Happy NaNoWriMo!

“The skies were so blue that day...so remarkably surreal.”

“I could see for kilometers upon kilometers, even the entire basin of the Nova River all the way to the sea”

“And the canyon behind us, with the plains stretching to the horizon on the other side”

“Do you remember how the fog rolled up the slopes, obscuring our view that morning?”

“Yes, yes I do. It was as if though I could feel the sky attempting to engulf me as we spoke”

“What a beautiful, beautiful day”

Chapter 1

He had been analyzing the wooden door for several days now, in a vague effort to ascertain the origin of the large burn mark just to the right of the doorknob. There were a number of key characteristics; the fire or whatever had left it had only seriously charred an area about the size of a half dollar. The rest of it largely fanned down and outwards in a manner resembling the outstretched feathers of a peacock defending its territory. Frustrated, the man sat on his bed in woeful pondering. Behind him lay an oven, the centerpiece of his glorious spatial cacophony of a house, covered with charred remnants of heavily processed cheese product that had fallen to the wayside during his repeated and often unsuccessful attempts at preparing Digiorno pizzas, as well as little charred pieces of garlic that has unsuccessfully missed their destination like halo jumpers caught in a hurricane. On the floor lay boxes and assorted food wrappers in a pile, falling from the 3.5 gallon grey-ish blue garbage can that stood pathetically above the wasteland surrounding it, teeming with ants crawling up and down its bleak facade searching for the treasure buried within. Beyond that door, that confounding puzzle of a door, the couch peeked miserably from the other side, visibly wincing as its innards spilled out in the form of wispy tufts of cotton, bleeding out its own comfort in the final throes of life. In front of the sofa was a pack of sodas, with an expiration date of November 1; today was November 30...beyond the sodas lay the television, where a massive amount of static sizzled in front of the screen, just waiting to lash out and zap whoever it was that felt the need to wipe the remarkably thick layer of dust that clung to the side in a desperate attempt to avoid the rest of the room. A clock hung from the wall, completely lonely and neglected, but rushing through the days with reckless oblivion. The sun had been only been up for about an hour and fifteen thus far in the day, but the deceitful clock was indicating that the winds were already blowing against the illuminated side of the house.

There was one aspect of the room though, that defied the prevailing air of filth in the room though. The windows were pristine. Were they anything particularly special? No. The frame was painted with a rather low quality paint, a lot of which was flaking off, revealing the former reddish colour that was poorly concealed underneath. The blinds had a layer of dust on them, but a light shone through, an indescribable light that seemed to emanate partially from the muted sunbeams diffusing their way through and partially from within them, combining to form a fleeting oasis from the house, perpetually devoid of the waters of life. But all he could think about was that door. That blasted door with the burn on it, trying to decipher the puzzle, completely oblivious of the dreadful, grossly desecrated state of his abode. He could have made a point to clean it, perhaps even open up the blinds and let the last shimmers of life illuminate his house and make it seem like a place where there was anyone, but he did not. Save for the ever present glow of the window, there was nothing. Nothing but the decay of the garbage, the grease on the stove, the soda cans watching the hourly television programming enthralled only by the frantic ticking of the clock behind it, and the man, sitting in his chair, time eternal, trying to figure out exactly what it was that had scarred his door with that bastardized, inverted peacock, whose colours had gone out with the flame that had etched the door to begin with.

Chapter 2

A rake lay outside the house, looking at the neighborhood from its high quality vantage point, from the bland, sun bleached ranch-style houses that seemed to be cramping the area on all sides. Not that the very house that was the home of the rake was any different; it was just as washed out and devoid of character as every last house surrounding it. It would certainly be nice if whoever had laid the plans for their neighborhood had made a strong point to avoid that kind of homogeneity that has a tendency to plague neighborhoods in the plains. The streets that surrounded the area were laid out in about the most predictable manner possible: north to south, east to west. Just a square grid mapping out the land scape as if an architect whose most creative idea in life was to build a massive building with the novel concept of 'graph paper' had, as some sort of dadaist joke, decided to take the street plans and replace them with his own personal notes just to see if anyone would figure their way around that well. Once one got into the city, there was really no difficulty getting around. There were tall buildings, buildings that were covered in neon lights and large name tags proclaiming to the world who they are with an enormous degree of pompousness, screaming out unto the world their personal information, turning the skyline into its own page of singles ads:

a/s/l?

In business for twenty years

Sex if you want it

Location, right here, you idiot

I'm a nice little hotel right here, just sitting over here waiting for somebody to come over here and pay me to do what I'm supposed to do in life. Please check me out, give me some love. I like casual affairs as well as intimate ones...please enter, maybe even stay the night.

This would naturally be followed by a number of smiley faces written out cutely using text, none of which had any real emotion to it, devoid of variety and expressiveness as the suburban wasteland that surrounded the urban core for miles and miles.

The streets lay all in rows, with such exciting names as 'A', 'B', 'C', 'D', and so on stretching on unfettered by any sort of terrain whatsoever, with the only real obstacles standing in their way being their cousins '1^st', '2^nd', 3^rd', '4^th' and onward in an identical manner which they would run into every quarter mile or so. This continued in a seemingly endless manner. Inside of the maze of streets, one would find themselves frequently forgetting exactly which street they were on.

Sheena is riding her bicycle down the side of a road. She's making a concerted effort to meet up with her prospective date Corey, who supposedly lives on the 4^th house down on the southwest side of the intersection of X and 45^th. She figures that the navigation won't be too particularly difficult for her, and so she continues to ride her bike down the side of the road, looking on both sides of the road on high alert attempting to ascertain her position in the grand scheme of the town. After coming across a number of roads that lacked signs all together, she was getting a little bit frustrated with exactly how she was to get to her final destination. She was fairly certain that the road that she was on was X, but she had gone such a long time without actually passing any notable identifier that second thoughts were beginning to get into her head. The numbers of the streets that she kept passing were only periodically posted, but she often failed to notice the signs. Looking around, all that she could really see was a deep blue sky, completely and totally devoid of clouds save for a small patch of wispy cirrus over near the distant horizon. Underneath lay a massive array of sun-bleached, slightly off-white ranch style houses laid one after another after another after another after another after another, to the point where trying to look down the line and figure out exactly where the last one was a task that would more likely induce a rather severe case of vertigo than actually lead to an answer.

This was stagnation of life, a stagnation of a nation nestled neatly situated on the Eastern side of the mountains of West, more times than not feeling the warm, dry influence of the Zephyr, always warming, always present, but almost empty, depleted of the nourishing rains, all of which were long deposited into the single river that flows largely to the northeast for awhile, then takes a sharp turn two counties up and flows right through the center of the urban core of the city, making a rather nice divider right in the area between 6^th street and 7^th street, flowing almost due south for several miles, finally making another bend around a lonely hill on the south side of the town, and flowing east-northeast, creating the southern border of the city. This was the water supply of the city, however, lately the rain in the distant west had died down substantially, and the river was running far below its normal levels, leading to a citywide water ban.

Chapter 3:

The mountains in the West were heavily eroded by millenia upon millenia of weathering and geological activity. The highest peak rose only 9000 feet above the sea. It was named Mt. Willis, after Jeremy Willis, the man who had first managed to summit the peak. Willis was originally a seafaring man, who would travel up and down the west coast of the nation, which lay only about 50 kilometres from the mountain range. His primary occupation was in the shipping industry, shipping the highly durable and rot-resistant wood of the northern regions down down to the more arid southern regions where the vast majority of the flora was rather brittle in composition and had a very low amount of structural integrity. During the span of his life, motors had not been invented, and so he would generally catch the currents down towards the tropics from the north, chilling, largely fishing to keep himself well feed and drinking the cool water that he would capture during his travels from the rains to keep himself nourished. Upon reaching the southern regions, he would unload his timber, load up on assorted citrus fruits, fill his boat with them, immediately turn around, and head back north. Usually he would encounter rather calm seas, with waves that rarely exceed a high of one metre; when anything higher was encountered, usually about the worst that would happen is that a couple of tangerines would receive a rather firm bump from their underside, fly a short distance in the air, and usually fall to the floor of the boat rather promptly. A few of them would be knocked over board every once in a while, where they would generally float on top of the surf for awhile, bob up and down until eventually the ocean began to slowly pull them down with its chilled, salty grasp, causing the price of oranges in the north to go up just a little bit, but really not to the degree where anyone would actually give a damn.

During the evenings, after throwing down the anchor to prevent erasing the effort that Willis had spent paddling upstream, Willis would spend his nights asleep on the desk, staring at the sky, trying to make out various patterns to keep himself entertained. To him though, it was often all exactly the same. The stars blanketed the sky with no particular rhyme or reason, just infinitesimally small dots, with really nothing to look at. On certain nights a large section of the sky would be washed out by the brightness of the moon, and on other nights, no stars would be visible at all and he would often have to spend the night inside of the cabin so as to avoid being drenched in a nighttime maritime storm; this would normally only happen once he had reached the more northerly reaches of his return trip. Sleep would usually come rather quickly, as dreaming was the closest thing to leaving the boat. However, shipping was his life; he could not complain much at all. The seas were his home, and he had no particular desire to leave them.

Chapter 4.

Dear Francesca,

I would have liked to have a little bit more contact over the past three years. I know that it's really neither of our faults, we both just happened to board our separate planes back in Portsdale. We said our goodbyes...at times I feel as if though I can still feel that last embrace on my fingertips though. Regardless, now that I have finally actually found your address, I feel a little bit obligated to catch up with you a bit.

How have things been over the past three years? What led you to move over to Gwenborough? Are you still as interested in architecture as you were the last time I saw you? I remember looking at some of the rather intriguing buildings with you...I especially liked that one that bore a strong resemblance to an equalizer display on the stereo we had back in our apartment. I know that you had plans to apply for that one architectural firm down south, but I never really got much follow up on that. I would be absolutely elated to hear that you had landed the job, but once again, things can change a lot in three years. Just think about it! Three years ago, I was just finishing up graduate studies in social work, getting ready to start my career doing various sorts of group therapy. And look now; ever since Kenneth died, that shook pretty much every single one of our plans up. I mean, look at us now. You're in Gwenborough, I'm in Talbott...how things have changed. I mean, hell, you wouldn't know this, but I'm working as a high school History teacher right now. Not at all what I wanted to do, but I was having so much trouble finding work around here, it was really the best I could do. I sincerely hope you're doing alright-- it would be really nice to hear from you sometime.

If you wrote back soon, it would really make me absolutely ecstatic. Then again, given the fact that we've gone such a long time without much contact, I feel as if though I'm trying to send encrypted messages out into space in the vague hope that I'll get a response. This is kind of the third address I've gotten for you, definitely to no avail....yet, at least. Hopefully I'm at least right this time. Then again, there's gotta be more than one Francesca Mascarene in the country, so I may or may not have been just writing the wrong ones only to get massively confused women named Francesca on the receiving end of the letters. Regardless, if you are still in contact with Geoff and Meredith, please tell the two of them that I send my warmest greetings.

Yours truly,

Lars Tuesday

p.s.

I enclosed a couple of photos from our trip last time we saw each other. They're the only copies that exist, so enjoy them thoroughly. Send me pictures, if you get this.

Chapter 5

The door was beginning to reveal of its secrets; patterns present within the charred hickory led the man to figure out a few things. Judging from the look of the door, it seems as if though there was a brief contact with flame, since the primary amount of charring seems to have been mostly concentrated to a single spot. Granted, this epiphany left him wondering how exactly that peacock shaped image had come into existence, but he was beginning to wonder as to whether or not he should actually question it at all. After all, the door was still on its hinges, as rusty and in need of a good oiling job as they were, he was still sitting in an arm chair, pondering everything and nothing at exactly the same time, and breathing the exact same air that he had been breathing for days. For the first time since the last time that he had made the effort to get up and get a little bit to eat, he walked over to the kitchen, held his nose with an exaggerated pinching motion, opened the door, momentarily recoiled from the overbearing stench of the food, and grabbed the last pizza from its expiring shelves. A hand crudely grabbed around in here, running over the slightly fuzzy and dry texture of molding bread, the abnormally soft and mallability of an assortment of rotting fruits, and over the bars on the racks that had a thin but impressive layer of grime resulting from food spills over the years, only to find that he was, in fact, out of his sole food supply, like a mighty river cut off from its source waters, slowly dwindling and leaving a barren frame of its former glory in the path. The man swore disgustedly under his breath and mumbled a string of barely comprehensible phrases that revolved around how much of a shithole his house was. He was not pleased, he was absolutely not pleased at all.

He opened the drawer with a fairly rough jerk, fingered the handle of the first butter knife that came into his hand, and promptly slit the packaging open, put the pizza into the oven, reaching over and pressing the switch while a lone pepperoni fell to the floor, landing right next to last weeks pepperoni that had fallen in almost exactly the same spot, where the hordes of ants had already gathered and had almost entirely made off with the pepperoni, piece by piece, working in beautiful tandem, marching along with a strong sense of organization that was completely and totally devoid of the rest of the room.

The smell of the fresh prepackaged freeze-dried meat piqued the interest of every single ant in the room. They had become desperate, wondering if any more food would fall from the heavens right into their traditional feeding grounds. With a resounding thud, their prayers were answered, as the sacrament appeared right before their eyes, glistening, covered in icy crystals, and with a distinctive smell that reeked of life. The feast was on. The black specks on the disc grew in size, shape, and number. Where there were once small, still, and vaguely cubic specks there were now dozens of segmented, wriggling bodies joining forces, many of which were taking parts of the pepperoni for themselves, others of which were bringing it back to their base to feed their young.

A resounding beep ran through the room, to which the ants payed no mind. The man, however, opened the microwave, ate his pizza, and decided that it might be time, for the first time in a long time, to actually leave his house and go replenish his food supply. He moved piles of garbage and miscellaneous debris out of the way, made his way to the door, put his grubby pizza- and dust-covered hands on the doorknob, turned it, and let the sunlight vandalize the room, disturbing its preexisting balance. He looked inside before he locked the door, saw the condition of his house fully illuminated, grimaced, and left, walking into the barren sameness of ranch houses, flat terrain, and the overbearing rays of the sun, on his way to the local grocer, as his shadow slowly trailed off of the porch and the sound of his footsteps feel upon the ears of nobody in particular.

Chapter 10:

By this point, she had really given up on trying to figure out exactly where in the hell this man's house was, just riding her bicycle towards the east, completely uncertain as to where exactly she was going. There was no destination whatsoever, seeing as how her original destination was completely and totally indistinguishable from its surroundings; just another vaguely off white, slightly dust coloured ranch style house with a lawn that hadn't been watered in several months due ot the fact that there was a ban on sprinklers that went on throughout most of the city, leading to the transformation of what used to be a city of a light green colour and white houses that actually had a little bit of an extraordinarily aesthetically pleasing tone to them into what visually resembled a dried out river bed, with a massive sea of light brown blanketing the entire landscape, turning it almost in a broad wasteland of sameness, blandness, with little islands dotting the sea, offering an almost vague respite if one managed to submerge themselves within the depths and see what they could find in the middle. Not that it really mattered though, because like an ice breaker making a shipment to a scientific research base, there was really little goal in mind save for making a few isolated souls experience a fleeting moment of joy; this was going through poor, exhausted Sheena's head as a layer of sweat began to soak its way through her shirt, starting off at her shoulders, working its way slowly downwards in a rather splotchy manner through the fabric of here red and black striped shirt, with little dark circular areas of sweat growing and connecting, fueled by the leaking pores of the skin underneath, bleeding together, to form a shape that vaguely resembled a head of a remarkably square shaped animal with two little ears dangling off into the pits of her arms at the back. She was very, very, exhausted, with her eyes beginning to feel dry and her skin beginning to steadily adopt a colour more and more reminiscent of the shirt on her back; transforming from the freckled white skin that she had had on most occasions, into a little bit of a pink colour, extending just a little bit in a very similar manner to the moisture spreading across her back, only here was discomfort, the type of discomfort that lingers with you for days, usually to go away after awhile, with the only meantime remedy available being a bottle of Aloe Vera, which had never really worked all that well for Sheena; whenever she applied it, it would simply lead to her skin tingling just a little bit as if one million fingertips were slowly but steadily tickling her with reckless abandon...granted, with a sunburn, this was not a pleasant sensation at all, and she dreadfully came to the realization that once she finally figure out where it was that she was going, she would not be able to rest in any sort of satisfactory manner whatsoever, with the excessively fabric softened sheets of her bed just rubbing against her irritated skin, accomplishing a feat that could easily be considered the antithesis of the original purpose of a blanket: to comfort. There was no comfort to be found here, unless she actually succeeded in finding the house of her prospective date, which really would be a rather nice thing to do, but to her the chances of that actually happening were bleak. There was a small grocery store in the area that she had passed a while back, so she promptly made a u-turn around to get a few painkillers and sunscreen, as well as some prepackaged meat-based snack foods that were absolutely loaded with grease, salt, and MSG.

Chapter 7:

He lay on his back, inhaling the spray that was being constantly blasted through the air, unsuccessfully attempting to hide himself behind the thick wooden door to keep himself docile during the night. He would have been, had be managed to not be on a boat, but at this hour, Willis only had one thing on his mind: 'Will the fruit be alright?' It had been about twenty days since he had left the southern port; not really much of an issue, since most of the time the trip up and down the coast took about two weeks going southbound and about twice that amount of time on the return trip. Unfortunately, the second half of the return trip was occasionally marred by the odd maritime thunderstorm, about half of which would end up occuring during the daytime, when he did not mind them particuarly much, but the others, those damned nocturnal showers with their thundrous musings, those were the storms that he minded. While the clouds communicated in their colossal palaver, Willis would hide inside, trying to drown them out with his own pondering, thinking about whatever happened on the day, overwhelmed with fantasies about how it would be nice to actually have some social interaction for once; he hardly ever got any of it while he rested on that eternally waterlogged seesaw. Really, the closest thing he had to a companion was the wind, when it was blowing at a high enough rate to actually do him much of a favor. This happened most of the time, and when it did, Willis would use the wind as a mutual friend of his, giving the wind a purpose and himself a direction. On those long days where he found himself becalmed in still seas, he would have to actually do all of the work himself, granting himself a little bit of exercise. He had come to enjoy that to an extent...really, having to push against the waters reminded him of the never ending march of life; it also just gave him something to do, at least.

A single lantern illuminated his quarters, with a 5 gallon container of lamp oil right next to him, only partially depleted, as he had filled the can at the last time that he was on his self-imposed shore leave, and used some of those rations to go ahead and fill the lamp all the way up. The light would flicker against the walls of the, casting erratically dancing shadows against the wall, illuminating the corners of the captains corners momentarily before they decided that no area could remain untouched in their dance floor. They continued their maritime waltz all throughout the night, while Willis lay awake, entranced by the movement and the rocking and the sound of the wind coming from all directions at the same time and the rain pelting the sides of the vessel with the endless rain drops making the seemingly endless drip drip drip drip drip drip drip drip, all bleeding together in a sort of audio technicolour where each individual dot became a single, continuous image, forming a washed out backdrop of whitenoise and vague rustling for the night; a haunting lullaby as Willis fell asleep.

Chapter 8:

Francesca:

The arrival of your letter in return led to the first bout of genuine happiness that I have had in several weeks now. I was especially fond of the photograph that you sent along with it; sure, it was a little faded, but that tends to happen with Polaroids. It kind of adds to that vintage quality, with the time always fading away from u sna all. The years in my mind are still with me in my head, of course, but it doesn't really matter, unless I decided to be an obnoxiously detailed artist who has spent all of those years that I spent developing all of these vivid memories honing ostentatiously precise ablities to produce images which are almost entirely indistinguishable from the photographs in question. But oh, fading happens, it happens all to often, but the past is inevitable. In ways, I feel obliged to say that no matter where one is in life, the past is always, always better.I mean think about it. While time moves forward after your grand plans for your life never ended up coming into fruition, the realization that present moment that you're in is not really all that bad at all doesn't actually hit you and leave a lasting impact in your head for at least awhile after the fact, in which case you invariably find yourself sitting in a room, writing down letters to former lovers of yours that really are not (and have not been for quite some time) a significant part of your life anymore, staring wistfully at the window and old faded polaroid photographs and contemplating about how those were, in fact, the days, whereas the present consists of you sitting around and moaning and moaning for indeterminate periods of time while you remember past events. I think about the past when I'm doing exciting things in the present, I think about the past when I'm thinking about the future, I think about the past when I'm thinking about the past. And most of that thinking revolves back to those days, however long ago they actually were, and remembering how jubilant and completely exorbitant in my happiness I was.

Regardless, this letter is slowly turning into an extended monologue, but I can't particularly really express what I feel without doing so. I'm dreadfully sorry to wallow in my own pity in my return letter to you, but I just really can't help it at all.

I'm actual [at this point, the manuscript of the letter has completely ceased to be legible, as a spill of water on the page here has smeared the ink, causing it to bleed across the page. All that is really able to be made out is an assortment of self-loathing and miserable ranting about how the past is better and assorted whatnot nonsense mumbo jumbo bullshit.]

~Lars Tuesday

Chapter 9

The pavement underneath the feet of the man paid absolutely no mind to the walking footsteps, the endless patter patter patter of the feet as he walked to the store, smelling very vaguely of a bizarre combination of laundry detergent and mold, seeing as how that was largely what the insides of his house consisted of; rather, there were about five parts mold for every part laundry detergent, considering the fact that other than the laundry room ( which mind you was rather dirty itself), there was no real facility to keep stuff clean, so he would just throw his clothes into the washing machine, leave them in there for a few days to dry, wear the same stuff for awhile during that phase, and then, one the clothes dried up, sit around his house pondering the door and occasionally making an effort to actually do something a little bit more productive while the little airborne particles of mold floating around the room, scoping out a new home, only to embed themselves in his clothes and accomplish very little in the washing progress, thus leading to his persistent smell of laundry detergent and mold; regardless, the man kept on going to the store with that oppressive hot sun bearing down on the back of his neck, providing him with a rare burst of vitamin D and irradiating him with way more than he would have ever normally bargained for, leading to a little drops of sweat for slow form on his brow, each one of them coming out of its own individual pore, coming together gradually, forming an intricate necklace of sweat that slowly, bead by bead, would fall off and irrigate the ground, giving it the first little taste of water that it had had in a remarkably long time, which it would promptly sponge up and drink down hastily, only to realize that the water was rather unsuitable for drinking since it contained such a massive amount of salt and other assorted by-products that came out of the man's sweat, so, had it a face, the ground would have put a big frown on its face, but it had no expression, no single route to stop its dissatisfaction with the terrible selection of nourishment that it had received more than just a simple refusal to grow anything, any plant life, from the flowers to the trees to the grass to the ferns to the whatever other form of plant life would have possibly chosen to grow in that very spot, rejecting any propositions coming through the main borough of decision as to whether or not anything should be aloud to proliferate here, zippo, none, absolutely zero, zilch and whatever other synonyms for that that could be thought of in the English language at least (that is not to stop anyone who reads this and decided to throw in their own from other languages, nichts, nada, and whatever other words can be thought of); the sun overhead continued to bear down on him as he took step after step, getting closer and closer to that massive warehouse of goods, the lifesource of the region, goods that traveled from the other regions bound by a massive truck, barrelling along at full speed, eighteen wheels with no intention of stopping, rubber on road, road on ground and the ground feeling the beat, the beatest beat of the beating of the diesel engine keeping things going, heating the air with the heat of pure progress, 150 kilometers per hour, full steam ahead, no time for stopping, until it gets to that destination, where it will promptly put those rubber brake pads against the cold steel of the rims of the wheels of the truck, grinding them slowly down as the massive amount of energy from the moving of the truck upon those same wheels (“Why were there brake pads instead of air brakes?” one might ask, to no avail—there is simply no answer to that question for the time being, perhaps there never will be, leaving the question open for answering for time eternal, until people forget about the matter to begin with and continue on their mundane existences) converted itself in the heat of the moment into a massive amount of heat that heated up the hot brakes on the hot wheels bearing down harder than the hot sun was bearing down on the hot pavement on a hot summer day which was only heating up and getting even hotter as the hotness of the day penetrated the interior of the car and made the man behind the the wheel (gear shift in hand, eyes set on the horizon and all of the mirages on the road ahead) sweat those same little beads of sweat that our protagonist (if he even is a protagonist) had been producing throughout the day, keeping the cargo moving slowly towards that grocery store that the man himself was about to enter, as the tread of the rubber on the sole of his shoe lay itself on the first step going into the entrance, he began to feel sense of refreshment as the air from the air-conditioned building manifested itself in the space immediately adjacent to the building, cooling off any soul lucky enough to manage to step within the area which was covered by the thin veil of comfort around here; regardless, the man slowly opened the door, noting the lack of any sort of creaking noise with the door, as if it had actually been lubricated sometime in the past ever or had just recently been put on a brand new set of hinges, or better yet, was a new door to begin with, and unlike anything, oh, you know it, the rest of the store was almost exactly the same, with absolutely everything new and fresh and filled with life, keeping the life going, with a glorious array of vegetables in the shelfs on his right with a never-ending mist emanating from the small holes right above it, spraying down and keeping the vegetables almost as fresh as they were on the day that they were picked, with the leaves of the lettuce staying perky for way longer than they would have, standing up and saluting all who entered the store, especially the man standing in the entrance, covered in sweat with a blank expression on his face looking over in their general direction (salute to you, general, salute to you), checking to see exactly where it was that he could replenish his supply of DiGiorno pizzas and beer, completely unable to think due to his dehydration and lack of any real nutrition for the past several days (or was it weeks? Months?), as well as the fact that for the most part, he was just enjoying the fact that for the first time in a long time, he was actually experiencing fresh, cool air, not air that was incredibly hot and filled with enough dust to make a maid cry, nor air that was about room temperature but musty to the point where the unacclimatized would enter the room and promptly get a large headache, a rather nasty case of rhinitis, and the type of pain in their bones that would cause them to go outside immediately and walk, incredibly disgruntled, to the corner grocery store to indulge themselves in some analgesics, grabbed from the shelf, put through the checkout line, swiped over the scanner, paid for, on credit of course, torn open with as much haste as possible and crammed into the open mouth, head tilted back, down the throat, steadily down, down, down into the esophagus, into the stomach, where the acids and enzymes would steadily break apart and destroy the protective casing of the pill, allowing the guest to be the beneficiary of its wonderful medicinal properties, appreciated by the world over for doing what container will do: remove their pain; that is, let people actually be comfortable, comfortable and feeling as good as the man now walking his way down the aisle, passing the multitudes of cereal, most of which generally contain four ingredients: some sort of grain based product, usually processed beyond reason, an assortment of added vitamins and minerals to encourage parents to buy the cereal for their children (now with 100% of your daily value of vitamin C, so your teeth don't fall out), usually a fuck-ton of sugar, so that the children willingly comply with their parents wishes to keep them with vitamins for breakfast (not that there's much of an option at a grocery store like this one), and some sort of food colouring, presenting the world with the fact that all food that one starts his or her day with must have a certain degree of unnatural tint to it to make it look a little bit more like something that anyone would actually want to eat (especially given the fact that with the sorry state of the city, there was so little color to begin with, so that the slightest bit, if only in your stomach, would be a huge improvement over what was there), past the condiments, past the bread, looking desperately, confused, trying to figure out where exactly the frozen pizzas had been relocated to. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw them, lying on the bottom of the last shelf of the last freezer on the left side of the aisle, just waiting to be taken to somebody's home where they would be loved and treated well (read: eaten), so he opened the door to an even colder blast of air that was not quite as fresh, smelled the aromas of the frozen foods contained within, knelt down on his knee, grabbed every last frozen pizza in there, fumbled with them all for awhile, trying to figure out the best way to arrange them in his arms so that he would not need a cart to get them to the checkout line, succeeded, and wandered toward the checkout line and the glowing door that lay shortly beyond.

Chapter 8:

The sky over the land had some defining characteristics on this day. An air of change, of the loss of stagnation that had prevailed over the landscape for the past few years. Far to the west, clouds were beginning to form—and not just the type of clouds that had been seen over time—this time in the place of dry, brittle clouds that stayed up in the upper atmosphere, only minding their time and leading to a momentary diffusion of the light of the sun, never producing any rain whatsoever, there were now clouds that were actually forming over low latitudes, with the cool refreshing winds from the north pushing southwards, oh thank you Boreas, thank you for what you have brought, bringing the north wind down so that it can finally be enjoyed by the people who are completely sick of the moody, irritating little brother Zephyrus who keeps on blowing from the west...regardless, the cold air marched onward, headed slowly for the area, with one mission, a rescue mission, to divide and conquor the area that had been long controlled by the dominant heat, oppressing the people. It was time for liberation, liberty, freedom, freedom from oppression, freedom from the same stagnation that had plagued the land for days upon weeks upon months upon years, on and on, driving the populace absolutely insane but leading to a sense of complacency and feelings of indifference towards the fact that the conditions that had been living under were almost invariably unbearable, making them bearable, just as as the business man who has been sitting in his cubicle, slaving perpetually for multiple fiscal years, putting his best foot forward in the desperate attempt to make more money eventually becomes cynical and stops expecting a raise when years have gone by without any sort of recognition of his hard work, continuing to push forward, not even thinking about the task at this point and doing just what he must to get by with not getting fired, or dying, as the conditions would have conditioned the people in this land of heat, aridity and depression in the thermal depression of pressure under the upper pressure of the upper air pressing down constantly.

However, there is another potential hero here, a renegade from the other side of the mountains, the cool air from the sea on the other side of the mountains, who managed to take a wrong turn somewhere along the way and ended up completely missing the mountains all together. It came up from the south, eying the river on the south side of the town, hitting the prior inhabitant that had invaded without permission all those years ago, and had to stop, sitting there, waiting for somebody, a hero to let it continue on its way.

But here we have the cold front, pressing forwards, steadily usurping the power of the air ahead of it, forcing it up, throwing it up into the air, pulling that noxious weed choking the environment, up, up, and over the shoulder like salt in the eye of the devil, you know it, refreshing the air and leading to a clash between the savior and the weeds, escalating high into the sky, from the ground, up one thousand, two thousand, three thousand feet and onward, up into the upper reaches of the troposphere, breaking through the barrier, with the bulging top climatically spilling over, rumbling, flashing, the sparks flying off of the cosmic swords, the thundering battle cries moving onward. But the heat and moisture from the cool mass from the ocean ended up getting pulled in here, tearing him apart and making the warring giants a bit uncomfortable, making the sweat from the warring giants dripping down to the ground, fertilizing the land with their might, their atmospheric virility, letting plants grow up, standing up, saluting the valiant efforts of the cool air, coming in, doing its heroic duty, and the people promptly coming along, praising the rain, bowing down to its glory, not even really thinking much about why it's there, but just figuring that it's a gift from the heavens (granted, those that study the weather would realize that what actually happened was that a continental polar air mass moved into the area from the northern regions, most likely caused by a southern movement of the polar front, and was then interacting with a semi-permanent air mass that was continental tropical, running together and causing a massive amount of atmospheric convection. It's a cold front, with precipitation totals coming on rapidly with an onslaught of rain and wind, way more ferociously as would have happened had the warm air decided to make a northerly migration and slammed into the cold air, in which the air would have caused less cumulonimbus clouds, and more nimbostratus, raining down for the better part of a day, but never really behind that intense or heavy. Then there would have not been much warning, other than the slow advance of the low clouds on the distant horizon, followed by a day of rain and a lowering of the pressure, not that it would have mattered, since due to the location of the dry air mass suffocating the land, the rain would probably fallen to the northeast to begin with, making no impact on the drought. Now, had the cold air mass moved in upon a warm air mass encroaching on a cold air mass, then we would have had an occluded front, where the cold front moved more rapidly than the warm front and 'caught' the warm front, lifting the warm air that had been between the warm and cold front off of the surface, and causing an overall lady of clouds and rain on both sides of the front, but not ever really becoming much of a storm. Had that happened though, historical evidence shows that the rain would have exceeded both of the other primary options, making a significant impact on the level of drought, filling the river bed to levels far beyond what it had been, catching the people off guard, but nourishing them with the beautiful water, the mana of life, hydrating and filling the land up to the brim with livelihood, taking the brown and the khaki and the beige, muddy tones of the region and turning them into green, blue, and an assortment of other colours, with the rainbow after the storm providing the most colourful thing since the dye of the cereal in the grocery store that was just trying to appeal to the eyes of the children of the parents, who up until the rain came would have been worrying about whether they or the children would actually get enough water to remain hydrated, clean, and sanitary. One thing that had not been seen for a very long time in this area, that would fairly easily set up around here was a mid-latitude cyclone, a lower pressure system, lifting the air among a combination of two fronts coming together in a large, moving atmospheric vortice with centers of low pressure, usually possess a disctincy cold front extending to the south/southwest and a warm front to the east/southeast, with a powerful rising motion occuring near the center of low pressure, the beautiful convergence and more precipitation happening all around, the winds never really picking a direction for a very long time, all four of the brothers engaged in a tug-of-war of epic proportions, leading to the their sweat and tears falling right smack in the center of them, between the continental polar, maritime tropical, and maritime polar air masses...but less us not get too technically here, that's completely beside the point. The point is that's what the meteorologists would have said about the situtation while they sat around in a room and discussed the potential for things, while a few sat in the back and told the others to quit hypothesizing and being so damn dramatic and enthusiastic about weather that wasn't going to happen. “Shut up! Shut up! All of you! You're getting on my nerves!”

Regardless, the cyclone, the baroclinic low pressure system would have derived its existence from density difference between opposing air mass types (continental polar and maritime tropical), with a small “wave” developing along the frontal area separating the two air mass types...oh, would it be at all audacious to believe that a low could develop between two high pressure systems? Picture two gears, two cogs in a colossal machine, both moving clockwise. They are not connected at all...however, the brilliant engineer sees the potential to harness all of the energy and put a third gear, connected to a turbine right in the middle of them...lo and behold, its goes in the opposite direction as both of them! Now we have a cyclone generated by the anticyclones, which in atmospheric standpoints appears to be a low forming out of absolutely nothing—go figure. Now in our new low, the wave creates circulation that intesifies the wave, precipitation occurs around low and along fronts, with the faster moving cold front catching up with the warm front, playing tag, with the warm front tripping over its shoelace and the cold front in the back tripping over the warm front that tripped on its shoelace, violently tumbling and scraping their knees, the sky is bleeding, the sky is falling, and the storms are strong because of this occlusion of the children of the winds. Now when they get up, they are tired, and there is no more storm. Here they stand and rest for awhile, slowly merge, and become a stationary front. That's what the meteorologists said, the studiers of weather, as they described all of the possible options that could have happened here. Simple banter, it was, simple banter, all of it, every last bit of it.) And before anyone knew it, those clouds would reach the area, bringing along with them the possibility of rain, rain that had been prayed for, begged for, pleaded for for years now to no avail. And the news stations were absolutely elated to hear this.

Chapter 11

The front tire of the bike rolled to a stop in the parking lot, kicking up a number of small vortices of dust and dirt and eroding a little bit of its tread in the process. It would be soon that she would go inside and get a small reprieve from the intensity of the day (“one long bike ride for a woman, one large victory for a single of womankind”, goes the bastardized saying). The door with the small camera angled above it pointing down at about a 45 degree angle stood there, waiting for her to reach its gates, watching her take step after exhausted step in the mid-afternoon sunshine, hair falling on her back and subtly shifting with every step., waving to and fro in sharp contrast to the motionless air. Step on pavement turned into step on doormat, and the door opened with a mighty yawn, welcoming her in with a blast of fresh breath of cool, conditioned air. She walked in and asked the clerk where it was that she could find something that would take away her pain.

“I'm sorry, we don't sell guns, ma'am.” said the clerk.

“No you fucking idiot,” Sheena retorted with an annoyed 'quit being a smart ass and answer my question' tone to her voice, “I'm not trying to end it all, I simply have a throbbing headache and a nasty sunburn.”

Taken aback by her crass reaction to his rather crude joke, the worker immediately apologized for what he had said, informed her that both the Aloe and the painkillers were in the cabinet next to the checkout aisle, and then walked away sheepishly, with an expression on his face that was a peculiar blend of blushing induced by extreme embarrassment and smirking based on the fact that he had just gotten away with telling a customer to go kill herself and managed not to get himself fired—a mighty accomplishment in the world of teenagers desperately looking for money and attention in the world of grocery stores.

She walked, tortured by the fact that the upper most layers of her skin were wildly emanating heat, dried out, sun baked, and extra crispy, put her hand on the smooth metal handle of the cabinet and pulled out both of her desired products, not quite content but on the verge of it now that she had her supplies for the rest of the day. Her desire to actually have the date go through at this point had gone substantially down, and she figured just as much that she'd see him eventually and apologize for blowing him off, maybe even taking him out to dinner on a romantic excursion of sorts, not that he'd be happy with the outcome that, much to the opposite of his expectations, Sheena did not show up and left him sitting by the door in khakis and a blue striped polo shirt with three buttons, the first two fastened and the other hanging off to the side and letting a little bit of his neck have some breathing room.

Door slamming shut in front of her, she put her arm down to the side with her desired items in her hands, the Aloe in the left and the pills in the right, walked forward a few steps until she was properly in line, and raised her eyebrows at the sight before her—a man, appearing to be about a late twenty-something in age, dark hair, kind of greasy looking, with an almost unrecognizable odour, a combination between laundry detergent and the overbearing stench of decay, with just as much sweat on his brow as she had soaked through the back of her shirt. In front of him was the conveyor belt that led up to the array of lasers under the glass panel embedded within the middle of the smooth, brushed stainless stell where the items would be laying, and on that conveyer belt lay a most strange combination of items, the widest variety of low quality food stuffs that Sheena had laid eyes on, the vast majority of which were different brands of do-it-yourself pizzas, some flavoured with cheese only, some with a not-so-gourmet layer of pesto, some with pepperonis that would likely end up on the floor next to a medium sized gray garbage can that was home to a colony of ants, some with sausages, some with bacon, some with mushrooms on top, some without, some with pineapple, some with ham, some with spinach, some with thin crust, some with thick crust, some with stuffed crust, some with no crust at all, all of which had a piture on the covor of the package that made the product look absolutely wonderful (not that it ever actually would) and a thin, plastic film filling a rectangular gap in the box where one would see inside of the package at the beautiful, mass produced item contained therein.

Sheena immediately started wondering the man would ever eat anything healthy at all, and thought about going up to him and asking him where he got his actual nutrients, then talked herself out of it figuring that it would be rude and that he mostly likely would give her a blank stare, because with the about of health that this man in front of her, he probably would not last a day beyond forty-five years, three months, 3 weeks, and a day, upon which the last little bit of his aorta would be clogged, stopping any and all blood flow to his heart, leading to cardiac arrest and the stopping of the blood flow to the rest of his body, no fun to be had there, as one simply cannot be enjoying themselves when they are lying motionless and dead on the floor! She needed socialization though, so she decided to engage him in some conversation, naturally starting with small talk and mildly pointless drivel, not really intending at all for the conversation to ever work its way much farther than that.

“That's a massive amount of cook-at-home pizzas, you've got here.”

“Yea, and?”

“Oh, I was just noticing them. I actually think that the one with the bacon on it looks kind of appetizing.”

“Yea, it's good”

After that, she realized that the conversation wasn't bound to go anywhere whatsoever when it came to an actual, topic, so she decided to discuss the weather with him.

“Man, it's so ridiculously hot today. I wish we would actually get some rain.”

“I know. It has not rained at all in how long now? Seven months? And even then, the last little bit we got was nearly a half inch, at the very max. I can't stand to look outside anymore...it just depresses me”

“I've just been riding my bicycle around trying to figure out where exactly my date's house is. I'm lost, late, smelly, sun-burned, and have a killer headache.”

“Yea, I can tell.”

“Tell what?”

“That you have been outside. You're red as a crustacean that's been chucked into a pot of boiling water. You need to spend some time inside for awhile. It might be good for you.”

“Yea. I definitely get the feeling sometimes that I need a little bit of exercise though, so that's why I decided to ride the bike...where is the corner of 26^th and W, while you're here?”

“Go outside, seven blocks down, turn left, then go another six. When you get to that corner, you'll probably see a small dry cleaning business with a sign in front of it advertising the prices and the fact that you can get cigarettes there for cheap.”

“Who's brilliant idea was it to sell cigarettes at a dry cleaning business?”

“One genius of a businessman, that's who.”

“Ah, well thank you, I'll go that way when I leave. I'd actually rather go down and take a long sit on that bench over there for the time being”

“Who are you”

She paused. He asked again. “Who are you”

“My name? My name is Sheena Lancaster.”

“No, Sheena, that's not that I asked...Who are you”

She wasn't entirely sure exactly how it was that she was supposed to answer a sort of question like that. Not only was she completely oblivious to what he was trying to get her to tell him, she wasn't really sure that she trusted him enough to tell him an an answer to a question like that even if she had been able to figure out just what exactly it was that he meant. All that she really had on her mind at this point was sitting down, resting her legs, and cooling off a little bit more.

“Who are you”, the man asked yet again.

“You haven't even told me your name, none the less who you are, why should I tell you who I am? I'm still not even sure what you're asking.”

“My name? I suppose I'll tell you that once you tell me who you are.”

“So you want me to go through and explain to you every facet of my being right here, spilling my entire life story, the meaning of my life, my hopes, dreams, ambitions, favorite food, mother's maiden name, social security number, eye colour, blood type? Do you want me to explain all of that to you?”, she said completely exasperatedly, frustrating with the lack of matters and intrusive nature of this stranger.

He looked at her, and wordlessly turned around, took a long stare at the vegetables on the side, sighed, and walked out the door, pausing in the parking lot, looking towards the ground, and pushing onwards, around the corner and out of sight.

Chapter

Francesca

Sorry about the delay in letters...the post office relocated and it took me quite some time to figure out exactly where it had gotten to. I have little to say at this point, but I really feel as if though I should say hello to you. I have a funny anecdote to tell you, actually.

The other day, I was sitting in my house, listening to a record that you gave me a few years ago—the Wide Right Turns album 'Get Outta My Way' – and when the song 'Buffer Your Face' came on, that one part at the end, the part where it goes on for about thirty seconds repeating 'stick it out, stick it in, stick it full of holes with a pin', the disc began skipping, leading to the sound produced just being 'ck it out, ck it out, ck it out', which started sounding like 'get out! Get out! Get out!'. As soon as this happens, I hear a police siren and a knock on the door. I go over and open the door only to find a Jehovah's Witness with a bible in one hand and an evangelical pamphlet in the other, wearing a Wide Right Turns tee shirt. Down the street was a police car parked by an eighteen wheeler with red scrape marks down its side and a bright red fire hydrant spraying its contents high into the sky, forming a mist that the sunlight hit, brilliantly forming a multi-coloured rainbow against the deep blue backdrop of the sky. The synchronicity here was absolutely bizarre, but really really cool. I feel as if though I should mention the fact that in the area immediately adjacent to where the fire hydrant was, a deep circle of emerald green grass began to grow, much deeper green then the light greenish stuff all around it with some patches of brown thrown in there for good measure. Really, I couldn't help but think of you when that happened, especially since I know that (at least last time I saw you), Wide Right Turns was your favorite band. They actually played a concert here a few years ago. Was a very good concert, but I ended up missing it because I found myself pulled over on the side of the highway for driving forty kilometers per hour over the speed limit. The cop ended up letting me off for reasons I'm not entirely sure of (maybe it was because of the fact that I have weak eyesight and told him that I thought the nine was a thirteen...complete nonsense, but an excuse regardless), but by the time that I got to the concert, they were closing with their song 'I Woke Up In The Countryside Naked And Tied To A Propane Tank With A Shotgun Pointed At My Face'...you know, the one that's pretty much about twenty minutes of a story that basically involves a massive number of psychedelics combined with a joy ride on the back of a train and falling off and, oh, screw it, I forgot the rest...but by the time I got there, they were already to the end where the rhythm had completely gone away and there was nothing but endless drum solos and guitar wankery and feedback from the bass and the vocalist standing in front of the microphone looking at the crowd with an unfiltered cigarette danging from his mouth. Sucks, doesn't it?

I hope you still like them though, because I still kind of do. And if you don't, then I can't help but wonder how much you've changed, because if that's changed, lord knows what else has.

Pajov Eternal

Lars Tuesday

Chapter

It had been a rather boring couple of days, but Willis enjoyed this, because it meant that with the weather not acting up, he was actually able to get shipments along. The same life, while what he normally enjoyed, was slowly beginning to bore the sailor. He wanted a little bit of variety; having spent the majority of the last decade moving up and down the same stretch of coast line, delivering timber one way and citrus fruit the other, he had grown tired of them. Gone was his former enthusiasm, his zealous lust for sea travel, his enjoyment of solitude. Gone was his desire to remain completely independent, going out throughout the waters as a rugged, isolated individualist, associating with almost no one but himself. Gone was his love of fighting the wind, harnessing it, and using it to his advantage. He wanted change, and if none came to him soon, he would go mad.

Besides, there was something about waking up every morning and having to check the sides of your boat to see if they were still watertight that got to be very, very old. He had also long ceased to be fond of having to deal with making a failing effort to sleep in cabin during the thunderstorms that would occur during the northern stretches of his travels. He actually had thought about the fact that it would have been rather nice to have gotten around to actually have spent the same amount of time as he had spent developing intrapersonal relationships instead of concealing himself from the world. How frustrated he was becoming!

However, a shipment was still in need of completing, as he had approximately ten thousand oranges on board looking to feed some hungry mouths in the northern regions. So onward he sailed, trying to harness the wind, not particularly into the trip but continuing to rig the sails, orienting them at exactly a forty five degree angle to the westerly wind, and pointing the rudder in such a way that he would continue north.

Several days later, through many nights and days and a large amount of citrus fruit, water, and whatever he managed to catch with his fishing rod, the slow lapping of water against the hull of the boat waas replaced with the abrasive grit of beach-front sand. He got off of the ship and proceeded to wade through the surf, the little grains pressing into his feet as he waded onshore.

“Did the load make it alright?”

“Why yes, sah, it made it just fine. We encountered some rough weather on the way up, but we only maybe lost 2% of the load, and that's it.”

“Well that's good. You're a couple of days late”

“Yea, I know that. As said before, I can't really help it”

“Oh well. You have had a very good track record for the most part in the past, so I cannot be too critical of that.”

At this point in the conversation, Willis answered with silence, more or less, as he deliberated as to whether or not to actually tell the man who was picking up the shipment that he was, after such a long time on the job, thinking about quitting his job as a seaman. He could have continued the conversation, but that all that would have been accomplished by that would have been a perpetuation of his job and his dissatisfaction with it.

Faced with the actually opportunity, he was substantially less prepared to go ahead and just get it off of his chest than he was when he was still on the boat. Now that he actually had to verbally express himself, he was unable to actually say what he had on his mind—that is, that he was lonely and desiring more companionship than just the wind and the sea and the sun and the rain and the boat and the distant shoreline and the horizon and the moon and the storms and his notebooks.

“I'm glad to hear that I have had a good track record”

“How strange on you to use the past perfect tense. Is there any reason why it is that you're talking like that?”

“Well, actually, yes. I don't really, well, think of myself as that much of a sailor anymore. I think I'm through. Basically, what I'm trying to say is...I would like to find a new career, explore the world a little bit more, maybe get out and meet some people, see some things, some things other than this ocean, and not always have that persistent rocking beneath me every last minute of the day. I just want, I dunno, something else.”

This was answered with a surprised look, followed by a slight wrinkling of the forehead and raising of the eyebrows.

“Jeremy...you're probably one of the best people we've ever really had on the job here. Is there any benefit that we could offer you to get you to stay around here?”

“No, not really. I am quite sure of it...I believe that I have had enough. I'm pretty sure, no, scratch that, I know that that part of my life is over with.”

“We will increase your salary, if it will keep you around. How does a fifteen percent pay increase sound to you?”

“If I were to accept that, than I would just be lying to yourself and to you. I simply have no desire to continue with this, and no amount of pay raise could really change my mind about this. It's not the pay, it's the lifestyle. I want something more, something with a little bit more excitement, a little bit less predictability, a little bit less monotony, a little bit less nothingness.”

“So I'm assuming that there's really nothing I can say to change your mind?”

“No. Not at all”

“Well, all I can say really is that I wish I didn't have to see you go. Godspeed and farewell.”

With this, Willis turned his back on the man, and the port, and his life as a seafaring man, and with the sun at his back, walked off, future known only to the fates.

Chapter

Francesca:

I feel almost obliged to look up your phone number in the directory and call you. If I were to actually call you at this point, it would be a wonderful thing, you know, to actually hear your voice after all this time. I can hardly even remember what it sounds like, but just the memory of its impact floats around in my brain quite a bit. I want to see you again, you know that, I don't know if I've exactly told you, but I definitely want to see you again. I'm not entirely sure who exactly it is that I am anymore...I forgot the answer to that question quite some time ago. Regardless, have you seen the sky lately? It has been remarkably blue for several weeks now. Some would call it beautiful, delightful, a wonderful, enlightening sight to behold. I find it rather oppressive. A little bit of rain would be nice. A little bit of rain would be nice. I can't help but be frustrated by this lack of rain. My grass is steadily turning brown. So is my neighbor's lawn. Go figure. I remember one time, we went for a walk and ended up coming across that one lake. I have no idea where the lake was; I can't really remember that all that well, but I can say that I remember the lake itself, and all of the vegetation around it. There were so many different shades of green around there, I felt as if though my senses were being completely overloaded by the outright beauty of the whole place. Then again, they probably were, seeing as how it was a rather cold day in early spring that was remarkably bright, with the aroma of the freshly blooming flowers taking over the air to the point where even if you had tried to get away from the scent, it would have followed you all of the way out of the countryside. Then the day after that when we were walking around the same area and there was the low lying level of fog that had sunk into the meadow that we ended up wandering through fairly often. And then as we were down there, it evaporated to reveal a number of elk that were just there, grazing in the fields. They looked fairly content with what they were doing. Really, they looked more bored, as if they needed some event to come along and get their adrenaline pumping. However, I don't really think that was all that likely to happen.

I almost forgot you ask you this earlier...how is your father doing? While I've been writing letters to you, I've completely neglected to check up on your father. I feel kind of guilty for not asking how Marco is doing. Please do tell. Regardless, I have little more to say. Goodbye.

~Lars

PS. I encountered someone that bore s triking resemblance to you the other day. I don't remember you having any cousins or so, but then again I never felt like I knew you quite well enough. Perhaps this endless drive is why I continue to write you letters after all this time even though I know as well as you do that the likelyhood of a reunion is rather low. Anywho, if you happen to have family in town, please tell them about me. I would appreciate that.

Chapter

It was finally coming, the rain, the blue rain from the gray sky, drooping overhead from above, with the moisture just falling from the sky, drip drip drip drip, it had been a long time coming, really, just waiting for the rain. The people had been looking at the weather forecast, just looking at it, looking and seeing that to their west for the past week or so had been a remarkably slow moving mass of wind and rain, with that nice little red capital L right in the middle of it (slightly up and left, but that's besides the point), and a little zig zag hanging down and trailing behind all of it, a line with the redness of flushed cheeks after one too many drinks and the bumpy surface contours of a brand new pair of corderouy pants, essentially cycloid in nature, extending over to the right. And here the people were starting to be, caught in the middle of the story, sitting out on their porches in weather that not too many years ago would have caused them to close up shop and stay inside until every single last drop had been expended , dropped out to fertilize the land and hydrate the people most gloriously for days, refilling the reservoirs (however much it rained, however, they never really seemed to be completely filled. I suppose that's just one of the curses of the land around here, eh?), letting some stuff grow, filling in the cracks in the dirt, and leaving thousands upon thousands of rivers on the side of the road, each one either falling into an area lower than all of the surrounding ones or finding their way into a man-made fissure in the ground leading to an underground network of tunnels where all of the water usage of the town would have eventually ending up, falling into the mildly polluted waters beneath and freshening them up just a little bit, and it was wonderful, wonderful wonderful rain, despite the fact that they weren't used to it, because it was life, it was a wonderful life assuring substance, a chemical upon which the roots of society are so incredibly dependent. Everyone loves water. Everything loves water. Everything needs water, because without water, nothing flows. The rivers slow down, eventually drying up and grinding to a halt. The people eventually quit moving around all that much, preferring to spend their time where water can be easily obtained, and in most cases nowadays, relying heavily on bottled water, where people from from distant area have decided to bottle up some of that vitality and life and sell it to people for about fifty cents a bottle, plus sales tax of course, so that a portion of the money that would normally be spent on enhancing life is actually spent on preserving it; a rather severe departure from the norm, really, but there really isn't that much that can be done about it because of the fact that when a man needs water, a woman needs water, he or she will damn well get the water that he or she needs. Regardless, the people here were absolutely delighted, and on the street corners one could see the little streams of water on the side of the road intersecting and spilling into one another, and visible a couple of blocks down you could see a little girl, white, with hair that was almost a russet colour like the leaves in autumn, freckles dotting her face (not that you could see them two blocks away, but that is completely beside the point), wearing a t-shirt with the image of a popular children's television show character in all of its animated glory and shorts that went down to about her knees, jumping up and down in the puddles, trying repeatedly to see just how far she could get the water to splash, shoving her foot into it at a sharp angle, and in the process, getting her socks and shoes saturated all the way through; to this she was completely oblivious, and the only person who would actually care at all about the fact that she was very wet was her mother who was more concerned about the fact that by getting so soaked, her beautiful daughter might come down with a cold or some related malady (not that she would, it was the middle of summer and she would be spending the majority of her time outside for quite a length of time, happily frolicking around and being an absolutely content child, avoiding sickness like the plague). A jump up would be followed by gravity promptly pulling her back down again, in which case she would simply decide to jump again, and then again, and then again and again again, splashing water everywhere around her and having a rollicking good time, with each individual rain drop landing on her, hitting her face, and slowly sliding off of the contours, meeting up with a number of other rain drops, and then falling off of its precipitous perch to pool in the puddle on the ground, where it would soon be propelled a fairly good distance by the frantic jumping up and down of the feet of the girl, landing and going right back to where it was before in the exact same manner. One would have been entirely unobservant to not see the rain coming. For the past few days, the air had been different, cooler than it had been in quite some time, but at the same time inducing just a little bit more sweat than normal. Each morning, for the first time in quite some time, where there used to be nothing, now people were waking up and eating breakfast and getting dressed and brushing their teeth (yes, in that exact order) and walking outside to see that all over the windows and surfaces of their car was a thin layer of dew, deposited over night by the atmosphere as a way to say that it still, in fact, loved you and cared for your well-being. Naturally, this increased humidity also led to an increase in irritating pests flying around through the atmosphere, but that was quite possibly the only difference around that anyone besides an outright masochist could have really complained about. So that was it. Here was a city of itchy, happy, hydrated people, whose allergies were delightfully kicking up for the first time in quite some time.

Chapter

He was sitting on his couch, listening to the patter of raindrops on the rooftop of his abode, still trying to figure out exactly what it was that had left the mark on the inside of his door. The fact that the moisture had changed had slightly altered the appearance of the door. Where there once was a very noticeable but thin crack running down the door just to the side of the burn mark (if it even was a burn mark), there was now more of just a line, with the crack filled in by the door itself as it absorbed water and swelled in such a way that led to the door itself actually becoming fractionally larger. Nobody would have really noticed though, other than the man who spent an absolutely inordinate amount of time analyzing every last detail of the grain of the door.

A small gurgling sound reverberated through the room, repeating once or twice and being accompanied by the man putting his hand on his stomach and feeling what there was to be felt. He notied that there was very little of the characteristic subtle pooch that indicates a recent filling; he was hungry, as was going to do something about it. And because he had walked to the store and purchased more food (even though the nutritional value was very low, he still considered it food, therefore he ate it without fail on a near daily basis, save for the rare occasion when he actually had company. Thinking about this, he realized that he actually had not had any company in a couple of years, and might actually need to get some food that had some nutritional value to it. “Oh well, maybe later on in the week”, he though to himself.), he had an ample supply of food available for the eating. He walked up, wandered through the cleared path of junk through the floor, went to his freezer and plucked one of the pizzas off of the shelf. The ritual was here, like a junky getting ready to give himself his fix, searching for a vein and trying to get the junk in, he fumbled around looking for a sharp object to get the plastic window off of the box to that he could pop it into the oven. Next, he searched for the garlic, so that he could boos the flavor just a little bit more, as the basic flavour of the pizzas themselves was a little bit dry and lacking in depth. However, he was unable to acquire what he was looking for immediately, so he decided that he might actually head to the store a second time and make a point to go along and pick up some garlic. Now that there was a little bit of hydration going along and the sun wouldn't hurt his eyes or skin at that much, it actually might be worth it, at least for just a little bit. Anyway, he had memorized the number at which he had to cook his pizzas in order for them to obtain any sort of quality—200 Celsius—however, he was never quite sure exactly what the length of time was that they should be cooked, as his freezer was finicky and would not have them frozen to the same amounts every singe time. That was the reason for most of his guesswork on the matter, which, other than the fact that he would occasionally have to down an unsatisfactory pizza, there was really not all that much complaining to do. Rather, he was more just glad to have food, so that he could resume his time spent musing in solitude, sitting in rememberance and non-sensicle introspection as he went onward through his day.

The light shining through the lonely window in the back of the house had shifted in colour just a little bit. What had once been a light that shown vaguely orangey-white, working its way through the dusty blinds, there was now more a muted, somber colour, a colour that was a delicate blend between a delicious cerulean and a light gray that was not quite white enough to be quite but not quite dark enough to be gray. This light pleased the man, as it suggested a gentle enveloping of his being as opposed to the scorching oppressiveness that was the norm all too often these days.

Because of this simply change in shift coming in from the outside areas, there was far less inclination to stay inside. The rain, the moisture, the refreshing change that was taking over the land was beckoning him outside. So he naturally went.

There was a chair on the porch. A green, plastic lawn chair, made of a plastic that was not entirely identifiable as any of the standard plastics that were rather common, and a paint that had never been seen anywhere else except for on other mass produced lawn chairs. The paint, however, had faded to such a degree that it was almost closer to a chartreuse colour, and there was a thin layer of dirt and broken dead leaves that had been sitting there for longer than he was aware of—since he never used the chair anyway, it had never really mattered to him at all whether or not it was clean. He looked at it, and remembered that his lunch was still cooking in the oven. There was some time to kill, so he brushed all of the miscellaneous debris off of the the chair and had a seat for a while as he mentally counted in his head the approximate time that he thought it might take for the pizza to get fully cooked. The fingertips tapped against the top of the thigh, rolling from pinky to thumb, but with a slight delay between the landing of the index finger and the thumb. This was repeated most with the right hand; however, after he shifted positions in the chair due to a lack of comfort and a numbing sensation in his leg, which ended up putting his right hand in such a position that it was substantially more comfortable to just let it hang off of the side of the chair, almost reaching the porch, but not quite, gently swaying back and forth in the breeze. His pants were kind of bothering him as well, so he had to make a point to adjust them just a little bit, shifting slightly in his seat so that the body parts contained therein were being adequately ventilated.

It was time, or at least close to it, so he stood up, walked over to the kitchen, opened the door to the oven, smelled the contents, was satisfied with the aroma, poked the pizza, found that it had been cooked to a rather large degree, took it out, put it on a paper plate, and walked outside with the hot pizza pie in his hands, ready to savour his treat (junk) as much as he possibly could.

The cool air was pressing against his skin the entire time that he was eating the pizza. This was completely foreign to him; he could not remember the last time that it was not thirty-two degree with five percent relative humidity and a pressure that was usually fairly high. He really liked it, with the cooling waves of lower temperatures and air that contained water for once just brushing up against him. He finished his pizza, closed his eyes, and slowly drifted off into unconsciousness, with an atmospheric blanket keeping him remarkably comfortable. This was a wonderful mid-afternoon nap.

Hmm. The chapters got messed up in number. whatevs.

Happy NaNoWriMo!