The visit

I went to visit him a week later. We weren't exactly friends; I knew him through work and after we'd had a couple of after work beers it turns out we have dating cousins. But I knew him well enough that I felt I should at least check in to see how he was doing. It had been two weeks since he had stop coming to work and there was no answer when we called. I knew if he didn't call in or go back to work in a couple of days he would likely be fired. So I used the work situation as pretext to check in and see how he was doing.

We both live downtown, so I had plenty of time after work to go home and grab some dinner and a change of clothes. It just feels way too impersonal to call on someone in a tie, you know? Like you're delivering bad news?
I nuked a pizza, downed a couple of beers for courage and headed out the door.

It took about 15 minutes to get there. I tried the buzzer first...it just rang endlessly. I tried it a few more times, hanging up after 4 rings (my logic being if he were going to answer, he would do it in about 4 rings) when a resident, sizing me up and deciding I wasn't a threat, let me in with her key.

The short elevator ride was somber and panicky for me, as I desperately tried to figure out what to say to him. What do you say to someone when their significant other commits suicide? I opted for 'how have you been?' and to stick to work matters. I was starting to wish I hadn't come.

As I knocked on his door I heard nothing inside for a good minute and a half, then some rustling followed by a hoarse "Who is it?" loud but raspy.

"It's Jim," I said, feeling more and more like turning and running in the other direction.

"Hol' on," came through the door. A stumble, a crash and a curse later, and the door opened a crack with the chain still on. A half of a face appeared.

"Hey," I said, trying to sound as light as possible, with a fake smile plastered on.

"Whadaya want?" he croaked hoarsely.

"Well, the office sent me. You're not answering the phone."

"Screw the office."

I'm not really expecting this, so I just blurt out, "let me in so we can talk."

He looks and me with his bleary, baggy eye for a moment and then shuts the door. A few seconds pass. Nothing. I turn to walk away, when I hear the chain sliding open on the door and the click of the lock and there's Chuck. He looks terrible in the already unflattering halogen lights. His hair is a mess and hasn't been washed in days. His skin is pale and sallow and his eyes have thick dark circles underneath. The worst is his clothes. They are grubby and his white dress shirt is covered in food stains. Ditto with his dark slacks. It doesn't look as though he changed at all since the funeral. By the smell of him, he certainly hasn't showered.  He notices my stricken look and smiles slightly. It is ghastly.

"Well, come in if you're going to. or go away. I don't really care," he says, and goes back inside. I follow.

Inside, the apartment has the heavy stink of cigarette smoke everywhere, which is odd as Chuck doesn't smoke. It isn't so much messy as it is unkept. There are several pizza boxes and paper takeout bags as well as some of those aluminum pie tins they deliver chinese food in sometimes. In the center of all this is a zombie glass almost full with cigarette butts, ash and a couple of pizza crusts for good measure. Although the couch looks well sat on, the rest of the place has developed a thin layer of dust and clearly has not been used in days. I move forward to take a seat and nearly trip over a knee high tower of empty beer bottles.

"Careful," says Chuck, with another ghoulish grimace. "Housekeeping hasn't been here in awhile."

Not sure how to answer, I just say "ah," and leave it at that, taking a seat.

He sits next to me and lights up a cigarette.

"Since when do you smoke?" I ask.

"Since I stopped caring. I like the rush," he responds.

I feeling uncomfortable, so I figure I'll just get it out and over with. "Why don't you answer the phone? The office has called a few times but you never pick up. They're concerned. If you don't talk to them by Friday they're going to let you go."

"Good. I hate it there. It's time I did some kind of work that actually meant something to me or at least to somebody. All I do there is push useless product on feckless customers by exploiting trust. It's no way to live."

"Be that as it may," I counter, "You still need to do something with yourself in the meantime. It probably isn't healthy to just sit around here rotting your brain on TV and cigarettes. I know you're upset, but-"

"But that's the problem, don't you see? I'm not upset at all. Ever since I got the news that Stacy killed herself, I haven't felt anything at all. Sort of cold, kind of sardonic. But that's it. I'm not bothered by what I feel. I'm bothered by what I don't."

"Well, it's probably just a phase. You're probably still in shock. It'll pass."

"No. I've always been like this. I've tried to hide it by fitting in; move with the crowd so I didn't stand out. But it proved useless. At the funeral, I was stone-faced...no, stone would be cool and smooth. I was like a block of wood, neither warm or cool, moist or dry. Just there."

"So you're trying to say you don't feel anything?"

"Of course I do. I just don't feel the right things. Guilt that I have no emotion over this person I cared so much about. But now she's gone and that's that. What I feel now is the same sadness as when a goldfish dies."

"Look, I-"

"No, don't try and placate me. It isn't necessary. I may seem depressed to you, but really all I can say is I don't care. That's why I'm just holed up in here, doing fuck all and seeing what comes next."

"Well, what about the office?"

"Tell them I quit, if you need to tell them anything." He looked right at me, for the first time in this whole exchange. "Look, Jim, you're a good guy, and thanks for dropping in to check up on me. I'll probably be fine. A little too fine. And do me a favor, will you? Find a new job, one a little less soul-sucking?"

I said I would, and with that he stood and we shook hands. He ushered me out the door and we said goodbye. I told him I would come back on Friday to see hwo he was doing and a slight smile plays on his lips for second, gentler than before. he says "Sure," very softly, almost like a whisper, and shuts the door. As I walk away I suddenly realize he won't be here the next time I drop in and try to puzzle out how I feel about that.

A matter of perspective

The bar was empty when he arrived. He ordered a Gin and Tonic, finished it quickly and had another. His mind was blank and he hoped to keep it that way and the gin helped or felt like it would. He didn't like the bar very much because it didn't feel like enough of a bar to him; The lights were too bright, the floor was too clean and the music was thick and sugary in his ears. Still, he was happy for it, because it meant his attention was focused on the surroundings and not the other thing. It also occurred to him that only the best bars could be dark and dirty and inviting especially so early in the day. Any fool could run a bar at night or sell a beer but very few could ever run the real kind of bar where important things happened or were discussed. Most wouldn't even know what that meant.

It didn't matter much though; the kind of place he visualized didn't really exist in this part of the city and wasn't an option anyway. He wasn't really sure what was going to happen and he wanted a safe neutral place that he wouldn't mind never seeing again if things went bad quickly. He wasn't exactly sure why the two were meeting or what they were going to discuss. He only knew they had to talk and figure out a way to resolve the situation so it wasn't messy anymore. Or at least AS messy.

The waitress, unseen before now, swept to the table from the back. She was a young girl, 25 at the very most, but with a hangdog, withdrawn expression. Her eyes assesed him with a bored listlessness that suggested she had seen it all before; a look all people in service industry get after awhile that says I've Been Doing This Too Long. She asked
-Ki Help you?
drearily, as though she were Sisyphus rolling the boulder. She indicated with the slightest of gestures to the drink in front of him. Where the drink had been. He absentmindedly finished it off with realizing.

- Sure. Gin and tonic.

A flash of a nod and she glided off for the drink. His reverie was broken and he glanced at his watch. 2:13. They had arranged to meet here at 2. She was late. He hated that about her; hated whenever anyone was late. He was and had always been habitually punctual, never arriving more than a few minutes before or after an appointment. It wasn't timeliness he valued; he was never the precise type. Rather, he hated waiting for anything or anybody. There was something he found exceptionally lonely about it. In fact, it was when he was forced to wait that he was loneliest of all. He supposed it had to do with being an only child and a latchkey kid. Frozen dinners or no dinners at all until someone came home to feed him. Bussed in and out to school and in a suburb, there was nowhere to go and nothing to do except wait. It always drove her crazy when he did that. Stormed out of a restaurant or a movie theatre rather than simply wait. A small half-smile crossed his lips and he told himself sternly Let's Not Confuse The Issue.

His new drink had arrived and been set in front of him in a lackadaisical manner. The waitress seemed neither interested nor disinterested in her job, merely functional.

- To your health, she said, as she set it down.
- Not sure I need it just now, he responded, distantly.
- Suit yourself, she said, a bit frostier now, before returning to her perch near the end of the bar and gazing out into the street.

He regretted what he had said. For a flash of a moment, the shield was down and she seemed to be really looking at him, instead of through. That just went to show he was more distracted than usual by her imminent but untimely arrival. Why did she want to meet? Usually, there was some issue of getting away from the house but he managed that without trouble. Maybe she was intercepted on the way? Maybe one of them had not been careful enough? He felt a start of panic and quashed it instantly. No. There were, if anything, too careful. Too precise. Though maybe that was the issue. That was the trouble with this kind of thing; you could never be natural enough. You always ended up too blase or not blase enough. He sighed a heavy sigh.

- Listen, would you mind settling? I'm finishing up.
The waitress had returned, check in hand, and he was surprised to find the drink half empty again. I better slow down, he thought. As though I really need things more muddled.
To the waitress he said

- Have you ever had a moment in your life where you feel like you've just stepped outside yourself and can see your whole life from a top down view and you wonder how the hell it came to this?

The waitress raised an eyebrow.

- You're drunk.
- I'm crisp and clear. Have you ever felt that? That sharp realization that This Isn't How Things Should Be?

The waitress shot him a look that said, Humor The Crank, before replying

-I'm a waitress.

The waitress said this as though it should be self explanatory. He didn't agree, and looked at her with askance. To which she repeated and replied

- I'm a waitress. I wonder that all the time. You tell yourself you're only here until so and so happens, or until a better deal comes along. And most of the time you really mean it. There are times when this is a great job and it's a lot of fun and you get to interact with people of all walks of life. But sometimes. Sometimes you've been working a 12 hour shift or for 6 days straight with only enough time off in between to collapse at home and head straight back and you've had to return 3 salads because 'there was something off about the taste, just something,' and you've got a big fake smile plastered on your lips so you don't lose out on tips you need to pay off an ever growing student loan and your face hurts from smiling so much and you catch a glimpse of yourself in a window as you rush on past and you swear you see a wrinkle or a gray hair come clearly into focus and suddenly you wonder to yourself 'what am I doing here?' and 'is this it?'. So yeah, I get where you're coming from.

He sat stock still as he listened to her describe her situation and couldn't believe how closely he related to it. Not so much the words but the intent behind them. It was as if she were gazing at the exact internal monologue going on inside his own head and spitting it out as she read. He said, strained and with a rueful smile,

- Yeah, that's it, alright. Only it doesn't end there. Next thing you know, you're doing something you know you shouldn't be doing in order to feel like you still control your own destiny. If you're lucky, you can keep it bottled up and not sound off at your boss or anybody else and get good and wasted or high or fuck or anything else so you don't feel a damn thing as the creeping horror comes over you. for the moment, you've escaped and try to forget it ever happened but when you're not lying to yourself you know it's there still and always, on the edge of the quietest and darkest part of you.

Now it was her turn to gape slightly.

- I don't...follow.

This was said with a tremor.

- Sure you do. It all goes together. You can't feel like that and just wallow. You need some kind of release. if you didn't, you wouldn't feel it in the place. I don't care if it's cheeseburgers, pot or reality tv. You, or I guess I, need to be thrown into something to try and mask it.

The waitress' eyes narrowed now. Her voice had resumed a coldness now.

- I don't know what you're talking about. I may step outside of myself in a moment of lucidity, but then you snap yourself out of it and move on. You move have time to sit back and feel sorry for yourself, but I don't. I certainly am not about to be strangled by foreboding every second of the day. If you are, you really need help.

- I didn't say it was constant...I just said tha-

- Can you pay your bill now?

The tab, long forgotten in their discussion, was in her hands the whole time, in one of those cheap faux-leather notebooks some places have to lend an air of respectability. The waitress had been gripping it so hard it had deep handprints on it.

-Yes...of course. Keep it.

He peeled two twenties out of his pocket and handed them to her; the waitress snapped them out of his fingers and stormed off to some unknown back area of the bar. He sighed again, rubbed his eyes blearily and downed what was left of the drink. It was exactly then that She walked into the bar, and he realized it didn't really matter to him anymore.

Zombieland

No one really knows when the first zombie infected the next and it became a plague of destruction. No one will ever know, because within 3 days 50% of the population was infected and the rest within a month of that. This is about what happened next.

The first misconception about zombies is that they can't live without human flesh to snack on. This proved false once there wasn't anyone left to eat. Rather, they are driven by a deep biological need to consume fresh flesh in much the same pre-zombie humans were driven to copulate. The urge was always there, but without the ability to fulfill it they managed, similar to a priest with a vow of celibacy. They didn't need to devour flesh for sustenance, as they no longer needed any sort of food.

The second misconception is they are brainless monsters also proved false. Although becoming a zombie removed mental faculty it didn't wipe it out. One became a sort of mental infant with the motor skills of a adult, all vicious urge and desire without the emotional complexity to express themselves. Picture a mentally handicapped adult with murderous impulses and you will get the idea.

So what was a population of zombies to do once there wasn't anybody left to snack on? Imagine a world where all the women on Earth were gone, leaving  only men. A kind of chaos, except in this case the population was totally static and without any concept of death. For a long while, the Earth simply healed itself. Nature began to take hold again in mostly abandoned cities. Animals, not recognized by zombies as food, began to fill in empty spaces left behind. The zombies just stumbled around, zombie-like, without purpose or goal, never tiring or need to rest or sleep or eat.

Finally, the zombies began to change. Bit by bit, they got a little bit older and their mushy baby brains actually started to record what was going on around them. They would stop aimlessly shuffling around and begin to look at things, not through them. They developed tiny goals and interests. Some would climb high up on buildings or cliffs and gaze down and feel confused by the enjoyment and the act in itself. Others would head to the green spaces and take in the lush green or the animals that once again ruled the planet. They were relearning how the planet works and how they could interact with it.

Finally, they tried to communicate with one another again. They would make long moaning sounds between their teeth or low guttural growls to try and show others what they had seen. In sheer frustration, they would grab each others hands and lead them to whatever they had to show and make a sound to represent it. Soon it was a common sight to see zombies hand in hand shambling down the streets, first in pairs, then in larger and larger groups until whole communties had formed. Or maybe formed again. Human society had manifested itself once again on the Earth.

Scholars decades later would reinterpret these early beginnings as their very own creation myth and argue about the strange remains of beings like themselves littered everywhere. They decided that a second, more perfect race had been created on the ashes of a first. And considering their evolution from bloodthirsty savages to reasoned debaters, who can blame them?

In time

Ryan was in time enforcement, which is a fancy way of saying he makes sure people don't go back in time and change the past. The time machine's creator, Dr. Reginald Sloan, had stated that while changes to the past would not damage the fabric of space time in any meaningful way, the universe's structure could be irrevocably altered. Dr. Sloan himself made such a change himself on his trial run. He claims went back to 1960 and accidentally caused the election of JFK. In the original timeline, Nixon was elected President in 1960, not JFK. He went on to serve a record breaking 5 terms as president, maintaining a patchwork support by winning the Vietnam war by dropping an atomic bomb and re invading North Korea with ground forces. A war ravaged USSR soon caved in, threatened and unnerved by the American willingness to use nukes.

Horrified by the enormity of what he had done (or, rather, undone), he vowed never to travel again and, armed with a time travel detection method known only to himself formed a timeline enforcement agency. They had been operating for about 5 years. There were 5 agents including Ryan and Dr. Sloan. Somehow or another the technology to time travel got onto the black market and various terrorist groups and hostile governments tried to use it to turn history to their own advantage.

They always failed, or at least they seemed to, Ryan would think to himself. After all, how would anyone know for sure that they didn't succeed? If you weren't there when a change occurred you wouldn't be aware of any change. You would also have changed. It was this thought, pestering him for months and then years on the job, that finally made him do what he did.

Ryan decided he had had enough of the thankless work of time enforcement. He wanted to rich and powerful and for it to have always been so. So he broke the law and tried to go back and make himself rich and famous with his future knowledge. No one really knew what would happen if you encountered or interacted with a previous version of yourself, but everyone agreed it wouldn't be pretty. So he played it safe. He left info for himself in the past about valuable stocks that were about to pay off big. His younger self didn't take the bait, he suddenly remembered, as he always kicked himself for not following through on the cryptic message an anonymous stranger sent him. He realized immediately he doomed the message to failure by making it too subtle. So he tried again, sending a message to himself at 20 to get a bookie and place a big bet on the Superbowl that year.

No dice again, as a new memory slammed into his head, another 'prank' note he received in college by 'one of his stupid roommates trying to trick him into gambling his money away with 'a sure thing.'

Again and again he tried to give a past version of himself a heads up of what was to come, only to find he couldn't, he wouldn't believe it. Finally, frustrated and past the point of caring, he decided on a more direct approach. He went back to meet his Dad, before he was born. He talked to his old man, younger then than he was himself and convinced him that he was his son from the future and to invest in all the right places to make himself filthy rich. He listened. He became the richest man in the world in a fortnight and went on to found charities, build hospitals and fund disease research around the world.

Ryan did not fare so well. He miscalculated. Badly. After striking it rich, his father abandoned his mother to focus on his fledgling empire. She never got pregnant and he was never born. But he was already in the past. In his head, there was a loud BANG that reverberated through him like a sonic boom. He lost consciousness from the pain.

When he awoke, he didn't exist. He wasn't Ryan anymore. He was nobody, with no memories, no past, no future. Space time had corrected itself by removing him from the equation. He got up and shuffled off, with no idea where to go, what to do or who he was. He thought he had been looking for someone, but then the thought faded. Oh well, he thought. It would come to him in time.

Decisions

When you were born, you had no idea where you were and what you were doing there. You were terrified but exhilarated as you took in the bright wide world around you. Once you started to get a handle on the world a little bit, you got curious. What is this? Who is that? Once happens if I do this? You explored, and through exploring you learned about the world. You learned which things are good and which are bad. Which are safe and which are dangerous. Which are fun and which are boring. But no matter what you experience, you hold on to a sense of wonder about this place you still don't understand, the world. You start to learn how to express yourself. You smile when you're happy and cry when you're sad and start to make sounds and gestures to get your point across. Then you learn how to speak and can interact in an all new way. You feel like things just keep getting better and better but you just can't express how you feel because the words, the actions just don't exist. So you carry this lightness, this giddy feeling of joy somewhere inside you, maybe your heart, and feel a fluttering excitement in your chest every time you think of it.

So finally you turn 5 and off you go to school for the first time and learn all about concepts and ideas that you never dreamed of. You love it, but now your life starts to change. The children around you are strange and sometimes cruel creatures. They play pranks on you and call you names and make you cry. They don't get in trouble because your teacher never sees and you don't know you're supposed to tell her about things like that. You like her, but also a little afraid of her because she punishes you because you disrupt the class, but really you behave the way you always have, you do something else when you get bored or when you see something that interests you. This is the first time you learn that being different and being curious aren't always a good thing.

Time passes, and as you go through the grades this lesson is pounded into you more and more. You chest flutters less. You get less curious. You start to wonder if the whole wide world is actually dull and dreary and if you haven't seen everything there is to see. Hormones kick in and your body goes wild, becomes uncontrollable. New and almost painful desires take hold and you are scared because you don't know what's really happening. You feel angrier and everything seems grayer and grayer all the time.

So now you're an adult and you work in an office. Maybe you sell insurance, maybe you sell paper. It doesn't matter. What does matter is you work all day in a windowless cubicle under unnatural light and your curiosity about the world is almost gone. That wonder you felt about the world? Now all you know is the office. You don't feel bad but you don't feel good either. You live a bland, beige kind of life. Except...

Sometimes you'll feel a twinge of something in your heart, a slight stirring. Sometimes after it rains you see a rainbow and you feel it. Sometimes you hear a song, even a song you've heard a thousands times before and you feel it that one time. Sometimes you're on a coffee break and just sitting and everything in the world is alright again, just for a second. But then it passes and you sigh and go back to work and forget the whole thing.

So what do you do? Do you work to try and get that feeling back? Or do you let it fade away?

Recently posted on Craigslist rants and raves

Recently I discovered that my furniture can talk. Not only that, but it's hyper critical of my life. One day about a week ago I came home a little earlier than usual. I came in the side door which is unusual for me but I forgot my keys and always left the side door unlocked. Dumb, I know, but it's saved my butt more times than I can count. Anyway, I came through the side door and so I guess the furniture didn't hear me come in or something. My desk, coffee table, recliner and chesterfield were all surrounding the TV, watching an old Baywatch or something about a beach cause I could hear the ocean-y sounds and melodramatic music. Their backs were all to me. Dumbfounded, I was about to go over and start moving them back when a voice came from the couch saying:

"Geez, it's good to get a chance to relax. Fucking fat-ass must've put on like 20 pounds this winter. It's like being sat on by a sack of moldy potatoes. And smells worse. You'd figure you spend all this money on a fine sofa like yours truly, you take care of that shit. Not fart your wet farts all over it in your dirty tighty whiteys."

The other furniture murmured in agreement.

After a second's shock, I was more indignant than anything else. Sure, I'd put on a few pounds, but certainly not 20! (I'd have to weigh myself later to confirm, and yup! Only 18!)  Also, who hasn't sat around in their underwear when no one's around? Or cut a mean one loose for the same reason? Knowing someone else knew about those things, even if that someone was a couch, was more than a little embarrassing.

Unfortunately, this complaint just got the rest of them started. The recliner chimed in:

"You think that's bad? At least he doesn't jerk off and rock back and forth like a maniac. I've soaked up so much jizz I'm prolly legally a cumrag now."

I turned beet red. Oh yeah, disgusting, you're probably saying. Like you don't jerk off!

"I feel for ya, man," the desk lamented. "I don't have it anywhere near as bad. I just feel sorry for the guy, ya know? Just sits at his desk, logged on the 'net, looking at nothing in particular, wasting away mentally, not physically, obviously (a chuckle from the coffee table and recliner and a woop! from the sofa here). But just throwing away his life, staring at a screen. Pity."

"Fuck 'em," the coffee table screeched. "If he's doin' it to himself, he must be havin' a halfway decent time or something. I mean, the way he lives, the shit he eats, he's probably gonna off himself soon anyways."

That got a laugh all around and a "You kill me, table," from the desk. I had had enough. I cleared my throat loudly and the laughter died instantly. There wasn't a sound in the room. I suspected they were testing to see if I heard them or not, so I said quietly "I heard you. I heard everything," to which the desk weakly said "Hey man, how're ya doin'?"

For some reason that just set me off. I flew into a rage. I was all cocksucker this, fucking piece of shit that. I went on and on. Finally I finished, and the furniture sat quiet again. Then the sofa told me they meant every word and that it was over. They were all leaving, if I cared would get my life on course. They would be back for their things tomorrow, they said. Then one by one they went out the door. They never came back.

As I said, I haven't seen them. But maybe you have? Please let me know. We all said some things we shouldn't have and I'd hate to leave it on a sour. Tell them I'm sorry, will you? And ask them to come back?

Kurt Vonnegut is DOA

Kurt Vonnegut died after a fall that resulted in permanent brain damage that left him vegetative. But he didn't die immediately. Rather, he spent the weeks in an undetectable part of himself debating the very strange offer he received.

**********************************************************************************

 After his fall, there was a very sickening thud and everything suddenly faded to black, then straight to white and he was somewhere else. He realized he was looking straight into a bright light and his head was inclined. He turned his head to the side and looked around. He was in a large strip mall parking lot. It was night. The stores were all shut and nondescript and the lot had large stadium type lights to keep the lot safe from prowlers and the like. He had been staring up at one. He didn't know why he had been doing this; one moment he was at home in New York and took a spill, the next he was..wherever here was. He felt strange too. For one, he didn't feel any of the nerve screaming pain he felt moments ago. Also, he didn't feel anywhere near as tired or achy as he normally did. He looked down at his hands and was shocked. There were no liver spots! They were the hands of a much younger hand. He was wearing a trench coat, simple slacks and dress shoes. After a moment, he realized he was also wearing sunglasses.

"What the heck am I doing?," he said to himself. Out loud. He looked at his hand again. Still the same, younger hand. He looked around again. Emptiness all around. Except..he saw the shape of a person, old and stooped over, making his way towards him. He started off in that direction, calling out, "Hello there. Where might we be?"

The figure raised his head, indicating he'd heard him, but said nothing in response. The closer he got, the more Vonnegut could hear him mumbling to himself inaudibly. When they were almost face to face, he said "We might be in the Amazon basin, seeing the forest destroyed to make room for hamburger meat. We might be in Egypt, on our way to see the pyramids of Giza. We even might be trying to make our dreams come true instead of living our nightmares. But we aren't doing any of those. We are in Midland City."

Vonnegut was immobile with shock. The figure in front of him was an older, shabbier dressed man. He looked and sounded identical to his father as an old man.

"D..Dad?!?" he stuttered out.

The man grimaced slightly.

"I'm not your father. I had a son once. You killed him. I look like your father because you wanted me to, because finally you needed me to."

Vonnegut might have been surprised to be confronted by his creation Kilgore Trout, but by this point he had exhausted all his incredulity by now and simply accepted the situation as it came at him. His (probably) didn't lie to him, and it no was stranger than anything else up until now. He was probably hallucinating in a pain-induced stupor. But a thought occurred to him.

"But I killed you! You died after Timequake!"

A dismissive wave and clearing of the throat from Trout.

"We're all dead from the moment we're born," he said. "In any case, I'm not dead yet."

"But, why not? And you said we're in Midland city? I made that place up! Where is this?"

"The asshole of the mid west, aka Midland city. Look, do you remember giving me free will all those years ago?"

"Certainly."

"Well, what you did then was unprecedented in the history of God, the devil and everything. Not only did you make me an actualized individual, you made yourself a part of the work. So I decided to return the favor. Since I'm a part of you, and you me, I could bring you into the fiction, into Midland City. You're nearing the end, kiddo. Your fading to black and fast after the fall you took. I brought you here and am going to set you free to live on in this place with all your madness and baggage and everything. But unlike you, I am offering you a choice. Stay here and see what lies beyond the horizon in your newly 50 year old body or just let it all end."

"Why am I do I have to be 50? Why not 20 or 30?"

"You're much better off with a little wisdom under your belt, believe me. But anyway you wrote yourself as 50, so 50 it is."

"Do I get to think about it?"

"Think! When did anybody in our gibbering monkey species ever think? Do what you want and let me know."

Vonnegut started to walk away then, not sure if he believed any of what he'd been told. He figured he could always take a look around and see the truth for himself. What did he have to lose?

******************************************************************************************************************************************

Vonnegut lay in a coma state for several weeks. Finally, one way or another, he came to a decision and left us behind here. But what did he choose? Oblivion or a kind of eternal purgatory. I don't know for sure. But every time I look at that last image of Vonnegut in Breakfast Of Champions, a single tear in his eye, and I think I know the answer.