When occasionally overwhelmed by the ‘peoply-ness’ of people – even after all these years – Patrice would escape to the bathroom to sort her thoughts. To be alone with herself was once akin to torture but not anymore. She stared at herself in the mirror. She didn’t mean to be vain, but her 75-year-old face was etched with beauty creases that multiplied when she smiled. Frankly, it was a delight. And to think, just twenty years earlier, those beauty creases were referred to as troublesome lines and wrinkles and were considered unsightly. 

Ah, twenty years ago. Those were particularly dark days.

Youth culture was thriving and those in their 20s professed to know more than their elders whom they largely ignored. A narcissistic man-child tyrant and convicted felon nearly disassembled democracy with the assistance of a cadre of his cowardly cohorts. Social media was invading peoples’ consciousness like a virus while an actual worldwide virus had recently taken out a sizable chunk of the population. And Mama Earth was writhing in pain – demonstrating her dissatisfaction through a series of horrific weather events. It must have felt to the Earth – that living and breathing entity that birthed us all – that no one was paying attention. No one was listening. 

But there were listeners. 

Empathetic bipeds whose voices had yet to rise above the din of the madding crowd, as it were. They seemed insignificant… at the time. They knew this. So they sat in the wings, awaiting their turn for a just a bit longer. It was okay though. They knew the power of patience. And strategizing. After all, they’d occupied that spot for a long time.

Despite her position as a high-powered lawyer, Patrice was among those empathetic souls. She was 55 at the time and was the first to admit that the world seemed to be spinning the wrong way on its axis. As though some mischievous cosmic child were responsible for the error. Yet even then, she held out hope. Dug in deep to access the good in herself so she could find it in others. Those she loved were doing the same. It was one of the ways they felt empowered.

Then by the grace of some slumbering god (or more likely a fierce brown goddess) who’d been rustled awake and was pissed about it, everything shifted dramatically. Without any logical explanation, the folks in the wings entered stage left and started making demands. They spoke with intelligence and conviction (and brilliant enunciation) about how they weren’t going to take anyone’s shit any longer. And people listened. 

The smartest of the current leaders knew to demure; to hand over the reins to them for a bit. Give them a chance to fuck up in their own way. Plus, the landed gentry and their ilk needed a break. They’d grown exhausted from wielding their certain brand of destruction and thought maybe a little R&R was called for. Some time at the cabin up north drinking fine whiskey and playing golf would do the trick. Meanwhile, the stupid and/or stubborn of the remaining leaders continued to engage in petty tribal warfare until in some merciful sweeping grand finale they managed to drive themselves extinct. And in record time. She had to hand it to them. For a group who put a premium on ‘banging,’ they went out with one. 

Patrice took one final glance in the mirror and smiled at herself again. She was pleased that she’d lived long enough to witness this new era. She never dreamed that women in their 70s and 80s and of all shapes, sizes, and colors would be the definition of beauty. In what world would toned young 30-year-olds envy her withered and aged skin so much that they sought surgeons who could give it to them? Some of the very same surgeons who’d made a killing a few decades before smoothing skin, no less. And yet, here they were. 

Brushing back her gorgeous frizzy grey hair and adding a little glitter to some of her deeper beauty creases, she exited the bathroom and returned to her chambers. Shutting the door behind her, she took a deep breath and nodded to the photographs of herself with Sandra, Ruth, Sonya, Elena, Ketanji, Kristen, Sun Ye, Zelda, and Maya. “Thank you,” she said to them (as she did every day) and then prepped for another busy day with the other SCOTUS judges. 

Some days, it begins with a line seemingly pulled from the air. For example:

Raspberries are a superior fruit. 

Or something innocuous like that. Though one could argue that such a statement may not be innocuous to those whose palates position the strawberry, the pineapple, or the paw-paw in a higher echelon than the raspberry. But does that really matter? Isn’t that just the detritus of overthinking? An avoidance of creating? Yes, it is. The point here is that the foundational sentence has been written. The hope being, of course, that this sentence will now provide some inspirational wellspring of brilliance.   

But it doesn’t. Not today. There’s nowhere else to go with it. No low-hanging fruit, as it were. 

And so the sentence is deleted; the foundation eliminated. Which is no way to start a story. Even an extraordinarily brief story geared toward those who are attention-span challenged.

The abysmal failure of this initial line quashes any inclination to snatch from mid-air another. A trip to the closest kitchen cupboard instead is urgently warranted. Yes. For inside that cupboard exists the realm of magic. If magic is a bag of miniature marshmallows and a box of Trader Joe’s Cheddar Rockets crackers, that is. Which, in fact, it is. The brain requires food to create, after all. Though one could argue that squishy little sugar pillows and space shuttle-shaped crackers sculpted from reconstituted cheese hardly qualify as any REAL sustenance. It could be though that the magic of these foodstuffs resides in their salty-sweet ability to lure the creative muse. Or the muses – if they’re traveling in a pack today.

And there it is. A notion. A spark. 

The Adventures of the Marshmallow-Eating Muses 

Hmmmmmm. A vision appears as a blurred Jasper Johns billboard image. His Usuyuki series, more specifically.It floats there for a bit. Its light comes to a fierce and rapid glow – begging coquettishly to be captivated. Then, just as quickly, it fizzles out. Gone. Houston, we have not achieved liftoff.

Then the crucial question arises. What, pray tell, are the cats doing right now? Surely they need attention. Or treats. A petting perhaps? Some play? It’s a ridiculous notion though. No offense, but they’re cats. These particular four-leggeds are entirely capable of making their needs known during the most inconvenient time for two-leggeds. This is well established in the owner’s manual and should come as no surprise. For now, they are getting their 22nd hour of sleep. Traitors.

Back at the table, the laptop beckons. The laptop goes by the name Maverick McClickyfingers (Double M to his friends) and his pronouns are he and him. Double M is being a dick today. No bones about it. (No pun intended.) He emits a silent screaming light from his screen – a skill he has mastered. Though one could argue a relatively useless skill. Then again, why be so argumentative today? It doesn’t seem to be serving anyone. And it sure as hell isn’t getting any stories written. 

Outside, the first stars appear. The cold silver-edged moon cuts a straight path through the orange-pink clouds. The birdsong has ceased, and the night-blooming flower buds shudder and shake in preparation for their moon-worship. Are the night-blooming flowers misunderstood by the vast majority that bloom during the day? Does the grandiflora rose cast a downward sneer on the evening primrose or the ostentatious sunflower roll its eyes at the quiet moonflower in its diurnal slumber? The bigger question is – What do a sunflower’s eyes even look like? 

Okay. Fine. The muses, the magic, Double M, and the magisterial felines elude today. It’s clear there will be no extraordinarily brief story. Alas, it’s a wonderful time to wave the white flag, to call uncle, and to surrender. 

Even more, it’s a wonderful time for a moon dance.   

Ethan sat on his front porch and watched the neighbor kids across the street. Their parents had dressed each of them, a boy and a girl, in wigs and instructed them to pose in various ways while they took pictures and videos. The older one, the boy, did not seem amused. He sported a shoulder-length wavy platinum-blond wig and rolled his eyes with each of his parents’ requests. The younger one, the girl, delighted in the attention. She mugged for the camera, happily striking pose upon pose while tugging at the coiled locks of her cotton candy pink hair.  

Ethan found the whole scene a little off-putting. He’d met the parents. They didn’t seem like sociopaths. But he knew better than most how well one could hide such a thing.

“It’s hot,” Ethan heard the boy whine. “I don’t want to do this anymore!”

His mother kneeled next to him to whisper something in his ear; struggling and staggering backward a little in her attempt to raise her large body back to standing. Whatever she said, he agreed to continue. Was it the promise of a treat? Or was it something more sinister? An admonishment? Perhaps a threat? Ethan shrugged off a weird feeling, grateful that he’d taken a pass on procreating. “Some folks aren’t cut out for parenting,” he’d always responded when family and friends would ask about his plans to have kids someday. Sometimes he was referring directly to those who were asking – though they were wholly unaware.

Ethan sank back into his seat and took a long pull off his vape. He blew out the steam and watched it float almost motionless in the humid air. The boy was right. It was hot. And sticky. “Air you can wear,” as his uncle used to say.

Ethan didn’t care for these kinds of days. They brought out the worst in people. When he and his sister were younger, they would ponder how each day was different and how they were like people and how people were like days.

“You’re a cloudy day with rain,” Casey had said as the two of them sat at the end of the dock at their cottage one early June day. Ethan’s toes skimmed the water, but Casey wasn’t yet tall enough that her toes could touch the surface of the cold clear lake.   

“I am not,” Ethan had said, sulking, and knowing on some level she was right. He was a cloudy day with rain. Most of the time, he was a cold day too – the kind of cold that drilled down into the marrow of your bones. Casey, on the other hand, was a sunny day. One of those warm bright days with an impossibly blue sky that seems to never end. Like if you reached up far enough, your hand would become engulfed in the blue and all you would feel is softness and warmth like the fur on a rabbit. He wasn’t going to tell her that though. 

“Well, you’re a stormy day,” he’d lied instead. “With hail. And lightning. And a sky that rains poop.”

Rather than kick him or punch him or rat him out to their mom, Casey had fallen backward laughing. It wasn’t the response he’d expected. But he knew in that moment that he would always covet her ability to be joyful. Her laugh was so full of light that it disarmed him and he caught himself laughing too. Though begrudgingly, he would note.

These days, Casey wasn’t as sunny a day as she used to be. She was by no means a cold and rainy day like him. But certain life events had transformed that blue sky into something less vivid and marred by long shafts of grey. He wished he could erase the grey and restore the bright blue. He didn’t have that power though. And he found this frustrating.

“Do you like my wig?” asked the young neighbor girl, startling him. She was now standing at the bottom of the stairs to his porch. He hadn’t even noticed her cross the street. She gave him a crooked smile that spoke of mischief. He noticed that up close, she wasn’t particularly cute. But this fact didn’t deter her from possessing an overabundance of confidence and charm. 

“It’s interesting,” Ethan said, looking around for the rest of her family. They’d seemed to disappear.

“Do you like giraffes?” 

“Do I like giraffes?” 

She nodded enthusiastically.

“Uh,” he shifted in his seat. “I guess they’re alright.”

She smiled again and twirled in a circle. “They’re my favorite!” 

“How come?” Ethan asked.

The girl climbed the stairs to his porch and leaned in toward him in a conspiratorial fashion. “They have blue tongues,” she whispered.

“That’s very weird,” Ethan said, then immediately thought he shouldn’t have. He’d been told he didn’t know how to talk to kids. Casey had scolded him several times for saying inappropriate things to her kids – his two nieces. He’d once told Zoe that the monsters under her bed were real, but that they didn’t like girls whose names began with Z. He thought it was funny, but Zoe wouldn’t go into her bedroom for two weeks after that. What he’d said to Kirsten was even more egregious. Or so he’d been told. He wasn’t ready to shoulder all the blame though. As far as he was concerned, Casey’s kids lacked imagination. Most likely the fault of their deadbeat father. 

“It IS weird,” the girl said, not at all taken aback by his statement. “But I like weird. Do you like weird?”

Ethan was getting uncomfortable. It wasn’t just the interminable heat and humidity – though they were big contributors. He scanned the neighbor girl’s yard, wondering where her pear-shaped mother could be. Then he wondered how well she could run. Or if she could run.

“I asked you if you like weird,” the girl said loudly, interrupting his thought.

“Yeah, I guess,” he shifted in his seat. The sweaty skin of his arms and legs squealed against the plastic chair. “Um, do your parents know you’re over here? I mean, like, where did they go? Where’s your brother?”

She shrugged. “I’m not sure.”

“You’re not sure if they know you’re over here?” he asked. “Or you don’t know where they are or where your brother is? Clarity is important here.”

She shrugged again. “I’m not sure of anything really.”

He had to laugh. “Most people have a hard time admitting that,” he said half-jokingly.

“I know,” she agreed, then threw her hands up in the air. “And yet, here we are.”

He stared at her for a moment. Was this kid for real? He looked around to see if he was being set up. Being “punked.” It’s something his partly sunny day sister would do. Or Buddy down from the quarry. Buddy was also a partly sunny day, but one that grew cold and cloudy as evening approached. 

He glanced back at the neighbor girl and wondered what sort of day she was. A bead of sweat ran down the side of his face. The trademark ringing in his ears was starting and he knew he had to go inside. At just that moment, the neighbor girl’s mother yelled from across the street and beckoned her daughter back home. She smiled and waved at Ethan; apologizing for her daughter’s brazenness. 

“No problem!” he yelled across the street to the woman, taking note of how her pink shirt clung to the sweaty rolls of fat along the side of her body. He had that weird feeling again. 

“See ya!” said the neighbor girl as she trotted down the steps and darted back across the street and into the arms of her mother. 

“So long,” said Ethan, slowly rising from his chair and leaving a pool of sweat behind. He slowly opened his front door. If today were a person, he thought as he descended into the cold darkness of his house and turned to glance over his shoulder one more time, it would be a serial killer.