The Moment

My life is one of great complexity these days. My girlfriend of three years (three glorious years if you ask me) just dumped me out of the car going sixty down a country road. Now... some might view this as an overreaction but I've come to accept it as simply a reaction. I mean it could have been worse. I couldn't have been wearing any clothes, for instance. She at least did me the kindness of allowing me to dress myself (mostly) before trundling me into the car and then springing the door open at sixty miles an hour while I wasn't even wearing my safety belt. Take that as a lesson, always remember to wear a seatbelt when driving around with the love of your life... you never know what might happen. As I fall, in rather slow motion (how else would I be able to internally dictate this!) I can't stop thinking about her hair. It is so shiny and smells so nice, and yes I'm aware the smell is artificial and not really coming from her.

What brought me to this deplorable state you ask? That is quite a long story, wow that's cliched. Just had to say it, didn't I? Every good story is a long one, unless its not. This story is really quite short and may inform the reader why I am not really angry at her at all. I mean, I may very well die after this fall has concluded but perhaps I'll just break a couple of bones. Maybe if I'm really lucky, in the split second before I hit the ground an alien spacecraft that has been lying dormant for millenia (under my very feet no less) will sense my impending doom and spring to life enveloping me in some bubble that will absorb all of my weight. No.... I suppose that has a very slim chance of happening but it always helps to be an optimist. The problems started this morning when I came home completely plastered. Before you judge me, it was my bachelor party.

...Did I forget to mention that my girlfriend and I were going to be married today? Hmm, I certainly need to bone up on my storytelling abilities. Anyway, I was wasted still from my bachelor party the night before and I was having the hardest time in the world waking up. Dreams were haunting me, literally, as I walked around trying to get ready for the big day. I could see my mother, who is long dead, following in my footsteps as I went into the bathroom to take a shower. The next thing I knew, Johnny Kruger (Freddie's twin.. made him up long ago) was trailing me with his banana fingers of doom - my mother wouldn't let me watch scary movies as a kid and she edited her bedtime stories quite severely. It was only much later that I realized how strange that, even edited, she deigned it appropriate to tell me the story of Johnny and his penchant for sending kids away to military school where they learned to be happy and productive members of society.

Where was I again? ... Oh, right, I was drunk. Check that, I was hungover. If I was still drunk this morning perhaps things might have gone slightly differently (actually they probably would have been far worse). Hold on, I need to check how close I've come to the road and the agonizing pain and/or death. .... I should be fine to finish the story, I have about 5 inches to go. At this current life flashing before your eyes timeline that should give me ....


"Coming up on News at 9. Joan the panda has given birth to quintuplets!!"
"Wow, that is something. Thank you John. In sadder news, a local man was thrown out of a car today on old interstate 7. Authorities have his ex-fiancee in custody now who claims that she threw him from the car because he stayed out too late at his bachelor party. She claims she didn't realize the fall would take his life."
"Tsk, Tsk. Let that be a lesson to all you men out there."
"..."

The Retirement

The man and the woman sat chatting while the last rays of the summer sun spilled over them through the thatched roof of the tribal hut. They were here on vacation, something that they had been wanting for quite a long time. The typical trials of everyday life had kept them from doing what they been longing for every day to this point: enjoy their lives to the fullest. It was only with their long-awaited retirement that they were finally able to kick back, relax, and enjoy themselves. This was the fourth stop on a trip that was designed to slowly but surely circumnavigate the globe.

It had started 5 years prior, after their last child had left the proverbial womb and had begun to live on his own. Both of them were a few years shy of retirement age and from this point on they began to plan how they would spend the beginning of their autumn years. He had experienced a large boom in business several years before this and had invested all of his money wisely so money was not an issue. That, combined with both of their retirement plans, gave them the financial cushion that they would need to do things that most never dare dream of doing.

It only took them two years to fulfill the federal requirements for retirement, but it took them another three years to decide the actual course of the trip. They couldn’t initially decide how much of the trip to spend with sight-seeing or how much of the trip to spend lying in each other’s arms. This battle was raging for several months before they looked at each other one day and realized just how silly they were being. After several minutes of out of control laughter between the two of them, they gave each other a nice long hug and he gave her a soft peck on the forehead. At this moment in time, they were content simply to be with each other. This realization forced through to them that it didn’t really matter what they did as long as they were with each other. The actual destination didn't matter as much as the ability to spend it together.

Once all of the plans were set in motion, they merely had to wait until the appropriate time when they would both set off for the airport. As with any trip worth having, this would most likely start at about 2 in the morning! Once there, however, none of the pressure of the trip would get to them because they were spending so much time together and they knew that this would be one of many similar trips throughout the remainder of their lives together.

They felt renewed again as they continued with their trip. All of the stresses of their married life and all of the petty arguments melted away under the coastal breezes coming off of the Mediterranean as they sat holding hands. Though they were considered quite elderly by this time, at least by the standards of the increasingly youth-centered society, at heart they felt much the same way they had many years past when they had first met each other. They knew everything there was to know about each other and yet they were finding knew and interesting ways of viewing each other. They knew that when this trip was over nothing would ever be able to come between them, and the realization of this made them happy: happier than at any time during their long marriage. This intense love radiated out from them and made all those who came within close proximity happier, though they could not quite understand its source.

The sun set on the two of them, with their eyes constantly gazing out towards sea but their hands clasped tightly together. Before the light completely failed, she slowly shifted her eyes towards her husband only to find that he was looking at her as well. Their eyes met, and they smiled.

A Late Night Encounter

The road was covered in leaves by the time Eric left his meeting and the sky had taken on a deep shade of purple. He knew that his wife would be furious at him for taking so long, but he was too exhausted to dwell upon her impending wrath. The deepening shade of the late evening night covered more and more of the sleepy forests on either side of the road, and Eric found himself having to pay more and more attention to the road ahead of him as the visibility dropped incrementally with each passing minute. He was on this road for half an hour before he realized with a sense of growing dread that he was no longer sure where he was.

He should have passed the old MCinty farm by now, and the trees should have long since thinned down to low scrub-brush and the occasional tree that refused to believe that forests were soon to be extinct. Not sure what else he could feasibly do, he pulled the car over to the side of the road which was a tricky proposition as the trees were almost on top of the small two-lane country road. Eric sat in a ponderous trance for several minutes before he flipped on the overhead light and reached into his glove compartment for his trusty old map.

It took him several long moments to find the map, buried as it was under several old travel books from his traveling days as well as the odd assortment of candy wrappers and old receipts. I really should clean this shit up, he though distractedly as he pulled the map out and began to unfold it. It took him several more moments to locate on the map the exact street that he knew that he was on. Had anybody been unfortunate enough to be in the car with him at this exact moment, they would have been assaulted with the kind of profanity that only sailors and possibly college students are wont. With this out of his system, Eric quickly began to fold up the map and he stowed it once again amidst all the trash of the glove compartment.

He sat still for mere moments before he shoved the door open and stepped out into the leaf-strewn road. He had a strong rustic look to him, complemented by the outlandish facial hair that he had grown long ago to placate his wife. There was a slight bulge under his overcoat that might give the more wary person cause to be alarmed. How the hell could I have gone completely in the wrong direction? I’m not that damn tired. He looked around him then and realized one thing that was a cause for great concern: a large silver animal was watching him with hungry, beady eyes.

Not being a renowned wildlife expert, he could not categorize this strange beast. He knew only that it resembled a mix between a dog and, well, …. Bigfoot! The only thing he could thing with any coherence was to be still and stay quiet. Though he knew this was no T-Rex, Eric hoped with a growing sense of alarm, that this creature was somehow distantly related and could not see him unless he moved. Intellectually, he knew this to be a ridiculous assumption but he held fast to the thought and began to resemble one of those living statues.

The creature began to approach with quite, assured steps that did not seem to affect the thin coating of dead leaves. No rustling sound came from the direction of the animal. Indeed, no sound of any kind could be discerned from this behemoth. For reasons that Eric would never be able to uncover, this caused his terror level to jump to levels heretofore never experienced in his lifetime. There was something primal and otherworldly about this strange visitor that beckoned to him and stirred up old vestigial memories that he never knew he possessed.

Images of primal terror began to cycle through his frozen brain, and he started to hyperventilate with short, shallow breaths. The animal had stopped its forward progression, but Eric was no longer paying attention. His focus was strictly upon the images that he tried with desperate measures to decipher, but found that they were flying by too fast for him to understand them. All he was aware of was that darkness had suddenly entered into his personal worldview, and it was coming closer and closer to grasping his soul in its sharp talons. Deep in his unconscious self, Eric realized what was happening to him but found himself utterly incapable of doing anything about it. It would take some kind of glorious outside help for him to be able to get away from the terrible clutches of this voracious demon.

Unbeknownst to the ancient demon and its hapless victim, another kind of being was at that very moment staring through slitted eyes at the struggle that was taking place. It could feel the darkness as strongly as Eric, but the difference was that this being understood the creature and knew its motives. It had seen it far too many times before to mistake the signs for what they were. Light radiated from this new creature on the scene in small waves, and a feeling of peace and tranquility was its essence. Seeing that the possession was in its last stages, this creature pushed out the light and peaceful emotions in an envelope that enfolded the man and the strange demon that has attempted to absorb the humanity left in the man. In a very old dialect, this being began to talk very fast and glide towards the situation.

Eric was dimly aware of all of this as it was happening, and could feel the two forces at work as they were battling each other. The rapidity of the hellish images diminished noticeably and a pall was lifted from his eyes that he hadn’t even realized had been placed there. He was vaguely aware of something being ejected from his core being and he could almost see a kind of wispy black fog leaving his body and coalescing once again into the silver creature that had started this whole strange affair. His consciousness began to slowly but inexorably reengage with his other senses and he was able to jump away from the hold that had been so tight only moments before.

A strong guttural cry echoed in the corridor between the trees as the demon raised what looked like hackles and charged at the newcomer. The newcomer, however, was ready for this and acted with a practiced grace to raise its hands at the demon and push forth some kind of brilliant energy at the rapidly approaching monster. It appeared that the demon was no slouch, however, as it deftly sprung out of the way of the energy bolt. For an instant both creatures stared each other down with withering stares and then they launched anew at each other and the impact was cataclysmic and knocked Eric a good ten meters away, where he just narrowly avoided hitting a big rock on the side of the road. He didn’t have enough time to count his good blessings, as the fight continued unabated between the two spiritual beings. He could only assume that one was good and one was bad, but turned on his heels and sprinted away from the confrontation as fast as his body would take him. He never even attempted to look back until he must have run a couple of miles.

All he could see was a bright light on the horizon that could have been mistaken for sunrise, but a quick check of his watch ensured Eric that it had only been a matter of minutes since he had stopped his car. At this point, he didn’t care at all who won this biblical matchup and he turned around and ran all the way back into town where he eventually succumbed to his deep fatigue and collapsed just outside of town. His dreams were impossible to define, but he swore till his dying day that they contained fantastic images of demons and angels in a fight for the ages.

He would never be sure what had happened that night, but he woke up a changed person. He had come so close to the true face of evil that he could never forget the complicated emotions that had rifled through his being. Though he had been frozen by the sheer terror of the confrontation, he had also felt an intrinsic connection between himself and that terrible entity. Right there before the newcomer came and ostensibly saved his life, he had actually begun to like what he was seeing and look forward to its terrible embrace. He swore to himself that he would never let himself forget what had happened and how much he owed to the illuminous stranger.

Though he had by no means been an awful person prior to his encounter, he became a paragon of virtue and philanthropy for what remained of his life. He did as many little things, as well as some big things, to make his little corner of the world a better place to live in. Several years later, when he and his wife welcomed their first child he worked even harder to instill in his young son the lessons that he had learned. Though he yearned for it, he never again met that mysterious stranger. It would be up to his son, some 50 years after that initial encounter, to relay his thanks and gratitude before embarking on an adventure of his own right.

The Baseball Journey: The Inconsistent Reunion

The baseball was in the middle of a very intense conversation with an old black and white arachnid that had crawled its way onto the soft leather of the glove when it felt itself lifted up and once again tucked under the little one’s armpit. It only had a little bit of time to register its surprise before it was pounded into hard gray concrete, which promptly rebounded it right back into the long-fingered hand of the small one. They’re lucky that I don’t have any pain receptors, it thought sardonically, but of course it really had no idea what a pain receptor was or even what pain felt like.

It had been many months since the little one had been home and the baseball felt a momentary sense of comfort being back in the overly sweaty mitt that it had been friend to for many years. Its age was incalculable, but none of that mattered to the big one and the small one who were playing out a ritual that had become sacred to them. Before the baseball quite knew what was going on it went sailing into the aluminum siding of the little one’s house.

“Dude, watch it. We’re way too old to keep getting yelled at by your dad!” remarked the big one.

“It was an accident, its not my fault that you can’t catch it” yelled the small one as he picked up the baseball and made yet another miserable attempt at an old-school knuckleball such that the baseball ended up several yards to the left of the big one. It heard a sigh of exasperation escape from the big one which would have mirrored the baseball if it was even capable of any speech. Just once, I would like to end up in the mitt when he throws that damnable pitch!

“Seriously man, slow down and concentrate on the pitch. How long has it really been since we’ve done that?” About 342 days, 9 hours, and 12 minutes, thought the baseball before realizing how desperate it sounded that it knew this figure with such precision.

“We’ve both been working and going to school. You’re only in the state about three times a year, and the rest of the time you’re with Jess”. The small one, with appropriate discipline managed to throw the baseball close to the mitt of the big one. Thanks you Lord, thought the baseball before realizing that as an inanimate job it had neither the need for nor desire of any religious notions.

“True. It’s almost over though and I’ll be back in the state. Of course, then I’ll have to look for a job and plan a wedding so time will be kind of at a premium…” The baseball stopped listening to the familiar diatribe of the big one as he went sailing through the air and the warm air. It had listened to the big one speak so often that it knew his ability to string seemingly random thoughts together so effectively that the end result was usually just white noise to the baseball.

After another half hour of back and forth motion, which was about to make the baseball sick, the two once again decided that their time could better be spent pretending to be in the big leagues.

“You got any Code Red?” the big one asked. The baseball was once again relegated to the dusty storage bin along with the glove, its one constant companion. Either they will come out to play tomorrow or it will be another year! The baseball though again, for the thousandth time in its small existence, about life and its many wonderful things that it would likely never get a chance to see. Before hunkering down for the long haul in this muggy old garage, it suddenly realized that there were no other baseballs in the box along with it. For some inexplicable reason, this notion forced small thoughts of unaccustomed joy to worm their way into its rubber core.

The Red Carnation

The spoon was sitting exactly where he had left it, as was the plate, the knife, and the cup. But the flower. Ohhhh the flower. It was decidedly not where he had left it. In fact, he had not left it nor did he like flowers. They were too pretty, and reminded him of days that he would much rather let stay in the oblivion.

The smell of this particular flower was a mixture of scents, so complex that even someone with an incredibly refined sense of smell would have a very difficult time decoding the complex smell. He did not have such a sense of smell, so all he thought was that this particular scent was an affront to his senses. He sat looking at it, trying his hardest not to smell and breathing through his mouth like a fish out of water. It was a small red carnation, wilted and with a dainty air about it as if the person who had left it there had transferred some of their personality into it. That is certainly ridiculous, he thought, but he continued to think it.

A hard knock at the door brought him out of his revery. At least somewhat. He looked like an old school automaton as he walked towards the door, unable or unwilling to take his glance off of the mysterious flower. He fumbled for the door latch and opened the door, unaware that this life was soon to be a thing of the past.

The retort of the gun was the last thing that he heard before succumbing to his sixth death in as many days. Dammit, at last something out of the ordinary and I die. This thought was stretched out and multiplied thousandfold as he entered the realm of Kiloria and all of his infinite personas were released. This was always the worst, that first entrance into the shining metropolis out on the frontier of space itself. The leap out of the bodies was never a thing that happened lightly, and this time was certainly no different.

“Welcome back, Number 1, do you have anything new to report?” said an imperious voice. The tone was unmistakable, and Number 1 found it literally impossible not to answer his question.

“The flower was back, and for the life of me I cannot explain away its appearance. I was only in the bathroom for a minute, and the flower appeared during that time.” He finished.

His superior, looking over and writing in a small black journal, took a long time to continue with this familiar routine. Much longer, in fact, than normal which prompted Number 1 to think with a fierce kind of glee that his journey might now be finally entering the last stage. He had been coming close to an epiphany of sorts for several jumps now and he could not wait until the last phase was begun and his time spent in the ‘real’ world increased many times over.

"This latest development is very troubling," he said with an authoritative air. "It is time for Phase 2. Go to the library and read up on red carnations. He is trying to tell us something, and I want to know what."

"Yes, sir," he snapped off a smart salute. With this, he retreated with a kind of lithe grace out into the night and presumably off towards the library.

His commander stood in the soft lush light coming through the phase8 material high above him for several moments before a soft shimmering surrounded him. A small buzzsaw burrowing up through the soft loam popped up through the ground in the very place where the elderly man had recently been without any idea that he was in a highly bizarre incidence.

A Piece of Skyrock

The rock was falling through the sky in a trajectory that would take it straight into the living room of Mr. and Mrs. Weatherweight. Their life was normal, and as normal people they had many problems that were quietly going unaddressed. Their biggest problem was that a piece of skyrock was at that moment plummeting straight for their favorite TV. They did not know this, however, so they continued watching a rerun of “I Love Lucy” on their brand new plasma screen television. In mere moments, their quiet little suburban lives would be threatened and their lives would be forfeit. The rock, knowing this, changed its mind and hit their hydrangea instead.

The powerful explosion that would have happened, because who knew that the plasma in plasma televisions was such a highly volatile substance (!), was forever altered. Instead, they were covered in dirt.

To them, however, this was the ultimate affront and after shaking themselves off with quick rapid shakes they stood up with something akin to murder on their carefully sculpted faces. With quick bird-like twists of their heads, somewhat eerily in unison, they looked around to find someone to blame.

Their first thought, and a strange one it was, was that the killer robots had finally arrived and were going to deprogram them all and make them into plumbers (!). Knowing that these two were highly sophisticated robots implanted into this quiet suburban neighborhood would probably make things much clearer. The rock knew all of this and so much more, but for now it was determined to keep all of this information to itself and keep its secret.

Mr. and Mrs. Weatherweight, codenamed after the two who had previously inhabited this particular establishment, were not specifically programmed to make sense of what was happening. What happened next might seem exceedingly odd to an outsider, but was run of the mill to your average neighborhood robot. They stood close and swiveled their heads towards each other in a slow methodical turn. Their hair parted and appeared to melt into their scalps, which had taken on a hint of a metallic coloring. Their eyes sunk slowly into their heads and appeared to retreat upward towards their scalps before actually popping out again with a slight pop through recently formed holes on top of their heads. Finally, their eyes connected together like a plug into a socket and they just sat there.

And sat there.

The rock, which had a pretty good idea what they were doing, was starting to get impatient after three hours of this sitting there. It decided to act, not something that was specifically in its programming but it thought it could bend some useful algorithms just this once. Or was it the tenth time. For some reason it didn’t know, but it didn’t care enough to double check its records even though it would only have taken one-trillionth of a nano-second.

Little tiny legs protruded from this small piece of space debris that was definitely not acting as such. Looking like a small earth spider, it crept over to the two eye-locked Weatherweights and crawled up until it was sitting right in-between their connections.

And it sat there.

The explosion occurred precisely one-trillionth of a nano-second later when the small piece of space rock realized that it had bent one algorithm too many and the resulting logical paradox was too much for its logical circuits to handle. It had time for one more thought in this micro time period.

Was it the Weatherweights or the Featherweights?

The Haunted Man

The man sitting in the plush armchair was haunted. This kind of haunting was not one of a ghostly incorporeal nature. Memories haunted this man and held him in a vise-grip from which he cannot break free. He sat quite still in his daughter’s room, looking with fondness and a bit of wry sadness at her beautiful hair and delicate features. So much like her, he thought. He is thinking of his ex-wife and ex-lover, a woman who stole his heart long ago and has never let go.

The haunting began years ago, when his wife began to show the first symptoms of her disease. They had told him that the disease was incurable and mental. They were the doctors, and he thought that they were full of shit. He had often had dreams about these doctors and the things he did to them were not for the likes of pleasant company. His incurable romanticism had as much of a grasp on him as his wife had on his heart. There was nothing that could ever tear them apart. Theirs love was eternity, and their eternity was love.

The trips to the hospital became more frequent as the years went by, and his desperation rose like mercury in an old thermometer as she would yell at him at the slightest provocation. His love for her reduced all of her hateful and spiteful ranting into willowy shades of what they really were, and it was all those dimly remembered fights that haunted him still. I should have known and I should have done something, he thought for the thousandth time. He was angry with himself, and something of this anger was evident in his grim visage as he watched the only remnants of his once dynamic relationship.

His daughter’s soft sigh broke his reverie. He looked at her as a new person each time he saw her. He found this to be a necessary exercise in mental discipline, and allowed him to separate his feelings for his daughter and his ex-wife. It was becoming harder as the years went on. Young Kayleigh began to resemble her mother more and more, her eight year old frame only starting to look like her mother. The man in the armchair was not sure whether this was reality or his mind conjuring up visions. Since the mind is king, he supposed it really didn’t matter.

A small noise drew his attention away from Kayleigh. The noise was so slight that he was sure he hadn’t heard it at all, but it was repeated with a hurried intensity a moment later.

The house was old, and it came with all of the usual problems associated with houses past a hundred years. He and his wife had bought it on a whim during their wonder years and had planned to put some good hard work into it and then sell it for a shitload more than they had paid. Those plans were upset by the untimely, yet not unwanted, birth of their son Frederick. Unlike the ancient house, Frederick didn’t last very long at all. The early death of their firstborn had only hastened his wife’s mental deterioration even further.

Something about this noise that he was now hearing made him pause before proceeding down the stairs to its source. He was afraid. His feelings were that simple and he was completely unsure as to its genesis. It was wrong and he could feel it in his bones. However, as any aficionado of creeper movies is aware, the things that go bump in the night are almost seductive in their very nature and impossible to avoid. Besides, this was his own house on a quiet street in a quiet neighborhood. Were anything to happen, he was assured that his very helpful neighbors would be out en masse to help.

The noise coming from downstairs began to sound like the ticking of an old style grandfather clock. His mind’s eye conjured up a menacing figure of a grandfather clock on the prowl and he began to have serious doubts about his own sanity. No more creeping, goddamnit. This is fucking ridiculous, he thought. He flipped on the switch and saw an empty hallway with bright yellow wallpaper. His wife would be furious at him if she knew how much he wanted to tear down that ridiculous wallpaper. He pounded his head in frustration, attempting to stop himself from thinking about her and the past. The pain brought him swiftly back to his senses.

After going halfway down the old stairs, he noticed that the noise had stopped its slow cadence. For some inestimable reason, this scared him more than the noise had in the first place and he almost lost his will and fled back to the relative safety of his daughter’s room.

“All right, this is ridiculous,” he said. “There is no one here and you know it. You are getting way too addled in your old age.” He said all of this out loud to himself, a habit he had picked up since his wife’s departure. He wasn’t loud enough to wake up his daughter, and there was something comforting in the small reverberations issuing forth from the empty house. He reached the bottom of the flight of stairs and turned into the living room. With a slight tremble in his hand, he flicked the lights on. He stopped dead in his tracks with a look of sheer horror on his face.

“Hello Gerald. It has been such a long time.”

The next few moments would never escape the narrowed confines of Gerald’s memories. She moved with a grace that he remembered so well from their many happy nights together. This time, however, she was not the same woman who had caressed his face with obvious love and attention. This creature was like something transformed. She briefly reminded him of the harpies that he had read about so many years before in High School.

He just barely managed to escape her talon-like clutches as she attempted to wrap her long fingers around his neck. In her heightened state of delusion she posed a threat to him. In normal times, her small frame and delicate features would not have stood a chance against his husky lumberjack frame. These times were far from ordinary, and he knew that he needed to think fast to avoid her attacks even as he was attempting to save her. He knew his first priority was his daughter and he was determined to keep her safe no matter the reason.

“I know you blame me for his death,” he said. He was casting for anything that might tap into the woman he remembered, and the event that had started her spiral was the best he could think of. Her hands were still reaching for his throat, but he believed that he felt a small diminution in her forward advances.

“I blame myself more than you could ever know. He was the world to me…. to us! What happened was unavoidable. You were a great mother to Frederick and you can be a great mother to Kayleigh.”

She had heard all of this before. Perhaps it was the proximity of her only daughter in the room upstairs or the man she had loved at arms length, but for once she seemed to take it to heart. He was not fooled. He had seen her relapse so often during her days at the treatment hospital that he had long ago stopped believing what she said. The love was still there, but that was all that remained. Most of that love was for the memories they had together.

“Gerald?”, she asked. “Is that really you, or is this another trick by the doctors?” He knew she was referring to the various techniques that her caretakers had employed to attempt to help her. Attempt being the optimum word. Nothing that they had every tried had achieved more than a modicum of success. Her mental break had seemed total and irreversible. She seemed to be having a small moment of clarity at this time, and he saw this and he hoped that it might be enough to talk her down and get her back to those who could help her.

“Honey,” he spoke, attempting to speak as if they were still married. In his confused mind, he believed that this would make it easier. “Do you know where you are?”

“This is our house, silly? Don’t you think I know where we live?” she spoke. Though her voice remained passive and even friendly, her physical reactions still bespoke the physical aggression that she had started this conversation with. He knew that the inevitable downswing may be only moments away.

“Of course I know that.” He was finding it difficult to keep his voice from wavering. “I was just joking with you. Now, why don’t you sit down over here and we can talk.”

She glanced towards the sofa briefly, but it was all the time that Gerald needed. He rushed forward and knocked her to the ground. The off-white hospital gown that she had been wearing when she had managed her escape rode up on her and exposed white panties. Something else was evident, however, and it made him pause. Soft bruises were evident around her waist. They looked purple in the bright light of the room, and he thought they looked self-inflicted. This latest revelation was too much for him, and he concentrated on subduing her. This proved difficult as she was now bucking up and down and Gerald had a fleeting image of himself on a mechanical bull. He saw no humor in this. Only sadness.

He did the only thing he could think and he hit her, hard, on the back of the head. He didn’t think this was the appropriate time for restraint. As a former boxer, he knew how to deliver a knockout and this time was no different. She stopped moving altogether, and he was able to turn her over and look at her face. He checked to make sure she was breathing, and then he tied her hands and feet with some rope that he had hanging up by the back door. It wasn’t the tightest knot he could make but it was sufficient to do the job.

He called the emergency hotline and then the police. He double checked his wife’s restraints. Then he rushed up to his daughter’s side to make sure she was alright and had not been too scared by the brief altercation. He reached her door and looked into her room. She was still there. His heart stopped beating as fast and he took a moment to compose himself before he went into the room and woke her up. He was always truthful with his daughter, and this time was no different.

“Hey honey, wake up,” he said.

“Daddy? Its dark still. Is school starting?”, she asked with innocent, wild eyes.

“No honey. It’s still the summer, but I need to tell you something. Your mother is here, but before I let you come and see her you need to know that we both love you very much. ... You know that your mother is not well, right?”

“Yeah.”, she managed. She had begun to sit up in bed and her eyes went curiously towards the stairwell. Quiet, gentle sobs were coming up from the first floor. They had an edge of hysteria to them but had failed to reach that far.

“Some people are coming to take her back so she can get help, but I’ll let you see her if you want. Only if you want to, its completely up to you." He left the question unanswered.

She didn’t answer for several moments, and Gerald could see that her eyes kept darting up to the ceiling then out towards the stairwell. This classic sign of memory made him think that she was trying to remember her mother. She had been five when the break had finally occurred, and he knew that those memories were dim at best. When she did answer, it came in the form of a gesture. She moved her head from side to side slowly as though the decision was difficult for her to make.

“I’m afraid.”

This simple answer from his beautiful daughter made the emotions that he had been feeling bubble up to the surface, and he began to weep. His daughter looked up with watery eyes of her own, though these may have been caused by her sleepiness, and she buried her head in his chest and wrapped her arms around his broad frame. They couldn’t quite reach, but at that moment they were all that was keeping him grounded.

The sound of approaching sirens brought him back to the present, and he gazed down at his daughter once again. Her eyelids were beginning to droop, in danger of closing completely, and he smiled. He knew then that whatever was to happen tonight with his wife and the police, everything would be surmountable as long as he had his daughter by his side.

“Go to bed then, my angel.” She giggled when he called her angel, then drifted back off to sleep.

“Sweet dreams,” he whispered. He stayed for one more silent moment. Then, with heavy steps, he began to walk back down to his ex-wife and the questions that the policeman would have as well as the doctors. For now, however, he believed that her haunting of him had come to an end. He would be content to be there for her as she continued on in her treatments, but he knew now that his true place would be right there in that rickety old house with a daughter he loved and cherished. His last thought was one of joy and jubilation despite the mess that awaited him downstairs.

The Baseball Journey: A Friendly Game of Toss

The baseball traveled through the air in its familiar low arc, and it began to wonder about the meaning behind its rather small existence. These two had been throwing it back and forth for the last half hour, trying with little success to convince themselves that they belonged in the major leagues. The baseball chuckled at the thought as it went pounding into the small one's thick leather glove at a measly 68 miles per hour!! You call that a fastball?, it thought as the big one bellowed a yell of approval.

"How fast do you actually think that was, I mean really. It certainly wasn't 98, but I'm sure it had to at least be in the low 80s!!", said the big one with an air of smug contentness and a stolid belief in his personal abilities. This made the baseball cackle even more violently as the small one managed to miss an incredibly poor attempt at a knuckleball, despite the pressure of the small one's fingernails digging into its skin, and went skipping over the lush grass before coming to a rest under a line of small evergreens at the side of a small, rather squat ranch house.

It was still sitting there 3 minutes later after the big one forced the little one to run after it because he certainly wasn't going to run after it. The baseball could have cared less, really, for it was content to have a small respite from the cycle that these two insisted on having every time they managed to get together. Still, since it had been stowed away for the last several months in a dank old box with naught but the odd creature or two to keep it company it was quite glad that it had finally been allowed to enjoy nature in all of its strange complexities.

"Man, my arm is completely dead!", said the big one while throwing the ball back to the small one in a high descending arc which allowed the baseball to bask in the warmth of the sun as it went slightly above the canopy of the great oak tree. This really puts it all in perspective, it thought as it crashed down through several layers of leaves and branches into the outstretched glove of the small one. The baseball felt the glove curved around it and it resigned itself to the fact that it was about to be stowed away once again. The small one pulled the glove off of his hand and stuck it, baseball and all, underneath his armpit. Ewwwww.

The two walked slowly and with matching swagger as they both applauded their ineptitudes, or so the baseball believed. If you were good enough for the majors, maybe I'd at least get to travel to one of those great ballparks you two speak about all the time, it thought with a trace of a disgruntled tone. The baseball mitt was thrown into a large plastic bin, passing through a thin layer of webbing that had until very recently covered the majority of the baseball's home (!).

"Hey dude, you wanna go to the beach tomorrow?", the big one asked just prior to slamming the door shut on the suddenly lonely baseball. Well, I would certainly like it, thought the baseball as it sat in the glove unable to do much of anything but reflect on its own inadequacies.