tonaliscence- enui involving a printer.

tchanack- a sucking sound made by a spoon in a bowl of semi-viscous porridge.

juavolarism- the insatiable need for eggs.

heggfint- the dillema of leaving the last drop of milk in the carton for the next guy, or finishing it off.

uousuous - the joy of correctly spelling a difficult adjective.

hingery- the dread of inevitable wounds caused by home repairs.

patchonk- the feeling of sorrow and grief, knowing that there will never be any new Dr. Seuss books ever again.

guttermuck- the oily, messy, irresistable sauce-dripping bottom of a home made burger/slopy joe, that was tightly packed in wax paper, for grease retention purposes..

pzitflitz- the obsessive need to make annoying sounds.

zipperflam- a yet to be invented strain of seedless mango that has a zipper for easy consumption.

and i’m crying and the tears are dripping down my face and landing on the paper and i don’t even have the strength to wipe them away and so i let them pool on the table as i stare down at my own reflection in the glass and ponder just how twisted i have become because even as the world is collapsing to dust and it’s filling my lungs and choking and it’s getting hard to breathe but i can’t even find a reason to keep holding on so i just let go and i’m falling but i can’t even take a second to unfurl my wings and try to soar because the feathers are gone plucked bare and the shafts used as arrows against me and they sting against my skin and the skin is raw and red and i’m just falling spiraling down with no way of knowing which way is up or down and i’m waiting for the waves to consume me at any minute and take the pain away wrapping me in their tender embrace as they steal the breath from my throat and lull me to sleep my hair fanning around me as i sink down farther than i ever have before down to where the light doesn’t shine and not even the fish dare to go but i dare to go and the last thing i see before everything fades away is that same reflection in the glass hideous and rotten but i can’t look away and then it’s gone and i’m gone too

Constant pressure from school in the forms of deadlines and test dates has been covering up the fact that I have a horrific work ethic that is "get everything out of the way so you can sleep at night". This work ethic was most likely caused by being deemed "gifted" and "a pleasure to have in class" in elementary school, which is all teacher-talk for "this introvertive, book-obsessed student has a crippling fear of failure so she is a perfectionist when doing just about any assignment".

Because of this, the free time we all have now has compelled me to squeeze in every last TV show and book I never got to have as a childhood experience and completely reject my online classes because of their lack of due dates, mandatory human contact, and general stressors. I have gotten so much seratonin from just doing things that I enjoy for once that I feel like I won't even be able to get back into my studies.

It's all so surreal: I can pick up a book without having to write an essay about it. I can watch a movie without having to take notes. I can draw without being told to focus on what's on the paper. I can wear whatever I want without getting dresscoded. I can have snacks without having to share with the rest of the class. I can write on this website without being told to switch tabs. My body hasn't even gotten used to this shift, and I still find myself waking up early and feeling strange when I get to eat and use the bathroom whenever I want.

I'm also more disconnected in a way, not being able to fully process this as more than extra vacation. Is it bad that I'm actually okay with staying inside like this? I hope it's just my introversion and not a kind of sick apathy that doesn't have me complaining like many of my friends are. I don't understand why so many people are willing to break the rules and risk illness just to go back outside, when they themselves had been wishing for a break from school. Call me a goody-two-shoes, but you won't find me protesting against a deadly virus.

There's still the slightest twinge of pressure from teachers wanting me to complete practice assignments, but what are they gonna do if I don't? They can't lower my grades that much or send me to any office, so there are really no consequences.

Maybe this is how it should be. No, I don't mean having a pandemic taking lives and putting our health workers and small businesses on the line. I mean less academic pressure. The fact is, my generation has lived under stress and anxiety from school-related responsibilities that older folks have never dreamed of, and now the big break a lot of us have begged for is here.

Truth be told, I had been praying for a break from school just days before quarantine was put into place in my county. I was breaking down by the time lockdown was announced, and can't imagine what I would have done if it didn't happen.

I haven't slept so well in years; never had time to dream so peacefully before. The literal burden on my shoulders, my backpack stuffed with outdated and expensive textbooks, is gone, and I can stand up straighter. I didn't realize that there had been a constant pounding in my head until it lessened, the only noise I hear now being the rain and bird outside and my family inside. Speaking of which, school lunch has been replaced by homemade meals, a transition I didn't know I needed until my weight stopped dropping erratically. I can't put into enough words how necessary this was for my mental and physical health, even if boredom and separation from my friends are beginning to creep up on me.

To sum my feelings up, COVID-19 may be forcing us indoors, but I may or may not have to be dragged out of bed once we can go back outdoors.

some days i think

that if i could just

reach my fingers

towards the sky

and touch those clouds,

bring them to my lips

and feel them brush

against my skin,

that everything would be alright

some days i think

that if i could just

dip my fingers

into the water

and feel the rush of the waves

against my fingertips,

listening to them

lull me to sleep,

that everything would be alright

some days i think

that if i could just

plunge my fingers

into the flames

and sense them

licking against my hands,

the heat scalding on my face

as it pulsates,

but never wavers,

everything would be alright

some days i think

that if i could just

scrape my fingers

against the universe

and savor the feeling

of the stars against my skin,

bathing me

in their milky light,

that everything would be alright

some days i think

that if i could just

touch my fingers

to your heart

and feel it

thumping against them,

to have you

look up at me

and tell me

you love me,

that everything would be alright

(but your heart doesn't beat anymore

and it won't ever be alright again)

I once knew this girl who believed the world didn’t need her. She thought she’d be better off, far away in her own, made up one. She hated the smell of coffee but loved the smell of gin. She admired the word Venice but swore she’d never go. She hated cigarette smoke and perfectly rolled blunts but I’d always catch her slipping on my smoke break outside. I never truly understood what she meant when she said she wasn’t needed by the world. I always thought that meant she was sad inside but really, it meant she was happier than any of us down here on the other side of the sky could ever be.

I met her on one of those rainy days when the clouds are bigger than the sun. I was just finishing my shift down at the store, cleaning shoes, and I decided I’d walk home that day. Even though the puddles were bigger than the sidewalks, I walked. And I sure am glad I did because just before I crossed the busy street around the corner, I saw her. She was a funny looking thing with long, skinny legs and frizzy red hair but she was the most beautiful funny looking thing I had ever seen. Her eyes were made of the prettiest green and she had below, about a million freckles. She was sat on a bench with her face buried in a book and I pretended not to notice her when I strolled past but how could you not? She followed close behind me and I tried my best to act surprised when she tapped me on the shoulder and asked my name. When I asked her’s, she claimed it was anything. I never protested this although looking back, it does seem more than peculiar.

From that day on, we were inseparable. I watched her catch her first fish down at the quarry and she cried when I told her I would later cook it for supper. She made me throw it back, of course, but it made me love her even more because while I saw the fish as nothing but a tasty meal, she saw a life. We were together all throughout high school and I would have never even thought of another girl when I was with her. I watched her make the moon laugh and the sun cry. Her ability to move anything and everything around her was something I would always envy, but never understand.

The last time I saw her was the day of our high school graduation. We were all set off to our waiting lives as mechanics or school teachers or perhaps newspaper boys but not her. She had big plans, we just never knew what they were. The night before she left, I took her to the train station and she told me she’d see me again one day but I didn’t hold my breath because after that night I never did see her again.

Last I heard she was down in Portland, working in a cafe, with a baby boy and no husband. I always wondered if she would become the something that I always knew she could be but then I received a note to her funeral eleven years later and all the memories of my first love came to mind. By that time, I was already married with two beautiful children and had mostly forgotten about the girl with no name. I wondered what life would be like if she had never left though. If she had stayed here and loved me and we had grown old together like she said we would. I never did find out quite how she died. I imagine it couldn’t have been anything less than tragic considering the imprint she was just so determined to leave behind on this planet of ours. I wouldn’t say this planet of her’s because she did not consider this planet to be her’s. She consciously lived elsewhere, without a worry for identity or money or mistakes. Everything there was simply perfect. I do wish she had taken me there with her. I imagine ‘there’ would be something extraordinary, just like the girl with no name was to me.

"Hang on-" Olver slammed what looked like a translucent computer chip onto the lunch table. "Dream check!"

"Seriously," Allany groaned, taking out her own Dreamcording, which she had painted clouds on. "You chose the worst day for me, I swear..."

Megn snorted when she saw her friends' Cords. "Ally, I don't think it even can work with the holo-board being covered. And yours looks fake as hell, Ol."

"It is not!" He held up the nanoplastic chip to the light, iridescent glints reflecting off of it. "I'll be pissed if it is, do you know how much I paid for it?"

"Don't know, don't care." She put down her own custom "Neon-Hued Nightmares" Cord, and they traded over their rationed MetaMeals.

The friends each snapped the Dreamcorders into their phones, each device showing a compilation of short videos. Each one varied from seven seconds to twenty minutes, was labled 1-6. What Olver, Allany, and Megn were looking at were playbacks of their dreams from last night.

"So, who wants to start?" Olver's Plexi-Glasses flashed, showing his confidence in the situation. They immediately dimmed down again when Meg answered.

"How about we start with you, since you wanted to do this in the first place." Her own Mood-dyed hair changed with the shift in power between them.

"Fine. But be warned: there might be a weird one in there." He smirked.

"We've both seen plenty of dreams. How weird can they get?" With a click, she started the recording on her device of Dream 1: "AwoKdhajOahdhG1842".

"I still don't get why they all have titles like that." Allany scooted over to get a better view of the screen. "Do you think it means anything?"

"Naw." Meg flipped her phone horizontally as the video started. "It looks like a Wi-Fi password to me. They probably represent how irrational these things can be." She was talking about the dream sequences the Cordings filtered.

From Olver's thick skull to the sticky electrodes he had slept with on his temples to the Dreamcorder device on his nightstand, the sequences came back as physical acid trips; distorted, vaguely-familiar plots and settings that looked cursed in some way or another to the waking human eye.

His first Dream began in the gym of their school, in the third person. The shaky "camera", his brain's line of vision, only focused on his hazy upper half as he played what looked like soccer. Then, the image began to pan downward.

"Woah, censor tha-" Meg started, quickly jumping to the conclusion that her friend was going to be naked in class (one of the most common dreams many got played out as blackmail material). "Nevermi..." But when she saw what was really happening, she rolled back laughing.

Olver's legs were that of a chicken's, so thin that they were missing the glitchy soccer balls every single time. The clip ended with him tripping on his own talons and falling into the floor, the beginning of the next dream.

"Wait, but it looked just like you normally! HahaHA-" His face and glasses shown scarlet as Meg was making a commotion in the cafeteria, earning them all some questionable glances.

"O-okay, okay, I'm done." Her laughs finally devolved into tired wheezes, and she regained the ability to click on the next video.

This one began with Olver, this time in the first person, diving into a pool of melting colors and sound. When he broke back to the surface, all of the warped music was replaced with screams.

"I don't remember having this nightmare," he muttered, focusing on the screen.

The camera cut from him climbing out of the water to the other side of the pool, where a blurred person lay covered in gasoline-colored blood. Olver seemed to get tunnel vision, the screen blackening at the edges to represent his panic. He tried to run to help the faceless swimmer, but his feet were frozen.

"Oh, I hate when that happens," Allany said.

He looked down almost too slowly, but before they could get a full image of what had been grabbing him, Olver was thrown to the ground and his own lavender blood poured over his eyes. The video cut off with his scream, Meg having to lower the volume as it only grew louder and louder.

She looked back to see real Ol with goosebumps, visibly shaken by what he had forgotten. "Next one?"

"Yeah, it's okay..."

The final video, entitled Dream 3: *&ihUqpwkL(), opened with third-person Olver at his locker. His kleidoscope eyes seemed to be staring off into the hallway, waiting for something to happen. Within seconds, something did: a boy, their friend Waelan, ran up and crashed his lips into his.

"ShIT!" Real Olver threw out his hand to shut off the screen, but Meg had grabbed his hand.

"No, you said it was okay! Let's see the rest-"

"Rest of what?" As if part of a comedic sketch, real Waelan had appeared with his lunch at hand.

"Nothing!" Ol had finally exited the video and taken out his chip. "We're just looking at each other's Cordings, that's all. Meg, how about you go next?"

"Sure." She gave him a 'I'll never let you live that one down' look as Allany turned on her compilation. "Ooh, I like the title on this one."

Dream 1: +_=OVNWqmxz{} was yet another school dream. Meg, in first-person, was taking a test in what really looked like the band room. Every time she looked at the clock, it changed to a random time. The test's sentences wriggled around the page the more she looked at it, and she was "writing" with a screwdriver. She was the only one in the room.

"Yo, this one's kinda creepy." Waelan sat down next to them. "Did those lights just flicker.

Sure enough, the lights suddenly shut off, the "darkness" a toxic-waste yellow filter over the room. What had sounded like a distant orchestral performance faded away.

The video ended with a raspy whisper directed to dream Meg. "Why are you here, bitch?"

"Hmm." Allany raised an eyebrow, then pressed the next video.

The next three seemed like remixes of the same scenerio: Meg is doing something mundane in a random classroom, then things begin to get off in some way. In math, she recited Shakespeare to her zombified history teacher, but it ended with her teeth falling out and her being unable to finish. In science, she dissected a pair of sunglasses, which kept growing bigger and smaller depending on which side she was dismantling, finally stabbing her with a giant shard of glass. And in PE, she was running the mile but didn't stop until she fell off a ravine in the middle of the track field, her feet (with sandwiches for shoes) continuing to move as the screen went dark.

"Now those were some classic ones." Allany shut off the screen. "My turn now, I guess..." She was already covering her eyes.

Olver gingerly pressed play on her Dream 1: 081?/cviyy*^kaLEO.

Ally, in the third person, was sitting upon a throne made of what appeared to be bismuth, dressed in her homecoming dress. Before her was a knight in shining armor who looked like Jadirel, one of their classmates that Meg saw in fourth-period bio.

"My loyal subject," Allany was saying. "I command you to reveal yourself."

The knight took off his helmat, and sure enough, it was him.

"More."

Jad removed his armor with echoing clanks.

"More."

He started to take off his shirt.

"More."

Meg's oohing in the background turned into a half-gasp as Jadirel began tearing off the skin from his face, revealing sunlight. "Wait wait wait, what the hell, Al..."

The video cut off as Jad's glowing face overwhelmed the recording, the edges peeling away into the next dream.

"I told you this was going to be a bad one," Allany scowled.

"That was a little cool though," Waelan shrugged. "Maybe you should show him for fun. Jad, I mean. After all, I made friends with you guys after showing y'all my Cording of me meeting Harry Styles as a giraffe."

"Yeah, but that one was funnier. This one was just plain weird. And I don't even remember the second one..."

"It doesn't matter." Megn grinned, clicking the next button. "We're seeing it!"

This dream, III~7289482skfb, was in the first person this time. Allany was walking around in her neighborhood's empty playground aimlessly.

"This one's a nightmare, I can tell." She chewed nervously at her granola bar.

Sure enough, a shadow fell over the woodchip-covered land, and dream Ally broke into a hysteric run. The trees and cars and houses in the neighborhood seemed to fall away until it was only her and whatever was chasing her.

"Go, go, go!" Once again, Meg was making a scene at the table by rooting for the subconscious version of her friend. "Come on, haul that ass!"

Just when they thought that Allany had outrun the monster, the screen panned to the ground.

"Damn, I hate that too!" Waelan was also yelling at the phone. "Get up, get u-!"

Dream Ally tried to scream, but it came out as a paralyzed whisper. They saw the shadow darken around her, and the creature pulled her onto her back so she could get a full view of it growling demonically, showing itself as-

"A freaking furby?!" Meg was on the floor again, practically screaming. "You- you were right, a furb- I hate it here!"

The shaking mass of rainbow feathers and a teeth-layered beak loomed over them, emitting sounds similar to a microwave's beep.

"I... I think we've seen enough." Olver took out the chip for her. "If my dream shows my unconscious feelings like Meg thinks, Ally, do you have an irrational fear of nostalgic toys?"

Allany shook her head a little too hard. "Only when I was like, five!"

"But the screen flashed red at the last second, meaning that you jerked awake, right?"

"Whatever! Let's talk about you too, then, you and W-"

At that moment, the bell rang.

Olver hastily grabbed his Dreamcording as the rest of them put away their half-finished lunches. "Huh, 'saved by the bell', right?"

Allany narrowed her eyes. "Right... cya." She vanished into the moving crowd out the door.

"Yeah, see you in algebra, Mr. Friend-Crush." Before snatch her phone, Megn was gone too.

"Friend crush?" Waelen shrugged once more, waving him goodbye. "Well, lik they said, whatever."

Olver nodded back, his glasses turning ever so slightly rose-colored.

He would have to ask him for his Dreamcordings tomorrow. You know, to make everyone even. See some more things that aren't supposed to be seen.

This is not quite hell, but not anywhere close to heaven.

It's not even close to what normal life should be.

I knew my 2020 was going to suck; the love of my life is gone for most of the year, and I'm 2,000 miles away from everyone I grew up with.

But dear lord, if I knew it would be this shitty, I'd have stocked up on toilet paper.

I have learned a few things while stuck in this seemingly endless monotony:

1. It takes me 23 steps to walk from the front of my apartment to the back window in my bedroom.

2. Touch starvation causes trouble sleeping (it's a scientific fact; look it up.)

3. Somehow, my cats are needier than ever. I don't particularly mind, but I keep inhaling cat hair.

4. My default state is who I was at 16 years old. I'm reading the Twilight books for the fifth time.

5. The days do not matter. Neither do nights. Time is an illusion.

6. Your car battery dies if you don't run it at least once per week. (I forgot last week, and I'm nervous to try today.)

7. I'm better at Spanish than I thought. Thanks, Duolingo.

8. My leg hair can, in fact, continue growing longer than an inch.

9. The Welsh word for dragon is "draig."

10. I do not want people to contact me as much as I once believed I did.

This pandemic has created some great memes, taught everyone how to make bread, and I'm sure it probably drove Charmin stocks through the roof.... but can it just end already?

I stomped off the field, crying, while men in pantaloons pretended nothing had happened.

I threw my fiberglass bow at my father’s feet like a tennis premadonnna having a tantrum--like a golfer who puts his favorite putter over his knee before he pitches it into the grass. I screwed up my face, made myself look as angry as I could; to hide my tears, which seemed very important at ten. And I complained, bitterly.

“They’re laughing at me, and it’s not fair. I can’t pull it back any farther.”

My father looked at the children’s bow at his feet, and at the men on the archery range who were trying to save my dignity by ignoring me.

“They’re not laughing at you. They’ve just never seen a child hit the bale from that distance, and they think it’s funny.”

I wiped my eyes. I was too old for this kind of behavior, but I’ve always had a temper. “I missed.”

“Yes.” He agreed. “But you missed very well.”

It’s taken my entire life to learn that lesson. To understand how to miss well. To learn from my mistakes, I must abandon the idea of hitting a lucky bullseye. We should all abandon the notion that every shot will be a Robin Hood shot. Or that we’ll even hit the haybale with every pull. In this life, it’s far better to miss well, and be consistent, than to hit the bullseye once and never come close again.

In archery this is called grouping. Like throwing darts, any child can hit the center mark by happenstance or luck. But your grouping--consistently putting the arrows in neat, tight clusters around your target--that takes real mastery, and real practice.

So it is with writing. Or any other creative skill. You should never expect to write one book and hit the bullseye in your genre or market. You should never expect to loose one story upon the world, and eternally reap the rewards. You must shoot thousands of arrows--hundreds of thousands--before you can have a good grouping. And if you miss alltogether, you should miss very well.

The men standing on the archery line that day--the men who had come to the renessance fair dressed like English bowmen--they didn’t hold my tantrum against me. Far from it. They cheered when I got off the grass and came back to the field. They made space for me on the firing line. And when I missed, I missed very well, and they applauded that too.

For all of you on this website. For all of you Prose writers who are here to get your practice shots in; I applaud you. I’m glad to see that you’ve abandoned the bullseye. And I hope you miss well too.

Noah clicked the last piece of wood in place before sitting up and staring at his masterpiece. Numbers, letters, and symbols were spread across the room, rimmed with red paint. He never messed with this kind of stuff, and no one ever should, but the owners said they wanted the storage room in the basement to be their... "place".

Noah never mentions this so-called "game" by name, it was that bad, but he took the job anyway because he needed the money. With his creation complete, Noah left the premises, not expecting what he would find only a few weeks down the road.

The owners of the property, Daniel and Amy, call Noah back 16 to 17 days after the installation of their new flooring, letting him know something needed to be fixed. Taking his tools, Noah drove over to the old home at the end of Parkson Street. It was a run-down home that the owners were getting fixed up, and yet it didn't seem to have changed one bit since he'd last been here. Noah trudged up the steps in the chilly autumn wind, the creaks of the porch stairs their own kind of alarm. 

Opening the two cathedral doors to the house, Noah froze. A black blob with huge white teeth and bright green eyes clung to the wall of the living room. The living room was right across from the entry Noah stood in. 

"I told you that the china dishes were expensive Rhonda!" the creature shrieked in a very guttural tone of voice. He, or what Noah assumed to be a he, was looking down at the floor. Without moving my feet, Noah craned his neck so he could see what, or whom, the demon was yelling at. When Noah saw what it was, he had to choke back a laugh. A small, circular Roomba worked it's way across the floor, cleaning up the broken china that lay broken all over the floor. 

"Why won't you talk to me, Love!" the demon screamed again, green eyes turning orange-ish. "Is it because you feel guilty? What would our future children think! You're a mess, Doll!"

As expected, the Roomba didn't reply to him, so he flung himself off the wall and in front of the Roomba. When the Roomba changed course, the demon spit a glob of red onto the floor, muttering under his breath, "I'm leaving for a few days. Don't expect me back tonight, Rhonda. Don't bother to call me either."

He turned to leap for the door, but froze when he saw Noah by the entryway. Suddenly, he screamed. "Why is there a human in my house!"

Noah screamed likewise, eardrums ringing. "Why is there a dem-" he stopped mid-scream as he remembered the "game" situation downstairs. "Ugh!" Noah banged his head against the nearest wall.

"How long have you been standing there?" the demon-blob-fish asked. 

"About five minutes?" Noah replied, playing along with the Thing in front of him. 

"So you saw the whole thing?"

"I suppose so?"

"Never get married," the demon told Noah. "Women are a pain!"

Noah chuckled. Even if the pile of black goo was from another dimension (Noah assumed), he still understood a women's nature. 

"Are you sure she didn't just get some of that China stuck in her brushes?"

The demon laughed, a low gurgling sound. "Nah. My wife, Rhonda, is clean as a whistle. She's a mute though. You never know how she's feeling."

"Sure," Noah said, agreeing. If you could know how your Roomba was feeling... Nah. He wasn't going to go in that direction. "I'm just here to repair a broken board downstairs. I'll leave you and Roo... Rhonda to let off some steam."

With that, Noah walked downstairs to the "Game Room".

A demon having romance with a Roomba? Eh. Noah had seen worse.