"It Won't Save Them"

His eyes narrowed in hatred as he looked down at his own name carved into the lonely tombstone. He was  a bit surprised they'd given him the courtesy of a marked grave. "It won't save any of them," he promised himself as he departed, ready to take his revenge.

"The Far End of the Curve"

The Far End of the Curve

                Doctor Christopher Harvey sighed as he knocked on the door.

                "Mr. Hickenlooper, are you ready?" he called. There was no answer.

                "Mr. Hickenlooper," he called a bit louder, "it's time for our session, may I come in?"

                He heard a sound from the other side of the door, and decided that it was as close to an invitation to enter as he would get. He turned the knob and pushed the door open. Inside a man wearing white pants and a white t-shirt sat on a bed with white sheets in a room with white walls. There was a wooden desk with a wooden chair in the room, both painted white, and on the desk was a stack of composition notebooks and a pair of fountain pens. The man was sitting, just staring at the wall. His face wore an expression of terrible  sadness, and a familiar aching of empathy for the man filled Dr. Harvey’s chest.

"The Death Statue"

The Death Statue

Let’s get this straight right off the bat: I am not in Special Ops or Clandestine Ops or Black Ops… not really in ops at all. I’m a detective. I don’t have awesome ass-kicking skills and I've never shot anyone. I am good at figuring things out. It’s usually a simple job. Someone suspects this guy or that girl is involved in some kind of scam or anti-whatever group which might one day put a bomb in a school or mosque or meat factory. There are all sorts of crazies these days. So I go and stakeout the guy, follow him, find out who his friends are. Then I write a report. That is how I spend about half my time. Writing reports. What I do isn’t usually dangerous, but I do have a gun. Yes, it’s a Walther PPK. Yes, I carry it because that’s what Bond carried. No, I don’t think I’m James Bond. I couldn’t buy an Aston Martin with 5 years salary, and as for sex with hot ladies on the job? In my fucking dreams. Literally.

"The King of Michigan"

The King of Michigan

My family still lived in the Lakelands, what used to be northern Minnesota and Canada, maybe with a little Wisconsin. Nothing near there was hit in the collapse, and the citizens were pretty independent. I hadn’t been back in half a dozen years. When my cousin Connor arrived and told me my uncle was dead, I didn’t think much of it. Then he told me the funeral was in the Lakelands, and the family wanted me to come.

"Asylum"

His first thought as the door slammed was that it was too damn sunny outside. In the movies there would be rain pattering on the windows and a somber song playing quietly in the background to set the mood. But then, this is reality. In reality it’s bright and fucking sunny and he hadn’t smoked a cigarette in hours and he was crabby and the fatass on the other side of the (glass?) partition was listening to an oldies station that was 80 percent commercials. Figures. Yet another example of the universe out to crush what was left of his soul.

Then finally, after an obnoxious DJ lets them all know that they’re listening to the greatest hits of all time, a pleasantly minor guitar riff starts and the singer starts singing about travelling through the desert on a horse with no name. I love this fucking song. And now I have to listen to it while it’s too sunny and I’m pissed off and yes, he admitted to himself, scared shitless. 

Then he started laughing. Loudly, almost hysterically. He laughed the laugh of the maniac that his ex-wife told everyone he was and that his friends were too polite to call him out loud. He laughed because he knew, not thought, but knew the universe was persecuting him relentlessly. He needed a way to get away. He needed a break, a place he could go to escape the universe that was after him. He needed... the reason he was laughing was when the word finally came to him: "Asylum"