If you’ve tried to contact me, please try again here! The new form will let me know. My apologies.

Meanwhile, I’ll just lie here thinking about the 17 unknown messages and how many of those were Gordon Ramsay offering me a dream job as his traveling writer.

I’m sure none of them were though.

I mean.

I’m almost positive.

When Martha recognized what it was, she paused… then sat down. She fingered the object in her hands idly as her eyes turned inward. Though she’d asked her mom to buy it because of how stylishly it accented her dark hair, it ended up spending more time in her hands. Open, closed, open closed: a fidget toy for the perpetually nervous.

Her favorite.

When not assuaging waves of anxiety, the clip was carefully positioned above her left brow, holding back long, dark brown hair. It made its appearance at every major social function and received many compliments from awkward adults who didn’t know how else to talk to children.

Drama came to mind, the kind arising from middle school misunderstandings. Someone else had a purple clip, too, but not this exact kind, and Martha tried her best to assert ownership. Finally, as all things do, it got back to an authority figure and Martha’s silent companion was restored to her. Fervently, Martha remembered, she had wished to be an adult so she could have control. She could avoid the drama and stupidity so prevalent in the world of children. She’d have control over the things that mattered to her.

Martha’s throat was dry. It was surprising to find the clip where she did. A child’s object in a child’s room, but not the little girl’s property after all. Martha wondered if her daughter had found the little purple thing somewhere in Martha’s things and taken a fancy to it, stealing it for her own personal collection. How typical of the three-year-old.

When had Martha lost the clip? Sometime in middle school. Maybe it succumbed to the growing mass of bobby pins, hair ties, bands, gels, styling agents and more drowning her old child’s things. The bathroom drawers become filled with new ideas of herself, different from who she was but crying out promises of future accolades. The clip was long forgotten as time inexorably ticked on.

The nervous girl turned into an even more nervous adult.

Her cell rang, yanking her from her fog. She answered. It was Jose again, asking how she was doing. If she had gone to therapy. How did it go.

Quietly, Martha answered and when Jose was satisfied she’d make it through the day, the call ended. Martha slowly put the phone back. She leaned her head against the wall where she’d been sitting. Her eyes closed as she struggled to keep herself in check. Jose wouldn’t like her to be cleaning this room again.

Her hands moved of their own accord: open, closed, open, closed. The snap was refreshing, relieving almost. As though pieces of her tension were released through a small tear in the fabric of space – a hole through which she could drop herself, piece by piece.

Martha remembered being yelled at in class when she had been clicking her clip unconsciously, not even aware she was doing it. Why did others care if she were doing it? It distracted. It annoyed. It made other people nervous when she did what made her feel better.

Maybe that was when she lost it. When she stopped trying to feel better and started trying to feel like others.

Open, closed. Open, closed.

Suddenly, she got up and went to the bathroom. She looked at herself. Hollows under her eyes and messy hair. She hadn’t put effort into her appearance in a long time.

Martha reached up and put the purple pin in her hair, above her left brow. Too messy – the pin slid forward, unable to hold her masses of tangles.

It took Martha a few minutes to find where she had last put her brush. She spent several more minutes brushing out the dark curls. Finally, she returned to the mirror and lifted the clip once more to her hair.

Even brushed and wetted, Martha’s hair would not comply. The clip may have been enough to maintain her when she was 11, but now her thick hair was too much and the clip gave up too easily. All it was now was a fidget toy.

And doesn’t a fidget toy lose something when it’s real purpose is gone? It’s just trash.

Martha went back to her daughter’s room and sat down in the same spot. She fiddled with the purple clip. Open. Closed.

It was about 3:30 pm. Her daughter would have been coming home from elementary school around now. Or would Martha have her own car in this alternate reality?  Maybe Martha would be the kind of mom to pick her daughter up from school instead of having her walk.

Martha thought of all the other mothers, lining up now along the school sidewalk, engines idling as they waited for their small children to come pouring out of the school, yelling at and cajoing their friends as they moved en masse toward their parents. Martha thought of little shoes, half off at Payless. Second graders toting big plastic superhero-themed backpacks the same size as their little bodies as they smiled at their mothers and told them about the bug they ate at recess.

Martha’s fingers were moving a mile a minute, snapping the old metal back and forth until finally, with a small metallic sigh, it broke.

Martha stopped, looking down at her hands and the small pieces of broken metal. Trash. After several long moments, Martha got back up and looked at her daughter’s room, unchanged in four years. She’d been cleaning the dust and dirt, but now didn’t seem to have the heart to continue. She turned off the light, closed the door behind her, and threw the purple clip away.

Re: Notice of intent to evacuate

Dear Monsieur or Madam,

This expertly crafted letter constitutes my written notice that I will be departing from the plush comfort of my basement chateau on August 15^th, at the end of my ethological study into the life of the native species Tipsy Kickface, or alenniam drakus.

Enclosed you will find $63.00, which will cover the last portion of August I will spend in my chateau farting on all furniture in preparation for my tragic departure.    

I expect that my security deposit of $10,000, given to you in the form of gold bullion, will be refunded in full, since the room has been left in quasi-alright condition. I have full confidence you can remove the human pee stains and dried vomit in time.

I can be reached via homing pigeon or fire signal after the above date. Please take care not to do so, however, as I loathe human contact.

Sincerely,

The Farting Duchess Anastasia

Ice shook in cocktail glasses and half-drunk patrons vaguely shot questioning glances around them. Tim paused for a moment mid-shrug, then remembered he wasn’t in California anymore. He ran to the edge of the outdoor bar to peer at the sky, but saw nothing of note.

The earth shook every one second, spaced out, like with footsteps. Everyone, including Tim the bartender, heard the giant rooster before they saw it. It’s cawing sounded profoundly more monstrous coming from a 30-foot beak. A dinosaur, Tim thought. It sounds like a dinosaur. While TIm was thinking this, however, his patrons had already begun scrambling to the street and away from the sound. They fell over high-tops and clutched their sunglasses to sun-bleached hair as they made their escape.

Tim wasn’t sure where he could possibly run – he wasn’t sure if he were dreaming, or roofied? Could someone have slipped him some acid? Those kinds of shenanigans his friends might have pulled back in San Diego, but not here.

It’s disconcerting, how the whole body tangibly reacts to extreme vibration; as each massive claw crumpled the hot asphalt below, Tim’s organs shifted and his heart stopped. This could not be real. Yet the empty street and the far-oo screams weren’t dreamlike; they were too crisp and the fear hit his spine too directly.

There was a giant fucking rooster slowly making its way down Duval Street.

Tim was still immobile as it passed him. Only a few breaths later and vacationing bodies ducked their heads around lamposts and from behind A-frames. The rooster had moved on. They saw the damage his claws and feathers had left behind: crumpled sheets, overturned tables, trees bent, merchandise all over the place. And there was Tim, wiping the counter down with a rag.

“Can I take your order?” He asked, thinking of California only momentarily before returning focus.

The tourists at the bar visibly relaxed, normalcy restored.

Finally, one said, “I’ll have a cocktail…”

“My wife has Crohn’s Disease. My buddy has a 65’ catamaran,” Man #1 said at the outdoor bar.

“Score!” said Man #2, next to him.

The rest of their conversation was unintelligible. Maybe because there was an uptick in noise from the other outside patrons, or because I stopped caring.

“You’re never stuck if you have money for gas,” I heard someone else say from the other end of the bar. That’s true, I guess. Depends on if you’re mentally stuck. Or does it? Maybe money for gas is all we all really need.

There was one group separate from the others. The woman on the far right was overweight, but hadn’t gotten the memo. Her rouge lips sat pursed beneath her large, dark, fashionable shades.

She said very little; two seats over the skinny brunette dominated the conversation.

The brunette’s hair was messy – her looks could afford it. Hands always busy, she made direct eye contact like it was a sport. Her movements were effortless. Presupposed social acceptance dancing unconsciously in her eyes.  

“I never say ‘y’all’!” she stated to everyone and to no one. “My mouth can’t even form the words. ‘Y’all.’” She laughed. “I’ve never said it,” she said.

Gold jewelry caressed tan, thin wrists as she waved to the bartender. “Thanks, Tim!” When she left the bar, so too did the men she sat with. Her flowery lilt decorated the air around her as she moved away.

No one noticed that the other woman with rouge and shades was gone. Had she been with them at all?

Visits to the mental treatment facility were always depressing. His aunt’s violent rages were getting worse and worse, and he was starting to feel his visits were hurting rather than helping.

At least he was trying, he thought bitterly. His disgust at his other family members always rose to the surface after these encounters.

Lost in his own thoughts, it took him several seconds to notice the long, white arm reaching from a doorway ahead.

The arm was slender, with unpainted but closely trimmed fingernails. It reached out and waved at Mark as he made his way down the hallway. As Mark got closer, the figure in the doorway attached to the arm became apparent. She was pale, skinny, and enveloped in a cloud of wild, black hair. Strands hung down, cascading over her features and striking a sharp contrast with her paperwhite skin.

“Hello Mark,” she smiled a broken smile, her mouth turned up at one corner and her eyes filled with shards.

Mark hesitated again, then smiled vaguely and nodded in her direction. For all he knew, she overheard an attendant say his name during a visit. He quickened his pace. Jeremy would need him back at the office and the afternoon was already slipping by.

“Marguerite Ann sends her love.” The mystery woman smiled, dipping her head and moving hair out of her eyes as she did so. Her movements were languid, confident, and knowing.

Mark stopped short at the mention of the woman’s name. He’d never talked about or even alluded to his mother in this dreadful place. He was angry her name had even been mentioned.

“I’m sorry,” he asked, forcing himself to be polite. “Do I know you?”

She shook her head slowly, the smile never leaving her face. “Wouldn’t you remember me?”

She’s not wrong, he thought. She was striking, if small, and a conversation about his mother with such a person wouldn’t have faded from mind so easily.

“How do you know about my mother?” He asked, more forcefully than he intended.

She played with a tendril, in no hurry. “Oh, she tells me about you, Mark,” she said, as she started to leave her doorway. “About your favorite way to eat oreos and how you used to like rain, but don’t anymore.” The woman stepped closer to the man.

Mark swallowed and stared, unsure how to respond. No one but his mother knew those things. No one but his mother, whom he hadn’t spoken to in the 15 years since her death.

The dark-haired woman, clad in a thin gown, inched closer to Mark until she was right in front of him, and he could feel her hot breath on his neck. She reached out with her thin fingers.

An attendant shouted from down the hallway. Mark stepped backward, but too late.

He felt a shock as her cold fingers made contact with the skin on his arm. He looked at her face and saw her dark eyes for one instant before he felt himself ripped away from the blindingly white hallway. The images around him swirled, cascading all around him in a confusion of time and space. He couldn’t breath. He tried to focus, but a pain swirled through his eyes that he couldn’t quite explain.

Gasping, Mark opened his eyes.

He glanced feverishly at his surroundings, not processing what he was seeing. His thoughts were tumultuous, his breathing heavy. His brain felt like Italian salad dressing that had just been shaken, unsettled and chaotic. The kind of dressing his wife liked.

His wife.

Without thinking, Mark turned his head to his left. There she was, sprawled in their bed, snoring softly in the dawn light. Mark turned back and stared around at the walls of their bedroom. A trickle of sweat carved its way down his forehead and he became suddenly aware of his body. It was sticking to the sheets, sweaty and tense. He forced himself to relax and control his breathing.

It was a dream. Just a weird dream. Mark closed and opened his eyes. He was awake now.

He turned to his wife and touched her arm. She moved slightly, her head turning in his direction. Black ringlets danced across her pillow. The woman moved her tiny hand to her face to push the hair away as he watched her, heart filling with relief.

It was nothing like any dream he’d ever had – visceral and real and haunting – but it was just a dream. He was home, safe, with his beautiful wife. And so what if the haunting woman resembled his wife? That was the nature of dreams.

“Hi lovely,” Mark said to his wife. The woman sleepily opened her eyes, smiling.

Mark looked into her dark eyes and something moved in his stomach. A dark rumbling, bubbling to the surface. He forced himself to put it away. It was just a dream, he reminded himself.

Still, he couldn’t help asking half-jokingly, “You’ve never been in a mental hospital, right?”

The smile slid from his wife’s face. He could see blood rush to her face, now, instead of her sleepy hand. She licked her lips. “How did you know that?” She asked, voice small and eyes wide.

Mark’s heart beat hard in his chest. It was a joke. “What? You’ve been in a mental hospital?”

She worked her mouth, not sure what to say, and began to sit up in bed.

Mark began to shake his head, unbelieving, when his phone rang loud beside him. He took two long breaths before turning and answering the vibrating cell. It was his cousin. The dark feeling bubbled up again and he answered.

“Hey man,” the rough voice on the other end was familiar yet pained. “There’s been an accident.”

Mark closed his eyes again, letting the dark wash over him. “Is it Aunt Tracy? Did she hurt her head?”

There was silence. Mark could hear the quiet sound of a man breathing heavy.

“How did you know that, dude?”

Mark hung up the phone. He lay back down on his bed, his eyes finding the white, blank ceiling above him. The whiteness was vast and silent, and all consuming. He fell into it.  

“Becky,

So you’re eating at the cafeteria, that’s good. You can cook in the apartment Buttermilk pie becomes famous all across Spain because of Becky Strohl; families demand buttermilk pie at all their meals. The craze spreads. She has to drop out of the University and start her own dessert and bbq restaurant. Supplied by KC Masterpiece as an incredible advertising phenomenon she is launched into the dizzying stratosphere of 5-star restaurants. People take one bite of her incredibly awesome pies and swoon from the amazing sugar overload. Men throw themselves at her, cabs stop for her, women emulate her. Buttermilk pie sweeps the world. (Well at least where they have buttermilk) Becky becomes an icon of tastiness.

But someone else comes up with some second-rate, fly-by-night dessert made from recycled tires and cardboard. Becky’s empire collapses. The last time Becky Strohl is seen, she is eating buttermilk pie with her fingers and swigging KC Masterpiece. A sad end.

Better stay in school.

Love, Mama”