1. The city was alive tonight; the sounds of partying and of fighting filled the air. As he walked by a alley, a tentacle reached out from the dark and grab him.

2. Being from Brooklyn, the Kansas prairie was scary as shit; it was so flat. There were no power line, cell tower, hell even trees for mile all around. It foretold of his social isolation. He was told their are no natural lakes; only man-made reservoirs and pond called cattle tanks. As he walked to the top of a small rise, the land dropped away to revival an Ark!

3. He focused on the simple mantra: " Slow is smooth and smooth is fast."

A protagonist, sometimes male and sometimes female, travels seamlessly between subtly different versions of reality. These could be metaphors for the protagonist's real-life transition.

An abandoned Space Shuttle launch pad. Hundreds of people on a nearby hillside sketching it. Black Sedan cars with opaque windows are parked in a strange formation; from the air it almost looks like a message...

Here every human imperative seemed muted, as if the atmosphere itself was laced with apathy and disillusion.

Teenager leaves high school very late and alone due to falling asleep in the men's room after detention. James got detention because he insulted that strange new chemistry teacher nobody can remember much about, even her name, other than she dresses like a older Goth and is never seen out during the day.

Our intrepid teenager walks thru a series of stereotypical BAD places because he is late for supper. IE takes a short cut thru the overgrown yard of that vacant Victorian mansion where those unspeakable multiple murders occurred 50 years ago to the very day/hour! That strange house that is on the edge of the old cemetery that even the stoners/drunks instinctively avoid. Right down the dead end road from that abandoned summer camp.

The weather suddenly turns for the worse as dark clouds hide the moon and stars. It begins to rain and fog rises...perhaps rising from the graveyard? No, just his imagination.

He takes a further chance and cuts down the ally between the abandoned tannery and the mental asylum that burned down when some of the inmates rioted many years before.

He thinks he sees that Goth teacher down a side street but cannot be sure it is her. I mean she never had wings, a barbed tail and hooves before...or did she?

He imagines, or does he, hearing an unearthly voice in the wind crying "Come back Shane!"

He hears wolves(?) howling and swears some woman is calling his name again and again or is she chanting it? Was that strange teacher just in the last doorway? And why did her eyes seem to glow?

But with the rain and fog it is hard to be certain of anything.

Feeling strangely tired and cold, his clothes seeming suddenly wrong, he spots a Starbucks. Our teen rushes inside to the comparative warmth and safety.

He pulls off his soaked hoodie revealing long curly red hair down to her sexy ass. Her fashion model worthy face is highlighted by hypnotically glowing red eyes. The fact she is not wearing a bra is made obvious by the wet top clinging to her generous assets.

She slinks up to the counter, holds out her card with slender fingers accented with black nail polish. In a sensuous voice she orders...

"I'll have a pumpkin latte, vente, skim milk, with a dash of powdered aardvark."

HAH! Try and do something with that!

John in Wauwatosa