Sun.

Looking at this girl was like staring at the sun. She shined bright and beautiful yet too far to reach and would most likely burn to the touch. Her form lights up every room she floats into. She carries the weight of the world on her shoulder like she carries her purse.

Levers

A dream I had, recounted to the best of my ability.

It was at night and I was sitting somewhere in the middle of a bus, its destination a place I only knew of in my dream. The seats were a gray cloth with blue geometric patterns down the middle, not unlike the seats on the long bus rides home from Eastern that I took during my freshman and sophomore years. The night was lit up brightly by a full moon, and there was an eerie calm it drove perpetually on a simple gray road on top of a hill.

Sitting to my right was Petronella, a coworker of mine. In front of me, Cathy, my supervisor who has been on extended leave for about a month now. They conversing with each other as a watched out the window, their voices speaking clearly but saying nothing.

As my attention drifted away from the conversation, it concentrated on just how quiet our surroundings were. The kind of quiet where you know something really bad is just about the happen. The proverbial calm before the storm if you will. I felt a wave a fear similar to the one I had when first cresting the hill of a roller coaster. A feeling I imagine I would have felt seeing atom bomb being dropped a block away. Something along the lines of impending doom. I covered my face with my hands, and waited.

I can't remember what happened next, which makes me want to think that it was a quiet transition to the next scene, but there is a space there where it feels like something happened. There isn't much, just a view of the world from high up above, enough to see the entire sphere. But instead of the usual black background with little specks of white, it was a canvas of pure light. The Earth itself was discolored as well, any more detail than that would be impossible to provide though.

The red boxy car pulled up in front of a large brick building, a warehouse. Cathy and Petronella got out and I followed. Strangely enough I wasn't all that confused. There was a feeling of excitement, as if the three of us were out for a night on the town, or something to that extent.

This is where it got vivid... very vivid. We entered the warehouse through a steel door, the inside shared the red brick walls as it's outside did. The floor was the textbook dull gray cement color, and there was a small room sectioned off in the right corner (facing me) at the very end. Yellow, shapeless machinery was in the other corner. We proceeded to make our way to
the machines, on the way I grabbed a handful of salt out of something.

This salt wasn't table salt, mind you, it was the flaky more mild sea salt they seem to put on everything anymore. I had a very large handful of it, large enough that I could pick from it with my free hand and take decent sized mouth fulls, still having enough left over so that I wouldn't run out. I could taste the salt dancing on my tongue, literally taste the salt. I could feel the tiny flakes lumped up on my tongue, and the burn of the freshly salted saliva as it rushed down my throat.

The three of us stood my the machines. Cathy and Petronella engaged in the same wordless conversation as before. I stood there, eating my salt, until I was called over via intercom to the room in the right corner.

I remember every step there.

I stood in front of a large pane of glass. On the other side was a tall, thin man. He had medium length, unkempt brown hair that curled into lockes as it stopped around the middle of his neck. He had a beard, but only as a result of not shaving. His eyes were large, very similar to mine. Similar enough that I could swear that they were my own. Over these were a simple pair of thin rimmed glasses. A black business suit with a red tie hung on his thin frame. His face almost gaunt as he loomed over me.

The man smiled warmly and waved his hand, still behind the glass. "Hello Mr. Mitchell. Thank you coming here today."

I responded in my usual fashion when dealing with work related meetings such as these. "No problem, wasn't out of my way at all."

"I've been looking at your performance and unfortunately, I'm afraid I will not be able to extend the contract to you for another year. You see, you've ranked third, and we can't accept that."

Shocked that I was loosing my contract (that I had no knowledge prior to this meeting), I began to bargain with the man, "I understand your decision, I really do, but I think that with a little more effort I could raise my ranking. If I could just have a little while longer to get the hang of it."

He shook his head, "I'm sorry, I can't." And walked out of the room to where I was standing. The man got uncomfortably close to me, only about a foot away.

I placed another handful of salt in my mouth. It burned a little more this time.

"I can't help you now. You just haven't learned yet"

He started to reach into the air in front of him, grabbing at tiny invisible knobs, seemingly pulling them out of some machine. His body swayed back and forth with the motions of his arms, and his voice became rhythmic and calming.

"All you have to learn to do is pull the levers, nothing wrong with that. Just pull the levers, and it will all come together. Just pull the levers, and keep moving now, just pull the levers and it will all come together."

He repeated this, over and over, his voice becoming almost hypnotic, sounding as if he was speaking in front of a fan. It was disorienting, confusing, disturbing. The man's face got closer to mine until it felt like I lost my footing.

I woke up just one hour ago, remembering a dream more vividly than I have in a long time, the man's voice still stuck in my head.

Love Walked In..

Loved walked in.



It wasn't sneaky or the least bit apprehensive. It went through those doors like everyone else does on their day by day routine. It came in calmly and at a steady swift pace. My eyes were buried in a comic book, at the time my only thoughts involved a certain radioactive spider bite victim and his struggle with his life. As I turn another page an odd,luke worm chill breezed through the bottom of my spine and ending at the back of my neck. I gave a quick shrug as to shake it off. Nothing. Then my fingers went all tingly and numb. Then as I sit there and twitched and decided to sit up. I pushed the tacky yellow chair I was sitting on back and went to sit up. Raised my head and there it was at 12 o clock. Dead center I made eye contact with a god damn angel. Her dark brunette hair was inky black and her face made me forget how to speak.

Past and Present.

Past and Present
by David Scheidt


The smoke danced out of barrel of the business end of my .45 like one of those Hawaiian dames. Just like what lightning strikes, then came the thunderous crash of my six shot hand cannon. What kind of day was I having? Seemed like it was gonna be the same as all of ’em, and a couple minutes after midnight I was standing there, ankle deep in a kiddie pool of blood. Believe you me, I’m just as intrigued as you are. Who was laying there, face down with a noggin full ’ah lead?

The poor bastard was a guy I grew up with then as fate would have it, witness his last moments on god’s green. He wasn’t so bad of ’ah guy. He’d offer to cover to the tip anytime we grabbed a burger, he’d always wipe his feet before he walked into someone’s place and he’d never forget to floss. Ya see we go way back, back to 105th, where we’d fight each other in front of tha school and throw rocks at Little Pete’s rundown house.

He was raised like all of us, medium sized roman catholic family. They’d have meatloaf every Tuesday and go to church every time someone died or got married. His old man worked a union gig on the docks, and was home when we woke up and went to sleep. He spent too much time at the bar. His mother was beautiful but, sad. She smiled but wasn’t a happy smile. You know that expression you make when someone tells you a bad joke and you don’t want to be rude? Typical family, daddy drinks and mommy cries. My buddy carried it on his back till the day I seen ’em drop. Over the years we grew older and for the most part grew up, but this guy, he just couldn’t let the past behind ’em. The load on his shoulders was so heavy it stumped his growth. He never liked when I used ta say that to em.

Quicker then we wanted it, we became teenagers. I got a paper route and he started smoking’. I kissed jenny brubaker at the park and he broke into the little corner store on 111th. Kinda amusing a count, counterpoint ain’t it? We’ll if you don’t get what I’m saying, I’ll just spell it out, we went our separate ways. I didn’t like it, but the high road was the one I had to walk, and this guy took the road Robert Frost was talking about, the road less traveled. He got into drugs, I got into college. When I left town, I didn’t care what I left behind, I never knew it would come back 20 years later and bite me in the ass. I left him behind and now he’s laying in front of me in a pool of blood, full of bullets that came from a gun that still warm to the touch. The gun that felt like it was gonna break on account of how hard I was squeezed the trigger.