The one thing Chaddeus knew from experience was the only thing lonelier than being a writer was being a writer with writer’s block, when the characters inside your mind stop speaking to you.

Fictional characters interacting with each other while the mind was idle formed these creative bubbles where ordinary situations weaved and evolved into something new and wonderful; plot germs to be sown as far and wide as possible as soon as they emerged. But his characters grew silent which meant his stories lost their ability to fly into the productive chaos of the ever-expanding frontier of creativity.

Set adrift in his lonely mental avoid, Chaddeus contemplated giving it all up and resigning himself to an existence as one of the content-consuming mundanes…when he was hit with a streak of story brilliance like a bolt out of the blue.

A tremendous amount of Earth’s resources went into constructing the Interstellar Drive which was designed to propel humans to the very edge of the ever-expanding universe.

The hope was to find a compatible planet in its infancy so that humankind could begin again and avoid the mistakes that placed their homeworld in its deathbed.

But as Astronaut Anton Pascoe explored the planet at the end of the universe, he stumbled upon a sign that suggested someone had beaten him to the punch.

Prudence Periwinkle was inked-up grotesquely beautiful entropy in high heels. Born to be chaotic, she embodied every single thing that was wrong with the world, so how could Howard have not fallen head over heels for her?

He had always been a sucker for a bad girl.

It was only one light, left on in the den when the Mays family went to bed after a tiring day constructing the corrugated metal Anderson Shelter in their back garden. When the air raid sirens sounded and the rest of the neighborhood followed blackout procedures, the forgotten light served as a beacon for the Messerschmitts.

Odette fell for him because he was a poker prodigy but as Dwight’s luck faded, so did his wife. Soon she was more ghost than woman, a trick of the sunlight that drifted silently away at the waxing of the moon in the black marble night sky.

“Is this your first kiss?”

“Why?”

“Because I do it like nobody else,” she said matter-of-factly as she ushered me to a cushioned chair. “So, if this is your first time, we’ll need to be blindfolded.”

“Wait, is this some kind of kink thing?”

“Not exactly…but kind of. You’ve heard of the third eye, right?”

“The spiritual gate that leads to the inner realms and spaces of higher consciousness?”

She nodded. “Well, I’ve discovered a fourth eye that can only be opened through the unification of two souls. When I kiss you I’ll damn sure open your third eye and when the fourth one opens, reality as you know it will slip from under your feet and you’re likely to experience some nausea and I can’t run the risk of you vomiting in my mouth.”

She kissed me and her breath was like a predatory flower, its sickly-sweet vapors made me so cold the marrow in my bones chattered. Her tongue felt like a misshapen creature, dead but still moving, as I wriggled to free myself from the muscular organ burrowing inside my mouth.

There are creations in the universe, cogs in the ever-expanding machine that keep the forces of Chaos and Order in perfect balance. Every so often a cog performs above and beyond its duties and is seated before the The Great All and granted remuneration.

“Your reward, young cog, is corporeal life.”

“Corporeal life? From a universal perspective, it is over in a blink of an eye. Such poor compensation from a Deity such as yourself. I would rather be unmade as an existential creature.”

“If that is your wish.”

“Wait! I thought we were negotiating?”

The thing most people fail to realize about lightning is how playful it can when the mood strikes. Lightning can tease you by blowing off your shoes or flash-frying the clothes from your body, leaving you naked and steaming in the rain. If you listen carefully you can almost hear an overhead chuckling when this occurs.

Lightning can also be quite fickle at times in the form of striking you with no ill effect but the person standing next to you ends up in the hospital. Or the morgue. So, it really is in your best interest to try to make friends with lightning when at all possible.

It wasn’t always like this.

I wasn’t always like this.

I remember a time when I wore a younger man’s face, when I discovered what true happiness was, when the word love took on a whole new meaning, when the world finally made sense.

When you were still alive.