I'm no stranger to online delivery.

In fact, the Amazon delivery driver now knows me by name. I always keep track of what I order and when. So, you can imagine my confusion and disappointment when instead of a new Gucci purse and belt, I'm greeted by a haphazardly-wrapped little box on my front step. No stamp, no return address, not even a note. Just my name written in swirly cursive letters on the top of the box.

I bring it inside, never one to refuse a gift of any kind. The brown wrapping paper comes off in one clean tear and underneath is a small shoebox, probably only big enough to hold a pair of child's shoes.

But there are no shoes inside. There is, however, a black leather journal. Odd.

Tentatively, I pull it out of the box and set it on my lap. The leather is smooth, not grainy. Very sleek. But who would have left this for me, and why?

I pull back the cover.

On the top left hand side of the first page is the date: January 7th, 2023.

The writing is pretty, with the same big swoopy letters used to write my name on the box. So that means whoever wrote in this journal is probably the same person who left it outside my front door.

I feel hesitant to continue reading, but I don't think I can stop now.

I tap my feet in nervous energy as I read the first entry:

January 7th, 2023

I watched her today. Waltzing around in that little black dress, a white shawl draped

over her shoulders. Her brown hair was pinned up at the top of her head. If you

squinted, she could have almost passed for Audrey Hepburn. She looked like the

picture of class. HA! If only everyone at the party knew what she really got up to in

her spare time. If only Todd knew, if only he'd see -

The journal slips from my grip and falls to the floor with a dull thud. Suddenly the room feels much too small and my sweater much too tight. I pull at the collar in agitation.

Who the hell wrote this?

I pick the journal back up off the floor and skip forward a few pages. I settle on another entry, this one dated April 18th, 2023.

April 18th, 2023

She likes coffee with extra cream and sugar. I should have guessed the princess

would have such delicate taste. Heaven forbid she handle a little bit of

bitterness. Life can be bitter sometimes. I'm not surprised she doesn't know this.

Perhaps I should show her.

Absentmindedly, I skim through one entry after another, the tone becoming more and more vitriolic.

One specific entry catches my eye and I pause. This one is recent.

November 1st, 2024.

Todd must be either a complete idiot, or totally lovesick not to realize what kind of

floozy he's been sharing his bed with. I saw her today. I was this close to confronting

her. For the first time in 5 years, I finally mustered up the courage to look her dead

in the eyes and tell her she was going to pay what what she'd done. But then this

waiter nearly knocked me over with a plate of stale mini quiches, and when I looked

back up, she was gone. Maybe it just wasn't the right time. That's okay. I'm

patient... I can wait.

I slam the journal shut, my breath coming out in short gasps. I have the horrible sensation of someone's eyes on me, although I know for a fact there's no one else here.

"What she'd done"? What had I done?

I scan my brain, trying to think of any particularly negative interaction I've had in the past several years. I have my occasional bouts of anger on the street and sometimes I can be a little testy in the grocery store. But it doesn't make sense for a total stranger to hold onto a grunge over so small a thing for so long. And to follow me around, wanting to make me "pay"? The person would have to be completely deranged.

Unless... this isn't about me at all. The journal frequently mentions Todd throughout the various entries. Maybe it's someone he knows, or someone from his past.

A ring from the front door bell startles me from my train of thought, and I jump out of my seat, the journal falling out of my hands.

I can't see who it is through the stained glass window, so I take a peek through the peephole. There is a person dressed in some kind of delivery uniform, hat bent low over their head. They're holding a parcel under one arm and a clipboard in the other.

It must be the Gucci items I ordered.

I unlock the door. The delivery person is standing still as a stone on the porch, not moving an inch.

"Hello. Is that my package?" I ask, leaning forward to try and see the person's face from underneath their cap.

Suddenly, the person - woman - looks up at me. I can see that she's absolutely stunning, with tan, glowing skin, and bright green eyes. A few strands of wavy, chestnut colored hair have come lose from her pony tail, perfectly framing her face.

"This is for you." she says, handing me the parcel. Even her voice is pretty.

"Thanks." I take the parcel from her with a smile.

She doesn't leave. She stands in the same spot, unmoving, staring at me with a polite smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes.

The moment lingers a bit too long and, wanting to end this awkward interaction, I gesture to the clip board tucked under her arm.

"Do I need to sign anything?" I ask.

She slowly pulls her stare away from my face and looks down at the clip board.

"Oh, yes. I do need one signature." she says, handing it to me. She reaches into her jacket pocket and pulls out a pen. She hands that over, too.

As I'm signing my name on the small black line at the bottom of the page, I can feel her eyes on me.

I finish signing and hand it back to her, but she stops me.

"There's one more line on the back." she says and the fake smile is back again.

The prior feeling of awkwardness is quickly molding into something worse. Slowly, I unclip the piece of paper from the metal clasp and turn it over in my hands. When I see the sentence written on the back, in those familiar curly letters, a chill runs up my spine.

It reads: there are no clumsy waiters here to save you. Time's up.

The time traveler is a term linked to an individual whose soul is capable of perceiving its being through multiple different time periods through the illusory understanding of a separation between past, present, and future. If this being is to travel to the past or future in connection to a period where the self is existent; this can be considered as to be the same person, both harnessing the same soul, the same self. David Lewis attempts to explain these cases of time travel using a logically consistent framework, one attempting to explain while lacking contradiction. He states the time traveler does require a personal identity, that the one arriving in time is the same as the one who had departed. This claim would quire a causal continuity of causal loops; the notion where events of the past and future are interconnected and create a chain of existence(Lewis 1986).

If Lewis’ argument of this continuity held valid, then the same soul could be existing within a singular time, limitlessly, although its experience could alter the state prior to which one had originally departed from. Let us take for example the situation of a man traveling back to himself in time as a young boy to warn himself that if he doesn’t finish his University degree, he will be very unhappy with his job in the future. This man holds psychological continuity with being a further developed version of his past self, yet is able to alter the experience of the present self by shifting the perception of the past self. These selves remain connected, and thus, if the man convinces his younger self to attend school, then this loop shall shift in the sense that the present man is now perceiving an existence of which he went to University and has acquired his desired career. It is more the question of; will this man have the awareness of shaping his present perception through the alteration of these events, or is there an instantaneous shift in which would lead him to only remember his past of going to University to create his present career? Could he remember a young adulthood in which we did not go to University anymore? Is there still an existing self part of his whole that is perceiving his life unfulfilled?

The time traveler term holds constraints to real world physics such as the Grandfather Paradox in which a being travels to the past preventing their own birth through hindering the connections of ancestors. While this notion has scientific limitations in that it would seem evidently impossible to cause such an event, according to the belief of these causal loops, one could easily erase this vessel, because ultimately they are not erasing the soul, only the conduit for the soul to perceive in such a way. The being that goes back in time to prevent their grandparents from meeting has now ceased certain biological offspring, as such the soul may then be inhabiting a different form of consciousness in varying positions or presentations. Based on the previous suggestions, would they be able to now remember the time of which they existed based on their grandparents, and parents, creating them as originally? Given the nature of our universe, it is unwise to hold this form of time travel impossible because we lack the proper evidence, as much we attain certain knowing of truth in our reality could be proven severely different to what we presently accept and judge this theory upon.

In this discussion it is also relevant to include what time travel is, and the nature of time itself. Through the construction and comprehension of our reality we have applied structural systems of time which adhere to our understanding of how our universe works. Our acceptance of time is one faulty as fideism, as there is lacking evidence to support the reason for why we have the clocks and calendars we do. To say it is 11:05 am is as one were to say there is one God and he has a long white beard and old wise green eyes. Time itself is illusory as the segregation of past, present, and future is impossible. If one is said to have traveled to the past; have they actually traveled anywhere, or are they simply perceiving an experience through a present link existing negligent of this construct? To say they have gone to a past time, is to say they have removed themself from the present time, but how could they not exist in the present or future if they exist in the past? If nothing is temporal, then does time actually exist(McTaggart 1908)?

If one is to close their eyes and think of a memory as a child, fully saturating their senses in this remembrance, truly feeling as if they are there-have they time traveled? If one ponders upon themself in five years from now, vividly creating a potential landscape of the potential future-have they time traveled? If our construct of time is merely an imagined lens in which the human limits its understanding of the nature of the universe, then the contradictions to ‘traveling’ through this concept of time are implausible.

Time understood as an illusion, and the comprehension of shifting experience through playing with this aspect of human experience could then be a much more common part of our existence than we are aware of. Perhaps we are always traveling through time, yet incapable of fully processing these shifts as our common knowledge of its makeup is refraining us to do so. Perhaps we are always traveling through time, yet as we make these changes are unable to remember doing so. If time is understood to be an illusory concept, then there is no past, present, or future, and there is no time traveler. If this is the case, how are we to examine that the current thoughts we have towards our past or future, are ultimately shaping exactly what is before us now?

Bibliography

Lewis, David. "The Paradoxes of Time Travel." In Philosophical Papers, vol. 1. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

McTaggart, J.M.E. "The Unreality of Time." Mind 17, no. 68 (1908): 457-474.

In quiet whispers, wisdom flows,

Through the ages, deep roots grow.

Memories linger, shadows dance,

Hearts entwined in fate’s romance.

Time's embrace, a gentle sigh,

Old souls wander, never shy.

In the silence, stories breathe,

Threads of life, we weave, believe.

Being dead isn't nearly as boring as you might think.

I discovered this on my third day of non-existence, when I finally stopped trying to open doors and learned to simply pass through them instead. The trick, I found, is to forget you were ever solid to begin with. Forget the weight of bones and blood, the constant pull of gravity, the way air once caught in your lungs. Remember instead that you are now made of the same stuff as moonlight and memory.

My name was – is? – Thomas Webb, and I've been dead for approximately eight months, two weeks, and five days. Not that time means much anymore. When you're dead, moments can stretch like taffy or snap past like rubber bands. Sometimes I watch the sun rise and set so quickly it looks like someone's flicking a light switch. Other times, I spend what feels like hours watching a single dewdrop slide down a blade of grass.

I haunt (though I prefer the term "reside in") a small town in New England called Millbrook. Not because I'm bound here by unfinished business or ancient curses – at least, I don't think so. I simply never felt the pull to go elsewhere. Even when I was alive, I rarely left town. Why start traveling now?

Besides, there's more than enough to keep me occupied here. Take Mrs. Henderson at number forty-two, for instance. She's been stealing her neighbor's newspapers for three years, but only on Wednesdays, and only if it's raining. I spent two months following her around before I figured out why: she lines her parakeet's cage with newspaper, and she's convinced that newspaper stolen in the rain brings good luck to pets. I can't argue with her results – that parakeet is seventeen years old and still singing.

Then there's the teenage boy who sits in the park every Tuesday afternoon, writing poetry in a battered notebook. He thinks no one can see him behind the big oak tree, but I float by sometimes and read over his shoulder. His metaphors need work, but his heart's in the right place. Last week he wrote a sonnet comparing his crush's eyes to "pools of Mountain Dew," which was both terrible and oddly touching.

The living can be endlessly entertaining when they don't know they're being watched. It's not creepy if you're dead – it's anthropology.

But I'm not always a passive observer. Sometimes, when I'm feeling particularly solid, I can manage small interactions with the physical world. Nothing dramatic like moving furniture or writing messages in blood on the walls (though I'll admit I tried once, out of curiosity – turns out being dead doesn't automatically make you good at horror movie effects).

Instead, I specialize in tiny interventions: nudging dropped keys into view, generating the perfect cool breeze on a sweltering day, ensuring that the last cookie in the box is chocolate chip instead of oatmeal raisin. Small kindnesses, barely noticeable but precisely timed.

My finest work happens at The Dusty Tome, the bookstore where I used to work when I was alive. My former colleague, Sarah, still runs the place. She never knew that I harbored a decade-long crush on her, and now she never will. But I can still help her in my own way.

I've become quite good at guiding customers to exactly the book they need, even if they don't know they need it. A gentle cold spot near the self-help section, a subtle illumination of a particular spine, a barely perceptible whisper that draws their attention to just the right page. Last week, I helped a grieving widower find a cookbook that contained his late wife's secret cookie recipe. He cried right there in the aisle, clutching the book like a life preserver. Sarah gave him a free bookmark and a cup of tea.

The other ghosts (yes, there are others) think I'm too involved with the living. "You need to learn to let go," says Eleanor, who's been dead since 1847 and spends most of her time rearranging flowers in the cemetery. "The living have their world, and we have ours."

But I've never been good at letting go. Even when I was alive, I held onto things too long – old tickets stubs, expired coupons, unrequited feelings. Death hasn't changed that aspect of my personality. If anything, it's given me more time to cultivate my attachments.

Take my cat, for instance. Mr. Whiskers (I didn't name him – he came with that regrettable moniker from the shelter) is still alive and living with my sister. He can see me, as most animals can, but he's remarkably unfazed by my transparent state. Sometimes I lie on the floor next to him while he sleeps, pretending I can feel his warmth. He purrs anyway, the sound vibrating through whatever passes for my soul these days.

The hardest part about being dead isn't the lack of physical sensation or the inability to enjoy coffee (though I do miss that). It's watching the people you love cope with your absence. My sister still sets an extra place at Christmas dinner. My mother keeps "forgetting" to delete my number from her phone. My father pretends he's okay but visits my grave every Sunday with fresh flowers and updates about the Patriots' latest games, as if I might be keeping score in the afterlife.

I want to tell them I'm still here, that death isn't an ending but a change in perspective. I want to tell my sister that I saw her ace her dissertation defense, that I was there in the back of the room, cheering silently as she fielded every question with brilliant precision. I want to tell my mother that yes, I did get her messages, all of them, and that the cardinal that visits her bird feeder every morning is not me, but I appreciate the thought.

But the rules of death are strict about direct communication. The best I can do is send signs they probably don't recognize: a favorite song on the radio at just the right moment, a unexpected whiff of my cologne in an empty room, the feeling of being hugged when they're alone at night.

Sometimes I wonder if this is hell – not fire and brimstone, but the eternal frustration of being able to observe but never truly connect. Other times, usually when I'm watching Sarah shelve books or listening to my father's one-sided conversations at my grave, I think this might be heaven. The ability to witness life without the messy complications of living it, to love without the fear of loss, to exist in the spaces between moments.

I've developed hobbies, as one does when faced with eternal existence. I collect overheard conversations, storing them like precious gems in whatever serves as my memory now. I've become an expert in the secret lives of squirrels (far more dramatic than you'd expect). I've learned to read upside-down books over people's shoulders on park benches, and I've mastered the art of predicting rain by watching the way cats clean their whiskers.

But my favorite pastime is what I call "emotion painting." I've discovered that strong feelings leave traces in the air, visible only to the dead – streaks of color and light that linger like aurora borealis. Love is usually gold or deep rose, anger burns red with black edges, and sadness flows in shades of blue and silver. I spend hours watching these colors swirl and blend, especially in places where emotions run high: the hospital waiting room, the high school during prom, the small chapel where weddings and funerals alike are held.

Today, I'm following a new pattern of colors I've never seen before – a strange mixture of green and purple that sparkles like static electricity. It's emanating from a young woman sitting alone in The Dusty Tome, reading a worn copy of "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir." She has dark circles under her eyes and a hospital bracelet on her wrist. The colors around her pulse and swirl with an intensity that draws me closer.

As I hover near her table, I realize she's not actually reading. She's crying silently, tears falling onto the open pages. But there's something else – she keeps looking up, scanning the bookstore as if searching for something. Or someone.

Then she speaks, so softly even I almost miss it: "Thomas? Are you here?"

I freeze (metaphorically speaking – I'm always technically frozen now). It's Lisa Chen, a regular customer from my living days. We used to chat about books, particularly ghost stories. She once told me she could sense spirits, but I had dismissed it as whimsy. Now, as I watch the colors dance around her, I wonder if perhaps she was telling the truth.

"I know you're probably here somewhere," she continues, still speaking barely above a whisper. "Sarah told me you used to help people find the right books. I could use some help now."

I drift closer, fascinated by the way the green and purple lights seem to reach out toward me.

"I'm dying," she says matter-of-factly. "Cancer. Stage four. The doctors say I have maybe three months." She laughs softly. "I'm not afraid of being dead, exactly. I just want to know... is it lonely?"

For the first time since my death, I wish desperately that I could speak. I want to tell her about the beauty of emotion paintings, about the secret lives of cats and squirrels, about the way love looks like golden light and how sadness can be as beautiful as stained glass.

Instead, I do what I do best. I create a gentle breeze that ruffles through the nearby shelves until a small, leather-bound book falls onto her table. It's a collection of Mary Oliver poems, opened to "When Death Comes."

Lisa picks up the book with trembling hands and reads aloud: "When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn... when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps the purse shut... I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?"

The colors around her shift, the purple fading as the green grows brighter, more peaceful. She smiles, touching the page gently.

"Thank you, Thomas," she whispers.

I stay with her until she leaves, watching the colors trail behind her like a comet's tail. Then I do something I've never done before – I follow her. Not to her home or to the hospital, but to all the places in town that still hold beauty: the park where the teenage poet writes his awful, wonderful verses, the bench where the widower sits feeding pigeons, the small garden behind the library where Sarah takes her lunch breaks.

At each stop, I paint the air with every beautiful thing I've seen since dying, every moment of joy and wonder and connection I've witnessed. I don't know if she can see the colors, but I paint them anyway – gold for love, silver for hope, and a new color I've never used before, one that looks like sunlight through leaves, that means "you are not alone."

Being dead isn't what I expected. It's not an ending or a beginning, but a different way of being. A way of loving the world without being able to hold it. A way of touching lives without leaving fingerprints. A way of existing in the spaces between heartbeats, in the pause between words, in the moment before tears become laughter.

And sometimes, if you're very lucky, it's a way of showing someone else that the cottage of darkness isn't dark at all. It's full of colors only the dead can see, but the living can feel.

I think I'll stay in Millbrook a while longer. After all, there are still books to be found, cats to be comforted, and stories to be witnessed. Besides, I've heard there's a new ghost in town – a teacher who's been rearranging the letters on the high school announcement board to spell out poetry at midnight. I should probably introduce myself.

Being dead, I've learned, is just another way of being alive.

A small town in Idaho, on the outskirts, lives an...artist...of sorts, and meets a reporter who gets more than he bargained for, and the end might come, or will it? MUAH HAHAHAHAHA!!!! From the mind of one of our talents, comes this irresistible Halloween romp. Here's the link to the narration of said romp on Prose. Radio, narrated by Jeff Stewart, who is whereabouts unkown in the States, in a room where he was able to send in the audio of this story by our own WilkinsonRiling.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqIX7_Ddllg

Also, he asked us to mention this: Another talent here on the site, has a book set for release on 11/22, so go here and pre-order your copy, and give this Appalachian poet some love. He's fantastic!

https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/in-the-throes-of-beauty-by-kevin-d-lemaster/

Piece feaured in the video:

https://www.theprose.com/post/780635/the-halloween-legend-of-jack-mccarver

To keep the tradition in closing traditional:

And.

As always...

Thank you for being here.

-The Prose, team

The sign for Lucky’s Pub squeaked above him in the night wind. Its hanging plastic had green letters, a foaming mug, and the head of a buck with many points.

Jameson could not see Sadie anywhere. He had barely seen her in the bar, but she had spoken in a low voice, her voice, distinct among the chatter and Kenny Chesney. “I want to see you,” she said, and the heat in his groin burned through his tether to reason. He had closed his tab and rushed to this empty curb.

Twenty-four years ago he failed out of college and came to see Sadie. Two days later he left a note, her, his uncle’s house and Francisville. He got to a restaurant on the West Coast and traded charm for gratuities until a regular asked if he’d considered selling real estate. That was 1998, in Seattle.

He had thought little of Sadie since. Jameson had money to burn in a hot town and he married one of the girls. He did not think of her during the flings that preceded and followed the divorce.

He had sent his RSVP for the reunion on a whim. When the reminder came and he no longer had a plus-one, he tried to find Sadie on Facebook, but then she appeared in Lucky’s and said, “I want to see you.” She had turned to the door almost as soon as she spoke, but she was Sadie. He remembered her voice and the smell of her, and Jameson looked down the road outside the pub and knew where she was.

The Route 66 Diner was a house beside a vacant lot; in some distant decade Sadie’s grandparents had knocked down interior walls in favor of tables, on which they served blueberry pancakes and home fries to loggers. Jameson and Sadie had fucked atop one of those tables on a night when their houses weren’t free and Sadie slipped the key from her mother’s purse. He had poured syrup across her torso and fucked her and she had loved it, and he had masturbated to the memory until he found other girls in his semester at Penn State.

The gutter had pulled away from the porch roof. Faded block letters still read “Route 66 Diner” with “Truckers Welcome” in cursive below, but time or blunt force had torqued the posts and sign into bent ruin. A Coldwell Banker sign on a smaller post offered showings by appointment; it was old, too. When Jameson turned the doorknob it rattled in his hand.

The air smelled stale and he could make out little in the dim light from the street, but peering to the far wall he saw an outline seated on a table, their table. “It’s been a long time, Sadie,” he said.

The fluorescent lights burned his eyes when she flicked them on, and his vision adjusted gradually. “It has, Jameson,” she said. There was no ambient noise here, and she spoke with a smoker’s sandpaper voice. She had patchy gray hair, gray and mottled skin, and a body too thin to look well.

Jameson sat on the next table. He ran his finger through its coat of dust for an excuse to look away. “How long’s it been closed?”

“A few months after Mom died. I hurt my back and gave up.”

“When was that?”

“You got me pregnant, Jameson.”

She lit a cigarette in the silence. As she exhaled he found his tongue. “What?”

“That time right before you left. You got me pregnant.”

“You never told me.”

Her laugh merged into a cough. “You never cared.”

“What did you do with it?”

“Named him Jameson.”

His gurgling nausea thickened, and to suppress it he yelled, “Why would you do that? Why didn’t you find me?”

“I pictured the way you’d cry when you came home and met our son. Then I wised up, and his name was to remind everybody of what you did.”

“Where is he?”

Sadie’s hand trembled as she raised the cigarette. She breathed it deeply before answering. “The cemetery off Belmont Road. Electrical fire. He was six.”

The fluorescents’ hum grew loud while Sadie smoked and Jameson bent his head toward his knees and a carpet stain. It took him a long time to perform the calculation, but the answer was 22.

He asked, “Where were you when it happened?”

“A few thousand miles closer than you were.”

That angered him. He met her glare; she blew smoke toward him. “I don’t believe you,” he said.

She snorted. “Ask around.”

“What do you want?”

“You owe me, Jameson.”

“Bullshit.”

“Yeah, bullshit. A mountain of it. You’re king of the mountain now, aren’t you, Jameson? Go off twenty-four years, buy some drinks at Lucky’s, make sure everybody sees your wallet and fancy watch?” She leaned forward and pointed her cigarette at him. “You owe me, Jameson.” She put out the butt on the table.

Unanswerable questions drifted through the stagnant air. He had to leave; he stood and opened his wallet. He counted and placed the bills on Sadie’s table. “I have $132.”

He waited for release. She watched him with her hollowed eyes and made no move toward the cash.

“There still an ATM outside the station?” he asked. She nodded. “I’ll be back.”

“Sure,” she said. Sadie pulled another cigarette from her pack. “I’ll be right here. Waiting.”

A traffic light hung over the four-way. It wavered in the wind and blinked red onto the gas station and the dollar store across the road. Jameson inserted his card. His finger hovered over the withdrawal button but pushed “Check Balance.” He turned back toward the sidewalk. There was a pet and garden store, a lot with U-Hauls, Lucky’s, a few houses, secondhand and hardware stores with apartments above. The diner waited in the dark beyond. A church needing paint stood just past the intersection; its sign advertised Sunday’s sermon, “The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth.”

He ripped his card from the machine and strode away. Jameson pictured Sadie, moaning with syrup on her young breasts and Sadie, gaunt, cackling smoke from the end of the table as he thrust, and he put down his foot and his rented car sped down Route 66.

She had everything going for her, skin deep. She presented gloriously on the stage as the designated beauty from her state. Her buttocks were firm and tented the bikini bottom just so. Her breasts were just so...healthy! Hanging perfectly at attention. Her waist was flat, the perfect connection between her upper and lower body.

Her legs were shapely, sinewy, and begging for the highest skirts possible. Her feet were lovely, like a child's. Her hands were porcelain. Her arms were cantilevers of poetry.

Her face would one day launch a thousand ships. While most noses are noticed immediately on a face, it's the attractive ones that are visited last, and she had impish upturned nose, on the perfect side of retroussé.

Her gait was a strut. Smooth and beckoning to follow, even into the gates of Hell, if she so ventured. As she walked, all of her parts syncopated in an interesting embellishment of her beauty.

This was the quintessential woman, skin deep. Who would care what was underneath?

While it's true the beautiful who walk among us compete in a fake competition for the eyes, age is the great equalizer. And while it's also true that beautiful people may be just as beautiful beyond skin deep and beyond, we train the beautiful to stay beautiful as long as they can, with fake adulation earned in fake contests.

She won the contest.

Deemed the most beautiful. In external appearance that belies the truth. And in twenty years, she'll catch up to everyone else on life's stage.

_______________________________

The pretty, young thing was an appetizer

Favored over a plain woman--no surprise there

But as they both got older

Similar wrinkles consoled her

For age was the ultimate equalizer

i was standing at some point. on two legs, with my arms out, maybe balancing, maybe not, but i was standing. my centre of gravity was above the wet cement, but now i'm up to my halfway in the road, gravel in my mouth and sludge in my ears. my left eye closed on reflex, and it twitches every time a piece of rock knocks on my eyelid. i'm worried the road juice is going to seep into my tear ducts and then i'll cry, and part of my body will be in the road and then i'll really never leave it. the sky is the ocean is the city is me and so i should not be afraid, but i don't want to cry into the road. that's too direct. then i am the culprit. it would be like carving up an animal with a knife instead of shooting it from afar; intimate, and all too ugly.

my blue waterbottle is likely done in for. so are my pants. and maybe a part of my hair. and maybe that means my head is done too. i list things i can sacrifice, as if i have a choice. things i am willing to sacrifice, offering, hoping the road doesn't eat at my most precious thing; my stomach. she's always hungry, she's always hungry and she guides me and if i had listened to her i wouldn't be face down in bayview avenue now. my stomach is my precious thing, and my keys, so that i have a place to sleep tonight. but i suppose by now the cement has caked on it. the keychain is attached to my jean loop and my jeans are even more submerged than my eye. even if i were to pull out the keys, and wipe off the cement to the best of my ability, even one grain could throw off the rotation. and then i won't be able to get in my bed and sleep.

my entire life would be a couple of meters over. and i would be outside, my phone on the brink of death and my keys useless, but i'd try to jimmy the lock for hours. i'd give up and get a slushie at 7/11. nd the door still wouldn't open. you can imagine if it does or if it won't. either way, the agony lies in the time where i am outside my house. i am knocking and no one is letting me in. the cook who is me, or the student who is me, or the cleaner who is me, or the landlord who is me, i am not letting myself in. i am just watching myself try to get into something that is apathetic if i will be near a bed or not. i will stand outside the door and i will peer into the window and i will knock and i will wait for someone, not to open the door, but for someone to pass by me and ask if they can help. and then me being locked outside my own house is not a sad story and one about the place that is supposed to be mine not caring the same way i do, the same way that one lover is always coiled closer to the hearth, but it will become something shared. and something shared it something worthy. of time, and of words, and of consequence. everything worth existing is because it is shared. and then maybe this stranger, or this couple, or this group of high school students or grandmas coming back from bingo or therapy group attendees will hear about my fall into the cement, which is now necessary in order to meet them, and one of them will be hungry and want a snack, so we will all go to the convenience store. and one of them knows a locksmith, and one of them knows a city guy, and one of them knows someone who had a similar situation and suddenly the weight of getting back to myself does not fall on me.

i return to the cement. i am not locked out of my house yet. i should be content with a quiet evening. i should appreciate the routine. i do. but, i admit, i have not outgrown the dreams a knight in the form of friendship. i have not outgrown anything like that in my whole life. i walk around in giant shoes and i clomp around like an adult, but if you were to many me run, i would fall flat on my face. i would be exposed as someone who is not tall, or big, or supposed to be wearing those shoes.

i think about moving my legs. i could try to gain leverage with one of them. i could try and pull one up to my knee. but i fear the rest of my body will tip further into the cement; like the deck of a ship, like all the boatswains and rowers i will end up in the ocean, i will be the fulcrum that does my lungs in.

i think about using an arm to lift my head. that should be my priority, i think. i can breathe out of my mouth, but i am sinking. i did not not forget i am sinking. i have just accepted that. and maybe that is why i have narratively ignored it until now. i have been sinking as i have told you about my maybe not-house and my not-shoes and now my maybe not-sinking. but i have always been sinking. it has been established, at least to me. innate in the scene since i am in wet cement. of course i am sinking. we are in a book, a novel, and i must sink. there must be stakes to falling in wet cement. simply falling in wet cement is not enough. i must continue the narration, i am held hostage, because an eloquent novel rarely offs it's protagonist, and if it does, not in such an unthematic way. it must be surrounded by pomp and circumstance. and so the sinking is the pomp and circumstance, if i am to die at the end of this scene. you must read on to find out.

i am sinking. but you knew that, because i knew that, and because the laws of narration said so. i am sinking, but slowly. there is enough time for all these thoughts and the ones that are not being translated to you. there are some just for me. or at least, that is what she will tell you. she knows me better than you, she'll say. so of course there is more than a dummy underneath. and i will not tell you otherwise.

i am sinking. we will try that again. i am sinking. i can feel the wet cement rising around my legs. it's closing in, holding my waist as if i need to be told not to move. i obey. it has risen over my right ankle, even though i tried to distribute my weight evenly. i must have fallen on my right ankle. i must have tried to break the fall with my right. funny how we sacrifice our dominate hands and feet. funny how we have dominate hands and feet. wouldn't it be easier to be capable with all limbs? evolution has favoured the right handed. or at least, the ones that came out of evolution. so did i. my right ankle is coated in wet cement. it is slowly filling my shoe. the weight makes my body tip, slowly, hard to starboard. it accelerates, like an old train engine, loud and not enough to carry the load.

i will lift my left arm, i decide. fuck evolution. i will lift my left arm and prop up my head. i suppose i could sacrifice the whole of my body. a decapitated head. i suppose that is the most idenfiying part of me. my family and friends would know. my mother and father, my two college friends and one colleague i eat lunch with on tuesdays. my neat circle. they would know. but i should leave them something better. at least a hand, those are double jointed and artistic; my circle would think it was fitting. i'd leave my parents my right and everyone else my left. they could splice up my pinky, let whoever take my thumb who wanted it. i think thumbs are the least aesthetic and most necessary part of hands. they are the moon of the orbit of fingers. they run the household. they are used for chopsticks, and cleaning, and all the small motor pinching movements.

i start to lift my left arm, and in exchange, my right ankle starts tipping even further. she reaches into the sludge. the weight wants me to stand in the bottom of this construction, a drowned one. breathing in cement would hurt, i think. breathing in rocks would turn me into an immortal very quickly, i think. the small pieces would fill out my lungs and indent into my bones and then when i died, and my meat withered away, the rock would be left. it slowly would melt into the road, as i did, and that would be when i would be the least guilty. i only died, and nature carved me out, and then i decayed, long after i could see the sun and must less think, and my existence would be so tilted towards nature it wouldn't be human. my self would have died. the only thing returning to the earth would be a hollow copy of me, but to the cemement and the sedimentary and the manga underneath,more of its cousins.

i prop my head up. my chin is covered in wet cement. i curl my fingers into a stand and rest my chin there. the cement is grimy, wet, like the insides of a gargoyle. i want to pull my hand out of the intestines of the road and patch it up. there will be such an ugly hole left behind. it won't even look like me. the shadow of humans doesn't look like humans. snow angels. belly flopping in pools. me in the cement. i don't want that. i don't want anyone to know i feel in the cement. something about the struggle to get out would be shameful, especially since i am lying here. i could fall asleep in the road, but people will think i scrabbled and clawed at the road to get out.

i can feel my hand starting to dry. now that my head is out, i have a better picture of the situation. the cement puddle is 10 metres by maybe 6, an entire swath of road. if i squint, i can see construction blockades. the road is closed. there have also not been any headlights. the signs may not be for anyone but the legality.

[i want to go attempt another piece so this will end here]