Wow, you really remembered you wrote this? Or did you just stumble upon it while deep cleansing your room? Honestly it doesn’t matter does it? Cause either way you’re reading it now for a reason. And whatever message it is your looking for I hope you get it, because I couldn’t exactly prophesy all possible outcomes, any of which you are no living in.

How many sticky notes have we taken down from the bucket list door? Hopefully more than thirty. After all you weren’t really supposed to read this until after college. But who am I to judge, we’ve never exactly followed the rules have we?

I honestly have more questions than I do help. Are you still leading a band of misfits somewhere? Have you kissed someone you weren’t supposed to yet? Are you important? Do you still have your folder of accomplishments? God we’re pretty fucked up aren’t we... are you seeing a therapist yet?

If not, it’s time. We both know all there is to talk about. And it needs to be said. Because otherwise you’re never going to be okay. And you’re never going to be successful.

I don’t know why you’re reading this letter. Or honestly, out of all the letters I’ve written you, I don’t know why you’re reading this letter. But either way, I hope it helps.

I love you.

You love you.

Your parents love you (even if it doesn’t seem like they do all the time).

Your idiotic brothers love you.

Your friends would’ve been rather lost without you.

And say you were to die right now this very minute. It would be ok. I know you’re probably still scared. Terrified. Petrified. But it’s like Joe depressingly said. It’ll be ok. It’s going to happen no matter what. And it’ll be ok.

Now if you’re reading this because some idiot dude broke up with you. Or you’re dealing with disappointment. Or maybe you’re coping with something much much greater. All I can prescribe is Ice Cream, a comedy show, and going on a run tomorrow. If you’re reading this because you’re fat (like actually fat) then I only recommend the run, and some serious tough love.

But I also don’t know why you’re turning to me for advice. I know infinitely less than you do idiot. I’m naive. Innocent (relatively). And you’ve been through college (hopefully).

You got this.

Now time to blow this popsicle stand

XOXOXO

Ps: burn the folder. You don’t need it. Plus... it’s kind of weird.

I studied the gears, whirring, winding, spinning. My sword sheathed at my side, as I watched the very last mechanical man die. He creaked and groaned, his bits sputtering, many of them visible from the way I had flayed his skin away to find the “off switch”. Peering down, I dropped to a crouch to better look in his eyes.

“I wish you could feel pain” I whispered watching his gears churn, lights blaring and alarms dinging. They would’ve been triggers for other mechanical men to come save him, had there been any left that is. Tears filled my eyes, my hand shot out clenching his throat. Forcing his head up to look into my eyes.

“I know you can’t feel anything.” I murmured listening to the way he ticked beneath my hand. “But somehow this helps.” His arms moved from finding leverage to grasping at my arm. A last ditch effort to kill me as he died. Drawing my sword I sliced through the connection in his arms, the gears in those limbs died instantly as electrical current wires broke. Those wires swiped through the air freed; every now and again one would lash my bare skin. But I could barely feel it. I felt something so much worse.

I cried silently as I watched this thing slowly die. He was studying me now too, my hand clenched harder around his throat feeling the mechanical pits bite into my palm. Yet just as the electrical currents had not awaken me from this hysterical slumber I was caught in, they barely stirred me.

Deep within me a voice rumbled. I never felt myself speak, but somehow I did through the crushing pain, weighing me down deeper into the earth, deeper than this compound, deeper than everything. Until I was in the center of the core, burning alive yet not dying. This pain could not kill me, even though I wanted to die.

“You killed my love. My true love. The love of my life. You ripped the life from the one person I adored more than anything on this planet. But you don’t understand what that means do you? You cannot feel anything, you are nothing more than gears wires and goo.”

I paused looking for word that could describe what I had felt. Love.

“What you did is the most grievous fault. For when you stole a life, you stole a Force from this world as well. You thought you had the right to intervene with Something so much more than you. Something that burns hotter and brighter than any star I have ever seen, or ever will see. It burns you just like the sun as you let It in. Leaving a mark on your soul as indelible as a birthmark, Something that will never leave, though It may possibly fade. It can make you feel as though you are drowning, from how immense It is. You strive to reach oxygen for one moment where you can think clearly, but you cannot for while your brain should be what guides you, your heart pulls you in an entirely other direction: deeper into the water. Because now It runs the show. You are never without It, but you never want to be.

Because just as everything within you calls for you to kill, you mechanical man, everything within me calls to It. I was drowning, voluntarily. I was sinking deeper and deeper into Its ocean, letting go everything that was me for them, for It. I may as well be dead without It, for It was what made me—me. For It, I would’ve cut my own beating heart from my chest. Because of It, I was the most powerful person on this planet. No harm could touch me, no matter how many times you and your brethren attacked me it didn’t matter. My skin can grow back, I could’ve learned to live without sight, or without a limb, but I have no idea where to begin without It.

With every slice of your claws on my arm, I felt nothing. In my veins was a blocker, put in place by It. And when you would cut me the pain would be stopped by how amazing It was. And I knew I would be ok. Now, It is gone, and I cannot feel anything—just like you. For what is the point of swimming in a kiddie pool, after living in the ocean for ten years? Anything you could do to me now would send no alarms, for I simply do not care. Without It, what is the point. It was a once in a lifetime thing, like certain comets streaking across the sky. It was more beautiful than that, more awe inspiring, and more dangerous. For had the world unanimously voted for their death, I would have burned the entire world to the ground. To save them, I would’ve burned myself with it. Had I been killed before someone killed them? I would drag myself from the pits of hell to seek revenge on the person who thought they had the right. Or in your case, the machine.

You took my light, my life, my soul, my everything. You took the best thing in the world, for no one else had It more deeply in tune with them than us. If I were you, It would’ve been inscribed in every gear. But because I am me, It was whispered with every beat of my heart. It was coded in every strand of DNA in every cell pulsing through me. It was carved in my bones. And any action involving It was muscle memory, even if I had never done the action before.

Because It was everything to me. It was me. It is me, but you took It. And now I am empty, as if someone scooped out my innards with a hot spoon. I’m alive, but is surviving after writing the best story in your life only to have the “the end” come on the tenth chapter with seventy more to go... really living? I may as well be you.” I spat out the final insult. Returning my eyes to him.

During the monologue, my eyes had closed, but now they were open. And the mechanical man looked different—somehow. He was still sputtering and ticking. Yet there was something softer to him. And in the reflection of his eyes I saw something. A bunch of zeros and ones were running across them, binary code, again and again. After watching it awhile I made out the message. With a gasp of shock my sword flew from my side and I sliced his head away, finally the whole machine went dead silent.

Shakily I stood, the tears still flowing, but quite like white noise now. With purpose I left the last remains of any mechanical man behind. His final words, defying all we had ever known about his kind, spun through my brain. But they didn’t change anything. He had relocated me from an ocean to a plastic kiddie pool.

A fucking kiddie pool.

They cannot speak,

for everyone else has spoken for them.

Our interpretations given

for their words unsaid.

They do not hate

as others do,

yet we call them the same.

As if sharing a country,

an origin,

a name,

equates to a share in sin.

They cannot speak,

for everyone else has spoken for them.

Our interpretations given

for their words unsaid.

They do not trust,

for we turn them away.

Forcing them back,

home to the terrorists

who have hurt some of them more

than any attack

done at our door.

They cannot speak,

for everyone else has spoken for them.

Our interpretations given

for their words unsaid.

They do not fight,

for they preach only peace.

Yet those words of theirs go unheard.

We only see what we’ve already determined.

Our ignorance a heavy blow.

All of us refusing to hear the bluebird,

after we glimpsed the wing of a crow.

They cannot speak,

for everyone else has spoken for them.

Our interpretations given

for their words unsaid.

They are not the killers;

we are.

Killing the innocents,

through our blindness.

We have condemned all the good

because somewhere

there is bad.

They cannot speak,

for everyone else has spoken for them.

Our interpretations given

for their words unsaid.

The advertisement blared across the screen as two girls looked on giggling. A spokesman with too much energy, was going on and on about how you could make your kid disappear for a stress-free week with a simple pill. The background was a bright pink, almost like Pepto-Bismal. Something sickly to an adult, yet entertaining and eye-catching to two girls.

The ten-year-olds picked up the phone dialing the number flashing across the screen of the TV, calling the company about the so-called “free” disappearing pills.

“Hi” Chloe started out trying not to burst out laughing after making eye contact with Mackenzie sitting across from her.

“We saw your commercial for the disappearing pills, we need two week packs. As long as they are both free.”

Mackenzie watched bright pink, like the advertisement had been, from laughing.

“And you promise we’ll be one-hundred percent healthy when we reappear, almost like no time has passed?”

Chloe nodded some more on the line give a fee mm-hmm’s as she often heard her mom do on business calls.

“Thank you,” she said finally before hanging up the call, looking at Mackenzie she smiled, “now we wait.”

Before Mackenzie could reply there was a knock at the door. The two girls exchanged confused glances, no one was supposed to be coming over. Mackenzie’s mom wasn’t expecting anything in the mail, a large no solicitors sign hung on the door, and Chloe’s mom wasn’t going to pick her up until tomorrow.

They carefully walked to the door. Both feeling like if they reached it too quickly it would be more likely that a monster lie in wait on the other side.

Mackenzie slowly drew open the door, and as she peeked out she saw no one stood there. Thinking it was a ding-dong-ditch she almost missed the small pink package on the welcome mat.

Opening the door the rest of the way, she picked it up finding there was “disappearing act” stamped across the front in cursive lettering. The name of the product.

Mackenzie could fit the box in her palm, “that was fast,” she whispered to Chloe who was peering over her shoulder.

“I mean they did say same day delivery.” Chloe reasoned, but she still looked uneasy staring at the small pink package. Mackenzie shut the door locking it tight, and turned to face Chloe, “I’m starting to think this isn’t the best idea.” Mackenzie whispered, a fluttery feeling in her gut sending her topsy turvy. “Oh don’t worry Mac, they couldn’t put it on TV if it could hurt you. It’s probably a hoax, we’ll take it and in reality it’ll just be a sugar pill. I think it’s called a placebo pill, it doesn’t actually do anything.

Mackenzie nodded, not feeling reassured, and the two girls went back to her room upstairs. Chloe closed that door and they both climbed on her bed. On the way up to her room Chloe had opened the box to reveal two small pink pills. Each with the same cursive lettering as on the top, this time saying swallow whole. Mackenzie took a water bottle from beside her bed, and Chloe grabbed a glass of water she had brought up there earlier that day.

“On the count of three,” Chloe urged staring deep into Mackenzies eyes who still had the same squirrelly feeling in her stomach. She nodded, shivering, despite her windows being closed against any wind outside.

“One... Two... Three!”

Both girls tossed back the pills chugging down the water each held, helping the pill to glide down their throat to their stomach.

They waited a moment staring at each other, but nothing happened. They were still just as visible as they had been before the pills. After a few minutes, and nothing happening, Mackenzie felt a huge wave of relief. “I guess you were right. About them being fake and all.” “Yeah,” Chloe replied seeming a little disappointed.

Suddenly, a loud knock came on the door downstairs. They both froze, that topsy turvy feeling was back, this time tickling both of them. Chloe went to get up, but Mackenzie’s hand shot out, “no, just wait, they’ll go away.”

They both waited with bated breath, then the knocks came again, louder. When whoever it was knocked a third time Mackenzie and Chloe began to cry, both terrified. Mackenzie took Chloe’s phone calling her mom.

“Hello?”

More knocking

“Momit’sMackenzieChloeandIorderedthedisappearingactpillsandwetookthemandnowsomeone’sknockingonourdoorandnotgoingawayandI’mreallyscared!”

More knocking

“Woah Mac, slow-wait did you say you ordered the disappearing pills?! Mackenzie I am coming home right now. Stay in your room! Hide in your closet! Do not open the door for anyone! Do you hear me?”

More knocking

“Yes mom” Mackenzie sobbed.

“Now go in your closet, and stick you fingers really far down your throat so you throw up. I’m on my way.”

More knocking.

Mackenzie and Chloe sprinted to the closet. “My mom said we need to try and make ourselves throw up.” Mackenzie immediately shoved her hand deep in her mouth probing her throat. She kept gagging, her whole body wracking, and finally she hit just the right place. Mackenzie fell the ground shaking as she heaved up everything in her stomach which all came out disgustingly pink and slimy. The vomit burned the carpet, and reeked of something almost like disinfectant. Mackenzie stayed on the floor, hunched over.

Chloe stared down horrified and the gurgling vomit leaking from Mackenzie’s lips. Mackenzie slowly tilted her head to look up to her, “you have to do it Clo, my mom said so.” Chloe shook her head, “no way I’m doing that. Plus, listen.”

The two girls froze, there was no knocking. “Whoever it was is gone. We’re safe.” Chloe insisted. But, that topsy turvy feeling was still in Mackenzie’s stomach. And this time, she wasn’t going to ignore it no matter what. “No Chloe, I don’t think we are. You need to throw up the pill. Like my mom said.” Chloe rolled her eyes. “You’re such a mommy’s girl. The pill had nothing to do with the person, and it stinks in here. I’m leaving, I’ll call my mom to come get me.”

Chloe moved to open the closet, and instinctively Mackenzie’s arm shot out stopping her. Her fingers dug in like claws into Chloe’s arm. “Don’t Chloe. Please.” Chloe stuck out her tongue, “chicken.” Mackenzies face turned red at the insult. Dropping her arm Mackenzie sank back to the ground. “Am not, idiot.” Chloe rolled her eyes again throwing open the closet door and strutting out. Mackenzie quickly shut it behind her curling up in the corner hugging her stuffed animal dog to her stomach. She tucked her face into her knees and sobbed as they had when the person first knocked on the door.

No longer in the closet, and now alone, Chloe was feeling bites of fear. The hairs on her arms stood on end, and she felt like she was being watched. But she couldn’t go back there where Mackenzie was, she couldn’t admit she was wrong and as big a coward as Mackenzie. Holding her head high, Chloe slowly opened the door of Mackenzie’s room to the hallway.

Looking left and right, she saw no one was there. Stepping out with a little more bravado. Chloe shut the door behind her.

Turning to face the hallway again. A small pink monster about the size of her palm lunged up at her out of nowhere. Chloe screamed, and as she did the little furry goblin shot into her mouth scrambling down her esophagus. She clawed at her throat choking. It’s needles scratched her soft inner skin as it scuttled down her, burrowing into her insides. There it opened wide beginning to gnaw away at her soft intestines. Chloe fell to the ground still screaming long and loud. She could feel it eating her inside out. Blood spurted out of her mouth and she cried, finally passing out from the pain. Blood and pink liquid oozed, bubbling and fizzing, from her ears, eyes, and nose. A loud squelching sound coming from the monster within chopping through her bones like they were butter. Till she was completely invisible inside it. All because of a pill that looked like candy.