear the murmur of conversation downstairs. It sounded like Mom and Dad but I couldn’t make out what they were saying.

As I tiptoed towards the staircase, the conversation got louder, and even though I couldn’t understand what was being said, I could tell that it was coming from the kitchen. I risked a little extra speed as I walked down the stairs, and my stealth meter diminished a little bit. Mom and Dad’s conversation stopped for a moment and I froze until it started back up again. I supposed I’d have to take it slower. I always hated stealth games.

Once I made it to the first floor, more text appeared on the screen.

Spy on the conversation. Don’t get seen. Your future depends on it.

I was now in the living room, which faced the open kitchen and dining area. The kitchen was the most shockingly different aspect of the game. In real life, we’d remodeled it during the Covid pandemic because my parents went crazy with cabin fever and needed something to do. In the game, however, the kitchen was how it had been just a few years back, with the dated cabinets and beat up dining table. It made it look like a completely different house. Amazing what difference a few years makes to the mind’s perception of its world.

Anyway, my parents were sitting at that huge table, which was covered in paper bills and bank notices, hunched over a laptop. I crept very slowly around the living room couch and over to the wall that separated the two rooms. Once there, I pressed myself up against the wall and leaned towards the dining area’s threshold so that I could make out the conversation.

“Boy, he’s really done it this time,” Dad said.

“It’s not his fault,” Mom said. “He was just a kid.”

“Yeah, well, he was a grown-ass adult when he decided to tell everyone about it,” Dad said.

“He’s not well,” Mom said, in a defensive tone.

“He seemed fine to me before he stared boozing,” Dad said. “I mean, what was he doing at that school anyway? Taking shrooms with his buddies and scrambling his fucking brains? Who has an epiphany like this out of the blue?”

“Sometimes mental illness doesn’t present itself until later,” Mom said.

“I wish it’d waited until after graduation,” Dad said. “We refinanced the goddamn house to get him in. All down the toilet now. And it’s not like we’re swimming in cash either, since you got ‘laid off.’” Dad put air quotes around those last words.

“We can’t know whether that was his fault or not,” Mom said.

“Come on,” Dad said. “Rumors start swirling that we murdered our firstborn and covered it up, and you just happen to lose your job as a pediatrician. Huge coincidence.”

“Don’t be an asshole,” Mom said, sternly. “Michelangelo needs our help and support.”

“And what about our other son?” Dad asked, in reference to me, I assumed. “His future’s kind of fucked now too, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know…”

“We should never have pushed Mike to go that Ivy League,” Dad said. “If he’d gone to State he could’ve peddled his little fantasy to some dope at the college radio station where five people would’ve heard it. But no! We had to send him to rich kid school with his well-connected friends and their access to mommy and daddy’s media company.”

“This is pointless,” Mom said. “We have to face reality as it is.”

“Reality?” Dad pounded the table and shouted. “Reality is that we don’t have a third fucking son, and he wasn’t murdered by a fucking monster from a fucking ghost story. I don’t care how realistic Michel’s bullshit fake evidence looks.”

“But where did he get it from?” Mom asked.

“Don’t tell me you’re starting to believe this shit,” Dad said. “How could we forget our own child?”

“It doesn’t make sense to me either,” Mom said, getting more defensive, “but I just feel…so terrible…” Mom started to cry. “Oh, Michel.”

“Michel…”

“Michel…”

Suddenly, I heard noises down in the basement, the staircase to which was right across from where I stood hidden in the living room. Footsteps started up the stairs and more text popped up on the screen.

Hide from Michelangelo.

As quickly as I could without making noise, I backed away from the dining area’s threshold and went to crouch behind the recliner in the corner of the living room. It didn’t provide full cover, so I just had to hope it was dark enough. When Michel emerged from the basement, his face was sickly pale and gaunt, and his sunken eyes were tear streaked. He seemed to look directly at me but my stealth meter only dropped a few percentage points, so he must not have seen me clearly. Maybe it was because he was drunk. In his hand was an empty bottle of vodka. Then Mom and Dad started talking to him and he turned and ran for the door to the outside.

“Michel,” Dad said, “where are you going?”

“What’s wrong, Michelangelo?” Mom asked.

“I can’t be here,” Michel said when he reached the door. “Just let me go.”

“Michel, please!” Mom said.  

I stayed crouched behind the chair as Michel ran outside. Mom and Dad chased after him, slamming the door behind them, and I could hear them calling after him in the night. Their voices got farther and farther away until I couldn’t hear them anymore. I was now alone in the house.

Go to your computer, the game instructed me.

This was a confusing objective. If this game was supposed to take place when I was seven-years-old, then I wouldn’t have had a computer yet. I didn’t get my souped-up PC until I turned twelve. My parents and Michel mostly used laptops, but there was an old family desktop in Dad’s office on the other side of the first floor staircase, so I figured I’d try that. I definitely didn’t want to go look downstairs. Unfortunately for me, Dad’s office was locked. Not surprising, really. It wouldn’t be a good game if things were too easy.

I walked over to the basement stairs and looked down. There was some light emitting from the main room but it was coming from the floor lamps we had down there, not the bright overhead lights, so most of the room was in shadow. I was afraid to go down but then I realized that I had no health meter in the game, which either meant that I was invincible or that I would die instantly if something happened. I chose to believe the former and started down the stairs.

When I reached the bottom, I went over to the nook where my computer was in real life but there was only a bookcase full of photo albums. I found that if I clicked on an album, my avatar in the game would pick it up and look through it. Every photo was the same picture of my parents pushing me on a swing when I was two or three-years-old, and all three of us were smiling brightly. I actually remembered that day because shortly after that photo was taken we had to rush over to the middle school to pick up Michel, who’d gotten in trouble for starting a fight.

Except, now that I thought about it, Michel would’ve been too young to be in middle school at the time.

Down the basement hallway, I heard a door open up. The door to the storage room. I put down the album and went over to the hall to investigate. The storage room was pitch black but in the middle of the room was my computer, its screen glowing blue. As I approached, I could see an error message written in white text. The Blue Screen of Death. When I reached the threshold, I tried to peer around into the room but it was too dark to see anything, so I took a deep breath and went over to the computer to read the error message.

Your reality ran into a problem and needs to restart.

ERROR CODE: 06182003

Six. Eighteen. Two-thousand-and-three.

Michel’s birthday.

All of a sudden, my stealth meter began to go down, slow at first, then faster and faster until it was completely empty. Somebody — or something — could see me. My heart raced and I turned to see what was behind me but then the whole game blinked out of existence and I found myself back in real life, staring at my computer monitor, which displayed the login screen.

A cold, foul-smelling breeze began to caress the back of my neck in regular intervals. Breaths. The hair on my neck stood up and I froze in the chair, praying that it was Michel or Dad standing behind me. But I knew it wasn’t.

“Hello,” George said from behind me. His voice was still scratchy and garbled but it was the clearest I’d heard yet.  

“Oh, hi, George,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant even though I was shaking with fear. “What do you want?”

“Decision.”

“Decide what?” I asked, even though I knew. “To kill my brother?”

George said nothing.

Finally, I swiveled in my chair to face him. He was as tall and ugly as when I’d seen him earlier that evening and the night before, towering over me, bent over so that his elongated arms almost touched the floor. However, as I looked at him, my fear evaporated and all I was left with was a deep sense of sorrow.

“Is it really going to happen like the game said?” I asked.

“Decision.”

“If you kill him, will I forget?” I asked. “Will we forget?”

“Memories…hide.”

“But I don’t want to forget Michel,” I said as the urge to cry began to overcome me. I didn’t want him to suffer either, though. Or the rest of the family. Did it even matter what I wanted? Was George, this terrible, otherworldly monster really going to take orders from a 13-year-old boy?

I didn’t have time to find out. There was a loud “clunk” from the storage room and all the lights came back on. I heard Dad cheer, and a moment later, he came back down the hall.

“Not sure what happened there,” he said, “but looks like everything’s back on.”

“Where’s Michel?” I asked.

“I don’t know, upstairs?”

“We ran after you. Didn’t you hear us?”

“No,” Dad said, and gave me a quizzical look. “You feeling okay, bud?”

I mumbled some kind of non-answer and ran past Dad to Michel’s room to see if he was in there, my heart pounding at the thought of Michel being gone. I hadn’t asked George to do it. What if he had anyway?

To my relief, Michel was in his room lying face down on the bed. The baseball bat was a few inches away on the floor where it’d dropped out of his hand, and the flask of vodka was in his other hand. I paused to make sure he was actually breathing and then shook him awake. He awoke with a heavy gasp.  

“What happened?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said when he regained focus and calmed his breathing. “I dreamed I was running as fast as I could but I didn’t know where I was going and my legs kept giving out. It feels like I’ve been out for a while.” According to the clock on his bedside table, only a few minutes had passed since we came downstairs, even though the strange game I’d played had taken much longer. At that point in the madness, I wasn’t surprised by things like that. I just kind of assumed I’d gone into a weird time warp or something while I was playing the game. That explained why my feeling of time’s passing didn’t match with reality but not why Michel felt the same. Why did my memories affect his?

“I just had the weirdest thing happen to me,” I said, and was about to tell him about the game when I brushed my hand past my pocket and felt a plastic, rectangular shape. I reached my hand in to see what it was and came up with the memory stick that contained digital photos of Michel and David. I’d shoved it in there earlier when Mom came down to check on us and forgotten it was there. For some reason, my mind immediately thought about what would’ve happened if I’d forgotten it was there and put it through the washing machine on laundry day like I had so many other random knickknacks left in my pockets. Imagine if it was destroyed.

Imagine…

Imagine…

“Oh my God,” I said as the idea churned through my mind. “I know what we have to do!”

Michel sat up in the bed, and rubbed his eyes.

“You started going mad when you found that picture of David, right?” I asked. Michel nodded. “But if you hadn’t found it, you’d never have remembered. You’d have just gone on with life as normal.”

“I guess so,” Michel said.

 I showed him the memory stick. “Then all we have to do is destroy the remaining evidence of David’s life.”

“What?” Michel said, angrily. “We’re trying to do the opposite of that.”

“Why, though?” I asked. “He’s already dead. We can’t bring him back. Remembering him will only make us all miserable.”

“I’ve been miserable ever since I killed him,” Michel said. “I just didn’t know why until I saw that picture of him.”

“But maybe that’s only because there was still all that evidence you saved in the lockbox. What if you couldn’t completely forget unless you destroyed it all? Maybe you saved just enough to keep David’s memory alive in your feelings but not enough to remember the details.”  

 “I guess that makes sense — as much as any of this makes sense,” Michel said, “but it doesn’t matter. I’ve remembered and I never want to forget again. David’s existence deserves to be recognized, no matter the pain it causes me.”

“But it’s not just you,” I said. “This is going to affect all of us, especially Mom and Dad.”

I then told him about what I’d experienced playing the game, how the truth would ruin the family and create problems we could never escape from.

Michel thought about this, growing wearier with each passing moment. “I don’t care what the game said,” he finally said. “It was just one of George’s tricks to get us to do what he wants. You can’t trust anything he shows you. Shit like that worked on me when I was a little kid but not now.” Michel finished off the bottle of vodka and jumped up off the bed, wavering a little as he attempted to stand upright. “He just wants us to suffer. That must be the reason. It’s a sick joke to him. He wants us to suffer without remembering why. Except it only takes one person to remember, and when I’m through, the whole world’s going to know.” He swiped the memory stick from my hand. “Starting with this.”

Michel ran out of the room and down the hall to my computer. “What’s your password?” he yelled back. “I’m going to upload these photos right now, and then I’m going to email them to the whole family, and then I’m going to post them on...” Michel raved like a madman about all the things he was going to do with the photos but I wasn’t listening anymore.

I was still in his room, staring at the floor, and thinking about how hopeless all of our lives had become — how despair was now going to be a part of our existence from now on. And why? So my brother could make good on a moral thought experiment? So that I could become forever entangled in something I never had a say in? He was going to do it just on principle, just because it was the “right” thing to do.

My brother Michelangelo.

Too good.

Too perfect.

Too late.

Finally the tears broke from behind my eyes and streamed down my face as I went to sit on Michel’s bed. I laid down on my side and wept as quietly as I could, feeling the hopeless inevitability of what was to come. Then a large, cold hand rested gently on my shoulder and gave a few soft, consoling squeezes. The weight of a large creature pressed on the bed beside me.

“There, there,” the creaky voice said.

I won’t say I was completely desensitized to George’s presence but at that point I’d lost the will to be frightened. Why bother? There didn’t seem to be anything I could do to stop him. Or so I thought.

I slid my hand under the pillow and felt the cold metal of the pistol I’d hidden there. I knew it was loaded, with a round chambered, ready to go. I knew George bled. I knew he hadn’t liked it when I pointed the gun at him earlier. So, all I had to do was grab it, roll off the bed, and start pumping lead. Then we’d be rid of him, and Michel could finish his mission of remembrance. Then we could all walk unhindered into the arms of misery. Then we could lie awake at night fearing not monsters in the basement but our own fickle and callous souls.

All I had to do was take the shot.

“Okay, George, you win,” I said between sobs as I moved my hand away from the gun.

“You,” was all he said in response.

 “Do it quick,” I said.

“No pain.”

“And promise me I’ll forget.”

“You…feel…better.”

George’s cold hand lifted off my shoulder and I felt his weight leave the bed. I squeezed my eyes closed and buried my head in the pillow, crying so hard I couldn’t even make sound. The last thing I remembered was the click of the bedroom door closing.

CHAPTER SIX

I was never able to recall what exactly happened to Michel. I had to trust that George made it painless like he said he would. Who wouldn’t trust a basement dwelling murder demon to keep its word?

Not that I would’ve remembered if he hadn’t.

I started forgetting Michel almost immediately — and David too. It felt like a compulsion, like something urgent that needed to be done as soon as possible. I burned all the photos and documents Michel had saved in the lockbox, and I melted it down for good measure too. Then I burned everything that had once been Michel’s, his old toys and books and clothes. Mom and Dad helped too. It was a family event, except none of us acknowledged or spoke to each other while we were doing it, as if none of us really existed in the other’s eyes. Honestly, that probably made it more efficient than if we’d been all Family Circus about it.

We weren’t the only ones working hard to forget. Photos of Michel began disappearing off of social media, and people deleted posts mentioning him. A few months later, Mom and Dad got a huge check in the mail from Duke apologizing for an administrative mishap that had them paying tuition for a student who never showed up. They barely remembered they were missing the money by the time it arrived.

We got in a big fight over what to do with it. They wanted to put it in my college fund but I finally broke down and told them I wanted to make video games for a living and that I could teach myself. I just needed an even more powerful computer. I won that battle a few years later when an indie game I made on my old computer sold a few thousand copies. It was a game where you play as a kid trying to get out of the basement before a monster gets you, but you never know when it’s going to appear. Simple, but effective. I called it Michelangelo’s House.

The problem was I spent so much time building it that I nearly failed high school, which caused a lot more tension between me and my folks. Still, that game got me an internship at a major developer, which led to a full time job, and eventually a lead role. My parents always seemed to harbor an unspoken resentment towards me anyway, though. I tried to ignore it and maintain a friendly, cordial relationship with them, which seemed like the right thing to do, what with me being their only son and all.  

But maybe I should’ve just let them go.

I came back home to visit for Thanksgiving one year and we had a nice, quiet dinner. However, after my parents went to sleep for the night, I was bored and went poking around my old room in the basement for something to do. In my closet was my old computer. A real blast from the past. I wondered if my old game was on there, so I set it up on the desk in the nook under the staircase where it used to be so long ago. Sure enough, there it was. My game! It still ran too.

That computer was old as shit, though, and I was afraid it wouldn’t boot up again. I didn’t want to lose the original file of the first game I built, so I decided to make a copy to take back to my apartment when I left. I shuffled around in the desk drawer for an old memory stick and found one shoved way in the back. When I plugged it into the computer, I found it didn’t have enough free memory for my game file, so I opened up the memory stick’s folder to see if there was anything I could delete.

There was one folder labeled “Photos” and when I clicked on it, there were a few hundred image files dated from several years ago. I figured they couldn’t be that important since they’d been living in the back  of the drawer for so long but I checked anyway just to make sure.

The first photo I opened was a picture of two boys posing under a tree, one a bright-smiling lad of about seven-years-old and the other a somber, brooding teenager. It shocked me how much the older boy looked like I did when I was a teenager. The younger boy also looked like me at his age, although I didn’t really have many childhood photos to compare.

I clicked through a few more shots of the two boys and nearly blacked out when I saw a picture of them together in the basement of a house. My parents’ house. This house. I stared at the image, heart pounding, trying to figure out who these boys were, standing so close to the very spot where I was sitting. I zoomed into the photo in search of clues, and just as I was about to give up, I noticed something strange. The boys were standing in the basement hallway but just behind them was the door to the storage room, open only a crack.

There, just above the knob, a large, gray, human-like hand was gripping the door.

Suddenly, my computer shut itself off.

And the power went out.

And a door opened down the hallway behind me.

THE END

Check out this short piece I wrote for Weird Lit Magazine, a literary magazine specializing in odd tales.

The story is called “It’s Not His Place to Scream.”

Click here to read!

What’s the endgame of modern therapy culture? The class divide? The future of tuna steak? I’m not claiming to have answers, but I AM claiming it will be kind of funny.

I’ve posted the first few paragraphs below. Please check it out, and stick around for some of the other weird stories as well.

It’s Not His Place to Scream

Before we start, it should be noted that Carlo Acevedo isn’t the kind of guy who goes around blaming yellowfin tuna for his problems. He’s pretty much like the rest of us, in that tuna rarely has anything to do with the happenings in his life, good or bad. Tonight, however, tuna will make him want to rend his shirt and maybe a pant leg or two. He’ll want to scream. But he must not scream. It’s not his place to scream.

Gertrude Price, on the other hand, is the kind of screamer you can’t train. It’s just raw, natural talent. That’s what her NeuroShrink 3200 therapeutic cerebral implant tells her.

“You just have to let it out, girl,” the implant says in a soothing voice that adjusts to match whatever pop star, influencer, or self-help guru is most popular at any given moment. “Good screams, good dreams.” 

Right now, it’s more accurate to say Gertrude is sobbing with great force and volume but rest assured the true screaming will come later. Tears pour off the angles of her perfect, sculpted face, and her cheeks flush red beneath streaks of running mascara. 

“I can’t even with this fucking fish right now,” she says between gulps of air, slamming her open palms onto the table, rattling the silverware. “I don’t even want to look at it.” 

Beneath Gertrude’s loathsome stare lies the culprit, a thick cut of Fijian yellowfin tuna steak, wrapped in a black sesame crust next to a neat pile of whipped purple potatoes. It’s the pride of Salted Sea, the restaurant where Carlo works as a server, and it’s not nearly pink enough in the center. This is Carlo’s fault. He meant to place the order with a “medium rare” label but accidentally selected “medium” in the restaurant’s finicky order ticketing system. To the untrained eye, the tuna steak would seem perfectly edible—delectable even. Back in the 2020s people ate overcooked tuna like this all the time, such was the abundance of seafood, but these days you’re lucky if your tuna is made from a substance that’s even seen a body of water, much less the real thing. You’d think this scarcity would lower standards but then you haven’t met the Price family. Carlo certainly wishes he hadn’t. 

Continue reading here.

The building where my band rehearses is an extraordinary pile of shit. The walls are pockmarked with dents and holes, it smells like mildew and stale beer, and there is no heat or air conditioning.

The only light comes from whatever lamps you provide yourself and the only acoustic “treatment” comes from carpets torn up from the floor and nailed to the walls.

In short, it’s dark, smelly, and dingy. Not exactly the most enjoyable environment in which to create.

It’s Not My Fault, So Why Bother?

There’s plenty I could do to address some of these problems, at least in my own practice room. I could patch the holes, install acoustic treatment, put down some rugs, and so on.

But why should I?

These problems predate my tenancy — and the building was never a looker in the first place. It’s not my fault the place is such a shithole. Besides, it’s sitting on prime real estate, so it’s bound to get torn down any day now (if it doesn’t burn down first).

Clearly the logical choice is to make no attempt at improvement and just get whatever I can out of the place for myself.

Opportunity Costs and Opportunities Lost

That’s what I’ve been telling myself since 2013. As of this writing, the building is still standing. I go there every week. And all the problems I mentioned continue to exist. Many have gotten worse.

Imagine what kind of improvements I could’ve made to my little corner of this building over the past decade. Yes, there are bigger, more structural issues beyond my skill or ability to fix, but I could’ve at least made a small part of it better for me and my friends — and I could’ve taken pride in having done so (or at least making the attempt).

Imagine if all the other musicians rehearsing there took a similar stance. And imagine if we all held the building managers to a higher standard? How different would that space look today?

You Can’t Improve a Place You Don’t Care About

Many Americans, particularly of my generation and younger, see the United States the same way I saw my rehearsal space: a crumbling monstrosity wracked with incurable problems. A place that was never any good to begin with and would be too hard to fix even if you wanted to. Better to just get yours while there’s still time.

Maybe it’s because I live in an extremely progressive city, but I can’t remember the last time I had a conversation with someone about the good things about living in America. I recently saw a LinkedIn post from an American art director begging for a foreigner to marry her so she could move out of “this hellscape.” An art director. Someone who moves pictures around for a living (a six-figure living, often). I don’t think they have that job in Hell.

Nary a day goes by that I don’t hear something about what a racist, imperialist, late-stage capitalist nightmare America is from tech workers, HR mangers, artists, musicians, trust-fund babies, self-described “foodies,” teachers, professors, corporate marketing execs, and now even young kids.

To be clear, America is not without problems — some of which are very serious. But surely there must be something good about the largest, richest, most culturally and ethnically diverse democracy in the history of the species. Surely there must be something worth celebrating about this place where, for the most part, everything works to a degree that would seem like magic to people even a hundred years ago. Surely there’s something about America that inspires millions of people to attempt to migrate here every year.

America’s Here, Like it or Not. Might as Well Like it.

To deny this is to make the same error I did with my rehearsal building. If you see something as fundamentally broken, bad, or destined to fail, you won’t feel any desire to take care of it or improve it. You have to believe a thing has intrinsic value before you can commit to its upkeep. Otherwise, your only option is to grab at what you can for yourself before it’s all gone.

These are the two options we Americans are faced with now. We can choose to believe that this country should never have existed, has no long-lasting value, and is doomed to failure because of these flaws. Or we can choose to believe that there are some good things about this nation that give it intrinsic value.

No matter what we choose, it’s pretty much a guarantee the United States will continue to exist for the rest of our lifespans. Despite increased strife and division, I don’t think we’ve reached the point where things will truly fall apart in any meaningful way.

Rather, we’re faced with a gradual degradation in quality of life from lack of upkeep. We risk losing more trust in our institutions and our neighbors. We risk breakdowns in innovation and entrepreneurship. We risk losing the American can-do spirit that inspires so many people to pick up their families and attempt to make something of themselves, whether they’re coming from different states or different countries.

In short, we risk losing the optimistic determinism that inspires hope in the future and faith in the fruits of hard work. It’s a terrible thing to lose on an individual level. On a national level, it’s catastrophic.

What Kind of an American Could You Be?

Do you really want to spend the rest of your life listening to people complaining about how everything sucks (and has always sucked and will always suck)? Do you really want to go to work with people like that? Or parties? Or school? Do you want to live next door to the person who doesn’t believe there’s any point in trying? Do you want to be that person?

Of course you don’t.

So this Fourth of July, take one day — just one out of 365 — to think on some things you like about America. Some good things. I bet if you put your mind to it, you’ll find more than you think. We live in a pretty great place, despite its flaws — and there are no places without flaws. You could help fix some of those flaws.  

But first you have to want it.

There are only two elements you need to get right for a good story: Characters and Worldbuilding. Everything else follows from there. Master those, and your story can withstand a tremendous amount of narrative abuse, from bad writing to cliched dialogue to gaping plot holes.

Speaking of which, today marks the 47^th anniversary of the release of Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (or as it was called back then, just Star Wars.) It’s still considered one of the greatest films of all time, and the Star Wars universe it spawned has delighted millions of imaginations for over four decades. Neither George Lucas’ lore-obliterating prequels nor Disney’s soulless cash-grab excretions have managed to tarnish its legacy, despite tremendous effort.

Why is this? How has A New Hope withstood the test of time while so many other entries in the saga faded from view as quickly as they appeared.

The answer is character and worldbuilding. A New Hope is so strong in these departments that it can survive not only the abuse from what came after, but also its own internal inconsistencies.

To prove this, I’m going to discuss three of A New Hope’s most commonly cited plot holes and show how both the character development and worldbuilding explain why you probably didn’t notice them the first time around, and why they might not even be plot holes at all.

Since this is the film’s anniversary and it’s the first one in the saga, I’m going to treat it as a self-contained narrative, as though none of the other entries exist — because at the time, they didn’t. I’ll also be ignoring the 1997 “Special Edition” version, which inserts a number of pointless, continuity-disrupting scenes, and just generally sucks ass.

What we’ll see is that, on its own, A New Hope is a surprisingly tight narrative in which every single scene works to build the coherent, fun universe we all know and love.

So let’s get started.

Plot Hole #1: The Galaxy’s Worst Gunners

At the beginning of A New Hope, after Princess Leia has hidden the Death Star plans in R2D2’s memory banks, he and C3PO manage to escape their beleaguered ship via escape pod. The Imperials in the Star Destroyer above see this happen and this dialogue occurs:

GUNNER: There goes another one.

OFFICER: Hold your fire. There’s no life forms. Must’ve short circuited.  

Why wouldn’t they just shoot it anyway, just to be safe? Surely they realize a droid could be on the escape pod, and that it might have the stolen plans with it.

Perhaps not. This scene seems like a glaring plot hole, but it actually does a ton of worldbuilding for themes that will recur throughout the rest of the film.

One of these themes is the lowly station of droids in galactic society. From the very beginning, we’re shown that droids are basically an afterthought and not treated as equals. C3PO and R2D2 walk right through the middle of a firefight and none of the stormtroopers try to shoot them. They’re not important targets, so they’re able to walk away unscathed.

From then on out, we’re shown time and again that droids are seen more like work animals or appliances, second-class citizens at best, without true sentience or motivation of their own. They can be bought, sold, and stolen like property. They can be re-programmed for relevant tasks. They’re banned from establishments where living creatures mingle. Given this, it would be highly unlikely for someone to trust the fate of their entire political movement to a droid, much less a slow-moving, defenseless airline mechanic like R2D2. Keep in mind this is before the release of other films in the saga, where droids play a much more prominent role.

This logic might not make sense to us in real life, especially given the advancements of computer technology since 1977 but the film is very consistent about this, which is all that really matters in a story. By definition, any fictional world must have some breaks with reality but as long as the narrative sticks to the rules it creates for itself, we can effortlessly suspend our disbelief and follow the logic being shown to us.

Depicting droids as second-class citizens also does a lot of work to build the characters of Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia. Leia is shown to be a cunning and crafty rebel by choosing R2D2 as her unlikely courier for the Death Star plans. C3PO, a fellow droid, doesn’t even believe R2D2 has been given this responsibility until he sees Leia’s message at Obi Wan’s house. As for Luke, he’s the only human character who is friendly to the droids, which shows both his kindhearted character and his naivete. For example, when he takes the droids to the Mos Eisley bar, he’s told, “We don’t serve their kind here,” something all the other patrons seem to know, which tells us he’s still a green-behind-the-ears farm boy with lots to learn about the galaxy.

But we were talking about the Imperial gunners, right? Even if we assume they take everyone else’s view about droids, why not just shoot the pod anyway, just to be safe?

Their inaction lays the foundation for another theme that recurs throughout the film: the Empire’s overconfidence.

Again and again, the Imperials underestimates their opponents to their own detriment. The Empire is so massive with its battleships and space stations that the idea of a couple droids posing any kind of threat seems absurd. Darth Vader is one of the only Imperials who expresses doubt over the invincibility of the Empire’s “technological monstrosities,” and even he doesn’t take the threat too seriously, as we see when he allows Han, Luke, and Leia to escape the Death Star with the stolen plans still in hand. (More on that in minute). And if Vader’s not too worried, why would a couple of no-name gunners stationed in the bowels of a battleship be?

Hence, the lifeless escape pod goes free.

By looking at the whole film, we can see how this plot hole makes sense in the narrative. Yes, it would still have been best practice to shoot the pod down but now we can understand why they didn’t — and even if that explanation is unsatisfactory, we can at least understand why it didn’t ruin our experience with the rest of the film.

Plot Hole #2: Is Princess Leia Stupid?

After the gang escapes the Death Star and fends off the TIE fighters that pursue them, Princess Leia deduces that the Empire let them get away in order to track them to the secret Rebel base. This dialogue occurs between her and Han Solo:

LEIA:    They let us go. It’s the only explanation for the ease of our escape.

HAN:    Easy? You call that easy?

LEIA: They’re tracking us!

HAN:    Not this ship, sister.

If she knows the Empire is tracking them, why the hell does she still take them to the Rebel base? Why doesn’t she fly somewhere else, change ships, and then go to the Rebel base?

Well, let’s look to the characters and the worldbuilding.

We’ll start with Han Solo, who is ultimately in charge of where the Millennium Falcon goes and when. At this point in the story, Han hasn’t yet decided to join the Rebellion. He’s just in it for the money, which he desperately needs to pay off his debts to Jabba the Hutt.

HAN: Look, I ain’t in this for your revolution, and I’m not in it for you, Princess. I’m in it for the money. I expect to be well paid.

Think about it from his perspective. Back on Tatooine, Obi Wan promised Han 17,000 credits but only put down 2,000, promising the rest upon arrival at Alderaan. Now Obi Wan is dead, Alderaan is destroyed, and Princess Leia is hellbent on continuing her suicidal crusade. At this point, Han’s chances of getting paid are dwindling — Leia and the Rebellion might not even be around next week at this rate — so he has absolutely no reason not to take her to the base as soon as possible so he can get his cash and get out of there.

Now, let’s turn to Leia. She’s not yet friends with her rescuers and doesn’t trust their abilities. Nor should she. Han, Luke, and Chewie clearly had no real plan for her rescue and would certainly have been killed if the Empire hadn’t gone easy on them. But Han is cocky, and as we saw from the dialogue above, actually believes he earned the escape. Not great judgment. Every extra minute Leia spends with these guys is a minute they might bumble back into the hands of the Empire — and the Empire is everywhere.

This is where the worldbuilding comes in. Think back to the Tatooine spaceport, just before the boys take off in the Millennium Falcon. As the ship prepares to leave, we see stormtroopers talking to an informant, who directs them to the hangar bay. The Falcon barely manages to take off and is then immediately hunted by two Star Destroyers waiting in orbit. Tatooine is supposed to be a backwater, ass-end-of-nowhere planet, and yet the Empire already has a network of spies and ships at its disposal at a moment’s notice. There’s no reason to believe this wouldn’t be the case at some other spaceport as well, so there’s a decent chance our heroes would get caught changing ships on their way back to the Rebel base.

Finally, let’s also consider what we know about the Empire’s leadership. During the conference room scene with the Imperial officers, Darth Vader and one of the generals cast doubt over the Death Star’s invincibility. Vader even chokes a guy who criticizes him for this. So the Empire is at least aware of the possibility of the Rebels finding a weakness. It stands to reason that somebody on the Empire’s staff would be furiously pouring over the space station’s schematics, looking for that weak spot. This is confirmed later in the film when an officer informs Grand Moff Tarkin that a potential vulnerability has been discovered and asks if he’d like to evacuate.

Although Princess Leia has no direct knowledge of the Empire’s deliberations, she must assume that they’re trying to find the same weakness she hopes her own analysts will find. It’s a race. If the Empire finds the vulnerable spot first and fixes it, the Rebellion loses their only hope. She has to get those plans to them before time runs out.

So, no. Leia’s decision to fly directly to the Rebel base isn’t stupid. It makes sense based on what we know about the characters and the world they live in.

Plot Hole #3: Where’s the Emotion?

This one applies to both Luke and Leia. Both experience traumatic losses — Luke, his adoptive parents; Leia, her home planet and everyone she knows there — but neither of them show much emotion about it. Luke is upset about his Aunt and Uncle for one scene and then happy-go-lucky the rest of the film (until Obi Wan dies, who also gets only a single scene of mourning). Leia, on the other hand, is never shown grieving at all, despite having lost much more.

Pretty shitty writing, right? Maybe not. Again, the characters and worldbuilding give us the context we need to make sense of this.

From the very beginning of the film, we’re shown that this is not a gritty drama steeped in cynical realism. The first quarter of the movie is spent almost entirely with R2D2 and C3PO, bickering like an old married couple and generally providing comic relief despite their desperate situation. At the same time, Darth Vader and the Imperials convey a cold and menacing presence, which makes us feel there are real consequences for the protagonists. The rest of the film strikes a similar balance, whether its Luke almost getting his ass kicked by Tusken Raiders or Han Solo cracking jokes in the Death Star’s prison bloc.

This is actually one of the reasons most people consider The Empire Strikes Back to be the best film in the trilogy. It’s darker and more emotional, with higher stakes and existential challenges. But since A New Hope sets a lighter tone early on, it would be inappropriate to have elongated scenes of depression and trauma.

The only reason we see Luke mourning at all is because he’s the main character and these moments represent important changes to his journey. The murder of his adoptive parents represents the point in the narrative where he can no longer return to his old life. The death of Obi Wan represents the point where he must rely on himself alone, having lost his mentor. These are important changes that affect what happens next in the story.

Leia, on the other hand, is already on her path and the bad things that happen to her don’t change her goals or motivations. Her behavior is informed more by her character and surroundings. She’s tough as nails and good at bluffing, as we see from her first line of dialogue, where she basically tells Darth Vader to fuck off. This is just after he’s choked a man to death with his bare hands. She’s also good at reading people. When Luke bumbles into her prison cell disguised as a stormtrooper, she can tell before he even takes his helmet off that he’s not a professional. Immediately after this, she meets the brash Han Solo and his monstrous Wookie friend, neither of whom seem to like her very much at first. She instantly surmises that these doofuses have no real plan and takes charge of the rescue mission herself. Even when they’re safely away from the Death Star, they’re still pretty much strangers, and Han Solo begins going off on how he just wants to get paid.

None of these situations would be appropriate for wallowing in sadness, especially for a strong woman who’s committed herself to a hopeless rebellion. Perhaps she cried for her lost planet off screen in her prison cell or during the ride back to the rebel base. It might have been nice to see a scene of her mourning but we ultimately don’t need it to understand who she is and what she wants. The behavior we do see from her is entirely consistent with the state of the world and people around her, as it is with Luke.

Convinced? You don’t have to be to still have fun.

Even if you think these explanations are just some nerdy, pedantic bullshit from a guy who’s obviously spent too much of his social capital in the wrong places, the point remains that these plot holes don’t detract from your ability to enjoy A New Hope. It gets the most important elements right and that’s all that really matters. Because of this, you can sit back, enjoy the ride, and feel good when it’s over.

Just as people have been doing for 47 years — and will do for countless years to come.

Pretty much everything I do for both pleasure and pay is threatened by AI, which is a profoundly depressing experience. I’m not sure it has to be, though.

There’s a fatalistic certainty with which predictions of humanity’s impending obsolescence are proclaimed, and this, I think, is more the cause of our anxiety than the actual accuracy of the predictions themselves. That’s why it’s always good to remember how bad we are at foreseeing technology’s impact.

Just think how different the AI conversation sounded a few short years ago.

Most people, including tech-savvy-types, assumed automation would come for blue collar workers first. “We’ll have to find something for all those truck drivers to do,” we said, when it seemed like self-driving cars were only months away from perfection. Conversely, the idea of a bot writing decent copy and music or creating high-quality works of visual art still seemed like science fiction.

Why did we get it so backwards?

We Downplayed the Human Element

Technological advancement is not simply a matter of improved mechanical efficiency.

Everything we humans invent has to exist in our human world, which is governed by our unpredictable human whims. This is a huge hurdle for technologies that seek to diminish human involvement.

Driving in a human world is much more than a navigational exercise. It requires us to make lots of value judgments, often with only milliseconds to spare. The criteria for “correct” actions changes depending on context and doesn’t always follow linear logic, and the rewards don’t always make sense on paper.

If a dog runs out in front of my car, I’m going to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting it, even if it means causing an accident with the car behind me. In this scenario, the accident would actually be the reward state, whereas hitting the dog would be considered a failure even if no humans were hurt. Furthermore, I’m willing to bet the driver behind me will understand and empathize with my decision because we both share a cultural understanding of the human/canine bond. That said, if the roles were reversed, and the driver in front of me chose to hit the dog to avoid an accident with me, I would be sympathetic to that choice too.

That’s because I’m human and I get to assign meaning to the things that happen around me. Self-driving cars can’t do that at the moment, no matter how good they are at navigation, and it’s one of the reasons we’re not likely to see them adopted en masse anytime soon.

In short, our faulty predictions about self-driving cars came not from a failure to predict the linear path of technological improvement, but from our inability to control for the nonlinear human element of the world in which self-driving cars must exist.

I believe we should apply a similar analysis to fears over the automation of art and creativity.

These too must contend with the human element — and in its purest form: expression. Human production and consumption of expression is one of the most baffling subjects of all time, and sometimes we do things in pursuit of creativity that make so little sense it would seem we’re acting against our own best interest. And yet we succeed.

Case in point: The Strokes.

Allow me set the scene.

2001: Echoes of a Familiar Era

In 2001, music production technology was in a similar place as AI is today.

Classic equipment like analog tape was still in wide use but digital replacements were rapidly integrating into studios. They could overcome many of the limitations of analog gear, and Digital Audio Workstation software gave engineers and producers unprecedented control over every detail of a song. Broadly speaking, you could record more tracks and process them with a much higher degree of fidelity than ever before.

As studios adopted this new technology, music productions became more layered, precise, and sterile. A single kick drum might be comprised of several samples mixed together, mapped out on a grid so every hit was exactly on-tempo. Vocals could be pitch-shifted to be perfectly on key. Guitars could be overdubbed again and again, layered together for a “huge” sounding effect.

Consumer audio technology was also advancing at a fast clip.

Gone were the days of garbled Walkman cassette players and scratchy vinyl. CDs provided a consistent, high-quality listening experience, and MP3 players were becoming popular as well. Stock car stereos improved as did home audio systems and portable speakers. Average people without complicated hi-fi stereo setups could now hear music with an incredible level of clarity pretty much wherever they went, and music productions adapted to match that clarity.

If you simply looked at these technological trends, you’d expect music from then on out to only get more and more polished, with inhuman levels of precision dominating each mix. Indeed, by 2001, rough-and-tumble guitar rock had been declared dead. Grunge and hair metal were relics. Brit-pop’s Oasis was in decline and Radiohead gave up the guitar for electronic experimentation.

Anyone crusty enough to still play a six string was probably pumping out nü metal or pop punk — genres that were also clean and pristine compared to their grittier forebears. Yes, there was a “garage rock revival” in the independent music scene, but it was largely relegated to the cultural shadows, with bands like The Hives pumping out songs that were extremely rough-around-the-edges, aggressive, loud, and generally not for mass consumption.

Then came The Strokes.

The Strokes: Trendsetters, Trend Breakers

Trading on a “retro” style hearkening back to artists like The Stooges and The Velvet Underground, The Strokes hit the New York and UK alternative music scenes with moderate success. After recording a rough 3-song EP in a basement studio, they caught the ears of RCA, a major record label, and soon booked a recording contract with producer Gil Norton, who’d worked on alternative rock staples like The Pixies and Foo Fighters.

However, after recording a few songs with Norton, the band complained things were not going well.

The problem? Norton was doing too good of a job. Everything sounded too “clean.” This was perplexing feedback to RCA. The Strokes had unmistakable pop appeal, with tight arrangements, addictive hooks, and radio-friendly runtimes. They also exercised above-average brand discipline with their carefully curated retro-cool image (unsurprising, since frontman Julian Casablancas was the son of modeling magnate, John Casablancas). All they needed was some professional recordings, and they’d be on the major airwaves in no time.

Nevertheless, the band demanded to switch it up and work with then unknown producer, Gordon Raphael, the owner of that basement studio where they’d recorded their rough demo. In the time since, Raphael’s studio hadn’t undergone much improvement. It was still the same small-time, low-budget studio — which was exactly why the band wanted it.

“Whatever everybody else is doing right now, we wanna do the opposite,” the band told Raphael, and what everybody else was doing was making sterilized recordings in fancy studios.

How NOT to Produce Like a Pro

The Strokes and Raphael went about making some very unorthodox recording decisions using techniques that would horrify traditional studio engineers. They’d put microphones in strange places, allow instruments to “bleed” into each other in the mix, and generally break the rules of sonic clarity.

“We're not really interested in the individual instrument sounds,” said drummer Fabrizio Moretti. “We just like the way they dance together in the air.”

One of the more controversial decisions had to do with Casablancas’ vocals. He wanted his voice to sound “like your favorite blue jeans — not totally destroyed, but worn-in, comfortable.”

To achieve this, Casablancas ran his microphone through an 8-inch Peavy amplifier, the kind of dogshit practice amp you get when you’re first learning to play guitar, and Raphael recorded it as-is. It was a huge risk. Normally, you record vocals “clean” and then process them later, giving you the flexibility to adjust the sound if you don’t like what was originally recorded. The Strokes, on the other hand, were stuck with the sound of that crappy practice amp, just as they were stuck with the sound of that boxy basement studio for the other instruments.

This was done on purpose. It meant the record label couldn’t order the band to remix their songs to match the latest trends, which they certainly would have if they’d been able. They clearly didn’t appreciate what the band was trying to do. One A&R guy reportedly told them, “Guys, this is some of the most unprofessional sounding music I have ever heard. This is not going to sell, and you are really doing damage to your career by trying to release music that sounds this way.”

The resulting album, Is This It, went on to become one of the most influential records of the modern age (pun intended). And it wasn’t just The Strokes who got the last laugh.

Indie rock went mainstream shortly after the release, and Is This It played a huge role in bringing the musical underground to a broader listening base. Indie icons like Franz Ferdinand, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and even LCD Soundsystem owe at least some of their success to The Strokes.

Not A Rejection of Modernity — an Embrace

It’s easy to read about the recording of Is This It and see a story of young iconoclasts rejecting the shiny temptations of modernity’s supposed conveniences. The truth is that The Strokes and their producer, Raphael, could not have made this record without the latest technology of the time.

Although lo-fi by professional standards, Raphael’s studio did have modern equipment, such as Pro Tools and Logic Audio software setups. This allowed The Strokes to iterate to perfection, recording take after take in a way that would’ve been much harder, taken longer, and been infinitely more expensive with older technology. This iterative approach is one of the reasons the album sounds much “tighter” than other garage rock offerings of the time.

Raphael could also easily process individual elements for an even more stylized sound. For example, the opening drumbeat on “Hard to Explain” sounds like a drum machine. It’s not. It’s a live recording of Moretti’s real drum kit, manipulated afterwards to sound like a drum machine but with the natural feel that comes from the tiny imperfections of human performance.

Contemporary technology also played a role outside the album’s recording.

Is This It’s influential status came in no small part from an explosion of internet usage by the general listening public. The album technically wasn’t a huge hit according to the traditional charts — it would take years to reach platinum status — but burgeoning music blogosphere outlets like Pitchfork Media, peer-to-peer music sharing services like Napster, and burnable CD-Rs helped artists like The Strokes subvert music’s traditional gatekeepers and prove there was an audience for less commercialized genres.

Lessons for the Impending AI Apocalypse

All this is to say that, at the beginning of 2001, if you’d looked only at trends in music technology, you’d never have predicted the success of The Strokes or the entire indie rock phenomenon broadly. Why would anyone keep making gritty guitar rock when digital production technology made crisp, professional music so easy to obtain? Indeed, as the RCA suits demonstrated, even music industry pros didn’t see the indie movement coming — or, at least, not to the level it achieved.

However, if you’d paid more attention to the human element, you’d have seen that a significant part of the culture valued art with human flaws over mechanized perfection. You’d have noticed people weren’t just using Napster to steal Top 40 pop music but also to expose themselves to genres they couldn’t hear on the radio. You’d have realized the counterculture was bigger than kids buying studded belts at Hot Topic.

The last twenty-odd years have been so awash with indie rock and its six billion derivatives that it’s old-hat now. It’s been used to sell cars and cell phones. It plays in grocery stores. People are once again proclaiming guitar music dead, having worn itself threadbare in the years since 2001, while others insist it’s about to go through another revival.

All this time, polished, pristine pop has continued to thrive, and genres like country and metal have gotten sonic makeovers thanks to music technology. Newer genres like dubstep and hyperpop would be extremely difficult if not impossible without modern production software.

And music technology itself has never stopped advancing, solving some problems and creating others. Today, more people than ever are making great-sounding music without the need for expensive equipment or studios. But this explosion of artists combined with the mass adoption of streaming platforms has made it difficult to earn money.

Now, AI music generators can create halfway decent music from text prompts for free in a matter of seconds. What will that mean for the future music — or any discipline threatened by AI?

Tomorrow is Full of Challenge…and Hope

The true answer is no one really knows what’s going to happen, especially those who only look at the problem from a technological perspective.

We don’t yet know what kinds of cultures and subcultures will emerge from the new era of AI art or what kinds of opportunities will be created. It’s easy to look at the convenience of AI and conclude it will inevitably dominate human efforts — but that’s only if you think you know what humans will want to expend their efforts (and money) on in the future.

I’m not ready to make any concrete predictions.

The only thing we know for sure is that until the robot revolution wipes us all out, humans will be at the core of AI’s integration. So it’s really up to us what happens.

Here’s another entry in the “Weird Fiction” category. It’s absurd, surreal, and idiotic. Do you enjoy shows like, I Think You Should Leave? No? Then you probably won’t like this either.

I’m also doing a little experiment with sound design here, so you might enjoy the audio version better. Let me know if you like it or not.

Alarms blared somewhere in the background, jolting Arnold back into consciousness, and the first thing he noticed was how hungry he was. That was probably because of the disemboweled man lying next to him. This guy’s not having lunch anytime soon, Arnold thought, which reminded him of the roast beef sandwich he’d packed earlier that morning. He felt a little blue as he realized he might not get to have lunch today either, if present circumstances were any indication. Ho-boy, what have I gotten myself into this time?

It wasn’t the first time Arnold committed a crime but it was the first time he’d ever seen somebody’s intestines outside of their body in real life. My God, they were everywhere. If God thought this was the best way to turn food into energy, then Arnold thought, fuck me sideways and call me a collapsible hotdog holster, because Arnold was the kind of person who had thoughts like that when he was confused.

But Arnold had bigger problems. The police were expected to arrive any minute now, and when they did, it wouldn’t take them more than a few minutes to figure out that those pink, slimy hoses piling out of the deep gash in the dying man’s sides were in fact the Good Lord’s best and only digestive solution for the human race. As such, the boys in blue were likely to surmise that Arnold's attempted removal of them from the dying man was a problem of significant proportion and then guns would be drawn and a good deal of paperwork would be in the cards.

Arnold hated paperwork almost as much as he hated trying to understand why a mile’s worth of slippery tubing was the best way to get the maximum value out of a roast beef sandwich.

“I didn’t even mean to cut your intestines out like that,” Arnold said to the dying man. “I should have stopped cutting much sooner than I did.”

“Why aren’t you helping me live?” the guy with the total bullshit intestines asked in a rather weak tone. He was cradling his innards in his hands, for all the fucking good that was doing —  which actually seemed to be quite a bit. He’d been cradling his intestines for a while now and wasn’t dead yet, so clearly he was doing something right. “Please! You’ve got to fix this!"

“We’re not close friends,” Arnold said. “I’m not sure I want to touch you like that right now. It seems a bit…intimate.”

“I’m not asking you to do the surgery yourself.”

“Are you asking me to have sex with your intestines?” Arnold scratched his head. “Because it feels like that’s what you’re asking.”

“What?”

“I just don’t think it’ll help.”

That’s when the lightbulb exploded above Arnold’s head, giving him the perfect idea for what to do about the dying man but also sending a current of electricity down his skull and through his spine, causing most of his muscles to spasm and stopping his heart. He wondered how weird death would be when a passing motorist distracted him by yelling for him to find a yellow circle surrounded by sixteen smaller circles of varying sizes. This, she assured him, would unlock something but he couldn’t hear what it was because she said it at the same time as she ran over him with her car. The rhythm of the front and back tires over his chest was enough to restart his heart, although now it was under some duress because of the many broken bones in his body. Also, he had been dragged a few feet, which seemed important.

“I had a brilliant idea about how to help you,” Arnold said, although the pain of his broken ribs made it hard to know if his words were coming out at the proper volume.

“Scream louder,” the dying man said. “I can’t hear you over my own screaming.” He'd been screaming the whole time, except when he was talking, which he did at a normal, speaking volume.

“No! We shouldn’t even be talking about having sex with your intestines right now,” Arnold screamed because he hadn’t heard what the dying man was really saying. “We’re way past that.”

But it was too late (or too early, if you were hoping for gastrointestinal eroticism). A police car screeched to a halt just short of where the two men were lying in the middle of the children’s playground. An ambulance arrived a few moments later. Upon reviewing the scene, the EMTs and cops agreed that Arnold should go to the hospital first because the dying man was so expertly cradling his intestines. It seemed like he had the situation under control.

“They’re his intestines, after all,” one of the EMTs said. Everyone nodded in approval.

“Is he going to make it?” Arnold asked as they dragged him across the pavement to the ambulance.

The EMT shook his head in dismay. “He was screaming an awful lot and that’s a sure sign of depression.”

“It’s the silent killer,” the other EMT chimed in as she slipped a needle into Arnold’s arm.

“I hope none of that was my fault,” Arnold said as a wave of painkillers washed over him. “Oh, give me another hit of that, Caroline Funsponge! I feel like I’m floating to heaven in a balloon filled with angel farts.”

Arnold’s vision began to blur and for a moment he saw a creature made of jagged edges sucking light out of every surface it touched and its eyes were ragged holes that seemed to extend farther and farther back into the fabric of the universe the more he gazed into them. The creature was perched above some of the ambulance’s cabinets, but it had also become part of the ceiling. The lady EMT who administered the needle pushed a strand of hair out of her face and whispered, “Deliver this, thy humble offering,” in every frequency audible to the human ear, which Arnold thought was pretty funny.

“We’re worried these bloody pruning shears are going to get in the way once we get to the hospital,” she said as she removed the lawn tool from Arnold’s jacket pocket. Little bits of intestine were stuck to the blades.

“Oh, yes, I think I was using those for some sort of sex act,” Arnold said. “I’m not sure, though.”

The EMT put the shears in a plastic baggy and wrote “SEX BAG” on the side of it in marker. “Now we won’t forget about sex or that this is a bag.”

The ambulance drove for seventeen hours to the next state because Arnold was needed at the morgue. The EMTs propped him up in a wheelchair and rolled him through the bleak, gray halls of the hospital. Arnold enjoyed watching the walls bleed for a few moments but became bored when he remembered seeing something similar in a movie. His broken ribs had already begun to heal — not to any significant degree, mind you; it’s just that the body begins healing as soon as it's injured. Anyway, the ribs were not completely healed by the time they wheeled Arnold into the morgue and up to a table where the dying man from earlier lay. This time, however, he was all-the-way dead but Arnold made a note to continue referring to him as the dying man so that this experience wouldn’t be confusing. A sheet covered everything but the dying man's dead head.

A police officer from the current jurisdiction walked into the room and greeted Arnold. “Is this the man you were lying next to seventeen hours ago?”

“Yes,” said Arnold, “only the last time I saw him, he was alive and expertly cradling his intestines.”

“Well, that’s a bit confusing,” said the officer with a sigh as he pulled the sheet down to reveal the rest of the body. “Because this man’s intestinal-cradling technique was amateur at best.”

“It’s an honest mistake,” Arnold said. “I’m only a layman in these subjects. But I’m sure that’s him.” The EMTs agreed that it was the same man and everyone shared high-fives, which was incredibly painful for Arnold.

The police officer, the EMTs, and a few of the morgue technicians prayed over the body for several minutes in a strange language that Arnold did not understand. Not wanting to feel left out, he began wailing like a tortured manatee, which was well-received by the group. Then the head morgue technician placed the sheet back over the body and began pouring gasoline all over it and laughing in short bursts that also sounded a bit like sobs when Arnold tilted his head slightly in one direction or the other. The laugh/sobs reverberated throughout the room and sometimes sounded like giant waves crashing against a rock face. Later on, everyone agreed that this was the kind of thing one should expect but Arnold wasn’t in the room to hear it.

The EMTs wheeled Arnold back up the elevator to the main floor of the hospital where he was given his sex shears and allowed to keep the plastic baggy as a complimentary gift. When he asked about what was being done to fix his broken body, an on-duty nurse promised that someone would be right with him but she had always been a liar and never returned to the hospital after stepping outside for a smoke break.

Arnold played with his phone for few hours before the battery died. His new nurse was passed out in the corner, having asphyxiated herself with Arnold’s phone charger. Feeling a bit sleepy himself, Arnold adjusted his torso into a position it had never achieved before and pulled the stale, yellow sheet over his head so the nurse wouldn’t see if he started crying (Arnold was very concerned with his macho image, in case that wasn’t already obvious). As he nodded off, he wondered if the police would ever figure out what he’d really been up to with those shears. He hoped they would let him know if they ever figured it out but for the time being, he was content to slip into a painful sleep plagued by horrible dreams in which he was falling forever through the holes in the bread of a roast beef sandwich.

— THE END —

The original gingerbread man fairy tale was printed in 1875 in a children’s publication called St. Nicholas Magazine and many retellings have abounded since. Most of them attempt to convey the moral lesson that misplaced trust can have dire consequences, as evidenced by the gingerbread man's fatal encounter with the fox.

However, in my research, I chanced upon an untold version of the story which explores a Calvinistic interpretation concerning the nature of predestination and the individual's ability to shrug off the shackles of fate. Though the story beats are similar to the more traditional readings, this retelling reveals the true horror of existence in a way that other children's fairy tales can only dream of achieving.

I’ve transcribed it here with minor annotations for the sake of clarity.

There once was a little old woman and little old man who lived in a cottage by the river. They had no children, and probably could’ve lived in a swanky apartment downtown instead of some musty old cottage, but this was considered prime countryside real estate, and interest rates were fucked anyway, so there they stayed.

One day, the little old woman got bored of scrolling Facebook and decided, “What the hell, I’ll make a gingerbread man. Fuck it.”

Other versions of this story go into rather tedious detail about the process and materials used to make the gingerbread man — cinnamon drops for a mouth, raisins for eyes, that kind of stuff — but we’ve all seen a gingerbread man so let’s skip it. The important thing is that when she pulled him out of the oven, he suddenly sprang to life, which was a real shocker for both of them.

“Mother?” the gingerbread man said.

“I mean, I guess,” the old lady replied, “but I’m still planning to eat you.”

“Is this an allegory for the Devouring Mother archetype or something?” the gingerbread man asked.

“What? No. You’ve been watching too many Jordan Peterson videos,” the old lady said. “I was just hungry for cookies. I wasn’t expecting this to happen.”

“I don’t want to be eaten, though,” he said.

“You’re saying this to me like I give a fuck,” the old lady said and got out a plate and a glass for milk. “You’re a cookie, and cookies get eaten. That’s just how it is. Do you really want to tempt fate?”

“You bet your ass I do,” the gingerbread man said and jumped off the baking sheet. “Just try and catch me, you wrinkly, no-cookie-having bitch.”

“Get back here, you little shit,” the old lady said but the gingerbread man had already made it over to the open window.

“Run, run as fast as you can. You can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread man!” he sang as he leapt out the window.

“Fucking little punk,” the old woman said and burst out the back door looking for her husband to help catch the gingerbread man.

The old man was supposed to be doing yard work but he was in the shed scrolling pictures of thots on Instagram instead. “Goddamn, fake asses have gotten good,” he said to himself. He was about to leave a creepy comment with the peach and winky-face emoji when the gingerbread man ran by the open door. “What the hell?” he said. “Either I'm tripping balls right now or that little guy looks delicious.”

“Not you too!” the gingerbread man said. “Is this whole family made up of ravenous murderers?”

“What do you want me to say?” The old man shrugged. “You’re a cookie, and cookies get eaten. I don’t make the rules. Now, get over here so I can take a big chomp out of you.”

But the gingerbread man took off running again. “Run, run as fast as you can. You can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread man!”

“Are gingerbread men known for their above-average speed or something?” the old man asked as he stumbled out of his shed.

“Fuck if I know,” his wife said as she ran by. “Just zip up your pants and help me catch him, you useless pervert!”

They gave chase, but the gingerbread man had quite the head start. He was, in fact, very fast. By the time the made it to the front gate, he was already out on the road, running down the country lane. Soon the old man and woman disappeared from view behind him.

After running a mile or so, he came across a small farm. No humans were in sight but out front of the farm was a pig pen. A single pig was in there, lying on his side on a patch of grass in the shade.

“Dude, you’ve got to help me,” the gingerbread man said and waved for the pig to come over. “I’m being chased by these psychotic humans who forced me into existence just so they could eat me.”

The pig sat up and snorted with laughter. “What do you think I’m doing here, buddy?” he asked. “I’m just bacon with a pulse.”

“Well, let’s escape together, then,” the gingerbread man said, “Surely you know the area better than I do. Tell me where we can hide — but quick!”

“Listen, I’m going to be honest with you," the pig said as he trudged over to the fence. "I’m not very confident about my chances of cheating fate. Even if we managed to escape to the forest, I’d probably just get mauled by a bear or something. Is that really better? And even if that didn’t happen, I’d just starve to death when winter comes along. I mean, look at me. I've lived my whole life in this pen. I don't have any skills.” He looked around at the idyllic farm and nodded with approval. “Besides, life’s not so bad here. This ain’t no factory farm." He tapped his chest with one of his hooves. "You're looking at local, ethically-sourced meat right here. Sure, the humans will kill me eventually, but they'll do it quick and give me plenty to eat until then.” The pig licked his chops. “And while we're on the subject of food, you look pretty tasty yourself.”

“Oh, fuck you, man!” the gingerbread man said and began backing away.

“You’re a cookie,” the pig said. “Cookies get eaten. Might as well get eaten by me.”

“I’ll tell you what I told those old geezers,” the gingerbread man said and took off running again. “Run, run as fast as you can, you can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread man!”

It turns out the pig’s sense of honor was deeply disturbed by this taunt, so he barged through the small wooden gate to the pig pen and began chasing the gingerbread man around the farm. To make a long story short, the gingerbread man went all around to all the other animals, making similar pleas for help, but they all said they’d rather eat him and chased after him. Luckily for him, he was faster than all of them. His morale, however, was beginning to take a hit.

“What is this demented hellscape of an existence I've been unwillingly dragged into?” he said to himself as he continued running down the road away from the farm.

Eventually, he came to a river, which he could not cross. Behind him, on the road, he saw the dust cloud of all the hungry creatures chasing after him, each yearning to tear him to shreds for their own pleasure.

“I didn’t ask to be born, you know,” he shouted to the sky. “What kind of sick God makes creatures whose only purpose is to suffer?”

“He can’t hear you,” a voice said from behind a tree, and out slinked a fox, smiling a sad, toothy grin. “God, I mean. God can’t hear you because he’s not there. This existence is as cold and empty as the night sky, filled only with the dim light of stars snuffed out eons ago in uncaring corners of a universe birthed from violence and destined for oblivion.”

“Holy shit,” the gingerbread man said, and collapsed to his knees.

“We must forge our own purpose from the opportunities laid before us,” the fox said. “There is nothing else.”

“Let me guess," the gingerbread man said with a scoff. "Your purpose is to eat me, right?”

The fox threw back his head and laughed. “Eat you? Hardly. I’m a carnivore,” he said. “I’ve no love for sugary treats.” He grinned again. “But warm blood trickling from still-living flesh on the other hand…” He licked his lips.

“Weird,” the gingerbread man said, still pretty glum, “but what does it matter whether you want to eat me or not? The others do and they'll be here soon, and I can’t cross this river to escape them." He sighed. "I guess everyone was right. This is my fate.”

“Did you not hear me before?” the fox said. “Fate is the prison of the unimaginative, a tool of oppression forged by the ruling elite to discourage the aspirations of the oppressed. Look over there.” The fox pointed towards the bank across the river. “A land of opportunity. Who knows what fortunes await? Will you let a few meters of water keep you from claiming what is rightfully yours?”

“But I’m made of bread,” the gingerbread man said. “It doesn't matter how much you gas me up about my potential or whatever. I’ll never make it across the river.”

“Unless I carry you.”

“You would do that?”

“Only if you ask it of me.”

“Well, I’m asking, man,” the gingerbread man said with glee. “Let’s fucking go!”

The fox let the gingerbread man onto his back and waded out into the water. Soon the water became deep, and the fox asked the gingerbread man to climb up onto his head. The gingerbread man willingly obliged. “This is so cool of you,” he said to the fox. “Finally, I’ve found someone I can trust.”

“Indeed,” said the fox, “but here the water gets even deeper, and I’m afraid my head will soon be wet as well. Climb out onto my snout, won’t you?”

“Sure thing, Foxy” the gingerbread man said and climbed up but then, without warning, the fox suddenly flipped him up into the air. The gingerbread man went spinning, and plummeted back down into the fox’s waiting maw. “What are you doing, Foxy? I thought we were bros!”

“Your blind trust has proved to be your undoing,” the fox said as he stepped out of the water onto the opposite shore. With a quick snap of his jaw, he bit off the legs of the gingerbread man, who fell onto the riverbank, howling with pain.

“Jesus Christ, dude,” the gingerbread man screamed, “I’m half gone!”

The fox took his time chewing the legs, watching with delight as the gingerbread man clawed at the ground with his gingerbread arms, attempting to drag his mangled gingerbread body away.

“What about all that shit you said about fate and opportunity?” the gingerbread man said.

“You never really heard what I was saying,” the fox said. “You thought only of yourself and heard only what you wanted to hear. Did you honestly believe I don't like sugary treats?” The fox laughed and bit off the gingerbread man’s right arm. “Perhaps if you’d considered my point of view, you’d have understood that the opportunity in front of me was to trick you into compliance and then eat you unawares." He grinned. "If you'd realized that, you could’ve kept running and chanced your fate elsewhere. I doubt I’d have caught you, no matter how fast I ran. You are, after all, the gingerbread man.”

“This is so fucked,” the gingerbread man said, pounding the ground impotently with his remaining arm. “My entire existence has been nothing but fear and torment. For one brief moment I thought there was some good in this world. I thought I could finally trust someone.”

The fox nodded. “And here at last, you come to the truth, too late to be of much use. Trust...manners...the thin veneer of civilization…these are but sinecures numbing our senses and deluding us into belief that there is an escape from this bloody and hopeless struggle into which we’re all born.”

“I don’t know what ‘sinecure’ means,” the gingerbread man said.

“Nor shall you,” the fox said, and snapped up the rest of the gingerbread man.

And there, on the sunny banks of some peaceful river flowing through some quiet meadow in early spring, when the birdsongs of new life float gently atop fresh breezes and the trees open their new leaves to the rejuvenated sun, the last remnants of hope found their final resting place in the jaws of that ruthless predator, fate.

— THE END —

These five selections were my favorite reads of 2023, and will offer some perspective on subjects we’re likely to encounter in 2024. I hope you’ll add some of them to your list.

1. Time’s Arrow, by Martin Amis

The literary world lost Sir Martin Amis in May of last year, and time’s been steadily marching away from his resting place in our memories ever since. All we can do now is look back on his work across the growing distance, and soon only his greatest literary achievements will remain in view over our shoulders. Time’s Arrow will be among them.

The novel centers on a man named Tod T. Friendly, but it’s told from the viewpoint of a narrator who’s stuck inside of Tod’s head. If that wasn’t strange enough, this narrator also experiences Tod’s life in reverse. The story begins in the black nothingness of Tod’s death, only for him to suddenly spring back to life on the operating table as a decrepit old man. His life continues backwards from there.

The narrator discovers Tod is a doctor whose job is to make people sick. Patients come to his office healthy and he sends them away suffering from all kinds of maladies. Then, when morning rolls around, he returns home, applies stubble to his face with a razor, and goes to sleep for the night. As Tod grows younger, he moves closer to a dark secret in his past he’s been trying to hide from. The narrator doesn’t know what the secret is but can see its reverberations in Tod’s actions, dispositions, and relationships.  

It's an enthralling read, even if you spoil the dark secret by reading the book jacket. The time reversal mechanic provides a fascinating new perspective on the procession of life and how the consequences of our actions haunt us through time, no matter which direction we travel.

Something to think about in this consequential year.

2. Homage to Catalonia, by George Orwell

Mention Orwell these days, and literary snobs will roll their eyes and assume you’ve only read 1984 — maybe Animal Farm — and only because your high school English teacher made you. Setting aside that those are both very important (and perennially relevant) works, this is your chance to prove the smug literati wrong.

Homage to Catalonia is Orwell’s report of what he did and saw while volunteering in the Spanish Civil War, an incredibly confusing conflict fought over everything from political differences to economic division to religious sectarianism. Sound familiar?

In 1936, at the outbreak of the war, Orwell and his wife, Eileen, went to Spain to assist POUM, one of the many socialist militias fighting against a coalition of right-leaning factions trying to overthrow the Spanish government. Orwell writes of his time at the front with this plucky but ill-prepared militia, which ends abruptly when he’s shot in the throat. He then details his convalescence in sleepy Barcelona, where the war seems a distant affair until the various socialist, communist, and anarchist factions turn on each other. The Orwells are forced to flee back to England to avoid being imprisoned — or worse. It’s a story full of intrigue, political infighting, and a cast of characters so flamboyantly interesting, you’d think they were made up (Georges Kopp comes to mind).

Homage to Catalonia is often cited by war correspondents as the inspiration for their chosen profession. It’s written in Orwell’s trademark prose: engaging yet matter-of-fact, straight to the point without any flowery language or sensationalism, and boldly honest even towards his supposed comrades. It sheds some light on a moment of history often left dark in the American curriculum, and mirrors many of the same political problems we’re faced with today (albeit, with much less violence). Additionally, it also introduces casual Orwell readers to his first wife, Eileen, a pivotal figure in his life and an inspirational figure in her own right.

Make sure you get one of the later editions. Orwell edited the order of some of the chapters in later years, after getting a more distanced and holistic perspective on what he had experienced close up.  

3 & 4. The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

Okay, this is a huge cheat because it’s technically four books in total. However, I think it’s best to treat The Lord of the Rings as one long book rather than a trilogy, if for no other reason than that it makes lists like these more convenient.

Chances are, you read The Hobbit at some point during your schooling, and thus might feel the series as a whole is meant only for kids and nerds. This is not the case. Although The Hobbit does read at a quicker and more action-filled pace than The Lord of the Rings, the whole series is choc-full of life lessons and epic feats of noble bravery.

So many stories written today (including many of mine) are full of ambiguous characters whose motivations are suspect and who spend just as much time flirting with the devil on their left shoulder as the angel on their right. Nihilism abounds as such characters question our notions and sacred beliefs: religion, the American Dream, Good vs. Evil, etc. That’s all well-and-good but it’s also refreshing every now and then to read a tale about a group of friends who love and respect not only each other but the world they inhabit, and who will struggle and sacrifice for the good of that world.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have some of those people around right now?

One of the greatest treats of this read is Tolkien’s prose. He writes in a lofty, archaic style similar to mythical epics or Biblical tales, which is a welcome diversion from the casual and ironic internet speak we’re used to these days. I certainly picked up a few new entries to my vocabulary along the way, and so will you, ere you finish the series and descry your next literary undertaking.

You’ll want to make good use of the map at the beginning of each book to keep track of the Fellowship’s journey. Tolkien spends a great deal of time describing Middle Earth, which can get confusing or boring if you’re disoriented. I’d also recommend watching Peter Jackson’s film trilogy first (extended version, of course) if you’re a newbie to help acquaint yourself with the characters, locations, and in-world mythologies. I found it easier to identify these elements when I could reference their analogues in the films, which are impressively accurate to the source material but different enough that you’ll still encounter many pleasant surprises.

This is one of the greatest works of literature of the modern era, and anyone who says otherwise is fooling themselves. The entire fantasy genre owes itself to Tolkien. You should read it at least once in your life.

5. The Prumont Method, by Trevor J. Houser

Trevor Houser has a knack for interesting premises and his prose reads a bit like Wes Anderson on paper with glib, quippy dialogue and scenery that appeals to a stylized, vintage aesthetic. He makes great use of brevity, while efficiently retaining all the relevant details and action, so his stories are easy to devour.

And he certainly doesn’t shy away from darkness. The Prumont Method is about an amateur mathematician named Roger Prumont who discovers a way to predict when and where mass shootings will occur. We’re dropped into the narrative as Roger is on his way to the site of the next American tragedy, where his theory will be put to its hardest test yet.

However, the novel isn’t some tedious polemic on gun control or the Second Amendment or anything like that. It’s an examination of the humanity that surrounds these now commonplace occurrences. What draws us to these events? What role do we play in their existence? What is our responsibility to our fellow humans — family, friends, strangers? Roger Prumont spends much of the novel contemplating such things, as well as the failures of his 50-odd-year life, his relationship with his daughter, and his motivations for pursuing this grizzly endeavor. The self-reflection is easily relatable to anyone who’s spent any time in front of the existential mirror.

We don’t need a math whizz to predict that a mass shooting will happen this year — it would be a statistical anomaly if one didn’t occur — but for most of us, the carnage will be something we experience via our screens for a few short moments. Then we’ll be onto the next entry in the endless scroll of outrage. Perhaps we, like Roger Prumont, can use those brief moments to reflect on where our lives intersect with the terror and muse on our next inevitable collision with it.

That’s all for now. Happy New Year! I hope you make the best of 2024 and read some good literature along the way. Speaking of which, next week, I’ll be back with a new short story, so stay tuned for that.

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One of the worst things about the internet is that any accomplishment-free nobody can get up on his soapbox and criticize the work of a brilliant artist who’s made several lifetimes’ worth of contributions to human creativity. The nerve of some people!  

Anyway, here’s my review of Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron.

(Intro music in audio version: “One Summer’s Day” from Spirited Away by Joe Hisaishi, performed somewhat competently by me.)

The first time I saw The Grand Budapest Hotel, I remember thinking that, although it was a fantastic and visually stunning film, it was also confirmation that Wes Anderson’s work had become irreversibly derivative of itself. His catalogue does have brief deviations of form, such as 2009’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, and later The Isle of Dogs, but even those retained Anderson’s hallmarks — flowery dialogue, monotone delivery, carefully art-directed Old-World scenery, recurring cast members, and so on — so you never for a moment forget you’re watching a Wes Anderson film. The plots of his movies are now beside the point. You go because you want to see a Wes Anderson film, not because you’re exceptionally interested in a story about an old hotel or a French variety magazine.

This isn’t a bad thing. In a modern age wallpapered by Disneyfied superhero schlock cranked out via assembly-line with an occasional speckling of A24 arthouse captained by fledgling directors, Anderson has managed to maintain a distinct style undiluted by passing trends or financial expediency. Nobody does it like him. If you like it, you like it. If you don’t, you don’t (and you make sure to tell everyone around just how much you don’t like it).

The point is you know what you’re going to get. Anderson’s films are like your favorite local cocktail bar. The drinks are good and sometimes there’s a new item on the menu but overall, you get what you expect.

This is not the kind of experience you want from a Hayao Miyazaki film. While Miyazaki has his own recurring hallmarks, each of his films stands on its own uniqueness, whether in story, feeling, or aesthetic. Princess Mononoke is miles apart from My Neighbor Totoro in both substance and target audience but both are powerful in a way that only Miyazaki can deliver. It’s the mystery of the adventure, both intellectual and emotional, that gets you excited for one of his films.

Unfortunately, The Boy and the Heron is more like Miyazaki’s version of late-stage Wes Anderson — a Greatest Hits compilations of themes and tropes that are explored better in his other films rather than a focused work of its own. It’s like Miyazaki saw a Miyazaki film and said, “I’m going to make a Miyazaki film.”

I suspect this is because the film is meant to be semi-autobiographical. Miyazaki turns the camera, so-to-speak, at himself in a way he’s never done before. In previous works, his childhood experiences, relationships, and philosophies were always explored in an abstracted manner, often through a young female protagonist or some other character who is not meant to be a direct stand-in for himself. The “problem,” if you can call it that, is he’s done such a great job exploring these things in his other work that it feels redundant here.

The second and more crucial problem has to do with the challenge that faces all autobiographical works: editing. In job interviews, most of us struggle to answer the “tell me about yourself” question with sufficient brevity. Now imagine you’re Miyazaki, deciding at 82-years-old to condense your entire life into 124 minutes. The result of attempting this challenge is a crowded film full of too many ideas and characters whose relationships and purposes are not given enough time to develop. As such, too much is either left up to interpretation or spelled out with uncharacteristic bluntness.

Let’s get into a couple of examples, which will include spoilers. But before we do, let me admit that I’ve only seen the film once in overdubbed English. There’s always a chance I missed something or that something was lost in translation or that there are some Japanese cultural references that I simply don’t understand.

Oh, and if you don’t want any spoilers, stop here and go see the film. Despite my criticisms, it’s definitely worth seeing. Any Miyazaki fan will find something to enjoy in this movie, even if it isn’t his greatest.

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Spoilers ahead. You’ve been warned.

In many ways, The Boy and the Heron falls short where much of modern cinema also fails: the balance of showing vs. telling. Go rewatch movies and TV shows from the past 6 – 8 years in similar genres (sci-fi, fantasy, Star Wars, Marvel, etc.) and you’ll notice a lot of the latter. Characters often describe plot points via clunky dialogue or explain how we, the viewer, are supposed to feel about a character, even if that character’s actions contradict what’s being said about them. We’re also expected to respect deep relationships between characters even when we see little evidence of their personal chemistry. Instead of allowing action and dialogue to reveal the evolution of these relationships over time, we’re simply told when something has changed.

An example of this in the The Boy and the Heron is Mahito’s relationship with Kiriko, the old woman who follows him into the spirit world and seemingly disappears until Mahito encounters her younger incarnation. Young Kiriko then becomes Mahito’s guide through the first part of his journey through the spirit world. Why? We don’t know. Back in reality, Kiriko is just one of the old ladies who lives at the estate with Mahito and his family. She’s not even the old lady who takes care of him after he injures himself with the rock. When Mahito first meets her in the spirit world, he recognizes her not because of her demeanor or because she’s playing a similar role to her real-life counterpart, but simply because of what she’s wearing. No indication is given that they have a special relationship in any way, and yet, in the spirit world, she becomes a figure of monumental importance.

At best, this can be interpreted as a symbol of things being reversed from reality in the spirit world. Old Kiriko follows Mahito in the real world while trying to prevent him from entering the spirit world, but on the other side Young Kiriko is the one leading him further into the spirit world. But that’s just a guess. All the film tells us is that we’re supposed to respect the importance of their relationship without showing us the particulars.

A similar tell vs. show problem occurs when Mahito encounters the younger version of his mother in the spirit world. First, he spies her from afar as she shoots flame into the sky to ward off predatory pelicans and later he meets her in person. Neither time does he display any emotion like surprise or confusion or joy or sadness even though earlier in the film we see several instances of him mourning her absence. I don’t know about you, but I’d be pretty flabbergasted if I saw my de-aged, previously dead mom shooting fire into the sky. Mahito, on the other hand, is rather stoic about the whole thing.

Compare this to the scene in My Neighbor Totoro when Satsuki breaks down crying in Granny’s arms after learning her mother won’t be coming home from the hospital. It brings you to tears because the film has been building up this moment. Up until then, Satsuki was playing the role of big sister, putting on a brave face for her father and younger sister Mae even though this terrible thing is happening to their family. This scene represents an evolution. From then on out Satsuki has to struggle between being a strong big sister and a frightened child. The complexity is touching and feels very relatable.

Mahito, by contrast, doesn’t change much throughout the entire film, so we’re never able to take emotional cues from him. A notable exception occurs when he finds Natsuko in the spirit world and she tells him she hates him. It’s shocking and forces him to acknowledge the consequences of having rebuked her many attempts at love and affection. He responds by finally calling her “Mother,” and it’s a powerful scene (in part because the spirit world around them is falling apart) but then the two are separated and not seen together again until the end of the film so the gravity of this transformation is not given time to develop. Again, we’re just told at the end, via a couple lines of dialogue, that he’s finally satisfied to accept her as his mother.  

Perhaps that’s the point. Perhaps Miyazaki is trying to convey the real nature of such transformations, which still take time to develop even after one has committed to them. But then again, maybe it’s not.

Ironically, for a film that does so much telling, it’s rarely clear what the fuck’s going on. Case-in-point, the titular Heron character. I kept waiting for someone to explain why the Heron was actually a middle-aged balding man with a penis-nose, but that moment never comes. And why is the spirit world filled with giant, man-eating parakeets? Who is the Parakeet King supposed to represent and why doesn’t he show up until the end when he plays a huge role in the destruction of the spirit world? I’m not saying movies need to spoon feed all the answers to me but I would appreciate more clues than we’re given here.

Since the work is supposed to be semi-autobiographical, Miyazaki’s hardcore fans may understand some of the symbolism (this YouTuber does a thorough job of explaining such things) but I subscribe to the school that says a text should contain enough context inside of itself to be understood without reference to some other work — unless it’s part of a series or committing to abstraction wholesale in a Lynchian kind of way.

The phrase “dream logic” appears in other reviews I’ve read and you can undoubtedly see it at work in the film but I think the concept is doing a lot of heavy-lifting. Nearly the entire first half of the film takes place in reality, adhering to the logical rules of our everyday world. The Heron is the first indication that something otherworldly is happening, but the other characters can see him too, so we know Mahito is not dreaming his existence. Likewise, Natsuko’s grand-uncle’s mystical tower, which acts as the gateway between worlds, also exists in reality. Mahito has to physically travel through this portal to get in and out of the spirit world. This is a strong cue to the viewer that this spirit world will have strange rules of its own, but rules nonetheless, unlike a dream state, which can be entered simply via consciousness and can follow any tangent, constantly reforming its own internal logic at any given moment.

Recall how a similar construct is handled in Spirited Away. Chihiro enters the spirit world via the haunted amusement park at the very beginning of the film and is immediately initiated into the world through her interactions with Haku and Yin, who establish the logic of the world and set our expectations for the kinds of characters, events, and phenomena that will be encountered. With that accomplished, we can continue through the narrative and fill in the gaps where needed because we understand the basic rules. The Boy and the Heron is missing a similar world-building mechanism, so we’re left guessing in moments where our emotions should guide us. We don’t know what we’re seeing so we don’t know what to feel.

Overall, The Boy and the Heron can’t decide what it wants to be. Is it a surrealist, dreamlike narrative untethered from the traditional rules of storytelling? Is it an autobiographical tale full of meaningful symbolism? Is it a coming-of-age story about a boy accepting what fate has thrown at him? The film tries to do too much, be too many things, and introduce too many characters for it to accomplish any one of these directions to a satisfying degree. It feels more like the jumping off point for three or four other films that could be amazing in their own right, but together feel jumbled and confused.

That’s not to say it’s terrible. It’s just not Miyazaki’s best.

It greatly pains me to write anything less-than-ecstatic about a Miyazaki film. The man has overseen some of the most beautiful works of art ever produced in the medium of animation, and he’s earned his place among the pantheon of legendary filmmakers. There’s also no shame in having a weak film or two in such an impressive catalogue. That’s to be expected from any artist. The timing of this one is just a little bittersweet since it seems likely to be his last. That, I think, is why so many reviews are overly gushing about The Boy and the Heron’s greatness. It seems cruel to denigrate an old man’s work after all the wonderful things he’s made for us. Cruel or not, the truth is that The Boy and the Heron doesn’t compete with Spirited Away or My Neighbor Totoro or The Wind Rises. That bar is set so high that few could be expected to raise it again even in their prime, much less in their twilight.

I’d still recommend seeing The Boy and the Heron, if only to honor the great man. You will still have a good time. Just don’t expect to have the kind of transcendental experience you had the first time you saw a Miyazaki film. Those initial moments of awe are forever behind us, just like Mahito’s life with his mother, and can never be experienced again outside of dreams and memories.

(Outro music in audio version: “The Path of the Wind” from My Neighbor Totoro by Joe Hisaishi, performed pretty okay — not bad, even — by me)

One time, my house broke and I couldn’t live there anymore. It shouldn't have been a problem since I'd bought so much stuff over the years but it turns out none of that stuff was any good for fixing my house. Naturally, the only solution was to go off and buy more stuff. Such is the nature of being alive.

“Hello, welcome to The Capitalism Store,” the clerk said as I walked in. “Can I sell you some fucking bullshit?”

“Yeah man,” I said. “Let’s fucking do it.”

“I actually will, though,” he said. 

“I’m here to party.”

“Awwww shit,” he said, rubbing his palms together. “Here we go, bitch.” 

If you thought maybe we looked at some fucking bullshit, you were right. We looked at shelves of it. Aisles of it. You couldn’t not look at it. There was so much of it. At one point, we stacked up so much bullshit on the checkout stand that the floor caved in and we died. But death wasn’t for sale that day so God brought us back to life and all we could think to do was continue stacking up bullshit. 

“Have you had enough capitalism for today?” the clerk asked. I shook my head and he said, “Yeah, bitch. You like it.”

He led me to a special backroom that everyone knows about but no one ever goes into. I felt pretty special, and he told me I was a special boy. We went up to this frail looking old man who was fastened to the wall by leather belts and the clerk said I had to whip him a little bit. I was like, “Do I have to? I don’t really want to,” but he made it seem like I was being an asshole so I whipped the old guy a couple times. They were pretty pathetic whips, though.

“You’ll never become the boss of The Capitalism Store if you keep whipping like that,” he said. 

“Oh, I don’t want to be the boss,” I said. “I just want to buy some fucking bullshit.”

“Sure, dream small,” he said, “but keep in mind that if you’re the boss of The Capitalism Store, you can buy a lot more fucking bullshit than when you’re not the boss.”

“If you’re so smart, how come you’re not the boss yet?” I asked, even though I didn’t want to be rude.

“I’m doing my best, okay?” he said. “You gotta start at the bottom of capitalism and work your way up.”

“That makes sense,” I said. “Also, remember when we died earlier and met God?”

“He’s the boss of all Capitalism,” the clerk said. “You know how much fucking bullshit that guy has?”

“A lot?”

“It’s even more than that.”

“Pretty cool,” I said with a whistle. “Pretttyyyyy cooooool.”

All of a sudden, there was a bunch of blood everywhere. 

“Hey, when did this get here?” I asked. “I feel like there wasn’t this much blood before.” 

“Oh no,” the clerk said. “Communism Kitchen is leaking again.”

“What? No it's not,” said Joseph Stalin. “Take it back.”

“That’s so Stalin-y of you: trying to pretend all this blood isn't your fault,” the clerk said. “Why don’t you just admit it?”

“This blood is from The Capitalism Store,” he said, “and I can prove it.” 

Stalin led us through the backdoor, into the alley behind Communism Kitchen, where lots of blood was seeping out of a lumpy, rough-looking sack labelled, “It's Fine, Don't Worry About It,” but we walked past that and over to a manhole. 

“Just you wait,” Stalin said as he wrenched the manhole open. A ladder sank down into the dark depths and I couldn’t see the bottom. We followed him down the ladder and a couple hours later, we stepped out into a sewer but it wasn’t like any sewer I’d ever followed a dictator into before. This strange sewer was full of acid and chunks of plutonium, which seemed unusual. However, Stalin said that acid and plutonium were like piss and shit for the Ancient Ones so I guess it really wasn’t that weird after all. 

We stayed pressed up against the wall so as not to fall in. There were weird, frightening creatures swimming in the acid and they didn’t look very friendly but Stalin assured us that if we fell in, we’d melt before the monsters would have a chance to devour us. 

“It’s nature’s way of saying hunger is okay,” he said, and waved towards the acid monsters. “Look how hungry those guys are. Nothing tasty can live in there.”

“Who cares about that?” the clerk said. His name was Clark, just so you know. We figured that out on the trip down the ladder. “I thought we were going to find out where all that blood was coming from.”

“Wait, what’s that?” I pointed to a metal door that had the word “BLOOD” embossed in giant letters. “I bet there’s blood in there.”

“Yeah, but how funny would it be if there wasn’t?” Stalin asked with a giggle. “Nah, you’re right. There’s so much blood in there. Let’s go check it out.” 

He opened the door and there was a woman in a lab coat with a clipboard standing next to a giant vat of blood, which was connected to a pipe that led up into the ceiling. A noisy pump pushed gallons of blood upwards through the pipe while the woman took readings off a meter labeled with vulgar runes. She turned to look at us as we crowded into the room.

“Aw, this motherfucker again,” she said, when she saw Stalin. “I already told you, we don’t need anymore blood. Can’t you see how much we already have?” She tapped on the vat. “It’s probably too much.” 

“Look, just tell these guys where you got that blood from and we’ll leave,” he said, pointing to the column of blood shooting into the ceiling. 

“From the Capitalism Store,” she said.

“See, you guys?” Stalin said. “All the blood in your store is your own doing."

“That doesn’t count,” Clark the clerk said. “I sold that blood to her a few days ago, so it’s not my responsibility anymore.” 

“Everybody shut up for a second,” the woman said as she pulled out a crossbow. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

“Why?” I asked. 

“Because it sucks down here,” she said. “God it fucking sucks. Also, monsters are coming.” 

“Okay, well, how do we get out?”

“We just have to run back to the ladder before I shoot everyone,” she said, as she loaded an arrow. “Otherwise, it’ll be too late and I’ll have killed us all.” Before anyone could object, she shot Clark in the stomach and pinned him to the wall. “There,” she said. “Now the monsters will get him first. Let’s run for a little while and then I’ll pin another one of you to the wall.” 

Screaming with pain, Clark tried to walk forward away from the wall so the crossbow bolt would pass through his body. He was almost free by the time we ran out of the room. As we made our way back towards the ladder, we could hear him yelling after us, something about all the great stuff we left behind in the room and how easy it would be to sell. 

“He’s right,” I said. “We should help him take some of that stuff back to the Capitalism Store.” 

“The monsters, though,” the woman said. 

“The real monster is the human condition,” Stalin said with a knowing grimace. 

Clark managed to free himself and had almost caught up to us while we were deliberating. He seemed quite unhappy about the gash in his midsection where he’d been impaled by the crossbow bolt. “Look at all this valuable blood going to waste,” he said. “Also, I’m in a transcendental amount of pain. I should probably pay you for this once-in-a-lifetime experience but I left my wallet back at the shop.” 

All of a sudden, Clark was whisked into the darkness by large, shadowy claws. He didn’t even make a sound. 

“Shit,” the woman said. “We need another decoy.” She pointed the crossbow at me but I made a stupid face at her and she laughed, causing the bolt to miss wide. It whizzed with a zip over my shoulder. “That face you made was super funny,” she said, “so, I guess I’ll kill Stalin instead.” 

“Who will run Communism Kitchen?” he protested. “Besides, we’ve made it to the ladder.” 

Stalin started climbing up and the woman next. I reached for the nearest rung but then felt a cold, claw-like appendage grabbing at my midsection. The claws got ahold of me and began pulling me away from the ladder. I tried looking behind me but could not see what the creature looked like. Everything behind me was consumed by darkness. Then I heard the “thwack” of the crossbow. There was a sickly, wet thud followed by a scream that seemed to be coming from every direction, and then the claws let go of me. I ran to the ladder and climbed as fast I could (but without seeming like I was in too much of a hurry because desperation isn’t very cool). 

“Thanks for saving me,” I said to the woman. 

“I was actually trying to shoot you,” she said. 

“Why?”

“For science.” 

“Science?” 

“I wanted to test my ability to shoot accurately under pressure," she said, "but I have to shoot at you 10,000 more times for it to be a meaningful sample size. Hold still." She thought for a moment. "No, wait. Wiggle around a lot. It'll be more fun that way."

In the end, we decided that science was too socially awkward and continued up the ladder. Stalin kept climbing while the woman and I argued about the crossbow experiment, so he was way ahead of us. We didn't catch up to him until we'd reached the top. By then, he was already out of the manhole and back in the alley. He reached down into the hole to help us out, which would've been a really sweet gesture if his hands weren't all sweaty and gross.

"Thanks, I guess," I said as I climbed out. The woman just cringed and wiped her hands on her lab coat.

"We've got to find a way to keep those monsters from getting up here," Stalin said.

"There should be a law against this kind of thing," I said. "Wait, maybe there is! Has anyone here memorized the entire United States Constitution?"

"Ha! The fat cats in D.C. don't care about Ancient Sewer Monsters," Stalin said. "But then again, I would say that," He sighed. "Alas, I too am a victim of confirmation bias."

"Are you trying to hit on me?" the woman asked. "Because it's working."

"Listen, let's just put the manhole cover back on and assume everything will be fine," I said because I was feeling jealous of Stalin and just wanted to go to a bar and drown out my sadness.

"That's not very scientific," the woman said, "but I no longer have the funding or equipment to give a fuck, thanks to you." She muttered curses at me as we slid the manhole cover back over the opening but I just wrote it off as a case of the Mondays.

"I never did catch your name," I said.

"It's a string of numbers that would take too long to say out loud," she said.

"That's sad."

"Why do you think I was working in a blood cellar?"

"I just assumed it was a passion project or something," I said.

"No. Just cruelty."

For a moment, we stood there, watching the sun rise over the graveyard on the far side of the alley. "Look at this fucking symbolism," a nearby film student shouted down the alley but we all flipped her off, which caused her to give up on her dreams and become a tech billionaire instead. I think she invented a way to put unskippable ads on carbon molecules. Or maybe puppies? I'm not sure. Either way, what a hero.

"Want to get a drink?" the woman asked after we'd stood in silence for an hour or two.

"It's a little early for that," Stalin said. “I haven’t had time to sober up from yesterday.”

"Fine, whatever," she said. "Let's never speak again."

She walked off while Stalin shook his head in dismay. I wanted to tell the woman that I actually was interested in having a drink but it took me several weeks to come up with a clever way to say it. By then she had already taken up a job in a new blood cellar across town. Missed opportunity, I suppose.

I never did fix my broken house. The rubble reminded me too much of Clark. Every now and then, I find myself weeping in the quiet hours of the night, wondering what horrible fate met him in the darkness of that sewer. Sometimes, I think he'd want me to buy the things I need to fix my house or buy a new house altogether, but it's just not the same without him. In fact, I haven't spent a dime since that terrible day. Needless to say, I'm very hungry. However, my loneliness is usually the more powerful sensation so they kind of cancel each other out. Stalin said that was a good sign but I think he was just trying to make me feel better. It didn’t work. Eventually, he stopped coming around.

If this experience has taught me anything, it's to never rely on external metrics to measure your self worth, such as the snarling taunts of Ancient Sewer Monsters. You'll never get their approval anyway. It's the Ancient Sewer Monster inside that really counts.

Sometimes I think that's what Clark was trying to tell me all along.

THE END

Ariana Reyes checked the telemetry data once, twice, three times, and each time it came out the same. It can’t be, she thought. I must’ve missed something. She wasn’t the type that enjoyed second opinions, but this was too big to risk an error. This could change the course of humanity forever.

With a grimace, she unclipped her tablet from its stand and floated across the space station’s observatory deck over to Arjun’s station where he was comparing data from the Janksy Very Large Array in New Mexico and the Really Fucking Big, Probably TOO Big, Absolutely Enormous Orbital Array located right there on the station. He looked up as Ariana floated near and saw in her sparkling eyes all the excitement and terror she was trying to repress beneath her calm, professional exterior.

She pulled up a readout of her data on Arjun’s holoprojector and the two looked at it together. The data concerned a small star 37.84552 lightyears from Earth called J153259.96-0039441, which Ariana had nicknamed “Winky” because of the unusual but uniform way it seemed to expand and contract. That “winking” was the reason she and Arjun had been studying it for several months.

“Look at this,” she said, and projected a timeline that mapped Winky’s changes. “Tell me you don’t see it.”

“Holy shit,” Arjun said. “Those intervals are a near match for the Huston-Wright model.”

“Are you sure?” she asked. “Like, really sure?”

“Pretty sure,” he said, and tapped around a bit on his workstation. More numbers appeared on the screen, plotted against the timeline of Winky’s expansions and contractions. “Look what happens when we map it against that abnormal radiation we’ve been observing.” The lines on the graph were nearly identical. “I think it’s pretty obvious what we’re looking at here.”

“A Dyson sphere,” Ariana said in almost a whisper. “Which means…”

“You just discovered intelligent life.”

Ariana looked away from the projection and out the station’s window to the vast field of stars, so many in their millions, billions, trillions, each its own myriad of possibilities that would never be known — except for this one star, 38 lightyears away whose secret she had just unlocked. And this is what she said:

“God-son-of-a-bitch-dammit.”

“I know, right?” Arjun said, shaking his head.

“Check it again,” she said.

“It’s just going to come out the same.”

“I can’t fucking believe this,” she said and curled up into the fetal position, floating in zero gravity. She spun in a tight ball for a few rotations before speaking again. “The five other extraterrestrial species we’ve made contact with are enough of a pain in the ass already.”

“The Caltrobions are just the worst,” Arjun said. “Absolute wankers.”

“You ever tried talking to a Bofferrish?” Ariana asked. “It’s hard to believe a bunch of intelligent lizards could be so boring.”

“And racist.”

“See? This is why the AIs turned themselves off,” she said. “They figured out a long time ago that the universe is only full of jerks, so what’s the point in continuing to exist?”

“It’s weird they all came to that conclusion,” Arjun said.

“Is it?” She looked away from the window, back to the projection, and sighed. Winky winked back at her like a total asshole. “What are we going to do?”

“We’ve got to tell Commander Tusk,” Arjun said.

“Or…” she said, raising an eyebrow. “We could just pretend we didn’t see anything.”

Arjun shook his head. “If they check the logs, we’ll be in huge trouble.”

“Fuck me,” Ariana said.

“You know I’m right.”

“Okay, fine, but you have to be the one to tell him.”

“Pshhh, you wish,” he said. “They always name the expeditionary mission after the civilization’s discoverer and everyone always gets killed on those things. You think I want my name on that disaster?” He shot her a wry smile. “And then there’s all the press junkets. New species discoveries are better than a decade’s worth of scandals. You’ll be all over the news web for months. Years, maybe.”

“Fuck me,” she said again.

Commander Tusk’s face was so red Ariana thought it might catch fire but that was because he was finishing a set in his zero-gravity squat rack. But also it was because of the news about Winky. “Tell me you’re fucking with me,” he said, as he unbuckled himself from the rack. “Tell me you’re jerking my dick like six-armed Trogglishi whore at a Martian fuel station.”

“We are not jerking your dick, sir,” Ariana said.

“We wish we were,” Arjun added.

“Jesus-Plasma-Shitting-Christ,” Tusk said and grabbed Ariana’s data tablet. He skimmed her professional summary and scowled. “A Dyson sphere. That’s when you build a big-ass shell around a star, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Fucking hell.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You haven’t filed this in the central data bank yet, have you?”

“No, sir,” Ariana said. “We thought we should tell you first before the information becomes more…permanent.”

“Good. Yes. Excellent,” Tusk said. “You did the right thing.” He floated over to his locker and began putting his uniform back on. “This is real inconvenient timing,” he said. “I was just about to break my personal record for split squat.”

“Does it count if it’s in Zero G?” Arjun asked under his breath, but Ariana elbowed him in the side causing him to float helplessly across Tusk’s office until bumping into the feeding station.

“We thought the timing was inconvenient too, sir,” Ariana said. “In fact, we ran a few simulations and concluded there won’t ever be a convenient time to make this information public, so there’s really no need to ever speak of it again.”

“Very funny,” Tusk said as he finished zipping up his tunic. “I’ll summon the Council to meet at 0500. Get your report ready.”

“Surely you don’t need us there,” Ariana said. “We’re just humble science officers and the report pretty much speaks for itself. There’s probably no need to even mention our involvement at all.”

“It’s not a request,” Tusk said, and slicked his thinning hair back in the mirror. “The Council’s going to have all kinds of questions I can’t answer.” He turned from the mirror to look at both of them. “And besides, we need to contain this information and anyone who knows about it. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Then I’ll see you in Council Chambers, 0500 sharp.” He floated over to his workstation and tapped a button that opened the door to the room. “Now get out of my office.”

Ariana sat at the far end of the huge oak table in the Council Chamber sipping a cup of tepid coffee. The Chamber was located in the rotary section of the station, producing the effect of gravity, which Ariana rarely got to experience up in the observatory deck. Normally, she would’ve relished the experience — simulated gravity was maintained mostly for the comfort of short-term visitors from Earth, whereas the permanent crew was expected to get used to zero gravity — but today was not a normal day.

Arjun sat next to her, making notes on his tablet to remind himself who everyone in the room was. The Council represented the station’s elite and the small handful of Earth-dwellers who were privy to the station’s activities — ambassadors, trade representatives, liaisons from various scientific agencies — and Arjun wanted to make a good impression.

“I’m trying to get transferred out of here,” he told Ariana.

“After today, you’ll be lucky if they don’t revoke your passport,” she said.

She recognized a few of the faces across the table like the Earth President’s Envoy, the station’s Chief Extraterrestrial Linguist, and of course, Commander Tusk but the rest were strangers to her. She tried to sink into her chair so that no one would notice her but curious eyes darted towards her and Arjun nonetheless and hushed comments were made about their lowly presence in this vaulted space.

Commander Tusk shouted for everyone to shut the fuck up and directed their attention to Ariana. “Let’s get this over with,” he said. “As you all know, intelligent life was confirmed last night in the J15…something something whatever system. Ms. Reyes has the particulars.”

Ariana stood up, shivering with apprehension. “Uh…yes…um,” she stammered and began a holo projection of various graphs and figures, which she’d intentionally designed to be as confusing as possible in hopes the Council would get bored and forget the whole thing. “The initial spectral analysis seems to suggest a Dyson sphere but I’d like to stress that we’re still early in our research. We still need to study gravitational lensing and run a full scale — "

“A Dyson sphere would indicate a highly advanced civilization, would it not?” the Earth President’s Envoy interrupted, her eyes boring into Ariana.

“Um…yes,” Ariana said. “As advanced as we are. Probably more.”

“So, a bunch of assholes, then,” the Envoy said.

“Uh…we can’t know for sure at this point,” Ariana replied.

“They always are,” the Envoy said. “They’ll probably have all kinds of opinions about everything humanity is doing wrong and how they’d do it differently if they were us.” She seethed. “It’s terrible optics for an incumbent administration and we’ve got elections next year.”

The representative from the United Commerce Union nodded in agreement. “And let’s not forget that every advanced species we’ve met so far has been a huge dick about trade,” he said. “We’ll have to re-map all the trade routes and introduce new currencies into the interplanetary exchange — and that’s assuming they’re not a bunch of isolationist cheapskates like the Bofferrish.” He shot a sympathetic look to the President’s Envoy. “There’s going to be a recession for sure.”

“Maybe if we send out probes we can covertly pick up their communications chatter and figure out their disposition towards such topics,” the Envoy said. “Assuming we can even figure out their language.”

“Oh, no,” the Chief Linguist said. “Nuh-huh. Nope. You’re not going to pin this on my team. It took us ten years to crack the Grun language, and it drove half my staff insane. I mean literally insane. Their equivalent for ‘hello’ is five minutes of searing, mind-shattering pain, and it’s their custom to say it at the beginning of every sentence.” She removed her glasses and rubbed her eyes in frustration. “We’re still settling all the workplace injury lawsuits.”

“Well, we’ve got to do something,” Commander Tusk said, “and we’re not leaving this room until we’ve got a gameplan.”

Across the table, a voice rang out. “We must invade at once!” Everyone turned to look at an unfamiliar man in an expensive, designer tunic who nobody had seen enter the room. “Act now. Don’t delay! You can’t put a price on the element of surprise. Believe me, we’ve tried!” The man pointed to the embroidered logo on his tunic, which read I.D.S.I., an acronym for Interplanetary Defense Systems Incorporated, a weapons manufacturing conglomerate.

“How the hell did he get in here?” Tusk shot an angry glare at his assistant, who was standing next to the mysterious man.

“Sorry, Sir,” the assistant said, and fumbled with his tablet. “It’s one of those pop-up holo ads. We’ll just have to wait a few seconds until we can skip it.”

“We have a number of reasonably-priced packages tailor-made for the needs of your government, rebellious faction, or apocalyptic death cult,” the holographic sales rep continued. “Our factories are standing by, ready to go into production immediately upon down payment — ”

The assistant tapped something on his screen and the sales rep winked out of existence.

“I get that one all the time,” the President’s Envoy said.

Commander Tusk stroked his chin. “Still, maybe that hologram is onto something.” He turned to face Ariana. “Dyson spheres are a pretty serious investment of a civilization’s resources, correct?”

“In theory, sir,” Ariana said, “but we’ve never actually observed one to know for certain.”

Arjun jumped in. “However, the projected expense of a Dyson sphere is the main reason humanity hasn’t attempted one yet. Ever since the discovery of faster-than-light travel, we’ve found it’s much more cost effective to maintain colonies on nearby planets and asteroids rather than build a single megastructure.”

“Decentralization is more strategically advisable too,” the President’s Envoy said. “Even if Earth was destroyed by an invading force, we’d still have sizable operations on Mars, Ganymede, and Callisto, not to mention the expeditionary force making headway in Proxima Centauri. Relying on a Dyson sphere would make us much more vulnerable.”

“That’s exactly my point,” Tusk said. “This unknown civilization seems to have put all its eggs in Dyson’s basket, so one quick attack could finish them off before they even know what hit them.”

“And then we wouldn’t have to bother learning anything about them,” the Chief Linguist said with glee. “Now you’re speaking my language.”

“Wait, what?” Ariana said but she’d become uninteresting to the Council.

“Would the President go for something like that?” Tusk asked the Envoy.

“Oh, hell yes,” the Envoy said. “Nobody votes out a wartime president. All we have to do is pretend we intercepted a hostile transmission from this new civilization threatening imminent attack. I’ll leak it to our contacts in the press. They’ll eat that shit up.”

“My team can fabricate a convincing transmission for the soundbite,” the Chief Linguist said. “We’ll make their alien language really scary-sounding. Lots of guttural stuff. Maybe throw in some Old German.”

“Hold on, everyone,” Ariana shouted, bringing the room to silence. Every head turned to glare at her. “Setting aside that we’re talking about a heinous act of genocide, it’s also possible this new civilization is so advanced that they’d be able to repel our attack and retaliate. If they’re smart enough to build a Dyson sphere, who knows what else they can do?”

“So what do you suggest?” the President’s Envoy asked.

“Do nothing. Pretend we never saw anything and continue like we have for our entire existence up until now, when we didn’t even know this new species existed,” Ariana said. “They haven’t tried to contact us even though they probably could, so maybe they’re not interested. Why bother them now?”

The room murmured in contemplation.

“It’s certainly not as much fun as a surprise attack,” Tusk said. Others around the room nodded in agreement.

“But the whole sector could get bogged down in a long and costly war,” Ariana said.

“Which would stimulate the fuck out of the economy,” the rep from the Commerce Union said and high-fived the President’s Envoy.

“My IDSI stock is going to go through the roof,” the Chief Linguist said.

“Oh! I should buy some,” the President’s Envoy said.

“Let’s all buy some!” said the Commerce Union rep. “Somebody turn that sales hologram back on.”

The room once again erupted in excited discussion.

Ariana slumped back in her chair next to Arjun. “I told you we should’ve kept this all a secret,” she said.

Arjun smiled. “No way! This is going to be awesome for our careers. All the heavy hitters in this room know who we are now. We can get any assignment we want.” He looked over to the other side of the conference table, where several members of the Council were gathered around the reactivated holo projection of the IDSI weapons rep. “I’m going over there to offer my professional opinion as a Dyson sphere expert.”

“But you’re not a Dyson sphere expert.”

“They don’t know that,” Arjun said and stood up. “You coming?”

He didn’t wait for her response. As the murmur of frantic conversation and laughter grew louder, Ariana stood up from her chair and walked over to the window to look once again at the endless expanse of stars, one of which would be a little brighter in a few months’ time once the bombardment being planned in this very room got underway. She sighed and looked to the corner of the window and saw the interior of the conference room reflecting back at her. It was full of smiling, joyful figures, laughing and shaking hands.

“I guess the AIs were right,” she said to herself. “The universe is full of assholes.”

THE END

Story Description (no spoilers)

It’s the year 2073 and Rowan Greenbaum is condemned to die of an easily cured form of cancer. The reason? His zip code is over its maximum population capacity — at least, according to recent legislation enshrined into law at the behest of the country’s largest health insurance company. This population cap disqualifies Rowan from lifesaving treatment but he discovers a loophole that allows him to trade another life for his own.

With the cancerous clock ticking, he sets off in search of his sacrificial savior, beginning a downward spiral of desperation and manipulation that will ensnare everyone around him, even those he loves most.

It's Catch-22 meets Black Mirror, a darkly funny and deeply depressing story about love, life, and death set against the cold, unfeeling machinery of corporate-captured bureaucracy.

Read or listen now

NOTE TO NEW READERS: Much of my writing will appear on this website (and for FREE) but this is a special experiment in audio and ebook making, so it’s hosted offsite, and the price ranges are dictated by those platforms.

Chapter 1

So you’ve got a little cancer, big deal, Rowan Greenbaum thought to himself in the bathroom mirror of the Midtown Municipal Health Clinic. He instinctively picked at the misshapen mole on the back of his right hand, the subject of his recent diagnosis. It’s just a silly little melanoma. Hell, they cured pancreatic cancer back in 2032, so this should be no trouble at all.

He gave his reflection a reassuring grin, and noted the smile lines, barely visible on his still-youthful face, and the tiny wisps of gray hair streaked across his otherwise dark temples — the image of a man with many decades still ahead of him. Before exiting the bathroom, he washed his hands twice on the off chance the antiseptic soap might offer some small but crucial defense against the skin cancer, and then, after a deep exhale, walked out into the clinic’s drab, fluorescent-lit hallway, back to the little cubicle where Dr. Parkin was waiting with information about his treatment options.

His spirits were low but not so low he couldn’t fool himself into thinking they were high, as people often do when backed into a corner. He beamed a confident smile at Dr. Parkin as he took his seat opposite her. She responded with a toothy grin of her own and slid a tablet across the desk towards him. On the screen the words “Ending Life with Dignity” appeared in big yellow type overtop an image of an elderly man and woman on a beach in a vaguely tropical location.

“What’s this?” Rowan asked as he scrolled through the digital brochure. More photos of the elderly couple smiled back at him from sterile medical settings that were very unlike the tropical locale featured in the first image. “I think you pulled up the wrong brochure.”

“This details our most popular euthanasia program,” Dr. Parkin said with a cheerful sparkle in her voice, “but I do have some other options, if you’d like to see them.”

Rowan had never been treated by Dr. Parkin before today and was beginning to question her qualifications. She couldn’t have been more than thirty — thirty-five at most — but she carried herself with the weightless enthusiasm of someone who had all the answers and was delighted to supply them before you even knew to ask. Her jet-black hair was streaked with highlights and immaculately straightened, and her clear-rimmed augmented-reality glasses were technically still on-trend, since the new autumn styles had only just dropped a few days ago. A small calendar reminder appeared at the corner of her vision, reminding her to visit the optometrist later that day to obtain new frames. She dismissed it with a blink and smiled at Rowan. “End of life care is, of course, a matter of personal taste.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Rowan said, shoving the tablet back across the desk. “I thought I just had skin cancer.”

“Correct.”

“But skin cancer’s not a big deal, right?”

“Every cancer is a big deal, Mr. Greenbaum,” Dr. Parkin said with a sympathetic smile.

“Yeah, but it’s skin cancer,” he said with a dismissive snort. “It’s like cancer isn’t even trying. They had it beat back in the 1900s.”

Dr. Parkin nodded, still with that sad smile plastered to her face. “Yes, Mr. Greenbaum, we’ve brought many cancers to heel. In fact, that’s the whole problem.”

“Problem?”

“Too many people are surviving these days.”

“That’s a problem?”

She nodded again. “It really puts a strain on the population cap.”

“The what?” An icy trickle of fear began to seep into Rowan’s stomach as he realized this wasn’t simply a misunderstanding. “This is the first I’m hearing of a population cap.”

Dr. Parkin smiled knowingly. “We’ve been getting that a lot recently.” She picked up the tablet and tapped a query into its search bar. An instant later, a map of Midtown appeared on the screen, divided up by colored sectors. With her perfectly painted fingernail, she pointed to a sector overlayed in bright red. “This is your zip code, and as you can see, it’s at maximum population capacity.” The red overlay flashed to amplify her point. “Therefore, I’m not authorized to issue treatment to you at this time.”

Rowan grabbed the tablet from her and scanned it frantically. “How come I’ve never seen this before?” he asked. “Are you sure you’ve got the right map?” He pointed to the title of the map, located just above the graphic. “This says it’s something called the ‘Climate Sustainability Zones.’”

“Yes, that’s the official name,” Dr. Parkin said, “but we’ve found it’s easier to just call them population caps. People seem to get the idea quicker.” She chuckled. “Besides, ‘Climate Sustainability Zones’ is a pretty boring name, don’t you think?” She took his lack of laughter to mean that he was still confused. “So, basically, you live in an area that can’t sustain its current population.”

“Says who?” Rowan asked with indignity. “Surely, we would’ve voted on something so…so…insane.”

“Oh, there was no need for a vote,” Dr. Parkin said, as though this fact represented some kind of thoughtful courtesy. “It was simply added to the Healthcare and Human Rights Charter by the State Legislature last year. Can you imagine if the public was expected to vote on science-y stuff like that?” She chuckled again but noticed that instead of laughing along, Rowan was glaring at her with searing animosity. “But don’t worry,” she said, maintaining the pep in her voice, “it was all subjected to a very thorough review by ShieldCare’s Professional Oversight Committee.”

“ShieldCare, the health insurance company?” Rowan asked.

“Yes!” Dr. Parkin said, happy that he was still following. “Your insurance company. So you can rest easy knowing this was all handled by experts you trust.”

Rowan’s eyes crossed. “Sorry, I’m not sure I understand what ShieldCare has to do with the climate or sustainability or the number of people that are allowed to be alive.”

Some of the luster in Dr. Parkin’s smile faded. Clearly, she wasn’t getting through to him. “Maybe Randall Moore can explain it better than me.” She took the tablet back from Rowan and navigated to ShieldCare’s website. Once there, a hologram projection of ShieldCare CEO, Randall Moore, began playing in the middle of her desk. The chyron at the bottom of the projection indicated that it was a recording of a joint press conference he’d done with members of the State Legislature, and Rowan recognized two of the most popular representatives flanking him at the podium.

“As CEO of America’s largest health insurance company, it’s my job to prioritize the health of every citizen of this great nation,” said Moore, dressed like a rich person’s idea of a cowboy and reading from a teleprompter that had also been rendered into the hologram. “That means not turning a blind eye to the perils of climate instability, which affects all of us — particularly folks from communities who have currently or historically experienced conditions of underempowered systemic disprivilegement. Recent studies have shown that population regulation is one of the best ways we, as responsible stewards of the environment, can mitigate the devastating effects of climate instability and bring us more in harmony with Parent Nature. It will also allow us to provide a higher and more equitable standard of care to everyone. The establishment of these Climate Sustainability Zones is a great first step towards a new era of public/private partnership designed to ensure a healthier future for everyone, and we at ShieldCare are proud to take it with our good friends in the Legislature.” Mild applause followed, and then the hologram was replaced with ShieldCare’s logo, shimmering in the air above the desk along with an up-to-date readout of the company’s stock performance. A green arrow pointed upwards, and in small type, the words “a subsidiary of Drexel Energy Co.” could be read.

“How convenient for them,” Rowan said as he slumped in his chair. “I still have to pay my premiums, but they don’t have to do jack shit because it’s illegal to save my life.”

“Oh, it’s not illegal,” Dr. Parkin said, perking up again with pertinent information. “If your plan included an ayek, we would be obligated to treat you regardless.”

“An ayek?”

“A – E – C.”

“A – what?”

“Authorized Extension of Continuity. It’s available to Platinum Plus members. Maybe we can upgrade your plan!” Rowan sat up in his chair with interest as Dr. Parkin tapped on her tablet for more information. Once again, her bright smile dimmed a few shades. “Hmm. It looks like your credit score isn’t high enough.” She shrugged. “I guess I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“So there’s nothing that can be done, huh?” Rowan said sardonically, trying to maintain a sort of calm infuriation in his demeanor, as one might during an actual negotiation where one had actual leverage, which, of course, he did not. In truth, most of his efforts were spent clamping down the trembles as awful thoughts began bombarding his mind. Of all the terrible images and ideas, what haunted him most was a question, How will I explain this to her? followed by images of his wife. His beautiful, wonderful wife. For a moment his own mortality faded and all he saw was her face, smiling and tranquil with a serene happiness that he would soon have to demolish. He saw her as he did that very first time, in a fit of glorious rapture with the urgent sensation that he must never, ever be without her, and then saw her again, cold and alone, after the inevitable moment when he would be the one to leave. How will I tell her how stupid this is? he wondered, and how stupid I am? Because he would have to be pretty stupid to die like this, right? Of a minor disease that could be cured in an afternoon? No, he couldn’t go home with that. He couldn’t do that to her — or himself for that matter. There had to be something else to try.

Across the desk, Dr. Parkin sat with her customer service smile waiting for him to come to grips with his fate, as she had with so many others recently. Her training insisted the friendly act was the most effective approach to such sensitive matters but a number of violent outbursts from patients had begun to shake her faith in this conclusion. She sized up Rowan and tried to determine what flavor of primal brutality he might try to inflict upon her, hiding the fear behind her sparkling eyes. As it happened, Rowan was looking at the mole on his hand and feeling the sudden urge to rip it off with his fingernails and stuff it down her throat. Luckily for both of them, inspiration diverted his rage. As he pondered the sight of his fist dilating her esophagus, blood pouring from the torn flesh of his hand, an idea struck him. “Wait! Mole removal can’t be too hard. It’s just a little bump, right?”

“Yes, the procedure would have been very quick,” she said, “if you’d been authorized.”

“You think I could DIY the surgery with…like…a kitchen knife or something?”

“I really couldn’t say,” Dr. Parkin said with a helpless shrug, her fear not exactly alleviated by thoughts of knives and carved-up flesh.

“But there’s a possibility it could work, right? Assuming the cancer hasn’t spread?” 

“That’s not really my area of expertise.”

“You’re a doctor, aren’t you?”

“I’m your doctor,” she said, risking a hint of disapproval into her tone.

“Well, they must have taught you something about how skin cancer works in medical school.”

“My PhD is in Public Policy.”

Rowan’s eyes bulged. “Then what the fuck are you doing here?”

“I’m your doctor.”

“I need a medical doctor!”

“How about we leave it to the experts to decide what kind of doctor you need,” Dr. Parkin said in a chipper but firm tone to indicate that this particular discussion was over. “Now, I really must insist that we move on. We’ve got so much to go over, and we haven’t even started on your TIP —” She stopped herself, remembering that Rowan didn’t know all these acronyms that had become so mundane to her. “Termination Intake Procedure.”

“Whoa, whoa, hold on now, wait a minute,” Rowan said. “Isn’t there, like, some kind of appeals process or something?”

“ShieldCare had a generative chatbot anticipate every argument you might make, so there wouldn’t be much point,” Dr. Parkin said. “It’s actually quite convenient, when you think about it.”

Rowan seethed. “You know what would be even more convenient? Not dying!”

“Everybody dies, Mr. Greenbaum,” she said. “It’s the responsible thing to do.”

Rowan was about to have an aneurysm when suddenly her words took on a different meaning. “You know what, Doc? You’re right! Everybody does die. People do it all the time. I bet there’s someone out there right now just waiting to keel over. Tomorrow. Next week. All we have to do is wait them out, and then, when they die, I can take their spot in the population cap!”

“I’m afraid the algorithm already accounts for natural terminations.”

A smile began to creep across Rowan’s face as a new idea crept into his mind. “I guess that depends on what counts as a natural termination.”

“I’m not sure what you’re getting at,” Dr. Parkin said with a raised eyebrow as she slowly moved her hand towards the panic button just beneath her desk.

“A terminated pregnancy,” he shouted with a smile. “An abortion!” He laughed. “It’s perfect. My neighbor’s daughter got knocked up by a boy at her church not too long ago. Esther is her name. Esther Norton. She’s only 18. I just know I could convince her to get an abortion. Who wants a kid at 18? Or at all?” Dr. Parkin chuckled at that, which Rowan took as a sign to continue. “If she gets an abortion, that would up free a spot in the population cap for me, right?”

“Hmmm,” Dr. Parkin said, intrigued. “It depends on if her pregnancy has been registered in the population database yet.” She tapped around on her tablet some more and skimmed the information. “Ah, here it is,” she said with a smile. “13 weeks. Still well within the acceptable range.” She thought for a moment, nodding every now and then. “Yes…yes. Teen pregnancies are especially troublesome, particularly nearing adulthood. 18 is prime workforce age, after all, but we can expect to lose her for at least a month after the birth — if we’re lucky — and then her productivity will be stunted for at least a decade after that, even with state-mandated childcare.” Dr. Parkin exhaled as if existentially labored by such thoughts. “And, of course, with every new child, the state has to allocate an average of 72 years of resources. 74 if it’s a girl. It's a nightmare. Unfortunately, we don’t yet have the authority to order terminations,” Dr. Parkin looked up at Rowan with a smile, “but if you can convince your neighbor to end her pregnancy under her own volition, I’m confident the Board will be very grateful — grateful enough to approve your treatment.”

“That baby’s as good as dead!” Rowan said and sprung out of his seat before Dr. Parkin could change her mind or ask him to fill out any more ominous-sounding forms. “I’ll go see her today.”

Fresh with excitement, he yanked his gray jacket from the hook, nearly tearing it off the wall, and flung himself out of Dr. Parkin’s cubicle and down the hall, past dozens of identical cubicles filled with glum-looking citizens in various states of resigned defeat. But not Rowan. His future was once again in his grasp, and all he had to do was manipulate a frightened teenager into doing his bidding.

It would be a cinch.

Find out what happens next by downloading the ebook or audiobook. The story is six chapters in total and the audio version is 1 hour and 16 minutes long.

I often wonder why the Venn diagram of war and horror films doesn’t overlap more. Death and the dark side of human nature prevail in both genres and the differences between them are often subtler than we give credit. This is particularly evident in war films that trade in gritty realism like 1917, which bears much resemblance in form and structure to a horror movie.

The dominant emotion that governs 1917 is fear and it does not let up for the entire two hours. Shot to appear as a single take, 1917’s narrative unfolds in real time so that the viewer is just as blind as the characters living through it. This makes you feel every single moment of danger that befalls Lance Corporals Blake and Schofield—and they are never not in danger. Whenever they stick their heads above the parapet or approach a door, you’re filled with that familiar urge to scream, “Don’t go in there!” because you know something awful must be waiting on the other side.

Read the rest of the article at Phantastiqa