 
Holly Golightly Syndrome

By C.E. Wanders

Copyright 2012 C.E. Wanders

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" _The worst evil which can befall the artist is that the work should appear good in his own eye"_ – -Leonardo da Vinci

Chapter 1

"We are gathered here today to honor the memory of Cyril..."

Father Flanders shook violently in the unforgiving damp-cold with dew fringed glasses teetering on the bridge of his nose.

An urgent cough accentuated his mistake.

"I beg your pardon. Sybil N. Vane. Yes we are gathered here today to honor the memory of Sybil Vane."

If Sibyl were to see here funeral through the eyes of a raven flying overhead, she probably wouldn't have been very pleased. Though there was a vaguely large turnout, and they all looked respectable enough in black, most of the mourners remained largely dry eyed. A coughing, hysteric sob crawled out of the throat of a woman on the edge of mourners who defied the general wrinkled demographic of the ceremony and who no one seemed to recognize.

(Great, the raven sighed, the only woman crying at my funeral is someone I don't even know.)

(Who does she think she is, dramatizing my funeral, like I don't have enough mourners?)

(And in heels?)

(For shame! Who wears heels to a funeral? )

(And why in the world George looking at her like that for? Isn't he still dating that nice Asian girl?)

His head leaned towards her and she pictured them ogling over her corpse.

(No George, don't do it! I don't trust that one.)

Bertha Fall however, was immune to George's advances.

She was attending therapy.

It was raining, which was of course even better for her psyche.

This naturally hadn't been her first option.

She sat in the variously generic offices of psychiatrists, psychologists, and counselors. She faced acres of men, women, red haired, brunette, and gray, on green, yellow, orange, black sofas, all clockwork with paperwork and pretentious glasses. It was like one of those children's flipbooks where you could incorrectly pair an alligator's head with a bear's stomach and human feet.

They all read the same script. "There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with you."

But no one outside of the professional world seemed to accept that consensus either.

Between extravagant, unsuccessful relationships which often left both her and the others feeling as though they had just been picked up by a twister and left somewhere inconvenient, and a few resulting melodramatic public dramas in college, Bertha slowly began to realize that she needed the equivalent of an emotional garbage disposal.

It began with charitable commercials, which was unfortunate because it gave people the impression she was charitable. But she found that role a bit too repressed and flourished as the character of the secret American assassin "Mini" on "Lagrimas." When the depression switched to mania she'd hire herself out as a groupie for bands no one had ever heard of and as an extra on car commercials with sales so big they had no choice but to instigate robust dancing sequences with clapping. They were all more profitable than having a pair of glasses declare her normalcy.

"Excuse me." Someone grabbed her elbow. "I don't believe we've met."

(Shit.)

This unfortunately had happened on a few occasions, and Bertha quickly became the sister nana gave up and never told you about, or personal mistress of the deceased. All very thoughtful stuff.

"Oh I'm sorry." Normally she could think of something right on the spot, but the man who had grabbed her elbow thoroughly intimidated her with an icy glare. "I must have gone to the wrong funeral. I'm sorry I have a memory problem and..."

He smirked. "Really, you have a memory problem? Look its ok I'm onto you." He stuffed his hands into his pockets and began to pace on the water logged lawn. "There's no shame in being homeless. I mean granted being homeless in a cemetery I think would be a more depressing option as far as public places to..."

"I'm not homeless." She snapped back. "Do I look homeless?"

"Well no, it's just....I see you here a lot." His blue eyes were mocking her but she loved them anyway.

"Well if you see me here a lot, that must mean you're here a lot too."

"What's it to you?" He shot suspiciously.

"Oh nothing." Bertha was eye level with him on the step, and she tried to meet his gaze. "If you really want to know the truth I have a lot of emotions, but I don't have anywhere to put them. So I...ah... sort of....maybe pretty much... kind of ... ah...attend anonymous funerals."

He gave her a look. "You can't be serious. What is this, fight club?"

"I'm very serious. It's something I'd rather not discuss at the moment, now if you please I have to go home."

"Well sorry then" He stepped back and lit up a cigarette, which went out promptly in the rain. "Sorry to bother you Miss."

He said miss as an unanswered question word, and threw the cigarette on the ground in defeat. "You shouldn't litter." Bertha pointed out.

"I beg your pardon." Water began to run in rivulets down the crevices in his face.

"Well you shouldn't smoke. And you shouldn't litter."

"Well you shouldn't cry all the time it gives you wrinkles. Goodness, are you really still crying?"

Bertha attempted a half laugh, but it came out as that pitiful sob-laugh where you're not quite done being miserable about something but you can't help laughing.

(So much for being charming. I sound like I'm on a horse tranquilizer in slow motion.)

"Sorry I'll be on my way now."

"Wait" he called. She attempted to speed walk across the soggy lawn in heels, and ended up looking like someone who really needed to go the bathroom. "Here, I gotcha poor sot."

Suddenly she found herself looking at his back and backside, which was quite nice, and wondering if she truly seemed that intoxicated.

"I'm not drunk." She shouted over the thunder.

"Maybe that's your problem." He shouted back as the rain began to pour down so hard it was deafening and finally set her back on the sidewalk. His eyes glanced inquisitively at her, as if she were some rare specimen on the discovery channel. "I do realize... this is a bit ridiculous...but you look a lot nicer when your face isn't all scrunched up. Do you want to get a drink?"

"Sure! Why not?"

They settled into some pretentious looking bar with legitimate business people in button down shirts and ten dollar drinks. Women with matching umbrellas and designer rain boots sent disgusted stares at Bertha and her wet hair.

Unfortunately, several drinks in, she had all but forgotten her budget, and her new friend George wasn't doing much better. Slightly tipsy, she set her glass down forcefully and said "George, George darling I'm giving you an ultimatum."

"And what is that?" He was on his third beer.

"Well I have to give you a disclaimer. I am, in case you haven't noticed, completely insane. You have two options. The first and most advised is that you run for your life. Just finish that off, maybe stretch your quads, and start running..." She and looked at him expectantly. He hadn't moved. "Do you doubt my warning, sir?"

"Bertha." He said in a flat voice. "I found you bawling your eyes out about someone you've never even met."

"Yes, well I'm just as crazy when I'm happy. I'm warning you. But I'll give you the second option and then you can reevaluate. Well you see I've always wanted to race someone down the street in the rain." She grinned goofily and hiccupped.

"So to be clear..." He rested his head on his fist. "I'm going to be running in the rain either way?"

"Mhmm." She nodded curtly.

"I may as well beat you in the meantime..."

"Who says you're going to beat me?"

After they finished their drinks they walked swiftly to the door, so as to not look too suspicious, but being drunk and far less subtle than they assumed themselves to be, they did evoke some derision from polite society and looked even more conspicuous running down the city sidewalk towards his apartment.

"So there you are being all cocky for nothing?" He arched his eye brow up.

"I guess so." She panted.

For a moment they stood in silence, breathing and listening. A woman rudely hit Bertha with her purse, but she didn't seem to notice. The next thing they knew, they were pressed against each other, a sopping tangled panting mess without a name.

(Oh shut up I know it's cheesy.)

Bertha woke up with a headache in a foreign bed with wonderful silk sheets.

His apartment was immaculate. Everything seemed to have its place. She felt like an intruder, messing up the order of an internal universe.

"Hi there." He nodded, with bags under his eyes. It was immensely difficult to read his face.

"Good thing it's a Sunday or I would have had to kick you out much earlier."

"Oh." Bertha was taken aback by the comment, and began to look for her outfit from yesterday, which she found neatly folded. "Did you do this?" She unfolded them, suspiciously.

"Call it a compulsion, but I like having everything clean and in order."

"Me...me too." She stammered a bit in relief. "I like color coding my closet."

He laughed, and grabbed the small of her back, pulling her into a long drawn out kiss. "That's so sexy."

(How long can I hold on to this one before he goes running for his life and sanity? Hopefully longer than a week...) "Sorry I'm not terribly intelligible in the morning. I sort of have a coffee problem, do you happen to know if there's somewhere nearby I can get some."

"I'm not sure I don't drink coffee. However I do have some for when my family visits."

"You don't drink coffee?" She gasped.

"Not really. I don't like it unless it has a lot of cream and sugar."

"Oh." She shrugged.

It was a step up from the other guys she had dated, who didn't want to seem unmanly and ordered black coffee if she did too, so as to not seem inferior in some sense. She could always tell they were fakers because they'd make an accidental grimace, or would leave it scarcely touched. "How do you do it?"

"I sleep for one," He smirked "...probably quite a bit more than you do. You're not much of a sleeper, are you?"

"Oh I sleep ok. Unfortunately I'm much better at sleeping in the morning and afternoon than any other time. Sometimes I think I was born to take a night shift in something..."

"What is it that you do?" He began to put a pot on. The rest of his house was substantially smaller than the bedroom. Bertha peered at the pictures on either side of the leather couch. Each one featured what she assumed was his family; a skinny mother, a stoic looking father, and a sister. They shared the same smile. The sight of his sister gave her the sensation of spiders crawling around in her stomach. She had never had problems getting approval from older or younger brothers, but sisters don't work the same way as brothers, especially because she looked about the same age. There's more complicated programming involved. It had taken her an eternity to accept her own brother's girlfriend, despite the fact that she was perfectly nice.

"I primarily work at a magazine for teen girls. It's not an ideal job, but it gets the bills paid and gives me enough time to work on my own writing. Then I have a few odd jobs here and there. Sometimes I make a guest appearance on a telenovela."

"That sounds like fun." The sound of moving pans nearly drowned out his voice.

"What do you do?" Bertha cracked her back, as she turned to look back at him.

"I developed a patent for a more efficient plane engine. Well for small planes."

"Oh an engineer?"

"No." Something began to sizzle. "Actually I was a political science major, so much good that did me. I also own a restaurant down on the east side that does pretty well."

"That's great." Bertha smiled. "So what are you doing in graveyards all the time?"

"I attend anonymous burials in place of therapy." He yawned.

"Oh very funny..." She pouted. "But seriously?"

"Oh, Sybil was actually a relative of mine. Grand-aunt or something."

"I'm so sorry about that again..." Her face grew hot, and she retreated to some juvenile iPhone game where you had to run away from manic fruit by jumping over obstacles, while simultaneously knocking over stacks of pigs seated to either side of the course.

"It's ok; I didn't know here very well." he handed her the coffee, and she wafted in the smell of Colombian-ambrosia-life-force. "I was watching the funeral next to me, I mean before I noticed you..." he blushed. "Anyway, you could tell there was a black sheep at the burial. The rest of the family sort of parts as if the person was contagious. And then you have those regretful sort that mutter about never having told so and so that they are sorry or that they actually loved so and so. They're the sorts that are too proud to say anything to a living thing, but have no problem talking to something that can't talk back...do you like pepper on your eggs?"

"Oh that's sweet of you to make breakfast. No thank you."

"I think the biggest shame of all is flowers placed on graves. They look beautiful, but think how much nicer the world would be if all the flowers placed on graves were given to the underappreciated living people."

"It's just a tradition." Bertha countered, as she dug into her eggs. "I think it's more for the person doing it. It's about revering the ancestors. But I definitely see where you're coming from. I always thought it was curious that people like cut flowers in the first place. But people seem to be under the impression that the beautiful things have to be hunted, cut up, captured and displayed."

"Hmm." He bit into a piece of toast. His chewing was loud in the ensuing silence as they tried to find conversation in passing traffic and clinking forks.

"So," Bertha attempted to redeem herself. "Did you..."

But a swinging door interrupted her. A skinny woman burst through the door carrying two six packs of cheap beer. "Hey George." She didn't seem to notice Bertha, and Bertha attempted to remain invisible upon matching up the face of the invader with his family pictures. "Are you still alright with the girls coming over tonight? We probably won't go out until later. Oo who's this?"

"Eliot, this is Bertha." He ran up and gave her a hug. "It's so great to see you!"

Bertha was left finishing her breakfast stuck in that merciless void when you're with someone who knows someone you don't know very well. So she retreated to the bathroom to wipe the bits of makeup from yesterday that had crept to the corners of her eyes. She didn't intend to listen to their conversation, but it's often easier to listen to something when you aren't supposed to.

"So everyone is coming over tonight. Ja ja!"

"Ja ja!" He replied back. "And you're going to be all Ms. Drunk Pants."

(Oh no. What did I get myself into?)

He was still talking excitedly, with his sister when Bertha left and he waved her off dismissively. As the door shut, Emily scowled. "I don't like her." She decided promptly.

"Oh and why's that?" George began to rinse off the plates.

"She skinnier than me." Emily scowled. "Oo oo so..."

Bertha was not psyched about George's dismissive goodbye, and was a bit taken aback by Emily, but at least George had her number, so that had to count for something.

"But I'm getting too far ahead of myself."

She sighed, and she entered her apartment. A black figure jumped out, causing her to spill the guts of her purse: vanilla hand lotion, a wallet with ignored cumulative pennies and a debit card in it, a phone that had miraculously stayed in one piece despite its daily struggles, and a copy of Paradise Lost with 500 post-its poking out here and there.

Kitty weaved through her legs. She didn't name the cat, of course, because that would suggest that she owned the cat when in reality the black fur ball seemed to own her.

"Hi Kitty." She opened a can of cat food, set in on the floor, and began to scan the cupboards for something for dinner.

A single bottle of sirrachi sauce, solitary sergeant, tottered as she opened the fridge.

(But if I end up shopping on an empty stomach I'm just going to end up with a compilation of pregnant woman/ teenage boy food.)

With a full Saturday sprawled out ahead of her, she instinctively knew she should make an attempt to be social, but had no innate desire to do so. During the week she would make the effort like a trooper, being nice to everyone at work, and listening to their stories. But by the end of the week she was all listened out and couldn't straighten out other people's lives from her own.

(Hmm... maybe I'll start that novel again.)

The full-fledged delusion that she was going to publish something someday resulted in notebooks of all colors and sizes, endless word documents, and a full blown crisis brought about by writing. Then of course, the crises which had been caused by writing had to be documented. Her fingers has scarcely typed "chapter one" when, the doorbell rang.

She brushed her wet hair back and adjusted her white tee shirt over her yoga pants accordingly in case it was George.

"Hey can I come in?" A short girl with a particularly loud voice asked.

"Oh, sure Rose."

"I was in the neighborhood so I thought I'd stop by. So guess who's starting to get interested in me now that I'm taken?"

This is the problem with being friend with a hyper sociable person: there are too many names to remember.

"...Ugh so Bobby didn't want to go to Walgreens with me, I don't know what's wrong with him."

Bertha scrunched up her nose, not horribly eager to hear about Bobby again.

"... cause like I was flirting with this guy for fun the other night, but I feel like it wouldn't be like the same for George and you, you know?"

(For all I like Rose, her and Bobby are going to get in serious trouble someday with the things that they say.)

"No, yeah that's true." Bertha was unsure how to respond. "Because I don't flirt, because I don't find the need to."

The comment went completely over her head. "Oh my God and it's so cute he keeps talking about the engagement ring, and even though I don't like his parents I think I could live in Connecticut."

"Uh huh." Bertha nodded, having heard the same story with the last three boyfriends.

It had always been that way. In college, she and Bobby acted like some authority couple on everything, as if Bertha hadn't been dating the same person for three years.

(I wonder if she knows that she's naïve, or if she's playing pretend. Not that I can fault her for it. People do it all the time. Most people know more than they care to admit.)

(And after three years, all I know is that I'm still naïve about this. I'm only smart enough to know that I know nothing.)

They continued to talk about so and so and who and what with Arrested Development on in the background, but Rose didn't stay long because she had to go to someone's birthday.

It was then that Emily found herself texting George.

Or who she thought was George...

Unfortunately she hadn't put his number under a name yet, and after updating her phone some of the old contacts on her phone had reattached themselves.

She didn't get a very pleasant response.

Bertha??? Do you know who you're texting??

Who do you think this is?

_(_ It could be one of about twelve people, judging by the level of outrage.)

_George lol?_ She replied just to make sure.

Sorry wrong number.

(Shit, I have to keep track of my mortal enemies better.)

(Come to think of it, I should probably try not making mortal enemies.)

Sometimes it was an ex, sometimes a friend she had fallen out with, and sometimes the friend of a friend she had fallen out with or broken up with because that person was too terrified to face her on her own.

But the problem with Bertha's mortal enemies is that she had never meant to make them mortal enemies. They had all been in the way of her momentary spurts of anger, and she usually forgot about them afterwards, the way a tornado doesn't particularly remember where it touches down. Unfortunately this made matters more confusing if she got a dirty stare, because she couldn't remember what it was for or if it was justified.

(Sorry... I think?)

She didn't hate people, she just hated aspects of their behavior or speech, and that was what she would react to. Unfortunately, in states of anger, she usually wasn't able to articulate this properly.

(....an angry roommate with dark eyes angrily and proverbially announcing "it's what you leave behind that makes you who you are.")

(But it's really the opposite, what you leave behind is the exact definition of what you are not anymore.)

After thinking about George's funeral comment, she pictured her own funeral. There would be the well-wishers, hopefully. And then in the backdrop there would be a group sitting there laughing and perhaps striking up a chorus of "Ding Dong the Witch is dead..."

But if it was one thing Bertha knew, it was that she would die with a smile on her face. She didn't believe she was going anywhere when she died, she believed death was a bit like a lovely endless sleep. For someone with a sleeping problem this was particularly appealing.

So what if you look a little crazy during your lifetime by telling the truth? At least you have the decency not to pick a fight with something that can't fight back, and the courage to stick up for yourself.

The thought of several people beating up her corpse just made her laugh, especially because her face would be chemically frozen with a look of happiness and serenity.

The people who never get their minds out are always the ones who drown in the end.

"Bitch stop smiling, I'm kicking you!" she imagined one trying to pick a fight with her corpse.

She wondered who would defend her corpse, and who would be kicking it.

(Eh, you never know: death mixes everything up.)

Chapter 2

Despite enjoying relatively secularized burials, Bertha's consolation tied to anything spiritual ended at the doors of a church. Nothing makes you feel more alienated than being guilt-led into participating in something you don't believe in. But Bertha went anyway for her family, and because she liked observing the way people act in church.

Bright and early, that annoying family swoops in to get the front row seats as if it were a competition. They nod emphatically with the sermons and send up one of their seven children up to mumble out the readings. Then you have the snoopy people looking around at everyone else's families, and then after mass even her own family would pull out their mental rolodex "Yeah I saw so and so and the so and sos and then the mother but not the father... and she looks too skinny." Of course, most of the mass would be old people and families, but everyone in a while you'd see an odd duckling young person going to mass. Unlike the rest of them, old people and singles actually seemed genuine. And then of course there are the people forced to go like myself. You can usually pick us out.

Bertha remembered when she turned 15 and turned from being religious to an atheist. It just made more sense to her, and she thought her family would understand.

"Why would you want to be an atheist? It's just because you're too lazy to go to church."

(Well no, it's because I don't believe in any of this. Sorry it's just not my thing, why can't you respect that? I don't care that you believe in something, why should you care if I don't? Don't you respect my opinion as a human being?)

There had been talks, oh there had been many, many talks "it's just a phase talk" and

"Augustine's argument" to which she'd reply "well I believe in a combination of Voltaire's stopwatch God theory and Spinoza's concepts of pan-theism". And then there had been the desperate plea "well don't you want to believe in something!" and "don't you want an afterlife? ("I'm already living out this life as much as I can, what in the world would I need a second one for?" "I hate following rules, and I'm already paranoid enough without the idea of some omnipotent figure watching me all the time." So really, her answer to that was "no".)

There was also the issue of "everything happens for a reason."

Everything happens because of a cause.

There wasn't any reason in it until people showed up.

Bertha realized though, that she would be just as preachy if she tried to explain it sounding like a broken-record, so she usually kept it to her writing, angry scribbled pages about how she found herself when she was lost, and now can see.

"You're lazy and selfish!"

"Ok, sure, whatever you say."

Sometimes it was just easier that way.

It's like that one psychological test...

"After you die you're in a room with no windows and no doors. How do you feel?"

Naturally, Bertha said, "Well I'd feel trapped of course, and try to make a way out."

But her friend had responded "I'd feel safe. Nothing can get in."

Bertha was so lost in thought that when her phone buzzed she felt her heart crescendo. Cautiously, she dragged it towards her as if it may bite, fearful that she may perhaps find out the secret identity of the person she had accidently texted.

Hey it's George. I was wondering if you wanted to get dinner some time.

(Omg omg omg yay!!! Eeeeee! My heart is on fire and I want to start dancing!)

Yeah, sure.

For a moment she regretted sending the last text. Not because she didn't like him, but she was afraid. The last time she had revealed her undying sympathies for someone it hadn't gone down too well. She had tried the whole Jane Eyre bit before. Even took to listening to the breeze for her name in highly wooded areas, which turned out to be a bad idea because she nearly got shot during hunting season.

Besides, she simply wasn't the type of girl that men fell in love with. Men had called her hot, sexy, cute, and occasionally "el cuerpo" which caused confusion at first because she thought it meant corpse instead of body. If she were in a romantic comedy, she'd be the sexy, intelligent, successful, bitch who gets envied by some annoying-ass girl with low self-esteem who believes in true love and butterfly fairytales and does something like saving babies and puppies by hand-feeding them sugar cookies. (Good grief I hate chick flicks). But of course, in the movies, if a woman is hot and intelligent she must have one flaw, and that flaw of course must be her lack of sanity.

Ok great, are you free Friday night?

Yeah

She peered warily at her phone.

(I did mention my craziness to him, didn't I?)

A few men in her life had made that mistake. She supposed it wasn't their fault: she acted normally enough in class, sort of kept to herself...

Some of them had even liked it, but as a sort of novelty.

Great! Is it cool if I pick you up at 8?

Sure! I'm so excited I can't wait to see you again.

She needed someone who was crazy enough to have something in common with her, but sane enough to anchor her crazy.

(Oh and no one normal. Normal people are like turtlenecks.)

Me too! Any food in particular you like.

Hmmm I like Italian.

There was the other catch. Despite being a size zero, Bertha had the eating capacity of a full grown wildebeest. It was not terribly attractive. She ate more food than almost every other guy she had ever dated. A few of them had even become envious of her metabolism especially the ones who had to watch their weight.

The rest of the week dragged like a foot that had fallen asleep. Bertha felt guilty defining her life by some man she had just met. After all, there had been periods where she hadn't been dating and she had still been alive and doing things. Besides, it was definitely something you weren't supposed to do.

But what better way to define yourself at one point in time than by the person you're in love with? Or, you could define yourself in turn, at the point at which you fall out of love.

Bertha found herself in a constant cycle between the two. People used to make fun of her for having the habit of falling passionately in love with people.

The points at which you fall out of love turn out to be, quite frankly, usually hilarious at how pathetic they are. She could pinpoint every single one of them; they're those awkward moments when you're dating someone and suddenly realize "yeah this isn't going to work." The first one became evident when her very pierced loved interest attempt to seduce her by swinging one of his swords around her head. The second had occurred when she popped into her boyfriend's car for a date and he took her hand, romantically stared into her eyes and eerily said: "I have a very important question to ask you. Have you been saved by our lord Jesus Christ?" Another one had insistently told her that he thought of himself as a young Kurt Cobain who was yet to be discovered. Yet another one had asked if she had mis-dialed his number, because his other friends had put their phones in their shirts and their boobs had dialed him, as if it would impress me that he was friends with people who had multi-tasking breasts. Finally one had given her and another girl a flower that he stole from a bouquet of flowers in a supermarket at the same time, while pointing out the song "Kiss Me" droning overhead.

It was an extended Goldilocks situation and incredibly frustrating. But George was different...for now. He seemed genuine.

One day at lunch Bertha started to reveal her situation to her friend from accounting, when Katie cut her off and asked "Have you, by any chance, started dating anyone?"

Bertha looked back at her quizzically. "Yes, actually I am. Why do you ask?"

She shook her head, and plunged a fork into a salad. "I can't believe that. I just had the strangest dream that someone declared his love for you in an arena."

"That is weird. Are your dreams always that accurate?"

Katie moved some of the croutons with her fork. "They have been." Her brown eyes looked slightly frightened. "I had a dream that a man got hit by a bus one time. The next day, when I was riding the bus we hit a guy."

"Wow that is weird." Bertha would normally be skeptical, but Katie was the sort of person who read math textbooks for fun and built computers.

"But anyway. In the dream you also got married. For some reason you also participated a rodeo..." her brow furrowed. "I can't quite explain that part."

"Oh." Bertha blushed. "That would be nice. The wedding I mean."

Katie looked at her as though she had grown a second head. "What are you and what have you done with Bertha?"

It was true. Bertha feared this man was making her of all things –gasp- sentimental. It was horrible.

"It's so strange." Bertha sipped more diet coke, having finished her burger and fries in an embarrassingly short amount of time. "I might... actually... want to cuddle? And hug him. I mean what the hell is this; you know how much I hate hugging. But with him I don't care. I'd be a hugger for him. I'd be anything for him."

"Are you on drugs?"

"Not unless you count diet coke."

"Actually I do count it. You drink so much."

Generations in Bertha's family had predisposed her to the culture of Diet Coke. It was to the point where if she noticed a teacher drinking Diet Coke, she instantly respected him or her more. And, perhaps coincidentally, the teachers who drank Diet Coke also happened to be some of the best teachers she had ever had.

But of course, the same didn't apply to other diet colas. She hated when people made the gesture of buying Diet Cola but didn't get Diet Coke. Then you're stuck in the awkward position of being appreciative of a soda you do not like.

Commercialism had combed her brain with a fine toothed comb, just in the way that television had brainwashed her into thinking that she was destined to be a writer.

But Bertha in fact, was not destined to be a writer. When she was little, she had watched a show called "Harriet the Spy" and had simply been imitating her ever since. There was nothing particularly awe-inspiring in that, except perhaps that it stuck. But writing always appeals to the weird quiet ones anyway, the way harmonicas and guitars magnetically attach themselves to brooding men.

Sitting at her desk during the last five minutes of work, she became envious of the parade passing by outside. (Of course, when you're working you always imagine there's some sort of epic fiesta going on that dissolves itself into the everyday world when you sign out for the day). Her mind drifted to experiences writing in her elementary school cafeteria when she didn't feel like talking to everyone else. When she was finally safe from interaction, the shadow of a teacher approached, and she nearly screamed as someone rested their hand on her shoulder horror-movie style.

"You write so small." Her school principle rasped into her ear. She smelled like cigarettes.

That was always the worst.

(I'm writing because I don't feel like talking to you. I'm not writing so that you can comment about the fact that I'm writing.)

(No, you can't read it yet.)

Her dad had occasionally crept over to her laptop or notebook and started to read it out loud, nodding his head until Bertha promptly shut one and gave him the evil eye.

"Yes, yes I'll save all of those stories."

(Much good it's doing me.)

Over the years she had known other authors, and listened to their stories and ideas and helped out. But she could never bear to part with all of her ideas or her work.

(Someone is going to miss something significant, or they're going to make something symbolic when it's really just random.)

Being a former English major, Bertha felt incredibly aware of the unfortunate symptoms of English majors: The way books are sliced and diced, and their meanings act like a Rorschach test. Nasty things had come out of overanalyzing books, especially books that weren't meant to be over-analyzed. Everything was edenic or philosophic or drawing on this or that. Bertha's only hope was that if she made references, they would be evident enough that someone wouldn't be able to pull an interpretation out of their ass.

(And then of course everything is Shakespearean or unoriginal somehow even if you weren't thinking of that at the time. Everything is Hamlet/ Hieronimo and Marxism whether you like it or not.)

Suddenly she recalled other college experiences.

(On Dasher- men who had run away from her and Emily Dickinson with her dashes, On Dancer- the awkward parties with women in vag dresses grinding up against someone new, On Prancer- the heels, On Vixen-because you are necessarily a vixen if you have an ass, On Comet-but with New York's air pollution we can't see the stars, On Cupid- unsuccessfully setting up her friend with a kid named Anthony, On Donner- the annoying girl pulling out a pair of Prada shoes at the school cafeteria, and On Blitzen-again are you?)

Do you ever notice how over time, the things you hate the most seem to lump together into one amorphous blob? Christmas, icky times in college, and high school, and elementary school sort of blended together into one horrific mosaic.

(And, anticipating the shock from a people so grown expectant to liking Christmas and thinking youth is merely full of happiness, I do apologize.)

On the subway ride home something suddenly and abruptly smashed her foot.

"Agh." She shouted out stunned, but felt badly immediately afterwards seeing that it had been a blind man with his cane who had punctured her foot.

Wincing quietly, she moved it over.

Unfortunately the cane also moved over, and whacked her in the ankle this time.

"Jesus." She winced quietly.

A small girl looked at her disapprovingly.

"Is my hero." She added on, rubbing her foot.

Thankfully the blind man soon settled on the other side of the train.

Oh subway rides.

Bertha remembered taking the D train back to campus and getting the strangest looks.

Perhaps the most awkward experience had been when a man got up started an intense, passionately filled poem, about white people as the oppressor. And unfortunately, Bertha was the only white person on the train. She hoped he wouldn't see her, so she sort of leaned back, but he eventually made his way around and began to shout at full volume, rudely to her face about slavery. That was the last time she rode the D train. It was, quite frankly, terrifying.

And afterwards of course, he held out his hand to ask her for money.

She appreciated the fact that most of the other train goers looked at him disapprovingly, or didn't give him money as well.

But it hadn't been her craziest experience, not by a long shot.

A religious man in a robe used to frequent the D train.

He had a long, grizzled white beard, ingrown wrinkles, and smelled horrible.

She and her friend were on their way to the city on a Friday night to see a movie.

They heard him before they saw him, an echoing, shouting, "...change your ways..." moved with the train passing in the opposite direction.

Unfortunately, he spotted Bertha and Rose, who were standing as close to the track as they could without it being dangerous.

Bertha caught his dilapidated shoes creeping up to the yellow line.

It started as a mumble, much like the poem, and then it began to erupt into an explosion of admonishments.

"Our young people, they are so sinful! They get tattoos, and they pierce their bodies. Do you want a needle in your penis?"

They didn't respond, as it seemed redundant to explain that as women, they did not have penises.

Rose gave her a look, and they both nearly broke into laughter, but thankfully the train whooshed over just in time.

But she felt bad for him as she sank onto the seat of questionable cleanliness.

How would you feel if no one believed anything you said?

Bertha, at times, had nearly reached that incoherency herself. When a loved one had stopped listening she just lost it. Because when you lose someone's attention, it's the beginning of the end. It's the most horrible thing in the world to know that a person actively invalidates your opinion, and you feel as though you haven't even been given a chance in the first place. Whether that's true or not doesn't seem to have much of an effect on your mental state.

A sudden gripping, paralyzing fear struck her.

If George stopped listening to her she feared she may lose it.

It had happened with men, but most of the time she had seen it coming because of their personalities.

But George, with his goofy smile and blue eyes, George was a terrifying concept.

( _I refuse to believe in fate.)_

It was absolutely terrifying how much she had fallen for George, even though she barely knew him.

(What the hell is wrong with me?)

This was not her. This was some strange Anti-Bertha. It was like a reverse Jekyll and Hyde. She had turned her from some inhuman thing that could taunt and tease any man she liked and have absolutely no feelings into something that needed things.

It was honestly horrible. She wished George would go away. But at the same time, she was too far gone for that.

By the time she got home she had very little time to get ready, and to make matters worse, she could hear phantom echoes of conversations from across the street.

The phantom echoes followed her everywhere. In the different booths at restaurants, from the vents in the wall which connected to other rooms in the building, and from behind closed doors tendrils from other people's conversations would hook and latch into her brain. As much as she didn't want to hear other people's conversations, she almost had to if they insisted on talking so loudly.

It had gotten to the point where she often picked places she wanted to go based on the conversations she couldn't help but hearing. If, for instance, she felt the need to be inebriated with interpretation she would go to a modern art museum and listen to people's comments to help her understand what they were looking at. If she wanted to make fun of hipsters and find out about 500 new bands she would go to Starbucks, and listen to the daily lives of the cosmopolitans.

On the other hand, she'd go to pseudo dumpy diners or fast food restaurants or listen in airports for different demographics. Or, the best of all was different bars, but never clubs. In clubs people expect you to dance. Conversations are also limited by thumping, ear butchering techno that makes you want to listen to any other type of music.

Moving from place to place felt like switching television channels.

It had only shut itself down once on the top of a mountain in Yosemite.

As she rested near an old, crumbling rock shelter, she heard nothing for the first time.

No people talking about this or that, or dogs barking, or computers whinnying. Just nothing.

Her eyes began to water.

( _What is wrong with me?)_

She couldn't fully explain the disconnection. It was as if someone else was using her eyes as peepholes, though who that was, she couldn't entirely pinpoint.

During her freshman year of college, her life had become so strange and drastic, she found herself eating a lot of popcorn. Her own life had become a movie, or so she had hoped. When her life seemed pathetic and miserly, she'd step out of herself and eat popcorn and observe and critique.

(Well, yes that is all well but this is the part where you're supposed to have an epiphany.)

She'd pace a bit up the halls like some sort of ghost, expecting to find some sort of omen. (I never knew my next door neighbor's name was Lou.)

(Like Courtney-Lou backwards...)

(Do you ever get the sense that if there is a God that he is a bit like James Joyce?)

But of course the unfortunate thing about movies and books is that they give people the delusion that things actually start and end in one moment, instead of accumulating weight like a water droplet falling down the side of a car window and picking up the smaller droplets in the endless ripping wind.

Though they may try, books and movies rarely capture the time you saw someone before you loved them and connect the dots to when you did. They can't capture all the gazes, all the grasps and kisses. They can't capture the science of why one person is drawn to blue eyes and the other brown or green. They can't capture why.

If you slowed the moving world down to milliseconds, nothing would be truly spontaneous. Or perhaps other people did fall in love instantly. The whole falling "in love at first sight" had never happened to Bertha. Every person she had ever fallen in love with had been after talking to them.

Romantic movies are so stupid.

They think that love has to be in grand gestures. You have to repair a dilapidated house you had sex in. Or drive across the country for someone you've heard on a radio. Or you have to die dramatically or stop a wedding and take a bus somewhere.

But either way, fiction seems to illustrate that the best kind of love was the love that you saw coming. The first time you saw so and so by the sea shore like Thomas Hardy's Emma all rimmed in the red of the sunlight.

But I think that the best kind of love is the love you didn't see coming.

Maybe it's the person you'd never, quite frankly, noticed before.

In the deepest form of love, or excused insanity, every tiny thing counts. Every time you see them means something.

And but of course, we're all so oblivious to these tiny little changes, that everyone thinks that romantic encounters are dramatic, planned, spontaneous, and destined. But really attraction is this breathing, pulsing thing that exists before either of the people notice it.

With that in mind, the author finds it important to add that Bertha and George's relationship had been in no way different.

George had in fact seen Bertha at more than one funeral, with his apartment in very close range; the cemetery was a part of his weekend jogging path.

For a while he was almost frightened that she had known all of the deceased, but after a while he began to catch on that she was not related to anyone.

His first instinctive thought was that she was insane.

In fact, when she approached him, it had been because he thought that she should seek help.

He was absolutely not attracted to her... until she started speaking.

Then suddenly the words became her, and made everything make more sense.

Up close, he realized how beautiful she was, even when distressed. It only made her eyes all the bluer. The crazy lady in the background had turned lovely, and intriguing, and before he knew it, he was in love with the cemetery woman. He was also one of the unfortunate people who had a need to find people who looked wounded.

So this is for all of the annoying books where someone sees so and so from a distance and they fall in love with each other before speaking. That isn't love. That's "Wow that person is kind of hot." It's impossible to separate the thought process out of love.

Love is when two people only make sense when they're together.

And suddenly he was there.

"Hi." Her face blossomed. "How have you been?"

"Pretty good." He replied shortly.

"Oh that's great!" Bertha was oblivious to his distance. "I'm so happy for you! I've been looking forward to this all week."

"Excellent, yes." They stood in silence for a while as the elevator descended. "I'm sorry did you say something?" He asked absently.

"Oh... I said I was looking forward to seeing you." Bertha said, deflated.

"About that..." As they stepped out of the elevator and off to the side, he grabbed her hand and began to massage it, but it seemed to be more for his sake of having something to fiddle with, "I have something to tell you."

"Yeah." Bertha felt the sensation of plummeting.

"Well I didn't want to mention it before, but I'm moving in about half a year. Someone offered to buy the restaurant for a decent amount of money."

"Oh." She looked around at the lobby uncertain of how to respond to that.

( _Why are you telling me this now?)_

"I'm sorry I didn't mean to put a damper on this whole thing."

"No, it's alright."

( _Figures.)_

"Do you um... not want us to date then?" Bertha looked up, confused as to why he would bother to come over in the first place.

"Oh no I want to date. I just don't want anything too serious. I don't see why we can't have fun for two weeks though, right?"

"Yeah." She was hesitant at first. Bertha looked through her reflection as they walked in the rain to the taxi waiting outside, and then at her reflection in the window. And then back at him again.

( _Well I thought we matched but I could be wrong.)_

"So do you like Carciollo's?" He asked, as they eased back into traffic.

"Yeah, I do..."

She considered her odds.

Two weeks to make a man fall in love with her.

That wouldn't be enough time.

It wasn't fair. Over the course of the night she found out that he would be about four hours away. Restless from a horrid dream involving getting a 79 on a test, Bertha found herself waking up beside him again.

She had tried to cuddle with him at night but halfway through he had pushed her off and turned his back, and rolled to the opposite side of the bed.

So she lay on her back, and looked up at the ceiling.

Without warning a tidal sob came over her, but she bit her hand, just in time. She had become adept at crying silently, because she didn't like the attention that her bewildering mood swings gave her. They can't be laughing with you if you're crying.

(Oh, it's all just for attention.)

She didn't want to be noticed, or particularly different from anyone else, but sometimes these things just happen.

It was a tricky, fidgety slush dilemma.

"Hey." A gentle voice came from the other side of the bed. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

(Why bother?)

"Oh goodness." He sighed. "What did I get myself into?"

That provoked a louder sob croak.

"Hey no no no!" He turned her over, and held her. "No cries. Why are you sad?"

"Because..." She sniffled. "Because I like you but but but you're going away now."

"Awww."

She cringed, waiting for an awkward pat, and a look of poorly masked face of sheer terror.

But instead he began to smile and hug her closer. "You're a giant baby."

"Am not." She sobbed back, stubborn.

"You are too." His lips pressed her eyelids like petals on water. "Nope see you can't cry now."

"Well..." Actually she couldn't because it tickled her face. "Maybe but...hey stop it."

His hands scrambled up her belly and near her butt. "Aww are you ticklish?"

"Maybe." She couldn't stop giggling. "But you're ruining my bad mood." She tried to frown but it didn't work.

"Goodness woman." He laughed back. "You just have so many emotions, don't you...She doesn't even go here."

"You like Mean Girls?" Bertha settled her head on his chest, and then decided to kiss him again.

"That's kind of awesome."

"Oh sure. I have a sister and my mom is ridiculous. I've seen all the romances and chick flicks. Sleepless in Seattle, It's a Wonderful Life..."

"So do I, and haven't seen either of those."

"Really?" He gave her a look. "What kind of strange thing are you?" He laughed. "Oh." He brushed a piece of her hair back and began to play with it. "I know what you are. Strange girl, I think you secretly enjoy some romantic things. You're trying to act all tough."

"Me tough?" She brushed back a stray tear. "How am I tough?"

"I know you don't believe me, but you are incredibly intimidating to approach. You seem very... Oh I don't know... independent-minded. Just very studious, definitely a nerd..."

"I'm not a nerd!" She objected.

"Yes you are. It's ok though, you're my nerd. And you can try and look all tough and whatever, Ms. Don't be all cheesy in public, but I know you better. I know you have a soul, as much as you hate the idea of that."

"But no one knows I'm like this. They don't know I like... some things... that are cute." The word felt like ashes and death in her mouth.

"You're cute!" he pulled her back into a hug, and their mouths attacked each other fondly.

"Mmm..." he paused for a second. "I think I shall make you my muse."

"Oh no." She shook her head fervently. "I object wholeheartedly to that."

"Why?" He stared straight into her eyes. "I don't see what the problem with that is."

"Well relationships between the muse and the person who gave her that title usually imply a tragic, stunted, and or nonexistent relationship. At least in the classical sense of the word... "

"I haven't decided how to make you my muse yet." He began to form imaginary boxes around her face. "Well I'm not very good at writing poetry or anything silly like that... this does pose a problem... I suppose I could write books like you..."

"No, that's my thing you can't take it." Bertha pouted. "Besides I didn't think you liked writing."

"As a matter of fact I don't." He began to get up and pace. "What to do what to do?" His hands fumbled with a stick of unlit incense.

"Well at least you can be my muse." Bertha decided promptly. "I'm in very much need of a muse right now."

"Can men be muses?" His curly hair danced around his face in the moonlight.

"I don't see why not." She stretched, and huddled next to him and he got into bed eagerly, like a happy dog. "You're very handsome."

He began to shake with laughter. "Whatever you say..."

After following the rippled tail of murky marbled half thoughts, she found herself in a supermarket with her sister.

There was a solid tape line between the two of them.

The side of the store on her side was still well lit, but on Bertha's side, the lights began to buzz, and dim, and shut off.

It started off slowly.

No one else was on Bertha's side of the line.

"What do you mean you're not a summer girl?" Her sister asked her, looking spooked. A group of bystanders watched on.

The lights flickered back on.

No one else was on Bertha's side.

Squeaking wheels caught her ear, and she turned around to see a cart moving of its own accord.

"They told me I was winter." Bertha replied.

Then the lights began to flicker more rapidly as if a mischievous child were having a field day with the light switch.

The other side of the tape stayed light, but as many times as she tried, Bertha could not cross the line. Something kept pushing her back, leaving deep red handprints on her arms and legs.

"Well what's going to happen to me here?"

The others began to shrug, and Bertha realized with horror that the other shoppers were also the mourners at Cyril's funeral.

The only noise was bluegrass sounding grainy over the supermarket speakers.

Black out.
Chapter 3

"Oh Shit!" Someone on the lit side screamed, seeing something in the darkness that Bertha could not. Slowly at first, and then more frantically they all began to run out like nervous birds on the shore approached by people.

The sound of a chair scarping the floor woke her out of her stupor. George looked up, slightly amused, and continued to dust.

The world outside was very, very blue. The snow on top was so white and pure it became bluish in contrast to the normal, gross city slush snow. Movies make snow in New York some sort of glamorous affair in the winter, but really, it usually ends up pretty disgusting and not terribly fun to walk through.

Plows spastically reared up and down the streets, making it difficult to concentrate on a mindless piece about saving money that was easy enough for a fourth grader to understand.

It had been difficult making the transition from college to the real world.

She had wanted to write about serious things; about the intricacies of human nature and the way different aspects of your background, such as your beliefs, affected your internal disposition and the way you interacted with society. The less religious she became, the more fascinated she became about the effect religion had on other people.

Unfortunately, there weren't many places to do that, so she was stuck reverting the language she had learned in college into the way "real people talked."

It had been a problem she had experienced ever since high school, with comments like "Put it in your own words" which really means "Put it in what I think should be your own words."

In college, people finally gave you some degree of respect, and it felt demeaning to end up with a job that, quite frankly, she could give to her nine year old niece who spoke as if she were texting.

(Did I really need to pay some 40,000 $ a year to be qualified for this. Really?)

(But a job is a job is a job)

In the meantime, she could still potentially write a book under a pen name, and no one would have to know about her involvement with a tweeny magazine, and compare the pieces.

One time her friend confronted her about the issue.

"Why would you want to publish anonymously?" She clacked her gum. "What's the point of that?"

Bertha was terrified that her identity would take away from her writing.

First of all, she was young. There was still a group out there in the literary world that would either dismiss her for being young, or would praise her for it.

Both of them were wrong.

Second of all, she was white, middle upper class, and lived a pretty easy life.

It wasn't as if she could write about a cultural identity either; she was a mosh-pit of European countries and none of them particularly resonated with her.

She wasn't particularly one political party or the other but came closest to libertarian, which would be a problem because there's an ignorant part of the country that seems to be under the impression that all young people are liberal.

She could write about being crazy, of course, but that was walking a fine line between credibility and genius. To make matters even more difficult she wasn't quite sure how to define her insanity.

Basically she had "White girl problems."

This would definitely reduce her literary credibility.

But she didn't want to write as a white person.

Or as someone from the upper class.

Or as a particularly feminine or masculine woman.

Or as a Libertarian.

But most of all she didn't want to write as a relatively attractive person.

In high school her kind, elderly Spanish teacher told her class a pretty applicable mantra.

"Pretty girls say pretty things."

Unfortunately Bertha didn't catch on to that lesson right away, and soon found out that if you were a pretty girl who said something mean or even worse, honest, you were automatically a "bitch". As if a pretty girl cannot, by law, ever be well intentioned with cynicism.

But after a time she began to learn and catch on. She kept her mouth shut more often, and let steam off writing.

(Pretty girls say pretty things but they can write whatever they want.)

She felt mad with power, letting the vanity pulse through her veins and consumer her, baptized by fire.

(Mwahahaha I can pretend I'm a forty year old British scholar who people take seriously. Come here Kitty, so I can pet you conspicuously like a villain.)

Her writing could be a scream, a sob, an ache, and an unabashed study of narcissism, but it would not be of outward petty narcissisms, it would be those nasty bulbous narcissisms that anyone is capable of.

Thunder and pounding rain synchronized to the Finale of Vivaldi's Four Seasons.

Her fingers flew faster and faster and faster and faster and...

Ten pages finished.

(When you're a little kid, you "play" without regards to any rules.)

(But what happens if you never stop playing?)

The progress made her grin like Jack Nicholson in "the Shining."

Alas! She had been cured!

The door swung open, and a scream nearly knocked her out of her seat.

Her brother leaned against the doorframe, catching his breath.

"Geez, you scared me." He gave her a strange look. "Do you always do this?"

"Only during thunderstorms, the lighting is better. Where are..."

"Hey Berts!" Her dad and mom came in, carrying three or four different plates. "What'cha up to."

"Oh just writing." She hit save quickly and shut the computer.

"For work?"

"Yeah." She lied. "How was the drive up?"

"Good." Her mom yawned. "Except your dorky dad almost got us in an accident."

"Oh.... Here I can put your coats in the closet."

They all looked respectably tired.

Her dad turned on the game and lay on the couch, while her mom began to heat up some of the dishes they had brought from her grandmother. As usual, there was enough food to cater a party. Aromas of pasta fajoli, and homemade raviolis permeated the living room, making Bertha so hungry she almost felt sick.

They all sat down with the usual "blessusolordforthesethygifts.....ChristOurLordAmen."

It was always awkward because at other people's houses when they were the holding hands sort, instead of the speed worshippers. Of course her grandparents would also say it more slowly and deliberately too, and look smiting-ly at whoever decided to race through it.

But at a table where only one out of four people, at most, actually believed in prayer, it felt more like a declaration of being from religious families more than anything else.

Despite being away from having a family meal for a few months, everyone sat in the same seat as they had normally at home. Bertha's dad sat at the head of the table with Bertha to his left, and his mother next to her, and his brother on the right, and an empty place where their sister would be sitting.

One time her dad decided to mix things up and switch seats, but everyone made him move back.

By the end of dinner they had barely made a dent in all of the leftover pasta.

Rain continued to slap the windowpanes.

Bertha's brother looked particularly morose today. Purple bags underlined his eyes, and his face was looking a bit gaunter than normal.

It was only in dropping a glass bowl that Bertha realized her hands had been shaking.

A deep, inset terror clutched at the reaches of her nervous system.

(No... no.. .nono)

"I'm just going to sit down for a moment." Bertha excused herself, and collapsed into the leather chair. Her father's eyes didn't move from the unusual sports channel, which was featuring curling at the moment.

A few things had killed Bertha's faith, but she had still remained agnostic from time to time.

But now it was gone.

She had a running bargain with herself.

Her own depression didn't necessarily mean there was a god one way or the other.

But her brother's depression did.

It wasn't fair. The universe may have had a reason to pick on her, but it certainly had no reason to pick on him. He was one of the good ones.

Despite seriously doubting the effectiveness of prayer, one of her main plea had been that she alone would take any strain of the misery.

So every night, in spite of not believing in it terribly much, she prayed that no one else in her living family would ever cry themselves to sleep.

Her parents were both in denial about the thing. There was no going to counselors or taking medication if that could be helped.

( _There's nothing wrong with you. Just get a grip_.)

Her mother was perhaps the most vehement.

She had told her frequently how there was nothing wrong with her and not to "Use it as a crutch."

As if whatever she had was a crutch... it was more like deadweight than anything else, and not to mention as a repulsive to people as if she were eating a container of questionable looking cold mixed super ethnic food and asking for a kiss afterwards.

(There is no god. There can't be.)

(If we are made in his image, then god cannot be such a lovely thing-god would throw temper tantrums and cry, and fall in love and do all of the silly things that humans do. Then he would not be god.)

A loud commercial interrupted one of her frequent spirals of existential funk.

"Are you tired of cooking seafood, and being left with the lingering smell of a dead fish?"

A woman in 90's looking clothing emphatically plugged her nose.

"Now there's air neutralizer from Captain Freeman'. For the people who love fish, but don't like the lingering smell!"

An Asian man in a white lab-coat appeared on screen. "Our exclusive formula is..."

The brief silence between switching channels.

"I am the great and powerful..."

A velvet green curtain opened, revealing a man speaking into a microphone of some sort.

"Wizard of Oz."

Silence again.

The man behind the curtain had the appearance of a fish as well.

Back to a game.

"First down Packers!"

Bertha got up to put away the remaining dishes.

"How was Ellen?"

"Good, good." Her mother talked loudly over the clatter of plates. Whenever she couldn't hear very well, she spoke more loudly. "She and Tom were just lounging around when we got there, I swear those two are two of a kind. How have you been?"

(Crazy.)

"I've been good. There's this new promotion up at work because Betsy quit."

"Oh that's great. You should try and go out for it."

"Yeah."

(Also I hate my job, am horrifically enough in love, and have taken to attending strangers' funerals).

But she left the rest of that unsaid because it would provoke a comment about her eyebrows or teeth whitener, or something of that sort. And she wasn't sure how she would respond to the latter comment.

Eventually the others settled into her room and the spare, leaving her with the couch.

Every nothing was on TV, so she found herself flipping through pages of hasty notes.

Her arms almost seem to act of their own accord, like Bruce Wayne's hand.

But instead of typing anything coherent, she stared at a spare notebook for fifteen minutes, thought of Eliot, and promptly wrote three very significant words.

The floorboards creaked overhead.

Someone else was awake, probably her brother, or her father. Her father had this gait about him that reminded her of someone who had just gotten off of a horse. He said "howdy" too. He seemed to be a bit of an inherent cowboy.

(There were a lot of cowboy men out there.)

(During one of their first encounters a blue eyed was tending to a stray cat. He very, very much wanted to be Clint Eastwood from "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" but picking up cats didn't make him Clint Eastwood, especially because he was more of a Paul Varjack from "Breakfast at Tiffany's who also interacted with cats.)

(Hollywood, as you can see, has brainwashed me into thinking that cats are particularly significant. All of my subsequent encounters with cats have been extremely anti-climactic.)

(Well if finding cats without names isn't going to do me any good, I may as well hang out in the mountains, and maybe I'll hear the voice of my secret admirer carried on the breeze.)

("Oh Jane! Jane Eyre... wait) Mr. Rochester is very confused at my presence "You aren't Jane Eyre. What the hell are you doing here?)

The next day everyone was up early.

In a zombielike state she managed to drag her feet to the coffee maker, and pour herself a cup. "So Berts" Her father had already been awake for four hours. "What do you think about taking a vacation to the Margins?"

The Margins, as their title implies, were particularly out of the way.

They were one of the only uncharted places left in a world increasingly over-mapped. Sure, they were labeled on a map, but no one had managed to thoroughly explore them.

The last few men who had tried had gone missing.

Campers usually stayed at the better visited outskirts of the margins. Very few bothered to penetrate its interior.

Originally the land had belonged to Native Americans (as most land mysterious land happens to). But unlike most of the rest of the country, the Native Americans who had lived there weren't driven out by settlers. Historians still don't fully understand the reason why the Native Americans had left that area. It was estimated to have an abundance of multiple resources, though no one had dared to collect them.

Early explorers found remnants of villages reminiscent of the eternally frozen scenes playing out in Pompeii. There was still half eaten food out, and other signs of recent activity. Later, all of the settlers went missing, except one, who was locked in an asylum. Oddly enough, these chilling historic accounts didn't seem to concern the parks department which created "the margins" camping ground shortly after.

In short, it seemed haunted and all in all a good time.

"Yeah I'd love to go."

"Good deal." He began to heat up his coffee in the microwave.

"Would everyone come?"

"Well it'd probably be some time in the summer when I can take off, so yeah, but I'll get back to you on the exact week; but probably sometime in August."

This was a valid concern.

Both of her siblings were likely to bring someone with them, in her sister's case her husband, and in her brother's some girlfriend.

Of course they would spend time with one another, but when night came around, everyone would retreat to their separate tents, and she would be alone with her thoughts, a lone sock.

It reminded her of being home in college over breaks. Her boyfriend had not been from the area, and no amount of skyping could ever fix that. Of course, to him a month hadn't seemed that long, so he hadn't bothered to visit. It resulted in several nights of listening to "Neutral Milk Hotel" at night, burning incense and over-thinking the future as if the future were truly something she could tangibly plan out.

But in some ways, it was a bit of a relief at least to have her own room and get away from her roommate every once in a while. Her roommate had a tendency to be very quiet, and then move suddenly, causing Bertha to have a near-heart attack and believe the room was haunted. This of course, added to the ghosts that were already there. The ghosts that had an infatuation with turning the sink on and off, was at first, relatively disturbing, but Bertha quickly got over that and merely got annoyed with it for being loud with the running sink and being unaware of the ecological effects of running the sink all the time.

If something was going to haunt her room, it would be very preferable if it would hover over her silently.

The more experience you have with ghosts, the more you get used to them.

When she was little she remembered waking up with an imprint of a second sleeping child next to her in bed.

It used to bother her, and she'd run to her parents' room, the house creaking with every step of her tiny, frozen feet poking out of the bottom of Aladdin pajama, pale as rabbits.

But as she got older, she found herself longing for the ghosts that used to lie so calmly and regularly by her side as a loyal lap dog. She figured that the ghosts were very cold, considering that they had lost their body heat.

They never seemed horribly malicious to her, they were just redundant cold memories that flocked towards the living and all things warm.

Back when she believed in superficiality demons seemed to pose the greatest threat. Damien and Emily Rose and all their demons. Not to mention "The Exorcist, which is terrifying even for a skeptic.

But over time, she became less concerned with demons, the devil, and hell, and became more concerned with the people who had created and believed in them.

(What malicious person had decided that certain people should eternally roast alive, hanging from various skewers and hooks? What type of person would create a being who gained off of other people's misery?)

(What sort of person would wish that upon even their worst enemy?)

Hell is just a form of passive aggression for the things and people that we don't understand and for the things we can't control, like the seven deadly sins...

The seven signs that you may in fact be human:

Lust- I want sexual intimacy

Gluttony- I want food

Greed- I want money

Anger- I get upset

Heresy- I question society

Violence- I fight back

Fraud- I play pretend

Treachery-I have hurt others

But I want. Gimme.

("Lament not Eve but patiently resign not on thou which thou hast justly lost" but by that on that which thou hast justly won in losing....)

"Bertha!" Her mom asked, more loudly.

The car was so close she could feel its hot exhaust beast breath.

She watched her un-affected expression pass by in the passenger's window.

Unfortunately they found it easier to pass through Times Square, weaving their way through tourists.

They seemed to be struck dumb on sight, like curious fish drawn towards a shiny lure, as Bertha had once been initially drawn to New York. Pretty pretty. Pretty empty.
Chapter 4

Bertha suddenly realized it was Valentine's Day.

She couldn't stop smiling, but not the fake smile you give for a picture, it was that goony smile that comes organically, like when you see a passing puppy or baby unless you're the sarcastic sort to pretend not to like these things.

(Babies are so last year...)

The alarm on her phone made her jump. She picked it up cautiously.

"Hell..."

"Bertha, oh thank goodness I got a hold of you, you won't believe what I did yesterday."

"What did you do?"

"Well yesterday Andy and I drank a few cranberry and vodkas, and I thought, wouldn't it be a great idea to buy some fun, you know some weird antique? So I went on ebay of course the whole time Andy was talking me into it... and this morning I woke up with an 18th century confessional on my porch."

Bertha was vaguely intrigued. "Can I have it?"

"What in the world, am I supposed to do with it, I can't return it, I was thinking... wait what would you do with a confessional?"

"I don't know actually, it just sounds like one of those things you want to have."

"Exactly my thinking...wait, you're supposed to be the cheap one?"

"Why don't you just put it in the coffee shop?" Bertha suggested, half shouting over the buzzing doorbell "Look I've got to go, but I'll talk to you later."

She tugged on one heel with the unfortunate task of finding the other, which was for some reason wedged behind the couch.

The knock at the door startled her too.

"Come in!" She moved the couch back just in time, and stood there, awkwardly standing next to it with her hand resting on the arm.

"Hey." He looked cute, in a pair of gray pants and a blue sweater that made his eyes pop. They were shy today.

"Hi." She tilted her head back and grabbed the sides of her skirt.

She felt unexposed and happy, as she had been kindergarten: feet shorter, paler, tiny, and wearing a jumper and half of my hair pulled up into a mini pony tail.

He seemed to transform as well, turning into a freckly little boy, who had reluctantly let his mother dress him up in khakis because she told him that girls like boys better when they dress up.

"You look pretty."

"Thank you!" She kissed him on the cheek, and blushed a bit trying to hide her goofy smile. "You look so handsome."

"Oh so I have so much to tell you..." He began to talk about his new job as they walked briskly down the red carpeted floor to the elevator.

As the elevator door closed, their hands collapsed together.

A passing old woman smiled through brief metal lined crack in the wall at the two ageless figures headed down together all in blue tones.

"So where exactly are you taking me?" Bertha asked over the whipping wind. It was a particularly cold night, which she began to calculate would later work to her advantage.

Right then and there she got the feeling that this would not be a half-love. This was not the sort of thing that would lose its potential. This was the sort of relationship that was like falling into an endless pit; soon it would get to the point where she could not remember any state other than falling and prefer it infinitely to the solid ground.

"It's a surprise..."

She was blindfolded so she couldn't tell where he was driving her, but when she opened her eyes her first concern was that they had gotten lost.

"Where are we?"

All she could see was a remote beach. The sand was cold under her feet.

"You'll see..."

Noticing her heels, he picked her up and carried her across the frozen sand.

A light temporarily blinded her.

As she recovered, she noticed the small house boat docked at a nearby pier. It was a bit shoddy looking, not terribly big, and looked like a rundown cabin that had been set on the sea.

"Is that our ride?" She smiled at him, nose growing numb in the cold.

"It was supposed to be surprise." He always wrinkled his nose like a squirrel when he was mock angry.

It looked bigger from the inside, and it was warm enough for her to take off her coat to reveal a low cut navy dress.

"Have a seat." He grinned at her. "I'll be right back."

A second person was definitely upstairs, which concerned Bertha a bit.

"Oh don't worry." George seemed to read her mind, bouncing back downstairs "He won't bother us."

"How did you get this?" She couldn't manage to keep her mouth shut, out of pure shock.

"Don't worry about it."

He remembered the look on his sister's face, when he had told her what she was going to do.

"You're doing what?" Her red hair began to quiver violently like perturbed snakes.

"You know what." He looked back at her fiercely. "I like her. Yeah, I know she's hurt me in the past and that you're just looking out for me, but I'm going to be ok. I really like her, so I think it's worth it."

The snake hair mane subsided, and now she just looked tired. "Well I'm sorry I just don't like her. She's so dramatic and emotional and crazy, you'd be better off..."

"Look." He took her by the shoulders. "I know we need to hang out more, but don't make this about Bertha. You would have been mad about any other girl I dated."

"But do you really like being trapped with a girl like that?"

He shook his head. "Neither of us is trapped. We're dating each other because we want to. I know, I've heard this before. A lot of people don't want us together, but I don't really care. Maybe they're right, but for the time being I don't think so."

"Wow." Bertha looked out at the view of the city, all lit up by the sunset, as beautiful and neat as layered pastel jello."It's..."

Suddenly nothing in his background mattered, being absorbed is a bit like wearing blinders; all the other suitors and worries get trampled underneath, left in a dusty wake watching the bouncing blackened heels of the runners.

They talked in breaths.

Afterward they lay, warm flesh mass, tired, sedated figures in the ocean.

But one you turn the key in the lock and throw it into the Seine, can you ever get it back?

I saw pale kings and princes too,

Pale warriors, death-pale were they all...

But for once she had become the pale captured warrior, obsessive as poor Porphyro hiding like a creeper in the closet with R. Kelly.

(This might not last...)

(Oh, pipe down sensibility. You can pick the meat off my bones like a raccoon at a later date. I'll pencil you in for Thursday, or whenever George comes to his senses.)

She wondered, lightly, if his father would give his blessing.

He probably would, but only in his typical sacrilegious blessing way, by quickly muttering "Homina homina homina Santa Spree Amen."

Yes yes. A blessing for his three children. The one like her father, occasionally riled up and smiteful but mostly friendly towards all. The son, being the one everyone wanted to be their son, good at setting trends too. And the holy-ghost locked in her room like some Emily Dickinson wannabe, burning enough incense to set the fire alarms off.

But don't you know that all good and bad things happen in threes?

The world was a largely picked over oyster for those three children.

If you start with everything what else are you supposed to want?

His eyes grew a bit more disquieted. They were so trusting, so unaware of the tangled enigma lying before him

"I'll figure you out." He said reassuringly. "I could write a book about you."

She gave him a strange look, as they stepped out of the boat onto the sand. Her feet were instantly frozen against the cold grain and stray rocks.

"That's sweet of you, but who would read it?"

"Your parents, and friends. They'd read it and say "ohh this finally makes sense..."

"I can't even understand me, good luck with that."

The wind whipped violently physically moving the car, and on the ride back it began to snow rapidly.

Scared of thinking about what would happen when he would leave in about a week, she escaped out of herself to another multiverse.

In that other-verse she could do these things, like falling in love and that sort naturally and they wouldn't drive her out of her mind.

But the probabilities had been unfairly distributed to this universe and left her with being only good at one thing.

(I can only be in rest when in motion.)

(Do this, do that, do this...nope you and your resume are still not good enough.)

She remained hyper-suspicious of...

"Holy shit!" the brakes screeched, the demon break lights of the cars ahead of them endless, and the sound of honking.

Overhead the sound of helicopters whacking the air began to grow louder like an emerging monster metronome.

He quickly switched the dial to traffic...

"... backed up all the way to the 90 east. It's seems a novelty double decker bus and ten ton truck simultaneously collided, and spun out, knocking out at least five cars."

Bertha shuddered, and wondered if she had brought this upon the world.

It became sort of a running joke, how "things fall apart" whenever she approached them.

(I go to London, they have riots.)

(I go to New York, they have a hurricane.)

(The Bills lost the game the moment I was born...)

Even the things she owned had a habit of falling apart or destroying itself.

Torn folders, notebooks that lose their cover, pens that explode...

Her phone interrupted her. "Hello Rose?"

"Hey I have to thank you for the coffee shop idea! It's gotten me a lot of business."

"Oh you mean the 18th century confessional?" George looked over at her, horribly confused. "Oh, you haven't even unpacked it... lawsuit... artist.... Existential existence... yeah they do sound like English majors, I've got to go..."

Traffic slowly began to shift over to the right lane.

"Who was that?"

"Oh that's my friend Rose. I'm surprised you haven't met her yet, she really wanted to meet you. Anyway, it's sort of a long story but she managed to... come about... an 18th century confessional, which she cannot return, so she put it in this coffee shop her boyfriend owns for the time being."

"Uh huh."

"However in a period of two hours the cardboard box containing the confessional attracted the attention of a number of hipsters, who thought that it was a new artistic installation, and spent the remaining afternoon contemplating the existentialism symbolized by the box, as well as its applications to Marxism. Unfortunately, word got around that someone had created this highly symbolic cardboard box positioned in a coffee house, which the new upcoming artist Putana claimed had infringed on her idea of putting a shorter cardboard box in a coffeehouse nearby thus simultaneously riling up local politicians because of the artist's politically focused..."

George remained silent, as traffic picked again in one lane. A number of evil glares followed them.

"You think I'm crazy don't you?"

"Well, naturally, but you're sort of crazy in a different way. But its ok I like you."

As they finally cut ahead of an angry suburban mother, he turned the dial up _..."_ She wondered if they really matched as a couple. It was always obvious when other people matched. Sometimes they looked alike, or wore the same color, or walked or talked the same way. Despite the concept of opposites attracting, even couples originally opposite seemed to indoctrinate the other person as part of themselves like some strange unconscious creed.

(But why can't I tell with us?)

"Hey I was thinking..." George looked a bit disgruntled, as they lie awake in bed. "About what you said the other day?"

"What's that?" George seemed to remember what Bertha did better than she did herself. She rolled over listlessly and laid her head on his stomach.

He touched her hair delicately. "Well remember how you were saying we don't have that much in common?"

"Yeah..." She hugged him so tightly he winced, and eased himself out of her iron grasp.

"Well I'm starting to think you're right. I mean you don't listen to metal, or are interested in the mechanics of everything the way I am. And I'm certainly not like you, with your spastic burnout over-achiever personality. I just like to chill and..."

She backed up as far as she could go, with her back to the cold wall. "What are you trying to say?"

"I don't know." He shrugged. "I guess I'd just like if we were more alike that's all."

"Oh." She felt taken aback, horrified that perhaps this whole time she had been blinded trying to fit into a relationship with a person who though not normal, was at the same time not strange enough to match her.

(One of these things is not like the other, one of these things...)

When we're very little we're told to point out the things and people who are different.

"Well that's ok." She hugged him but he was unresponsive, so it felt unfulfilling. "I mean we're not supposed to date versions of ourselves; that would just be weirdly narcissistic. That's infantile love. If you love someone who isn't like you but you admire them none the less and want to be like them; that is true love....I guess."

George seemed unconvinced.

"Oh come on!" Bertha clung on to him regardless. "Well if it really bothers you that much I'll try listening to metal more. I mean granted I can't get into your hobby of collecting straight razors, but I can try everything else. What do you want me to be, seriously, tell me?"

He pushed her off, annoyed. "Never mind we'll talk more tomorrow."

"What, what's wrong?" Being called annoying only prompted her to become more annoying.

"I just told you oh my God do you ever listen to me?"

"Yes..." she said quietly and resigned.

"I don't want you to be anything. I like you how you are... ugh... whatever I don't want you to change for me or anything. We're just supposed to be like each other naturally. Maybe there's a guy out there for you who want to explore the world too and see everything, and maybe there's a girl who will actually relax...I don't know, maybe we're just not... right."

"But..." Bertha started tearing up. "I thought we were."

"No...well I know it's kind of late, but I can take you home..."

Bertha rolled over, and pretended to be instantly asleep, as if that were somehow possible.

"Get up." His voice was devoid of sympathy, and he was immune to her tears.

"No." She replied stubbornly clinging to the side of the bed.

"I said get up." He began, more stubbornly.

"I said no!"

Suddenly she felt herself being forcefully put on her feet.

"There you go!" He said angrily. "Do you want me to drag you outside too?"

"No don't I'll just stay here." She crouched, and laid calmly on the floor.

"What are you doing?"

(When I was little we used to play a game where the goal was keeping still.

You'd try not to twitch or make too much stomach movement as you breathe. It was called "Statues" or something dumb like that.)

Bertha refused to move, and suddenly she didn't mind not moving for once. It was as if she had simply lost the will to move, so she remained in fight and flight response at the same time lying on the ground in peaceful protest.

"Alright." He paced angrily out of the room to go talk to his roommate. When he came back twenty minutes later, she was still lying in the same position.

"Babe!" Concern began to creep into his expression. "Alright I'm calling the hospital."

Those two words prodded a chilled sob out of the muffled depths of her lung.

He leaned down and looked into her face.

She mouthed the word "No" and seemed to collapse again while still remaining in the same position.

"But babe..."

"No no no no no no..." She began to sob more deeply then bit her hand, so as not to embarrass him even though the damage had probably already been done.

"Ok, ok shhh..."

Her eyes were closed, but she could feel his warm lap as he moved her head up.

He began to rub her temples, which in some odd way helped, and then ran his thumb along his chin, and pushed a piece of her hair back.

"I'm sorry."

To which she responded something like... "Ahm nah see blue."

"Babe." He laughed. "I can't understand you."

"I'm sorry too..." She began to sit up, and her ugly red face convulsed yet again, as she buried her head in his shoulder.

"It's ok..." he let him ruin her sweatshirt. Outside the morning birds began to sing, ever so chirpy, it's so miserable listening to happy things when you can't understand them. "Here..." he picked her up and gently placed her back in bed. "Hey." He got in next to her. "Everything is going to be ok."

"threally?"

"Yes really. Ms. Cry cry pants. "

"so ... the weather?"

"Yes, we're still together." He sighed, which nearly prompted her to cry again.

"No, no I'm kidding, just kidding, you're my monster and I love you and..." his fingers lightly began to crawl across her stomach.

"Not fair..." Bertha laughed uncontrollably, and shook so hard that she fell off the bed.

"Oh God." George sighed. "You're going to start crying again aren't you? Ugh, you are so much work." He hugged her tightly as she crawled back into bed.

"No I'm ok." Bertha sniffled. "But now I'm hungry."

"I finally figured out how you stay so skinny... you cry all of it out..."

The next morning, she dropped him off at the airport, feeling empty and...

"What where the fuck you going miss!" An Indian man shouted at her from a cab.

(On second thought maybe I'll daydream after I get out of the JFK terminal.)

Seeing the airport again gave her shudders, as she remembered the frantic chaos of being one of the 50 flights cancelled during a major runway shut down.

It hadn't been her first encounter being stuck at an airport. The other time coming back from a ski trip people had adapted so well, that some even bothered to jog near the baggage claim when they shut the airport down so they could stay in shape. That's Denver for you.

However, as soon as the wind storm took out a major runway in New York, instant panic ensued. There was crying, and people started to walk briskly and some full out run to the ticket counter. She imagined music from the ork scenes in Lord of the Rings playing in the background.

(Oh yes, JFK has many soundtracks. It's to the point that I've encountered so many delays and cancellations there that every time I actually get onto a plane in JFK, I consider belting out "We are the Champions.")

Someone honked loudly.

(Yeah I've got to stop doing that.)

Instead of heading back to the city, Bertha ended up at a large outlet outside of town, consisting largely of Asian and Middle Eastern shoppers.

This was one of those absurd places for people who liked labels.

It had been something she had always grown up with.

In high-school everyone had a Vera Bradley, a North Face, and they all went to Spot coffee.

For a while there was a fake Chanel bag phase too.

In college, it seemed less noticeable, at first...but if you looked closely enough everyone was wearing Uggs or knockoff of those, and of course the Hunters for the rain.

It had gotten to the point where someone noticed her Steve Madden flats with a knowing face. Of course, Bertha hadn't known they were Steve Madden, until taking them off later, because she had gotten them discounted, and she just liked the way they looked.

Her phases of style moved from brand to brand. It started young with Limited too, then Aeropostle, then American Eagle. Then there was Tommy Hilfiger, then Polo, and some Calvin Klein and Lucky (none at full price) and Forever 21 and H&M...

Yet Bertha didn't consider herself materialistic.

Of course it extended to coffee: from Tim Hortin's to Starbucks to Dunkin' Doughnuts...

And finally to Apple products with the iPod the iPhone the iPad.

Brand Recognition is everything.

People gravitate towards things they know.

But it wasn't a source of happiness for her.

It was more of a prerequisite for having an identity.

America is a cruel place.

We're not as deep as we think we are.

Sorry idealists.

(I think Aristotle would argue that it would be better to look up at the stars rather than keep up with personal appearances even if it meant walking into a hole. Well, if you're looking up at the stars and not taking care of yourself, you're also walking past a number of job offers.)

(Wait, what job offers? This is a recession.)

And the jobs that are out there are for the sharks.

Finders, keepers, losers, weepers.

(She thought back to high school, when her well-intentioned but inadvertently degrading principal had read some Dr. Seuss book "Oh the places you will go.")

(Even then she realized how silly the whole thing was.)

Everyone was so intent on making themselves different and unique.

But when you strip yourself of all the external things, is any one all that special or different?

In the fancyfancypurse store, over the different rushed dialects, the faint sound of "Paradise" began to play...

"Ja, ja! This one is so cute, Ja!"

There was a wall of identical looking purses, with the garish, trite, letter pattern in ugly, plain shades of brown. The only difference was that some of the handles were different colors.

(Who defines what looks good?)

(You wonder if they just make these ugly things because they can. Why put more design, effort, or creativity into everything. Let's just put our logo on in with some dumb word that sounds high fashion.)

(It's Derelicte.)

It was amusing how the foreigners crowded around all the brands.

(Yes! Yes! This will make us either more or less American. Which-ever you prefer.)

(Oh, I do hate when you walk into a party and someone has the same purse.)

(Why is that? Why is that such a threat to us?)

(Aren't we aware that it's mass produced?)

(Gimme gimme validation.)

Bertha stepped outside, feeling too claustrophobic in the store as more tides of overly-enthusiastic shoppers filed in.

Outside, a swindler in a bright yellow shirt had a card table set up.

That drew her thoughts back to London, where a British police-man told her about how sometimes thieves worked in pairs. While one would do the card trick and cheat people that way, the others would search the pockets and the purses of the people watching. Or some were so adept that they'd work alone in coffee shops or other public places by throwing their coats over your things, and taking it from underneath.

(Do you ever get the sense that the whole world is going to a dark place?)

(What's going to happen to us? Maybe we'll shoot or sue our way out of this mess; it seems to be the only two things we're decent at anymore.)

(Of course, I suppose it always seems like the world is going to hell, because no one reports the happy news.)

Bertha's apocalyptic thoughts immediately ceased upon smelling a Cinnabon stand.

(Ahhh that smells so good!)

Despite her initial inclinations, she ended up eating some Mexican food next to a family with two young kids and a baby.

The baby had brilliant blue eyes and was gazing up at an ornament hanging at the top of her carrier, cooing carelessly.

Bertha smiled at her, and she replied with a toothless grin.

The other two kids were four and five.

The four year old boy was dressed in hipster glasses, corduroy pants, and a button-down shirt. He was playing on his PSP. The five year old was a girl, who was carrying an iPad and playing Temple Run. She was dressed head to toe in pink, and had a streak of pink dye in her hair.

(What's going to happen to them when they grow up?)

(What happens when kids grow up like this, and they aren't able to reproduce the way they grew up by themselves?)

Bertha looked away from the baby, concerned it might see the worry in her face.

(Oh, yes the two party systems are _definitely_ helpful for the person who gets turned off by the extremists of both.)

(Ours is a country that polarizes people.)

(Well, I'll vote because I don't want a democrat in power, or we'll I'll vote because I don't want a Republican in power.)

(Things fall apart.)

(In fact we'd be better off with anarchy.)

(At least anarchy is fair.)

(People always argue that life isn't fair. But that isn't necessarily true. So far as we know there is nothing that controls the weather and natural disasters, or determines that the "best, well intentioned" people get ahead in life, because often they don't. It's not that life isn't fair. Life is undiscerning chaos and chance, and that, whether you decide to agree or not, it perfectly fair. There was nothing that was particularly "fair" or "unfair" about the world until people arrived...)

(I guess the only way to step back is to realize that no, the world isn't going to end necessarily when people die out. There was life before us, and there's probably going to be some form of life after us. And though humanity could be comprised of some greater purpose and all of history is progressing towards something, it's also entirely possible that the existence of mankind as a whole was a sheer accident. In fact, it seems like we're more like the exception than the rule...

Green on gray. Green on gray and mist to mull the whole thing in together.

(Like Witch's brew.)

After a slow, long drive back through the fog, Bertha imprinted herself on the couch and picked up her phone, nearly calling George out of habit.

(Time to order sushi and bubble tea, should I get the crouching tiger roll, the hidden dragon, or the tiger hidden inside the dragon that is simultaneously approached by a hippo from Fantasia...Not the new one, the good old one.)

Of course, it would be at least a half hour before the food arrived or maybe more depending on the adeptness of the delivery person.

Legends arose of the apartment no one seemed to be able to find. Scholars trace the curse back to the ancient Native American burial ground on which several séances and witch burning held, some at the same time. There were also multiple tales of Morgan Le Fay who, when learning witchcraft, accidently set a curse upon 44 west Hamilton.

The delivery people all had different names for it in their respective languages, but it all roughly translated to "Where the hell is this damn apartment? There is no way we are going to deliver it in a timely manner."

(Speaking of witches, George had lovingly told her that she had a bit of a distinctly shaped nose, as he liked to call it a "witch's nose", and threatened to exorcize her every time she cried.)

("You have a crying demon inside of you." He said jokingly, but his eyes turned darker. "Here." He stuck his hand in a glass of water and sprinkled her face and muttered something in Latin and made the sign of the cross. "That ought to do it.")

(But it certainly hadn't done anything before. No, it certainly hadn't cured her bright pink infant head of something dark and wandering. Most wanderers are by nature a bit dark. Wandersheidt, it was practically in her blood.)

(The one who wanders is the one who, by definition, does not stay on the straight and narrow path.)

(But once you have wanderlust, can you ever really eradicate it?)

She had been taught to enjoy wandering; to the endless, winding endless golden hills of Idaho like braided hair, and grainy sugar crepes of France on a merry-go-round, to the frigid cold walks in Wisconsin where the snow always squeaks but the sun does make everything look beautiful and desolate, to the boardwalk in Quebec with its quaint shops, to the Boston Commons where old people do tai chi in the morning, to the market in Seattle with the big clock marking the way, to the glaciers of Alaska, to Christopher Columbus' home in the Dominican Republic-my was he short!-, to Yosemite, to Yellowstone, to Ocean City boardwalk with the cheesy tee shirt shops, and Florida where we shop at Bells and eat grapefruit for breakfast and Disney of course, to Philadelphia where everything is historical, to Galveston and the old hotel in San Antonio, and up Mt. Camel undeniably hot and Mt. Tremblant so wicked cold, and up Mt. Marcy in a day, and down into the depths of the grand canyon where we almost reached the river. Almost.

Some people like to settle more, and dread travel. But Bertha wanted to avoid her own silt, to avoid becoming a scab at all costs. Because to a certain extent it's hard to see past where you've come from the way you can't see around contacts if they're in your eyes. It was easier to be the stranger, always new, always allowed to be wide-eyed and mysterious. It was easier not to be held to any previous standard of identity.

(Stagnancy will be the death of me.)

"Arghhhhh..." the buzzer startled Kitty who darted out from under the couch and ran into the wall.

"Awww." She picked up Kitty. "Poor baby... Come in!" the door unlocked.

At the smell of the fried pieces rolled delicately into the sushi, Kitty's ears perked up and she slowly padded on towards the door and tipped her head inquiringly towards the delivery man, who was a pimply young teenager in Harry Potter glasses.

"Here's your food mam. Geez..."

The sight of the cat made him jump.

"Here you go." She gave him a moderately generous tip for being timely.

"Don't you know that black cats are bad luck?" He chuckled walking away.

"You poor fool, everyone thinks you are really a witch don't you know?" She looked into her reflective eyes; brown green black. "It's ok between the two of us one of us was bound to get burnt had we been born in the 1630's."

Suddenly, Kitty froze in place.

She padded softly, cautiously over to the window, where instantly she began to hiss, and her fur shot up in spikes.

"What is it girl?" Bertha asked, unsuspecting at first. It was probably that German shepherd that lived down the street. She took the opportunity to take out the sushi without having Kitty jump out from somewhere to sniff it.

But five minutes passed, and she would not stop hissing. Kitty seemed to get more disgruntled and outraged by the second. Kitty was not amused.

"What is it?" She opened the drapes that looked down at the city streets.

There was nothing particularly unusual. A vendor began to pack up his cart of sugared cashews for the day. A woman hauled out her trash, talking angrily on the phone in Spanish, and slammed her door, leaving the street empty.

"Look, Kitty there's nothing out there..."

And then in the distance, as darkness began to hover in the streets, she noticed a man walking down the street in a trench coat and carrying a suitcase. There was something so oddly regulated and rigid about the way he walked it was as if he were some sort of robot.

"Aww its ok girl...here..." she tried to tempt Kitty with a piece of sushi, feeling her ribcage grow tighter as the man approached closer.

There was something wrong about his proportions...but what was it?

(His neck is too long.)

When he came into better view, Bertha noticed that a man identical to him was walking directly behind him... at the same speed... with the same timing. She wanted to close the curtains and look away but she couldn't help it. The German shepherd began to whimper, and pulled on the end of his tether, trying to get inside the house with anxious clawing. Her palms began to sweat, and she stare, unblinking at the surreal parade, and it made her think about that one urban legend...
Chapter 5

George set his bag down, and proceeded to set up his things in the guest room.

By the time half of his things were properly ordered and put into place, his grandparents called him to dinner from the front hall.

His grandfather had bushy white hair, and eternally expressive eyebrows to match. His face was tanned from the sun, and callouses that had once frequented his fingers had long disappeared. He was ah yes ever so proper in all aspects, except when it came to bowel movement, which was something he seemed to focus extravagantly on.

At the moment, he was lounging at a red leather chair, which didn't match the table set of the kitchen, but he insisted put at the head of the table. Needless to say, he made a formidable shadow as he sat down at the end of the table, quiet, but so deliberate when speaking that the rest of the room instantly went quiet regardless of where they were.

(Grandpa King George the third.)

George found himself in the unfortunate position of being named after him almost predetermining him to follow in his footsteps of lawyer-dom, and make the less intelligent defendants cower and soil themselves.

Unfortunately and fortunately, George hadn't done well on the LSATs, and had developed into an entirely different person. He was quirky, friendly, stoic, and outlandishly intelligent all at the same time but he didn't have any aura of omnipotence.

Grandpa King George the third was a bit of an Old Testament Godly figure setting strange regulations, and ever powerful with the ability to smite or bless different family members.

And George was nothing like that.

(I suppose when kids kick in the particularities of my mother will kick in.)

(Or his Martha Stewart-cream friege phase, as Bertha had lovingly called it.)

(Oh god if Bertha had children...)

A thudding horror whirled around the house; a lanky girl in converse occasionally running into things, unnaturally excited after prematurely trying coffee for the first time. As she runs into the table, pausing to rub her shin, another similarly lanky girl with big blue eyes tackles her from behind shouting "Don't you dare ever take my cd again..." In the meantime the third is crying in a corner loudly sobbing from the corner, morally opposed to any form of fighting because "it's mean."

And then, as he'd walk through the door, their babysitter would come out of the closet, shaking like a hostage, having become the conquest of the children.

"Oh Mr. George Blah-Blah, it's so good you're home."

"How were the kids?"

Normally you just lie to parents even if the kids act up a bit cause it's easier just to say "Pretty good" but the mousy looking babysitter would just continue shaking like a crack addict and say "Well... they have a lot of energy..."

"Yeah..." Mr. George prepared for tsunami of necessity. ".. They're just like their..."

At which point Bertha would come bursting through the door, taking off her heels dramatically, and complaining about her last case.

"That Mr. blah blah blah is so full of shit." Her face red and explosive. "Aghhh...anyone up for walking the dog?"

Meanwhile at the dinner table, his grandmother sat next to her grandfather, making up for his lack of conversation, chatting away about the new people at the country club. The pearl necklace around her neck glistened against her sloppy skin.

She was the keeper, and presumably the only thing that could pull any sentiment out of her husband. The magician.

It came out in little ways. When he got too angry about something she'd, put her hands on his shoulder and say "now George be reasonable", which worked as well as if he had some button on his back that said "decrease anger mode."

Despite his sternness, George opened every door for her, and held her hand when crossing the street for an early dinner and morning mass.

George the younger barely touched his food, his stomach still upset because of the transition from the city to Florida. He and his sister talked amongst themselves, wary to let their red-faced cousin Alec into their conversation. They knew if he did he would go on and on and on and on about all of his charitable endeavors, which sort of defeats the purpose of the endeavors in the first place.

("Cousin Seintjohn Alec you will never be a saint.")

After dinner, George retreated to his room and lay on his bed with his hands behind his head. (How am I going to break up with her?)

The thought of being with her for a long time seemed, at best, wishful thinking. She was the type of girl who brought excitement and passion and all of those things, but it was beginning to wear on him.

(She seems more like a character than a coherent person.)

(Maybe Emily is right...)

(Wait... why am I taking relationship advice from her again?)

(But she does have a valid point about Bertha she isn't easy to date, that's for sure.)

Meanwhile, Bertha was staring at her phone, eager to call George, picking up her phone every once in a while and then putting it back down.

Finally she gave up on that, and sat down on her leather couch.

Kitty settled on her lap, and snuggled against her legs, purring.

"I guess it's going to be you and me for a while, at least for now, do you like George?"

Kitty tilted her head.

Channel flip... nothing nothing nothing nothing...

(This is better I guess. I do love Gene Wilder...)

"... _but nevertheless ... shortly about to be... Cause I've got a golden ticket. I've got a golden way..."_ ("Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" _)._

"I have a good feeling about him too Kitty."

Kitty settled back into her lap.

"Although that in and of itself could be an issue, besides the fact I'm talking to my cat..."

(Yeah, and your cat has better instincts that you do. Maybe you should do more listening. I'm highly symbolic.)

George looked up at the cracked ceiling and pictured Bertha crying over him, steady as a shower, with his efforts to break up with her.

(Am I really worth getting that upset over?)

She's wearing a black dress but she seems to lose weight when she hears the news, like a parachute that has recently descended.

(Well...) She wipes away her hypothetical tears (If I didn't get upset over something I really cared about wouldn't that be a problem?)

(I guess... you don't see me crying at all.)

Meanwhile Bertha has a sketch pad out, and begins to draw formal dresses. After picking up the Freudian slip piece, she realized, terrified that it looks a lot like a bridesmaid dress...)

(What is wrong with you? You're under the impression that that's supposed to fix everything, but really it could just make things worse. Two people who fight a lot aren't going get along any better when they're married than when they're dating... I don't think.)

Someone knocked on George's door.

"Brrriiing..." Bertha's phone lit up, and began to vibrate violently.

"Hello?"

No answer.

"Hello?"

"Are you in significant debt...?"

(Oh, I didn't think that I knew that anyone in Pasadena California.)

There was something in her that wished that it was a wrong number, she could never tell if the voices were robotic or human.

(Am I really that much of a...)

"Is anyone there?" George peered out into the hall, but the only noise he heard was the sound of the warm breeze sifting through the hallway which made the whole house seem hollow. Unable to detect the source of the three clear rapts, he shut the door again and returned to the indent in the covers where his phone was waiting.

(Hmm to call or to text?)

"Hey, how are you! I was just about to call you!'

(That made him feel all the worse.)

"Listen about that...I have something very important to tell you."

"Oh, me too!" She gushed. "I had such a busy day and...sorry you go first."

"Listen...ah... I think we should see other people."

The line remained silent for a few, exaggeratedly silent minute.

"Oh." Bertha's voice took on a tone he had never heard before. It was terrifyingly flat and dead like a raccoon that hadn't been picked off the road after it had been run over the first seven times.

(Well, that was a lot easier than I thought...) George breathed a sigh of relief.

("I'm... I'm going to go now...") her voice was quavering.

"Are you..."

The line went dead.

George sighed.

(Well I could end on that note, but I really don't want to...)

Surprisingly, she picked up.

"What? What do you want?"

(Nevermind then...)

"At least talk to me, what do you want?"

"I just wanted to ask if you're going to be ok..."

The line went silent, though he heard rustling on the other end, and distant screaming.

"What is that?"

"Oh, I'm watching something on TV."

"I said are you going to be ok..."

There's no earthly way of knowing

Which direction we are going

There's no knowing where we're rowing

Or which way the river's flowing

(I don't want to be alone and trapped ...)

Is it raining, is it snowing

Is a hurricane a-blowing

(Don't make me do it. Distract me longer, free me from myself please don't let me just be.)

Not a speck of light is showing

So the danger must be growing

Are the fires of Hell a-glowing

Is the grisly reaper mowing

"No." She began to cry coffee tears, a miracle. "No I'm not" and hung up.

Yes, the danger must be growing

For the rowers keep on rowing

And they're certainly not showing

_Any signs that they are slowing._ ("Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory").

Gene Wilder's big eyes wiggled back and forth, so resolvedly unresolved...

(I need to find myself a crazy man like him.)

(Now drink up the dregs and good riddance.)

(You were a wild thing. How was he to tame you anyway?)

Four hours later she began to feel the burnout effect; the hot tears scrunched out of her face had apparently dragged everything else with them.

Kitty curled up at her feet as she slid into her pleasantly cool sheets.

But despite being tired, she could not fall asleep, so she decided to make a general petition.

(Dear potential God, Buddha, Yaweh, etc. You let other people sleep. So let me.)

But it never worked. She remembered being eleven and being awake, half scared to walk through the dark house while the others snored on, trying to make the drawer in the fridge squeak as little as possible. And earlier than that creeping to her parents room, half running because the house was haunted, bare feet cold rabbits on the floor snow white.

"Just try and go back to sleep, there's really nothing we can do for you honey."

24 years of not working.

(Doing the same thing and expecting a different response is insanity.)

And despite using Advil P.M. or drinking or other depressants later in life, nothing really seemed to work, so she'd use the time to try and meditate on something.

(If you dig deep enough into yourself, aren't you supposed to find something inherently good, or an aura or something weird like that?)

Her pseudo nirvana was a place with violins playing, hot springs, and violets everywhere, but today she couldn't get there.

Instead she tried to knead her consciousness for answers, and followed herself down cerebral tunnels.

George's mint tasting kisses, and the furry slither of Kitty at her ankles, past a young brother and sister the brother with blonde blonde hair and the sister with precocious, bang fringed eyes, how I have let them down by not being someone who just gets a grip, darker, darker, roaming the streets full of summer beer with friends wizard of Oz style, past the nights where you hear the morning birds, past the words bound in print, climbing over pages and pages of notebook space, unconquered territory binding me, past the sound of nothing in Yosemite, and past the wonderful feeling as a plane goes into descent... "Folks we're clear to land in Buffalo, please prepare for descent." Grainy crackling voice.

Dead end.

There was nothing there.

(Where is the complicated inner nexus of guilt and purpose? All I see is a void...)

She plunged into it deeper and deeper, but it was like being trapped in a current of black velvet with the hum of distant organs in the background.

(What a pity. It seems someone has misplaced my soul.)

(A soul, what a strange concept. Whoever came up with the idea that people have souls in the first place?)

(Someone inflated me some time ago with sugar, spice, and everything not so nice plus chemical x...but I don't see what that has to do with having some eternal inner figure that lives on after I die. So far as I know they used up all that animation on the clay and ribs.)

(Can some people have souls and others not?)

(Am I in the minority or the majority?)

(Oh, eternal void so delightfully unconquered.)

(Well... I guess lack has as much significance as full does.)

(Beyond these primary narcissisms, I'm just left with just black velvet lakes of nothing, or in turn, whatever I wish them to be.)

(They can be purple hillocks or nothing...)

("Oh, we'll never get to see the wizard now, I feel so sleepy...)

(So much for yoga being relaxing, I am only ever really relaxed on the surface anyway then...)

(Take a deep breath... and find your center, let the rest of the world fade away.)

(When the world fades away so do I.)

(So where is my center?)

(I am nothing separate, so much as I long to be... oh homo Fugue!)

(I need a separate anima mine died out long ago.)

(The thing that makes me move is not inside of me but rather outside of me.)

(But it is real, and it is not just one thing.)

(Am I a fiction?)

(I live to be the woman who continually rises and falls, pretty woman phoenix, oh we do love our stories about resurrections... every book needs that Sisyphus character, that person who cannot break the cycle of ever up and down the born celebrity or butt of jokes... if you are different you will be noticed whether you like it or not it's mandated ...cold Marilyn lady fingers.)

(No one pays attention to Cassandra's seemingly inconsequential mutterings. Holly, shall we put on our beaded, crystalline ornaments, I didn't find any shiny auras, so let's put something shiny on the outside, if you dress well no on realizes you're slowly spinning into oblivion.)

(Is this what lies behind the green curtain?)

(I want to map out the interior where my soul should be, trace every inch of the velvet sea, and draw a demography of all the crevices and peaks, dark cave... no wonder I am claustrophobic in the dark underground places, because it reminds me of the extended collapse.)

(And as it shall be a world without end.)

(Homina homina homina santa spree amen!)

(I need some primal force to spin the stars into shape, to turn the soul into something that looks like it makes sense, with billions and trillions of stars that can be old or young at the same time depending on where you are in the soul-a-verse. Stars are pretty, so we assumed that inherently gives things meaning. Pretty things are supposed to make sense.)

"Hey!"

George rolled out of bed, eager to get his mind off of Bertha.

(She's probably fine now anyway.)

(No use wallowing about.)

His cousin Bob stood at the door with his unusually graceful posture for a man of relative goofiness.

"Dude..." he stooped under the doorframe and sat on the other twin bed. "... everyone is making us go to the Margins tomorrow."

"Ugh are you serious..." George shook his head. "And whose brilliant idea was that? I thought grandpa and grandma hate nature."

"I know right?" But he didn't seem too torn up about it. "I guess we're just going to have to get away and smoke there, aye?"

George peered cautiously out the doorframe, listening to see if the others had come back from getting ice-cream, but the house was quiet. "How much did you bring?"

"I forget have to check... at least a gram.... And I picked up so Vicodin too from getting my wisdom teeth out.... I've been selling the stuff like candy. You want any?"

"Nah, man. " He lay back on the bed. "Ugh... I don't want to go the Margins though. I wanted to sleep in and then escape to the beach and maybe get a good burn going."

"Yeah we could hit the shore..."

It was so amusing how out of it Bob's parents were. Karen and Joe were your typical parents that try too hard. They had all of their children wear matching tee-shirts for Christmas photos, and they were the horrible sort to include an overly-informative Christmas letter. They were the church every Sunday family with chore charts and other weird things, but despite their odd upbringing Karen and Joe ended up being some of the absolutely craziest partiers that George had ever met.

Bob, or Robert as his parent's called him, had been dealing for five years, and making a pretty substantial profit off of it, selling to other college students. He had a crew cut, straight As, and was a mean quarterback just your all American guy.

His sister was similarly popular, with bleach blonde hair, and straight A's. In her spare time, she worked as a club promoter, wearing tiny sequin skirts and dresses of questionable coverage. She drank heavily, but it didn't seem to affect her grades. Emily always seemed to have hard feelings towards her, seeing that she got better grades than her.

Naturally they were both in the business school.

George kept himself busy; he didn't want thoughts of Bertha settling like the fat, whitish, top layer of hardened grease on an otherwise appetizing soup that needs to be skimmed off later.

The next morning, at some absurd hour where you're so tired you feel sick, George had somehow been herded to the car, with a golden delicious apple that he never got around to eating, because he promptly fell asleep with his face flattened against the window.

He woke up with little recollection of his dream, except that it had ended in a dead corpse telling him to "Turn left."

(Turn left, what does that mean?)

(What is this, a bad horror movie that tells me something lifesaving?)

(At least I haven't been thinking about Bertha.)

(Damn now I'm thinking about her because I was thinking about not thinking about her.)

The sun began to filter up through the trees as they stumbled out of the car awkwardly with stiff legs and sore butts from sitting too long like marathon runners at the finish line.

"Is this it?"

To all extents and purposes, it looked as though they could've been anywhere next to the highway. The landscape was not particularly distinctive, and the only thing that distinguished it was the two tall posts with a swinging sign cut out in wood which had probably originally looked charming, but it had since began to rot a bit, and the "m" in "margins" could collapse any minute.

"Yup. This is it."

The air whistled through the trees and blew up the half frozen, crisp leaf ghosts on the ground. (It's probably better leaves have no conception of mortality, they'd have to watch the other leaves around them die, leaf by leaf, waiting for the inevitable and the ancestors clearly visible on the ground.)

(Wow that's grim. Very positive...)

(Shush sanity. Leave me be. I was in love you have no part in this.)

(Well obviously not if you have two different voices of yourself talking to yourself.)

(Yes, well it gets very lonely in this narcissistic head. Can't imagine how Bertha does it, she's far worse than I am.)

(That she is. Eh I think you're going to be ok.)

(Thanks rationality! Wait, aren't I obliged to say that via instinct?)

Suddenly the path opened to a big clearing. The sun lit up a mirror lake pink, orange, yellow, your basic stereotypic poetic variety pack sherbet sunrise. To the far right, a series of cabins appeared, much to everyone's relief.

(I had always pictured the Margins as this desolate uninhabited place, but it looks alright now...)

The cabins were pretty well cleaned and kept up, but there was a catch. Each room had a theme: one was full of dead eyed deer, another various turkeys and other frozen fowl, and the final moose and deer.

("Dead staring things on the walls always add a certain quaint charm to the room...")George pictured Martha Stewart hanging up the rabid raccoon, frozen in attack stance, on her wall, and tying a little lace-strapped bonnet under his chin.

"Well..." Bob nudged George as they stayed behind to carry in the coolers of food. "At least we can go outside to..."

Rain began to pelt them from above.

"I swear," George said "Whatever is doing this up there is just having so much fun."

They ran inside the Turkey house with the cooler, where they proceeded to notice the peacock standing between two hawks.

Even dead, it looked at odds, so alone...

(Really getting carried away with the whole death theme, are you George?)

(Oh, come on, this was just a give-away symbol. Obviously Bertha is the dead peacock.)

(Oh really, really, are you really going to go there?)

(I just did. So there... maybe I'll even write a poem about it.)

(I can't talk to you anymore.)

Back at the Moose house, a table with an absurd amount of food had accumulated with all the classic weird foods that sort of end up on tables at family gathering. There was the rolled salami, and the chips and onion dip, and the deviled eggs mainly untouched except by that one person in the family who is enthusiastic about eating deviled eggs.

And there were piles of glistening olives, sending beacons of redemption from the middle of the table.

"So," Emily nudged her brother, after her aunt ran out of things to ask them to compare them to her own children. "How did it go?"

"Ok." George spit a pit out into the rain where it landed in a muddy basin like a planted seed.

"Did you get my sweatshirt back?" She eyed him accusatorily.

(Ah yes, the ballad of the tie-dye sweatshirt...)

Originally a not terribly noticed, too small tie-die hoodie that George had grown out of, he had, on different occasions given it to both his sister and Bertha. However, Bertha had been the last one to have it. When Bertha had received the hoodie, Emily felt betrayed, vowing to win back what had become a symbol of her brother's affection.

"Is that why you tried to break us up? Because you wanted a hoodie?" He asked Emily laughingly.

"No, no..." She shot back. "Well... actually yes. But also I don't like her."

Thoughtlessly, he texted Bertha "By the way you need to give me back that hoodie. My sister wants it..."

Two hours later he got the curt response "No thank you."

He hid his phone, afraid of the response he would get from Emily if she happened to see it out of the corner of her eye.

"What do you mean no, thank you..."

"Well I don't really want to give it to her. If it's just for you I don't care, but not for her."

"But it was mine originally..."

"Well, you gave it to me, not to her. Why don't you just tell her that if she had wanted it so badly she should have been a better sister to you and we wouldn't be in this dilemma?" Meanwhile Bertha was laughing at home. She was going to give the hoodie away soon anyway; it was just a matter of victory.

It was the only time she had gotten a really good girl fight in a long time.

(Now I know why George likes making me mad all the time. There is a certain guilty pleasure when you stop letting the other person get to you, and play with them.)

Bertha sighed openly, causing her friend to look over.

"You ok..."

"Oh, I'm alright."

Down at the other end of the table, her friend and the others were engaged in a conversation centered on a tiny girl in a black turtleneck.

They were discussing something very excitedly and her friend would periodically look at her hand. At first she thought it was a class ring, but then she quickly realized that it was something else....

"Oh, you're engaged?"

The table went silent.

(Well that was sufficiently awkward.)

(I really should listen.)

"Oh nice, congratulations!" Bertha smiled.

She pictured her friend Rose, writing on the other end with jealousy, and probably not being very subtle about it.

When she Bertha remarked how odd it was for someone to get married that young, but secretly she was sort of... well... jealous.

(But but she's so...)

(No don't think that you're not supposed to think that...)

(But she's just so ...)

(No, don't think it, don't you dare...)

(Ugly)

(And boring.)

(It's like vanilla granola...)

(Wow I am such a bitch aren't I?)

(Well at least you aren't saying anything out loud.)

(Keep looking in your soup do not look up, whatever you do.)

(Am I really that inwardly ugly that I can't get engaged before her?)

And that's when Bertha realized that she needed to change.

(From now on I'm not going to judge anyone.)

In the meantime, her friend and boyfriend were fuming at the other side of the table because her ex had just come in, and between the three of them there was such an array of talking too loudly and other poor battle tactics. The others had left, leaving money for the check and Bertha to her thoughts, occasionally interrupted by the awkwardness of the love triangle going on over her head and ducking her back into her thoughts.

(I mean maybe she's sweet. That's it. You could try that out.)

(.... Do I have to?)

(Yes, you really do.)

(....cricket cricket...)

(Oh forget it I give up trying to make you good.)

(You'll save myself a hell of lot of trouble.)

(At least stop comparing yourself to people, you'll be better off.)

(... that's a bit more reasonable...)

On the way outside, Bertha tripped and fell down a few stairs, nearly mauling an old couple who stepped out of the way at the last minute.

(I don't fall I just fly downward.)

Her ankle burned, and she stumbled a bit trying to roll it off, but it wasn't bad enough that she couldn't walk back.

It's odd, you expect the emotionally sensitive to also be sensitive to physical pain, but for Bertha it was the opposite. It was as if the proportions were completely wrong, so there wasn't enough sensitivity for pain. In fact, she had burnt her elbow pretty badly because she had a delayed reaction to touching the hot glass plate of a gas fireplace being very preoccupied with her emotions.

(Damn things are going to get me killed.)

The rain didn't seem to be letting up anytime soon, but George decided to go outside anyway. He was beginning to feel suffocated by his family. They were all panicked and hyper, and in a sense they reminded him of Bertha, especially his aunts all together in a pack.

He was seemingly unaware of the damage he was causing his nearly submerged black converse, as he stepped out into the rain with his mother's umbrella. Droplets collected on the wider leaves until they broke and tumbled headlong like crystalized acrobats. Out of sheer instinct, he found himself shuffling in the denser clusters of trees.

Unfortunately, everything was beginning to look less familiar.

For one, the trees all looked older, and mossier. The foliage had grown so thick that George closed his mother's umbrella because it was getting caught on too many things.

In normal circumstances he would have turned back, but he figured he had very little to lose. Suddenly his foot flew free, and he noticed the two startlingly cleared paths branching off to the left and right.

(Oh so this is what that whole dream business was about.)

George had since gotten himself so lost that at this point it didn't seem to make much of a difference where he ended up.

(Hmm, my dream told me to turn left so I'm going to turn right to spite it.)

Rays of sun began to poke their brilliant heads out of blanket clouds.

Huge, endless faces of rock blocked him from going anywhere but through the wide alleys that broke up giant shoulder of what had originally been part of a glacier.

(Rock city...)

George ignored his intuitions not to go in alone, plagued by the impractical curiosity that specifically asserts itself on cats and main characters as a rule. The uniformity of the path disintegrated, and he found himself going left and right, through the narrow and wide and changing elevation.

(What if they all cave in?)

(What if I never get out and tell Bertha that I love her?)

(Wait but I don't... right?)

He began to walk faster with an impending panic.

"Damnit." He felt his center of gravity disappear as he tumbled down into one of the side nooks.

George paused to rub his ankle, which thankfully wasn't swelling yet. He looked up, still dizzy from the fall.

Sunlight guided his eyes to what he thought was the west, illuminating the well-worn wall.

On closer inspection George noticed what he thought might be a carving of his name.

Careful of the shifting sodden leaves, he made his way over.

George dumps Bertha at his grandmother's house

He stepped back, paranoid.

(That can't be right, I'm hallucinating.)

George dumps Bertha at grandmother's house via text message-Bertha becomes a miserable workaholic and eventually kills herself. George meets next girl-Autumn?Auburn? Actually manageable beautiful girl, everything Bertha is not-never thinks of her or speaks to her again Bertha gets into a fatal car accident four days later driving back from a night out...

(What the hell?)

He craned his neck at the wall where the writing went on and on and on. It was all about him and Bertha.

George sees Bertha at a funeral notices that her apartment... talk about how apartment is almost like a hotel... crazy sister... sweatshirt

His head began to swim.

(Am I dreaming right now?)

His ankle continued to throb.

(Calm down, calm down.)

(Well, has everything before this come into fruition?)

But George searched in vain for something that hadn't happened between him and Bertha

Well you shouldn't cry all the time it gives you wrinkles. Goodness woman, are you still crying?"

There were other writings that hadn't come true, but they were vigorously scribbled over. For instance, Bertha's cat had not gotten hit by a car.

(Nine lives indeed.)

Clumsily, he dropped his phone into a pile of soppy leaves, and brushed the clods of dirt off frantically.

His first instinct was to call her, but he paused, cautious.

(Well, what happens if I break the direct orders? Will it call attention to myself from some unjust figure peering at the whole thing above?)

(Was it worth it...?)

Feeling horrible, he began to look at the next wall, which had descriptions of a girl he had never met: An earthy girl, with brown eyes and tan skin, who loved to play Ataris and actually liked metal. And she could cook.

(She sounds perfect for me.)

(I can't deal with this; maybe I'll pretend I never saw this.)

But as much as he tried he couldn't forget the look of the grove, it haunted him as he sat back in the cabin. His phone haunted him too, with phantom vibrations.

(I can't stand this...)

He opened a can of bud light, and then another, and then another.

For once he felt that the company of his family was less grating and a better buffer to whatever weird things were happening beyond and yet within his immediate existence. But as the others nodded off to sleep in pseudo food induced comas on the way home, he found himself wide awake and feeling a little nauseous, staring at the passing moon that made the shadows of trees dance rhythmically.

When they got home, he helped the others unpack the leftovers, and blankets and other things.

"Goodness..." His mother sat in the living room with a new glass of wine poured, and a book. "I never understand why your Aunt..."

"Mom." He interrupted her, well aware that she would go on talking quite some time unless he acted urgently.

"George I was trying to talk..." She scowled.

"Mom, I need to take the car."

"What?" She asked, with her usual, outraged New Jersey accent. "Where in the world are you going, it's already eleven thirty? Are you going to Brian's or something? I hope you don't go out looking like that what in the world did you do to your shoes..."

"Yes, I'm going to Brian's." He lied. "I'll probably stay over too..."

"Alright at least change out of that flannel, you're starting to get a hole in the elbow ... tell Mrs. Ling I said hi..."

She was still talking when he shut the door.

"Oh." She shrugged, and put the lip of the glass to her lips.

Stay awake.

Bertha looked at the text, confused.

This day had been full of oddities.

It had been the first day she had considered taking a sick day that she truly didn't need, and spent the whole day going in and out of work as if it were a dream, sucking back tears like she was back in college....

It was just not her at all.

(Something is not right.)

Her parents had skyped her later, after telling them that she was depressed.

They both looked slightly pained.

"You know you could try going to church..."

She gave them a look.

"Church is depressing."

"Well you're already pretty depressed anyway, it can't do much more."

(But it could.)

"You don't have to buy into all of it but maybe just going to it will make you feel better."

(What if I don't buy into any of it?)

Going to church always made her feel nauseous, with talk about all the blood and suffering.

The statues and painting of a bloody tortured man aren't particularly appealing either.

(I am not one of the saved ones, and I know it.)

Bertha couldn't even explain how she knew; she just sort of felt like one of the damned ones.

(In all my twenty years, I have never, ever felt the presence of God. Ever.)

(But it works for all of these people, why isn't it working for me?)

(Once I prayed that my goldfish would never die when I was nine. Instead it lived until I was 21.

It had since accumulated a growth coming out of the side of its body. The tumor grew slowly at first, turning white. Then it grew bigger, weighing the fish down day by day so that it had to swim more slowly. We weren't quite sure what to do with the poor thing.)

(Then at the end it got so bad that it just sort of clung to the leaves of fake algae, wheezing with terrified eyes, until it stopped moving and floated to the top after months of suffering.)

(What a convenient symbol.)

"I know but I don't think you need medication you can just sort of keep yourself busy. You just have to be patient."

(Yes, if I'm patient my depression will simply disappear. Well it's already been four years I better keep hanging in there. Be a good sport.)

She stared down at the phone, suspicious.

In the meantime, George was filling up the car, looking at the other people who were there. A man with an intense beard helped a woman in pregnant woman in plush pants out of the car. His truck was a bit beaten up, and looked as though it could break down any minute, and it looked as though they had trouble making ends meet.

But when they locked eyes neither of them seemed to notice that.

(I want that. Well minus the sweatpants and truck and whatnot.)

The buzzer sent Bertha off guard.

It was three thirty.

She groaned and pulled herself off the couch where she had fallen asleep, an infomercial about the sham-wow on in the background.

(It's like the whole thing was some intricate embroidery and the whole time you never realized that you didn't put a knot in the back, so everything came undone.)

She busied herself taking the blue nail-polish off of her fingers, but as hard as she tried, she couldn't get the bluish tinge off.

It was five o clock in the morning when George arrived, beeping the button urgently.

Unable to sleep but still relatively sluggish, Bertha opened the door, and before she could understand what was happening she found herself in George's arms.

But as a reaction she just felt herself tighten up into tense knot. "No, please no."

"What's the matter?" He ceased kissing her forehead and eyes and anything else that would occasionally peak out from her fetal position.

She didn't say anything, she just sat there quivering.

(What if I can't interfere... what if the author's will is done anyway?)

"Hey..." he embraced her. "Don't you want to be with me?"

Eventually her head poked up-turtle like and strained red from crying. "Of course I do."

"Then why are you crying?"

Finally she gave in, like a falling monument, burying her head into his chest.

"Are you sure about this?" She finally popped up and wiped her eyes. "I mean I was thinking I was one of those people who aren't supposed to be you know be with other people. Like those people who just work all the time. Maybe that will make me happy!"

But her subsequent sobbing suggested that she believed otherwise.

"No no no..." He began to lightly scratch her back, which seemed to calm her a bit.

"No you're right." She popped up and tried to get a grip of herself. "But I have to be tough. I just want to be one of those tough people who never cry about anything and... I just want to be super super tough like you."

"You are tough, love." He sat cross-legged, and she across from him as if they were a figure and his reflection reaching out to grab each other's hands.

"Well I have to be." She avoided his gaze. "I figure I have to let you be with someone who's better for you. You deserve a good girl... not... I don't deserve you. Besides, this is, this is...."

"What?" he looked at her inquiringly.

"This is insane." She sighed. "I mean you could be with anyone in the world. You could be with someone who's nice and normal..."

"So?" He shrugged and noticed that she had stopped crying. "Oh that's good you've stopped crying."

"I'm dehydrated." Bertha pouted. "I have no fluids left." She frowned.

"Oh goodness woman." He poured her a glass of water. "Well we wouldn't want that aye?"

"I guess not." Her face scrunched up again. "But seriously, why don't you go out and find some girl who won't damn you. It would be easier. I'm sure there's someone out there. "

"Actually..." he began hesitantly.

"That's alright." Her voice grew flat and dead. "You'll be happy then. That's all that matters. I'll be ok soon too, I'm going to get by ok. "

"No...no..." now his eyes were beginning to get teary, as Bertha began to see more and more calmed down. "I was going to say there is, but I haven't met her yet. And I choose you instead."

"Wait...." Bertha looked up inquisitively and tried to interpret that but came up with nothing. "What? How do you know someone is better for you if you haven't met them yet?"

"Look." He took her hand, and mulled over the explanation but none of his confusing ramblings would really do it any justice, so he decided to take a different approach. "It's not something I can entirely explain but I have to show you something. I know this is absolutely insane, and I..."

"You're not taking me to the hospital are you?" Bertha wrenched her hand away. "Or the asylum or the cops. Because I swear if that's the case I will sue you, don't think I won't. I know I'm crazy but I've gotten along just fine before and I'll get along fine without you after a time. "

"No Bertha no, I'm not like the others. I actually care about you. It's ok, you can trust me." He grabbed her hand back and held on to it protectively. "I'm not letting go of you. Come with me. I promise everything will make sense very, very soon. We're going to the Margins."

"The margins?" her eyes lit up with the prospect of visiting something haunted. "Well alright then, why not? Do you want to sleep here first?"

"Ah..." He wondered if any second the author would find them entwined and have them rudely plucked from existence.

(But if the author can find us anywhere, what difference does it make where we are?)

"Sure." He smiled weakly.

They felt awkward at first, sleeping at other sides of the bed, worn out and unsure where all of this was going. But then Bertha grabbed his waist in her sleep and laid his head on his chest.

He shifted over, and looked down at her, this tiny conundrum.

It was as if there was just too much person in one person let alone for one book.

If the author were to write a book about the two of them it would be the mad sort of book that would have so much outlying energy that it'd fly off shelves and hit unsuspecting librarians in the head.

On their way out the next morning, Bertha noticed a bright pink post-it on the door.

"Mr. Plot came by, inquiring about suspicious noises. Tenet must explain feline noises coming from room."

"That's odd of him to write himself in third person." George shrugged.

"Oh no that's Mrs. Livingston's writing he must have stopped by because I wasn't there. I'm not supposed to have pets here but Kitty is usually quiet aren't you?"

A pair of green eyes flickered up from her purse.

She threw it in her purse unthinkingly, and Kitty began to play with it.

"Just out of curiosity..." George asked. "What is Mr. Plot's first name?"

"I'm not sure...."

George nervously pictured Mr. Plot being some form of a mullety bounty hunter for the known universe, keeping things in order. He began to laugh.

Bertha gave him an odd look. "Never mind I'll explain later."

"You may want to lay off that coffee..." George stared at her warningly after a few hours. "You'll probably have to go the bathroom soon."

"Oh, actually..." Bertha looked at him guiltily. "I sort of already do."

-sigh-

He gave her a look, and then placed an empty soda bottle in her hands.

"There you go." He started to snicker, but truly he was afraid to stop because of Mr. Plot.

"Rude." Bertha pouted.
Chapter 6

"Make it quick!"

Bertha hopped out of the car while it was still heaving to "Park".

As she sat down on the excessively cold toilet seat she wondered how, if circumstances had been different and she hadn't known George very well, he driving her out to the middle of nowhere so urgently would seem far more suspicious.

George jerked his neck impatiently at her as she walked back to the car.

A black sedan had pulled up beside them, ruffling up dust flurries.

The area near the side of the road began to look more unruly, and before they knew it they were at the margins.

It still felt like early morning because of the coldness of the day. A loon cooed in the distance, synchronizing with the squeaking wooden sign which somehow managed to look more decrepit than it had the day before.

Bertha shuddered with excitement, eager to run off into some misadventure.

But, much to George's dismay, it seemed to take him forever to find the rock city. He kept ending up at the four cabins, too sharp minded to get lost.

"Why don't you let me try?" Bertha shrugged, as they sat on logs outside taking a break after walking strenuously in circles.

George just gave her a look.

"I don't want you to get us lost!"

"Well wasn't that how you found it in the first place?" Bertha shrugged. "Maybe it's one of those places you can only find if you're lost. And I'm very good at getting lost and stumbling upon things by accident."

"Hmm..." He continued to look skeptical, but Bertha could tell that he was going to give in soon. "Fine." He shrugged.

And sure enough they found themselves back at the two forked path.

A nearby squirrel nibbled at his acorn defensively.

Kitty popped her head up, ever alert and bounded out of Bertha's bag before she could object to the little enraged huntress.

"Kitty!" She yelled in futility. "Ugh come back..."

Bertha sat down on a nearby log. "Well maybe we should just give up then I don't even know what we're supposed to be looking for. I'm sure there are a ton of boulders in here..."

Kitty came bounding back, alert, and stood in front of Bertha looking vaguely guilty. Upon noticing her owner's disapproval, she brushed up against George's leg.

"No trust me we're almost there." He awkwardly placed flailing Kitty back in Bertha's purse.

As they walked around the stony alleys Bertha began to get a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.

"I don't think we're supposed to be here. I think we should leave..." Her eyes became panicked like a horse about to throw its rider. She was more claustrophobic than George. "We need to get out of here." She grabbed his hand urgently. "The sun is higher in the sky, who knows how dark it'll be when we get back..."

"No, just trust me..."

They stepped into the grove.

For a few moments, Bertha just stood in silence.

Kitty poked her head out of the top of Bertha's purse and began to hiss, detecting the black magic.

"Wait...that can't be right." Bertha peered closer at the wall. "Do you see that too?"

George wasn't exactly sure what to say; he was still terrified of her possible reactions.

She fell to one knee, making the leaves around her shudder.

Kitty brayed even more loudly, and hissed at the wall, emphatically.

"It's ok." George put his hands on her shoulders.

"So there is someone who is out there better for you... and... and I am damned. So all those feelings of gracelessness... those were actually real..."

"It's ok it's ok." George sat on a nearby rock and peered into her eyes. "Those things on the wall... I think that we can change them."

She steadied herself, and sat on a rock jutting out of the center of the grove. "I was right. There is a better person for you out there. But this isn't fair... I didn't formally sell my soul to the devil...that I can remember, anyway. Granted, I do tend to forget these things."

"Hey..." George looked more closely at her. "At least you're better off than the author."

Bertha brushed off her knee and sat down next to her. "Wait... what do you mean the author?"

"These notes about us... it's clear that we're some predestined fiction. And these are just the notes."

"But what about the devil? I mean granted that the author is God."

"Oh." George's eyes grew dark. "Well I'm not sure about that."

Actually he was sure.

The wind whipped through all the stones, whistling, making empty box lonely sounds.

She was hunched monstrously on the stone, the sound of her crying warping her voice.

He kneeled down and grabbed her hand.

"Let's make a heaven of this hell. Bertha.... will you marry me?"

She sat there stunned. "Yes." Flew out automatically and her eyes began to get teary. "Even if it's selfish of me... yes..."

"How is that selfish? I want to be with you too! Come on, let's get out of here..."

"You do realize..." Bertha began to pant as she put on her seatbelt. "You're potentially tearing a hole in the fabric of reality to marry me."

He grabbed her hand and shook it a bit. "Well who else is going to put up with your shenanigans?"

She grinned back, but her face fell when she realized who Mr. Plot was.

"Wait... George." She gripped his hand harder. "I don't think we can go back."

"Hmmm..." he frowned. "Well where are we supposed to go?"

The sun began to set, making the relative silence of the Margins all the more creepy.

Bertha's stomach rumbled obnoxiously.

"Well I guess we can go somewhere to eat, and then maybe figure out things from there."

The sun began to pinken everything. Eventually they pulled over and hopped to the back part of the truck. Food could wait; the world was going to end.

The wind hit the bus, creaking hollow empty world outside them, but not between them. Can the empty things hold full things and still be empty?

They lay on each other, panting and hungrier than before, yet reluctant to move from away from the warmth of each other's forms, or put their clothes back on.

(Look how defiant we are!)

(Keep your leaves away from us you cruddy Victorians.)

The sun had sunken in, leaving the brash lady bar lights.

George's snow skin turned blue and then red as he shifted his pants on.

Despite the odd hour the diner was surprisingly crowded. A couple of pre-teens, excited to be out this late, spent their time flirting with a group of boys the same age, who didn't seem to notice their silly banded hand waves and constant texting.

Giggling, gaggling, obsessed.

(Wearing more make up than I own.)

(Then again I did spend most of my pre-teen years with my nose in a book, and spent more time running away from boys than I did chasing after them.)

At another booth a middle aged couple finished up their bowls of soup, and made way for an outrageous platter of midnight breakfast.

The waitress serving them had raccoon eye-mascara, skin that was too tan, and sneakers that were too white. They squeaked viciously as her cankles picked up speed.

A heavily bearded trucker, who looked as though he could hide a bird in his beard, was discussing politics with the cook who was alternately flipping eggs and playing devil's advocate.

But as soon as they opened the door, it all stopped.

In one, slow prolonged single swoop, every head turned, as if their necks had all been cued to swivel at the same time.

"So..." George tried to break the silence, assuming that they were all silent because someone had seen them in a car.

But when they remained silent for a full one minute, necks craned in the same position, some unnaturally so, Bertha began to back up slowly.

(They know we are different.)

Bertha's eyes: blue with a yellow ring. Fire in water is witchcraft.

(Let's get the fuck out of here.)

George, irises bigger bluish green: the world.

It seemed to take forever for them to back up, slowly, slowly, slowly...

Bertha squealed in terror when her back hit the bar on the door.

And out they went, half running half walking, hungry, into the blessed night air.

"Shit, where are my keys..." George began to frantically search his pockets.

They waited for a few moments in silence.

Bertha had no desire to look at the diner again but reason told her that she should keep a lookout.

"Holy...oohh." Bertha couldn't even talk. Their heads had moved again.

But their bodies hadn't.

One of the preteen girls had her head turned exorcist style. She could almost see the blood move through her veins which had uprooted themselves from their niches. Her eyes were bulging unnaturally big jellyfish...

"George, don't look up..." Bertha finally said.

Then the savior jingling of keys.

They left marks on the pavement when they rolled out.

Neither of them could think of anything comforting to say, so they just drove and drove.

"Where do we go?" Bertha began to panic and breathe heavily.

"Well... you're going to kill me for saying this but..."

"What?"

"Oh no. Oh no no no, please no. I mean it's fine to go there during the day but weird stuff happens there at night. I really don't want to go to the Margins right now."

"Well where do you suggest we go exactly... we can't go back to town, especially not after that..."

"How are we going to get food..."Bertha stroked Kitty, who was nuzzling her urgently.

"A valid concern." George continued to drive in the same direction, but as soon as they came to a light they turned south.

"North... what's north?"

"We're going south lovely. We're going to Uncle Frank's."

"I thought Uncle Frank died."

"He did." George looked off distantly. "But I can still get in the house."

"Hmm..." Bertha looked out into nothing. It was so dark that even after putting on his brights it looked as though they were driving into ink.

George turned the radio on as the silence began to itch his insides.

Despite being the house of a deceased uncle, the old cabin was slightly comforting.

"God, it's cold in here..." George rubbed his hands, and attempted to switch the lights on, but to no avail.

"We could just sleep in the car..."

"No..." George let his eyes adjust to the dark. "It's safer in here. And besides we can still start a fire."

In the meantime, Bertha searched around blindly in musty rooms for blankets and came back with the covers from and pillows from the beds, eager to get out of each room quickly with an odd feeling that something was watching her.

"That ought to do it." The fire was crackling and dancing seductively upward.

(Nothing is more beautiful than fire.)

Bertha looked at the way her diamond glittered in the firelight.

(It's such a shame that everyone else is a zombie I wanted them all to see my ring.)

"What are you doing silly girl?" George rested his head on her shoulder.

"Nothing." She kissed him on the cheek, and then turned his head to face hers. "I'm not sure if I told you... but I super love you."

"I super love you too."

"Oooo I very much want to build a fort right now. Eeee!"

"Strange girl." He frowned, but he began to arrange the covers and pillows. "Oo actually I could build a fort to keep me safe from you."

She gave him a look.

"Grrrr...." She replied, and tackled him. "No, see now you can never, ever escape. I steal you." She smiled curtly. "See, I win."

"What are you writing about?" A hipster peered over at me. He had pretty, dark brown eyes. Unfortunately with the glasses he translated into a bit of a monkey in a sweater.

(Hmm...I'm writing a novel in Starbucks. Does that make me a hipster by default?)

(Damnit.)

(Wait no, I'm not a Democrat, nor do I own anything by American Apparel. I should be ok.)

"Nothing." I wasn't particularly interested in divulging my story.

I also wasn't particularly excited to admit that, despite having the appearance of being productive I hadn't actually written anything yet, just scribbled up four different intros and then crossed them out of my notebook which looked deceivingly like a printed book with its hard cover.

(Maybe I can start with names. Names are easy enough.)

(Caroline?)

(No, reminds me of the roses song.)

"What are you writing about?" I replied in return. He seemed to want me to ask him.

"Oh, a bunch of different things." He sighed, pushed his glasses up on his nose, and inched his mac a bit closer to him.

(Don't worry I'm not going to steal your precious story.)

"Mostly I'm going to talk about the downtrodden inner-city kids."

(Of course you are.)

"But I'm also studying the concept of "bling" and how it acts as a mockery of legitimately gotten "proper" money and old power institutions by creating new forms of power, new monarchy."

"That's really interesting. So I take it you're sociology major too?"

He gave her an odd look. "You're sociology major?" he looked me up and down.

That day I happened to be wearing a nice, bright blue corduroy skirt with black patterned tights, a scarf, and a black scarf. "Yes." I smiled. "Surprising as that is."

(Excuse me for not looking like I just rolled out of a homeless center ironically.)

(What the devil am I going to write about?)

(Why is my narration alternately in the voice of a 40 year old British man?)

(Both valid concerns.)

"So what do you normally write about?" He asked.

Another girl sitting at his table looked scornfully at me.

(Don't worry I don't want Glasses, Ms. Short hair.)

(Go stare defensively into your espresso I'm not in the mood for a staring contest right now.)

"Just stories for the moment. I'm under the great delusion that I'm going to write a novel."

"Aren't we all?" he shrugged.

(Eh, maybe hipsters aren't that bad.)

"Oh." And suddenly it hit me. "I have an idea..."

He nodded his head awkwardly, until I looked back up from my hunched stroke of genius look, realizing that he expected me to elaborate.

"I think I'm going to write a love triangle where the other person is a girl and not a guy. Like Les Miserable. And then she dies. That seems to do the trick. It's going to be about the ultimate failure and impracticality of true love."

"That sounds like a downer."

"Indeed. Well, if you think about it nothing super happy is really very good. Depressing things win awards. I'll start with your basic love story. Bertha and George, but then George meets another girl and Bertha is left to some dire fate."

But when I looked back, the hipster and his friends had magically disappeared.

(Can all of them do that?)

The table was still tottering a bit.

I shrugged and tried to start at the beginning again...

But I couldn't bear to start writing on one nice, clean blank page, and then marring it with a cross out, so I started to jot my notes in the margin.

(Stupid dirty washcloth mind always needing to be rung out.)

Phone bzzzer.

(Insistent little demon, won't you ever let me be?)

Hey you can come back to the room now.

(Thank goodness. I'm so tired of writing in public; it's so tedious talking about things you haven't written yet.)

On the way back through campus, she came across a group of drunken girls.

(Already, what time is it?)

She could hear them before she could see them though.

"Omg, omg no she is such a bitch... omg we need more pictures I look fat in this one!"

Teetering and tottering and giggling.

Garish tans.

Geese on stilts.

Squawkers.

They gave me a look, looked at one another, and started to whisper.

(Why do you want to push down all of the things that are blooming up?)

"Is that...?"

"Yeah, yeah, that's her."

"Oh my god, she does look crazy."

I am legend.

Is it horrible that I want to think that they are talking about me?

You're not supposed to like that sort of attention.

Right?

Everyone has to start somewhere.

But I have bigger things to contend with than tittering chimpanzees.

The smell of passing coffee caught my struck heart.

(I want.)

(oh...)

(Awkward ahhh no awkward awkward, look down. No don't look down too dramatically, no look away...)

It wasn't him.

Sigh.

(Thank goodness...)

(Right?)

(Why is it that the fallen always have a habit of finding one another?)

(But I should save them from that. Good for them.)

(After all dating me is a bit like carrying the ring; most of the good ones turn half-mad and evil.) (If in fact we exist in a multi-verse, there's probably versions of us who have dated, married, killed, or never known each other anyway, so it doesn't seem to make much of a difference which verse it happens in.)

By the time she got back her roommate had already fallen asleep with the lights still on and a book in her hand.

(I wish I was able to do that.)

But despite being tired, I could only twist and turn in bed, constantly getting up to adjust my back so I could potentially be comfortable, and listening to a mix of conversations that wafted up from the vent above my bed combined and the trailing drunken discourse of people near one of the main gates.

(Bubble girl.)

But for once I actually recognized a voice. It was one of my exs, pretending to be tough and probably lighting a cigarette in front of this skinny girl who had been following him about for some time.

(Get together already!)

(Don't you hate when you see two people who match and you don't have the authority to provide the circumstances for them to do so?)

(Of course, I have been wrong in the past... but I'm pretty sure about this one.)

The older I get the more and more I notice people who just match. They don't necessarily have to look alike but sometimes they do. They talk similarly, or answer questions in similar manners.

But at the moment he was with a different girl, who, quite frankly, was too pretty for him, and all wrong...

(Do I have to come down and fix everything myself?)

(Of course everything is supposed to happen for a reason, but no one ever said that it was necessarily a good one.)

(Maybe the author is just getting sloppy.)

I turned a bit, lifting my arm up around my pillow, seeing if the elevation helped a bit.

(I really need to work on my posture.)

(Eh... I guess I'll sleep when I'm dead.)

As I took out my notebook, the morning birds started to chirp.

Morning birds are the worst, when you can't sleep.

(They're mocking me in a sing-song manner.)

(Them and that damn radiator hissing all the time.)

(Well, you know what. In the universe I'm about to write all the birds went extinct because they were all eaten by symbolically fictitious cats, and radiators were never even invented.)

(So there!)

(You know something is wrong with you when you have the desire to avenge yourself on the radiator that keeps you up at night.)

(Although I do like dogs better, why are all these iconic movies associated with cats?)

(All of my encounters with cats have been far less epic in comparison.)

(No, no I'll use the cat for now.)

(And I'll match all the people I want to together, and explain the tragedy of being with someone who you don't match.)

(The concept of fate is a bitch.)

By the time I had finished scribbling notes and some of the hastily done preliminary pages it was light out and the garbage-men where courteously shouting in Spanish and clanking everything.

(How did I end up making myself care so much about something that technically doesn't exist?)

(If the world doesn't make sense, I'll make one that does.)

(I am the mad scientist with no limits.)

(Mmm I want Dunkin doughnuts for...)

George and Bertha woke up tangled and thankful.

"Hey George?"

He turned over. "Hmmm?"

"Shouldn't we be dead."

"Mhm." He groaned, only half listening.

"I thought so." Bertha sat up. "I just have the strangest feeling that everything is going to go horribly wrong."

"Mmm?" George was still buried under the covers, reluctant to move. "No, I'll cuddle later. Sleep now."

"Wait, do you smell that? It smells like something is burning." She got up despite her reluctance to move from the warm buffer of blankets into the cold, dusty house.

By day the house was far less creepy. It still had a quality of old cabin to it, that was for sure, but not haunted old cabin, just stale house.

The fire had since burned down to ashes, and it didn't appear to have moved from the fire place.

Yawning, she opened the door to acres and acres of...

Nothing.

It looked like some backdrop for one of Salvador Dali's warped clocks.

A few burnt trees, still smoking, looked like skinny, hunted and depraved skeletons on the vast hills of rock and ashes. The only sign of life was the resilient tiny purple flowers of fireweed emerging from some of the cracks.

It looked like Tim Burton purgatory, but if you squinted hard enough...

(This looks oddly a lot like my nirvana, with the purple flowers, just not constructed yet.)

The sun, fresh in the sky, painted everything pink tinged.

"George come here for a second..."

"Fine." He snarled, and stumbled over zombie-like. "Huh..." the image struck him momentarily silent. He scratched his tussle of unruly curls. "I've never seen anything like it. Goodness I'm hungry. There's a Dunkin doughnuts down the way do you want to try our luck with that..."

"Hmm..." Something brushed against her leg.

Kitty had a dead bird in her mouth. How she managed to look so cute and innocent with a bird who had broken its neck and dripped blood on the porch was beyond Bertha.

"Kitty don't eat that."

Kitty tilted her head, and pranced off with her prize, well aware that Bertha would not be able to pry it from her iron like jaw grip.

"George..." Bertha felt quicksand hollow out the bottom of her stomach. "What do you think happened to our families?"

"I don't know..." George suddenly looked nervous too. "Hmmm... let's work on getting food first. I know those people in the diner were terrifying..."

Bertha shuddered.

"To say the least... but they didn't come after us. And facing one shouldn't be too bad besides..." He disappeared with that trailing thought.

The thought of anything bad happening to her family was almost more than she could bear, and she began to blame herself ahead of time.

"Why didn't I check on them...?" She petted Kitty, who was contentedly licking the blood off her tiny chin.

Suddenly Bertha heard what sounded like a loading shotgun.

"...we have protection now." George finally finished that thought.

"You wouldn't use that, would you?" Bertha looked at him, confused.

"Only to scare them off if they approach." George explained, seemingly feeling at odds holding the gun. "I don't like it either, but if something ever happened to you I couldn't forgive myself."

"I'll try and find something too."

Bertha searched through old drawers, crawling with moths and flannels.

(And he didn't even die that long ago.)

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately because Bertha had no idea how to use a gun, she only found what looked like some sort of hunting dagger. The handle was well-worn and craved into what looked like a tiger.

(If no one's putting any symbolism in this story, why is it still showing up?)

She didn't plan on using it at all, but having it sheathed at her belt made her feel a lot better. And also like a badass.

"To Dunkin Doughnuts?" Bertha asked.

He cocked his gun. "Let's do this."

After which they proceeded to laugh, almost wickedly.

"Who knew the end of the world was going to be so much fun?" Bertha's finger traced the pattern on the handle. "Wait do you have money?"

George gave her a look. "Darling, all of this is a fiction, you might as well pay with monopoly money; none of this is backed by anything."

Bertha, very taken with the idea of fake money and feeling guilty about just stealing something even if the person they were stealing from was essentially blind in some hypnotic stupor, took a piece of paper along, and began to draw the first new dollar.

She started drawing a cat's eye, but only just finished it by the time they got there.

So there it was the symbol of a new nation, taken from an old one and an even older one: an eye.

"George." She turned his head as they parked. "Did I ever tell you, you have the best eyes?"

"Not now." George got out of the car, spastically, urgent to get his bagel and run.

The man at the counter didn't see them at first; he just continued to put some croissants up on the shelf.

But the second he caught them out of the corner of his eye, he froze.

Bertha's first reaction was to back out again.

"It's ok." George grabbed her hand, which was shaking too.

They made their way slowly up to the counter, where the man peered at them as if he were some form of robot.

But, sure enough, he didn't move.

Bertha, anxious for coffee, decided to blatantly ask "Can I have number 8 please with black coffee" out of habit.

He didn't move, but tilted his head eerily.

"I'll take it black." Bertha said, pseudo-impatiently.

His stare was particularly unnerving.

"Here give me the gun." Bertha took it, and held it up to his face. "Now get us some doughnuts and a coffee for me."

George obeyed reluctantly, afraid that any minute the employees head would snap around, but he or it remained focused on the gun perhaps out of some eternal instinct.

Still shaken up, they ran out, never fully looking back.

Unthinkingly they backed up, not noticing the obstruction, until their car reeled upward and suffered the damage.

Screeching metal...

"What the hell was that?"

Neither of them moved, frozen in place.

Bertha noticed the garbage can rolling off lopsided with a dent in it, and settling to a halt.

Behind the cash register the man began to move again, but didn't seem to notice them at all. It was as if he were a holograph on a loop putting the croissants back up again.

"It was just that." Bertha decided, and they pulled away neglecting to notice the woman lying on the ground where their car had been.

A livid red halo surrounded her cracked neck and awkwardly crushed and twisted features. Reconstructed, she had green eyes, a pretty nose, and a nice laugh. She had been coming into work to help take the shift of the man putting away the croissants. He had simply gotten a "creepy feeling" but unable to explain it simply said that he needed her to come in to make up one of her days.

She reluctantly agreed and drove over in a green Volvo where she suddenly caught sight of Bertha and George and froze, as they backed over her.

In the meantime, Bertha and George were entirely unaware that they had hit someone, and the evidence came off in the misty rain, leaving scarlet lines in the road of a newly lawless land, as they sang a Journey song to make up for the lost radio.

And it just so happened...

... that girl...

... may have possibly...

... wait, let me check on that...

... may have been..

... George's soul-mate.

"I'm tired of singing" Bertha decided. "And we should probably ditch this car soon. Whatever we hit, it's making the car slower. Don't you think?"

Chapter 7

I yawn, and step back from the computer, nearly finishing a chapter where the main character meets the "love of his life" in a cemetery.

(What did I...)

Apparently I had been scratching my arm with the tip of my pen instead of the butt, so it looks as though my tools turned against me.

(I wonder if I can connect the dots and spell out "Homo fugue.")

(That would be a fabulous tattoo.)

(New skin cells.)

(If you have a ship where all of the pieces have been gradually replaced by new wood, is it still the same ship?)

Tea time!

("Drink me" to wake up. Coffee, coffee, tea, soda.)

("Eat me" to sleep. Advil PM.)

I thought these night hours were supposed to be symptoms of being young and restless... But I'm 21 and I've had this since I was a baby.

Parent's baggy eyes and mid-day naps with jaw slightly open.

Falling asleep with book in hand or football game turns on.

Switches to an infomercial about cooking fish.

(What are you watching?)

(Oh, I didn't realize you were asleep...)

Extended bursts of energy followed by burnout.

Days of super production... LSAT on LSAT problem, staying up until three doing homework ahead of time and getting lost in novels that weigh as much as a small child. Everything has been super cleaned, enough Clorox to smell it from the hall, eyebrows plucked and red, hard to pay attention with my friends thinking too much about the other things I have to do, or what clothes I have left after some of them got ruined by the school dryers....

And then suddenly it stops, and everything moves in slow motion.

Everything is more difficult to do but I'm calm, a figure moving in an atmosphere thick as amber, lulling poppies, we'll never make it to the emerald city if we fall asleep.

(Is this what relaxation feels like?)

(I very much detest it.)

"You don't always have to be doing something..."

... actually... I do.

(Who was is that said you only need 5 hours of sleep and could still be productive.)

(Ben Franklin?)

Sometimes it's nice to be awake when the rest of the world is asleep. You can hear the little things like planes passing over head, the wind shifting in the trees.

(The wind. How can something so seemingly insubstantial be so powerful?)

I find I like 3:00 at night the best.

It's the sort of time when the weekend winds down.

If you're outside and cold, you get back and get all warmed and cozy.

(Close your book; the next chapter will be their tomorrow.)

Must mean I'm a witch though, enjoying 3:00 at night.

Why is night so evil?

Parent don't want you to be out or night, people who come out at night are up to something bad.

I ought to move somewhere else, where they start dinner at ten and sleep during the day.

Sounds ideal to me...

(Except England of course, last call at 11, getting all dressed up at 8 or 9.)

(Strange.)

And here I am in New York, conveniently "the city that doesn't sleep."

(Why New York brags about insomnia is beyond me.)

At least I sort of fit here, city of caricatures, city of bust your ass, except everyone here likes being so tough.

(I'm about as tough as "the Cure".)

I need a different late night city.

(Oh, chai tea, fill my soul...)

(Hmm, it seems a bit mundane to write an ode to tea.)

(I'll write one to the boy in Spanish class, I like what's his name... oh yes....)

(The one with the nice blue eyes who moved a desk over and sat next to me; I might have made George after him.)

Wish I could say it was an accident.

(I remember those silly R.L. Stein books. He'd introduce every one by saying that any person who is terrorized in his books and resemblances to anyone in real life are merely coincidental. I guess that makes sense in those sort of things, but still it seems so silly.)

I shrugged.

(I'll own up to it, I don't care. Most of my characters are based off of real people.)

(Probably not you though.)

(You're so vain... you probably think this book is about you.)

(Trust me, it's mostly about me.)

(I'm vainer than you are.)

(But don't we all want things to be about ourselves?)

(I'll own up to that too. I've wanted someone to write a song about me. A good one though, not a crumby one where I'm compared to the moon. I want to be someone people talk about, but in reality, few people know or have ever known me and if they take notice of me, it's as indifferently as "yes, there is a tree over there." )

(There are so many background people who think they're in the foreground.)

(When, truth be told there is no foreground.)

(I have 500 trophies, but it doesn't mean I'm special.)

(I need a calling, like the Protestants.)

... Can playing devil's advocate be a calling?

Well, being a trickster seems to define it better.

That sly figure that gets away with things other people don't.

Kitty began to paw at a bagel playfully as if it were her pray.

She stalked it from all angles, and then pounced.

"Awww..." Bertha watched her lovingly. "Who knew something so vicious and diabolical could be so cute!"

"I know." George smirked. "But you always manage to surprise me." He kissed her on the cheek.

"I'm not that bad, am I?" Bertha frowned.

"I said you were cute, love." George emphasized. "And yes, yes you are. But hey, it keeps thinks interesting."

"You know what I just realized..." Bertha sighed. "Wait, wait stop over there, there's an abandoned Mustang."

"Well that's awfully convenient. Of course it's not a terribly subtle car."

Too late. 'Well ours doesn't seem to be holding up so well. Bertha sat there, mouth open. "I want."

"You like cars?" George looked at her oddly.

"It's sort of a long story... but I did drive a mustang once, and ever since...Please, please let me drive. Please."

He gave her a look. "The last time I let you drive we nearly got in an accident."

"I'm not that bad of a driver..." She pouted.

Silence.

"Fine..." She sighed. "But only because it's the apocalypse and if we run into something stopped on the road I don't want you to blame me."

"Fair enough." He shrugged, as they pulled over. "So what were you saying you realized?"

"Oh yes um..." She was temporarily distracted by their new surroundings.

Neither of them noticed the severe damage done to their car.

"...ah, that's it I was going to tell you Happy Birthday!"

"Oh thank you. I forgot about it honestly."

"Hmm but I feel horrible I don't have anything to give you right now..." She pouted.

"Well write me an ode then." He shrugged.

"What sort of ode?"

"Like from the Odyssey." George craned his neck to check for any potential oncoming traffic, as they headed back to the city, both secretly nervous about their families.

"Oh ok." Bertha took the other half of paper, and spent the time scribbling out various ideas

After a half hour of relative silence, Bertha took it out and opened her mouth but then paused, embarrassed to read it.

"Oh blue eyed Adonis... eh I can't read this." She blushed.

"What you've never written poetry before?" He nudged her.

"No I have." Bertha sighed. "Much to the dismay of my poetry teacher... but I thought we were just going to have to learn poetry not write our own, do you know how horrible of a poet I am?" She blushed. "It's so bad. Like really, really bad. Writing poetry is generally not a good deal."

"It can't be that bad."

"Oh, no it is."

"Well just read it quickly then... it's like pulling off a Band-Aid."

"Alright she sighed. Here it goes..."

Her voice changed as she began to read.

"Blue-eyed Adonis I'll follow you everywhere if you let me... I'm sorry." She started laughing.

"No, it's sweet. Keep going."

"Ok." Bertha grew bright red and read off the rattling thing, which we cannot include for fear of dead poets digging themselves up from their graves and physically attacking the author.

He was quiet for a moment.

"See I told you it was dumb."

He pulled her into a short kiss. "You're sweet. Hmm..." I suppose I should have to write you an ode to what the..."

Something swerved out of the way and started honking.

They sat at the side of the road panting.

(Time couldn't pick a more inconvenient place to resume than on a one way street.)

As they got closer to the city they stopped for gas, still jumpy despite the fact that time had clearly resumed.

In the meantime, back at Dunkin Doughnuts, the man spotted the half-sheet of paper with the eye on it and began to pack up his things hastily.

"Shit they're on to me."

He was running so fast, he barely noticed his co-worker, but hastily ripped out of the parking lot once he discovered her.

"God, god I can't believe I got her killed." His hands were shaking on the steering wheel. "Vinny is going to have my fingers for this."

The eye symbol, apparently, had been a sign of the local mafia.

"Well did you think of anything yet?" Bertha asked as they came up to the city. They would have to fix everything, and had to text their families. George's mother was probably to the point of calling Brian, who of course, George had forgotten to contact.

"Hmm... well I guess it isn't really a poem, but here it goes... you make me want to be a better person. Is that good?"

"Aww baby!" Bertha smiled, and kissed him at a stoplight.

In the next car over a teenager scowled at her.

There are always those obnoxious, selfish people who spend Valentine's Day trying to make people feel sorry for them because they didn't have the guts or initiative to try and get involved with someone.

It's not the people who are thankful for their friends and family on Valentine's Day despite being single.

It's that sour type.

Like Bertha before George.

("Thank goodness I'm not you anymore.") Bertha smiled.

I was about to break up George and Bertha when the fire drill rudely interrupted my miserable progress.

"Ugh! Didn't we just have a fire drill?" I shouted down, complaining to my roommate.

Four grumbling minutes later, we settled in one of the couches in the campus coffee shop.

"Oh no." I grew pale. "I left my story out there in the open..."

"What could possibly happen to it? I doubt anyone is going to read it."

"There's more truth to that than I care to know. No I know no one will read it but still... it's like my baby and I'm like a mother bear. If you read my story before it's perfect I'll rip your head off."

"What's it about anyway?" She asked curiously as we waited for my chai tea.

"Well it's sort of a generic love story that goes horribly wrong. And everyone dies."

"I thought the guy was going to live, what was his name... Chris?"

"No, it's George." I blurted out, face hot. "I'm going to do two fake outs. So the first time around he thinks it's Bertha but then he meets...what's-her-face... well he meets someone who he think is perfect but it turns out that she's just working for the mafia to avenge her father because she and he are from opposing Italian families. And her brother is involved somehow too, he's the main guy, she just sort of gets in the way of everything and both her and George end up dying. Except she doesn't love him so while she dies for love of her family he just dies for unrequited love of her."

"That sounds fun." Katie said flatly. "By the way Rose mentioned going out tonight. Now, I am certainly not going out, to that crumby sticky little overpriced bar because if it's crowded I may get violent."

"Understood." I sighed. "I wouldn't mind going out."

As I spaced out, I noticed a pair of glowering, sulking, accusatory eyes.

(Well, what are you looking at, strange person?)

(I hope you're not in the unfortunate position of liking me.)

"Chai tea!!"

"Thanks!" She picked it up half burning her fingers. "Do you think that we can go back in the building by now?"

But unfortunately clusters of people still surrounded the building, which held a deceivingly large number of people for its size.

Girls and boys in sweatpants flirted with each other by the yellow light of the lamps.

"Yeah... we have had a lot of fire drill..."

"Oh, I didn't know you lived on the fourth floor..."

(I guess you can't fault them for it. You never know where you're going to meet someone. If you listen to the stories of how people met, it's usually in situations that don't necessarily warrant romance.)

(I wonder what the R.A.'s must think of people as they go from room to room.)

(You can tell a lot about a person by the way they keep their room.)

(I really, really do hope I've closed my notebook. Most people aren't snoops, but there's a good chance I've written something offensive.)

It had happened before. One time I got so angry and written a subsequently fiery poem that it offended the whole literary magazine at their college.

(Probably the line about ugly girls not having a monopoly on intelligence...)

(Eh... still don't regret it.)

(Of course, I hadn't realized that part of the coven was on the board.)

(Is it a coincidence that Bertha can't run away from any of her enemies either? They leaked in there too, the damn corpse kickers.)

It started off when they started to sit near her in class. Then some of them began to follow her around, to the library and unfortunately they figured out where her dorm room was.

The first few weeks of it were hell, because she had mistakenly believed that it was all either coincidental or that they had wanted to be her friends.

But then things started to get weirdly stalker-ish...gave her the feelings of a fly caught in syrup... yet in the end...

(Is it horrible that they disappoint me as enemies?)

I waved reluctantly at the R.A.

(She was very into bonding.)

(I think R.A.'s are supposed to be though.)

(I have my friends and group of people I know I can trust. I don't want to cause any trouble but I've found it's a lot easier to keep to myself. It doesn't mean I don't like other people. On the other hand I do, I think other people are very interesting.)

(I guess I just like being the stranger.)

(I can't even "go native" in my own life.)

Thankfully my notebook is in the same place, untouched.

Notes in the margin, something about a proposal.

(That's weird; I don't remember writing that...)

(Guess it could make things more tragic?)

Into the furthest, darkest corner of the desk, stay safe your sacredness.

Tear me out of this repetition... classes, homework, bed, no sleep, call home "yes, yes everything is fine I was thinking of doing this or that in terms of graduate school" "Oh don't worry about that yet" "Was thinking of getting a job" Zebra comforter is not a person I want to sleep with the boy I like but I can't, because he told me I'm not good at sleeping can't very well blame _..._ why do you own so much black? Are you acknowledging your own mortality New York... for being known as being so shiny I just see you dim, black on black on black clothes everyone business standardized.. very well very well.. teach me to be someone who looks good in a suit and keeps her mouth shut, that's the best for everyone right?... a job isn't a calling anymore, a job is the new goal...pick a job any job... if you don't love it you'll grow to love it... but I don't want to be ordinary..

Bother. I'm destined to be ordinary. I'm going to make myself a bag of popcorn and least enjoy the entertainment value in all of it.

Maybe life will make more sense if I stop trying to make sense of it anway.

Nothing good on. Change the channel.

Shit, is it Valentine's Day?

I hate Valentine's Day.

Light streamed in through the windows of her old room, in her parent's house. It smelled like incense and ink. Waft in the Homesmell.

It was the perfect setting for her monologue.

"Shakespeare, so obsessed with his trade found it absolutely necessary to shake the earth like an eager child with a snow globe causing Ophelia to stumble into the lake. "Oops." He presses his fingers to his lips. "Well I should make it look like a suicide. Elizabethan women seem to be killing themselves off all the time anyway." Shakespeare, the man eating popcorn in the graveyard on a paint chipped Adirondack chair next to a grave that says "Yoric". "I daresay Yoric, this is all very entertaining, these living people. Yoric?"

No response.

"Thou asshole. I swear I'm going to make fun of you later for this, just you wait."

All of the strange happenings in New York led Bertha to "the All America city".

Bright Victorian houses, more decrepit closer to the hospitals contrast to the well-trimmed seemingly endless suburbs, giant courthouse looks awkwardly super phallic, the land of private schools and lawyers and movement, Elmwood with your blonde cornrows and coffeehouses and local artists. West side rowing club, lighthouse run be careful if a shady van follows you as you run through... rowed up a body once I heard.

Death city. Death of industry the old creaking steel mills on the water. Teenage-wasteland

Sabres-games.

I don't quite belong to you, don't have the flat nasally aaa-a as much, but then I don't have the Wisconsin oohhh as in "Don'tyaknow!, and sometimes there's even a Western Pennsylvania twang odd how sometimes my mother sometimes sounds like she's from the south.

Bertha felt home in her winter house, in her winter room. Blue-grey sky on bluish snow when it's cold and the world seems so empty that a passing plane is as loud as your stomach grumbling during a test. Blue paisley sheets, and blue gray walls blue notebooks with blue ink of course, blue shirts all stacked together. Blue-lonely and blue-homey all at once.

Walls all covered with drawings and posters for silly things like how to read tarot cards.

Downstairs, the imposing black and white photos.

Don't know much about them only knew them when I was little.

The legendary eight, only one still living.

All the old lace and old hair-cuts, short and curly, looks like everyone had dark hair.

Some smiling-some not. The Italians aren't smiling; the German, Polish, Austrian, and Hungarian with smiles.

One Italian bride particularly pissed off. She left Italy before discovering how short her arranged marriage husband was.

One identical looking to my father. Eerie. Hanish pronounced Ha-an-nish.

Pasquale. Came over at thirteen, looks so very severe but we look the same. Same eyes. Do these people live on through me?

And weirdly enough I am committing identity theft.

These people, my dog, these pictures and the glossy piano and blue blueness of everything it all belonged to the author, but now... it's mine.

If I am her and she is me, can we both be?

Father, son, and holy-ghost; author, daughter, void.

"Hey." George came up from the basement hair messed up.

(I wonder what we'd look like in a black in white photo.)

There's something so poignant about him being here, walking around as though he's in an intruder in the dead of night.

In the kitchen my father began to make crepes.

So strange to be here, near the couldasack that I used to play "house" on reluctantly with the neighbor. I preferred kick ball to imaginary babies. Get out of the street when a car drives by "Hey Arnold" style. The neighbors that sent me down the hill in the backyard in a baby doll stroller tiny thing that I was, but lanky like a stork. Can't say I didn't want to do it then, can't say I wouldn't do it now but my butt is too big and the stroller has been since sold at a garage sale.

Spanning out like Google earth it looks like a green eye hill.

"You guys hungry?"

Thankfully we were, and able to challenge to the several paper like grilled crepes waiting to contest our appetite.

(So strange being back at this table. Brother in college. The little boy who used to head-butt people sitting in his usual spot across from me. Parallel points.

And my sister doing her residency. Far less of a shopper now. Still expressive like an actress.

Dad goof ball still visiting the hospital now and then and biking with mangled knees.

Mother calm to his stress. Quiet, intelligent, always reading, rolling her eyes at my father.)

When you see people like that who are all settled down, it makes you so impatient. I want to be able to own a house I come to every day, not rent some place that isn't quite home yet. I want to have the token husband and give in to the pull of church even if I don't believe it I'm probably still going to raise my kids the same way maybe just once a month with the church though.

Other people idealize youth, running around clubs and pubs studying beauty but honestly... I want adulthood so badly. I don't want Ke$ha and vodka like I'm supposed to, I want cheese and wine with a few friends saving up for some exotic vacation. I actually like classical music and reading. I'm cool like that.

Without warning we are on our way back.

It's horrible: it doesn't matter how many times you fly, airports do not get nostalgic. Planes yes, but airports are like hospitals. Cold blank walls with the sealed exits and the sub-arctic conditions, as if people really want to be this cold. All craziness ensuing. The temporarily misplaced persons express anguish in their nomad-hood.

Bertha grabbed George's hand.

Across from them sat a man dressed in a pink bandanna and what looked like a kimono, shouting loudly. "And he said go out, got out and be the salt of the earth."

Bertha frowned. "Salt of the earth, what a strange concept..."

"Mhm." George was playing some game on his phone.

"If you salt earth it makes it difficult to impossible for crops to grow. That's why the Romans salted the earth when they conquered Carthage. Why would anyone want to be something so destructive and counterintuitive?"

"Well..." George tilted his phone, engrossed in the screen. "It might be the renouncement of mundane food and simple pleasures for the concept of eternal food."

"Maybe." Bertha shrugged, and pried open her rather large novel trying to get re-immersed. But the impracticality of salting the earth or being the salt of the earth still struck her.

(There must be something I'm not getting. Salt adds flavor so maybe it has to do with creating a culture. That much I get, but then why not just say the salt of your food. And besides, the point of salt seems more for garnish than for anything else. It's like saying be the insignificant seasoning, don't be anything substantial.)

(Is adding salt to the earth like adding meaning to life? You don't necessarily need seasoning to survive but it makes eating life a lot easier.)

(Or maybe it means that they should be endless, like grains of salt.)

(I haven't the slightest idea, but having dropped Christianity, at the expense of potential bad luck, I should promptly find a Christian to throw over my shoulder for good luck.)

Naturally the flight was running late, Buffalo was a dead end stop, and the planes seemed in no rush to get there.

"Alright folks can I ask that you move your bag to the apartment above your head." The flight attendant had a stretched worn out smile, patience wearing thin. It was difficult to tell if she was being polite or simply going mad.

As the plane ascended George's hand gripped her more tightly. He wasn't one for flying.

But Bertha felt at home among the clouds.

Real heaven, looking down at the world and seeing all the different ways that cities were plotted out, the beautiful city lights the lakes, the tiny clusters of farms and valleys. Being able to see different parts of the country picturing different lives: families on farms, families in the city and the mountains, local bars and restaurants and different accents plotted out: it's all just so perfect. We went up, saw the charted cities, and pulled the gods down with us

And then comes the longing that comes from being above the world that makes you want to get back into it.

I want to explore all those little towns, all the nooks in the different boroughs, hear silence in the Rockies and hear everything in New York. Dissect the suburbs of each place and listen to a million different perspectives. Explore the boiling nectar cities in the dark.

Who ever said Paradise was in the east?

I am living a bit in the past on this plane due to the extended distance from the earth. When time sits still my past comes for my bounty, wielding clubs.

(Odd that they should all pick the same flight.)

Do you ever wonder what would happen if all the people you've ever had problems went all met up at the same time?

(Trying to find some similarity between all of them but it seems futile. Let me think, let me think let me think...)

One doesn't make a move, one doesn't speak her mind, one doesn't play guitar well, one doesn't....

Doesn't.

That must be it.

I despise the half-assers and the cowards of the world. The roommate who let the love of her life slip away passively.

The men who tried just friends as a move.

The people who just sort of live their life, no emotion, blah blah blah blah blah. Vanilla.

I wonder what it would be like to be boring.

It sounds horrific.

I don't want to be safe.

"Folks we are about to descend. Please place your tray tables in the up-right position. Use of all electronic devices is now prohibited."

The woman came back around, shrill as ever, waking George out of his temporary slumber.

(The liquid gold tendrils greedy veins grasping, clutching, cities burst leaked lights across the country all Technicolor veins.)

(Come to think of it I'm pretty tired too.)

(A tad hung over.)

(Despite my whole philosophy I must put out the disclaimer that flying is more like Paradise when you aren't hung-over.)

(At least I'm not sitting next to anyone obese or sweaty or with a baby. Or all three: the trifecta.)

A bit of turbulence on the way down shifted some of the bags above my head.

(If somehow this causes my notebook to fall out and I lose it...)

"Oh my God." A woman exclaimed. "Look out the window."

What had used to be Westchester had apparently all burnt down.

Blackened chunks of debris floated in the Hudson.

But rather miraculously, it seemed as though the fire had been contained, and had only caught the very edges of the city the way fire begins to eat and blacken the edge of a page before it fully catches.

Bertha gazed at George as he slept. He looked so peaceful and cute, curled up like a squirrel. She kissed him awake as they landed.

"Hey love." He just-woke-up-grinned and wiped some of the sleep spittle off on his cuff.

"Hi baby. Aww you're so cute."

"You're cute too."

The flight attendant looked relieved as everyone began to turn their cell phones back on.

The five minutes after you land somewhere is always the longest. Cramped legs pulling suitcases awkwardly from above and sort of half obliging and half cutting to get out of there. Everyone wanting a shower and fresh air...

"You know I had the weirdest dream." He yawned. "But I really can't remember what it was. Oh well. I think I was going to ask you something but I can't remember. Did you ever happen to go back to the Margins that one weekend with your family...?"

"Yeah I did." Bertha noted bluntly, and unconsciously smirked a bit.

"Bertha...." He said, more exhausted than anything else. "What exactly did you do?'

"Nothing." She said, blinking innocently.

"Alright." He looked at her suspiciously. "I don't believe you, but I figure you can't keep a secret for very long you'll probably end up telling me later anyway."

"Mhm." Bertha nodded curtly. "Don't worry about it love. I just had to get a few things taken care of."

Chapter 8

It was a crazy night. I had come back from a rather unsuccessful endeavor at a drink up at

Michelangelo's where the only person who had approached me had been a rather Kermity looking young man with bulging eyes and a blue sweater.

He seemed to have a regular rotation among the three girls nice enough to talk to him, but after a while we tried to get rid of the empty extra chair available at our table for fear he, or someone else, would come back around.

Every so often some poor boy would be pushed to our table where the three of us sat, amused until their awkwardness got old and he retreated, into the depths. The boys who came back got un-amused stares and a reception for telemarketers.

Finally he sort of just hovered over me and asked me to dance, so I dodged a bit and finally decided it was time to leave.

"I mean I mean I don't want to pat myself on the back..." I staggered a bit." But I think I finally created a plot that makes everyone happy. This is the one I'm going to publish."

When they deposited me at my room I decided to crack open my notebook, and tried to start off from where I left off. Intoxicated and very lonely I blindly followed the notes in the margins.

The next morning I pried it open and began to read, and got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

(Wait this isn't what I wanted to happen at all, this doesn't even make sense, where did I write this down...)

The others in the cafeteria gave me a strange look as I flipped through the pages frantically, looking at my notes.

(This can't be right, did someone steal my notebook?)

I grabbed my dish of something-or-another and forcefully set in on the conveyer belt and headed back to my room.

My roommate jumped as I threw the door open.

"You scared the crap out of me!" She panted.

It made me feel much better that she was in the room.

"Good thing you came in here. I almost forgot I had work." She struggled with her shoes and half ran out the door.

(Well bother that... now where was I.)

Half-mad I shut the blinds.

(Where are these notes where are these notes maybe I wrote them when I was drunk that's why I don't remember them...)

It didn't even look like my handwriting.

Bertha accepts George's proposal

They go to Uncle Frank's house and Dunkin doughnuts

(Holy hell I didn't write this...)

But yet there were pages and pages and pages of writing.

I texted everyone rapidly if they had touched my notebook.

(No/ No I didn't know you were writing too/ No, are you alright?)

(I'll get back to you on that last one.)

(To hell with this! This was my everything. I just wanted to be able to control one thing about my life, why couldn't this just be like a normal book?)

(Maybe someone else stole it...)

(But who would steal it? No one would bother to do this I'm positive.)

I began to flip the pages, and realize that they extended beyond the margin and bled over into the rest of the page, flooding purple tirades.

Dear Author,

My name is Bertha, perhaps you remember me as THE GIRL YOU WERE GOING TO KILL

OFF. Listen, I know you have a vision or whatever, but I'm generally not a big fan of it so I'll tell you how things are going to be. I'm going to be with George, and his "soulmate", somehow or another; is not going to be a problem anymore, she and George will not get together. Additionally why the hell would you torment my brother? Its one thing to pick on me but to pick on him is just downright wrong. From here on out he's going to be happy, and so am I.

We don't have to listen to you anymore and we're not going to. I don't know what the hell is wrong with you that you would want to write something so miserable, but it doesn't matter anymore.

As for the rest of the fictional world we'll let them continue to believe in you for now. Quite frankly it makes their and our lives easier if we assume that you know what you're doing, which apparently you don't.

And you know what, I would have never bothered you if you had just let me be with George, and left my family alone. However, it seems you leave me no other option. From here on out, you have absolutely no control over us. You had your privileges and you abused them and it's something that, I will not stand for. This took me forever to do in purple nail-polish so you better damn-well read it.

Sincerely,

Bertha

(Is this some sort of joke? Who the hell would do something like this, this can't be...)

The handwriting was completely unrecognizable, except on certain letters like I, where our handwriting matched up.

(Made in my own image.)

(There must be a way to stop her.)

(You can take the rest from me but you can't take this, sorry. If it isn't my way then, that's that. Sorry Bertha. Nice try.)

(How am I going to do this without being noticed, that may be difficult.)

"Excuse me..." I asked the people standing in the stoop for fear of oncoming rain, huddling to the warmth of the building and lighting up their cigarettes "Do you have a light?"

"Sure." One of them reluctantly handed me a cheesy lighter.

"Thanks!" I ran off, suspiciously.

"Hey!" he shouted after me confused, so I shouted over my back. "I'll be right back."

The lighter took forever to get a flame. Click, clickclickclick click (C'mon, c'mon.)

A brilliant flame leapt out of its throat.

(How is something so destructive so beautiful?)

(Baptized by fire.)

The page began to catch but far more slowly than I had hoped, and it only slightly warped the hard cover.

"Ah fuck." The tip of my finger was red and blistered but I hadn't noticed, so set in my ways on the destruction of this new world.

It was trying to fight back.

Suddenly I had the unnerving feeling of eyes on my back. For once it wasn't just my paranoia....

A group of well-dressed women and gentlemen looked at me oddly. They all looked relatively wealthy in pearls and suits.

"Oh my." One of them said, but the rest of them were too shocked to say anything.

I turned a quarter of an inch more and noticed the sign.

The University welcomes its most honored guests for the fundraiser for the arts and preservation of our library.

A black leathered foot stomped it out, probably a security guard.

(Naturally.)

The woman in the teal dress became livid, face bubbling up teapot.

At that point everything fell through, sort of the way wood finally collapses and gives in when a building catches fire.

(Was this my 8th or 9th life?)

They soon hauled me off.

As the ambulance pulled up they pulled a girl with red, strained eyes into an ambulance. She seemed fully resigned to her fate.

It whizzed its way through the city.

A siren is the most horrible sound in the world because when it starts up, rupturing the relative peace of the world, it walks the strange barrier between something that almost sounds human. It sounds like an exorcism of dreams, unfolding the steel accordion of hopes that simultaneously gives weight to life and at the same time weighs you down as if your feet were made of lead and you have to walk through the floorboards getting your shins all splintered.

Perhaps the worst feeling in the world is the feeling that no one is listening to you.

Now, I haven't the slightest idea who this girl is.

My name is Harriet Bleaker. I'm one of the main donors of the University.

Despite the author's initial objections, I had every intention to find the girl's parents and get it published.

Her parents reluctantly agreed, publishing it under a different name.

I still visit the girl from time to time.

Sad stuff really.

She seems to be under this majestic delusion that she had created sentient, free thinking beings and that all of the meaning that she placed in them has in turn drained her own life of any substantial meaning.

Despite her oddities, there are bits I like in here.

It's a shame how many brilliant things are lost because the artist or the author doesn't' think his or her work good enough.

Like the whole bit about the cats.

It's very original, the symbolism of cats.

However, when I proceeded to tell the patient about how much I liked the symbolism of cats and its uniqueness, the writer began to hit her head against a wall.

I haven't the slightest idea why.

I also asked her about why she threw in all the eyes.

It was a dark and stormy day when I visited her room. The room had previously been stark, but she attempted to liven it up with unusual cartoonish drawings. They smiled carnivorously as they lit up with the lightning.

"So I must ask... what's with all the eyes?"

She frowned, her importance dependent on a world that technically does not exist. "Well I don't know. I suppose it has to with the idea of the evil eye. My great grandmother said she once got it from someone, and after living through the deaths of three of her husbands, I couldn't argue with that. So in part it's just sort of that idea, but in a more complex form. I didn't want anything to go awry with the major plot. Unfortunately it backfired and protected the characters..."

"Mhm.." I nod.

(Now what do I want for lunch... chicken soup or a sandwich. Or both? I have been doing jazzercise lately I'm sure I can afford both. )

"... but it also has to do with the idea of the author being able to see everything, and not writing blindly. Or so I had hoped."

"I see." I nod curtly again and jot down some notes. "So the eye is like the third eye idea of seeing everything."

"Uh..." she became silent for a moment. "Yeah ok sure."

"That's really rather brilliant, as is the theme of colors throughout the book."

"What theme of color... I mean oh thank you. Yes I did that all on purpose..." She said that, seeming to lack conviction. "Totally. No big deal. "

"Why that's very smart of you, very quirky." I said.

(Yes, I do think I'll get the soup and the sandwich. Soup the color of the Nile river pea soup. Well maybe it isn't that color it would have to be pretty polluted.)

(Quirky is just another way of saying, its ok, you managed to walk the line between crazy and brilliant and somehow came out with some validity.)

The author sighed and stared out the window, disregarding the "urgent" note that the journalist had left on the table.

(At least here I can observe people and get new ideas... new ideas for a story. Although, it did land me here...)

She frowned at the white walls. They needed more drawings.

(It's like the red shoes except with a pen. I'm going to write, half possessed, until the ink of my pen runs out in which case I'll have to use my blood, until I'm all used up. My heart will be page 400 and my spleen will be chapter 20.)

The sun began to slant in the room, sending up bits of dust, making the whole world very lazy, very yellow.

Outside the store began to boom across the music, and formed slowly into the song as the volume crescendoed...

A couple passed by on the sidewalk, holding hands.

A boy whizzed past them on a skateboard and subsequently past the man selling hot dogs, who yelled at him for scaring off a business man customer.

George and Bertha began to dance back and forth slowly in the warm breeze.

They were several miles outside of town, on the ocean, near the lighthouse where they had first sailed on the ocean together.

"Hey love..." George looked into her eyes.

"Yes dear."

"I wonder what ever happened to the author."

Bertha didn't reply, feeling a bit guilty.

"That's more of a statement than a question." She said shortly.

George sat down on a time-smoothed rock nearby. "Well I can't imagine that she could have taken all that very well."

Bertha attempted to look indifferent but her face was growing red. "Well it doesn't matter now I win."

George snickered. "Not everything is about winning you know. Now look I know you hate her and you have every reason to, I do understand. But, realistically, if she didn't exist neither would we, or even if we did, we may have never met. That was her idea."

He grabbed the sides of her neck as he saw her tense.

Soon enough the tears began to turn her eyes bright blue.

"Hey, stop it." He hugged her close to him. "None of that. It's going to be ok now."

"I know I know... it's not that." She sniffled. "I think I did something bad."

"It's ok I know." George said. He sat back a bit.

"You do?"

"Yes." He hugged her closer. "It's ok I know why you did it too, but it was really mean."

"Well she started it." Bertha pouted.

"I supposed that's true." He shrugged. "But that doesn't excuse your actions. I want you to apologize."

"Apologize?" She whined. "What good would that do, she wouldn't be able to tell; she doesn't have the notebook anymore."

"Hmm..." George brooded for a moment. "I guess that's true."

The wind picked up, and Bertha's hair whipped around wildly lioness proud and deviant.

"And actually it's not just you winning." He grinned guiltily. "I win too."

"Oh good." Bertha wiped her eyes. "I knew you'd come around."

"Actually." He smiled. "As it turns out I actually wrote something too."

"Really?" She gave him a devilish smile. "What did you write."

"Well I'm not sure if she got it... but it was about how it was rude of her to split us up. And there was a second part to it." His eyes withheld something, but Bertha could tell he had given in and committed a good deed.

"Oh no." She moaned, as they walked hand in hand back down the beach. "What did you do?"

"Oh don't worry about it."

Harriet Bleaker, having recently picked up the journal got to the second last page.

It had already been confusing enough typing everything up because it was in multiple different handwritings and none of them were particularly easy to read.

But the last page seemed to make so sense whatsoever.

( _I'll just leave this out then.)_

Dear Author,

Hello, my name is George. I'd yell at you for nearly killing Bertha but it seems she's already got that primarily covered. I'm not here to accuse of anything except being lonely.

If you are anything like Bertha, which I sort of deduce is why the two of you hate each other so much, what's that phrase... oh right narcissism of minor differences you do have some good to you and you do deserve to be with someone.

I suggest you stop being foolish and finally date that boy you like so much. His number is 333-333-3333. I noticed because you wrote it at the top of the wall. Either that or you're going for a theme of trinities. I have no idea.

I'm also writing to tell you that I am, in fact, not a cat person, though I have grown to accept Kitty as if she were a dog. But in the meantime, if you could send me a dog or some other animal that would match my totem that would be most excellent.

Also thank you for letting me meet Bertha. I didn't mean to offend you, sometimes these things just happen.

Yours truly, George

(Well that was weird.)

(I guess I'll have to go and visit her then, maybe this was meant for her by someone else?)

(Perhaps she had multiple personalities, each developed through a character until they became real.)

It was 9:00 and they were promptly in the pews.

Bertha and George gave each other a look.

It was going to be a very, very long mass.

But Bertha played nice. She even sang. All things considering, church's music wasn't half bad. It was definitely generic enough for her limited range.

Afterwards, Bertha and George stuck around.

"Hey." Bertha said. "So I have something to do."

He gave her look. "You're not going to dismantle religion are you?"

She remained silent for a minute. "No, surprisingly. Actually I'm going to confession."

"You, confession?"

"Ah, yeah." Bertha said, feeling reluctant.

"It is something we..."

"No no no." Bertha blushed. "It's something else."

"Alright." He shrugged. "I'll wait for you out here."

Bertha waited, nevy, in line as an old woman with blue hair stepped out.

(I can't even imagine what her sins would be. She looks so sweet.)

(Hmm then again so do I. Point taken.)

(Can you always tell who the tigresses are?)

(I have blue eyes; I'm not supposed to be wicked.)

"Hello father." She sat down. "I mean bless me father for I have sinned my last confession was... uh... I can't quite remember."

"That's quite alright dear." His voice was more shriveled than it was judgmental so she felt a lot better. His ears had probably been worn down from years and years and years of things you would never even think of. "Sorry about the wait. It seems father Barry accidently sold one of our confessionals one night to some hipsters in Brooklyn. Anyway, continue."

"Well I brought a list. I'm sorry. I sort of have a lot of sins.

Primarily, I'm Italian but I can't be religious.

Secondly, as a result, I've had to lie in coming here, disappointing myself.

Thirdly, I've had to disobey my family in not coming here.

... Should I keep going?"

"Mhm." Father was thinking.

"Also I may or may not have committed theocide. Either that or I drove one crazy. How do you describe that?"

"Not sure." He mused. He remained silent for a few minutes. "I'm pretty sure you didn't commit theocide."

"Actually I don't think so either, that's not right." Bertha scratched her head.

"As for the driving god insane, whatever gave you the impression that he was sane in the first place?"

She remained quiet for a few moments. "Well, actually... nothing that I can think of. If history is moving towards something it only seems to be more chaos."

"Exactly." He shrugged.

"Are you suggesting that God has gone mad with power?" She tilted her head.

"Actually it's quite the opposite." He replied, surprisingly openly. "Well, these aren't my personal views, I choose to think that God is sane and that there is some master plan but there are different theories. But one could argue that someone doesn't go mad with power so much as one goes mad when he or she is cut off from endless power. But driving a person or whatnot crazy isn't a sin. Sometimes these things can't be helped."

"Oh." Bertha tilted her heard. "But isn't it wrong to drive someone mad?"

"Well no one really drives anyone mad, that's not really how it works."

Father McDonald rubbed his nose and yawned.

(I am so tired of you people coming in here to start intellectual debates with me. I'm not here to discuss the implications of existentialism.)

"Oh thank goodness." Bertha sighed. "For a second I thought I was going to have that on my hands too. I don't know... I keep building up this outer image of bitchiness... I don't know if you understand..."

"Mm." he mumbled.

(She just doesn't stop does she?)

(It's so very nice and warm in here.)

(Not too warm.)

(Sort of like a Cabo Breeze, as you listen to the waves lulling you to sleep...)

"That's so refreshing. You know it's sort of a defense mechanism. It's to the point where I vehemently deny that I'm good though so I get into my head that I'm just a bad person."

There was a thud at the other side of the booth.

"So like you know it's like I don't want to be a bad person, but I just can't make myself believe that I'm good. I've equated brutal honesty with something that's bad. But at the same time I don't want to..."

A noise roused her monologue.

"...give... everything... an idealism it doesn't.... deserve (-sigh)"

He was snoring.

"Hey."

"Hi." George grinned and grabbed her hand. He looked very handsome in the light of the window panes.

"You know what I realized?" She looked at him starry-eyed. "Being here always weirds me out but it's ok if I'm with you. I know you're not a big religious person either, but I would probably suck it up for you, or for our..." She blushed.

"Oh now don't go thinking about those things, woman. Are you trying to scare me away?" But while he probably intended to look overwhelmed, he actually looked happy.

"Also I have this other crazy idea." Bertha mused. "Maybe there's some person who planned the author going crazy, just like the author planned me going crazy and who is equally ambivalent."

"Hmm." George smiled. "So does that mean then... we're supposed to be together?"

She hit him lightly. "Well we are anyway even if the universe doesn't want to admit it. I defy it in that case."

"Oh you just like defying things." They crossed a busy street full of pseudo-theoretical cars. "Doesn't that mean that the author is just another author's fiction too, which she can also defy as you did?"

"Not sure." Bertha shrugged. "I think they have different laws."

"How do you know about the real world?" He looked at her quizzically.

"I don't know I figure it has to make more sense than this one."

"Maybe." He shrugged. "Oo let's get coffee."  
The stepped in to the café. Rose was trying to maintain calm with a customer.

"Yes, I do realize that you ordered soy and not regular milk... yes I understand... I'm sure soy milk tastes different."

It was definitely difficult to miss.

The now unsheathed confessional sat in square in the middle of the coffee house. It was coffee colored in the yellowish light.

The prodigal confessional, while looking particularly sacred within the confines of oak doors, lost its mystical powers when placed in the middle of the coffee house. It just looked like a broken, decrepit tardis.

Funny the way things lose their meaning when taken out of context.

Curious to see if it would do anything for her, she sat inside, but unfortunately she did it with so much force that the door swung shut.

A noise startled her from the other side like a bird stuck in a rattled cage.

"For goodness sake." She caught her breath. "What are you doing in here?"

"I don't know. What are you doing in here?"

"Uh, don't know."

(Well, this is excessively uncomfortable.)

They sat for a few moments in total silence.

"So..." the other side said slowly, "Is your door stuck too?"

"Yes." Bertha gave up on jolting the handle. "Ugh... I'm claustrophobic."

"I know." The other side laughed.

Bertha attempted to look through the pane, but the device to slide it fully open was on his side.

"What do you mean you know?"

Silence.

Then a slow and wheezing laugh, a creepy wind-up toy.

"Sweet heart." He laughed. "You're never going to guess who it is."

"Well that works out because I don't particularly care to guess." She tried jolting the handle again.

"I'm not sure how to put this but... I'm your guardian bounty hunter."

"My guardian bounty hunter...?" the cubicle got colder.

(Hmm this isn't right.)

"Wait aren't I supposed to have a guardian angel."

"No, no, that's only for the good people. Everyone else gets bounty hunter. No excuse me while I eat your soul."

"Can you at least read me my rights?"

"Uh..."

"Wait, wait, wait... I don't have soul. If that's what you came here to collect."

"Well actually..." he placed a pale hand under what looked like the shadow of his chin. "Wait... um... well... are you sure?"

"Yeah... I mean looked for it for quite some time. I think I've misplaced it."

"Hmm..." He paused for a moment. "I need to consult my supervisor about this. I'll be right back."

Something black flew out, leaving a confused, formerly possessed hipster on the other side.

"I doubt you've misplaced your soul you look like such an angel."

(Was that a pick up line?)

(...I think I'd rather deal with the bounty hunter.)

"And your eyes and..." he shook his head a bit. "You're far too pretty for a place like this."

Bertha was three steps from strangling him.

"It's not fair for you to seduce me like this."

"Alright very funny sir." She laughed awkwardly.

"Seriously, can I get your number?"

She just gave him a look.

But the door wouldn't jolt open.

"No, no thank you. I have a boyfriend. Also why in the world would you ask someone else just based on their appearance? You've never even heard me speak. Do you even care about what I have to say? "

"I'm sorry I didn't mean any offence...."

The sidewalk ahead of me remained blessedly empty.

I looked down at the grave next to me, and sit cautiously on the bench.

(Cautious, not of course, because of the dead lying below...)

(Dead people are a lot easier to hang around. They don't ask you what you're writing about.)

A husky, blackened shriveled rose, blew around like tumbleweed.

I picked it up and twisted it between my fingers, making it dance.

The bench creaked and shifted as someone sat down beside me.

From the corner of my eye I thought it was someone I knew. But it wasn't.

Chapter 9

They were having a perfectly lovely sleep when the drawer opened itself.

Annoyed, George rubbed his eyes and scowled at the open drawer.

"Babe..." He groaned in morning voice language. "Can you shut the drawer after you open it?"

Bertha didn't respond, breathing heavily, her back moving like a steady subtle tide.

She looked so peaceful.

"Babe..." he elbowed her. "Babe... babe"

"Ugh..." Bertha spasmed awake. "What is it?"

"The drawer..."

She sat up on her elbow.

"What about it?" She yawned.

"You left it open."

"No I didn't. I wasn't up."

(Goodness, you even have to comment on the things I don't do.)

"Oh, I'm sure it just opened itself up."

The drawer proceeded to shut itself so forcefully it sent tremors rippling on the bed.

They remained silent for a few minutes in half terror

"I told you so." Bertha shrugged. "Well if that's all for tonight, I'm going back to sleep." She turned back on her stomach.

"That is not all." A booming voice announced.

The closet door flew open, and blew hot air like the mouth of a large beast.

George grabbed Bertha protectively.

For a few moments nothing happened.

Despite being mortified, Bertha could not help but ask "who's there?" in a quavering voice, shortly followed by "If you dare come near George or me I'll cut your heart out with a fork and feed it to ravens and various other fowl."

George was shaking despite the rising temperature in the room.

"Oh, there's no need to worry about George." The female voice said coyly. "I'm only here for you...well sort of..." the shadow had arms that were too long and skinny "...well to be clear I'm only here to hurt you. I'm here to win George's affections."

"Naturally." Lily's fear was quickly replaced with an atomic defensiveness.

"Well that's very nice of you shadow figure..." George said slowly, fumbling with words. "But no thank you. I'm good."

"Yeah, sorry." Bertha said in the mock polite tone of a secretary when you haven't made an appointment.

The figure seemed to shrink for a moment.

Bertha gasped audibly.

A halo of flames erupted around it and for the first time they saw its full figure.

Its neck was too long, with a bulbous, globular head on a pole. Two arms rattled about looking like a combination of dead branched with flappy strips of paper fingers. Its torso looked the most human, and had a body eerily similar to Bertha's.

"What are you?" Bertha didn't know whether to fear or pity the figure.

"Oh now you want to know..." the flames flickered away. "You didn't even give me a chance last time you just plain hit me with your car..."

"What are you talking about?" George's heart bolted. "I never hit you with my car."

"Oh you did. Although to be fair, I don't think you noticed." The figure sighed. "I believe you were listening to Journey."

Their faces super-paled.

"Oh my void!" Bertha sat up. "So what are you exactly, are you a ghost..." The figure moved as the heater turned on, like one of those giant blow-up dolls outside of car dealerships. Except it wasn't silly looking, it was pathetic and horrible, as she in vain attempted to stand still to no avail like a husky dying insect blowing in the wind. "I can't say I'm anything more than a leftover character. I was supposed to be placed somewhere but I didn't end up anywhere because the author did some shoddy work and forgot to invent an afterlife. So here I am."

"Here you are." George said sadly. "And why exactly do you want me?"

The figure nearly fell over as the radiator shut off.

"I'm not sure...exactly... the tumble sort of disoriented me... but I think I'm supposed to be with you."

"What's your name..." George began to feel dread creep up in the confines of his stomach.

"Autumn... or Auburn..." the shadow wheezed. "Weird, but I can't actually remember."

"Oh no."

"Oh yes." She smirked. "But it's ok if you don't comply. We can still be one without your consent..."

"What do you...?"

George flew back and hit the floor.

"George." Bertha asked, cautiously, picking up the lacrosse stick in the corner of the room.

A full four minutes passed, as Bertha slowly inched towards him. She could feel her skin crawl.

"George!" she shouted.

He grinned, clutching the pen which had rolled on the floor, and tilted his head a bit too much.

"Oh hell no..." Bertha jumped on the bed, having seen Evil Dead.

He stood up slowly and cracked his neck.

"It's ok. Now we are one. I don't need you anymore." He jabbed at her ankles with the pen.

Bertha jumped on the bed, and by then George had developed a different strategy, placing the pen underneath where she would probably land, right under her food instead of going at it sideways.

Terrified, she made herself fall off the bed, ran to the desk, and picked up a knife.

"What are you going to do with that?" Amber's and George's voice said at the same time. "You wouldn't dare hurt your precious husband."

"No, but I can hurt myself." She screamed. "Don't think I won't. How do you expect to beat me if I'm a ghost too? "

George fell dramatically to the floor.

Bertha ran over and dragged him up to the bed.

"Stay vigilant." The shadow laughed and took off, shutting the closet door, and opening the drawer for the hell of it.

It was early Sunday morning.

I smiled as I looked at the poem taped on the door that my roommate had written to Wordsworth.

"The country is overrated. There's nothing to do."

But for a split second, the thought of living in middle of no-where was somehow appealing. (Maybe somewhere in the woods up north.)

Campus was a sleeping nation

Normally the tours would come through on Sunday with wide-eyed, high school students eager to be in the position to go mad with power.

But today it was too windy.

I batted a flying newspaper, and hopped on the bus to the city for her book signing.

A tired sophomore, slept in the row ahead of me, face plastered to the window.

Every time the bus shook, it made the ibuprofen in my purse rattle, and feeling self-conscious I tried to muffle it by adjusting it in my purse.

As I look out the window, my eye catches on an advertisement for the salvation-army.

(Salvation. I bet my grandparents are worried as hell about mine. Grandpa, a Buddha like figure containing fathoms. So peaceful and wise.)

(Not much like King George the Third.)

(Alec does remind me a bit of my cousin though. Always putting the charitable stuff up on sites.)

(I always thought it was a bit silly. Kind of despise the whole label of "humanitarianism". I don't want to be that type.)

(I want to help without people ever knowing I helped.)

"Honestly." He looked slightly guilty. "I found the whole thing a little uncomfortable. I'm not sure how to say it but... well... I didn't like it."

"Oh." I wondered why, in that case, he had bothered to come to the book signing at all. The girl attached to his arm was giggling.

"I found it a little weird. I mean I know you're obsessed with me and everything but..."

He began to turn away but I wasn't done yet.

"I don't like it. I mean no offense it was just so corny and unoriginal."

"Oh."

He began to turn around, the girl on his arm attempting to stare me down, but then looking away, not able to follow through. She seemed more his taste; weak prey. "She's so crazy!" she laughed.

But both of their faces fell when they saw what I had written on the inside flap.

It isn't about you.

In the meantime, I waited and waited and waited to see the other face, but it never appeared.

I shrugged, signed another book, and drew a tiny little ink rose on this one.

Ghost girl. Waif.

Servant to your own imagination.

Seal your eyes up, you wouldn't want anyone to read them.

(Puts on sunglasses.)

A hawk took off from the roof of my dorm.

It flies over the ruins of haunted Hughes hall where two freshman did yoga and one found their soul and the other didn't.

It flies over the chapel, hidden in the bowels of an administrative building where in the fall there was a service for a boy who committed suicide and no one cried except a stranger.

It flies over Dunkin Doughnuts and a red streak in the parking lot where a drunken college student dropped four Loko and stained the pavement red.

It spots the stray cats wandering the alleys and considers dinner.

Shantih my ass.

Work cited

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Dir. Mel Stuart. Perf. Gene Wilder, Jack Albertson, Peter Ostrum. Film. Warner Brothers, 1971.
