Our mouths are full of blood

You have a little something on your lips, right there at the corners of your mouth, and I think it might be blood.  If I mixed a bit of blood with these words would it be enough to color your thoughts?  Let us not exsanguinate our meaning.

What would change if sinners traded places for a day?  I would make gluttony the sexy sin instead of the sin of sex.  If I was writing the rules for this event one such that I'd pen would read thusly:

     If you are the same size, or larger than any three Somali refugees you are not allowed to comment          on anyone's choice of sexual partner.  

Here is another:  If you eat more calories than a poor Ethiopian family gets in a whole week you are subject to picketing.  Festively festooned men and women waiting for you to leave Old Country Buffet to greet you with signs such as, "Jesus hates fat people", or "Burn Bertha Burn", or the catchy yet poignant, "Gluttony is a sin (pertinent Bible verse)".  

What a ridiculous picture I have just painted.  Of course someone should tell that man in lavender yoga pants holding the sign with graphic pictures of liposuction procedures that he shouldn't be picking at the toothpick in that fat lady's jowls while he has a 2x4 stuck in his.... eye.  It's stuck in his eye.  This being a totally original idea I will have to give some thought to the best way to phrase this. I haven't worked out all the wording yet. It being an original idea and all.

Could we restrict hate from our diets?  Just cut back a bit on our ignorance and hypocrisy.  Could we do that?  Without honesty and humility there is no possibility for meaningful discourse.   

When one person eats as much as a village, while the village starves to death.  I can see this.  It is apparent. It is also apparent that how I buy my food, where I buy it from, how it is grown, and how hard it is to get it to me also have effects.  I can see these things.  My choices add food to or take food out of other people's mouths.  

No consensual sex act short of rape, incest, or pedophilia has ever caused another human being to starve that I know of.  

Here is today's creed.  I will fail to live up to it, but I must try anyways.  

1.  Tell the truth, about myself and everything.

2.  Be humble.

3.  Be mindful of the consequences of every choice.  A choice can be small, but it can never be insignificant.

This is enough for today.

Lonely

 I am destined to write pure shit for a while.  There might be a worthwhile thought buried deep under the steaming piles, but in the meantime there is a river of shit to wade through.

I grew up surrounded by a fog of language.  A certain way of speaking, and by default a particular way of looking at the world.  It has not served me well.

Here is what the fog sounds like.
"The world is scary and dark.  People are naturally evil.  You are better than them.  Even though there is so much humanity, it is only those who live in this fog who matter.  Those fools outside the fog are so much firewood for the furnace of an angry god."

Now that I have taken a few lurching and scared steps out of the fog the world seems brighter and more lovely.  People seem like they are doing the best they can.  The mass of humanity that is so different from me is wise about matters I have never even considered.

And I am lonely.  The friends I had before promised to walk with me, but the context changed.  Perhaps even the basis of it all changed.  The relationships dissolved.  Maybe I didn't know how to be a friend.  I don't know.  Perhaps we were never really friends.  More shit I guess.

It is lonely though.  I have never in my life looked at my fellow man with such a lack of judgement or criticism, and I have never felt so alone.

The opposite of play is not work.  It is depression.
Perhaps the opposite of faith is not doubt.  Perhaps it is fear.

in the village

the quaint and lasting effects
of a quiet that fell
on deaf and dying ears
like a lightning bug fainting from the dark
like shifting sands after an earthquake
a thousand miles from a soul
and i wonder at that;
how you take words and turn them
in your hands
like spaghetti
like confusion
like an overfilled belly
followed by predictability.

in the village they have a
word for you
in the city they know you but
use no name.
they've called you by
buddy and chum
but your face is
flat like a billboard
masked like a dollar bill
like a one act play
without the curtain
drawn.

the tiresome effects
of this quieted namelessness
disquiets me
like a stillborn gazelle
like a stale and unwanted pastry
left on the door step for
a starving girl
who cannot get out of bed.

Quantum

left under the bed

in shapes of atomic

chance,

with dust mites and

trifles of forgottenesses

you are still

boxless and free.

Quantum in nature

leaping the edgeless

formless voids of 

supernatualimaginantions

playing supertonic 

symphonies

in halls of dark matter...

and i wonder

from my mind's confines 

the nebulous way

i forget you and your

gravity. your

atomic fury.

your permanent 

relativity,

which shines a

defining light that

I have never known 

before.

Recipe for a Fantasy

First take one giant, and dice finely.  As the pieces become smaller in size you will notice that you have reduced your  giant into thousands of half-lings.  Take one of the half-lings, and throw the rest in a lake.  They can't swim very well, and no party needs more than one half-ling.  He will serve as the party's rogue, and comedic touchstone.  Short people are funny.  Deal with it.

Next take the largest tree in the forest, and pull it up by the roots.  At this point the tree has far too much substance and interest for our purposes, so begin to methodically whittle it down.  Keep whittling.  That's right, just keep whittling.  Once you have whittled it down to a tall, but toothpick thin strand of wood  (as boring and nondescript as possible) lean it up against a stylish looking fern and it will soon start chatting to you about how wonderful it is.  All elves are like this, but your party must have one, and no one takes them seriously.

The party of course needs someone of the magical persuasion, and for this there can be no better ingredient than a gnome.  For our gnomish ingredient start with a pile of phone-books, and grind them into a fine paste.  Gnomes are made up almost entirely of useless and trivial information, which makes phone books a perfect base.  Preferably from a Midwestern town such as Canton, Ohio.  Alma, Wisconsin also works well.  Take 4 cups of the phone book paste, add burnt hair, a broken typewriter, and speak these magical words, "The party needs a magic user.  I guess.  I mean, we do need one right?  We can't just skip it this time?"  In a puff of smoke your magic using gnome will congeal before your eyes.  He will most likely kill you by accident, and will prove much less useful than expected.

For the final member of the recipe you will need a large stockpile of meat.  The kind of meat doesn't matter much, it's the quantity that matters.  Begin by making a rough shield shaped frame out of wooden planks, and then just start piling on the meat.  You want that shield to be so full of meat that the next stranger who wanders by will hardly be able to resist speaking the magic words of creation, "Looks like you've got yourself a meat shield."  Yes.  Yes you do.  It could be an Orc barbarian, or a dwarf paladin.  It doesn't make much difference.  As soon as a stranger (it has to be a stranger) speaks those words the meat will congeal into a large stupid brute who will run headlong into danger and soak up most of the damage.  They won't contribute much to the story, but you've got to have a meat shield.  For shielding you.  From stuff.

Well, there you go.  Add a pinch of story.  2 T of rivalry.  1/4 t of phobia.  1/4 cup of back-story.  1 religious fanatic.  A handful of cultists, and one extraordinarily evil villain.  Grate in  a generous amount of humor, and add salt and pepper to taste.

Bon appetit.

Growing up Christian: 9 things I wish I hadn't learned, and several I'm glad I did. (Introduction)

Starting a book is hard. I have a good idea of what belongs in the middle parts of this book, but where to begin?  That is a problem.  So, I will begin with a story.

First a little background. When I was about ten or eleven years old there was a man I knew in the church that my family has always attended.  Let's call him Steve.  Steve had an extraordinarily broken life.  He was a drug addict, alcoholic, womanizer, and actively worshipped Satan.  His life was literally a car wreck.  What I mean by that is that one night when my dad and some of the others guys from the church were out trying to talk to Steve and help him he became violent and rammed his car into my family's shiny green sedan.  That was probably the nicest car we had growing up, and I think we only had it for about 5 weeks before Steve went demo-derby on it.

Fast forward 1 year.  Steve is clean. Steve is sober.  Steve is married to the woman that he is still with today (I think they have 15 kids(it might not be that many, but it's some other absurdly wonderful amount)).  If I have ever witnessed a miracle, this was it.

This story takes place at one of our many Wednesday night church meetings.  Steve was up front that night and he told us all his amazing story of how he had been pulled out of death and destruction, and into life and a group of people who loved and cared for him.  The juicy details could not have been more appreciated by anyone in the room than that 10 year old boy in the third row who was also me.  To me it was an epic adventure, and better yet the good guys had prevailed.  It was a happy wonderful ending and I soaked it up like a pasty white sponge.

After the service I quickly went up to Steve and began to gush all over him with how much I loved his story.  I remember telling him that his story was one of the best I had ever heard.  I will never forget how he frowned and stopped me, and then said, "No Josh, your story is so much better because it doesn't have all that bad stuff in it."
I was crestfallen, but something much more insidious was taking place.  You see, this was just another in a long series of reinforcements to something I was learning as I grew.  One of several things I learned growing up that I wish I hadn't, and a few I am glad I did.  This lesson was that I was better than most other people.  I belonged to a special club made up of people who God loved slightly more than everyone else.  Furthermore, since I had been born into that club I must have a leg up on new recruits. No one ever said these things to me explicitly, and I am sure it was not intended, but I was learning it nonetheless.  While I was growing up Christian.

"The Colossus' Glass" The Last Thing He Saw

“I remember the last thing I saw before I went blind. It was one of the Colossus, a massive herculean giant, fifty feet tall, hoisting a great lens up over his head in the burning orange of the setting sun. I couldn’t take my eyes off him, frozen in awe, or maybe fear, I can’t say now which was stronger. He stood higher than most of the buildings of our city, and his face was sullen, emotionless, unmoved by the mayhem and destruction he would reap by obeying the commands of his director. He just hoisted to his shoulder the large monocle-like glass the size of a small parachute, wreathed in gold and tungsten, and turned it slowly in a circle. As he turned the glass it focused the rays of the sun on anything in its gaze. Churches burst into flame. Playgrounds melted to boiling molten puddles. Rows of houses, entire city blocks, shriveled and shrank into the earth under a glowing furious heat. I watched from the hill. I couldn’t move. Those who remained in the streets turned and fled. They were the wise ones. Yes, I am lucky to have lived, to have lost only my sight, but foolish to have stayed. As the Colossus’ beam turned the corner toward me, he faltered. He lost his grip on the glass. And I stared too long. As he adjusted his hands, each one the size of a small car, on the edges of the glass, it quickly jerked and swept past me. In a way, it swept through me. I did not erupt into flames. I did not melt. I did not char. With a great white flare, the light reached the back of my mind and stayed. And then there was nothing. Which is exactly what I have seen since that day. Nothing.”

Out From Bree: Part Two

Out From Bree: Part Two

Out From Bree

The Tale of the Brothers Hamel and Bernus

 Part Two

Boom! Boom! Boom! came three resounding knocks on the east gate of Bree. The thuds, which were so loud that they could very well have splintered the gate’s wooden beams, woke the slumbering gatekeeper, Bernus Wendling, from a deep midday sleep.

In his dream Bernus had been scaling a great mountain when his footing was lost and he stumbled backwards into a great void. He awoke just as he reached the dense forest floor far below. Of course he had not landed in a forest beneath a mountain, but in his tipped-over chair on the wooden floor of his small green gatekeeper’s shelter.

With a shrill gasp he sprang up, and for a moment could hardly believe he had survived the fall. As he stood motionless staring down at his chair, bleary eyed and breathing heavily, his mind eventually wandered back to reality. He dusted off his sleeves and looked up the road that led back into town, hoping that no one had witnessed the embarrassing scene (this time).

Boom! Boom! Boom! The knocks came faster this time, reminding Bernus of the task at hand. “Oh right!” He rushed to the gate and opened the window slot in the door. He nearly toppled over backwards again when he saw a fierce gigantic grey-bearded face staring directly back into his from an inch away. “Ah!” blurted Bernus, accidentally letting go of the slot door, which quickly slapped shut once again right on the great grey face.

“Sorry! So sorry!” Bernus opened the slot again. “Startled me there, ya did! That’s all, so sorry. Uh, hello. Hi. Uh, right, could I get your name sir?”

“I’ll give you much more than my name if you don’t open this gate sometime today!” The old man’s voice was gruff and impatient. “My name is Gandalf, and I have been knocking on this blasted door for the better part of five minutes!”

As grumpy as Gandalf sounded, Bernus was quite used to people losing their patience in conversation with him, and as such was not quick to notice such things. “Well then, Mr. Gandalf, let me open up for you then, shall I? Just one moment, if you please.” The slot slapped shut again, right on Gandalf’s nose. “Sorry!”

From outside of the gate Gandalf could hear the quick scuffling of feet, the clank of a large lock, then the rattling of a latch. This rattling stopped and started, stopped and started, and then was joined by grunting and sounds of strain. “If you’d prefer I could knock the gate over myself to save you the trouble,” Gandalf called from outside.

“I’ve got it here, I think,” came the voice from the other side. “Oh, wait, no I haven’t. Umm.” More grunting and rattling. “This, uh, this happens sometimes. Just a moment. Usually if I…”

After a few more groans and rattlings of the latch, Gandalf sighed and raised his staff. Touching the end to the gate, it swung open with a whoosh! and knocked Bernus, once again, onto his back.

“I got it!” Bernus sounded triumphant.

When the dust kicked up by the commotion had settled, Bernus got a good look at Gandalf. It felt to him as though he were looking upon a weathered statue of a great hero of old. Gandalf stood tall, much taller than scrawny little Bernus.  He seemed all the taller as he wore a high grey pointed hat, a long grey robe, and carried only his staff and a small leather tobacco pouch, which hung at his side.

“Master Gandalf, sir,” Bernus said as he raised himself to his feet, both excited and nervous to be standing in the presence of such a figure, “Welcome to Bree.”

These December poems

These five poems come, I suppose, in response to my last poem 'Tuesday' which ends with the simple question: Where are you?  This question comes from and in reference to Genesis 3:8-21 where the Bible tells us that the Lord God was walking in the garden in the cool of that day while Adam & Eve were hiding in the trees.  That singular question (3:9) zeros in on the heart of this new condition that they find themselves in, the condition I find myself in every single day: naked, in need of clothes. These lines are then some offerings that attempt to answer the question posed, a poetry from the 'naked' perspective.

As I was thinking further on why it is that I write at all, especially from such a vulnerable place, it occurred to me that in crafting verse I was indeed not unlike the wood carver, looking at the raw form and chipping away until beauty was born.  It seems artists of all ilks are compelled by this need for beauty and the beautiful. And while this parallel to the carver may be true in one sense, I think in another way that the writing of poetry, at its core, requires a uniquely complicated culmination of varying roles.  It is as if first the poet is a timber cruiser, searching an endless forest for just the right tree. Always vigilant, mind fixed with his crude ax in hand, out some fifty miles into the wilds he marches on.  He goes because, as we all know, not just any tree will suffice his purposes.  It must be quality selection of timber that stands true in a part of the forest he thinks capable of producing a crop of the right shape and design.  A soft and pliable quantity that has grown up under the correct conditions.  In reality, this journey, this seeking is the most essential piece of his work.  The poet needs that path just as much as he needs the raw material, almost more than he needs his subject. But now there she stands, the one that is bold enough to contain his potential work of art. It is then that his role evolves, as he becomes now the lumberjack fierce and strong.

I have hacked and packed out many a desirable 'tree' in my short time as a writer.  The work is both exhausting and exhilarating simultaneously.   But as any decent carver can tell you, finding good wood and bringing it home do not make art.  The details must then be etched carefully with a tried and steady hand. Each phrase's edge sanded into the right kind of shape so as to improve the new born form. Truth be told, I think I may never get there.  That impossible perfected place I can only envision opaquely in my mind's eye. That elusive space where the journey, the cutting, the packing out and all of the finish work somehow fall into a harmonious syncopation, like a song being sung.

And so it was, last Tuesday morning, that I awoke under a new fallen snow almost startled to realize the position of my heart.  So far to the north and bitter cold.  My inner thoughts sounded an ethereal alarm of sorts. My vulnerability so real to me there, beneath so thin a veil.
Where are you?  those thoughts inquired.
"I am journeying naked through the trees," I replied.
"Clothe me... in your words."

A.S.

Part 2

Jack’s brain felt as though it were floating in a warm blue liquid. Everything was calm. His eyes were closed, and in the darkness he heard no sound, felt nothing of his body, knew nothing of his surroundings.

Jack’s forehead had directly struck the concrete. Hard. He laid their motionless on the train platform. Some witnesses fled, fearing the supernatural, while others came closer, either intrigued by the impossible or hoping to help the mysterious bleeding man.

As his eyes opened he saw blurry shapes crowding his field of vision from all directions. He heard dull, distant voices.

Jack’s eyes began to focus on the faces staring down at him. He heard unfamiliar voices. “Is he okay?” “Who is he?” “What did he just do?” The questions came from every direction.

A large man in a red sweatshirt knelt over him. “Sir?” He looked straight down into Jack’s eyes. “Sir? Can you hear me? Do you know where you are? Sir?”

Jack couldn’t respond. He couldn’t quite connect the dots just yet. He could, however, feel a dull, throbbing pressure coming from the right side of his forehead.

“Jack?” Finally he recognized one voice. “Jack, are you okay? Jack!” Emma was there. She was afraid.

It was difficult, but Jack concentrated and pieced together two words. “I am.”

“Ma’am, you’re with him?” asked the man in the red sweatshirt.

“He’s my husband.”

“My name is Evan. I’m a doctor.” The man in the red sweatshirt was direct and calm. “The way your husband hit his head, I would bet he’s got a concussion. He should be fine to get up in a few minutes, but for now--”

“Emma.” Jack wanted to tell her he felt fine, that he wasn’t even in pain, so he couldn’t have a concussion. His forehead just felt a little sore. He wanted to ask why he was on his back, and why all of these people seemed so concerned for him. He couldn’t quite piece together the words to ask these questions. He remembered that they had been at the stadium. That they had come out of the gates. That they had stood in line for a while. That he had tried to see--

Then it all flooded in at once. He remembered trying to see over this man, the doctor in the red sweatshirt. He remembered jumping. He remembered shrieks and horror and confusion. He remembered a crowd backing away from him. Now that same crowd closed in on him.

“Jack, my name is Evan. You just hit your head on the sidewalk. I need you to relax, ok?” Jack was not paying attention. His mind was replaying the impossible scene from only moments before. “Do you know where you are? Do you know what happened?”

He did.

Frantically, Jack reached for Emma’s shoulder but missed. She grabbed his arm to steady him as he flopped onto his side. “We have to go. We have to go.” It was a struggle to put words together, one after another, but now his adrenaline surged and gave him focus. “We have to get out of here.” The confusion. The closeness of the strangers, pressing in. Jack had to escape.

With his palms on the concrete and Emma steadying him by the arm, Jack struggled to stand. “Sir” the doctor sounded concerned and reached for his other arm. “Jack, you need to lie down, you’ve got a concussion, Jack, I need you to stay here, ok? “

Jack got one foot under himself and tried to stand. He fell into Emma who was crouched next to him. “We have to go!” He hoisted himself upwards using Emma’s shoulder. She stood with him, unsure of herself, but not knowing what else to do.

Jack gained his balance and looked up. He was looking into a crowd of faces, a sea of eyes that had seen the whole thing. Some backed away like before. A few stepped forward to help steady him.

“Don’t touch me!” Jack could see to the back of the platform, where the streetlights of the train station ended. It was dark there, down below at ground level, and the street seemed mostly empty. His heart was racing. He had to get out of the light, off of the platform, out of the center of this mass of strangers. He lurched forward.

Jack pushed and pulled at the shoulders of those who boxed him in. Frightened, they made a path, one by one stepping back to make way. Some still held up cell phones, recording Jack’s primal struggle to escape. Emma rushed to keep him from toppling over.

Fans continued to pour out of the stadium and onto the back of the train platform. These people, these newcomers to the scene, had no idea what Jack had just done as he painstakingly fought his way between them, against the flow, bleeding from his forehead and tripping over himself. He breathed heavily, his chest heaving as his momentum carried him unsteadily forward, passing by each curious face with determination.

His progress was abruptly halted when he ran directly into a heavy-set man with a backwards cap and a large soda. ”Whoa! You okay there?” The man could see that Jack was unsteady. He grabbed his arm to help.

As soon as Jack felt the man’s hand grasp his arm, all of Jack’s fear and panic mixed with urgency and confusion, and within an instant, Jack exploded.

He punched the man in the face, just below the left eye. It was a sloppy punch, the punch of a dizzy fighter still reeling from a hard blow to the head, but the surprise of the blow sent the man stumbling backward, spilling his drink on the shoes of others in the crowd. The man put his free hand over his face, sputtering a muffled “what the f---!“.

Emma, too, covered her mouth. She was stunned. She stared at her husband with fear in her eyes.

Jack’s head was pounding now as he saw single drops of blood fall down in front of one eye. He stood, dizzy and in pain, as more onlookers stepped back, tripping over each other, but never taking their eyes off of him.

The way they looked at him…

He started to run. He was desperate and anxious. He made his way as directly as he could toward the stairs that led down to the ground level behind the platform.

He turned back at the top of the stairs and saw Emma directly behind him. She was weeping and trying to keep up. He reached back and took her hand frantically as they descended the stairs that led down six feet to a shadowed sidewalk.

Jack couldn’t stop. They ran down the block, Jack stumbling now and again, Emma keeping him from falling completely. He had to escape, to get out of sight. He heard one or two shouts from behind, but kept running.

They had made their way three and a half blocks when Jack, unable to take the dizziness and the pain, finally ducked into a darkened alleyway. He fell forward onto his knees next to a huge wet dumpster. Emma knelt beside him, sobbing and out of breath.

Jack pulled Emma close, held her tear-streaked face in his hands, and desperately pleaded, “What just happened?”

“I don’t know.” Her voice was quiet and weak.

Jack swayed. He fell sideways against the dumpster, dropped to the ground, and vomited.

Part 1

“Honey, we have to get out of here.” He felt faint. His words came out slowly. “You have to get me out of here.”

Jack had just shaken the laws of nature, and he knew it. He wasn’t sure how he had done it, but he knew he had. And he was terrified.

Thirty seconds earlier, it had been crowded.

There were hundreds of people filing toward the open doors. Jack couldn’t quite see if the train was already full or if there would be room on this one yet. He tried to peer around the other disappointed fans pouring out of the stadium and onto the light rail platform. He arched his neck to find some sightline toward the train doors. It looked full.

“Shoot, this might take a while,” he said to his wife, Emma. He decided to give up and just go with the flow of the crowd for now. “Man, that game was rough.” Emma wasn’t listening. “Those nachos were good, though. Why don’t they ever taste that good at home?” She was digging through her purse for something.

He went back to trying to see ahead to the train doors. The crowd had stopped inching forward. He could tell that they were close to the doors, but he still couldn’t quite see if they’d make it onto this train. He didn’t want to wait for the 10:25.

There were two men talking about the game in front of him, one wore a leather jacket and the other a red hooded sweatshirt. Both were tall. Jack, even on his tip toes, could not see over their heads.

“I can’t see a thing around these guys,” he said to Emma, knowing he was basically talking to himself.

He needed to see over them. He strained himself, stretched and craned his neck as far as he could, but came up short. He was boxed in all around by hundreds of people, so he would have to jump to see around the two brutes.

He bent his knees just a bit, and sprang back up with as much vertical momentum as he could muster from a standing position. He pushed his chin up and looked down his nose toward the train as he got just high enough to see over the two tall men.

That did the trick. He could see then that the train was very full. He scanned for vacant spaces. No luck. They’d have to wait for the next one. It was late and he had to work early. Oh well, he thought.  What difference would ten minutes make? He was still happy just to have been at the game, even if it was a trouncing. No surprise. It’s a rebuilding season. Everybody knew it. Maybe they’d shuffle up the roster in spring and come up with something promising. What they really needed was to get rid of --

His mind stopped abruptly. Every other consideration, every other detail of life and existence vanished from his brain. He became immediately and horribly aware.

He hadn’t landed yet.

He was still looking over the heads of the tall men. He was staring at the train. He wasn’t moving. Why wasn’t he moving? Others were moving. He wasn’t moving.

He turned his head slowly. So slowly, in fact, that he wasn’t sure he was turning it at all as he panned across the platform full of eager passengers. He was above them. They were below him. He wasn’t on the ground. Everyone else was.

Each passing fraction of a second felt as though it dropped him deeper and deeper into a dream.

His whole body tensed and froze. A sudden panic set in. He hesitantly looked downward. He focused on his shoes, and his eyes grew wide.

He turned his head to the right. “Emma?”

She was still looking through her purse for something. “EMMA?”

“Yeah?”

“I--  I’m--  I think I--  jumped.”

“I can’t hear you.” She turned. Her eyes didn’t meet his face but his right hip. She looked up. Jack’s eyes were filled with shock. She looked down, wondering what he was standing on.

Jack was two feet above the ground. He was standing on…nothing.

She gasped and slowly took a step backward, staring at his shoes.

“I’m not-- I can’t-- “ Jack stammered. “Emma? Emma, what’s happening? Emma, what’s under me? Am I—”

“What is this?” She took another step backward.

This time she backed right into a young woman talking loudly on her phone. Emma tripped over the girl and into the side of an old man in a long overcoat. “Oof!” He caught her under the arms.” Careful there, I gotcha!” Just then the girl on her phone let out a piercing scream. Her phone crashed to the sidewalk.

All heads in the crowd now turned. Then everyone nearby stopped cold.

There were scattered shrieks and gasps as anyone within ten feet pushed backward to get away. The tall men turned around and found themselves staring right into the chest of what appeared to be a much taller man right behind them. They quickly saw the truth. One of them blurted out some startled profanity as the other tripped over him trying to get back. They both scrambled to their feet again and backed up with the rest.

A wide circle had now opened up around Jack. Everyone on the platform and inside the train could now see something that they couldn’t quite understand. A loud gasp followed by an “Oh my god” was heard from inside the train as just then the doors closed. The train began to move as another scream rang out, then another. The train grew louder.

A loud chugging and swishing mixed with the growing commotion on the platform. The crowd seemed to crescendo along with the growing noise of the train. All seemed to blurt out their unfiltered gut reaction. “What is this?!” “Holy --” “Jesus Christ!“ “WHAT THE--”

The train’s piercing whistle erupted in one long blast as it departed the station and, in its echo, everything again went suddenly silent.

A full twenty-foot ring had opened up around the floating man and his wife. Emma had ended up on her back on the sidewalk, not yet able to stand up.

Hundreds of wide eyes stared like unlit light bulbs, waiting, watching, searching for reason. No one in the crowd knew exactly how long this silence lasted, but all recalled later that the silence was broken by one horrified voice, coming from eight feet above platform.

“I don’t know what’s happening!” Jack sounded like a frightened child in the last moment just before the drop of a roller coaster.  The crowd stared.

The girl who had tripped Emma and dropped her phone scurried forward into the empty circle. She reached down and scooped up her phone, then hastily jumped back into the crowd and started recording. One by one other cell phones began to pop up throughout the crowd, recording each passing second.

He was floating. He wasn’t moving. Not up. Not down. Not left or right. He was simply floating.

“Jack, is this real? Or is this some hidden camera thing or…” Emma asked. “I don’t like this, Jack, stop it.”

“I can’t stop it, Emma. I don’t even know how I started it!”

Jack began breathing heavily. Very heavily. And very deeply.

“Jack?” Emma raised herself to her feet.

He had been off the sidewalk for a full twenty seconds, a fact which was now becoming very real to him. He felt lightheaded as he looked around at the countless faces.

“Honey, we have to get out of here.” He felt faint. His words came out slowly. “You have to get me out of here.”

His vision began to darken as he saw the faces begin to swirl around him, slowly at first, then faster and faster. He felt all thoughts drain from his mind. He saw a glimpse of Emma as she rushed toward him with her arms stretched forward. She screamed. It sounded distant, muffled. Everything became fuzzy. And then everything went black.