Gena’s problem was that she couldn’t understand. The tapping of the group therapist’s pen chimed hollow; it pulsed dullness and dim cognition. No one was going to get better.

“How are we today?” Eric asked the group. His eyes had that particular color of maybe grey, maybe a speck of color, but no one was going to look at his eyes, just the chart he tapped.

Ermine and Vic, the red group’s brothers spoke at the same time, “We need a ping-pong table.”

“Is this how both of you feel? I’d like to hear from each of you individually,” Eric said.

Ermine and Vic crossed their arms and slumped in their chairs simultaneously. Gena saw their blue heart lines pumping to the exact same beat. They thought they were the same person, but had been whipped into speaking as “we” since they were toddlers.

“Nothing else?” Eric made some notes on the chart. The scritch and scratch of his pen called out weight and arrogance. The pen seemed to glow a bit to Gena’s eyes, like it was feeding. “I’m sure individual letters submitted by the both of you would work wonders on the funding of extracurriculars.” The brothers weren’t biting. They’d set out their hopes and had them properly dashed. “Too bad. Well, let’s have Vic stand up and find a separate seat, please. You know we’re working on not sitting next to each other.”

The brothers pretended to not hear.

“I could tap on the glass and get Mat in here if that’s something you boys are interested in doing today.”

They looked at each other and nodded at the same time. They both stood up and walked to the center of the group, turned back to back then perfectly split, both walking over to another chair opposite. They stared at each other across the void. There was no space between them.

“Well, Samantha, how are you feeling on this fine morning?” Eric asked a little perkier. The whites of his teeth were brighter. Samantha hated that name, she was Stolt to herself and everyone else and wouldn’t respond to anything otherwise. Stolt crossed her legs, the white hospital pants and shirt she wore wrinkled from her motion and made hollow, scrunched sounds.

Eric waited patiently, he was paid to be there. Everyone sighed because everyone had tried the waiting game with Eric and it never worked. He’d make marks on his chart. The silence would crescendo over the course of the hour and consume all the group’s thoughts. The silence had to be filled. But no one wanted to fill it. The hungry silence ate and ate and ate all their hearts.

“Hey Stolt,” Gena leaned over and nudged her knee, “how was your terrible morning?”

Stolt, jostled from her defiance looked up at Gena. Stolt saw something there, a shimmer of color, a note of humanity.

“My morning began with the rising sun. It was orange from a purple night. It burned my eyes and I knew I was still alive. I closed them to keep out the burning though I longed for it to consume my soul. To die in the fire of the sun would be a great honor.” A grim smile completed her litany.

“A witch, before they killed her,” Gena said with her eyes askew from Eric, “told me that sunshine and fire are one and the same in all places across the universe.”

“Do you think about death often, Samantha?” Eric jumped in.

“Dude, she likes being called Stolt. Even my third grade teacher asked what names we preferred being called and he molested me, alright?” Viv’s lips glowed with rivalry. She had a voice which could be heard from across the greatest din, a triangle chiming from the back of an orchestra.

“Speak when it’s your turn, Vivian.” Eric turned his attention back to Stolt, “Samantha is your real name. That’s the person who is going to walk out from this hospital, a woman who knows who she is and understands how to live in this world. Samantha’s persona is the cause which resulted her being here. And I’ll not feed such malediction.”

Stolt raised her shoulders in defense. Somewhere another chord from another name zapped into her mind. Two songs played across her soul. “Sa-man-tha,” she said like there was a bad taste in her mouth.

Eric looked at her quizzically. “Yes, she’s the girl we’re looking for. Likes butterflies, paints rolling landscapes, studies everything about Australia. Would you like to fulfill your dream of going to Australia, Samantha?”

She shook her head, “Butterflies are weak.” Stolt then closed her eyes to meditate somewhere far away, where waves crashed like swords crossing and the sun poured molten, down from heaven.

“I guess we should move on. Gena, you seem particularly interested today, would you like to share how you are this morning?” Eric clicked his pen several times over.

“Do I get good marks if I say I feel okay?” Gena asked.

Snickers and empty guffaws made their way around. Tim and Ermine motioned at each other like they’d had the balls to ask about the chart.

“Now Gena, we don’t ask about what I mark down. What I put here doesn’t matter. It’s about how you’re actually feeling.”

Gena rolled her eyes against the bullshit, “That’s like saying it doesn’t matter if I swallow razorblades or coffee.”

The fluorescent lights hummed and burned Gena’s vision. This whole institution was meant to deaden and destroy the human spirit. Why would anyone think they could get better in such a dreary place?

Eric made a note on his chart, “Anyone else projecting that it is because of me they are being kept here?”

Time slowed and tension thrummed low and hostile. Stolt, Viv, Vic, and Ermine all raised their hands. Gena saw their arms moving in perfect unison, as if the same song of gallows stabbed into their spines simultaneously.

Gena saw the group circle and the four hands floating up to their apex. If she lifted her hand too, they’d create the five points of the pentagram. Stay in shadows, but misery. Risk it all and reveal yourself to freedom.

Gena raised her hand with the group. They were all outsiders. They were all one foot in this world and one foot out. They couldn’t see the vibrations like Gena could. But it didn’t matter. Gena’s hand reached into the void and her hand completed the five points of the star.

A strum of shock and beauty coursed through the five, like a splitting tree or a flower petal being ripped in the name of love. Eric dropped his pen to the floor and as Gena stood so did the rest.

The air became fresh. Their voices called high and low like the wind over empty bottles. The glass and walls and fluorescent lights and concrete floor melted away.

“Don’t break the circle!” Gena cried as they shimmered away from the world.

Grass and sunshine suddenly came to be. Clouds and trees and the hawk crying. Heart beats and smiles. The group looked around at one another.

Eric knelt and touched the ground, “How, where... What did you do?”

Gena looked down on him with glee, “You were right, Eric. It wasn’t because of you we were stuck there. Thank you for pointing out that was merely our projection.”

World's torn apart

There’s no hope in love.

Guns are cheap-

The power of life and death,

The power of God

All in a click.

Here’s looking at you kid.

Arnold starts by winning the lottery, several of them actually. He hit Las Vegas too, put all his winnings on red twenty-one, he still felt the rush of winning, even though he knew where the ball would hit. He buys things like Italian cars and nice suits. Oh, and he had a girlfriend, Rachel. Yeah, he dropped her immediately, almost as fast as he quit his job as a TGIF waiter. Why settle? He was practically a god now. TGI F-yourself.

"Let's just drink champagne today," Zou says, the latest of the models he's found. She's blonde and exotic, but also midwestern. He never understood in the movies how just being wealthy attracted women, but it does. It's boring.

He doesn't respond, just gets out of bed and looks over the view. It's tropical, he think. No, Mediterranean? Maybe he's in Greece. Could be the Virgin Isles for all he knew. He feels stupid for always needing to ask people about the world and how it worked. He taps the glass on the Watchface.

"Arnie, hey, come back to bed, you're getting that look on your face again."

"What look?"

"I don't know, like you're seeing something, you know?" She reaches over for him, but he stays in the same spot.

"No, I don't. What does it look like?" He bends down into her beautifully pale face that's perfectly sprayed with freckles. Her hazel eyes catch him even in her still drunk, just waking stupor. Yeah, she's beautiful. But he thinks about Tabitha, again.

"It's, ah, umm..." She stutters at the sudden need for honesty. "It's kinda like when you see someone running on a treadmill, you know? Like you're looking at something far away but you're just running on a moving wheel thing."

"Fuck," he runs his hand through his hair. He's more sober than he's ever felt in his life. The watch dangles on a necklace he never removes. He picks it up in his soft hands and turns back towards the ocean or sea or whatever body of water he was looking at. Tabitha giggles through his thoughts, back home, all the way back in 1986. That's the first time he remembers wanting to do something in life.

They were sitting on their carpet squares coloring with crayons. Cartoon worms ate through the alphabet strung across the wall. She had black hair and dark eyes and mocha skin. She touched his pictures and like them. He felt proud of that, he'd been working really hard on those rockets that transformed into robots. Not just any stupid robots from TV, but his robots. And his drawing. And Tabitha liked them.

"How far back could I go?" He mumbles.

He's done several years, relived what it's like to drink in his twenties. He went back to his high school years and wanted to study to get into a better college, but he couldn't just put the right answers and expect to pass and then get into the nice colleges and get the prestigious job like doctor or lawyer.

There was so much work involved with that. And he just didn't have it in him. Didn't have the passion other than winning lotteries or placing sure bets. He'd been investigated, but he could afford lawyers to fight those fights for him.

Before, as a waiter, he went home every night and smoked weed. He just was with Rachel who was cool, but she wasn't anything special, other than neither of them had to really put any effort into the relationship aside from the occasional tiff about sex or who was going to pay the take out. When they broke up she got upset but just shrugged and said "Byeeeee, Felicia." But she did call when he won the lottery that first time.

He could do anything, but it felt scary. Who the hell am I, anyway? He thought.

He never did anything great because he never knew he'd have to. So he just relaxed a lot, he explored a life where he could just pay for whatever he wanted, the American dream, right? Just buckets of wealth for free and posting it all on instagram or whatever magazine wanted to do articles about him.

"I'm like a super hero, but not the kind who you'd read about in the comics because I'm not doing anything to help anyone. I don't have a nemesis, I'm not trying to save the world."

Zou laughs, "What? You're my super hero!" She sits on the side of the bed with her legs open, straddling him.

He moves away, but picks up her hands. "Hey, thank you." He looks down at the girl waiting in his bed. "This easy life, being rich or beautiful, sleeping all day and partying all night; I think it's just a phase we all really like in America. But we lose sight of the rest of the work, how life really is for the rest of the world. And what it all means for us to live a life worth living."

"You're not making any sense."

"I think I am, you just don't understand it yet."

He lets go of her and twists the nob of the stopwatch all the back to 1986.

The rush of light is nothing but a blur. It never mattered about the amount of clicks he gave, just the memory of a time he held in his mind.

Everything is black.

The smells of clay and glue, wet paper and spilled milk. His hands are tiny. Everything is really bright. The world is tasty and fun. What is that thing over there? He thinks. I think that's my desk, oh boy! Oh and these are my friends, I love my friends except stupid Fred, and girls are gross, and I love coloring! Why am I wearing this stupid watch?

And the six year old boy takes it off and throws it into the slips of time. Who cares about time, he's going to color for the rest of his life.

Hi Tabitha!

“Ha’Tordeck, why do we kill?” Gi’s tone seeped into our bones.

The circle of males snarled, glad to be spared from Gi’Korik’s scrutiny. Our fingers rended into the carcass of the stag we’d hunted that morning. It was soft. The smell intoxicating. In my final sprint, I had delivered the crushing blow to its puny skull. Using a bit of antler I picked raw meat from between one of my lower tusks. All our leathers were wetted with the blood of our kill, but it only showed as a sheen off our lowly blacks. Stains of blood are a dishonor. Wind blew like god breath and the power of my crushing blow played over in my mind, with each review the pleasure of the victorious washed me anew.

“Ha’Tordeck!” his switch lashed into my bare shoulders, green black blood fed into the soil. The tight leathers he wore gleamed like fresh snow denoting his rank and superiority, he was a pure warrior. He had no need to hide; with the white he could clearly be seen, hunted, and challenged. The blood from his kills would only feed the soils and winds. His soul would remain unblemished.

“Because we are stronger.” I hissed, cowering from him. But the blow came again. Always to one of us the strikes would come. Each day he would ask us such riddles and each day he beat those who answered falsely.

“Then shall I kill you now? Am I not Gi? Found worthy of strength, honor, and cunning?” He struck again, “Why must we kill?" and again. "WHY MUST WE KILL?" and again.

"WE DON'T!" I bleated and the beating ceased. His shaggy white eyebrows pulled the wrinkles straight on his scarred forehead: his expectant look for me to say more. "To kill we have reason. To choose."

Gi’Korik shouldered the switch. The circle of peers leaned away from the dead stag towards Gi. Our master paced the raw earth, dusty autumn heat made our sweat stink. A murder of crows followed overhead impatiently waiting for their turn with the stag.

“We are Orc.” Gi’Korik said after much time. He sat down cross-legged yet still above us. “We possess might, forge great weapons, bending the elements with our power.” He raised his arm in a fist; his veins writhed like a nest of snakes.

“None finer.” Grath said. His father was blacksmith. His interruption earned him a switch to each cheek. He took it and did not dishonor the bloodless wounds by covering them.

“You,” Gi tapped Vitt upon his shoulder and then Cix, “and you. Who struck the beast first?”

Vitt bowed low hiding his vision and professing his back, a sign of trust and thanks, or in times of dishonor acceptance of revenge or justice.

“This faltered the beast, Ha’Cix you struck into its leg. This slowed it.” Gi’Korik touched me upon my shoulder, a great honor or a terrible burden. “Then Ha’Tordek crushed its skull within three paces. Ha’Tordek, would you have caught the beast on your own?”

“No, Gi.”

“Ha’Vitt, Ha’Cix, would you have been able to crush the skull of the beast in a singular blow?”

“No, Gi.” They replied in unison

“All work differently. All contribute. All feast upon the shared kill.” Gi’Korik rose dusting off his whites.

“Gi, is there not more honor in the kill?”

Gi’Korik turned into my heart. His eyes were a black storm with red strikes and yellow-cat viciousness. “Ha’Tordek… Speak your thoughts.”

I should not have asked, but the question burned my tongue and must-needed to fly. “Our first king, Vi’Jojen Kor, the carver, the bloodless, spinning teeth. We learn his stories at first breath, how he culled the madlands, how he drove out the unbelievers, killed false prophets, slew all Orc who are false-

“The Herem-dar…” spoke Fow’Lowdren.

I continued, “Are not all tales of his conquest, the slain, the great murder?” others murmured noises of agreement but dared not speak out of turn.

“Vi’Jojen.” Gi spoke, “Was his only legacy death?” His storm eyes took to the sky and for a time he breathed with the rhythm of a swaying tree. A cloud formed alone in the blue.

“Are we beasts without reason?” Spoke Gi’Korik.

“We are Orc.”

“Are we monsters who kill for glee?”

“We are Orc.” We said as one.

“Are we gods who cast this world into death for glory?”

“We are Orc.”

He spun on us like a flying ax “And what is Orc?”

Peering around like a vulture, circling. We knew not to respond. It was the question of bearing. It was why we were being trained. We privileged few who displayed prowess in the eyes of our clan-fathers, sent to the farthest shore of the frozen continent Vespiren, like a fist before impact. Here we trained, here we proved the salts in our blood. Here we learned what is Orc- then scattered in the winds for the great pilgrimage.

“When you are bound and sacked, then sent to a forsaken land of strangers, cursed to wander and face the tests of god, earth and man, always are you to think this question first: what is Orc. In this you can always put faith.” He beat his chest making himself a drum, sharing his rhythm. The deep thrum vibrated through all of us. In unison we raised fists and pounded our hearts to his beat.

“Urah.” We chanted.

“I was no older than all of you, sent to a land unknown. I woke on a beach of black glass pebbles. There I was woke by a beast of great size, no fur, and no legs except for fins.”

“Urah.” We chanted.

“Tusks dropped like swords from its mouth and roared in my face a challenge, the first challenge.”

“Urah.” We chanted.

“Do Orcs ever refuse a challenge?”

“No. We are Orc.”

“I had nothing but my hands and soggy wits to commit this challenge. I was a foreigner intruding upon rightful territory. Do I still accept?”

“Yes. We are Orc.”

“The beast was five times my weight and fanged to rip me in two. It had advantage of terrain and elements. Did I back down?”

“No. We are Orc.”

“Are strength and death the only path to victory?”

“No. We are Orc.”

“The battle was fierce, the first of many. With no luck to aid me, no blade of Orc yet earned, I fought with nail and tusk. The thing was slow but its hide was thick. Again and again it lunged trying to crush me, I caught its timing like a hungry wave, in and out - in and out. When it lunged the third time I leapt upon it and sunk my tusks deep into the beast’s jugular. The bellowing death cry was the music of my heart. The neck meat dishonorably wetting my jowels a storm struck dropping rocks of ice from the sky. Orc cannot fight the heat of the sun or slay the cutting bite of wind. This I knew as the next hardship, the challenge of endurance. The pilgrimage would be fruitful with many more hardships to come. Each a lesson, a test of our spirit, and the only path in finding within, what is Orc.”

“Urah.”

It’s getting close to the end and I want to leave you with hope. Though you’ve gone through so much and you’ve got all this shit that you suddenly learned, Boy, I want you to know that you can depend on you. Trust in yourself. 

When the day is long and things feel hard it’s okay to freak out. It is a distraction from your work but if you don't acknowledge those emotions they'll only serve to block your progress. Find good tools you can use to fix and appease those feelings. Go for a walk, read a funny book, call up a friend and ask them about how they're doing. Distract yourself from the situation which caused you to melt down and then return to it. I’ll bet nine times out of ten you’ll come back with refreshed eyes and say, I’m gonna do this. 

You want to know the best fucking part of this plan, you’re going to fucking do it. 

Now what are you waiting for?

It’s spring. 

 I was waiting for hard summer to come but it’s too late, I should keep moving. The desert is just over the mountains. I want nothing more than to pass without revelation, to crunch deathly russet sands under my boots and collapse into oblivion. 

There’s little time. 

Everyday I feel it dripping down my back and through my bones like I’m a walking hourglass. The machete in my hands is dull, pitted and loose at the handle. The rotting corpses at my feet have stopped twitching.

I think it’s been 40 years, which makes me about 83 now. Feels like the right number for me to die. I only wish I’d sired some children. The compound is far, far behind. The dead ones had come, rickety and hungry as always but this time in more numbers than we’d seen. I was the first to create the place and I’m the last to leave it. My dream is dead. My compound is dead. My apocalyptic family is walking-dead, walking fucking dead.

Crows call overhead. They are my solace like a cool drink. I dream about showers, how the hot water would scorch my skin red in the best way like a lover’s slap in the face. I kick an ugly redheaded man and wipe his leavings off my blade on the rags of his pants. Fuck I miss Ginny. She had red hair like a blaze in the night. So many crows. I figure there’s got to be as many a’them as there used to be people. I’m the only people now, probably. 

My map’s old, almost as old as the road signs that point the way to destinations long pillaged, long ravaged. Lake Tahoe, I’d heard of it when I was a lad pissin with my shirt open on crops of the middle country. Ain’t a country anymore. That took about a decade though. We martialed quick and we had the best weapons in the world. The fuckin problem though was so many people couldn’t put two bullets in their children's heads. They’d get bit, shit spread and the crows feasted. Probably for the next thousand years they’ll be eating. Cleaning up our mess.

Time to walk, too much walking left to do and not enough time. I want to make it south. Die in the valley of death. I was born there, a birth in Death Valley. My ma called it poetic justice for the place but she was an idiot. She couldn’t kill her husband, just like she couldn’t leave him in life, just like she couldn’t stomach violence on TV. People didn’t know how to fight for life and that was the biggest problem. For three years I watched on the TV, while it still worked, while I still had ice cubes and bullets from the sports store down the block. I watched how whole families got eaten up and I saw my ma, when I went to visit that third year, the year it all went to shit and I couldn’t find a hot shower ever again. She hated violence alive. In death, she was death, she took out a whole church because she was too proud to admit the teeth marks on her thigh.

The sky always gets prettier. I love the sunsets on this final hike of mine. People said that the blood color of it was a terrible thing to witness everyday but it’s so rare now to see fresh victims coming. I saw an Eskimo once, must of come down off a glacier by the look of his parka shredded like a hobo’s. The things I seen... and I never lost the gratitude of a sunset. Funny, before, I didn’t give a nothin for it. Fucking sun was gonna come back the next day, waking me up for some crappy job, some crappy coffee and crappy traffic to get through it. I miss driving now. Any gas we siphoned never went into cars, there were too many other ways to use it. Don’t get me started on coffee. ’Bout 20 years ago I found a coffee transpo warehouse. Cleaned out. That was probably the last time I cried.

I love these woods. I love how the sunlight dapples into long shadows and mixes in the rising dust. My eyes still haven’t left me. This is not such a bad place to die and sleeping in trees keeps the crawlers off me. But there’s something about the idea of the sun baking my cold bones till some crazy aliens find ’em a million years from now and figure me for the last man on earth that didn’t suffer from the craziest fuckin myth come to life. Ed used to say it was an alien virus or some kind of X Files crap. We laughed. 

If you’re reading this then I was wrong. You’re alive. You can take these bones and place 'em in the desert for me and let 'em bake till they’re white as shark teeth. I know it might be a lot to ask but at the same time, what else you got to do, stranger?

My name is Bart Gilley and today I’m goin’a die before I turn. I seen it enough but it’s so goddamn weird to feel. It’s like when I used to go to the dentist and got numbed up. It starts around the bite, mine’s in my left calf, and my foot’s gone to sleep after a couple hours. 

The moon’s rising and I can’t walk no more. I’m just listening to the crows. I think they know when one’s gonna take his own instead of turning. They’re smart bastards. Perhaps they’ll inherit the earth and do somthing better with it.

My daughter is six and a half years old. Into the kitchen she walks, the afternoon light shines her hair alight with cherubic splendor, "Hey dad do you know the f-word?"

"Fart?" I say jokingly, she's six and farts are still funny. I'm in my thirties, farts are still funny.

"Fuck. Fuck is the bad f-word. Do you know that word daddy?"

...

People are enamored with this whole coming from the stars stuff. They talk of galaxies forming and constellations crossing. They want the exploding super nova and hot cosmic debris flailing behind their eyes. I'm a comet burning fresh tracks across the night sky. Dangerous gases and simple atomic structures and secrets of an unknown place few can touch and even fewer actually understand, that's what we are...

People want that star dust like cocaine all lined up. Make me a star baby. I shine bright, I am unique. But we need apps to tell us the names of each star in the sky because only a few actually stand out. Who hasn't heard of the North Star?

The rest are the rest. Sure they're stars, there are so many of them that we look in the blackest dead of space and find enough stars to obliterate our puny Milky Way.

Congratulations we come from stars. So what. You're here now in the flesh and blood, breathing air and getting upset when a flock of birds decides to make your car a shitting ground. You pay bills using electronic money whose only synthetic value is based on the number we all agree on.

We are stars. We are gods. We are powerful masters of destiny. Wonderful I'm psyched! Now what? Does all this power come with a compass because I have no idea where to go. Wait, we're flying through an infinite void we are trying to understand but our minds cannot truly fathom?

Great.

We're all stars.

Do you ever just hear luck? 

It’s intangible but there is this forsaken pull somewhere on the top of your head that tingles your spine. Thoughts of “what the fuck” and the adventure of “Let’s do something reckless” sputter in your mind like the Lady kissed you. 

It’s a contact high as you pass through her membrane. She caresses your decisions and unless you’re able to let her have her way then you will lose. You will hate her, blame her, despise her and never again enjoy that thrill of victory. Or failure.

The greater the risk the greater the reward. 

Some people walk away, they call it quits while they are a little ahead. But how do they know where they are? What if there is so much left to gain? 

I am touching Her right now. Luck. She is upon me in what some might consider the most minimal of regards. But I just made a less than 1% chance victory. On a whim. On a forgotten desire, suddenly remembered, perhaps an omen of her doing. 

In the past we had won the toss, but only had a couple bucks to tithe on the bet. I think it was to prove her point to me, to trust in her Graces, and the turning of them. So, she let us win the first time. Back when we were too chicken-shit to go all the way. We could have made money. 

Tonight $100 was all I had left. Tonight $3500 landed in my lap. With friends behind me staring at the inevitable loss because of a silly marble's teased landing. But I felt Pulled to chance that one lonely roulette table. At her whim. 

The bet had to be done. There was no choice other than doing it right then.

I owed her that much.

And she paid it off.

And my skin tingles at her touch as I write this down. 

She likes it, the spreading of her Word. This might inspire others to her cause- her fickle and petty cause. 

I am her lover. She favors me ever so slightly because I am a true believer at heart. I meander as all true believers do but when the dice crack together like ocean thunder and all is soaking in the murky tides of failure, I see Her. 

Laughing. 

I also laugh.