penfist

stories are the bones of everything

love

Density propensity

by 2 Comments

I was taking the subway home. Like I do every day after work.

I work for an organization that uses technology in ways. Well, let’s just say what I do isn’t considered legal or ethical. In a world where 100 multi-billionaires control 62% of the earth’s wealth, I could give a fuck about what’s considered legal or ethical.

I have a family to take care of, and bills to pay. I use my talents to get what I can, keep my family fed, and keep our quality of life as high as I can. No one’s getting hurt. I just skim money out of the system using my technical and social abilities. Backdoors, phishing expeditions, social engineering. These are my domains. I have a good crew. The operation that employs me pays good bonuses when I do a good job. My kids don’t wear shoes with holes in the soles. They aren’t malnourished. We’ve got mad bandwidth and they can learn whatever they want about the world.

Meanwhile, I’m taking a little here, and a little there. Rich people don’t need that much. So I shave a little bit off, carve a slice out, make a piece of the pie mine.

This world is crazy. It’s people cutting each other’s throats, just like it always has been, except now we do it in a vast ocean of zeros and ones. People don’t have to get dead in the streets and alleys like they did back in the olden days. You know what? That’s alright with me. People get paid, bank accounts get switched around here and there.

Oh shit. Mother fucker just stabbed me. I was taking the subway home.

Minding my own business. Bam. Dude comes up on me. It doesn’t hurt. Just cold. Spreading cold. That mother fucker.
My monitor flashes a red warning and I hear a voice in my head. “Biological damage detected. Emergency protocol active. Hibernation mode priority one.”

I can’t see right. Can’t hear right. It’s like I’m in a tunnel going down into the dark and that mother fucker is getting smaller and smaller. Did he just kill me? What the fuck for? I wasn’t doing nothing to him. Oh shit. I’m not going to get to say goodbye to Brianne and Jonas and little baby Paco. This really sucks. What the fuck?

“Tomas. Tomas, can you hear me?”

I realize that yes, I can hear someone talking to me.

“That you Jonesy?”

“No shit it’s me. How you feelin?” I feel someone touching me. Holy shit. Either I’m not dead, or Jonesy and I are both dead and made it across to the after.

I think about it. Run a systems check without realizing that I’ve engaged it. The voice says, “Systems no longer critical. Running full diagnostic. Please stand-by.”

“Brianne called us when you were late.” Jonesy. “She was upset. ‘He’s never late. Never.’ That’s what she said when I took the call. ‘Something’s wrong Jonesy. I know you got him chipped. Go get him! If you don’t I’m gonna kill you.’”
They really like each other. She’d never threaten him if she didn’t think something was seriously fucked.

“You know I like her Tomas. You got a good woman. Man, if you wasn’t with her, I’d get with her. You know that shit is true.”

I do know that shit is true. I seen those two looking at each other. If she didn’t love me so much, and we didn’t have them two kids, she’d get with him. I might even be alright with it. If I wasn’t around. Shit, life is short. Too short not to have some love.

I cough. Try to speak. My throat. It’s so dry. Feels like it’s full of sand.

“You found that motherfucker that stabbed me?” I welcome my voice, despite the discomfort it causes me.

“Relax Tomas. Just take it easy. He got you right in the liver. We had to call in a favor with OmegaCorp. They printed you a new liver while you was bleeding out. Hey man! Carlos came down and donated two liters of his blood to keep you from dying man. That Carlos. I know what I said about him last month, but that vato is alright. I take back all that shit I said. You owe him man.”

I think about what I’m hearing. Open my eyes. Look at him through the heads up display. He looks tired.
“Jonesy, man. I’m glad it was you. Hey man. I got questions. Was this about the Princeps Corps job?”
Jonesy shakes his head.

“No man. This shit is payback for that Russian thing we did last year.”

I close my eyes. Think back. Mother fucker. That guy on the subway looked like he was related to Pavel.  I open my eyes.
“You’re talking about the Lisin thing?” Jonesy nods. “I thought so.”

That mother fucker and all those Russian mother fuckers. I have a family to feed. They’re worth more than 15 billion nuEuros. It isn’t enough that we’re on the brink of an environment that won’t sustain human existence. It’s not enough that we fought a world war that extinguished 80% of the planetary population just two decades ago. No, we’re still stabbing each other with metal alloys over fractions of fractions.

“I’m calling in my favors Jonesy. I want all the processing cores I’ve saved. Upload me into the mesh network. There’s hell to pay.”

He hesitates. I can see it in his eyes and I know what’s coming.

“Jonesy. She’s waiting for me to call. She wants to bring them to see you.”

I harden my resolve. Some people just have a density propensity. I’m not one of those. Not me. From now on, I’m a ghost in the machine, and I’m going to ramp up the income redistribution to a whole new level.

Fuck my freshly printed replacement liver. I was just taking the subway home. Mother fucker should have minded his own damn business. Don’t care who he works for. He’s freshly slaughtered meat now.

Is it legal? I don’t care. Is it ethical? Couldn’t give a shit. I have a family to take care of. I’ve told you what that means to me a million times Jonesy. Now it’s your turn. Cause there’s hell to pay and I’m the devil.

Finding god

by Leave a Comment

I try to stay away from politics and religion because they tend to be divisive. Sometimes I cannot. There are events that affect us all. They sweep across the world like a fire. Think of the crucifixion of the Christ. Or the death of Muhammad by fever in the year 632. These events are still affecting the world stage today. They have been since they happened. I’d like to say that these two historical figures claiming to be agents of a divine being brought peace into the world but events often disagree. There are multiple competing storylines that fade backwards into human history before the invention of writing. Stories wrapped around history. These affect our psyche in manifold ways.

It is the year 632. The prophet, a self-proclaimed agent of the divine, is dead. He has left no heir apparent. His followers have a difference of opinion about who is to lead the faith. Should it be Mohammad’s companion Abu Bakr or Hussein ibn Ali, Muhammad’s closest living relative? The argument resulted in battles that continue to this day. Ali was killed in one of these battles. He was beheaded. We see this happening still in the name of those who claim god as their own. The new religion split into two distinct sects. They have been fighting ever since, with each other and with anyone who disagrees on the finer points of their version of god.

It is the year 2005. I am a man wearing a uniform in a city not that far from where Ali was beheaded. I am an invader following orders. My days and nights consist primarily of producing war propaganda, hearing bombs going off and worrying about bullets, mortars and rockets falling from the sky and ending me. It is a surreal world full of intense psychic stressors. I live in the palace complex of a deposed dictator. He was a Sunni. I am told we are there to bring freedom to all the Shias he oppressed. I am told we are there to bring prosperity and hope. For some of us this idealistic belief is the driving force. For others the impetus is to bring our society’s values to the backwater country we are in. Still others are there simply because they were told to be. They do not believe in a cause and are simply doing a job.

All around, outside the walls and sometimes inside, people are dying. Horribly. In the name of god and vengeance. Everyone sees god through his or her personal lens and from the context provided by their own past experiences and present circumstances. At the height of my time there, estimates of the death toll in my host city range from 4,000 to 15,000 casualties per week. The air stinks of reprisals, fear and suffering. I feel the bombs going off inside people’s heads and outside the gates. I see the aftermath of the violence. Prepare stories about how we are liberating prisoners from torture chambers. Write about Sunnis being captured by Shias and having their heads poked full of holes using power drills. The Sunnis respond by blowing up open air markets full of Shias. People die for many reasons. Some die for no reason at all. I am entering middle age and at this time and in this place I find myself those around me are struggling to emerge from the events of the middle ages.

I survive 2005 and 2006. So many around me do not. Those who do must of necessity carry away scars that are both physical and mental. One cannot exist in the midst of violence without carrying the echoes of that violence around. The scars of my past contain the many ideas of god within themselves. What is this word? I refuse to capitalize it intentionally because I want to remind my brothers and sisters of humanity of one thing: you do not own this idea any more than I do. Your god or gods are yours to worship as you see fit up to the point where you are forcing those ideas down my throat as car battery acid or into my head at the tip of a power drill.

It is 2015. There are two brothers. Raised to believe in a version of god I do not understand. This god is easily offended. I suspect this god is also weak. This god never speaks except through angry humans who believe that those who disagree with their version of events must be executed in the name of untouchable and intangible ideas that they have in their head. They have rules that include extreme silliness. My god is so important that you may not draw a picture of him. My god is so important that you may not destroy any of his words. They make the holy into the unholy by waging war in the name of something I don’t understand.

What kind of god would need followers like this? Not the kind I can fathom. This could never be the lens through which I see the world. Where all of existence is merely a game of chess pieces played by a being that demands I slaughter others to honor it following esoteric rules made up thousands of years ago and often stolen from the esoteric rules of other gods worshipped by generations past all the way back into the beginning of written language.

There is no one true god. Because each of us has our own version. And this is why we often fight. Over disagreements about what this unseeable, unknowable thing inside us really is. Yes. You understood me. God is inside each of us. Some of us have more than one god inside ourselves. And whether there is only one or there are many they are all the same thing. Because all the atoms and molecules of the universe are connected. All the energy is connected. All the stars send their light across all the universe. It takes a long time to travel that distance.

Which makes me wonder why such tiny beings as ourselves spend so much time and energy fighting about what god is. Wouldn’t it be easier to spend some of these resources exploring everything we cannot see yet. I’d rather do that than to spend all my time living inside books that claim to be the only true explanation of god. Such books often contain wisdom. And wisdom is not a static thing. Like the universe wisdom is a growing, living thing. It does not stand still. It does not use force to control others. It uses patience, tolerance and understanding.

I am student trying to learn. I am a mote that is self-aware. I am a wound that wants to heal.

Maybe all the aberrations I have experienced are there to teach me what god is and what god is not. For myself only. If others want to follow my example or take a piece of it they can choose to do so in freedom and without expectations on my part. Here are words crafted as fragments of my own journey.

I am finding god. God is not a bomb. God is not a bullet. God is not contained inside a book. These things are only tools used to create or destroy. To build or tear down. God is inside you and all around you. God is the fabric of everything. God belongs to everyone. I am not god’s exclusive messenger and neither are you. If you have been given anything worthwhile in this existence it is the choices you make about what you do with all the information available to you. Choose your paths wisely.

God does not act alone. God does not demand. God is not vengeful. God does not become offended and is never offensive. God does not hate. God cannot be drawn.

God is community. God is reasoned debate. God is exploration of the self and of the universe. God is infinite and in everything. God understands love that seems impossible.

Each of us is nothing more than a possibility. Each of us is only here for a few moments. I hope you are finding god in a peaceful, thoughtful way today. If we could all agree to pursue spirituality from this perspective the world would change drastically for the better. I believe it is possible. In the cosmic scheme of things it shouldn’t take more than a few eye blinks. While I wait for those blinks to transpire, god bless you and keep you. May you be inspired in ways that make your journey rich and full of epiphanies, laughter and pleasure. I hope you find your measure of humility, strength and courage. Unto you be granted the qualities of mercy, wisdom and a thirst for knowledge.

I am made of scars and ideas. I am made of love and weakness. I would rather know you than kill you. I am a man who does not believe in anything but the fluidity of existence and the journey. Ideas are not static. Knowledge grows and spawns new wisdom. I am not standing still and neither are you. We are all spinning through space. Together. I try not to lose sight of that.

It is the year 2015. What will you do with this eye blink?

Signed,

An apostate

Ignoring conventional thinking about genrecide

by 4 Comments

[su_quote cite=”Ryan Casey”]Listen, people are clever. If you put a new book out, chances are they’ll read the blurb/see the cover, and decide whether they want to buy it or not.[/su_quote]

I had a conversation this evening with someone I care very much about. This person is invested in me and my nascent writing career as a self-publishing author. We were talking about how I can market myself and sell my books. One of the questions was whether an author can publish work in multiple genres. It’s a good question, and one that I want to think about. I have every intent of writing in any genre that I wish. The two books I have published as I write these words are erotica. Specifically, they are BDSM psychological conditioning thrillers with elements involving unethical acts, criminal acts and plot themes that involve murder. Mixing all these elements is not easy, and I am sometimes disturbed by the things I am writing about. But, they’re thrilling and engaging. That’s what my current audience feedback says, in any case.

I see no reason that I shouldn’t be able to build an audience of erotica readers who will also be interested in self-help, modern fantasy, science fiction, horror, poetry collections and post-apocalyptic novels down the road. My friend and adviser thinks I might be limiting myself or hurting my personal brand if I’m not careful how I market. And, because I value the person and the advice I’m receiving, I’m mulling this over very carefully.

[socialpoll id=”2188540″]

What do you think? Once you like something by an author, how likely are you to try out a title in a completely different genre? Let me know your thoughts, either in a comment or using the contact form if that’s your preference. I love interacting with my readers, and however you arrived here, I’d like to thank you for your interest in my work.

Pen

Dust

by 1 Comment

This place was once my home. It is a cold, empty shell now. I remember, though. The windows used to be filled with glass. The front door was green. Our porch was always filled with barking dogs. That was before. When I thought time was on my side. That happiness was a permanent state of being.

She used to bring the oldest dogs out here. Into this same patch of sunlight where I am standing. The oldest of them all was named Gonzo. He had no teeth. She fed him baby food for humans. He loved it. He loved her. Years ago, in this patch of sunlight that is warming my shoulders. She carried him here, and put him down in the grass. Such green grass that year. It still rained back then. There were dandelions growing among the blades of Bermuda. I framed Gonzo against two of the white puffballs, hanging there in space above the verdant plain. He was so tiny. So decrepit. His snout hung down like a piece of deflated black balloon. It waggled when he moved. He always moved to follow her movements. He couldn’t walk much. But he would try to shuffle and follow her wherever she went. Next to him in the frame of my digital camera with its amoral, cold eye, the dandelions appeared huge. They looked as big as Gonzo’s head.

Those dandelions blew away in the wind a few days after I took the picture. And then Gonzo’s life blew away in time. She cried when he died on the couch. Wrapped up in a little blanket as she cradled him. He looked into her eyes lovingly, in pain. Then he made a sad noise and he died. We both cried for Gonzo. I dug a little grave for him. Planted a tree over his head in the rocky soil of our hilly home. The tree grew, for a while. She and I were sad, but our lives went on. For a little while longer.

My lips are bleeding again. I don’t have any more water.

It must have been three years later when the rain stopped. Everything dried out. The smells in the air changed slowly. I didn’t notice at first. But they did. I think the creek at the bottom of the property was the first thing to dry up. The lichen growing on the smooth, polished rocks died. I wasn’t worried then. We had dry summers all the time. It was the second year without rain that got us worried. The politicians were praying publicly by then.

I should go inside.

We used to sleep in this room. The air conditioner was always on. Its wet hum comforted her. She loved the room cold. It had to be under 68 degrees Fahrenheit. I liked that too, but sometimes it got too cold, and I overslept. Back when being late to work mattered. Now, the torn mattress is inches thick in dust. This house is filled with dust. The wet red clay has all dried out and been carried into the air in the dry winds that are killing me. That are killing everything.

It hasn’t rained in seven years. When I realized what was happening, I built a cistern at the bottom of the property. Drained the well at the top of the property into it. Covered it. Sealed it. We stockpiled food before the panic set in. Before our drought covered the world.

She used to sleep on the left side of the mattress. I was on the right. The dogs went wherever they wanted. Sometimes between us, and sometimes burrowing at our feet. She would often reach out and touch me in the night. In the cold. Her hands seeking the warmth of my body. Sometimes, when she touched me, I would wake up and look at her. Love her with my eyes. Her touch was gentle but needy. Soft but strong. She would ask me a question with her fingers. Are you still there? Do you still love me? The answer was always the same.

Until she killed herself last year.

In this dust covered bed. With the pistol I bought her for protection when I was away on business trips. She couldn’t shoot a snake or a rabbit or a wild pig with it, but she was able to put it in her mouth and pull the trigger while I was down the bottom of the property checking the water levels. By then everything except us was dead.

The trees were all skeletons, brown, brittle and dried. Their leaves long since dust. The dogs were all gone. I told her we needed the water, so they dried up and died. She resented me for it. With the power out, we laid in bed sweating in the heat and dust, and her fingers never reached for me anymore. I sweated. She sweated. But it all dried up in the dark and we would wake up thirsty. I would go out looking for life in the dust. By then the neighbors were all gone too. It was just her and I, in the bed, waiting for the dust to fill our lungs. But she didn’t want to wait.

The photos on the walls are filled with happy versions of us. She is smiling at me still from years gone by. Her green eyes shining, with crinkles around the corners.
There is a dry, dusty blood splotch on her side of the bed, barely visible under the thick dust. No one ever tells you that you might have to dig your wife a dry grave in a world empty of life. If I had known that back when we got married, I might have made different choices.

The water ran out on Tuesday. I think it was Tuesday. My mouth is so dry. And I’m dizzy. It’s hard to think. I’m going to lay down on this dry mattress. On my side. I won’t look at the bloodstain under the dust. I’m just going to look at the pictures of us. When we were young and happy. Before the world dried out and everything died. I’m going to close my eyes and think about the wet humming of the air conditioner. I’m going to sleep a while and hope that when I wake up, she’ll be right there with her fingers reaching out to touch my skin again. I want that back. The dogs snuggling at our feet and the touch of her delicate fingers reassuring me that everything will be OK. I wish I could have that back.

Hemlock

by 2 Comments

You did this. You bastard. Things would have been fine if you could have acted decent once in a while. Why did you insist on drinking all the time? Why did you insist on beating me? I hate you. I always will. It didn’t start that way. I used to love you with everything I had. You used to love me too. At least I think you did.

Back in high school, you were so gentle. At least I thought you were. You didn’t hit me until later. I knew you had a mean streak in you though. I remember when you kicked your dog. What was his name? Jack. That’s it. When you kicked Jack for shitting on the carpet. He couldn’t help it, and you broke his ribs. I remember thinking maybe that was too harsh. I had no idea you would be breaking my ribs too, just a few years later. You fucker.

You were such a sweet talker. So full of promises. You told me you’d buy me that cabin in the mountains. Why did we end up in a duplex in the valley? Because of you. Your goddamn temper made sure you couldn’t hold down a job. And you decided I needed to be constantly pregnant. How did you think I could hold a job when I was constantly preggers? Six children, you gave me. You fool. We couldn’t afford one child, let alone six. You cursed us to poverty. You cursed us to mediocrity.

If I didn’t love books, you would have undone me. I’d probably be dead right now because of you. You beat me within an inch of my life so many times I can’t count. But I’m resilient. I always came back from the beatings. You scarred me, but you never broke me. You worked me over good, but you never won. The six kids did more lasting physical damage than you did.

You. I’m not sure where it started to go wrong with you. Long before you broke Jack’s ribs and punched out a few of my teeth when I questioned you not paying the rent. I suspect you were broken when you came out of the womb. Your mom used to tell me that you were special. I think she was willfully ignorant when she said that. You were just mean. I’m guessing you used to get your jollies torturing small animals before we met and you whispered all those sweet lies to me. You deserve to rot in hell.

Why am I even talking to you anymore. You’ve given me everything I needed. I should just walk away. I don’t know why I’m standing her explaining anything to you. I should walk away. But for some reason I feel the need to stand here. You have to listen now. It is my turn. Shut up. You just shut up.

When you started hitting Shelly, I knew I had to do something. She is only seven years old, for God’s sake. I let you sucker me, and that’s my fault. But Shelly didn’t have a choice. You had no right to beat our child like that. She had no control. The doctors told you. I told you. She has nocturnal enuresis. It would have resolved but I think you were the main cause of it. You scared her. You shouted at her. You lurched around the house drunk and mean. They all hate you. I didn’t do that. You did that.

In the summer, I started researching. Hemlock seemed the easiest. I considered dimethylmercury, but it is too hard to get. Arsenic is too easy to test for. There were other choices, but hemlock seeds were easy to order. If you have taught me anything, you’ve taught me patience. I grew the plants in our backyard. It took four days to ship from Ohio. It took a year to get the plants big enough. You made fun of the plants, like you made fun of all the things in my garden. And you kept on being your rotten self. Treating me like dirt, and treating our children like a curse. You were foul that whole summer while the hemlocks sprouted.

When I started to mix the flowers into your meals, I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing. You got sick that night. Threw up a lot and complained that it was my fault. You weren’t serious, but you were certainly correct about that much. I did make you sick. I made you very sick. That whole month, I experimented with dosages. I got things just right so that you were too weak to be yourself anymore. But not so weak that you couldn’t suffer through it.

Remember that time you raped me? The first time? The one you apologized for? That was the last time you apologized for anything you did to me, to our children. You blamed your actions on the alcohol, but that was just a cover story. You always take whatever you can, whenever you think you can. I never forgave you for that. The insurance policy was my idea. Do you remember? No, of course not. You took the blood tests and I paid the premiums. So you wouldn’t think about it. I can’t believe I used to love you. You beat the love right out of me.

Tomorrow, they are going to pay out on the policy. George, John, Jr., Susan, Shelly, Michael and Tom are never going to have to cringe from you again. I’m glad I killed you. Now we have a chance at a real life. All the good you are ever going to do started the moment I decided you had been punished enough. I’ll never forgive you. I take no comfort from the fact that you are lying in the ground rotting. Your ugly face still haunts me. Your fists still pound me awake in the night. You voice still rattles around in my head. Sometimes, I wish I could kill you all over again, just to make sure you cannot come back.

Goodbye John. May you rot in hell. The children and I are going to the pound after we get the check. We’re going to get a dog no one wants. We’re going to name him Jack. He’s going to have a good life John. I’ll never come back here to visit your grave again. I hope it’s lonely where you are.

the world they made

by 8 Comments

The dreamer worked carefully. His long, delicate fingers moved surely over the drawings and notes, adding a detail here, and a flair there. The black pen in his hands flew from point to point, and he occasionally brought the tip down in an emphatic motion. His lean arms flexed under the white lights mounted over the sleek metal of the standing desk where he toiled. Some trick of the light made particles of dust or some other matter shimmer from time to time around the workspace. The skin around his blue eyes wrinkled up as he leaned down to check a detail. As the dreamer looked up, the stress lines in his forward relaxed for a moment.

“What next love?”

The muse threw her hair back over her shoulders, an unconscious motion, one she did dozens of times a day. Her right hand came up to her face, and she pursed her lips. From across the room, she opened her mouth, then paused a moment. Her face lit up in a smile more real than the world itself.

“Can we have a talking goat?”

The dreamer considered. He flipped through several of the large drawings, concentrating. His brow went back into furrowed mode, and the black metal pen began to dance in his fingers. The pen did a roll, and a dip and then spun around in the air with a faint whistling sound. The dreamer’s left hand caught the pen in midair, stilling it for a half second. His eyes blinked. The air around his workspace sparkled. The dreamer drew in a breath, and the metal pen came to life again, its dance resuming.

“Yes,” he said finally. “We can have a talking goat. But we can only have one.”

The pen continued its dance, and the dreamer looked up, his blue eyes piercing and serious.

“Will you keep him company? Will you make sure he is happy? A talking goat needs care you know.”

The muse stepped a half step closer to her dreamer. Her body arched, she leaned in, and her lips pursed again.

“Of course love.”

She looked at her lover, the dreamer, and smiled.

“I’ll go make us lunch.”

The muse sashayed her way out of the room.

The dreamer forced himself to look away from her retreating form, and bent his head and focused, which was his wont. On the pages of his standing desk, he plotted and planned. The pen became a whirling dervish as ink flowed from its ball point tip. An hour passed, and the muse came back into the room, bearing fresh tomato soup with basil grown in the muse’s garden, and fresh homemade flaxseed bread slices covered in ghee butter.

The dreamer walked over to their table by the window. It looked out on the rooftop garden, high above a large metropolis where everything stayed busy all the time.

The dreamer stared into his muse’s eyes, which sometimes looked green, and sometimes looked brown, depending on the light.

“I think the clouds are perfect today,” he said between bites of his flaxseed bread. He white teeth showed just a bit when he looked at the muse. They never did any other time. She made him different, somehow.

“The clouds are perfect today. Let’s put them in.”

So the dreamer did, as soon as he had finished lunch and kissed his muse on her pale forehead, and then on warm, receiving lips. It was his ritual. One of so very many he had developed since the two of them began plotting together against the reality in which they found themselves.

“I have to focus today. Our time is short, my love.”

The muse smiled, a bit sadly.

“I know love,” she said.

“After you garden, work on the list of who you want to bring, and then we’ll go to the oncologist’s office.”

The dreamer kissed his muse one more time, and bent to his task again. His hand, and the pen it held, came to life. His lips spewed up unconscious words, in an almost prayer like fashion. As the muse gardened, he built a world where her cancer was not killing her. He made forests for her, and wrote in special trees, old ones, with magnificently thick trunks that were thousands of years old. He planned the walks they would take, the ones where he could pretend to be astonished by the fact that both their names appeared together in the bark 50 feet above the ground.

The dreamer’s forehead dripped with sweat as he planned the view outside their hillside home. He labored especially intensely on the verdant greens in the grasses his muse would see out the windows of their underground home built into the hill, with the wall of windows facing east. The waterfall that came to life under the command of his mind and hand, armed only with his pen and imagination, flowed down the hillside and through the interior courtyard of the safe nest the two of them had talked so much about. That last retreat that they were going to flee towards.

Later, they went to the oncologist, and the muse was swabbed with alcohol and dosed. After, she was much braver than her dreamer, as he sobbed and held her while she threw up into the toilet. When her uncontrollable heaves finally stopped, and his eyes were clear enough for him to see, she looked up into them, and held his face.

“I love you,” she said. “I always will.” Unable to speak, he simply looked back.

The next day, it rained, and the dreamer and his muse slept in. She was sick, but well enough to hold on when he held her. They spent an hour just facing each other, eyes locked, in an easy embrace. Then he cooked while she slept the sleep of drug induced exhaustion. The dreamer came back into the room with her eggs and yoghurt, but she was too ill to eat anything. He cried, and she comforted him. She slept again.

He worked desperately. They were able to eat lunch together by the window.

“I’m almost ready love,” he said to her, later that evening.

She smiled through her pain, and her eyes came alive. Then, she had to sleep again.

He worked all night, and went through another ink cartridge. The drawer where he kept the spares was still mostly full. The dreamer worked frenetically, like a man possessed. He only stopped to check on the muse in their bed.

On a cold, blustery afternoon a few days later, the dreamer and the muse greeted their friends. She was pale, which was her normal, but also frail looking, which they did not associate her with.

Shaka, the poet, was the most visibly affected by how sick she looked. The group had not gathered in two months, and the muse was much changed.

“I’m so ready,” Shaka said, and gave the muse one of his great, big bear hugs full of pure love.

The small group gathered around the dreamer’s table.

Melanie, the tall, ethereal actress, and Matthew, her shorter, more intense partner, stood side by side as always, their bodies crackling with the electricity they generated in the inch between them.

Jennifer, the naturopath, wanted to say a few words, but the group shushed her.

“Time for that later,” said Ned, who had been a childhood companion to the dreamer, and who had once saved his life during a storm.

The dreamer looked at his muse, and then at each of their friends. His eyes, which were always engaging, seemed now to be pulling energy from each of these people he loved.

“Are all of you ready?”

They were. The dreamer opened the plain, unstained wooden door behind and to the left of his desk.

Jennifer forgot she wanted to give a speech in the light that came through from the other side. Starting with Ned, each of them went through in single file, except for the muse and her dreamer, who stepped through last, holding hands.

Several years later, under a pink sunset so beautiful that the muse wept with joy, the dreamer toasted his friends on the hillside.

“We have been here five years,” he said. The group toasted. “I love each of you with all my heart, and I want to thank you joining us on this wonderful voyage.”

“This world you made sure does have tasty grass,” said the goat. The group toasted, and the muse, who looked so full of joy she was about to burst, hugged Billy while he happily chewed grass. Then she kissed the dreamer on his lips. His eyes shone at first, and then welled with tears of happiness.

“Thank you,” she said. He said it back.

The music started, and everyone danced in the courtyard by the waterfall while the full moon watched.