What Would Life Be Worth

if you didn't die a little every day?

Life's Tricks

Surreal as it was, he knew he had to go. Waking up on a stranger's couch is something that either reminds you of the night before, or of your own mortality. It really depends on what you drank before finding yourself there. But he found his keys, found the bathroom, then found his car. Work. At 10. That's why he left this house at 8, waving to the stranger at the top of the stairs as he left. On his way home, he realized that, not knowing when he fell asleep, he might still be too affected to drive. But it didn't feel like it. He'd be fine. He thought he should feel tired, as he usually did, but he was alert, if not refreshed. From there, his day transformed into what could be considered normal, although, once in a while, he would look down at himself and realize that he was never really there.

Premature Exit

As he stood with a look of nonchalance carved into his face, they began to realize he was serious. Some members of the audience began to smile; some began to despair. Most stood up and left, until less than a dozen remained to see the spectacle. He knew they would love it, but perhaps everyone would have, if only they had opened themselves up to it. As I left the building, I heard him calling out to them one by one to come up onto the stage. I suppose my cab driver was no better then he could have been.

He Will Play Chess.

His ringtone was the Imperial March, and it will forever play in my head, even now that he is so far away in the land of his home, where he learned the alphabet and how to climb and how to fall. This stuff made him happy and he wanted to do these many things at once, but it is only so much that one mind can handle, and one body is less capable still. Please forgive his mortality.

Well, it's Tomato!

For seventeen long years his salads had been filled with tomatoes, and yet when he saw them his heart felt a longing the likes of which he had never felt before, and it stretched from his knees to his elbows because he is symmetric like that, and the redness of the fruit caused him pains of the throat, but his death came swiftly and with no regret.

Stars and Trucks

Looking up from the bed of the pickup, he could see Cassiopeia. Even in his drunken state, she shone brightly in the sky. He tried to tell his fellow truck bed passengers but they would have none of it. He was smashed up against the cab, finding out with every bump that he wasn't as limber as he used to be. Suddenly, in a flash of sobriety, he realized what he was doing. He felt exposed and vulnerable. His friend said that he could see people watching them as they rode by. These people didn't care, but what if they did? They could be arrested, couldn't they? Riding through downtown crouched in the bed of a pickup must have consequences. But then they arrived at home, free and clear, with only the memory.

It started at the end.

There was once a rare genius, with one severe physical defect: a lack of appendages. This was the worst in a long line of abnormalities present in his ancestors. The savant decided to have children despite the risk of them having deficiencies. The prodigy admittedly exacerbated the phylogeny of his progeny.