7X4=21

Call The Force

There is Me

Sigurvegari, or Sigur for short, didn’t think he was that different from his fellow farm animals. Everyone was a little quirky. Rabbit didn’t enjoy milk, Horse hated breath mints, and the pigs couldn’t stand the noise of their own footsteps. Sigur just didn’t like to go outside of his hutch. It wasn’t that he hated that outside world, his cage was just comfortable. That was all. Sigur also hated to talk, so when he conversed with the pigs and compared carrots with the rabbit, he would write down his thoughts on a little pieces of paper and slide it through the wire mesh. He even gave the horse some diet tips. She was trying to lose weight.

Once a day, the farmer and his children would come into the barn and pour feed into the troughs, which were so old that their engravings still read “Made in the USA.” The humans always talked about borings things: taxes, property values, or when they had guests over, the weather. Sigur thought that they were so bland and white that they probably learned what skeet was from a David Foster Wallace essay. But one day, the farmer and his family didn’t come, the troughs were not filled with food, and no one was informed about the weather in Polk County.

“I bet it’s raining,” Horse said. “That, or we’re the only living things left.” She flung back her mane and tried to smile, but the flies that buzzed around her nostrils would not allow it. Instead, she sneezed.

“Yeah. It was probably a meteor or a tsunami or a an intergalactic death ray that turns cows into disco dancers,” the pigs said in unison as they tries to wipe the mud off of each other’s faces.

SIgur pushed a piece of paper out of pen. Horse picked it up and read it aloud. “Maybe they’re just on vacation.”

“But who will feed us?” Rabbit said as tears streamed down his face. The animals’ jokes had been in vain.

Two days passed. Three days. Four days. And no farmers came. The animals starred at the barn doors like it was a portal to some kind of heaven. That the wooden double doors would swing open and their savior would walk in and fill the troughs with their favorite combination of gruel, racehorse meat, and whatever the farmers had for dinner last night that their house dogs has passed on. Horse didn’t approve of this specific formula.

“We should do something,” Rabbit said as he starred at the barn wall. The other animals were unsure if Rabbit was some kind of genius or just brain dead for having starred at the walls for the vast majority of its life.

“Like what?” Horse said.

A piece of parchment flew out of Sigur’s hutch. The paper hit Horse’s foot, but the stallion either didn’t feel the impact or ignored it. It was hard to tell.

“A race,” Rabbit said. “The winner gets the rest of the food.”

“But I would need a head start,” Horse said.

“Never. Remember back in 96?”

“Have you seen your feet? Their…”

“My feet? Your legs look like tires?”

Sigur stomped his foot against the bottom of his hutch and the barn fell quiet. He extended a paw and pointed toward the piece of paper that lay on the floor.

“Well all die in here, and it’s because of you,” Rabbit said. It was unsure whom he was talking to.

“Me? You have a giant’s appetite.”

“I’m not fat. You take that back. You take that back right now.”

A pig wondered over to the piece of parchment and read it.

“An election,” the pig said. We’ll have a vote. And the animal with the most votes gets to decide what we do next. Ok?”

None of the other animals raised a complaint. They were all too busy fantasizing about the act of winning, about all the power and satisfaction and comfort that would come with winning. They needed that.

The election would be held in three days time and Sigur spent the vast majority of that time trying to figure out how to get the rest of the farm animals to like him. He had always tried to accomplish this, to connect with the other animals, but now there were rules, there were stakes, someone would win, and with that, it all mattered so much more. He read the biographies of famous politicians, magazine columns that advised people on how to sound intelligent at parties, and dummy guides to how to make people do what you want. Sigur counted his lucky stars that all this reading material lined the bottom of his hutch.

Sigur could hear the rest of the animals practicing their speeches. Rabbit promised carrots and backrubs and questioned horses’ sexuality. The pigs told tales of midget strippers and thought that rabbit didn’t have enough leadership experience due to his preoccupation with walls. Horse called the pigs inbred and critiqued their speech patterns in an essay she entitled The Squeak is a Lie. Sigur didn’t know why he suddenly hated his fellow candidates, but somewhere inside of him, in a place he could only describe as a depth, he felt like he had been told to.

Election day arrived and the animals agreed to a banquet. During the first course of apples and hay, Horse stood up to delivered her speech.

“Remember the age of food? Remember when we could pick boulder-sized apples fell from the roof? I can return us to that. Let me return us to that.”

“Lies!” Rabbit said. “This is her stallion magic at play. Just look at that mane.” All the animals looked at the mane, and for a moment, felt an anxiety, a deep urge to return to the era of apples falling from roofs.

“But the rabbit never provided food to anyone,” the pigs said. “Look, our graph has all the information necessary. Pig #1 and pig #5 held up a color-coated chart that detailed, in mathematical objectivity, that Rabbit didn’t provide food and that he may also be an evil animal.

Horse raised her hind legs and picked the graph out of the pigs’ hands. Rabbit went for the Horse’s jugular. The pigs jumped into a bale of hay, but not before biting Rabbit’s back legs. Guerilla warfare had always been their favorite. Sigur decided that he couldn’t eat his carrot anymore. He opened hit hutch, climbed out onto the barn floor, and stomped his foot. A mist of blood floated in the air as silence fell upon the room.

“There are no apples ceilings. There is no mane magic. And there is no color coated chart detailing why a person is terrible. There is me. And there is you. And there is us. We are here. We are here. We are here.”

Wow.

Because the 2nd Amendment Hates Fruit

I may have taken a walk to this song.

Preview #1

One of life’s greatest tragedies is that we are not allowed to choose what we dream, thought Minni Plemie as she watched her children lay on the sand. The Plemie Children were unaware of their mother’s gaze as they argued about what certain cloud formations looked like. The morning fog was burning off. Zlo saw a plane and thought that the jet stream looked like a little slit, a view into heaven. For some reason, he didn’t want to share this detail with his siblings.

Elsker lay next to Zlo and housed a handful of pebbles in her mouth. She liked to pretend that the rocks were analogous to ice cream, but rumor had it that she liked the taste.

Zlo watched a few ducks waddle from the bay to the shore. Brinner, Zlo’s younger brother, stood up and took a candy bar out of his pocket. He crouched down and inched towards the ducks. Two crows squawked at Brinner and flew into the air. It was unclear if they were mocking him or warning the ducks about the impending snack. Brinner, conscious of every movement, watched his feet as he walked. At a proximity that would make a survival wilderness semi-envious, Brinner unwrapped the candy bar and held it towards the ducks. However the ducks, either not hungry or in the mood to antagonize a young boy, ignored the candy bar, and went straight for Brinner’s finger. Flies buzzed in the air and a scream was heard before first blood was drawn. Brinner held his finger and ran towards Minni. At the sight of her son’s tears, Minni laughed. She had no idea why.

“Mom! Mom! I’m going to die. I’m going to die!” Brinner said.

Minni ran a hand through her hair and touched all her fingers against her thumb. She fell to the floor in laughter.

“Help! Mom, I need help. Can’t you see, I’m going to die!?”

Zlo and Elsker, bored with the clouds and curious about the commotion, stood up and join their brother and mother. Elsker spat the rocks out of her mouth. Despite her general tomboy nature, she still wanted to seem like a lady.

“Mom! Mom! Can we get ice cream? You promised we could get ice cream.”

            “I’m bleeding! Make it stop mom, make it stop!”

            “My favorite flavor is Chocolate, but I’ll also settle for vanilla and a topping.”

            “It hurts! You don’t understand!

            Minni lied on the grounds and gasped for air. She massaged her skin as she laughed. The flies momentarily stopped buzzing as Timothy ran towards his family.

Zlo saw his father and thought of those old airplane ads where the family stands on the runway in order to greet their returning father.  He wished his life were an advertisement.  Elsker runs up to her father and grabs his leg.

“So daddy, I want two scoops and three droppings. Vanilla and hubbleberry and ross vigor, and gummy hair and…

Timothy just dragged his daughter along on his leg. He would respond, but he had nothing to say. He reaches his family, unties his tie, and tries to catch his breathe.

“What? What did you guys do?” Timothy said.

            He had taken off his tie and let it rest around his neck.

            “The duck, it bit me and it’s bleeding and I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

            Timothy bent down and made eye contact with Brinner. He took his tie and wrapped it around his son’s finger. Once he completed the makeshift bandage, Timothy walked over to Minni and put a hand on her back.

            “Ready for the picture, babe?”

            “You said you would be here by eleven o’clock?”

            “I got held up. I’m sorry, but I said between eleven and noon.”

            “It’s twelve past eleven.”

            “I can’t do it.”

            “How about tomorrow?”

            “Busy.”

Timothy broke into a smile as tears streamed down his face. He grabbed Minni’s hand, raised it to his lips, and kissed it.

            “Lets take this picture!” Timothy said.

            Timothy stepped over Minni, pulled a small camera out of his pocket, and put it down on a nearby rock. The quality and composition of the image were irrelevant; it just had to be a memory. The family arranged itself behind a laughing Minni. Timothy stood directly behind his wife and put his arm around Zlo, who, for all future record, was the only one smiling. Brinner sat on the ground next to his mother and held his finger for dear life. He thought that if he squeezed hard enough maybe he would never bleed again. Elsker stood behind Zlo, partially obscured from view. She had two rocks in her mouth. The flash took and for a moment, the time between breathes, all of their lives stood still. However, the earth continued to spin, and as soon as the flash dissipated the family scattered. Timothy picked up the camera, looked at the picture, and slipped the camera back into his pocket. He took of his jacket and laid it on the rock, determined to enjoy the afternoon. Zlo walked up to his father and tugged at his pant leg.

            “Why are you taking you clothes off? It’s cold out.”

            “Didn’t you have fun?”

            “That’s not what I asked.”

            “Yeah… I, I guess your right.”

Six year olds can read emotion with remarkable accuracy.

Guys, I have a great idea.