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THE GAIAN PRESS - Issue 14.0 - March '06


IN THIS ISSUE:
1. The Neighborhood Watch - Gaian news for our attention deficit generation.
2. Honorable Mentions - Writing submitted and scouted by the best.
3. Geek Chic - A Girl's Guide to Geekdom.
4. Point! What's Your Point? - Anti-social, anti-state, anti-you.
5. Best of Issue - As voted by the members of the Press.
6. La Revue - Advice on things to do or not to do.
7. The Afterthought - Preview for the next issue and then some.















PART I. Poetry
Listed in alphabetical order by author.

A Live, by Apropos Krause
Dreamer, by Scary Fairy
"Dreams, In Color", by Lebki
Perfection, by Aderyn



A Live
By Apropos Krause

Somehow I always expected less,
More gray and cloudy[ness]
than bright sk[eyes] and vibrancy
So now I�m a[way]ke,
First time since I lived,
And yet I�m not livid.
Not being a live is
A hard [con]cept except
You don�tcan�twon�t wrap
Your mind around it.
Just [un]like being alive.
You are.

Dreamer
By Scary Fairy

Thought bubbles arise
with lofty promises
of bowing down
to be worthy of the monarchy.

Ink races across the alarm
and my hopes
are twisted from existance
with drops of White-
Out snow.

Two million sketches
into this dim-witted future,
and I'll revisit
my cartoon thought
balloons
that no one seems to notice.

"Dreams, In Color"
By Lebki

---------------------------------------i.

Crystalline pool, the depths of which you have never seen!
Have only dreamed.
You're swimming!
Effortlessly, in this atmosphere of shimmering water.
No cares in the world, just child's play,
Cool blue in-ground light nothingness.
Drift a little. Then turn around and look up at the sky.

Can you believe people live there,
Spend their lives in a waterless prison?
Now how can you go back?

I have seen muddy spring bake in a summer oven,
Have seen blooms flourish, wither, and die:
The white-pink apple blossoms sacrificed
For the forbidden fruit;
The mulberry-colored clover flowers host bumbling bees.
The trees, eternal, push forth dark-colored leaves
From soft buds.
And lucky four-leaf clovers
Are picked, preserved, and forgotten.
Have you ever felt so alone as when you weren't here?

I think it's time to tell you why
You never met your mother.

---------------------------------------ii.

She had a dream:

Here comes Mister Happy Yellow Face,
Grinning a wide-mouthed embrace.
Say cheese (Can you say freeze?)--
No one can be that cheerful. Please.
Happiness-keeper, you sunny guy,
Everything you stand for is a lie.

Some day you'll drive off a cliff
-------------(goodbye cruel world)
And I'll be the only one smiling.


---------------------------------------iii.

She said, I've got the blues.
No reason to wake up; hit the snooze.
Or smash it. I don't care.
Either way, I'll still have my despair.

The sandman must be sick tonight.
There was no one sprinkling my dreams with
Sweet nothingness.
Why should I say that God loves me, or exists?
Whenever I prayed for a snow day, I got rain.
It's raining now.
Rain droplets, liquid sapphires on my head.

She said, I'll do it tonight.

I'm so sorry, my son. I wish I could give you sunshine,
But all I have is a leaky umbrella and a battered soul.
Maybe if you don't know me, you won't grow up so sad.

(Hit the snooze and go back to bed,
Is sleeping what it's like to be dead?)

---------------------------------------iv.

--------------------------------Slip slide aquamarine
--------------------------Pink coral on yellow sand
--------------------------------It's all just a living dream
--------------------------So come on, Miriam, take my hand...

---------------------------------------v.

Hate, the anti-love all victims feel:

I'm seeing red flags of this disease
One for each horseman, fluttering on the breeze.
Is it madness when it feels so right?
O stifling heat!
Blood was pulsing in my veins, all I wanted was
To break, blow up, blow out--
---------------------------but not die.
It's irrational to want to die, leaking dangerously into insanity.
But anger is stoked, and somehow is not ludicrous;
(Get lost in the beat,
The passion's fired up and so is the heat)
Wars come, go, and come back again.
People are massacred, and new ones replace them.
(Now work with me: who does the killing?)

You will see this, the fields strewn with bodies,
Washed red with blood instead of water.
"How?" you will gasp. "How can these people bleed so much?"
And my reply is that anyone bleeds, if only he is stabbed.
How is this not ludicrous?

---------------------------------------vi.

Rewind: Sunshine, eighteen glorious years ago.
Come in my window: it's open wide.
Pour molten, golden heat onto my bedside.
You're gorgeous, queen of morning and of noon;
Tell me this will last forever, 'cause I'm never leaving June.

I picked up the baby and told Miriam a story:
I was driving north, and an unfamiliar forest was to my right.
Then came a break in the trees (an entrance to a church)
And in one glorious three-second burst,
The dawn's sun-lit fingers (As if gold had sublimated,
As if liquid gold had evaporated and poured into that tree-break),
Crept out and lovingly shone on me.
I said, "God exists. I see him now."

But if that were true, it wouldn't have been dark again.
If that were true, it wouldn't be raining now.

(Oh my baby, said Miriam, How were your dreams?
Did you dream in color?)

---------------------------------------vii.

I held her hand the night she died.
Rain streaked the windows; fog peered into the glass,
That bandit of the night, cloaked in watery shadows.
Remember the blue, clear-glass skies so long ago?
How could I know that under those skies,
She was crying?
I have never in my life seen so much blood,
Been as afraid as when I heard that single shot.
It was cold when the ambulance came, colder when
She was pulled in.

The baby's crying, but I want to scream louder.
Scream of how she left me in this eternal night.

In her vase bloomed blue and white flowers,
Baby's breath, the night her breath ran out.

Perfection
By Aderyn

The ultimate curse,
Cause and effect
Of narrowed eyes
And fatal stabs.

Invincible will of
Friendless power,
Loveless wealth,
Useless talent.

Born to this path,
A towering maze
Of menacing cornflowers,
Shrouded in loneliness.

For every goddess,
Bonds are eternal
And freedom is lost
Forever.



PART II. Prose
Listed in alphbetical order by author.

Daydreamer, by radioactive alchemist
Fallen, by Raye Dragonmage
Your Luck Just Ran Out, by Rikku Abdul



Daydreamer
By radioactive alchemist

My companion dragged his heavy sword back up to his shoulder, getting ready to strike again at the dragon, the great golden-green serpent with fiery breath that blocked our path, prevented us from entering the cave where the princess was held captive. As he brought it up, I muttered a spell under my breath, moved my hands so, and summoned a wall of protection against the dragon's blasting flames. Another spell, quickly, to make my friend's sword able to pierce the dragon's tough hide. His sword glowed, and he raised it above his head, ready to--

"Mr. Blue! Please pay attention, and read us the next paragraph."

...strike. I sat up in my chair, ignoring the giggles of the girl behind me. "I'm afraid I've lost my place," I informed the teacher politely. She scowled.

"We're at the paragraph that starts with 'It was all very well to say 'drink me.'"

I started immediately, continuing the teacher's sentence. "...but the wise little Alice was not going to do that in a hurry. I would say she's not very wise if she chased a rabbit down a hole in the first place, wouldn't you say?" I asked, looking up. I liked to one-up teachers which pointless questions, or ones they couldn't answer, or ones that just got them angry--because they couldn't do anything about me. I was a perfect A student, a few of the teachers even adored me enough to not care if I didn't participate in class, and the principal was one of my father's good friends.

"I'm not asking for a running commentary from you, Mr. Blue. Just read the paragraph."

"Very well," I replied with a sigh. It wasn't really a burden; I didn't know how many times before this I'd read Alice in Wonderland and I practically knew it by heart. Alice was kind of like me; at the end it all seems a dream. I'd rather live down Alice's rabbit hole than in reality. "'No, I'll look first,' she said, 'and see whether it's marked "poison" or not;' for she had read several nice little histories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts and other unpleasant things, all because they would not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them: such as, that a red-hot poker would burn you if you hold it too long; and that if you cut your finger very deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds; and she had never forgotten that, if you drink too much from a bottle marked 'poison,' it is almost certain to disagree with you sooner or later. However, this bottle was not marked 'poison,' so Alice ventured to taste it, and finding it very nice, (it had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavour of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffee, and hot buttered toast,) she very soon finished it off." I opened my mouth to make a comment on the stories Alice had read and what her parents or her nanny had been thinking, and how it was different back in those days, kids were raised right; and the fact that that combination probably wouldn't taste the greatest--but the teacher called on the next person and he began reading. I kept my thoughts to myself, and sunk back into my own world until the teacher yanked me out again to read another paragraph.

Thankfully, the bell rang before she could get back to me.



I always walked home from school when the weather was nice, instead of taking the bus. Even though I lived a few miles from school and it took me a good hour to walk home, it was quieter than the bus and I was attracted to quiet like a bee to honey, however off that analogy may be since bees are attracted to pollen, and make it into honey themselves. Or perhaps it's about how they'll defend their honey. I'll defend my quiet, if I have to. Sure I can still tune out the noise, but why waste the extra effort when I can take a nice walk instead? And buses are always bouncing up and down on their nonexistent hydraulics, and disrupting me, and then I have to worry about keeping track of which stop is mine, where if I'm walking it's sort of automatic and I can get home no matter how immersed I am in my thoughts, without thinking about it at all. The human mind is a funny thing, mine probably more than most.

I stepped through my door to the other world--an imaginary door, mind you, but that was how I got myself into the proper mindset. There were different doors to different places; they were all different. Some were normal-looking doors, others were huge and metal with massive rivets, some were wooden, some had carvings, or lettering. Behind each door was something different, a new place for me to go and explore. If it was a new door, I could only guess what was on the other side. The look of the door usually reflected what was beyond it, but not always. That was the fun part.

It was easier to go through when I was walking along, because then I could physically walk through the door (well, as if it was there, at least, but of course it really wasn't except to me); when I was sitting still I had to do it mentally, with a door in my mind or behind my eyelids. It was somehow less...solid that way, and I was more easily drawn out--good, because I had to use that technique in school. When I was just walking along, or when I locked myself in the privacy of my own room, I went through physically. Of course it was only pretend, only my imagination, and I longed for it to be real even though I knew that was impossible, that it would never happen. I may not be in touch with reality most of the time, but at least I know how to distinguish between them and I'm mature enough to realize they are only fantasies, that they only exist within me--and no one else.

This afternoon, waiting for me on the other side was kingship over a country at war. I had a beautiful young daughter; my wife the queen had been dead many a year and the Princess was the only light in my life. But alas, she fell ill--and the only one who could cure her was on the enemies' side. My only options were to let her, my daughter, die peacefully and leave me all alone; or I could hand her over for marriage to the ruler of the enemy kingdom. She would be cured, and the war would end--but for how long? And I would never see her again. Ah, cruel fate! What must I do? She lies in her silken gown on her silken sheets, hot with the fever that will not end except when her body cools in death...what am I, her father, to do? If I hand her over to the enemy, it is for the greater good of the people. The fighting will stop, there will be rejoicing in the streets; trumpets will sound from the turrets and the bells in the churches will ring out the glad news of the end of a war marked by a joyous wedding where the two enemies become allies.

But could I hand her over to the cruel hand of an old man, who wanted her only for her beauty and innocence? Of course I could not. I was a selfish man, guarding her like she was my only treasure, the jewel of the kingdom. Better for her to die and go to heaven, to be immortalized in a tomb of stone than for her to suffer; then I would know where she was, and that she was happy and at peace; and then I would be as well. Every day, I would go to her grave and speak to her, leave her fragrant flowers that she could no longer smell, jewelry and trinkets that she could no longer wear or enjoy.

Ah, the follies of man. Her funeral was a solemn affair, but wonderful; she spread out now in her silken burial shroud, her face as white and as soft as the wings of the doves who landed at her window and were fed breadcrumbs from her dainty hands! A spray of lilies clasped to her chest, bound by a silver chain on which there was a silver cross. Her open coffin was white and silver, fitting for a princess, my daughter. No black for her, no, death was something to be celebrated, her moving on. I had the mourners wear white. I myself wore white and silver, my mantle made of the white, soft fur of the snow-fox from the distant mountains. It kept me warm in the chilly wind that swept through the churchyard, heralding fall's approach.

Into the mausoleum her coffin was carried, and laid to rest on the central slab where the recently deceased are put in a position of reverence. The coffin before her, that of my departed wife, the queen, was moved to the back in the narrow slot that waited for her. I made my chamberlain promise that my dear daughter would not be put back there; she was to stay on the pedestal forever, even if I in my coffin when I was finally laid to rest had to go directly to the back.

When the mourners departed, I stayed in the mausoleum with her, talking to her, directing my voice to where she resided in heaven. There, all alone, I wept; but not for long at all. When I returned to my castle, it was to prepare myself for the next battle. Even in grief, the war could not be forgotten. The very next day I marched out with my loyal troops to the battlefront, all of us with white ribbons pinned to our breast. We fought for the memory of the Princess.

I fell in battle, slain by an enemy sword as I stepped through the front door of my house and out of the world of my thoughts. Even though I had been in the role of the king, I felt satisfied by his fate--after all, he had let his daughter die. I never dwelled on them for long afterwards, however; there were always more waiting behind more doors, a never-ending succession of them.

Toeing off my shoes by the front door, I dropped my bag there to wait for me until morning. I always did my homework over the lunch hour, since it was the noisiest time of the day and harder to get into the right mindset to step though the door. Unless I had a paper to write or a project to do, I never took my bag upstairs. It was a perpetual stranger to my carpet.

I raided the fridge and the cupboards for something to eat; lunch was hours behind me and dinner equally far away. My mother didn't get home until six-thirty, then waited until a quarter after seven to start making dinner, because my father didn't get home until eight. It was the same schedule, every night. My grandpa had been in the Navy, and my father had gone to a military school (hence the bad pun on my father's name, Navy Blue). His military background shows through into normal life, even though he hasn't followed his father into the service, exactly; he's an engineer for Lockheed-Martin, which I guess is sort of related because they make planes for the government.

According to the digital green of the microwave, it was only a little after four. Lunch was way back there at eleven, and I was a teenaged boy--I liked my food, almost as much as I liked stepping through the door and escaping reality. If I'd had a mini-fridge and a microwave in my room, my family would probably never see me again. I'd asked for such, but of course had been denied them because my parents knew that. I was stuck with having to come downstairs if I wanted anything to eat, and of course I had to come down to eat dinner. I probably wouldn't have missed that, anyway; my mother is a professional cook slash cake-decorator and works at a high-end bakery that does a lot of wedding cakes and such. We're always spoiled when it comes to dessert.

Some of that dessert happened to be left in the fridge, in the form of a jelly roll; I took part of that as well as the makings of a sandwich up to my room. I could hear Magic doing something incredibly annoying and noisy in her own room, which was across the hall; it sounded like she had one or two of her friends over. She was seven, but my parents had deemed her old enough to be responsible enough to have friends over when nobody was home--even though she definitely wasn't responsible. I don't know how they managed to go wrong raising her, especially with my father's method, but she is literally a wild child. I think she's just hyperactive, but my mother insists that it's just a stage and she'll grow out of it. She's been saying that since Magic was four.

I tried to ignore the noise she and her friend(s) were making, and went into my own room. I shut and locked the door tightly before depositing the plate on my desk and sitting down. While I ate I checked my email; there was the usual junk, and one email from my father saying that he would be home late again that night because they were working on some sort of big secret project and the deadline was the end of the month which happened to be only a week away. It didn't really mean anything to me, since I hardly ever saw him anyway. Email was the prime mode of communication between me and my parents; the dinner table was second. "Family night," every Sunday night, came in third. Family night was mostly meant to get me out of my room for a more extended period of time. It was only one night out of the week, so I put up with it. That, however, was four days away, it being a Thursday.

I finished snacking, leaving a bit of the jelly roll in case I felt hungry again before dinner, and tidied up my room because Thursday meant vacuuming day, which meant our rooms had to be clean. I wasn't a messy person, but there were some of my books lying around and some clothes that had missed the hamper and fallen to the ground around it instead--or in the case of one sock, landed in the wastebasket. I put the clothes in the hamper and the books back on the shelves, dusted a bit to make it look like I'd at least tried, and then I got down to my own personal business, locating a door that would keep me occupied until I was called down for dinner.

Sometimes I just took the first door, but other times I would try a few times until I found one that looked promising. The discarded doors usually showed up again a few days later, so it wasn't like I was missing out on anything that might be behind them. And of course sometimes the ones I'd left unfinished came back so I could go in and finish them, and if there was a particular one I enjoyed I could summon it up at will. Quite a few of my favorites were like those never-ending games, sort of like...oh, Dungeons and Dragons. I could always find new things to do, new places to explore. Others were a set scenario, like the one on the way home, and others were sort of like RPG games, where I had to complete a challenge or a quest or something before it ended--those usually ended up being the ones I went back to finish, because they could take a while.

I was aware, of course, that I was probably unique in the way I thought. I really didn't have a big enough imagination to pull all these ideas from, I didn't think, so I knew they had to come from somewhere. Maybe one door led to a place, a real place, where all the different ideas were kept; or maybe they were all real worlds, with real people, and I was able for a short while to enter them in my mind.

Of course I knew that none of that could possibly be true, but it was still fun to think it might be. Maybe I really did just have that much of an imagination. After all, when I was feeling lazy I liked to read instead; my bookshelves were chock-full of fantasy novels and novellas, trilogies, classics, cheap knockoffs of bestsellers and the bestsellers themselves, anything I could find. There was a used bookstore downtown, and my allowance was twenty dollars a week. Anything I wanted that was out of my budget my parents would buy for me (unless of course it was something like the mini-fridge), but I wasn't spoiled by any means--mostly because I didn't ask for nor want nor need much. I'm easy to keep satisfied, because I can satisfy myself just fine. I never get bored. I never really complain, unless Magic is making too much noise. If we go somewhere as a family, I go along and try to participate without 'drifting off,' as my mother puts it. She's wrong, though; I don't drift, I plunge in headfirst and am swallowed by it.

When I'm in my room, my bookcase becomes my portal and I imagine it changing into the door. Maybe it's because of the books and what they contain; I don't really know--that's just how it is, and how it's always been. I remember the day I first discovered the doors; it was my tenth birthday, and I wasn't doing anything special, just being left to myself as usual. The only thing that happened to me that day to show it was my birthday was a cake and a present of fifty dollars from my parents. Other than that, it was a normal day, even if it happened to be raining. I was in my room, like usually, and playing the "imagination game" like every child will do. But I was upset, it felt too childish that day for some reason, and I wanted to refine it. So I created the doors, just like that, and the bookcase was always where they appeared. For that reason I've never moved the bookcase from its spot, even though I don't think moving it would disrupt anything--it's just...sort of sentimental being right there, I suppose. Where it all started. When I was ten, I thought that maybe it was a magic bookcase; and for a while that was the only place the doors appeared. Later, they started appearing elsewhere: in front of me when I was walking, behind my closed eyes, sometimes inside the pages of my school books. I could control when they appeared, of course, and where (to a degree); but never what they will look like unless I have a certain one in mind, and certainly never what's behind them, unless I've been there before and even then, in the never-ending ones, sometimes I wind up in a completely different part of the world from the location I left.

But I wasn't thinking about any door in particular, except that I wanted a new one, fairly long. If that was what I knew I wanted, then only those kinds of doors would show up--it was just a matter of choosing which door looked promising, and what sort of thing I was in the mood for. I wasn't entirely sure what I was in the mood for; I was feeling lazy but I knew I wasn't in the mood to read a book because that would take even more effort--I'd have to get up off the bed where I'd lain down, for one. Sighing, I rolled over onto my back, looking at the bookcase upside-down. I wondered if the door would be upside-down if I did it that way, so I tried it; sadly, the door was right-side up. I didn't like the look of the door, it was too plain, so I erased it as I rolled back over and tried again. Again, it didn't seem right; I was being picky. I tried again, and again. I knew there wasn't a limit to the number of doors that existed so I wasn't worried about exhausting the supply, but I'd never had to go through more than seven or eight doors at most to find one that satisfied me. I found myself getting up into the late teens, but they were all too plain. I wanted something more exciting, but they weren't changing to fit my mood. They'd always changed before. I tried going for a familiar door, but it wouldn't appear--the same plain, wooden doors in differing shades just kept showing up, doors that told me nothing about what was behind them and they were so plain that I didn't want to waste time checking them out.

Finally, the plain, square doorframe that surrounded the plain doors wavered and changed into a high stone arch. The door was still plain, but at least it was a little different than the rest. It had heavy iron reinforcements, like a castle door, and the wood was worn down. The door handle was just an iron ring, worn smooth like many hands had grasped it. The stones that ringed the door were also smooth, and looked like they didn't really belong with the door itself. It intrigued me, and that was good.

Like all the doors that appeared before me, it was insubstantial, and I could still see the bookcase faintly behind it. What wasn't usual was the faint wisps of fog coming off the doorframe and from the crack underneath the door, and its slow but steady solidification. I didn't want to lose it now that I'd found it, but since I'd seen it I should be able to bring it back again. I closed my eyes, breathed deeply, and counted to ten. It was a sure way to get rid of any door. Opening my eyes again, I was faced with the same door, now looking entirely solid and real. The fog was gone except for a few wisps still curling at the foot of the stones and licking at my carpet, testing it before disintegrating into nothing and disappearing.

Rather than being scared, or wary, or any other things I may have felt that would have stopped me from going through, I was excited. It was real, which meant that everything else had to be real as well, that they were not just my ideas but they were actual worlds and now, finally, one was being opened to me, for me to go into for real, physically. Not taking my eyes off the door--just in case--I got up off my bed and approached it. I was almost afraid to reach out and touch it, for fear it wouldn't really be there and it would turn out it was all a dream, that I'd fallen asleep on my bed without knowing it and that I would wake up sorely disappointed.

Without thinking more about it, I reached out and grasped the iron ring. It was smooth and cold, like I would have expected it to be. There weren't any hinges on my side, so I assumed the door opened inwards, and I pushed against the wood with my hand. When the door didn't budge I put my shoulder up against it and tried more pressure. It gave slowly, letting out a massive creaking protest as though it hadn't been opened in ages. I let it go and it swung inwards. Looking down at the point where the grass on the other side met my carpet and seeing it bending over into my room with the light breeze the swept out of the door, it seemed so...natural. Not strange at all, like I'd always known something like that would happen and I was already used to it.

I looked up, past the grass and into the dense forest beyond. I couldn't tell what time it was on the other side, because the trees obscured the sky, but it was fairly dark underneath the leaves. Reaching behind me with one hand I felt around on my desk, picking up the first thing my hand encountered which happened to be my favorite pencil, the red one. Leaning down, I tossed it through the doorway and watched as it came to rest on the spongy grass, a bright spot of red in the muted greens and browns of the forest. Of course I wasn't about to lose my pencil, and of course I was going to go through the door and get it back and of course I was going to go in farther and explore and treat it just like it was a regular thing, only I would actually be there and it wouldn't all just be a daydream, something in my mind.

I didn't want to take my eyes off the door, and for once I regretted not bringing my backpack upstairs. There was nothing I could do about it, though, so I'd just have to go in empty-handed and hope someone would be nice enough to help me out. The world on the other side seemed pleasant enough, not monsters or dangerous things that I could see. I retreated to my closet, backwards, still not taking my eyes off the door, and got out the pair of boots that I kept stored there. They weren't ones I wore regularly, which was why they weren't downstairs in the hall closet; they were army boots that my father had gotten for me last year. Since they were the only pair available and I wasn't about to go in barefoot, I sat down on the floor and put them on--keeping my eyes on fixed on the door the whole time, of course.

Once the boots were on, I really had no excuse not to go through the door. I stood up and approached it once more, feeling the light, warm breeze that blew through into my room and ruffled the pages of the book on my desk and the stray hairs that always managed to escape from my ponytail. I squared my shoulders, and stepped off my carpet and onto the soft grass. My pencil had rolled quite a way in, and I made it my first goal to get to it--and only then would I allow myself to explore this place. As I bent down to pick my pencil up out of the grass, a gust of wind stirred up. I heard the door creaking behind me, and, clutching my pencil tightly, I whirled around just as the door slammed shut.

Editor's Note: If you would like to continue this story, please go here.

Fallen
By Raye Dragonmage

I spin around faster and faster, giggling with my friends as we swirl around and around, singing about ashes and falling down, then we tumble to the grass and lie, laughing, for minutes on end in a futile attempt to catch our breath. A cool breeze whips over the hilltop, ruffling everyone's hair and kissing flushed cheeks with barely-felt lips.

I scramble to my feet and run down the hill towards the playground below, singing, "Ring around the rosie, pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall DOWN!" A few of my friends follow me, laughing and trying to catch my pigtails as they stream out behind me. But I have a head start, and they can't get up enough speed to catch me without going head over heels down the hill.

I stop in confusion as the playground before me, and the voices of my friends behind me, suddenly vanish. Instead, I'm standing on a cobblestone street, and the ground seems farther away; I'm taller, much taller. People lay around me, dying as I watch them. I try to run, but my feet seem to be glued to the ground. I let out a pathetic whining noise, like I'm five years old again, and scared of the dark. But it's not the dark I'm afraid of: it's the horror of the plague wiping out a third of Europe's population right before my eyes.

A few yards away, a group of scrawny children run by. Out of one of their pockets falls a single flower. That's right... they thought flowers could protect against the plague, I think vaguely. I feel sick, scared, and I want to run after those kids, to get out of there. I want to be back with my friends, playing on a hill, with nothing but the thought of losing the next game of hopscotch to scare me.

And suddenly, I'm there. I'm laying on my back, the sun above me, and my friends are giggling all around me as a cool breeze whips over the hilltop, ruffling everyone's hair and kissing flushed cheeks with barely-felt lips. It was a dream, lost in a moment of pondering with closed eyes, unreal, at least to my five-year-old self. I smile and pick myself up, pulling up two of my friends with me. Everyone helps each other to their feet, and we start the game again. "Ring around the rosie, pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall DOWN!" I'm laughing with everyone else, but unlike them, my giggles don't hold the emotion. I feel hollowed out and scared by what I've seen. For some reason, our game doesn't seem so innocent anymore. I tumble to the grass again, and manage to rip my jeans as I do so. I'll get it from Mommy when I get home later. But now, that doesn't seem to matter. Someone pulls me to my feet, and we start twirling again. "Ring around the rosie, pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall DOWN!" But haven't we fallen far enough?

Your Luck Just Ran Out
By Rikku Abdul

When I turned down the offer to go to Cara�s house, I had automatically gotten the feeling that I would regret it. But I had a paper to write, and I knew I wouldn�t get anything done while I was there. And it�s not that I have priority issues�it�s just that when one�s friend owns an air hockey table and a large assortment of video games, one can and will be tempted. So I went home, thinking that I would go straight to the computer and start writing that paper. This didn�t happen, however, seeing as Carrie was already there. She insisted that she had to talk to her friends for �like a few minutes, and it was, like, really important.� Like an idiot, I believed her. And so began the chain of events that started this whole thing. And to think if I�d just kicked her off the computer this whole mess could�ve been avoided.

I waited for a while in the next room, and �a few minutes� turned into a half hour. The sounds of her clicking the mouse and typing told me that she wasn�t planning on surrendering her position anytime soon, and I wasn�t about to try to make her, either. I knew how Carrie was. If anyone tried to pry her away from the computer she grew claws and fangs and fought like her life depended on it. Instead, I headed for the bathroom, thinking that she�d be done on the computer after I�d taken a shower.

No such luck, of course. Ryan was still in the shower, exactly where he�d been when I�d walked into the house nearly an hour ago. He�d been in there so long that I could smell the steam from outside the room. It was several minutes later when the sound of running water stopped.

�Hurry up, Ryan!� I yelled at him, knocking on the door. �Seriously, how long does it take to take a shower?�

He emerged a minute later, a thick, warm cloud of steam billowing out behind him.

�I swear, Ryan; if you used all the hot water...�

He just smirked, flipped a piece of hair out his face, and responded with a nonchalant �Whatever� as he walked away. I was about to head into the foggy bathroom when I realized I had no clothes to change into. On the way back, the pessimistic voice in my head said, �You watch. You�ll get back there and Carrie will be in the bathroom.�

Stupid pessimistic voice. Why does it always have to be right? On the bright side, the computer was free. I�d get the stupid paper out of the way, and with some hope there�d be some hot water left after my sister got done taking one of her routine hour-long showers�okay, maybe they�re not really that long, but they seem that way sometimes.

Maybe I should�ve asked for a self-help book last Christmas. I wouldn�t have known it then, but it really would�ve done me a lot of good right now. The idealistic title for said book would be along the lines of �Optimism�Why One Should Never Succumb to its Distorted Ways.� Or maybe it could�ve been something like �101 Reasons to Put Your Idiot Sister and Smart-Mouthed Brother up For Adoption.� It was right after I�d entered Microsoft Word and finished banishing the stupid talking paper clip that the power decided to start flashing on and off at ten second intervals. I just sat there for a moment, waiting to see if the computer would ever even get back to the desktop. It was amusing for a while, but it didn�t take long for it to become annoying.

Yeah, yeah, I thought as �Windows XP� came back to the screen for what could have been the millionth time. Yes, computer. You remember what operating system you run on. Good for you. I get it already. It followed a routine; it would let me log onto my name and it would say �Welcome,� and sometimes it got to play its little song, and then it shut off with a flash. It didn�t seem like such a big deal at first, but when you multiply that sequence by thirty, it begins to get a bit repetitive.

I think I�d read somewhere that a prisoner could go insane from sitting in a cell and listening to the sound of water droplets falling. I wondered if my situation was any different.

And then there was a sudden, yet short-lived ray of hope�the power stopped flashing and for a moment I thought it would actually stay on for good. But when desktop finally came back, the computer froze. I did exactly what the computer teachers always tell you not to do�but you do anyway just to annoy them; I started clicking repetitively on the Microsoft Word icon.

�Stupid piece of��

I didn�t finish that sentence. The power turned off again. And didn�t come back on. I groaned in frustration and put my head down on the desk. I heard someone come in the room, and I instantly looked up to glare at whoever it might be�one of my favorite stress-relieving methods had always been to glare and snap at anyone around me. Ryan was standing there with his usual smirk plastered to his face. At times I�d questioned if his face was stuck that way.

�What�s wrong with you?� He asked. �I thought your special time of the month ended a week ago.�

�Could you please shut up?� I snapped at him. �And how the heck do you know anything about that?�

�You do realize that �shut up� and �please� sorta contradict each other, don�t you? I mean, they�re really on opposite sides of the politeness spectrum. Oh, and as for that last question? One can just tell.�

He might�ve said more, he might not have. If he did say anything, I wasn�t listening. I just put my head down on the desk and listened to the howling wind outside. The howling in my head seemed to harmonize with it. If that stupid computer weren�t worth ten years of my allowance, I might have just thrown it out into the street to be run over by someone�s Cadillac. And if it weren�t illegal, I might have killed Ryan. Unfortunately, I don�t think I�d be getting that great a raise in my allowance anytime soon, and the world�s not fair, so I would still be penalized for killing my brother. I�m afraid the excuse �We�ve only lost another idiot� or �Hey, it�s called natural selection. Smart beats stupid. What can ya do?� wouldn�t work. Too bad.

It was at least another fifteen minutes before Carrie was finally done in the bathroom. I gave up on the computer and headed for the bathroom.

I don�t know what I expected. What I do know is I was an idiot to believe the water was going to be even remotely warm. My siblings� showers had probably taken over an hour combined, and since the water heater was off, whatever hot water was left wouldn�t stay warm for long. In short, the shower was not pleasant, and it did not nearly as long as my siblings� had.

I spent a large chunk of time after this trying to pry the fully-charged laptop from my little sister. �I wanna play Solitaire!� she�d whined, to which I retaliated with, �Go play Solitaire with real cards.� She seemed a little confused at first. I don�t think Carrie even realized that Solitaire could in fact be played with real cards. She was always a bit slow. Maybe it�s because the food at the middle school has little or no nutritional value�not that I can say differently about the high school food�but actually, I think it�s probably because she spent too long staring at the Solitaire cards and MSN Messenger on the computer screen. Fried her brains out.

I did actually manage to finish that paper and save it to a floppy disk. No, the laptop did not explode in my face, or get pop spilled on it so the keyboard wouldn�t work, or become a makeshift football for Ryan to practice with�indoors, might I add�though for a while I feared that any of the above could happen.

The power still had not turned back on by the time I was done with the paper, and it was nine o� clock according to the guy on the radio. As we sat there amusing ourselves with dominoes, watching the laptop�s screensaver, doing terrible accents that were a cross between an Old Englishman and a pirate�long story; it�d be best not to ask�and listening to crappy 80�s music, I wondered how long the power would be out. Maybe, just maybe, the whole town still wouldn�t have power in the morning, and school would be cancelled!

My dreams were crushed when my mother came in to the room with a cup of fresh Burger King coffee. They�ve got power downtown... I thought. Carrie asked if anyone else had power. Apparently, almost the whole town did, besides our neighborhood. And it was just at that moment that I remembered the school had back-up generators.

It was sort of fun for a while, the power being out. We had ten million candles going�good thing my mom has a zillion mostly-decorative candles sitting around for no reason. We actually started the fireplace, which we hadn�t done in a really long time. My mom did get angry when she realized that Ryan had left the refrigerator door open for a good ten minutes by accident, however. It was fun to watch, though, I have to admit. It wasn�t at all fun to go to bed, however, considering the heaters didn�t work, and we would in fact have to get up to go to school tomorrow.

Is there a moral to this story? Does my idealistic title for that self-help book about siblings apply here? I don�t know, seeing as how it all could have just been one big coincidence. The lesson I probably should�ve learned was not to procrastinate on my school assignments. But taking into consideration the fact that I�m slow to learn and quick to procrastinate in learning from my mistakes, I don�t know how well that one got through to me.

I did learn this, though�buy your sister a deck of cards for her next birthday, and always get in the shower first, if at all possible. I don�t know how well that applies to anyone else, but it�s a lesson well-learned for me, and I don�t think I�ll forget it anytime soon.