For some people, dreams are nebulous nothings that disappear upon awakening, never to be remembered or discussed again. I have always had very vivid dreams. As I got older, my dreams began to encompass a full cast of characters and were so detailed I started writing them down so I could turn them into stories, or simply to remember the bizarre.

Sometimes I felt as if I truly lived only while I slept.

I often cry when I wake up.

Increasingly, dreams are the one place I feel safe and happy. Apparently, I am not alone in this sentiment given the overwhelming worldwide popularity of Lifesadream. Its first iteration years ago was as a virtual reality therapy program used to treat a variety of mental illnesses. Known as DreamTherapy, it incorporated positron emission tomography along with deep transcranial magnetic stimulation and a neuroelectro converter that transformed electric signals to images for review, aiding in more effective, targeted therapy. The success rate was nearly 100%, but even now the cost remains beyond the reach of most.

Subsequently, the makers of DreamTherapy modified it for use in the rehabilitation of criminals and enemies of the state (terrorists) with a program called NeuroRehab. Except in government usage, I doubt NeuroRehab will live beyond the experimental stages given the cost (executions cost pennies and the rise of penal labor camps has diminished interest in costly rehabilitation). Even so, to date, five serial killers, 13,012 rapists and 1,469 school shooters have been reintegrated into society as fully functional members thanks to NeuroRehab.

For some reason, none of those included from the enemy of the state group have survived the transcranial magnetic stimulation. I don't know why. They're still experimenting. Of course, there are plenty of subjects for testing, so I suspect it's only a matter of time before, one way or another, domestic discord is eliminated completely.

When DreamTherapy's proprietary technology patent expired, Lifesadream, a division of Neuralink, combined the existing technologies with an implantable neuronano chip that allows everyone to live in their dreams, or, for a more reasonable price, to relive their most precious memories over and over again.

Last year they introduced the neurocable and I've been trying to participate in the program ever since. Until the neurocable, you could only live in your own mind; but with the neurocable, two can exist in the mind of one.

After months of waiting, hoping and refreshing the waitlist page ad nauseum, three weeks ago I won the Lifesadream lottery. The waitlist has had millions of names since they first went live. So far, some one million people across the globe have entered Lifesadream facilities. In order to accommodate as many people as possible domestically, the U.S. government provided, at low cost to Neuralink, thousands of expropriated libraries and university campuses that had fallen into disuse.

As soon as I got the call, I quit my job and sold our house. Yesterday morning, I signed over power of attorney and our savings to the Lifesadream Foundation. They will use the money to maintain and care for my husband and I as we live out the remainder of our lives in my mind. My dreams. As I look at my husband sitting in his favorite chair, eyes vacant, I cannot wait.

**********

"Are you comfortable, Mrs. Pickering?"

It was evening. I was laying in a soft bed in a room that was probably a professor's office back in the day. The body suit in which they'd dressed me gently massaged my limbs. My husband was in the other bed, sleeping under a white comforter. There was an IV line in his arm, the bag hanging to the left of his bed. Mine was to my right. There were armchairs as well. We were surrounded by nurses and the surgeon we'd met that morning. A machine with various monitors stood between our beds, embedded in the wall and there was a desk with a chair and a monitor near the door. The windows were high up and I could see the sky was a pretty purple that would soon fade to black.

"Yes, thank you."

"Dr. Woburn..."

"Call me Maynard..."

"Dr. Woburn will be inserting the neuronano chip through the nasal cavity. It is painless and relatively quick. We'll start with Mr. Pickering and then we'll insert yours.

"Next, we'll attach the electromagnetic coils to both of you. We will wait until you fall asleep naturally since sedatives might affect your dreams, and then we will connect the neuro cable into the ports we placed above your ears this morning.

"Do you have any questions?"

"Do we ever wake up?"

She glanced at her tablet and said, "You have the lifetime package so we will keep you under until you die of natural causes. We will use the transcranial magnetic stimulator to maintain a state of infinite REM for both you and Mr. Pickering."

"What happens to people who don't have the lifetime package?"

"It depends."

"On what?"

"The package. Some choose the End of Life package in which case we put them under and then after 24 hours, we inject them with Pentobarbital. Some, like you, choose the Lifetime package and we keep them until they pass. Some with a partner choose the Until Death Do Us Part package in which case we keep them under until one dies and then awaken the other who can then decide whether to go back under with an end of life package or go home. Depends on the desire and the available funds, of course.

"Some choose the Memory Lane package and run a series of isolated memories for a set period determined by price. At the end of that period they are awakened and go back to their lives. It's a kind of vacation for some people. It's a great stress reliever. I do it once a month."

"If he dies first, will I still dream with him?"

"That is unclear at this time, but it is possible."

"What have others said?"

"At this time, all our clients making use of the neurocable are still in a joint state of REM."

"There haven't been any deaths?"

The nurses exchanged a glance. "At this time, all our clients remain in a state of REM, either alone or with a partner."

"What happens if I die first?"

"As stated in the contract, if the dominant party predeceases the partner, the partner will be removed to our hospice facilities and kept comfortable until their passing."

"What if he dies first?"

"He will be cremated and buried with you upon your expiration."

"So, this is it. I won't see you or this room again?"

"All things being equal, no."

"Okay." I took a deep breath. "Thank you for all you are doing and will do for us. The world had gotten almost unbearable for us. For me. It was so bad I looked forward to sleeping every night as a short escape. I can't believe we can actually, truly live happily ever after now. It's a dream come true. Literally." I laughed. The nurses smiled.

"Are you ready, Mrs. Pickering?"

I looked over at my husband of 42 years.

"Yes."

**********

"Baby?"

As I slowly awakened, I felt my husband's arms around me, his body strong and warm. I opened my eyes, "Eddie?"

"Morning, baby," he said, kissing me softly. "You wouldn't believe the dream I had. I swear I was dreaming our whole life all night."

"Really?" I said, running a hand through hair that was thick, curly and brown.

"Yeah, it was wild. We had a kid, I started my own business, you taught physics for 30 years and then retired to take care of me because I got early onset Alzheimer's. It was a nightmare! I was so glad when I woke up this morning and it was all just a dream."

Looking into his eyes, I smile. "Me too, my love," I leaned up to kiss him. "Me, too."

She traces the familiar path of his vertebrae—thirty-three notches of bone she's memorized like prayer beads, like stations of the cross. Each touch an absolution neither of them deserves.

Time stretches. Contracts. Pools like candle wax in the hollow of his throat.

They don't speak because words would make it real, would crystallize this ending into something neither can take back. Instead: the whisper of sheets, the staccato rhythm of breath held too long and released too soon, the wet sound of mouths meeting and parting. Meeting and parting. Meeting and—

His hands remember things his mind wants to forget. The exact curve where hip meets thigh. That spot behind her left knee that makes her gasp, makes her arch like a bow string pulled taut. He's mapped her body in the dark so many times he could navigate it blind, could find true north in the constellation of freckles across her shoulder blades.

"Don't," she says when he tries to be gentle. Because gentle would break her. Because gentle would mean acknowledging what comes after.

The late afternoon light filters through gauzy curtains—the same curtains that have witnessed a hundred secret afternoons, a hundred stolen hours. Today the light feels different. Thinner. More precarious. Like it might shatter if they move too suddenly or breathe too deep.

He watches the shadows play across her skin and thinks about quantum physics—how light can be both particle and wave, how it can exist in two states simultaneously. Like them: both ending and eternal. Both here and already gone.

She bites his shoulder hard enough to leave marks that will fade before morning. Before he goes home to a different bed, a different life. Her nails dig crescents into his back—tiny bruised parentheses containing everything they've left unsaid.

The ceiling fan turns lazy circles above them. Around and around and—stop thinking. Stop. Just feel this: skin salt-slick with sweat, muscles trembling on the edge of release, the particular gravity of bodies falling into familiar patterns for the last time.

When it happens, it happens like this: a cascade of small surrenders. The way her breath catches. The way his hands tighten on her hips. The way time fractures and reforms around them. Like a wave breaking. Like a star collapsing. Like the end of all things.

After, they lie in the wreckage of what they've done—what they've been doing—bodies cooling in the artificial breeze. The space between them grows by microns, by millimeters, by miles. Already she can feel him receding, becoming memory.

She doesn't watch him dress. Doesn't watch him check his phone or straighten his tie or gather the scattered pieces of the life he's going back to. Instead she studies the ceiling, counting cracks in the plaster like rings in a tree—measuring time in concentric circles of regret.

At the door, he pauses. Opens his mouth. Closes it. What could words possibly add or subtract from this moment?

The click of the latch is so soft it's almost inaudible. Almost.

She lies there until the shadows lengthen and the day bleeds into dusk, until she can no longer smell him on her skin or feel the ghost-print of his hands on her body. Until she becomes singular again. Indivisible. Whole.

Or something like it.

Hiraeth. The home that I need. The home that is supposed to be safe. A home I can only find in my head, a place I cannot go but I want desperately. Some place, where I can never be, what I can never see, what I will never smell, Unfelt, and forever away. A home that isn't even a home.

Nostalgia. I yearning so deep in my soul, it hurts. A curse forever embedded. The smell of blood that brings back horrors. The smell of cologne or perfume that makes you want to cry. The old scents of books, the worlds we can never relive or have. The sound of shoes squeaking, remembering when they would have ran to me, but now they cannot.

Hope. Something that I cannot get rid of. There will always be a flicker, but hope means it's not there. You hope he would be yours. You hope they will live through it. Hope, a new torcher of it's own because it gives you something to hold onto tightly just to rip it away in the most painful way.

Might. He might have lived. They might have made it. A place where there could have ended differently. Might. A word that means there could have been a different outcome, meaning that it's coming out as a blame on one person. They might have made it if only, only I had done something different.

Forgotten. To never have another person whisper to you, or hold you. To come to a home that no longer remembers anything when you remember. The pain of realizing you were never important enough to be remembered.

Wished. I wished it was different. A wish is made when there is only hope, no logical sense or real chance. A wish that cannot come true, because wishes don't exist.

God. The only person who has watched over every death, held all of the human kind. The only person who mourns the loss of every life because they saw all. They knew all, they met all, they were all. And still there can be no stop to death.

Almost. They were almost there, he almost lived, I almost saved it. It almost finished. He was almost born. She was almost redeemed. He was almost forgiven. She was almost loved. He was almost not alone.

Last. Alone, desolate. Broken, but moving on because they are the last. The dwindling fear, the hope that last did not just mean one. A lonely number, a lonely status. She was the last to see them. It was the last sunrise. The last chance. The last life. The last piece.

The night sky over Silicon Valley buzzed with drones, a constant, artificial starlight cast down from Damian Sinclair’s floating fleet. Like his mind, they were ever watchful, scanning, analyzing, bending the shadows to reveal every hidden movement. Below, in his quiet glass tower, Damian watched the city pulse to his rhythm—a symphony of algorithms and innovations, all in his image. His reflection in the window seemed ageless, unchanging, a mere echo of his own genetic perfection. Somewhere, in cryogenic storage far beneath his feet, lay millions of embryos, each one a small monument to his genius. For Damian, this was no mere experiment. It was his greatest work—his legacy—crafted cell by cell to outlive them all.

A red button flashed on Damian’s desk. Damian strolled over and leaned into the microphone. “Yes, Tara?”

“Mr. Sinclair,” a cool voice breathed, “They’re ready for you.”

He cracked his neck and marched over to his office’s elevator. A grin slowly crept onto his face on the way down to the Keynote Arena. The doors opened to the sound of thunderous applause coming from behind the thick, silver curtain. Damian grabbed a microphone from a meek assistant, stepped through the curtain, and took in the sight of thousands of his admirers, from industry figures to reporters to the lucky few fans that had coughed up the ten grand it took to secure a seat there.

“My friends, today we are gathered to witness history in the making.” He could see a wave of spectators leaning in on the edge of their seats.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I stand before you today not as a mere innovator or CEO, but as a steward of our collective future. We live in an age of incredible achievement and unparalleled fragility. Our world is more connected, more technologically advanced than ever before—and yet, we’re more vulnerable to global threats: climate catastrophes, pandemics, political instability, rampant infertility. One unfortunate crisis, one moment of oversight, and the diverse tapestry of human achievement could unravel.” He paused, letting the silence stretch as he scanned their faces, leaning in, hungry to know his next words. “And only we—yes, we here—can prevent that.”

Behind him, a giant screen showed a cell failing to undergo meiosis, shriveling in a petri dish. It was replaced by a plump infant smiling down at the audience with icy blue eyes.

“That’s why I created Project Genesis, a comprehensive repository of the human gene pool, a vault designed to secure the full spectrum of humanity’s diversity. In this vault, we will store the DNA of individuals from every background, every corner of the globe. It’s a legacy library, preserving the finest details of who we are for generations to come.

“Imagine a future—a hundred, even a thousand years from now—when unforeseen events have altered the face of the Earth, and there’s a need to restore humanity’s genetic essence. Future generations will look to Project Genesis as the beacon of their heritage, able to rebuild a diverse, vibrant human population with all of our strengths and talents intact.

“This isn’t about me. It isn’t about you. It’s about the survival of humanity’s best qualities. Every artist, every scientist, every teacher, every visionary—we are collecting the DNA of pioneers and everyday heroes alike so that humanity will always have a path forward, no matter what happens.” Images of Aristotle, Leonardo da Vinci, and Albert Einstein flashed on the screen. The images faded away to reveal a video feed that panned across the audience.

“Project Genesis isn’t a replacement for human life; it’s a safety net. A precaution. And as your steward, I believe it’s my duty to take this step now. Because if we don’t preserve ourselves, who will?” The crowd roared with excitement.

“You may recall providing a DNA sample with your entry here today. My gift to you all is that each one of you will be part of the first generation of this monumental archive. You will be the mothers and fathers of the future, regardless of the limitations biology may have placed on you.”

A collective gasp escaped from the audience and made way for another round of applause. Damian’s grin grew wider. The crowd didn’t know the first phase was already complete.

Damian walked back behind the curtain and took the elevator back to his office. He pressed a button on his desk and a large monitor lowered down from the ceiling. The news was already buzzing about his announcement. Headlines scrolled across the screen. “Eccentric CEO pledges to save the world.” “Sinclair Enterprises, the nexus between humanity and progress.” “Damian Sinclair champions biodiversity.”

Damian leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands together. “Savior of the world” sure had a nice ring to it. It was true, too. At least, it would feel true to the citizens of the world. They would get to feel important and useful, which is as close to a sense of purpose as any mere human could hope for in the modern age.

Damian believed in the power of predictability and perfection. He felt that entropy was an unavoidable eventuality in a chaotic world, but it was his own purpose to harness that random disorder and turn it into a force for good—his own definition of the common good, that is. Human beings were messy, flawed, dangers to themselves and others. Replacing humanity with clones was a necessary evil—and “evil” itself? Such a subjective word.

- - - - - - - - - -

That night, Damian could hardly sleep. He couldn’t stop thinking about the millions of new beginnings resting safely in cryogenic freezers in the sub-basement. The first trials had been massively successful. All key performance metrics had been easily met, and not a whisper of it had escaped the top-secret lab. He felt the urge to check on his little ones.

Damian had a dozen children scattered across the world, each born via a carefully chosen surrogate. Each surrogate had been handsomely paid to bring progeny into the world, though a couple had turned down the money, as they felt it was a sufficient honor to give Mr. Sinclair the gift of life. He didn’t have relationships with these children. When they came of age, they would receive access to a hefty trust set up in their names. Until then, they were of little use to him. He would bring them out for photo ops to maintain his carefully constructed image of Damian Sinclair, benefactor and father to the modern world.

But these embryos—these were all his. When the time was right to release the rest into the world, he would release his tight grasp on their cryogenic chambers and unleash them throughout the planet—and beyond. Space was the final frontier, and he had already begun populating it with various satellites and probes in anticipation of a global catastrophic event. It was only a matter of time until humans finished wrecking the great planet they had been undeservedly gifted.

Damian pulled back the black silk sheets and stepped into his gilded slippers. He stopped at the wall of windows and took in the sight of his empire. Below, skyscrapers reached up toward his tower up above, obscuring the colonies of humans marching on the drab pavement underneath. Their lives were so… inconsequential. So meaningless until the moment Damian had deigned to give them something to hope for.

He pulled a white lab coat over himself. He hadn’t checked on the babies since the big announcement. Damian padded over to the elevator and clicked the button that led him down to the sub-basement. He felt the air grow colder and his breath crystallize into the air as he descended.

The elevator stopped and the doors opened. He stepped into the gleaming white corridor and the doors closed behind him. He made his way down the long hall and past the row of heavy metal doors. He stopped with his right foot still hovering over a miniscule speck of dust on the white marble floor. He cursed the cleaning crew under his breath and vowed to relieve someone of their duties the next morning. Damian stepped over the impurity and toward the gold door at the end of the hall, the imperfection still fixed firmly in his mind.

He scanned his lanyard at the door and it slid open to reveal a massive laboratory. Rows of giant freezers stretched through the lab and lined every wall. He turned to a screen next to the door reading -272.5º C and frowned. This would not do. The embryos had to sit at exactly Absolute Zero to be preserved until their deployment. He angrily tapped at the screen to set it to -273.15º C.

Damian strolled through the rows of freezers and held a hand up to the frosty glass. Here laid the next step for humanity. The culmination of his decades of hard work. As he strolled past each cryogenic chamber, his gaze softened to a faint smile. Here lay the next step for humanity, his meticulously designed children, preserved at the very edge of absolute zero. And it was all his. His legacy.

During the day, few people had the privilege of access to this secret unit—only the top scientists and trusted engineers he had hand-picked. During the night, the place was empty. This was his sanctuary, where he could shout his dreams and lofty ambitions out to no one but his army of embryos.

Reaching out, he pressed a palm to the frosty glass, whispering to the embryos, “One day, little ones. One day, you’ll have the world. And when you do… it will be my world.”

---------------------

Note—This is a full novel I've written that I'm working on getting a literary agent for. Please message me if you're interested.

The first thing I noticed was a strange sound: a sound like the repetition of laboured breath, close but not too close. It had a deep timbre which I couldn't place. I didn't notice anything else. I sometimes think about how, in the absence of things, a certain emptiness of senses washes over me. That was what it was like. Not too hot, not too cold, not in pain, not, not in pain. Not anything, basically, just a person, listening in the darkness to a low-pitched, repetitive sound.

I opened my eyes and that was when the senses began to rush around me, like an augmented reality being built, brick by brick. The room was a pale colour, off-white, which made me instantly feel cooler. Tiny lines wove their way up the walls, intersecting and running out like roots, reaching up to a mottled ceiling. Cracks. The place was dilapidated. I was sat on the ground, which made me feel a dull ache sinking into my bones, as though I had been sat in the same position for a long time. Cautiously, I reached my hands beneath me, placing each palm flat on the marble floor and using the stability to push myself to my feet.

Now, I could have accepted the sound I was woken up by. I live in the kind of world which is full of noise, meaning I rarely dwell on the origin of the soundtrack of my life. However: marble? Really? Marble was the stuff of Ancient Greece, of cartoon Hercules confronting the statue of his father. It was durable in a way that no one bothered to seek out anymore. The coldness which crept around me felt partially linked to the properties of marble itself, and partially from a sense of disconnect and connotation.

My curiosity made my movements laboured somehow. I'd always expected a quick-paced panic to possess me in a situation shrouded in mystery, yet here I was, eyes narrowed, moving with hesitance and controlling my breath. The sound continued in the background. The room that I was in was small. Neglected. Relatively empty. There was a window, through which light was seeping, putting a spotlight on tiny particles of dust as they danced around me. Naturally, I tried to tug it open, a layer of dust transposing itself onto my sleeve in the process. It took three pushes for me to force the lower pane upwards; once it was free from its catch, it gained momentum and swung up to hit the upper frame. The sound suddenly stopped, to be replaced by wings, violently flapping their escape. The stray, mauve feathers clustered on the sill made me think perhaps I'd dismissed more than one detail I should have been able to process.

When I spun back around, the floor was no longer empty but rather littered with copious papers, all sepia stained and flickering in the breeze. I sat back down, against the wall, using my hands to turn the pages into less of an incoherent mess and more of a pamphlet. 'Not the window', 'Not the window', 'Not the window'... each page repeating the same phrase, not written, whispered, my hands speeding up, tossing each to the side until the last. 'The door'. The words echoed. From where, I couldn’t tell. With one eyebrow raised, something I have never been able to do deliberately, I cast an eye at this door. It was nothing special, old but not ancient, incredibly plain but heavy set. With nothing to lose, I got back to my feet.

Yesterday (maybe?)

"This is your final warning." The statement came out with little drops of spittle, which I watched until I realised that would land me with the knowledge of where they fell. "We have made plenty of defences of your decisions and it, frankly, is not sustainable..." Here, I opened my mouth, and was preempted by a look and a hand, outstretched to say no. "You are going to walk back out there and do your job, live your role, properly, professionally and without complaint. Do you understand?"

I have always found it quite interesting how often we are asked whether we understand, when the real question is whether we will comply.

I stood without saying anything, lips pursed, head bowed to signify a posture of compliance, and left the office. This was the office of Ms Cally Windstrup. She was not in charge of the department within which I worked, her seat was much higher. However, I had been on her radar for quite some time. I had been known to question everything. Sometimes verbally. Sometimes with actions which 'reflect poorly on the company'. On one occasion, I was even told that I had questioned the morals of the company with my choice of attire. I couldn’t pretend that wasn't a satisfying moment.

The route from Cally Windstrup's office to my booth felt to be a well-trodden path, you could almost see the tracks of my Doc Martens in the soft carpet. I trudged through several departments, unnoticed by anyone. Each department here was comprised of: the aforementioned soft carpets, part of a scripted ‘office’ physical aesthetic; a bank of booths in which workers could carry out their daily tasks and the whirring tech of a machine at work. Inside each department's monstrous cavern of computers existed the reason I was here, the world how people now knew it: 'Net6', known to some by its name, known to most, nowadays as purely 'The Internet'. As I passed 'Intelligence', I gave a monitor a nudge. My least favourite department. I thought of them as 'spies with no eyes'.

The computers took up most of the space, and most of my time. A forest of bulky boxes rimmed with flashing lights and labelled buttons. Knowing which to press was now hardwired in my mainframe, though I probably couldn’t explain it.

I walked around this office on a ridiculously regular basis. There’s a phrase about familiarity where the claim is made that the action could be done blindfolded. I genuinely had. I’d zoomed around it on my wheeled desk chair once, only to find that, when I came back the next morning, it had been replaced with a mahogany chair with four solid legs. That didn’t bother me too much, considering they’d been replacing the wheely chair every day to cover up the fact I’d been picking out its stuffing. One morning, I’d dug around in a cupboard, found a megaphone and staged a lone revolution. The next day, even the room where the cupboard had been was gone. I’d entered this office in a short tartan one-piece one day which I’d sewn together from my dad’s old suits. That one got me an almost instant demand to Windstrup’s office, and I’m sure it didn’t help that I treated the walk that day as a catwalk.

The reason that this particular memory has stuck was not the request to Cally Windstrup's office, that was a regular jaunt. I had been tracking the changing shades of her nail varnish in my journal. They changed weekly. I would also not have remembered the trek back to my booth. I am surprisingly mobile for a Net6 employee. No, when I got back to my booth, and I eventually managed to find a position on the solid chair which was close to comfortable, I found a letter on my desk which was not typed. I remember this letter, its stiff manilla envelope and the blotted curve of its cursive. I remember its sharp corners and the heaviness which readjusted its sense of gravity as I rotated it in my hands. I don't, though, remember opening it.

title: Natural

genre: Light Sci-Fi

age range: YA

word count: 80,175

author name: Hannah Keogh

why your project is a good fit: It's new, it's fresh and it's taking a look at the way tech is heading in the future

the hook: Where is the world heading and is it healthy?

synopsis: Darcy, our young non-binary protagonist, wakes up in a room. As their memories return to them, they try to work out where they are and, more importantly, why. Only days ago, they had been administering the inner workings of the alternate reality technology that has come to dominate their world, 'The Net'.

Through corridors and rooms where experiences don't seem to add up, Darcy is allowed the freedom to experience life in a way they never have before, especially when they bump into Niccolo, a cynical young man who seems to have even less of an idea than Darcy themself. The pair embark on a journey through a slightly chaotic world, building a relationship that may not have been possible in the ruins of the world they had both been accustomed to.

A story in two parts, 'Natural' is a love letter to all that is human- the tiny things that add up to make life real.

target audience: young people who care about the world

your bio: I am an educator from the UK, currently living in California. I used to be a teacher and now I work in educational policy. I read a lot and write book reviews which I share on Instagram

platform: Instagram @hanreadslots

education: Master's level education in politics in the UK

experience: amateur writer

personality: ADHD extrovert

hobbies: reading, writing and outside exploration

My sweet Coco was much like a feline deity, born from ancient days of Egyptian glory. His beauty, elegance, and massive ability to love surpassed boundaries, leaving their mark in a connection beyond the norm. I always swore he was smarter than any human I knew. Somehow, he could convey his needs and thoughts in a telepathic way that amazed even me. Coco and I had a deal: whoever went first needed to return and visit the other. He has remained true in this promise, visiting in my dreams when least expected. Needless to say, the reunions are achingly bittersweet.

White pine needles tick-tick-ticking against the window (like time, like subpoenas, like success slipping through desperate fingers). Sean "Puffy" Combs—guidance counselor badge gleaming against midnight cashmere in defiance of July heat—watches Timothy fold and unfold a college brochure with trembling hands.

"You're scared of greatness," Diddy says, voice smooth as aged cognac. "I see it in you." (He always sees it, has seen it since '91, watching Biggie in that Brooklyn deli, greatness wrapped in oversized plaid. And, of course, he saw it in *himself* when he dodged those civil suits back in 2023.) "But let me tell you something—" The words hang crystalline in the wood-paneled office, where motivational posters crowned with EXCELLENCE and PERSEVERANCE float like fever-dream billboards through ambient dust motes.

Timothy's fingers still their anxious origami. The brochure—Dartmouth, all autumn leaves and ivory towers—lies conquered.

"Your parents want medical school." Diddy adjusts his titanium-framed glasses, a gesture unchanged since the Bad Boy days, when contracts—not college applications—filled his field of vision. "But I'm hearing music in your molecules, young king. Been hearing it since you picked up that violin at talent night."

Timothy shifts uneasily in the cracked faux-leather chair. "But my parents—"

"Let me stop you right there." Diddy raises a hand, fingers adorned with the same diamond-studded rings that once clinked ominously on court tables. "Your parents invested in possibilities. I invested in certainties. Like the certainty that I'd bounce back from adversity every time someone tried to bring me down. You think lawsuits shook me? Nah, they sharpened me. You think settlements were failures? They were *lessons*, my man."

(The office smells of pine and privilege and potential. Always potential. And maybe a hint of Diddy’s custom cologne, Success by Sean John™.)

Timothy's posture performs a minute transformation: thoracic vertebrae realigning themselves toward possibility. Diddy catalogues the shift with predatory precision. He’s built empires on smaller tells than this.

"But—" Timothy's voice emerges quantum-uncertain, simultaneously strong and fragile—"they've already mapped out my whole pre-med schedule. MCAT prep starts next summer. My father keeps saying music was fine for building discipline, but now it's time to be practical—"

"Practical?" Diddy rises, Trevor Emory suit whispering against leather. The word hangs between them like a challenge. Outside, beyond the window's membrane, children's voices carry across the lake like scattered prayers. "Let me tell you about practical. I invested everything in what they told me couldn't be. Took that investment, multiplied it through sheer—" he pauses, letting the word build like a bass drop "—audacity."

Timothy’s eyes track Diddy’s movement with the hesitant hunger of a young artist recognizing permission. The air conditioner hums in G minor.

"Your parents want you to follow their dream." Diddy taps a perfectly manicured finger on the Dartmouth brochure, smirking as if it personally offended him. "But when I started Bad Boy Records, my mother wanted me to be an accountant. ACCOUNTANT." He pauses for effect, raising his voice just loud enough to make the secretary peek nervously through the office door. "You think Forbes lists are full of accountants? Nah, young king. They’re full of *visionaries*."

Timothy blinks. "I don’t know if I—"

"You don't know if you what? Have what it takes? Let me tell you something about doubt." Diddy leans forward, elbows on mahogany, presence filling the room like smoke. "Doubt is success whispering, 'You sure, though?' And you know what I whisper back? ‘Hell yes.’"

A blue jay lands on the windowsill—watching, witnessing. Timothy straightens his spine, lets the Dartmouth brochure fall. His fingers twitch with phantom violin strings.

"I’m still not sure," Timothy starts hesitantly, but his voice is different—less a whimper, more a melody.

Diddy laughs, the sound layered with multitudes: Brooklyn streets and Manhattan penthouses, platinum records and publicists dialing damage control. "Let me tell you what I’m sure about. I’m sure that you, my young maestro, have the gift. And you know what we do with gifts?"

Timothy shakes his head, entranced.

"We unwrap them. And then we drop them on *everybody's heads*." Diddy pulls a gilt-edged Rolodex from his desk drawer, its pages heavy with the weight of connections. "I know a little conservatory in New York. They owe me a favor. Well, several favors. Let me make a call."

The guidance office holds its breath. Somewhere outside, beyond the pines, beyond the whispers of old lawsuits and newer scandals, the future rearranges itself like notes finding their perfect chord.

Rene Lives Here

November 21, 2024

She told the waitress, “The usual.” I was too scared to ask for the same. I ordered a single malt, double, and neat. Now it was time for business.

Rene worked for me for nearly four months. In that period, sales and revenue doubled. I already gave her a corner office. She now wants a company car. I am inclined to agree.

The new project will require Rene to work seven days a week. I asked her if she wanted an assistant. She nodded in the affirmative. Then our drinks arrived. I took my double shot and threw it back (old college day's fun). She took her pint of beer and watched the waitress spray whipped cream on the top. Then she added a cherry for appearance. Rene unwrapped her pink straw and inserted it below the whipped cream line. From the neck down, Rene was more than an accountant. She was a star accountant with a business savvy par excellence. From the neck up, she was a combo of a little girl eating Halloween candy and a tomboy displaying a goofy, yet attractive, anti-savoir-faire.

I took it all in, and cleared my throat to regain Rene’s attention. “Did you want an assistant?”

She told me to wait at the table. Rene made eye contact with a young Korean looking man drinking the same beer with whipped cream, sitting at the bar. “This one will do.”

It was all I heard as she took her drink to sit beside him for nearly thirty minutes. When she returned, she told me she hired him and he would begin in the morning. Rene would take care of the necessary paperwork.

I thought about ordering the same drink. But only for a brief moment.

This is apparently Rene’s world.

I am just visiting.

Nunney has a castle which, for some reason, fails to dominate the attention of any passer by. Nestled between said castle and an over-topiaried churchyard once stood a tavern. I use the word tavern rather deliberately; the patron’s slick use of ‘pub’ only worked from his own tongue. It was dank, low-ceilinged yet still decadent. Somehow, this became my sanctuary.

Once per fortnight, my grandfather and I would pack away our identities (those of embittered, recently turned enemies) and we would drive the twenty minutes of twisted lanes to this tavern. The day in question was no different: we sat, side by side, as we coursed through the Somerset country in curt silence. I slammed the car door petulantly as we parked, squinting to see through rays of sun that somehow made it through the castle’s pointless arrow-slits. I could feel my grandfather’s gaze boring through my inch-thick thighs but he hadn’t the gumption to make a comment. Of course I had not yet eaten today.

At the door, we left our histories on the grisled black mat. A bell rang, summoning the attention, but not the presence, of the patron. Fraser was a disturbing man, practically the sole member of staff that we would see. His skin a translucent grey denoting sickness, eyebrows slanted in permanent disapproval and voice deep with a Scottish lilt. He wouldn’t move from behind the heavy bar, looking down instead at the reservation book lit by a gas lamp. It would not have surprised me if those pages were made from animal skin parchment. Checking it was a habit. Of course we were there, but he seemed to like tracing his calloused finger down the page to find our names regardless.

He led us to a table in a private room, running us through its history for the umpteenth time. The history itself was no doubt fiction but it fit with the narrative of messy noise this man liked to live within. He used the wooden menus to gesture to a mediaeval mural unlit on the back wall. “It’s crucial that light does not reach this. Conservation is key when it comes to relics…” Each sentence failed to properly end; it often felt like he would reach a point and then decide we weren’t really worth his explanations. After several false starts at conversation, he would leave us to ‘settle in’.

Each visit, I would purposefully disrespect the patron. I was acutely aware that he rewrote the entire menu each week, with absolute attention to detail, trend and season. My obsession with food meant I was, of course, entirely informed on the inclination towards tart apple in starters. I was no stranger to the asparagus that’s so fresh at this time of year. Each fortnight I would place down my menu, assertively provocative, and order the caesar salad. Dressing on the side. Fraser wouldn’t even write down my order. His reaction paralleled grief. She can’t decimate my expertise in this way (denial)? How dare she (anger)? Would Miss accept just a slither less of the dressing (bargaining)? Why do I bother sharing my gift to a world so ungrateful (depression)? Finally, he would slink back to the kitchen (acceptance) whilst I bore the brunt of Grandfather’s glare.

This evening, again, was no different. I had worked very hard this week to curate my ever diminishing diet, and would probably barely touch the dressing today. I looked the publican directly in the eye on his return and placed my order with no regrets.

We had already accepted, however, his choice of wine. As we consulted his taste, you could see the satisfying scratch we had given his ego. Five straight minutes he had spoken, five minutes of barely audible sommelier babble which comfortably filled the silence between two with so much to say. Fraser, in the end, was the one to settle, despite pointed comments set up as inaccessible questions. And he had returned with a bottle coated in dust. It’s odd how the British see signs of taste and wealth in dilapidation. He blew the dust towards a musty window, pouring a glass for my grandfather to taste. I knew he had no understanding of wine, so watching his act always filled me with a bit of joy. It’s amusing to watch someone else belittled.

Then, the magic window opened. The moment wine touches our tongues, they become untied, spreading open an evening’s truce. Grandfather forgets, briefly, how irate my self-imposed torture makes him. I, in turn, let go of the immense reins of anorexia. We soften around the edges, falling into a more comfortable rhythm of observational chatter and recollection of memories. Bread arrives, warm and salted, and I don’t hesitate to tear a corner. Just a corner, but it’s a casual aside that would usually never happen. By the time I sat behind the salad, I was a different person entirely. I was a frequenter of restaurants, noticing the succulence of the chicken breast and how it complemented the salt of the pancetta. I revelled in how carefully each crouton had been doused in, no doubt homemade, olive oil. I dipped each leaf into the dressing, and even I could not deny that the publican had created something of wonder there…

We left as dusk was settling around the stuffy village. Fraser watched us from his same spot at the bar, and I wondered fleetingly whether he knew the significance of this outing. The outside now felt too small, tight around me, imposing somehow. The pithy candles in windows and bunting on gutters seemed insincere and I just wanted to be home. So we both paused, resuming our familiarly toxic roles and clicking back into an awkward dance that we now called life.

Marcella

November 20, 2024

Marcella entered the infamous Spintria in search of employment.

She wasn’t male and she had other wares to offer.

Part of that was a lie. Marcella already was gainfully employed. She was in the Spintria in search of the men she did not want to be in search of her. For this mission, she dyed her hair blonde, as per the Roman custom for all prostitutes. Combined with her young age and pleasing looks, she easily made it to those that screened potential candidates.

The four of them demanded an audition.

Lying (again), Marcella eagerly agreed.

The first was overly excited and (definitely) overweight. He knew his limitations. She knew them also. The two engaged the viewing pleasure of the other three for no more than a few minutes before he surrendered. Marcella permitted his graceful exit before turning her attention to the other three.

They would not be as passive as their predecessor. They wanted far more. By the look of Marcella, she understood and actually encouraged their aggressiveness.

That is, until she grasped both of her knives.

Within seconds, two were bleeding as all thieves should. The third, merely stung by her blade, begged forgiveness, kneeling before her, hoping she would understand.

What Marcella understood was the value of completing the contract and collecting any bonus money for doing so quickly. The third saw her determination in her now vacant black eyes.

It was the last thing he ever saw.

The space was now eerily quiet. Small drops of water, condensing on the arches, slowly trickled to lower levels, pooling. With each drop, Marcella could hear the micro echoes reverberate along the length of this chamber and its catacomb entrance.

It was along this entrance the first man, the overweight man returned. This time, bearing a small satchel. When he threw it to Marcella, it hit the stone floor, revealing the sound of the gold coins contained within. A man of many words, he did not keep Marcella longer than necessary.

Marcella took her cloth to wipe her blades before sheathing them. She pointed one at the gold chain he wore. It was to be her tribute for both not taxing his poorly maintained body and dispatching his three previous partners to the afterlife they so richly deserved. He would pay his taxes to Caligula, but not to Caligula and three additional parasites.

Despite the blood and her payment, today was worth the money.

Definitely worth the money.