Danny O’Toole suddenly found himself hovering somewhere between time and space; hearing conversations from people who were not there. He could feel his body, but he couldn’t see it. He still felt old, but he didn’t know how he could feel so light…so flowing and agile. He was everywhere and anywhere, hovering high above the ground. Out across the lonely rooftops, seemingly all around him in four directions, voices chattered up into the hazy sky. But he could only see a single spot below his house. The sky above him was frozen and the sun had no heat. He could look straight into the sun and it didn’t bother him. He was conscious of nothing beyond the voices and the moment. It was a moment that went on and on. He didn’t panic. Actually, it was with a strange calm that he looked down at the piles of bricks, each stacked neatly in rows anchored against the hard, dry dirt. The bricks were stacked five high and ten across in two solid red rectangles. To Danny, these had been monuments of possibility; solid blocks of reality perched against the emotional chaos that had been his life.

I just like imagining somebody choking to the tune of Jock Jams. Is there something wrong with that? If so, then this is a world in which I no longer want to exist in. If writing a story about this makes me insane, than I will choke you to death when I see you at the Insanity Olympics. Little Billy, as his parents lovingly called him, although he was rapidly approaching the age of 18, was in his room listening to music on his headphones. He listened with headphones for 2 important purposes: 1. His parents would nag him if the volume was too loud, and low volume music is not cool. 2. He was embarrassed by his favorite songs, which mostly consisted of Jock Jams. This fine evening he was munching on a bag of potato chips while listening to GET READY FOR THIS. One particular chip was a bit larger than average and it ended up getting lodged into the poor boy ‘s throat. He began choking. He tried screaming for help but could no longer talk. His heart immediately began racing at an accelerated pace at this jarring observation, knowing that this was an indication of an authentic choking.

Ever took the stairs slowly, each step getting a bit harder than the last to hoist up her hundred-pound body. She ached down to the bone and knew that if she stopped moving, she’d probably fall asleep on her feet and end up in a heap at the bottom of the stairs. She didn’t get it. It had been two weeks, and neither the fatigue nor the pain had subsided. She grasped the cool, iron railing, pulling herself up the stairs by her arms now, letting the burning ache fill them. Why the hell was the elevator in this building still broken?
“What are you doing?” she heard, and jerked her head upwards to see Lindsey staring at her. She hadn’t even known someone was there, making it easy for him to spot her first. He was standing on the landing just a few steps above her, his hand still on the railing. He’d obviously been watching her a while. She looked at him, seeing his incandescent blue-green eyes grimace and scrutinize her over.

I hardly knew my old friends; nevertheless, when they said they were coming I felt obliged, from the same sense of shame that had defined our relationship years before, to make the nerve-wracking train ride into the city. It was a blazing day without heat. Aside from an increasing concentration of jet contrails as the city neared, only a few scattered clouds, black and the exact size and shape of blimps, interrupted an otherwise empty sky. I spent the ride gazing at scenery flowing past like a smooth-running river, altering in stages from tufts of green to angles of gray. From time to time I pulled out my phone for no particular reason. Inside the enormous domed terminal, my phone died the instant I tried to call my old friends to let them know I’d arrived safely. That posed a problem. How could I be expected to remember their phone numbers, three sets of ten digits that I’d only looked at once during rambling speeches on their part, with grunts of approval on my part, about their accomplishments since we had last met in the flesh, like reading from resumes?