Wow. That was fast. Thanks admins!

Magnificent Incandescent was true to her name. As in, she was magnificent, she was incandescent, and she LOVED long words. Her parents were very proud of their naming abilities (as they should be). One day, Magnificent wanted to write a story, but she hadn't any ideas. And so she turned to her fairy godmother (Magnificent was a princess by the way). "O' kind and wise fairy godmother," she said. "Has thee any ideas on what I should write about?" But this question even befell the fairy godmother's wisdom, and she shook her head mournfully.

"I am sorry, sweet child, but I have no answer for you. The only wise piece of advice I know to give you now is EAT YOUR DINNER GOOD BYE!"

And so yeah. 

Magnificent ate her dinner.

The End.

Happily Ever After.

Bye! 

Cool! I'm writing a book, a fact which you likely know since it is currently my sole personality trait, and I am in a planning phase. The temptation to keep planning and planning and never actually go back to writing anything is pretty bad,and that's what has killed most of my projects, so keeping up the practice of writing is important.

Here's a few short things, mostly set in northern Snohomish County. Most beautiful place in the world. They are mostly fantasy type stuff, like everything I do.

Two Twins in a Big House who Share One Waking Self 

What it's like

Cold, especially in fall and winter. Drafty. Concrete driveway. Lots of trees around it. 

Rooms and their contents

Rooms either mostly or completely unfurnished. Long hallways. Two bedrooms. One empty. Other contains two beds.

Your name 

You call yourself Taylor. You read a book about a Taylor once.

Her name 

You don't know.

What she is when you sleep 

Awake 

What she is when you're awake 

Asleep 

What you have 

The night. The moon. A journal. Paint. Paintbrushes. Blank canvases.

What she has 

The day. The sun. A journal. A box of iron nails. A bicycle

What you look like 

Soft and cool, like a muddy river. 

What she looks like

Bright and sharp, like a bayonet.

What you do 

Paint and paint, like a rolling river. Keep a journal. Sleep through the day. Watch movies. Run down empty streets with your eyes closed. Breathe in the frozen nighttime air. Bathe in springs in the forest.

What she does 

Slash open empty canvases. Keep a journal. Dance on rooftops. Sleep through the night. Ride a bicycle, standing up. Hiss like a tire with a hole in it. Laugh. Eats wires, lights fires.

Local schoolteacher teaches more than school

"Okay, Lucy. Okay, the first thing you need is a bird's bone. It sounds hard to find, yes, but they still sell rotisserie chicken, do they not? You can hollow it out easily, if it's a larger bone, but it works better if it's small. Then, go out in the yard, and plant it. Wait three days, yes, three exactly. That part is pretty important. Dig it up in three days, and you will find it to no longer be hollow. Snap it in half, and drink the liquid inside. And then it'll happen. You'll start to speak the truth. Not just things that aren't lies. The truth. People will hear it, and they might not like it, but they will know. Have a nice weekend! Oh, remember your bag, Lucy, I would hate to see it misplaced."

Interview with Danielle Zhu, Relating to the Thing She Saw on Friday, While Driving with Her Daughter, Shortly After Consuming a Slice of Meatloaf. (As related to Dr Enoch)

Enoch: Hey, Danielle. Good to see you, good to see you. Ah, please sit down.

Zhu: Ha, okay. Sorry, this is about the, the...

Enoch: Yes, yes, now this was last...

Zhu: Friday, yes, Friday. And, I had just had dinner. Terrance made it, and- 

Enoch: Oh, does he do the cooking?

Zhu: The majority of it, maybe. I feel kind of bad, but you know, I work all day, and he kind of has the house to himself, since Diana is always at Wren's house.

Enoch: Ah, Diana is the daughter, I remember. And Wren is a friend?

Zhu: Yes. Well, they're girlfriends really. I think she doesn't know we know, but a mother can tell. They work well together, so...

Enoch: How sweet. Oh, but we're off topic, aren't we?

Zhu: Yeah. Ha, it happens. Anyway, dinner. It was meatloaf. Terrance can cook, but uh...

Enoch: Just not meatloaf.

Zhu: Right! Right, not meatloaf. Anyway, I drove to pick up Diana. She was at Wren's house, which is the big, big house. Her Grandfather's, I think. And it's at the top of the huge hill, deep into the forest. 

Enoch: Wren... Wren Hawthorne? 

Zhu: That's her.

Enoch: Ah, I know the family. Weird folk, quiet. But honest, that counts for a lot.

Zhu: Yes, so we're driving back from the house, downhill. It's quiet, late evening, starting to rain lightly. A drizzle.

Enoch: We get quite a bit of that.

Zhu: Amen to that. Too much. Anyway, it's dark, is the point. Which makes it all the stranger, when it happens. It was dark, and all of the sudden, there- there's just this flash,of, of light.

Enoch: This was true for your daughter as well? We will interview her separately, but, the details...

Zhu: Yes, we.. our stories are the same. We saw the same, heard the same... Maybe she'll have remembered more, uh, better grasp on the details but 

Enoch: At least superficially, you share the same story.

Zhu: Yes. Anyway, there's the light, and also the radio cuts out.  It had been playing that... That song that plays every time you turn on the radio, the.... Uh, I guess the song that was playing isn't relevant, but, the radio cut out and started making this warbling sound... Like a guitar filled with marbles. Anyway, the light dies away and then we see the guy.

Enoch: This being the man you described to the police.

Zhu: Yes. 

Enoch: Could you describe him for us again, please?

Zhu: Yes. Okay, he was tall, uh, more like giant actually. He was... He was a giant probably, as in he likely had... Had giantism. He was dressed all in red. Red, a red suit. The rain... It sounds ridiculous but it just seemed to... Not touch him. His face, all of him was so bony, that he looked like a skeleton wearing a costume. 

Enoch: And what did he say, Danielle? What did he tell you?

Zhu: Nothing. Nothing at all. You 

Hey, these are fun, and easy so here's a few more.

The day the storm came 

One: A small bird broke through the window in the parlor. ( this happened as, almost simultaneously, a peal of thunder sounded )

Two: It began to flood. Our father shouted, almost gleefully, that this was the big one, and he told us to run toward the shelters.

( the shelters: concrete, underground. constructed by our father in about three days. well stocked, cold on warm days, frozen on cold days. )

Three: We ran outside into the muddy yard. Our father was cackling and leaping like a child.

( we found our older sister outside, in the hot tub, staring up at the blackened sky. she claimed, at the time, to have simply spaced out. almost ten years later, at the Christmas party, she made a confession, which placed this claim, as well as several of her previous actions, under suspicion. )

Four (last): We listened to the rain echo against the shelter, and our father laughed and laughed as he reminded us of how we had mocked his construction of it.

Overheard in a Thrift store in Camano Island 

" My grandpa always said, well, he was a clown, a professional clown, and he always said that there were only three real clowns in the state. He said that there were plenty of folks who'd put on the makeup, but there were only three real clowns in all of Washington. And yes, he counted himself in their ranks. He said, there's one in Walla Walla county, who he had dinner with once, and one in Lakewood. The one in Lakewood visited with him a few times, and his name was... It escapes me, but he kind of frightened me. I know my grandpa took the makeup off, to sleep and eat, you know. But, but he was a consummate professional. It was on more than it was off, and I barely remember his face without it. And they buried him when I was twelve. I went to the funeral, and the whole time, I expected him to pop out of the casket, and pull a quarter from behind the Rabbi's ear. But no. They buried him, and since that day, any time I see a clown performing, I think, you're pretending. There are only two of you."

Objects of Interest found in Lloyd "Mad Dog" Raskolnikov's house, after his mysterious disappearance in the summer of 2013.

A small wax figure of a goat. A box of iron nails labeled "for a friend." Two partially consumed meatball subs. A broken stained glass bird. A bottle of ink. Thirteen empty notebooks. The book " Lucid Dreaming for Dummies." Several tabloid magazines. A small radio. Vhs tapes. A raccoon skull. Shoelaces.

Teenagers play Heavy Metal music, sleep in a forest, dig an entrance to the underworld, emerge transformed.

We were first alerted by a noise complaint, but the situation quickly proved to be more severe.  They were digging with shovels. A few just used their fingernails. There were only three of us, and it was dark. We tried to stop them, initially but... There was something in those woods. The news reports called it mass hysteria. Anyway, a couple of hours, we were digging right with them. It took... We were there for days. We worked, and birds, crows and things brought us food.  We hit metal eventually. It was a door. One of them, the... His name was Kol, and he was the leader I guess, he had a heavy iron key around... It was on a chain he wore on his neck.  And miraculously, it fit the lock, on the door. He... I'm sorry, I don't remember what was behind the door, but... It was... Since then, I've just... Felt good. Or better, anyway. I... That's all I can recall at the moment. I would like to see behind the door again someday, but I'm not young anymore, and I doubt that I'm going to have the chance.

These are really fun! 

A few more because why not.

In Old Movies People Scream 

You never really learned to tell the difference between people and animals. You understood on a surface level, (bipedal-hairless-civilized), but it never really clicked. Maybe it was the way you were raised, stories around town varied on that point, whether you were raised by a hunter, a lumberjack, one of the billionaires on the hill, for a while there was a rumor that you were a feral child. ( None of it was true, of course. You grew up with normal folks, the closest thing to normal around here anyway.) People either hated you or loved you, you with your slate grey eyes, and longing thin face like a shining blade.

You were a lonely child, a lonelier teenager. One day you just got tired of it all. It didn't happen suddenly, it was a slow gradual slide. Into silence. One day you just stood up and left. You followed the train tracks into the woods. 

And you returned, a new creature, anointed by the springtime rains. 

You had learned something. The truth. You had fallen asleep below a waterfall, and you saw a vision.

It was a wheel, and it turned in the sky. And it's spokes were roads, and it was carved of stone. And on it stood all the creatures of the earth, and all the people of it as well. And there too, stood things you had never seen. And waters flowed freely from the wheel into an expectant sky.

And in the center of the wheel, a tall man stood, a king. In the dream, you had picked up a small stone, and thrown it at him, and he had fallen.

You had awoken, and found a goat sleeping beside you.

After skinning the goat, you made a cloak of it's fur, and returned to the town.

In the town, you spoke to many people, and told them the truth you had learned. Some followed you. Most spat on you, and mocked you. It didn't matter. You gathered those you could, and base them bring you iron nails. You melted the nails, and from the iron, forged a key. 

Then you headed back into the forest, for lo, there was much to be done.

You began to dig.

What the old man said when he didn't realize we were hiding in his bushes. ( He was talking to a woman who had been walking her cat on a leash)

"I don't know who his parents are, or I would ask them to keep him around the house more often! He wears these battered old rabbit ears, weird, blue. He rides around on this scooter, never says one word. Makes this awful crackling sound in his throat, like this! ( demonstrates crackling sound) And he takes things from my house, I know this! He looks at me with this empty stare. These kids! Kids on bikes, on scooters, I don't know. Who teaches them? What do they learn? The flock to each other, like herds of so many goats. I fear for them, with futures like empty plains."

Lowest Quality Comedian Who Holds Your Coat (and the keys to it)

" I saw-I saw-I saw this girl the other day she,she was running yes yes running down a road with her eyes closed and and I thought to myself I thought self, well who knows where where where she goin but I'd hope she makes it there! 

Well well well I'm sure you're a scratching your head thinking where where where's the punchline  but the truth of the matter is there is none and a while you was searching for it I took your wallet! 

So good night City! Good night streets and houses! Good night quiet cars speeding toward bigger places that are no less empty! I love you! I love this earth and everyone in it! May God bless you all, and may my stomach be ever full!"

To find answers, consult a gravedigger.

All was quiet on the road. Months fluttered, and I looked for you. The churchyard was our meeting place, it was neutral ground, which was the sort of place where we had to meet in these days. If we were to meet anywhere else,  we might hit each other. Or, we might try to make amends again. 

Neither sounded like a good thing to do. Not on that night.

You didn't show up, which I tried to not take personally. It grew late, and I started to miss you. I tried not to do that. It was the beginning of a string of unfortunate thoughts, which I am ashamed of having thought, and which I cannot write down without feeling sick.

I started to think about the accident, and how it had changed me, and how I had changed you. I thought about all that change, moving in ripples across the world. All originating from 

One 

Loose 

Nail.

I watched in the mirror as my scars rippled and shifted, making a circus of my face.

I wondered why I ever came down here, and I realized it was you, of course it was because of you that I had came all this way, and then I sped off into the night.

So much fun to write. The anthology pile doesn't stop from getting taller. 

I dreamed of vultures

I knew there was still something between us after I fell asleep in a ditch and you carried me to your house. (while in the ditch, my intent was not to fall asleep. I don't remember what I was doing, but at the time, it felt immensely important.) I woke up on your couch, and saw you, sitting in an armchair, staring at me. "We can't keep doing this," is what you said. I wanted to say, why not? We both enjoy it.  I wanted to tell you that it didn't really matter to me what bizarre social configuration our relationship was in, as long as it gave me an excuse to be around you, always. I didn't say that. What I said instead was "okay," and I asked to use your shower.

The Girls Who Hold Funerals For Roadkill, So You Don't Have To.

One: They always wear yellow raincoats, even when it isn't raining.

Two: They ride skateboards on the side of freeways.

Three: When they see an animals body, they lower their hoods and whisper the ancient words. This frees the animal's spirit from the world.

(in doing this, they absolve the person responsible for running over the animal from all sin.)

Four: As a showoff gratitude,  the animal will whisper secrets in her ear.

Thank them if you see them. They provide a service.

Skeleton in white apartment building.

" Okay, we are going to have to make this quick. I'm kind of busy today, you caught me on a bad day. I have ballet practice, and.... Okay sure. Yes, my father was 'Mad Dog' Hawkins. No, surprisingly, he was not a bad father. I mean, I didn't know what he was doing at the time, obviously. I would have told someone. The only strange things I noticed about him at the time were... Little things, you know? Not too odd, in the grand scheme of things. But... He had a bizarre fixation on Vaudeville, Vaudeville performances. He called me 'Tummler.' that was his little nickname for me. Sometimes he would talk in a heavy Irish brougue, only he wasn't Irish. Little things. Quirks. When I say I never could have guessed, I mean it. I couldn't have guessed. I still hardly believe it."

List of things I hope to tell you someday 

I miss you.

When you said you were afraid of moths, and I laughed at you, I didn't mean any harm. 

My mouth tastes like pennies when I think about you.

You left you toothbrush on my sink. It's still there.

I pushed you away because some part of myself hates the idea of having anything good, and refuses to believe that I deserve to be anything more than lonely.

Interview with Terrance Zhu 

Name:

Terrance Zhu.

Occupation:

I am a radio host.

Family: 

Lovely wife and daughter.

Home: 

I live in a small apartment, overlooking a saltwater marsh.

Hobbies:

I should probably get a few of those.

Greatest fear:

Personal.

Worst memory:

I was bitten by a large dog when I was three. The actual memory is no longer there, all that remains is a mixture of strange, murky impressions.

If you were the king of the world, what would you do:

Abdicate.

Your dream job: 

I'm living the dream already, baby.  

I painted the house green. It proved to be an ugly color.

He lived alone, mostly. Friends came over occasionally, but he had always felt more suited for being alone.  

He had been eleven when he realized this. He was on a camping trip in Montana, he was staying with his parents in a small cabin in the woods, and something had compelled him to leave it, and walk in the forest for a while.  It was early morning, and everyone else was still asleep. He had met a man in the forest.

One: The man wore a cowboy hat.

Two: The man had no eyebrows.

Three: The man was pale, almost blue.

He had spoken with him, and told him what he would become.

The boy would be a hermit king. The boy would become a breaker of wheels.

He had grown up, and moved into the house with a friend. They had gotten into an argument, about what, he could no longer remember. It wasn't important. It was only the seed of a great black plant, that had grown and grown. He lived in the house alone now,and watched his neighbors from behind the window shades. 

He didn't know their names, so he made up his own. 

Rabbit hope fireside 

"I like to ride past houses on my bicycle, and wonder about the people inside them. I like the idea of the world being full of people who don't know me,  or care what I do.  I like clowns, they don't scare me. I like to break into closed shops, and not take anything. I like to take advantage of whatever I can. I like all the birds and creatures of the earth. I like to be sad. I like to dance on the roof of my house, and set fire to empty buildings. Life is beautiful. Without it, I wouldn't be alive. I like to watch people sleep, and hear them breathing. In my world, everything revolves around everything, in a looping, infinite dance. I like think about everyone I will never meet. I like gravestones. I will grow up to be nothing but a taller version of myself. Salt is sacred."

When your cat went missing.

Solidarity wasn't a thing where she lived. She lived in her house, and her neighbors lived in theirs. Sometimes they nodded at each other. She was getting old, and her feet swelled up. There was more space in her backyard than she needed. She spoke to the cockroaches in her house. She needed something, anything. When the boneman showed up she said that was all right, it's all right. Onto the next plain, the new thing. She planted grapes there, and she tends to them still. It isn't a bad life. It isn't a life at all.

When she was seven, a cat bit her 

What you are 

Happy 

What you saw 

A wheel in the sky 

What it made you feel 

A joy, welling from your heart, overflowing. Spilling and pooling around you.

What you taste 

Jasmine. Candle wax. A hope for the future, if you only stretch out your hand.

A brighter day 

When you were born, she cried. She thought that you were a replacement for her.

It took a while for us to figure out that you were albino.

You were born with no fingers on your right hand, which we noticed sooner.

You grew to be tall, with long flowing white hair.

Your name was Sophie, but dad called you Tummler, and the name stuck.

You became a ballerina, and you made it big.

You fell in love with the girl who played the Black Swan to your White Swan.

You were married last year.

You quit dancing, and wrote a memoir about your childhood, being raised by a notorious serial killer.

It was called The White Swan.