This entry comes in the from the dark and often beautiful place known as the mind and heart of one of our legends, with a short and gripping chapter to stand statuesque in the halls of our Emerald Author Challenge. Told with shamelessly naked abandon, it climbs to shine upon the world of words Prose. has become known for as home to many of our living greats. To read this entry and see more as they crop up, and, better yet, to enter your work, just click right here:

https://www.theprose.com/challenge/14633

And here's the link to the show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gz8VS5YUoyA

And.

As always...

Thank you for being here.

-The Prose. team

TheWolfeDen sent in some files of her reading her beautiful writing, and we're here to tell you, it's damned beautiful.

Here's the link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HGXyCdf1Lg

Featured talent.

https://www.theprose.com/TheWolfeDen

And.

As always.

Thank you for being here.

-The Prose. team

Can you make me forget?

Can you be my escape?

Can your kiss

send me into ecstasy

of dreams and sky

and space and stars?

Can you erase my mistakes?

Paint over my broken dreams

with cozy realities

and nights of passion and sin?

Can you fly with me

to Austria and Italy,

far away island escapes

of white sand and blue water?

Can you make me stop thinking

about checkered pasts

and chaotic presents?

Can you gloss over the pain,

replace the heartbreaks

with life and fire and fun?

Can you get me writing again?

Can you get me dreaming again?

Can you help me?

Can you throw me

a life preserver

so I don’t drown

in this lonely ocean?

Can you make me forget?

Can you be my escape?

Can your kiss

send me into ecstasy

of dreams and sky

and space and stars?

Can you erase my mistakes?

Paint over my broken dreams

with cozy realities

and nights of passion and sin?

Can you fly with me

to Austria and Italy,

far away island escapes

of white sand and blue water?

Can you make me stop thinking

about checkered pasts

and chaotic presents?

Can you gloss over the pain,

replace the heartbreaks

with life and fire and fun?

Can you get me writing again?

Can you get me dreaming again?

Can you help me?

Can you throw me

a life preserver

so I don’t drown

in this lonely ocean?

I’ve been talking music lately with a youngster and it’s got me thinking… reminiscing more like, about the music I love. And I do love music, maybe more than anything. You kids today are soooo lucky, and soooo spoiled. I can’t imagine being a kid and having every song ever written at my Spotify or Apple fingertips, and what gibberish that ability might lead me to listen to?

You see, when I was a kid you had to patiently seek out music on the radio, or maybe television. There were always relevant musical guests on Ed Sullivan and Hee-Haw. Or you could tune in to “The Johnny Cash Show”, or the “Glenn Campbell Good-time Hour,” where you knew you’d find interesting and diverse music, but mostly you tuned your radio dial in quiet desperation… flipping past the latest, current, costumed thing like The Village People or Kiss (I apologize to those of you who are fans of these bands. No really! I am truly, truly sorry) until you found something to revel in, something that fucking moved your everlasting soul.

That was the music I was in search of when I was thirteen and the lights went out in my bedroom. I didn’t really care if it was rock, or pop, or soul, or disco. I just wanted it to make me feel something. It might make me laugh (The Streak), or cry (Cat’s in the Cradle), or think (Ode to Billy Joe), or dance (Proud Mary), but it had to make me feel alive. And once you found it you had to wait for it… and wait… and wait some more until you heard it again, usually at the very worst possible time, when the song was already half-way through, and you’d have to beg everyone in the room to shut up as you cranked up your single speaker, AM only, transistor radio, and of course you were always the youngest one, so no one paid any mind to your “ridiculous” pleadings.

And records cost money. They were precious. You might ask for The Eagles’, “One of these Nights” album for Christmas and get KC and the Sunshine Band instead, because “the department store was out.” And you also wanted a book. Your single, working mother couldn’t afford both, so you read your book and you listened to KC and the fucking Sunshine Band until you knew every word to “Shake Your fucking Booty.” Trust me when I say it was a difficult time, a time when one was literally forced to thank God for an older sister whom one hated, and who hated you, just because of her record collection.

Because you see, when something is rare you value it more. When I finally scored that Eagles album it was like owning the Mona Lisa. I lovingly cared for it. I only handled it’s outer edges, and I routinely changed my turntable’s needle, and I never, ever failed to return it first to it’s original paper sleeve, and then to it’s cardboard jacket if something, say by chance an afternoon baseball game, called. That Eagles record stayed in playable shape right up until CD’s came out, when it was retired to memory where it’s songs still haunt my showers to this day.

But please don’t take this as complaining. I am forever grateful that I was born in the age of radio, and of recordings. I truly don’t know how people survived before Barry Gordy and Sam Phillips saved this rockin‘ world, but they thankfully did, those Neolithic souls, somehow struggling along in their music-less lives so that we could live in an age where we are mercilessly bombarded with music, good music and bad, and where I, for one, love every damned song someone feels the urge to sing.

Dying, for me, was a beautiful experience.

I know that sounds crazy, blasphemous even, to describe such a tragic thing, a viscerally sad thing, in such a dissonant way. You might wonder if I was depressed. And truly, I wasn’t. In the end, despite everything, I was stupidly happy. Still, if I was being completely and truly honest, dying, the actual act of it, not the pain or the ragged breathing, no, the actual process of letting go… that part. That part was bliss.

Let me tell you about my life, before I ask you to celebrate in its ending.

It wasn’t a particularly spectacular existence, some might even call it boring, run of the mill. A life that could be mistaken for a thousand others. Of course, to me, at the time, it was everything, the only thing.

I was born in a small Midwestern town, raised in typical Midwestern niceness, by a father who was strict and distant but did his best, and a mother who was a tad too religious but who did all the mothering things with unmatched fervor. I was clothed in clean clothes, my feet adorned with shoes that were sensible and fit well. I was loved and scolded and hugged in all the typical ways. I had two sisters I constantly squabbled with, banging on the shared bathroom door, hastily getting ready for the day in a panic, somebody always holding up the one hairdryer, using up all the hot water.

I loved, oh yes, I loved. Roman, that was his name. I remember thinking his name had that unique way of rolling easily in the curl of my tongue, passing effortlessly through my lips, like I’ve said his name all my life, or that I’m meant to, for the rest of it.

He was brilliant, my Roman. I met him at university, studying astrophysics. He had grand ideas and even grander dreams. He loved life but at the same time was disillusioned by it. He said to me once, using his hands to gesture into space: “It’s not possible, you know, that this is it. There’s more to this, more to everything, we just can’t see it.”

You would think it would hurt, the way he said it, the way he longed for something more than us, more than what I could give him, but it didn’t. Because I knew what he meant, I felt it too.

There was something in between the empty spaces, he told me, between the tiniest of particles. An answer to everything.

I never found out what he meant, neither did he. He died shortly after his twenty-fifth birthday, before he was able to finish his research, before he got to meet his daughter, at that point still the tiniest clump of molecules gestating inside me.

I remember the pain of that moment. How the world became dull and gray. How I went to sleep too many nights hoping to never wake up again. But day after day I woke up, and I would go through the motions, and I would go to work and my prenatal appointments, smiling at my doctor, telling him yes, yes, I’m doing okay. It’s hard, but I’ve got my sisters, you know, and my mom…

Then I had my daughter, and at once the world had color again. She had Roman’s eyes, almond shaped and deeply brown, thick dark lashes swooping downwards at the sides. I swear she looked at me in the exact way Roman did, with that exact slight raise of the brows, the slight curl in the lips, and I remember weeping.

I named her: Aster. Star. The only one that mattered in my universe, my sun.

We had a simple life, our little family of two. We fought a lot, in the way all mothers and daughters do, Aster having the quick wit of her father, the stubbornness of her mother. She broke my heart a million times when she was a teenager, which we mended as we both grew older. Then as quickly as she came into my life, she left. I understood. She had to build a life of her own, having met her own star, her own universe.

And it was good.

“Mom?”

She’s finally here. My star. “Aster.”

Large dark eyes stared down at me. She was older now, my star, smile lines having formed at the corners of her eyes. Have those always been there? They must have. Aster always smiled with her eyes.

“Hey mom, it’s okay. We’re here.”

We. I couldn’t see well these days. She must have brought her little boy, my grandson. I squinted at the small blonde head on her lap. She named him… Roman.

I wanted so much to smile, but it hurt to even breathe. My chest muscles struggled to expand. I saw the nurse put a hand on my daughter’s shoulder, shaking her head.

Yes, there was pain, every single muscle hurt, the air caught uncomfortably in my chest, but there was also something else… something light. Suddenly I felt weightless. I knew then it was time to go.

Time at once contracted then expanded, and I could see everything, the future, the past, all possible choices and universes all at once. I finally saw it, what my Roman was talking about, the space in between the tiniest particles, the invisible energy that connects all of us together, in every universe, in every possible dimension. My universe, my stars.

I died then.

And it was beautiful.

SUNDAY, JULY 17, 2022.

"Have all the preparations been made, Nick?"

"Yep, we should be ready to get you up on stage in a couple hours here. Just waiting for your suot to arrive," Nick replied, checking his clipboard.

I looked over at Willow, our accountant, who was sitting oddly close to Nick. "And, Willow, what's the budget for the finale looking like? We have two months to prepare, so I'm not super concerned, just wondering."

"It's… you don't need to worry. You sold out to Buccee’s, remember? There are quite a few zeros here…"

"Good, good," I said. "That means we can be a bit extravagant next month if I choose as well… Also leaves a budget for the premiere in October."

"Holy cow, dude," Nick said with a bewildered look on his face. "Don't do that to me."

"What?"

"We're that close to October? Heck, this season is almost over? Jeez, I feel like I wasted my entire year. What have I done?"

"Nick," I said sternly. "This is supposed to be funny. Quit giving people a midlife crisis."

Willow checked her watch. "I gotta go," she said. "I'll be back for the show, though."

"Yep, same, actually," Nick said, setting his clipboard down. "I'll see you in a couple hours, Caleb," Nick said, placing his clipboard down.

The two left the room together, leaving me alone.

"They must think I'm stupid," I mumbled to myself before leaving my seat.

The office was very small and built solely for the purpose of these brief meetings prior to the show. Often, the three of us would gather in the room to discuss ideas for upcoming shows as well. Other times, we would discuss expanding the business and hiring others. But, more often than not, we gathered together in this room and argued like real friends. We all have a deep, platonic love for each other, but arguments were frequent, and always hilarious in hindsight.

In fact, yesterday we argued about who plucked their eyebrows the best. The answer is none of us, of course, because none of us learned how to do it professionally. We all just woke up one day and got fed up with the ever-diminishing gap between our eyebrows. I will say, though, as the eldest, I very obviously am the best at plucking my unibrow.

Where was I? Ah, yes, the office. It consisted of a round table the takes up 85% of the room, the chairs around it, and a window overlooking the small, wooded pond behind Pen to the Paper Arena. Having given very specific instructions for how I wanted the building designed, this was the only thing that I wanted. However, I know nothing about architectural design, and my blueprints would have led to a building ever on the verge of collapse. Who could have thought that there was such a thing as structural integrity, and that a building of this would need massive support beams and pillars?

Nevertheless, this led to our office having a closet. A very small closet. A closet so small, the only thing that is really worth storing within it is a broom and dust pan. A person could squeeze in, but if the door were to get closed, there would be no escape.

I heard a noise from the closet as I scooted my chair in. "Pizza time?" I asked, cautiously approaching the closet. I grabbed Nick's clipboard and held it tensely above my head. Slowly twisting the knob, I prayed to God that it would just be Tobey Maguire with a stack of pizzas.

I quickly yanked the door open, closed my eyes, and swung the clipboard. I smacked the side of my hand against the side of the door and screamed like a little girl. The clipboard flew out of my hand, bounced off the wall, hit me in the back of the head, and skittered to a step in the exact spot Nick had left it. I stumbled forward and fell into the closet. Somehow, in a feat of physics only possible in written word, the door slammed shut behind me, leaving me alone, cramped, and stuck.

I knew it was futile to call for help, so I opted to take a nap, assuring myself that I would be awake by the time Nick returned. But I had only gotten an hour of sleep the night before. When I awoke, from my standing slumber—which felt quite good—and managed to look at my watch, it was midnight. I had slept for twelve hours! There was nothing I could do. Nick likely wouldn't be back until next Sunday, and I had left my phone in my locker with do not disturb on.

TODAY

"God?" I asked when light seeped into the closet from behind me.

I twisted myself around as best I could to see a silhouette of a tall, strong man in the doorway.

"God! It is You! Well, I thought that I was going to live to be 103, but 18 works too, I suppose."

"I'm not God, Caleb, though you're lucky you survived, man," Nick said. "A week without food or water? Where'd you use the ba—nevermind. I can smell it."

"What else was I supposed to do? Hold it?"

"Well, the people are waiting. I was going to host it if you didn't show, but seeing as you're here…"

"Hey, man, I need you to get your priorities straight. First order of business: a shower. Second order of business: food. But I'll take the food first, please. I could kill for a taco right about now."

*****

"Goooooood evening, ladies and gents!" I called from the stage, lights dancing, smoke spewing, and ice cream getting shoveled into my mouth. Yes, that sentence is grammatically incorrect, deal with it.

"Sorry for being late! But I am here now, so let's begin, shall we?"

The crowd cheered.

"In third place, we have Remember by Raybug63! I thoroughly enjoyed it. It really got me thinking. I always love seeing your work, so thanks for sharing!

"In second place, we have AnnFan14's "Call me what you want, when you want, if you want"-lyrics by Dominic Fike. You put a great message within this work that more people need to be spreading and feeling! Everyone should just be themselves!

"And, in first… I had a tough time with this. We had many, many great posts this month. But I think that the author most deserving of first this month is Ayifushere with I wish I could fly away.!!! It was a beautiful but sad work. Many posts seemed to have a sad undertone to them this month, now that I think of it.

"Now for some honorable mentions. Roses311Sublime, I always love seeing you. A Story From My Mind While On Quarentine With Covid was amusing, as always.

"Ebube's untitled work was a short, cute read that I recommend to everyone.

"HMS… I wanna see more from this world you created in Dinner and a surprise. I was left curious to know more about where we were, who this things were, and just see whatever other wacky thing existed here!

"fudo, you were definitely a top three contender. Who couldn't love that story of yours?

"Hyperfluxe, that twist at the end was unexpected. Great job! I thoroughly enjoyed your work.

"Thank you, everyone, for coming out tonight! I will see you all soon."

Tomorrow only comes for those who live today, don't sit back and accept your fate.

Life with purpose, make the best of it.

Find someone you love and be someone they admire.

If you see a hero in your heart, follow that, become like that.

Accomplish for the right reasons. Do your work for the right reasons.

Forgive your parents, love your children, and let your children forgive you.

Take the time to walk. Take the time to be silent. Be silent.

Learn everything you can about this world and do something with your knowledge.

Help when able. Help life.

They lie. They lie and I could say it again and again and it wouldn't make a different. They would still say it, because they would still foolishly believe it. They would still say that this is good for me, that next time it happens I'll know how to deal with it and they would think they've mad me feel better.

I'm tired. I'm so tired of getting stronger. It's exhausting. It's killing me. I don't want to do it anymore, I've had enough of getting hurt. I've had enough of crying, of losing sleep overthinking things I cannot change. I've had enough.

There's a limit. There's a limit to how strong a person can become before it breaks them. Before they cave under the pressure, before they decide they don't want to be strong anymore. There's a limit to how much a person can take before they realize it's not worth it.

They next time the world wants to make me stronger, I wish it would kill me instead.