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Dancing in the rain

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It was tomorrow already and the rains had not come. They had chided her for wanting this house, more like a niche, all the way at the end of the alley at the lowest part of the city. The cobblestones directed the water this way, all of it, every last trip and drop. And then it ran, tumbling, gurgling, into the tiny alleyway beside her abode, rushing out to the sea which was the border of not only this city, but this state, this country. It might as well have been the border of the world for all she cared because she had no plans to venture out beyond it. Here is where she had been born and here was where she would die. There was no melancholy in it, no pathos. This was her fate and she was happy to accept it.

It hasn’t always been this way. The usual fits and starts occupied her in her youth, all that you would expect from a child. All of her classmates had wanderlust or itchy feet. All wanted to backpack in some foreign country on their summer breaks or find a way to get a spouse, get a job, get out of this fortress that was their home.

She had followed along, assumed that she was supposed to feel disappointed in her hometown, was supposed to want to leave as fast as possible, but that was what everyone else felt. It wasn’t really about her. It was all about them and what they felt.

It took a lot of her years and a little bit of therapy to understand the difference between her own feelings and those of everyone else. Perhaps she had enmeshed with the world because of her needy parents who had pushed their own anxieties and fears upon her while minimizing her own. Any pain she mentioned was overridden by their own hurts, both physical and psychological. They would tell stories of how it had been worse for them, making her pain small in comparison. And then they would tell her how they’d overcome it – always with a pill. Sometimes it was an aspirin, and sometimes a Xanax. Always legal, but never useful. It was a stroke of luck that pills never helped her or she would have become an addict like them. Every pill they offered her had a double effect, so much so that she started halving them on the sly. Then she just stopped taking them all together.

Which she really needed was love. Empathy would have healed her more than the “medicine” they offered. Meaningful connection, listening, anything other than what she had been given would have helped. It was a violence to her soul for them to say through their actions that her pain was meaningless, and to not teach her ways to heal that didn’t involve pills. But then again, you have to know better to do better. They were all dead now, or just dead to her. They would never learn from her hard-fought lessons.

So now she listened to her inner voice, the voice of her true Parent, the One who had created her and sustained her and brought her to this moment. Once she had started listening for that voice things had gotten a lot simpler.

Not necessarily better, mind you. Her parents hadn’t understood why she had quit college just a month into her sophomore year. Her mother had told her to ride it out, but her father – he understood. He too had been in that same situation decades earlier. Yet he had not been treated fairly or kindly then. In that moment, he knew he had a choice to treat his child now the way he wished he had been treated then.

Her brother had been the most unreasonable, telling her she caused shame to the family name. Meanwhile he was on marriage number three and had been discharged early from the military due to insubordination. But he, like their mother, had never been to college, so they didn’t know how alien it was, how foreign, how impossibly not human and artificial. It wasn’t for sensitive people, those who felt everything, all the time.

So now, all these years later, she was living in a tiny room with just a few possessions and finally she was content. She didn’t need anything, and when well-meaning folks tried to give her more books or craft supplies or ideas, she politely but firmly refused and directed them to donate it to a local charity or take care of it themselves. She didn’t need their ideas for her stories. She had plenty of her own.

But the rain still needed to come. You see, she had chosen this home because of the water. She loved the sound of it. She loved to dance in the rain. It healed her. But the townspeople didn’t understand an adult frolicking in a rainstorm, so she did it in private. This house with its little alleyway provided just that.

The strangers.

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The door was at the end of a long cobblestone alleyway. There were other doorways along this narrow path, and other windows above. Each door, ornately decorated with carvings and inlay, had no peephole. It was seen as a distraction from the aesthetic of the whole, and was in line with the beliefs of the culture.

Most of the citizens lived on the second floor, so when caller rang the tiny bell by the door, they would peer out at who was below. If they were interested in company, they would saunter downstairs and admit the visitor. Strangers were rarely allowed inside, so there were no solicitors in this town. The faithful had to find other ways to lure people to their gatherings.

This town had been rebuilt of stone after the second flood a century ago. Sure, the members of the fledgling town could have read the signs and chosen to relocate, but they had come to love the easy access to water for their entertainment and cuisine. There was nothing like a day by the shore and a grilled halibut to make a life complete. They weren’t willing to give this life up, in spite of the risk that came with a town so close to water. Plus they enjoyed being able to travel on a “road” they didn’t have to build to see other cities and other cultures.

For you see, they were perfectly happy visiting strange exotic people who lived a few leagues away, but weren’t interested in having anyone strange come visit them. Strangers weren’t seen as dangerous, or even odd – just simply not like them. And that kind of person might cause more trouble than it was worth.

The townsfolk were too polite to explain the rules to strangers, and in many cases they might not even fully understand them. Rules and customs had the force of law here, and like laws they sometimes made no sense but people followed them anyway.

It served no purpose to explain their particular rules to strangers – they had no desire to allow them into their lives. Strangers were shunned to the extent that they weren’t even allowed to become members of the community by any means. You could not marry into the town, or seek to transfer citizenship, or even own property if you were a stranger.

But then there were others, people who were not born in the town, people who visited, who were welcome with open doors and open arms. What was the difference? Somehow they knew the rules. They were seen as part of the community simply because of how they acted. You either got it or you didn’t, and if you were in you were in for life without question.

Butterfly

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Michelle knew today was the day for the big reveal. Her family and friends had suspected something was up for a while. They could see how hard it was for her to continue to pretend. This would be no surprise to them. But for her workplace, a busy advertising office with many prominent clients, this would come as a shock, if not a joke. It would be difficult for them to accept this new reality because there had been no signs. She had played her role well.

You see, Michelle knew down in her bones that she had been born into the wrong body. Now, it wasn’t a case of gender. She was sure she was a woman, whatever that meant. The roles and rules had shifted over the years in women’s favor and she could make do and make a life within these constraints.

Michelle‘s difference was that she was African, not Caucasian. She had always been drawn to the African culture and stories. She’d dated guys from Kenya and Egypt and Mali, despite concerns from her mother that it wasn’t safe. Her mother had said that others they would encounter when they were out together might cause trouble. Michelle was unfazed – her mother’s life was full of fear and imagined danger, and she was sure that fear would kill her mother before any stranger would harm herself. Michelle was determined to not adopt her viewpoint.

It wasn’t out of spite that she dismissed her mother’s concerns. She knew, deep down, that her mother’s version of reality was not her truth. Soon she started examining everything else in her life to see if it was valid. She didn’t want to live her life – her one, precious, beautiful life, – following someone else’s pattern. So everything she had been told and taught got questioned and challenged. Her parents and friends thought she was going through a rebellious phase but she knew better. The unexamined life was indeed not worth living.

So that Tuesday she called a meeting and told everyone that she had to speak her truth. She was, despite appearances to the contrary, African, and from henceforth she expected all of them to call her by the name Kipepeo, which was Swahili for “butterfly”. She would not answer to anything else. HR was consulted. The legal team was notified. She had no plans of going before a judge and legally changing her name. She cited men who were named Robert who insisted on being called Bob. She cited Native Americans who had gone on a vision quest and come back with a new name. And then she stopped explaining.

Kipepeo insisted that her employer print out new business cards for her, the same as if she had gotten married and changed her name. Except she hadn’t. She insisted that the nameplate on her office door be changed< as well as what was printed on her checks. She accused anyone who did not call her by her new name of creating a hostile work environment. She called it her true name.

At that, her employer started to look for ways to get her to leave. If anybody was creating a hostile work environment, it was her. They had gone along with her claim that she was actually African. It wasn’t something that affected the workplace. But his name thing was going too far.

Epiphany

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Only once a year was this door opened, and that day was today. Many people loved the pomp and pageantry of Christmas, but for Elaine, it was Epiphany that took the cake. She celebrated all the usual observances her little village church offered, and a few extra. Opening this door was one of them, and this honor was now entrusted to her.

Elaine‘s family had been the keepers of the key since time and memory began – and perhaps longer. Every generation it was passed on to the second oldest daughter in a modest but meaningful ceremony upon her entering into cronehood. Of course they never used such words outside of the family, never even said menopause. It wasn’t anyone’s business how and when the key changed hands. If questions were asked, they were deftly and efficiently turned aside in such a way that the asker felt that his query had been satisfied and yet was none the wiser.

The door was a deep turquoise blue, the color of the domes of Santorini sanctuaries, of endless pools in long-abandoned quarries. There was an ornate metal scrollwork seemingly festooned with clusters of ripe grapes upon it. This was no mere feet of artistry – there were two purposes to these ornate bands. The first was obvious: it gave the wood a structure, like a skeleton, to ensure the door’s persistence. It would not do to have this door, of all doors, decay before it’s time. The second was hidden: never spoken aloud, never even hinted that. The guardian of the key invariably realized it soon after she was entrusted with her noble task. It was of no matter if she didn’t, however – early, late, or never, the truth was still there. It had no need to be passed down like an heirloom or a password. It was too precious to need to rely upon something as fallible and frail as human memory. The truth could go many generations before being realized again. It could wait.

So why Epiphany? That was a little murkier. All Elaine’s family tradition would comment was that the one year it wasn’t done, the cows ran away, the children were more difficult than usual, and the tractors wouldn’t start. And not just any Epiphany, but the one on January 19, the one of the Julian calendar. This made the tradition a little less obvious to the village, which wasn’t cosmopolitan enough to know that there were two different dates for the same event, just like with Christmas and Easter.

Not like it really mattered what day it was celebrated, because lightning never strikes twice in the same spot with the same day, but it was the principle of the thing, and a tradition was a tradition.

Elaine opened the door at sunrise as she has been taught. The door would remain open all day, letting the chapel inside soak up the sunlight from the sacred day. Then at sunset, the door would be locked again, sealed for another year. Perhaps the chapel was some sort of holy battery, solar powered, long-lived, and needed the light on just this day to keep the village running smoothly.

Just in case that was true, they kept the population of the village under 100 people to ensure the special energy would not be used up too soon.

Time to leave

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Jane knew it was time to leave when she saw this. It was her car, sure, but he had paid for it. That was what he told her when she complained. It wasn’t hers.

Nothing was hers. She had no reason to complain. She should be grateful he even accepted her, even allowed her to stay with him as long as he had. And that was part of why she stayed. He’d convinced her she couldn’t survive without him, had no worth outside of his company.

She spent so much of her adult life with him that she had almost forgotten what it was like to not be with him. Now that she thought about it, she remembered asking him if she could get a tattoo, or even color her hair. He grudgingly agreed to both, but with restrictions. How many other expressions of her self had she suppressed?

When she mentioned to her friends that she was thinking of leaving, they said “But you should be grateful you’re in a relationship” or “Think of those people who have it worse and they stay” – like any of that mattered. It did, for a while. For a while she was fooled into agreeing with them. For a while she thought she was wrong, or crazy, or ungrateful.

But then the day came when she could no longer ignore the messages her body was telling her, but she tried. Back and neck so tight she had to get massages twice a month. Nightmares where she was trapped, waking up punching or kicking. Heart palpitations. She realized she was taking three different anti-anxiety medications just to get through the day. And still it wasn’t enough. But she ignored it, pretended she was fine. Everyone else she knew just seemed to accept it as normal. She even ended up in the hospital thinking she was having a heart attack but it was just anxiety. Even then he didn’t believe her, made her bring letters from the doctor, notarized, before he would be grudgingly accept her back.

She became suicidal in September, the life drained out of her. His response was to say she wasn’t the girl he had picked, had graced with his attention. He said she better pick herself back up and be cheery again or he’d kick her out. Never did he imagine that he was the reason for her despondency. That if only he had treated her with kindness and trust she would’ve blossomed instead of withered.

Maybe she should’ve left then, but she didn’t. Maybe she felt she couldn’t afford to live without him. Maybe she had gotten so used to feeling second rate and third class that she even agreed with him that there wasn’t any point to complaining. Maybe everybody in her position felt the same way and she should just accept it and not hope for better.

But then it happened. The day she never had even dared to hope for – that awful beautiful day when everything became crystal clear and her path lay before her. Stay, or die. He had made the decision for her with this message. She knew if she returned to him her life would be forfeit. It was no longer merely uncomfortable or difficult to be there, but deadly. A few phone calls and she was gone. She never looked back.

Christmas town

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This was the door to Christmas town. Everyone who lived here celebrated Christmas every day. Every night was once again Christmas Eve, with the anticipation and eagerness you would expect. It seemed backwards to do it this way, but it worked for them. And who were these fine citizens to do anything in a normal way? They had all, independently, come to the conclusion that this day was too special to have only once a year.

Some had started with the idea of celebrating Christmas for the 12 days, right up to Epiphany. That tradition had faded out of practice but the clue remained in the Carol, or in the Catholic observance of Three Kings Day. What had been lost was found again.

Other had celebrated Christmas in July, watching Hallmark holiday specials and having a grand dinner with all the trimmings. Others had a special dinner with family and took the whole day off to rest and rejoice once a week.

But for some, these make-do attempts weren’t enough. They wanted Christmas every day. It wasn’t the presents they wanted, but the presence. They had come to recognize that Christmas was its own entity, a very force in itself. It was if a certain Someone was in the room, but they just couldn’t be seen. Neither old nor young, male nor female – this presence was eternal, and available to all who made a place for it in their homes.

It was why Advent was such a powerful time. It was a preparing, a setting-aside, a making-space. In Advent, you didn’t just prepare gifts or food or clean your home or pack to go visiting family (blood or otherwise). In Advent you made a space for this Someone to live in your heart. It took a month for most to clear away the cobwebs, to gear down from a workaday life of getting and spending. They were so used to a life of lack and want and ignorance that it took all that time to settle into the new pattern that this Someone offered, a pattern of wholeness, of contentment.

For the residents of this town, one day of this feeling wasn’t enough. One by one they moved here, having heard of this place through rumors and whispers.

There was no industry here for people to travel to – no shops or businesses. Everyone had the day off. Nobody wanted for anything. There was always enough food, always enough craft supplies, always enough books. Nobody finished anything in Christmas town and nobody felt bad about it. There was always the next day and never a rush.

For you see, Christmas town was in a temporal bubble. It really was Christmas every day here. They weren’t just pretending. Food never went bad because it never got old. It simply transformed at the stroke of midnight into fresh groceries again, so they could enjoy the pleasure of filling the house with all those delightful aromas from cooking a Christmas meal.

People didn’t age here either. Children were always youthful and agile, elders were always mirthful and spry. Each enjoyed the company of the other, and the Christmas Eve bedtime stories never got old.

However, the people who lived here never realized that it was always the same. They too reset at the stroke of midnight, also becoming new again. They never aged, never counted the days since they had moved to this unusual town. How could they? It was all the same, an unchanging day of joy repeated ad infinitum.

(Written around Christmas 2019)

Bear Hug

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George had raised bears his whole life, but this one was different. He never named the bears actual names – this one was called 15767, or “15” for short. The numbers were some arcane blend of the birthdate, breed, and sex of the bear, a special code that made sense only to George and the people who worked for him.

15 was trying to kill George, but to the photographer it looked like playing. At first George thought 15 was playing too, but he quickly realized things have gone south when 15 started bouncing up and down on his head. This wasn’t a game anymore, but he couldn’t let on to the photographer. Not only was his pride in jeopardy, his entire career was on the line.

The photographer was there for the ad campaign for his business – Bear Protection Services. He needed to get more people to buy his trained bears for their home protection. “Have a bear outside? No burglars inside!” was their motto. The idea was that you’d get a bear to prowl around your property and it would maul anybody who tried to get into your house without your permission. There was a month-long acclimatization period to get the bear to recognize the homeowner and his family. It wouldn’t do to have one of George’s bears kill a client.

But that was exactly what was happening right now. George was getting mauled. The bear was using every move he’d reinforced. It wasn’t like you could teach a bear to do anything that wasn’t in its nature. You just used the parts of its nature that benefited you and reinforce them with treats. But that was part of the trouble. You couldn’t get a bear to stop doing something you didn’t want him to do. Yelling at it or hitting it on the nose just made it angry, and an angry bear was an unpredictable bear.

15 was very angry right now; George could see it in his eyes. They were darker than normal, with no catchlight. It was as if the light had gone out of his soul. Not like there had been a lot of light in this bear to begin with. His temperament was what made him interesting to George. But that very temperament might mean his death.

Fortunately George had years of martial arts training and even more years of backalley brawls behind him. He knew how to kick out from under an attacker, even one who outweighed him by at least 300 pounds. Of course, the first rule was never to let your opponent put you in such a position in the first place, but sometimes that couldn’t be helped. He had planned to let the bear pretend to maul him as an example of what the company’s trained bears could do for their clients. It all started off well. But then everything shifted and got real, very fast.

Now, 15 wasn’t exactly the friendliest bear George had ever worked with. It was a hard balance to work out. Too friendly and the bear wouldn’t attack the assailant. Too mean and he attacked the family. The sweet spot was somewhere in the middle, but that was difficult to gauge with bears. It wasn’t like you could put them through the Myers-Briggs or the Enneagram. George had found some small success in going by the bear’s horoscope, but he never told that to clients. He had a reputation to uphold.

He finally managed to get out from under the bear thanks to a streetfighting move he’d learned in Pittsburgh. If that hadn’t worked he would have resorted to putting his fist in the bear’s mouth to make it gag. He didn’t want to do that in sight of the photographer for fear of seeming to abuse it, but he was desperate. It wouldn’t do to let the bear win this fight, or else it would have been the end of his business, and of George.

(Written 11/5/19)

The elephant in the room.

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The day came when finally nobody was responsible for their actions. It was law. You could now sue your parents for not teaching you how to eat healthy and exercise. Your obesity was no longer your fault. You could sue your classmates in elementary school for making fun of your weight by calling you “Porky” or “Blobbo”, instead of pretending you didn’t take up two chairs. Whether people acted or not made no difference. You could blame them for your obesity, saying that they made a bad situation worse or that they didn’t show you a better way.

“Fat shaming” was now an offense punishable by fine or imprisonment, or both. There was no need for a trial, since enduring that would cause more stress for the larger person, and probably lead to more stress eating of comfort foods. It wouldn’t do to have the situation escalated to the point that the judge, jury and attorneys all ended up in jail too.

So nobody said anything, because the fine for sins of omission were worse than the punishment for sins of commission. So the chairs in doctor’s waiting rooms got wider andstouter to support the people who were wider and stouter.

Half of Americans were on medicine for diabetes or cholesterol, or both. They even managed to lobby to get the medicines for free, saying it wasn’t fair to punish them for diseases that came with being obese. The two went together like steak and potatoes. And speaking of food, the newly formed  Big Americans organization was also lobbying for special food stamps for all their members so they didn’t have to pay so much for their drug of choice. So far it hadn’t been approved, but they hadn’t given up.

Gyms went out of business or cut their hours way back because they couldn’t afford to stay open. No longer was it fashionable to be slim and have visible muscles. Likewise, all clothing manufacturers were expected to make outfits up to 20 XL available in the stores. Nobody was that large, yet, but it was deemed wise to be safe just in case. Most of the people who were over 10 XL couldn’t walk into a store anyway because their knees and hips couldn’t handle the strain, but sometimes they used to scooter or had a special robotic exoskeleton they wore to assist their bodies. These exoskeletons were first made for people who had been in accidents and were unable to walk, but it wasn’t long before Big Americans saw how useful they would be to their members.

Yes, now is the best time to be alive. You could eat all you wanted, never walk further than you wanted, get everything delivered, and blame everyone else on your condition. In fact, you could quit your job and get paid to stay home, and nobody would dare to say anything at all, until you became the elephant in the room.

(Written October  29, 2019)

Sister trouble

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He thought he had the upper hand. He had the gun, after all. He was only eight years old, but he had been trained all too well by his father and uncles. Women were to obey men, no matter what. If they didn’t, they had to be forced to, or killed.

His elders hadn’t told him exactly when he need this knowledge, but he figured now was as good as any. His younger sister was annoyingly taller than he was, and annoyingly got better grades to0. Their parents seemed to like her better, as well. He was sure it couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that she never caused any trouble, never talked back, always gave more than she took. Because if any of that were the case, then he’d have to change his own behavior and that wasn’t going to happen.

So he decided today was the day he would make his sister pay for his mistreatment. She had to understand that he was in charge, simply because he was male and he was older than her. Somehow talent and ability were irrelevant. Somehow the fact that their parents were actually in charge escaped him too. Now was the time to assert his dominance, and if she didn’t accept it, he’d be forced to kill her. It was for her own good, after all. If she wouldn’t submit to her brother, then how would she act around her future boyfriends? Best to get that train headed in the right direction early or else there was no telling what trouble could happen. It would be an embarrassment to the family name.

Little Susie smiled at Bobby when he pulled out the gun that Sunday afternoon in their backyard. She’d just gotten through cleaning out the birdcage for Mr. Peepers, their three-year-old budgie. She was the primary caretaker of the bird, even though it was Bobby who’d demanded the pet. After a week of owning it, when the novelty wore off, their parents realized he wasn’t taking care of the bird so they assigned the chore to her. For some unknown reason they didn’t insist on Bobby picking up the slack. It was his pet, after all, the one he’d begged and pleaded for all those months. They could have told him he’d have to care for it or they’d give it away to another family, but that never crossed their minds.

This injustice never crossed Bobby’s mind either. It told him he could do whatever he wanted with no repercussions. If only their parents could have looked into the future and seen how this lesson would warp him, resulting in a string of divorces and bankruptcies and get-rich-quick schemes that never quite seemed to work.

That Sunday was the final straw. Susie had gotten a gold star in Sunday school, while he got nothing. He’d not done the worksheet, so of course he got nothing, but the truth didn’t phase him. He was angry at her because he hadn’t gotten a gold star and she had.

So when he pulled a gun on her, she wasn’t surprised. She laughed at him, as she had learned to do. It wouldn’t do to get upset or frightened. That was what he wanted after all. Or so she thought. This time, he didn’t want the upper hand. He wanted all the cards. He wanted her dead. Only then will he reign supreme. No more being compared to his sister, always unfavorably. There would be no more competition because there would be no more her. Today was the day where he would prove he was better than her once and for all and no longer would he have to look at her smirk.

And then it happened. He pulled the trigger. And just like that she was dead. For once in his life he’d done something right the first time instead of halfway. There was no trip to the emergency room here. This was a one-way trip to the morgue.

Bobby thought all his troubles were over. Turns out they had just begun. Of course he had to go through counseling. Jail wasn’t even considered, since he was so young and the family assumed it was an accident since he was so feckless in every other situation. There was no way this was intentional in their minds – he wasn’t clever or determined enough.

But even though he was never punished physically he was punished metaphysically. Susie came back, but only for him. She first appeared in his dreams, with the same gunshot wound to the chest that had killed her. He could see right through her. Every night she appeared, and every night she looked a little more sallow, the blood around the wound a little more crusty and black. He never told anyone about this. On the year anniversary of her death she began to appear in front of him while he was awake as well, but only he could see her. She never left his side. Instead of being rid of her, he saw her more in death than he ever had in life. He ended up having to be institutionalized. Everyone felt sorry for him. Well, everyone except Susie, who knew better.

(Finished October 28, 2019)

The league ladies

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The ladies of the 32nd St. Temperance League knew it was time to do something. No longer could they trust in just leading by example, it was time to take their show on the road. People weren’t taking charge of their lives, weren’t connecting the dots. They knew better, but they didn’t act better.

Simply calling people out on unhealthy actions didn’t work and they knew it. They’d not participated in such activities themselves, but they’d watched and learned. It was helpful that others had made their mistakes for them.

But this was their flaw, or even their Catch-22. They didn’t know what it was like to feel the temptation and not yield to it, or more – to yield and then learn how to recover. It was easy to tell folks to stay on the straight and narrow if you’ve never strayed. But it meant more if you’d wandered off the path, got lost, and then found your way back. Who wanted a tour guide who had never visited the country they were touting?

But there was the rub – people didn’t trust people who had taken a trip through crazy-land. Whether it was just garden-variety mental illness or that with a side of substance abuse, they didn’t feel easy around those folks, even if they’d recovered. There was always an unspoken fear they’d relapse. It was the same old problem that had plagued Mary Magdalene – the woman who had seven demons cast out of her. Everybody focused on the past – that she used to have seven demons tormenting her – and not the present – they are gone. Her present wholeness was discounted while her past troubles were highlighted.

It wasn’t fair, but it was human nature, and these ladies needed every advantage they could, no matter how unreasonable. Because it was serious now, no time for talk. Lives were on the line. The only trouble was nobody knew. It was just like with Noah, building an ark in dry weather, on dry land. People mocked him the same way they mocked these ladies. It didn’t deter them. They had to share their message but the people didn’t have to listen.

That was the deal. In fact, nobody had to be rescued at all. Nobody had to be saved. The ladies had to tell the story, but the people didn’t have to listen. It was hard, of course, knowing so many folks would perish in the upcoming tribulation, but that couldn’t be helped. In fact, that was part of the test. If they were mature enough to heed the instructions and follow them, they were ready for the evolution. Otherwise? Who needed them? Layabouts and slackers who refused to be responsible for their lives didn’t need to be rescued. Everybody as a whole was better off without them. The tribulation (nobody was sure whether it was going to be with a bang or a whisper) would weed out the blamers, the entitled, the arrogant. All those who expected others to take care of them – or blamed others for their situation – would be wiped off the map.

For the ladies, that day needed to come soon. They were exhausted with the laziness that surrounded them.

(Written early October 2019)