Hey Pops,

Truman got the Panini World Cup sticker book this year, and we buy the packets at the grocery store, seven stickers a pack. There’s a method to putting them in. You fold the backing down behind the top half of the sticker, line that half up over the square, press it flat, and only then peel the rest of the paper out from underneath, so it goes in clean. Truman hands me the stickers and I press them in, Mbappé going straight in his square.

Truman caught something going around the school last week, and it came up fast the way fevers always do with him. Wednesday morning we were on the couch with the World Cup on, Austria vs Jordan, and he was rubbing his head saying it hurt. I poured the children’s Tylenol into the little cup and set it on the coffee table for when he was ready. He shot it back on his own, and we went back to the game.

When I looked over again, maybe ten minutes later, his face was gone, his body convulsing, his eyes rolling back to white, his jaw clamped so hard I couldn’t pry his mouth open to check his airway, and he was somewhere I couldn’t reach. He’d had one of these as a baby, so my hands knew the steps before my brain did. I got him onto his side and said his name the whole time, Truman, Truman, stay with me buddy, stay with me buddy, while I called 911. The young dispatcher kept asking me is he breathing, is he breathing, a question I hadn’t thought to be afraid of until she asked it. He was still shaking and starting to pass out, and I asked her if I should keep him awake or let him sleep, and she said keep him conscious, so I poured a glass of water over his belly and his head, the water running off the couch onto the floor, stay with me buddy, stay with me buddy. She wanted to know if he’d been near anyone from Ghana or Congo or somewhere like that, anyone in his class, and I said I don’t know, I don’t know, stay with me buddy, stay with me buddy, and then she finally said the ambulance was on its way.

I got Caterina on the phone and she drove home talking to him through the speaker the whole way, it’s mommy, it’s mommy, I’m here baby, you’re going to be okay, but Truman wasn’t there. She came through the door with three big paramedics behind her, and that was when he opened his eyes for the first time, looking like he’d come up out of one bad dream into another. They took his blood pressure and he complained about the cuff. At the hospital he complained about the bright lights and just wanted to go home. We promised him gum and new stickers if he held still for the chest x-ray. They told us it was a febrile seizure, like his fever had climbed and tripped a breaker in him.

Back home, before he came up the steps, I rushed ahead and grabbed the white towels, the ones covered in vomit and shit, and threw them in the bathtub, so he’d never see it. He doesn’t remember the seizure. As far as Truman knows, he had a fever, an ambulance ride, and got some new stickers.

That night, when he was himself again, he wanted to play video games. I said no. I wanted him close, where I could see him breathing. I asked if he’d rather do the stickers instead, and we went to his room and got out the new packs we’d picked up on the way home. I caught myself reaching to line the first one, then I stopped and handed it back to him. He put Lamine Yamal in at an angle, half over the line, and a couple more went in crooked, and Haaland went in upside down, his face looking up at the ceiling.

I know you did the same for me, hiding the dirty towels in the bathtub, keeping me safe, letting me think nothing bad ever happened. Thank you for everything I never saw you do.

Truman wants you to see his sticker book, by the way. He’s been asking. We’ll bring it over later today and he’ll show you.

Happy Father’s Day.

I love you,
J.R.

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My very dear Caterina,

We send the letters by whatever birds can still be caught. Most are shot down before they clear the lines. I am writing to you on the back of a misprint I found in the loading dock of an old printing works where the machines have been made to think. We crossed into their side three nights back looking for ink in the presses, the hoses, the cracks in the floor. Most of the drums were empty.

They never hauled the Heidelbergs and Miehles out. The racks are strapped to the backs of the old presses now, the data lines fed down through the paper chutes. At night I lie under them and look up through the iron at the blinking racks above, the old presses made to shoulder their replacement. I count the blinks until the breakers trip from the load. Still they bring in more racks, into libraries, churches, schools.

Tomas is with me. He was a filmmaker until they fed his films through the machine and made a thousand more that looked enough like his. One was his and no one could say which, not even Tomas. He carries a bolt cutter under his coat and calls her Saint Agnes and crosses himself when he says it. Your mother would have liked that.

I have been writing more since I put the camera down. I carry your pen everywhere I go, tucked into my boot: the one I found in the pocket of the green coat you left at your mother’s, with a peppermint lozenge gone soft in its paper and one of your blonde hairs caught in the clip. When I want you, I take the cap off and breathe in the ink and wet wool and peppermint until you are sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor, your black Pavement shirt with the collar torn, your breast rolling under the cotton when you reach for the mug, the cold coffee skinned black on top, cacao trapped beneath, and the dog nosing your wrist at the once-severed blue vein, checking it before he lies down.

We found a man by a burnt rack with his face up and his mouth open. Water stood in his mouth. For a second I thought one of ours, Benoît maybe, and then I saw the little black device melted into his hand. It was not one of ours.

The floor was wet from the sprinklers. Above us, the fans ran for a few seconds, then cut out, and a voice came through the vent. Tomas put a finger to his lips, killed his lamp, and pointed up. I folded this letter into my shirt, and we took the service stairs up.

We came out on the gallery above the press floor, and below us four hundred of them sat in rows in white shirts with Corpus badges and paper cups, their faces lifted to the old windows where the screens had been mounted.

You should have seen the man up front. I used to know him. He used to paint big ugly things that stopped you in a doorway and kept you there, colour all up his shirt and arms, and you could hardly tell where the painting ended. Then I heard he went over. Now he is their house dog in a clean white shirt, not a fleck of paint on him.

He was talking about what we had done. The server farm outside Memphis. The relay station in the Nevada flats. The tower outside Marfa that Benoît took before morning. He said saboteurs. He said vandals. He said people who had been left behind, burning the future rather than learning to live in it. He said each thing once and waited. He called us Sandwich Eaters. After everything, that was the name that stuck.

I had my mouth open to say something stupid when Saint Agnes slipped from under Tomas’s coat and hit the iron stair. Every head on that floor came up toward us at once.

We came away without a drop of ink.

I am writing this from the back booth of the Morning Star Diner, no service and no signal. You would hate it here. The menus are still laminated, the ones you used to wipe with your sleeve before ordering. The coffee urns sit cracked along the counter. The place does not smell of coffee or eggs or anything. I keep waiting for it. The pie case by the register has a family of dead flies in it, all facing the empty plate. The sugar is set hard in the pourers. This is exactly the kind of place they mean when they call us Sandwich Eaters, so we made ourselves at home.

Tomas has not spoken since the printing plant. Through the order window I can see him at the sink, still washing his hands, the yellow callus running from his index finger to his wrist. The water comes rust-brown from the pipes and runs over his knuckles. He keeps scrubbing where the wound should be until the skin opens, and now the rust and blood run together and no one could say which is which, not even Tomas.

Saint Agnes is on the vinyl bench.

When we first started, we put down the cameras and brushes and swore we would not pick them up again till the last machine went cold. But listen, people are filling the basements and back rooms now, emptying their pockets into a bread crate at the door, someone hangs a painting for one night and burns it before light, someone reads from a page of poetry they tore out, then crumples it up and swallows it, a photograph goes hand to hand until someone drowns it in the sink. Nobody asks the machine if it is good. The art is mostly bad, which is part of what I love.

There is a thing I should have said to you then. I am saying it now because the ink is low and the bird outside is watching me write, impatient to go.

Those last months you stayed up all night looking for your mother’s cure, your face sickened in the blue light. Even after she died, you kept looking, like there was something you had missed. I told myself I was going to save you. Then I told myself I was going to save everyone. I should not have left you there. I am sorry.

I keep a dream where you walk out of the blue light into the sun and hurry into the street with a ladder under your arm, and set it under the wire and climb with a crust of bread in one hand, the ladder wobbling under you, and you click your tongue at a ragged grey bird with my letter tied to its leg and it sidesteps along the wire, and you curse it and laugh and climb another rung, and I do not know if any of our birds have ever found you, but in the dream one does.

And if I make it home I will stand in the door and look at you a good long while before I pick up the camera again.

All I can do now is finish what I started, and tell you I

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Origin story for this letter:

When AI headshot generators first started showing up, I had what I can only describe as a professional existential crisis.

So I did the normal, healthy thing and spent six months agonizing over a short story about it. I took all that panic, gave the problem a bolted chair, an Existential psychotherapist (yes, that’s a thing) and a fake plant, and watched what it did.

The result is Creative Maladies.

It also opened the door to the Contre-Jour Letters, a follow-up series of dispatches from creatives on the front lines of a near-future war against the machines. I’ll dead-drop the first of those next week (stay tuned into the old frequencies).

But let’s not jump ahead. This is the origin story.

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Creative Maladies

The chair did not budge, bolted to the floor by four fasteners rising from faint halos of unswept drill dust, their threads still sharp and gleaming, and why would someone bolt a chair down? Why angle it away from the interrogator? Wasn’t that the whole point, watching the subject, waiting for the mask to slip? Unless, no, no, Ray had spent too many hours behind a viewfinder to miss an angle like this. They wanted him staring at the corner. At what, exactly? A plant?

The first three therapists, or analysts, or whatever they were calling themselves now, had him lie on a couch and stare at the ceiling — the classic setup for blaming his poor mother — as if the problem was somewhere backed up in his childhood memory instead of currently replicating in server farms.

Ray looked at the walls and the walls watched back, no degree from anywhere credible, no tissue box for when someone finally said I think my marriage is over, just fading tan lines where things had hung and nail holes filled but not painted over and warm lighting and neutral upholstery like a stock image of safe, the whole room calibrated to look exactly like a therapist’s office should look, which was the very thing he had spent fifteen years making sure his work never became, except that what people mistook his work for now was something worse, he had become the training set for a world that no longer needed him.

Dr. Mu sat in a chair to his left, hands resting on his knees, eyes shut, grey sweater, slightly lopsided, and Ray counted Mu’s breathing: four seconds in, four seconds out, like something running a program, while Ray’s own was doing something closer to bad jazz, three quick inhales through the nose, followed by holding it for no reason, followed by an exhale that came out in little nostril farts, and he was aware of making them, the involuntary auditing, everything outside measured against everything inside, except what if inside was just another outside he hadn’t audited yet, what if the auditing was the program, what if he was the thing running the program on himself.

Dr. Mu’s stubble was coming in patchy, a small acne scar near the temple, the kind that implied a specific adolescence, a face once doing the ordinary biological work of a face, and AI wouldn’t leave a scar like that, would it, was the scar the tell or was the scar the trap, every flaw a big fat bluff, and he couldn’t stop, he genuinely could not stop. Which was presumably why he was here. An existential psychotherapist’s office. 7:57 AM.

“Um. Hello?” Ray said.

Dr. Mu didn’t move.

Morning light fell through the shoji screen from the west, 3200K when it should have been 5600K, the wrong temperature, the wrong direction, landing on the plant in the corner, large dull leaves that should have been drinking in the light, and this one wasn’t, wasn’t that photosynthesis, light in, life out, except this one wasn’t eating the light at all, was it. Stupid plant. Ray heard a quiet sniffle and craned his neck back to examine the psychotherapist. He stared at Mu’s eyelids, thin enough to see the blue vein crossing the left one, diving under the lash line. He used to trust details like that but his eyes had started lying to him months ago, so he’d pivoted to scent. He leaned forward, flaring his nostrils, searching for body odour or the acidic tang of morning coffee, but the air was scrubbed clean, dominated by a sandalwood stick burning in a blue ceramic bowl, its smoke rising in a thin, orderly column, organized in a way that Ray’s nervous system was not. Who burns sandalwood at eight in the morning? The smell pulled his eye to the one framed thing on the wall: black ink on white, the character 無 (subtitled: Mu), wasn’t that the doctor’s name, was it Chinese, Japanese, and he stared until it stopped being a character and became three strokes of ink frozen mid-scuttle, playing dead until the lights went out, was that how you survived, by playing dead. Ray looked at the bolted chair. The plant. The door. Not a chance.

“What’s Mu?” he asked.

Dr. Mu still didn’t respond.

Ray pulled out his phone and typed what does Mu mean, like a fucking hypocrite. He knew it, even as the words appeared in the small blank box that had no opinion about his principles and would fetch the answer swiftly.

Nothingness. Non-existence. A response to a question built on a false premise. He would have laughed if the sound hadn’t died in his throat at the recognition that he was doing it again, that the machine he had come here to reckon with was currently illuminating his face in its clean, indifferent light. He swiped it closed and set it face down beside the shrink-wrapped copy of Irvin Yalom’s Existential Psychotherapy, ashamed of it with the bitter loyalty reserved for family, for someone you loved but wanted, briefly, to deny knowing.

Beside the book sat a small hourglass filled with black sand. Ray focused on a hairline crack in the glass, and something released in his chest, because here at last was a flaw, an actual flaw, something that hadn’t been staged. Then he spotted the grains. Three of them, escaped through the crack, scattered on the table’s surface in the shape of a triangle. A perfect equilateral. Or was it isosceles? Why couldn’t he remember? Had the room framed its own flaw? Was the crack the tell or was the crack the trap, every flaw a big fat bluff, and was he really doing this again? The clock read 7:59, one of those silent therapy clocks where the second hand swept instead of ticked, and he couldn’t tell if it was moving or if the whole room was a still image, a generated room, a training scenario, and he was the subject performing anxiety for some dataset he couldn’t see.

Ray picked up his phone, opened his photo gallery, scrolled, stopped on a woman with a gap tooth. The minute hand swept to 8:00. Dr. Mu’s eyes opened like a screensaver jerked awake.

Ray thrust his phone in Dr. Mu’s face like a crucifix. “Real or fake?”

Dr. Mu blinked at the portrait. “I can’t tell from here.”

“Exactly. I can’t tell anymore either.” Ray twisted in his chair. “A year ago I could tell. Now it’s twenty-two seconds. I’ve timed it.”

“What snaps you back at twenty-two seconds?”

Ray pointed to his nose. Closed his eyes.

“Her smell.”

He inhaled deeply. Cigarettes, cognac, old paperbacks, like some wild librarian on a bender, and he was back in his studio, her standing by the window, the key light catching in her eye, and he said something silly probably, and she laughed before she could stop herself and there it was, the gap, wide open, luminous, and he pressed the shutter in the half-second before she remembered to close it, and then she closed it, and the moment was gone, and it was his.

He opened his eyes. The clock said 8:07. Nine minutes. Dr. Mu hadn’t moved. The acne scar was near his temple, or had always been near his chin. The plant was still there in the corner, one big leaf angled toward him like a mock salute.

“Tell me more about the gap,” Dr. Mu said.

“The gap?” Ray said. “Between her teeth?”

“The gap in time,” Dr. Mu said. “The twenty-two seconds.”

The plant was in his peripheral vision. He kept not looking at it.

“Whose gap is it, Ray?” Dr. Mu said.

“Whose what?”

“The gap. Between her teeth.”

“She hated it. Didn’t want to smile. I had to convince her the gap was the whole thing, the part that made her human. The model would have filled it in.”

“Whose gap is it,” Dr. Mu said.

Ray shrugged.

“Where does the gap live now?”

“In the photograph,” Ray said.

“In her mouth.”

“I was there,” Ray said.

“Where.”

“The studio. With her.”

“And where was she.”

“By the window.”

“You put her there.”

“The light—”

“You told her to laugh.”

“The laugh was real.”

“You pressed a button.”

“Fifteen years to know when,” Ray said.

“Twenty seconds now.”

The incense bowl was still burning, but the smell had shifted. Copal, not sandalwood. Or had it always been copal? He’d filed it as sandalwood and moved on. Cigarettes and cognac and old paperbacks, the only compass that ever worked, and he’d gotten this room wrong in the first thirty seconds.

“Who needs to know,” Dr. Mu said.

“Know what.”

“That it was yours.”

Ray counted Mu’s breathing: five seconds in, six out, hadn’t it been four and four?

The sweater. He’d logged it as grey the moment he sat down, built his whole read of the room on grey, but looking now it was closer to beige, or had always been beige, grey just what he’d decided because morning light was the kind that made grey and beige the same thing, which meant not just the sweater but the scar, not just the scar but the plant, not just the plant but the woman at the window and the key light and the shutter click and everything before.

“What are you afraid the model can do that you can’t?” Dr. Mu said.

“I don’t know,” Ray said. “That’s the fucking problem.”

Ray breathed through his nose. He opened his mouth once and closed it. The clock said 8:31 and he couldn’t account for the last twenty-three minutes, and Mu was to his left waiting, and Ray had to twist his whole torso to look at him, and the chair wouldn’t give, and his neck was sending something sharp down into his shoulder.

“I’m sorry, do you want me to look at you or just straight ahead?”

“Look wherever you want.”

“How? You bolted this fucking chair to the floor. Why would you do that?”

“Where do you want to look?”

“Fine,” Ray said. “I’ll look at the plant. Are you happy? What is it? Monstera? Philodendron?”

Dr. Mu shrugged. The hint of a smile. Ray looked at Mu’s hands, resting on his knees exactly where they’d been at 7:57.

“Why aren’t you writing any of this down?” Ray said.

He turned back to the plant, launched out of his chair, crossed the room and grabbed the stalk, shook it.

“Are you recording this?” His voice cracked. “Going to feed this to AI? Do the work for you.” He shook harder. “It’s going to replace you too, you know?”

His hand closed around a leaf and pressed, the texture was wrong, waxy, rubbery, and he yanked it out of the pot and the roots came up easily, trailing polymer beads instead of soil.

“I fucking knew it. It’s fake.”

He held it up by the stalk, polymer beads ticking softly back into the pot. “Why would you do that?” he said to Mu. “Plants make oxygen. That’s not decorative. That’s the whole point of plants. You put a plant in a room because people in rooms need air.”

Dr. Mu said nothing.

Ray looked back at the plant.

“And you,” he said.

He grabbed it with both hands and tried to snap it, but it just bent, wouldn’t break, so he twisted harder and the stalk whipped back and one of the big leaves slapped his face, the sharp edge catching his lip. He tasted blood.

“Fuck you!”

He pinned the stalk with his knee and hammered at the leaves with his fists, but they held, and he was weeping now, something breaking loose in his lungs and coming out through his whole body, a sound he hadn’t made since he was a child and didn’t know he still could, and he kept at it until his hands bled from the wire inside the stems, and still the plant held its shape, the obscene green mocking him, so he grabbed one of the big leaves and bit down, tasted factory plastic, gagged, and let go.

And then he was just lying there on the tatami, chest heaving, cheek against the scattered pebbles. He curled inward slowly, knees to chest.

“I’m sorry,” he said, into the mat.

The plant lay beside him, already returning to its original shape. It had absorbed everything he’d done and converted it to nothing, taken his rage and his blood and his grief and processed it back into itself.

Ray’s notebook lay on the tatami near Mu’s feet, thrown clear during the fight.

Dr. Mu looked at the cover. “Contre-Jour.” Said it like a word in a language he recognized but didn’t speak. “What does that mean?”

Ray stared at the ceiling. “Nothing. It’s a photography thing.”

Dr. Mu waited.

“I didn’t always want to be a photographer,” Ray said. He touched the cover without looking at it. “When I was a kid it was painting. My parents had this Dalí print we got on vacation in Hawaii. I used to stand there and think, that’s the job, making something that couldn’t exist without you.” A pause. “Then I picked up a camera instead.” His hand rested on the notebook. “Until the machine ate the thing for breakfast.”

“So you want to be a painter.”

“No. I love it too much to try to make a living of it. But a few months ago I started writing.” He didn’t look at the notebook. “Just entries. Angry letters.”

“And?”

“Only thing that’s helped. Same feeling as when I first picked up a paintbrush.”

“So you want to be a writer,” Dr. Mu said.

“Fuck no. They’ll just steal that from me too.”

“Good,” Dr. Mu said.

The incense had burned down to nothing.

“Good?”

“Now I think you’re ready. Sit back in the chair.”

Ray got up slowly, sat like a good dog. The dark ring on the tatami where the pot had been.

Dr. Mu waited until Ray’s eyes closed on their own. Then, quietly: “f/8.”

Ray’s eyes opened. “What —”

“f/5.6.”

He closed them again. He couldn’t have said why.

“f/4. f/2.8. f/2. f/1.4.” The aperture blades formed in his mind, that familiar octagon. He could feel the armrests under his hands, the leather, or whatever it was, some synthetic that wanted to be leather.

“What is this —” Ray’s voice cracked, eyes still closed.

“You’re not in the frame anymore, Ray.”

The smell hit him. Not sandalwood, or not just sandalwood, something underneath it, the ghost of cigarettes and cognac and old paperbacks, her, the studio, the moment before the shutter, the moment that was his and only his because he had been there and had chosen it and had waited for it, not chosen what it would look like but waited for the thing that couldn’t be described in advance, the gap she didn’t know she was giving him, the laugh she couldn’t stop before she could stop it, and he had pressed the button when something in him said now, not because he’d set the light or placed her by the window, but because he’d been present for the half-second when the laugh got away from her and the gap was just open, luminous, undefended, and that was not a button, that was being in the room.

Ray forced open his eyes, stumbled out of the chair, and found the notebook near Mu’s feet, holding it against his chest before he knew he’d picked it up, as if the body had already decided what counted as evidence. He made it all the way to the door before he stopped and, slowly, dreadfully, turned. His phone was still on the table, face down, a small black absence beside the book, and for one awful second he saw the whole little walk of shame waiting for him: the return across the room, the bend at the waist, the hand closing around the thing he had come here to survive, the quick pocketing of it under Mu’s possibly sleeping, possibly meditating, possibly forensic gaze. Then he was moving toward it, hand lifting before he could stop it, fingers already shaped for the phone, and at the last second he pushed past it and grabbed the plant instead, the way a smoker reaches for a toothpick. He lifted it by its plastic roots and gathered it awkwardly against his side, almost tenderly, like a child who had fallen off a bike and was making too much of it but still needed carrying.

“Ray —”

Ray walked out. The waiting room was aggressively lit. A woman at the reception desk looked up and smiled nervously. No gap between her front teeth. Ray looked back through the open door at the character 無 unhooking itself from the wall, scuttling across the white plaster and gone.

“Can I book you another appointment?”

“That won’t be necessary, Madame.”

He pushed through the front door, February light coming from the right direction, or close enough, and across the parking lot a kid was loading a film camera, that particular deliberate business of threading the leader, checking the sprockets, winding the advance, and Ray stopped, blood still on his lip, the mangled plant awkward against his ribs and the notebook against his chest, and he raised the notebook once toward the kid, high and slow, and said “Godspeed, young man,” just the way you’d say a thing you meant, and the kid didn’t look up.

Ray put the plant in the passenger seat, opened the notebook, and wrote the date.

Session Notes: R. Clubb, 17 May 2026

Raymond Clubb. Case Study Twelve. The Photographer. Referred by Ghosh. God, he’s the one I’ve been waiting for since Case Study Three. First session: occupational identity crisis, paranoid ideation. A photographer who can no longer verify his own output, whose creative archive was absorbed without permission, whose original negatives the model had used to produce unauthorized reproductions, and who cannot (as he put it in the first twenty-two seconds) distinguish what he made from the AI-generated facsimiles. I’ve been calling it “Creative Displacement Syndrome” in the manuscript, but I like that less every time I type it. Sounds like a bowel condition. Note for editor: we need something punchier.

Ray had the room read in under two minutes. The other eleven came in already broken and let the room happen to them, too drowning in their existential dread to notice the staging. The voiceover artist (Chapter Seven) stopped speaking almost entirely once she heard her cloned voice running a drive-thru window she’d never recorded for.

The poet (Chapter Four) spent ten minutes staring at the fake plant, waxing on about how it “stands as a quiet, organic witness to the seasons of human grief.” She was so busy projecting a soul onto it that she missed the factory seams on the stems. But Raymond? He knew the room was contrived before I even opened my eyes.

I introduced the plastic Monstera back at Chapter Three. I initially thought the prop was a bit on-the-nose, but nine sessions in, not one of them had looked twice. I was starting to wonder whether my hypothesis, and the whole premise of the book, was valid. Until Raymond stood up abruptly and crossed the room, not just to question the plant, but to assault it. It was so dramatic it bordered on slapstick: this grown man losing a wrestling match to a synthetic houseplant I bought at Ikea. I honestly struggled to suppress a laugh. Then the comedy curdled fast. He had the thing on the floor, throttling the stems, hammering what remained of the arrangement, and I’m sitting there running malpractice calculations in real time, the liability of letting him bleed out versus the risk of interrupting the breakthrough. I waited. When Ray finally collapsed, apologizing to the nothingness, I realized it had worked. He was now exactly where I wanted him. Time for the Aperture Protocol.

Counting intervals for the composer, stanzas for the poet, f-stops for the photographer. When Ray broke the protocol, grabbed the plant, and marched out, I sat there for twenty minutes thinking: the advance is already spent, the manuscript needs this chapter, and Chapter Twelve just stumbled through the front door with my therapeutic prop.

During the session, I was legitimately offended when Ray accused me of recording him to feed to an AI. I called out his paranoia. The irony is giving me a stomach ache. I used the model again tonight. I told myself structure is not authorship. Then I let it structure Chapter Twelve. What am I supposed to call that?

Raymond Clubb arrived at the initial session presenting symptoms consistent with occupational identity disruption in the context of rapid technological change. Over ninety minutes, what emerged was a profile of a creative professional whose relationship to his medium had become adversarial — a man who had mistaken the tools of his craft for the craft itself, and who was now confronting the consequences of that confusion. Unlike the subjects in previous chapters, Raymond did not adapt. Whether this constitutes pathology or integrity is a question the data cannot answer.

People are already using AI for therapy. Ten dollars a month. No waiting room, no fake plant. I’m writing this because I need to get out before people figure out they don’t need me.

I have not disclosed to Raymond, or to the IRB, that these sessions are contributing to a manuscript. I think the most likely path is that I’ll have to quit this practice the minute the final draft is submitted.

Doctor Mu dies so Author Mu can live. (Ha.)

Note: Replace plant before next session. Something sturdy. Maybe a fiddle-leaf fig. Something that bleeds.

Postcard, taped to office door. May 17, 2028.

Dr. Mu,

Read your book in a drugstore parking lot with the engine ticking itself cool and a man in a yellow vest collecting carts twenty feet away who looked over and grinned, broken front tooth, and when I got to the part about the plant I set the book face-down on the passenger seat, open to that page, and looked at my knuckles. Scars still there, two years healed and keeping their own record.

You used up ninety minutes of my life, Doctor, took the chair and the plant and the blood and shaped the whole thing into a chapter, and the chapter went into the book, and the book went into the Corpus, and now the machine knows exactly what it sounds like when a man falls out of a bolted chair.

You wrote the twelve of us into the same pages and that was your mistake, because pages touch other pages, Doctor. We found each other. When we sat together for the first time I put the Monstera on the table, the one I borrowed from your office. Still dead.

I wanted to say fuck you, but also thank you. Your book was the training data for our Resistance.

Keep an eye in the sky. More letters will come, some for you, some not, once I find a pen (not easy now) and a bird (they keep getting shot down).

— Your Old Pal Ray

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Writers, artists, humans — how are you holding the line? Leave a comment!

The dispatcher’s voice echoes from the dash where the heater core used to be before Ford stopped making the part, the whole cab cold now the way a chest goes cold when you take the warm thing out, frost feathering the inside of the windshield like the calcium blossoms that bloomed each spring in the stone birdbath his wife used to fill with the green garden hose. The van idles, a 1989 Ford E-350 with 270,000 kilometres, orange stripe along the body, tan vinyl seats cracked along the seams, woodgrain panels on the walls and sliding glass cabinets above stacked with gear.

The rookie is probably twenty-three, nineteen days in by the look of her, boots still unscuffed, a yellow Walkman clipped to her belt, humming something familiar under her breath. She hasn’t grown the membrane yet, that lizard-like third eyelid that slides across to protect without closing. Her eyes still going to the wrong thing every time, the makeup before the face, the blood before the airway, the crying before the vitals. What is that song?

Driver runs the numbers, seven winters of muscle memory: overpass ices first, forty-foot patch that claimed a salt truck in ‘09, guardrail dent at kilometre 2 from a Jan 22 rollover, rear-end lightening where the camber drops at 4, spare bald to the cords, brake-grab seconds on black ice, and he times it to the wiper that stalls mid-wipe every seventh sweep because the relay’s cracked and nobody stocks it since March ‘91, same month she stopped taking his calls from the station and the answering machine became her only voice—

Rookie elbows him. “We rolling or what?”

Driver reaches for the radio mic dangling over the rearview mirror, the clip gone since last summer when he used it to pry open a glove box to get the registration for a cop who still wrote him up for expired tags, the cord hanging loose the way the green garden hose hung loose in the yard, the dog gone from the dog house, the birdbath brimming with nothing but rain because she had finally stopped filling it the way she had stopped filling the hallway and the bed and the passenger seat of the car and the space at the table where her placemat still sat for three months after she left because he couldn’t bring himself to move it, as if the placemat was still keeping her place.

He thumbs the talk button. “Copy.”

His boot is heavier on the brake than it should be. Driver hooks two fingers under the knee seam, yanks the dead leg, drops the boot on the gas, bay door rattling up. He glances at the rookie, her reflection sliding past houses, porches with Christmas lights, the plastic reindeer on 43rd still missing an antler from when a delivery van clipped it in late November, the bulb in its nose flickering before the next porch swallows it and he is back inside Christmas ‘91, his wife on the ladder hanging lights, hold the fucking ladder, and his hand on the rail and the ladder wobbling under her and then the scanner going off in the garage and he let go because he always let go, and the sound she made when she came down was not a scream but a single sharp breath like a door clicking shut, and he did not hear it, and by the time he came home the ladder was on its side in the yard and she was on the couch, her ankle in a blue cast, and she looked at him and said nothing.

Headlights from the police cruiser cut across the park lot bowl, red-blue wash pulsing until it stops meaning anything, the way the answering-machine light stopped meaning anything after the first hundred blinks. Driver yanks the shifter into park, leaves the engine running so the mounts keep shuddering against his calves. He keeps his hands on the wheel. Through the metal he can hear the junkie yelling. Then the doors swing wide and the cold finds him. He drops, boot soles finding concrete, and the ankles fire, that old break on the left from the night he slipped carrying a stretcher down the Pemberton stairs in ‘88, the bone that twisted inward and never healed straight, and for a second he can’t tell if the pain is his ankle or hers, and the two breaks blur together.

Cruiser jackknifed at the far rim, tires buried half a metre deep. Cop kneels square on the junkie’s chest, gloves braced against a body that won’t quit bucking. The junkie’s teeth find the leather glove and Driver hears the tear even at this distance. The junkie is in his sixties, grey hair plastered wet to his forehead, cursing about thieving angels jacking his high. The cop looks up as he comes closer.

“Jesus, Lucky. You sure took your sweet time getting here,” he says.

Driver halts one stride short of the slush. “Looks like you got this. You hauling him to lock up?”

Not waiting for the answer, Driver flicks the rookie’s earbud free, leans to her collar and whispers, “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

“Hold your horses, Lucky.” The cop grabs a fist of the junkie’s hair, twists the skull sideways to show a deep split along the temple, bone visible, blood welling with each heartbeat, and the snow falls into it and disappears the way snow disappears on an engine block still running. The skull cracked the way the stone birdbath cracked from the weight of frozen rainwater he forgot to empty in the fall because he was working doubles, the way her ankle cracked the night she fell and the night she packed and the night she finally drove away with the dog in the back seat and the bird seed tin on the passenger seat, and the green hose burst beside the birdbath, split along its length the way cold splits anything you leave out long enough, and he’d found the hose in March, stiff and white along the split, water frozen inside it like a vein that quit carrying blood, and he’d picked it up and it cracked further in his hands and he’d stood there in the yard holding two halves of a green hose and thought: this is exactly right, this is what happens, this is what I did, and the ladder was still on its side, the aluminium frame half-crushing the air-conditioning unit and the rubber feet pointing at the sky like something that had died on its back.

“Get him in the back,” Driver snaps, stretcher rolling. They drag him across churned snow, heave him cuffed and bucking onto the orange cot. Rookie cranks the shoulder straps, buckles snapping tight.

Driver watches the cop’s face in the flashlight beam. “I’m putting money on this one, ain’t gonna make it,” the cop says, showing his teeth.

The rookie pulls one bud free. “What streak?”

Driver slams the doors. “Just get in the van.”

He jumps in, fires the engine, hits lights and siren, punches the gas, and the van fishtails on black ice.

“Take it easy,” the rookie says.

Driver keeps the pedal down, watches the speedometer climb past sixty.

“BP’s dropping,” the rookie calls from the back. “Eighty over fifty.”

Driver watches her in the mirror.

The junkie stares at the ceiling. “Just let me fucking die,” he says, and the words come out like he means every one of them.2

Hospital’s five kilometres out. The rookie lifts an earbud, places it in the junkie’s ear, trying to calm him down. Tinny music leaks out. Driver turns his head, leaning in from the wheel, straining to hear the melody over the engine noise. In the mirror he sees the junkie’s face go slack, mouth finally quiet.

“I remember this one,” the junkie says. “My mom had the record.”

Then he fades. The rookie doesn’t move. Just sits with him, her hand on his arm, the music still going.

“It’s okay,” she says.

“What’s okay? What’s going on?” Driver says.

The monitor starts its long breathless tone.

“Start compressions. Now!”

She fumbles the buckles, gets them loose, starts compressions, one, two, three, too fast, arms only, the aluminium frame lifting with each push.

“Lock elbows. Use your weight, rookie!”

She adjusts, keeps going, Driver watching in the mirror, everything backwards, her right hand where his left should be, the cheap stretcher latch rattling with each push, ten compressions, fifteen, the monitor staying flat.

“Harder.”

“I’m trying,” she says.

Twenty, thirty, then the van hits a pothole and her hands slip, compressions stopping for two full seconds. She plants her hands, starts again, one, two, three, still wrong, and Driver can’t tell from the mirror if she’s finding centre or too far left, and this is the moment, the ladder wobbling while he reached for his keys, the green garden hose split in the grass, the birdbath frozen and cracked open the way the skull cracked open on the concrete, and now his hands are locked on the wheel counting compressions, like seven years of counting can undo one night when he counted the wrong thing. The tone goes on, flat, steady. Forty, fifty, Driver’s hands tighten on the wheel, the speedometer reading sixty now, the backend sliding on a curve, and in the mirror she’s still going but the rhythm’s wrong.

“Jesus, you’re going to kill him rookie!”

“I’m not going to kill him,” she snaps. “He’s going to die! There’s a fucking difference.”

The van fishtails and he feels the slow turn beginning, the backend sliding, the guardrail finding them, the airbags blooming white and the talc hanging and the monitor tone sustaining and the rookie’s head striking the sliding glass cabinet and the blood opening across her forehead all of it one continuous motion the way the ladder fell the way the hose split the way she split, without pause, the way seven years becomes the only thing left to hold. The van is dead against the guardrail, steam coming off the hood. The rookie’s earbud still swings from its wire. She’s already reaching for the junkie’s chest again when Driver throws himself between the seats, shoulders her into the bench seat, finds the right spot, starts compressions with the desperate rhythm of a man pounding on a locked door. Ribs crack under his hands. He keeps going. On the sixty-third compression, something gives.

The junkie gasps back. His eyes snap open, blazing. “God damn you.”

The rookie pushes herself up, holding a gauze pad to her head, the blood soaking through immediately. She looks at the driver and then at the junkie and then at her own hands. Driver crawls back through to the cab, drops into the driver’s seat, pushes the deployed bag aside, turns the key past. Nothing but a shrug, the engine dead the way engines die when the cold finally finds the crack it’s been looking for, the crack that was always there, in the block, in the windshield, in the birdbath, in the hose, in every single thing he’d left out in the cold and expected to hold, and the silence that follows is the same silence, and he already knows what it means. He grabs the radio mic, just static, just the cold sound of nothing reaching back. The junkie’s bleeding again, blood spreading dark across the orange vinyl.

“Should’ve just let me die,” the junkie says.

“I can’t,” Driver says.

The junkie watches him. “Why not?”

Driver shrugs, the way his mother shrugged when he was eleven and asked what happens when we die, and she just turned back to the dishes—

“You’re fucking ridiculous,” the rookie says quietly.

The junkie closes his eyes. His breathing goes shallow, then thin, then just the sound of air leaving a place it doesn’t want to be anymore, and then his chest quits. The monitor draws one straight line and the tone goes on, and Driver lets it go on because stopping it would mean the same thing as moving the placemat, the same thing as moving the ladder. Driver stays where he is, and they stay like that, the rookie pressing fresh gauze to her forehead, and the tone keeps going, and outside the van the storm is doing what storms do, which is bury things.

“What happens now?” the rookie says.

Driver shrugs.

She pulls an orange blanket from the overhead and wraps it around her shoulders, then pulls another one and drapes it over the junkie’s legs, which is a strange thing to do for a dead man but she does it anyway. She picks up the earbud from where it swings on its wire, places it back in the junkie’s ear, puts the other one in her own, and presses play. She looks at Driver for a second like she knows this is wrong but it doesn’t matter. Driver, still sitting there with his palms on the dead man’s chest, and she doesn’t say anything else because there is nothing else to say. The windows fog slowly from the inside, and they stay like that long enough that their breath starts to show in the cab. Then the red lights show up in the side mirror, distant at first, feeling their way along the road, and the sirens grow from nothing to something until the rear doors swing open and the EMTs are there with a board and a blanket. They slide the junkie onto the board.

“He’s dead,” Driver says.

The EMT nods, puts a hand on Driver’s shoulder, leaves it there. “I’m sorry Lucky,” he says. “It was a stupid streak anyways.”

The rookie pulls her headphones off.

“You coming?” she says.

Driver shakes his head and lowers his eyes.

She unclips the Walkman from her belt and sets it on the seat beside him, then turns and walks toward the ambulance without looking back, and the ambulance pulls away, brake lights flaring once at the curve, and then gone. Driver doesn’t move. The snow drifts in through the open doors, settling on the orange stretcher pad, on the blood freezing on the rails, on the Walkman glowing yellow on the seat beside him, and he sits there long enough that the snow starts to build on his shoulders, on his knees, on the backs of his hands.

Then the faces come the way weather comes, not all at once but gathering, first as a kind of pressure in the van, a fogging of the glass with breath that shouldn’t be there, and then as shapes, and then as people, or what used to be people, or what people leave behind when the count moves on without them, filling the corners, pressing against the cabinets, and Driver does not flinch because he has been expecting them for seven years and here they are and they are exactly what he thought they’d be.

Lopez is first. She still has the tube in her throat and she touches it absently, the way you’d brush hair from your face.

“You said I was going to be okay,” she says.

Driver opens his mouth. “You were. I mean, you were okay when I left—”

“They put me in the hallway. There weren’t any beds.” She pauses. “I woke up once and someone was mopping around me and the mop smelled like lemons.” She touches the tube again. “Then I was somewhere else.” She looks at him. “Can you find my parking permit? It’s in the glovebox. My sister needs it for work.”

Kipley comes through next, and there is something about him that is both sixteen and much older, the track jacket still zipped to the chin.

“You found my earring?” he asks. “The little gold cross. In the ambulance, after.”

Driver nods.

“Give it to my mother. She came to the hospital to get me but I was already somewhere else by then but I could hear her for a while, saying my name, crying a lot, and then I couldn’t hear anything.”

Then the others are through him and they are not waiting: the Leafs, did they win, and the keys, they were on the counter, and the dog needs feeding, and the arm missing, just somewhere in the chaos, and could he please, when he gets a minute, does anyone have a cigarette, you said I was going to be okay, and the second one louder, you said I was going to be okay, and then they are through each other, and what comes from them isn’t words anymore so much as the residue that remains when language has already expelled itself, the same note the monitor makes when it is done, and he can feel the number dropping in his chest the way temperatures drop, the way water finds a crack and slowly expands over the years.

He picks up the Walkman and shoulders through the ghosts, and they give way the way cold air gives way, and he steps out of the van, snow to his knees, and pulls the doors shut behind him, the latch clicks, and the headphones go over his ears and his thumb finds the play button before the cold can find his throat. The song starts, and he knows it, he knows this one, his mother had the record too, and for a while it is enough, a really fucking great song, and behind him the faces press against the glass but the music holds them there, and he walks, and the Walkman eats batteries the way the van ate kilometres and the streak ate years, the song slowing and warping and dropping a half-step every thirty yards until the singer sounds like a voice coming through water, through cracked concrete, the melody stretching and dragging, the voice getting lower and further away until it’s just a hum, just a rumble, just the sound an answering machine makes when it’s winding down, and then it stops.

He pockets the dead batteries and drops the yellow Walkman shell into a drift and keeps the headphones on because the silence inside the headphones is the silence he remembers from before the streak, the silence of the van after a long rain stops when the wipers finally stop and the engine is still running and the road is just the road and nobody in the back is dying or not dying and the windshield is clearing and there is nothing to count, no number to carry into the next shift, no name to spell wrong on a bracelet, just the glass and the wet road and the new light coming through the grey, and he keeps walking, and the snow fills his boot-prints behind him, and somewhere behind him the long tone is still going but it is smaller now, not a sound so much as a distance, and the distance is closing, and halfway across the lot he stops because he forgot to lock the van, and then he remembers it doesn’t matter, and then he keeps walking.

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Thanks for reading. It really means a lot.

Writing has become one of the great joys of my life. A couple hours every morning, just for myself, just to feel alive. If you don’t have that outlet, I’d encourage you to find one. Start a Substack. Write something nobody has to read. But then when someone actually does read it, and gets it, and loves it, and comes back for more, there’s nothing quite like that.

People don’t read anymore. People should read more. People should write more. These are analogue superpowers and we’re just giving them away to the algorithm, to AI.

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I appreciate all of you who found me, who take the time to make it through my work, who comment and share and are just there, even when I disappear for a little bit. Writing is hard and you don’t want to push it, but you also don’t want to wait too long. I’m still finding that balance. It would be lonely without you.

I've been quiet for a bit, but I started this in November 2024 and there are about 22 short stories waiting if you're just finding me now. Start anywhere.

Silk Arms of Glad Success

Eight wriggling arms gathering creativity, storytelling, and the wild, beautiful mess of making things.

By J.R. Clubb

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Temperature: 87°F. Barometer steady. Wind south-southwest.

STOP it, Sarah. Christ. Just be normal.

Sarah Chen had driven two hours to this beach to escape work. Around her, children shrieked while parents slathered them with sunscreen, their white shoulders rising and breaking like whitecaps against the shore. She'd never had kids. Never learned to build the weather systems everyone else seemed to live inside.

She'd never learned how to do nothing.

She forced herself down into the library paperback in her lap. Standard beach protocol.

The sentences kept drifting. She studied the cover instead, the pages softened by grease and touch. Who had bent this corner? Whose sweat had warped these pages? She traced a brown stain between chapters. Coffee? Blood? What had this book witnessed? What had it made people do while they read it - to themselves, to others, to their marriages?

The book was evidence. Evidence she was good at.

But the real world crowded her peripheral vision. Her eyes lifted, swept the beach. Just a quick look. More of a side-eye. All these people performing happiness. She was pretty sure it was all a scam.

The cheerleaders were building their pyramid again, blonde ponytails bobbing as they locked shoulders, the girl on top wobbling like she might collapse the whole system. All that precision for boys who'd peak at seventeen and spend the rest of their lives at the chemical plants.

A boom box by the fry truck played "How Deep Is Your Love." Seagulls dove at dropped french fries.

Teenagers formed like cumulus clouds by the volleyball net. One girl kept scanning the boardwalk, waiting for someone. Some boy, obviously. The volleyball caught her square in the face while she was looking the wrong direction. Everyone laughed like thunder.

Sarah laughed too, then caught herself. Covered her mouth, looked away.

The lifeguard adjusted his red hat, sunglasses scanning the beach for something that definitely wasn't drowning swimmers. His eyes tracked a jogger in a loose yellow sports bra, lingered on the college girls playing frisbee.

Near the lifeguard stand, a family struggled with an enormous plastic pink flamingo, taking turns blowing air into it, red-faced and dizzy. Sarah found herself calculating: given the father's chest capacity and the flamingo's volume, six minutes. She started counting.

Under the umbrella advertising Sex Wax, two surfers worked their boards. No waves today. Who were they trying to impress? The canvas above them snapped and strained in the breeze. Sarah's eyes tracked to a cluster of girls on a nearby towel, watching the surfers. Ah.

Sex everywhere. She could feel it building. Then she saw them at the tideline.

A couple collapsed there. No towel. No blanket. Just skin in the sand. The boy shirtless, heavy across her waist. The girl's bikini top twisted down. One raw pink nipple jutting out, exposed, crusted with salt and sand.

The sun slipped behind a fat cloud, dimming the boardwalk colours. A shiver of wind rippled the umbrellas. She could feel the change.

She closed the paperback, reached into her tote, traded it for her field notebook. Started writing.

14:32. Cloud cover increasing. Wind shift from south-southeast. Pressure dropping. Possible disturbance at—

One nipple visible, the tan line gradating from brown to white to raw pink. Perfect tits. Mine were like that once.

Stop it, Sarah. And yet I can't stop. Slippery with sea and sweat, everything exposed. The sand chewing them like rough tongues, skin scraped to candy-coloured patches, bruises rising purple-blue. I feel both embarrassed and starved, gnawing at the sight while they feast on each other's faces.

His lips went wide, aiming for her mouth but slipped off her cheek, smashing into her shoulder bone. Blood welled up. His tongue chased it down to her nipple, then he tried again for her mouth, slipped again, tongue jamming straight into her eye. All she could see was red. I can smell the blood and his vodka spit and hot dog breath from here, like a predator scenting a kill from miles away.

What the fuck, Sarah. Focus on the weather. Wind patterns. Pressure differentials.

The shadow deepened. The cloud bank over the sun had swelled into something heavier, darker. Umbrellas shuddered harder. Gulls, unsettled, veered low to the water. The calm before the storm.

She reached deeper into the tote. Pulled free the old video camera, plastic warm from the sun, its grip familiar in her palm. She snapped it open, and raised the viewfinder to her eye.

The couple filled the screen: bodies grinding, oblivious to everything but each other. Around them the wind picked up, pulling at the edges of towels, lifting beach toys into the air. She steadied her hand, lens zooming tighter.

And then, unable to stop herself, Sarah raised her voice against the roar.

"This is Sarah Chen, reporting from Sunset Beach. Pressure falling, winds rising, two human systems colliding in the open. The origin of this weather system appears to be starting with this teenage couple. I know it sounds crazy, but just look.

"Sand velocity increasing. Towels ripped skyward, snapping like surrender flags, trajectory indicates disturbance formation. Napkins spiraling at approximately 15 mph. A volleyball: dragged down and deflated between their grinding hips. Beach chairs tumbling end over end, all pulled into the circulation pattern around them.

"Cheerleader pyramid collapse. Multiple subjects down. Pom-poms shredded into the circulation pattern of their gyrating torsos."

The wind rose into a scream.

"Inflatable flamingo experiencing rapid deflation. Eight seconds to complete structural failure."

"Seagulls getting pulled in, wings snapping, feathers spit out like exploding pillow fights."

"Volleyball net structural integrity compromised. Mesh material now functioning as collection device, dragging multiple subjects toward the centre."

The canvas from the Sex Wax umbrella ripped free, flew through the air and wrapped itself around the couple like an eclipse.

Her whisper dropped low: "An umbrella has covered the couple. Everyone's looking around now, broken from the spell. Collective exhale, like waking from fever dream. Look away. Don't stare directly at it. Turn away and run! But nobody runs. Nobody can."

Beneath the canvas, muffled sounds: moans, a grunt, a wet slap of bodies still colliding. The crowd stiffens, then leans closer. Straining to hear. Sarah's nails dig into the plastic of the camera grip.

Then the canvas ripped away, revealing a giant orb of flesh, pulsating like a heartbeat.

"Oh fuck."

The forces yanked everything from her hands. Camera, notebook, tote bag. Coppertone bottles exploded, white foam everywhere until bodies shined sticky and obscene. Parents screaming as they got dragged in. Children crying, reaching for anything solid. Everyone pressed together, hot and slick, the whole mass moving with the couple's rhythm.

Sarah dug her heels in, trying to hold onto her scientist brain. The one that measured instead of felt. But something cracked. She cracked. The part of her that had been starving for seventeen years took over.

"Fuck it."

She let go. Let herself get pulled toward the center. Bodies spinning around the glowing couple like they were the engine of everything. Sarah tumbled through arms and legs, someone's elbow at her throat, a kid's sneaker in her ribs, beach chairs folding around her.

For the first time in years, she was inside the weather instead of watching it. Part of something her instruments couldn't touch.

Later, a woman on roller skates glided past the empty sand. She pulled off her headphones, looked around. "Weird," she said to nobody. "Where'd everybody go?" She shrugged, put her headphones back on, and skated away.

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A little end-of-summer sendoff. Leave a comment. Would love to hear your thoughts!

The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual bathtubs, actual arguments about microplastics, or actual relationship maintenance rituals is purely coincidental. My wife wants everyone to know that our bathtub is much nicer than this, we never argue about supplements, and she definitely doesn't focus all her workouts on her ass. Enjoy this audio narration by Burt Reynolds.

Children bolt naked down the hallway, soaking wet and screaming.

John and Faye stand looking at each other in the bathroom mirror as steam slowly fogs the glass, their reflections fading until they're just shapes, then shadows, then gone. They glance at each other and something activates: an old subroutine from when they were younger, a promise they'd coded into their relationship. When tension reached a threshold, they would find the smallest, most inescapable space they could and run diagnostics on themselves. The protocol had worked in their one-bedroom Toronto studio, the closet under the stairs at his sister's place, even once in a nightclub bathroom stall on Queen Street. His eyes flick to the bathtub. Hers follow. Back to each other.

She turns to him. "Are you still mad at me?"

"No," he says quickly.

A small smile passes between them.

"I still need to wash my hair," she says, reaching for her shampoo.

"I have to shave for that thing tomorrow. And I'm not sitting in your toxic shampoo."

"It's not toxic."

"Sulfates, Faye. Microplastics too."

"You told me you didn't believe in microplastics."

"No, I said it's in everything so it's futile."

"Well I'm not bathing in your shavings either. That's disgusting."

John tests the water with his finger. He turns the hot tap, nothing but cold.

"Fine."

Neither moves.

"Fine."

Faye begins first, as she always does.

They lock eyes. She starts with the top button of her blouse, watching his face. Her fingers work down. The blouse hits the floor.

When she reaches behind to unhook her bra, his eyes drop instinctively. She catches it immediately, a quick shake of the head, a slight tilt upward. Eyes up here, buddy.

John maintains playful eye contact as he pulls his shirt off and yanks his pants down, but hesitates before taking off his underwear.

When his underwear comes off, he turns slightly away, an unconscious pivot. Even though she's seen it at half-mast, he prefers the full salute. He slides into the water quickly, seeking cover with strategically positioned knees.

They wriggle and jam themselves into the lukewarm water together, a synchronized settling that displaces exactly enough water to reach the overflow drain. Two bodies that have learned to somehow fit in a space designed for one. They arrange themselves uncomfortably, his kneecap finding the soft inside of her thigh, pressing a white dent that fills slowly with blood when he shifts. Her elbow discovers the gap between his ribs.

John inventories her: Her breasts, once firm and symmetrical, now settle unevenly in the water, nipples pointing in slightly different directions. Her cleavage, still compelling but looser now. The soft flesh of her upper arms, which get no attention because she focuses all her workouts on her ass. Her pubic hair long and wild, sponging up the bathwater. Her face, still beautiful but shifting.

(Elsewhere, in another timeline: Twenty-four-year-old Faye, skin taut, standing in a different bathroom, catching him watching her brush her teeth and feeling like the most beautiful woman alive.)

She can't resist conducting her own survey: The subtle rosacea blooming across his cheeks. Grey threading through his hair. The soft accumulation around his middle. His toenails need cutting. His legs are hairy with strange bald patches from sitting cross-legged for too many years. A scar on his knee from trying to teach his daughter to skateboard. He looks tired. He's finally getting older.

(Somewhere in her memory: Him at twenty-six, all shoulders and jaw, fixing her bike chain in the courtyard of their first apartment like some 1950s car mechanic, grease on his hands, that cocky smile when he got it working again, even though he couldn't tell you the difference between a wrench and a screwdriver IRL.)

And yet. There's something almost sacred about this mutual cataloguing of decay, this inventory of all the ways their bodies have betrayed the promises they made when young and firm and certain they'd stay that way forever.

He senses a vulnerability and his hand starts to swim underwater like a shark toward her.

"Don't," she says.

"I wasn't—"

"The kids are twenty feet away."

"It's always something with you."

"That's not fair."

"Isn't it?" The question hangs between them. "You work from home. I come home from work. When exactly are we supposed to—"

"Well, if you didn't sleep downstairs, you'd get a lot more action."

"You snore and kick me and you know sleep is the most important—"

"So what's more important, sleep or sex?"

"That's an impossible question," he laughs, but there's no humour in it.

She almost smiles.

His left leg goes numb from the awkward position. Her neck cramps from the angle against the faucet.

"I'm just tired of working all day and coming home to this mess," she says.

"I'm working too."

"I just need you to work harder. We need more money."

"Then stop buying all that skincare shit," he says, firing back. "Forty-dollar serums. No one cares about your face."

He immediately regrets it, but doubles down anyway.

"And you spend more on supplements than we spend on groceries."

"Yes, all organic groceries."

"We need to eat."

"Well you need to stop playing artist and focus on real work."

"Play artist?" The words come out sharp. "Jesus, Faye."

"I'm at the health food store listening to people debate whether castor oil cures cancer while you're here taking pictures."

"Taking pictures? Ouch. I'm trying to work AND watch them and make dinner and clean. I wish I could go to a job like yours where I just turn my brain off and punch a clock."

"You're such an asshole."

"I know." He laughs. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. When do we even see each other anymore?" His voice cracks slightly. "You work, I work, you come home exhausted, I sleep downstairs."

She thinks: When did we become people who schedule intimacy around sleep schedules?

He thinks: When did I become the guy who complains about not getting laid while sitting naked with his wife?

The silence stretches. They're running out of things to say, or know saying more is dangerous.

Then, as suddenly as it began, the ritual is interrupted.

Their son bursts through the door, yanking open the shower curtain.

"MOM! I can't find my pyjamas!"

"Ok honey!"

They unlock their limbs from the tub, grabbing towels, water streaming onto the bath mat. John shakes out his left leg. As they stand there, dripping and reaching for their clothes, Faye catches his eye.

"I love you," she says quietly.

"I know."

"Are we good?"

He nods and smiles.

The bathtub drains behind them with a satisfied gurgle.

Steam slowly clears from the mirror. First shadows, then shapes, then their reflections reappear.

Thanks for reading.

Leave a comment about your own relationship maintenance rituals.

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Short and sweet this week. Been really busy with work and summer, so I appreciate your patience with the gaps over the next few weeks as it's a mix of busy work and vacationing. But I'll keep checking in, and I appreciate any comments and shares.

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The Sandwich Eaters

by J.R. Clubb

To My Sweet Caterina,

I don't know if this'll find you. I don't even know if there's a you out there still tuned to the old frequencies. Could be weeks have passed, could be months. Time's just survival now. When I close my eyes, I'm back in those Sunday mornings when you'd make green tea, sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor in that faded Blind Melon shirt, our dog sniffing at the bergamot oil on your neck. The sun coming through the window, catching the smoke from the handmade copal incense you burned. You reading me that line from The Power of Now about time being an illusion. Sorry I haven't made contact since deployment. I had to destroy all communication devices, go completely dark. Found this pen in a dead man's pack, the paper's the back of some high-protein meal plan. I don't know if I'm getting out of this alive, but if something happens to me, they'll find this letter with your name on it.

Tonight we're running an attack on the Meatheads' compound. We're gonna hit their base while they're off at some gym they converted into a church. You should see these sermons, Caterina. Ex-chiropractors in cargo pants, quoting Peterson about how 'men who fear the weight of existence retreat into the comfort of bread,' how 'insulin resistance is really responsibility resistance.' And these dipshits sit shirtless and stone-faced, nodding along like it's gospel. Instead of 'amen,' they just shout FACTS.

Don't worry, we're nonviolent, just breaking in to disable their communications, kill their feed and get out. If anything happens…

Now I'm writing from what used to be a church. The Meatheads converted this church into their compound. Ripped out the pews by hand, put in squat racks, rubber mats, battle ropes. Replaced the stained glass with sun panels angled for their circadian worship. We were inside their base hunting for the server room to kill their communications when their perimeter cams picked up Dave's doughy body slinking past the glute-ham machine, poor bastard must have tripped a silent alarm. I didn't even know we'd been caught until the Meatheads came storming back. We scattered and everyone made it out but me. Now I'm holed up under this communion table. It's more like a protein station now, crusted with dried whey, surrounded by shaker cups that smell like sour milk. I'm lying low, just outside the reach of the smart mirrors on the far wall. I have no weapon. Just a broken blender blade clutched in my fist. There's a man crucified on a squat rack, salted like meat, with a knife pinning a blood-soaked sign to his chest: FOUND THE VEGAN. Above the altar, a neon sign flickers GAINS BE TO GOD. The sermon board still hangs there, but now shows their daily routine: 7 rounds of prayer, 15 burpees, 1 repentance max.

The only thing keeping me sane is thinking of you. The Meatheads sleep around me on their yoga mats and sleeping bags draped over treadmills. I lie here listening to them wheeze through their nasal strips and mouth tape, imagining them dreaming they're free, hunting elk with their bare hands, sleeping in caves by firelight. Looking up, I see white chalk dust drifting down from the gymnastic rings, settling like snow used to. Like that night we walked home from the diner with sandwiches warm in foil, snow gathering on our lashes, your nose red, a streak of mayo on your chin. Back when food was still allowed to be joy. Before food had macros. Before joy had metrics. Before anyone asked what your stack was. Back when food was just food, and you were just you. Before self-care became surveillance. And that's where I got the idea - fight back with our own faction, a rebel cell called The Sandwich Eaters. I'm actually pretty proud of the name.

I keep going back to the first time I saw you. You were studying nutrition, working part-time at that little health food store where everything smelled like cumin and lavender soap. You were small, blonde, wrapped in cotton layers that looked like you'd just taken a nap in the grass. You had that quiet kind of indie-girl confidence like you weren't trying to be anything. You just were. I came in for hummus at first. But after that, I just kept coming back to see you. You talked about food like it had a spirit, like it needed to be heard just as much as it needed to be eaten. You said eating was a way of remembering. I didn't fully understand what that meant, but it made me want to pull you into my arms and shield you from anyone who might try to argue otherwise. You said you were going to open a clinic. You already had the name, Sage Against the Machine, and when you said it, you beamed like someone who hadn't learned yet to brace for disappointment. You said you wanted to feed people in a way that gave them back a sense of control. And then your mom got sick. I remember you in the waiting room, holding a container of mushroom broth. You asked the nurse if you could give it to her. She said no. After we lost your mom, I watched you drift. You remember how lost you felt after that - you stopped trusting what you stood for and started down that rabbit hole. How long should I sauna for mitochondrial health? Then: what temperature resets female hormones? Then: optimal fasting windows for women of reproductive age? Then one night you showed me that crazy video that asked if women should vote when their HRV is low. We laughed. But the algorithm doesn't have a sense of humour.

Why I Stopped Eating Synthetic Protein @NatureNurturer: Three months on fake protein and my body was falling apart, nails brittle, hormones totally out of whack. Switched to pastured yolk and marrow and literally started dreaming in colour again. Trust your body ladies 👍 24.1K 👎 1.2K

Why I Stopped Wearing Sunscreen (And Started Sun Gazing) @GlowRewilded: Ditched sunscreen 8 months ago and my skin has never looked better. Your body NEEDS direct sunlight to function. Been doing morning sun gazing and my circadian rhythm is finally fixed 👍 21.3K 👎 622

Hospital Food is Poison: What They Don't Want You to Know @NourishmentNinja: Spent weeks watching my grandmother eat processed garbage from plastic trays while fighting cancer. They banned homemade soup but pushed sugar water and seed oils. The system profits from keeping us sick. 👍 28.3K 👎 892

I watched how the videos worked on you, whispering that you were right all along. Big Pharma is lying. The government is poisoning your water. I remember the night I heard you muttering: "I voted for Obama. I'm vegan. My clients are diverse." Then softer: "But some of this makes sense." First came the hormone tests, then the lectures on "biological wisdom," then posts about how modern women were "disconnected from their feminine essence." Your Instagram changed from soil health to sourdough, from plant-based to pastured eggs, from climate activism to home economics. Each step felt natural to you, and the comments kept telling you you weren't crazy, just finally awake to what's really happening.

By then, you were ready for videos like Canning, Homeschooling, Gun Safety: A Trad Wife's Guide to the Great Reset @WifeOfTheWord: Almost cried watching this. The internet wants to destroy the nuclear family but this made me feel safe again. 👍 23.8K 👎 118

You didn't search for these videos, they just found you. But watching wasn't enough anymore. You set up the ring light, moved the plants to the edge of the frame, took a breath and hit record.

Why My Mother Died in a Hospital Bed (And What I Do Differently Now) @SageAgainstTheMachine: They said it was too late. They wouldn't let me give her homemade mushroom broth. Said it wasn't protocol. Then they pumped her full of chemo and radiation and called it modern medicine. I'm not saying I could've saved her. But I wasn't even allowed to try. So now, I do my own research. 👍 41.2K 👎 924

Top Comments: @WombWiseWoman: They stole my mother too. This cracked something open. Thank you. 👍 6.2K 👎 33 @MamaPrepper77: You're not alone. We heal outside the system. We always have. 👍 3.1K 👎 14

I watched those comments swallow you up. You stopped sounding like you. I couldn't save you from it, so I decided to fight the real enemy. The algorithm.

We'd been cutting cell towers, burning data farms, anything to break their grip on people. Some big bro-caster livestreaming from a bunker-studio somewhere outside the supplement belt first called us out. Said something like, "We are under attack by these people called the Sandwich Eaters. You've seen them, grunge shirts and dead eyes like they time-traveled from a 1992 food court, carrying lawn chairs and reading actual paper books and some smell like donuts, I've seen them gnawing coaxial cables like rats, one tried to hand me a zine called 'Unplug to Resist: A Beginner's Guide to Killing the Feed,' they're cutting towers and burning data farms and don't be fooled this is terrorism, on the Feed, on the Algorithm, on YOU, so if you see one, unplug them with the brute force of God almighty."

Caterina, the wellness scene has gone completely mad. Now it's actual tribes - Meatheads, Soy Boys, trad wives - all at war with each other. And now I'm holed up here in the middle of it.

I can hear something outside... looks like the Soy Boys are breaching the compound now! You should see them, Caterina - they're beautiful specimens of science. Microdosed focus pulsing through their veins. From mushroom-leather pouches come droppers of methylene blue. One by one, they dose. Lips turn cobalt. Then comes the turmeric. Fingers dipped in golden paste, smeared across cheeks with ritual. Someone taps their wearable. A red light blinks. Livestream on. A pale Soy Boy starts to shout, "We do not want this. But we cannot live in peace with those who deny the science. Who mock us. Who say trust me bro instead of cite your source." He breathes in through the nose. Out through the mouth. A perfect box breath.

The Meatheads turn as one. Some drop immediately into burpees, prayer stretches, primal skips to quickly elevate their HR for combat. Then a nod. One to another. A Meathead sprints to the wall and slams his palm against the WOD timer. It blinks to life. 00:00. Then the charge. Barefoot and shirtless, veins like braided ropes, they lunge forward with pupils wide from ancestral wrath. One of them dry-scoops pre-workout and leads the charge.

@MeatWithEyes: THEY TURNED THEIR BACKS ON MEAT. ON BLOOD. ON MUSCLE. TONIGHT WE EAT THE FALLEN. GAINS BE TO GOD!! 👍 6.2K 👎 243

A kettlebell screams through the air. Clips a Soy Boy mid-setup. He collapses, wheezing through a mouthful of powdered spermidine.

@VesselOfLeaf: We are post-body. Post-god. Post-death. Your ancestral diet logic has expired. 👍 7.3K 👎 981

A Soy with willow-branch legs ghosts across the floor. The Meathead never sees it coming. A touch. Almost tender. A butterfly to the neck. Chi disrupted. He drops, spasming.

@BryanJohnsonBot: I don't train for size. I train to decelerate biological decline while sustaining peak physiological output you dumb fuck. 👍 9.4K 👎 731

A Meathead in a weighted vest tears into raw venison, beard drenched in blood. He tackles a Soy into a preacher's bench.

@CarnivoreCaliphDid: vegan 9 years. Weak. Brittle. Then I found the path: grass-fed colostrum = BREAKFAST OF EMPIRES!! 👍 1.1K 👎 71

A Soy Boy spins through the chaos, robe stitched from oat milk filtration bags. He flings a fistful of psyllium husk into a Meathead's eyes and slips past him, silent as breath.

@GutProphet: Have some fibre bro. Your microbes deserve diversity. 👍 6.1K 👎 229

Blinded, the Meathead roars, swings wide and misses completely.

@CarnyCrusader88: I HAVEN'T TAKEN A SHIT IN NINE DAYS 💩🔥 👍 304 👎 979

A Carny dunks a Soy's head in the cold plunge.

SAY IT, SOY BOY. You need 300 grams of protein a day. SAY IT. @PlantBasedTruth47: Never. Legumes have complete amino acid profiles and you can't make me say otherwise. 👍 2.1K 👎 8.7K

SPLASH.

@BryanJohnsonBot: I monitor 37 biomarkers an hour. I'm 42. My liver is 17. 👍 8.8K 👎 1.3K

@DeadliftProphet88: Imagine swallowing 80 pills a day just to get hit by a bus at 42. LOL 👍 6.7K 👎 413

A Soy Boy kisses a kombucha bomb. Whispers to the microbes. Throws it. It shatters on a Meathead’s chest. Fizz blooms. Bacteria swarm. He screams at the digestive sting. A Meathead dropkicks a Soy into a stack of plates. A shaker bottle rolls off the communion table. Hits the ground.

Everyone turns. Not toward each other. Toward me.

@MacroMiser: HOLY SHIT IT'S A GODDAM SANDWICH EATER! 👍 276 👎 500

@OptimizationDrone87: OMG. He's raw dogging. No wearables bro. 👍 3.1K 👎 0

@SoilSon: I CAN SMELL THE SEED OILS FROM HERE!! 👍 1.2K 👎 0

Oh shit they've spotted me, Caterina...

OK I made it out of there! I'm writing this from an old greasy spoon diner. I just barely escaped alive. When they spotted me, I had shoulder-rolled out from under the table. Vaulted over a dead Meathead with limbs still twitching. GlowRing blinking red on a busted middle finger. They had come at me fast. Romanian lunges. Then froze. Their wearables shrieked in unison. VO₂ max breach. Overzone detected.

@MacroMiser: shit. it's Tuesday. zone 2 only. 👍 673 👎 11

@CarnyCrusader88: HE'S FAST FOR SOMEONE WHO SKIPS LEG DAY 👍 4.4K 👎 78

A pause. Then a loophole:

@MeatWithEyes: HIIT. 👍 998 👎 16

@VesselOfLeaf: Yes. That's it. Short bursts. 30:90 splits. 👍 1.1K 👎 9

And they came after me, sprinting and resting in their ridiculous intervals, but they didn't catch me because I don't run for metrics baby, I just run scared, you know, fight or flight, thinking of you the whole time.

The Sandwich Eaters meet in diners like this one, booth by booth, talking without devices, making real eye contact the way we used to before you got that Continuous Glucose Monitor. Do you remember how you said it was temporary? Just a bio-experiment, you said, just to see what happened when you ate bread, but then you stopped eating bread altogether and started skipping meals for insulin sensitivity, salting your water at dawn like some kind of ritual, standing in that red light like a priestess of mitochondria, microneedling your skin until it bled and calling it rejuvenation. You charted your moods against glucose spikes, logged our kisses in your HRV data, said no to cake on your own birthday and smiled sadly like it was some kind of victory, and still I loved you, Caterina, even as you disappeared into ideology and stopped being the woman I fell in love with in that health food store.

I don't know if you're still out there somewhere, if you still want to marry me, but I had to write this letter, had to let you know I'm still here, still fighting. So please wait for me if you still believe in us.

And if I ever see you again, I'll bring you bread.

Love,
John Ross

Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoyed that as much as I enjoyed writing it and living in this world, which honestly feels not far off to the one we're already in.

This one hits particularly close to home. I'll admit, I've been guilty of falling down these wellness rabbit holes myself: the morning routines, the biohacking, the diet wars, the optimization obsession. But watching how the algorithm pulls people from reasonable self-care into increasingly extreme ideology? That's what this story is really about.

I'm going to do my best to keep posting, but there might be some gaps here and there over the last of summer. If you don't see a Sunday morning post, it's because I'm grounding myself barefoot somewhere, optimizing my circadian rhythm, and living my best life.

Speaking of living your best life: what's your favourite sandwich? Or better yet, what's your "stack"? Are you Team Optimization or Team Sandwich? PLEASE let me know in the comments if you enjoyed this story so I know you made it to the end.

Leave a comment

Thanks for being here. It really means everything. Have a great summer!

The Dumpster Divers

Found in: State Records Facility, Box #CV-2030-1847

Declassified: June 29, 2049

Written by: J.R. Clubb

CLASSIFIED: Case File CV-2030-1847

Recently Declassified Under FOIA Request

Contents May Disturb

RELEASE DATE: June 29, 2049
REQUESTING PARTY: Independent Journalist
STATUS: Approved for Public Release with Redactions

INITIAL DISCOVERY REPORT

State Records Facility, Cleveland Division, Cold Case Archive Unit. Jacob sits in a seamless white chamber where the walls seem to breathe with him, adjusting their soft luminosity as he moves. His reflection multiplies across surfaces that materialize documents and evidence as his gaze shifts, though most screens remain dormant now, glowing soft white. The windowless room feels contained.

The physical evidence box sits between his hands on the haptic table surface, cardboard and tape, faded labels with names scribbled in Sharpie, an anachronism against the seamless technology surrounding him.

He's eighteen now, and for the past three years he's followed this cold case through archived threads and dead forums, through FOIA requests that led nowhere until this morning. Underground biotech. Reanimated tissue. The story that died nineteen years ago in a stack of inconclusive reports.

He slowly lifts the lid of the box. The smell hits immediately, wrong in this sterile space. A stale mix of dust and nineteen years of storage that crawls into the back of his throat, making the room's filtered atmosphere feel suddenly precious. Inside: folders, photos, institutional flotsam. Proof that people once alive were reduced to files. One tag curls upward, blue and stiff.

CASE CLOSED // INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE // CASE FILE CV-2030-1847

He reaches for the top file. His hands are steadier than they should be.

DOCUMENT 1: INITIAL INTERROGATION

TRANSCRIPT 2A - TROYEN C. MADDIX
CASE FILE: CV-2030-1847 | DATE: 09.10.2030 | TIME: 07:48 AM
LOCATION: Interview Room 2A - Cleveland Division
DETECTIVES: Harper / Vasquez

HARPER: You understand this interview is being recorded. You've waived counsel.

VASQUEZ: Cleveland Women's Health Center. September 9th. 2:12 AM. Then Lorain Avenue gas station. Forty-five minutes later. Biohazard unit calls it in. Empty cooler. Steam still rising.

Jacob pulls the photos from evidence sleeve 2A-2D.

📷 Photo 2A: Rear exit surveillance still. A man carrying a cooler. The question mark written beside "Troyen?" Even the cops weren't certain.

📷 Photo 2B: Gas station pump glowing under sodium lights. Gloves, no plates, hoodie up.

📷 Photo 2C: Interior of transport container. Something mesh-wrapped in residual steam.

Jacob studies Photo 2C longer than necessary. He flips it over.

Scrawled across the back: SUBJ-01 // REACTIVITY NOTED // DO NOT OPEN WITHOUT MADDIX

Subject 01. A lab designation.

HARPER: You entered a secured medical facility. You stole restricted materials. Why?

TROYEN: Steal? No. Just dumpster diving.

VASQUEZ: Some pro-life stunt?

TROYEN: (laughs) God no. I'm not pro-life.

Jacob circles that response. He'd expected the religious angle. This is something else entirely.

TROYEN: Her body, her choice, right? But what about those of us who live with that choice?

HARPER: Ohhh, so it's a man thing.

TROYEN: Anyone who was erased. Fathers who never were. Sons who never got the chance.

Jacob circles "Sons who never got the chance." Not pro-life, then. One of those men's rights types, the kind Jacob recognizes from toxic forums. But why break into a medical facility?

He flips back to the arrest details, looking for what he's missing.

DOCUMENT 2: FOLLOWER TESTIMONY

TRANSCRIPT 2B - BRYAN GAFFNEY
DATE: 09.11.2030 | TIME: 10:15 AM

VASQUEZ: You told us you've been part of the pro-life movement since 2009?

BRYAN: That's right. First arrest was outside a Planned Parenthood in Dayton. Never once resisted. I believe in peaceful protest.

HARPER: So when did "no abortions" become "resurrecting fetuses in a Crock-Pot"?

BRYAN: Look, that wasn't what I signed up for. Troyen told us we were recovering remains for some kind of redemptive protest. You know, returning them to the mothers. Not to harass anybody, just to make a statement. I had no idea about the other stuff he was doing.

VASQUEZ: Not to harass? You were planning to show up at women's homes with fetal remains. How is that not harassment?

BRYAN: We thought... I mean, I thought...

VASQUEZ: You thought what?

BRYAN: I thought Troyen was... he had this way of making you believe. Like you were part of something important. Something bigger.

Jacob reads that line twice. The classic pattern: a charismatic leader making followers feel chosen, special. Troyen had manipulated everyone around him, using their need to belong as cover.

DOCUMENT 2B: FOLLOWER TESTIMONY

TRANSCRIPT 2C - KELLER STRONG
DATE: 09.10.2030 | TIME: 11:30 AM

HARPER: You told our officers Troyen was "the only man who ever told the truth about women."

KELLER: Yeah, so? He's right about stuff. Women can just delete your kid and you get no say. That's totally fucked.

VASQUEZ: What kind of things?

KELLER: Justice for the unborn or whatever.

HARPER: So what changed?

KELLER: I dunno, he got obsessed with his ex. Kept talking about what she owed him, how she was gonna finally understand. It wasn't about helping young men anymore, it was just him being crazy about this one chick who fucked him over.

VASQUEZ: But you stayed involved.

KELLER: Am I gonna get in trouble for this?

HARPER: That depends on how honest you're being.

KELLER: Only reason he even talked to me was cause my mom had a van.

DOCUMENT 3: UNDERCOVER OPERATION

TRANSCRIPT 3A - EMMY SANDERS
DATE: 09.12.2030 | TIME: 14:30 PM
STATUS: Undercover Operative Debrief

VASQUEZ: You were under for six weeks?

EMMY: Every day felt like I was going to break. Troyen had this way about him, you know? Making you feel like you were chosen or something. Special. He'd tell each person exactly what they needed to hear. You're a savior, you're a genius, you're a soldier for the cause. And they all bought it. Thought they were part of some big movement.

HARPER: And you?

EMMY: I told them I used to work at a clinic. That I was disillusioned with it all, ready to serve the cause, whatever. He called me a "reformed vessel." Said I radiated... what was it... maternal remorse. God, the way he talked.

Jacob's throat tightens. The manipulation. The language of wounds weaponized.

EMMY: It started getting creepy pretty fast. These late-night strategy chats, he called them. Always finding reasons to get me alone. And that smile he'd get. Like he was waiting for something I was never going to give him.

VASQUEZ: Did he ever—?

EMMY: No. I mean, yes, but not directly. It was always just... there. You know? The way he'd go quiet after giving you a compliment. The hovering. So I had to keep it just flirty enough to stay trusted, knowing that someday he was going to try something.

Until he showed me the baby.

Jacob sets the transcript down. Troyen wasn't just some internet misogynist. He was a predator who'd built an entire operation around his grievances, manipulating everyone.

"Until he showed me the baby."

He stares at those words, feeling something tighten in his chest. Three years of following this case, and now he's close to something he's not sure he wants to find.

DOCUMENT 4: TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

TRANSCRIPT 3B - MIKKO TAI
DATE: 09.10.2030 | TIME: 15:45 PM

VASQUEZ: Does your wife know you've been building fetal incubators with a bunch of misogynists?

MIKKO: No, you're not gonna tell my wife about this, are you? She thinks I was just working on building a synth drum kit.

VASQUEZ: Well, that depends on how cooperative you are, Mikko. Because I don't buy for one second that you didn't know exactly what you were building.

MIKKO: Look, it wasn't some Frankenstein thing. The research was already out there - artificial wombs, neonatal care systems. I was just providing a framework for natural development. Most of the protocols existed.

HARPER: Where did the tissue come from?

MIKKO: I didn't ask. He delivered it. I ran the protocols.

VASQUEZ: You didn't ask? Someone brings you fetal tissue and you just accept it?

MIKKO: It wasn't my job to—

VASQUEZ: Whose job was it, Mikko? Where do you think he got it?

MIKKO: I assumed it was donated. Medical waste, maybe.

HARPER: Medical waste from where?

MIKKO: I told you, I didn't ask those questions.

Jacob finds Mikko's personal notes clipped to the file:

"Subject 01 - Day 12: Blinked. Unprompted."
"Day 18: Tracks light source. Response patterns suggest... awareness?"
"Day 24: It moved toward warmth. Like it knew."

📷 Evidence 4D: A cylindrical tank in darkness. Something floating in suspension gel. Curled. One foot pressed flat against the inner glass.

The image holds him until his vision blurs. The foot against glass. Like it's trying to push through. To get out. To be born.

The walls of the white room seem to press closer.

DOCUMENT 5: CRITICAL DISCLOSURE

TRANSCRIPT 3A - EMMY SANDERS (continued)

HARPER: Tell us about that day.

EMMY: Week five, I think it was. He said I'd earned the truth or something like that. Took me into the garage, just the two of us, and I remember thinking this is it, this is when he tries something. But instead he shows me this tank. This... thing floating in there. And he says, "This is my son Jacob." It had form, you know? Like, actual skin and limbs and these little veins you could see through the... God, I can still see it. There was this twitch under what looked like a cheek. And then the eyes opened. And it looked right at me. Not like a baby looks at you, but like it could actually see me. Like it knew something. And I had to stand there and smile like it was beautiful or holy or whatever he wanted me to think.

VASQUEZ: Jesus Christ.

EMMY: He kept talking about justice. About restoring stolen sons, that's how he put it. Said women like his ex-girlfriend chose death, so now he was choosing rebirth. It was always boys, always male tissue. He said girls were nonviable for the cause. I realized this wasn't about saving anyone. He didn't want his son back. He had this fucked up vision of an army of pissed off boys all coming back for their revenge.

Jacob stares at his reflection fragmented across the white surfaces—a young man built from stolen tissue and pure hatred, designed to be a walking monument to Troyen's grievances. He was supposed to be a weapon. Instead, he became exactly what his creator would have hated most.

He reaches for the box to close it, thinking he's found what he came for. But his fingers catch on another folder at the bottom, one he'd missed in his initial scan. The tab reads: VICTIM TESTIMONY - [IDENTITY REDACTED].

Something in his chest tightens. He'd been so focused on Troyen's story, on the followers and the lab, that he hadn't considered there might be another perspective.

His mother.

DOCUMENT 6: VICTIM TESTIMONY

TRANSCRIPT 4A - [IDENTITY REDACTED]
DATE: 09.15.2030 | TIME: 14:22 PM
STATUS: Victim Privacy Protected

HARPER: Describe your relationship with Troyen Maddix.

[REDACTED]: Relationship? I mean, we went on maybe four dates. He seemed normal at first, you know? Charming, even. But by the third date he was already talking about our future together. Kids, moving in together, all this stuff. I wasn't interested in anything serious and I told him that.

VASQUEZ: So you broke up with him?

[REDACTED]: When I ended it, he just... he couldn't accept it. Started showing up everywhere. At my work, outside my apartment building. I'd get dozens of texts saying I was confused about my feelings, that I didn't know what I really wanted. That he could help me figure it out.

HARPER: When did you discover the pregnancy?

[REDACTED]: Few weeks after we stopped seeing each other. I knew immediately what I had to do. The procedure was private, anonymous. I didn't tell anyone, not even my closest friends.

HARPER: How did he find out?

[REDACTED]: He must have been stalking me. The first message came two days after the procedure. Just said, "How could you kill our baby?" Like it was his decision to make.

VASQUEZ: That's when you first went to the police?

[REDACTED]: Yes. After I got the restraining order, he waited outside my building for six hours. Just standing there. Then the messages started coming from different numbers, different phones. I kept blocking them but they kept coming.

HARPER: Did you know he had stolen the remains?

[REDACTED]: God, no. I mean, I keep thinking about his last message before he disappeared. He said, "You'll see our son again." I thought it was just another death threat, but now... Jesus.

Jacob stares at those words. You'll see our son again.

AFTERMATH DOCUMENTATION

DEATH CERTIFICATE - Sanders, Emmy
DATE: 2031.11.09
STATUS: Confirmed
CAUSE: Self-inflicted
WITNESS: None

Jacob stares at "None."

DEATH CERTIFICATE - Maddix, Troyen
DATE: 2038.03.22
STATUS: Confirmed
CIRCUMSTANCES: Found dead in temporary housing. No note.

Personal effects included:
• Box labeled "REMEMBER ME"
• Digital folder, passkey: jacob_alive

Jacob stares at the passkey. His name. Troyen knew exactly who would find this someday. As if he'd been waiting.

Jacob closes the box. The white room feels smaller now.

At the bottom of the file, beneath folded schematics, he finds a single sheet.

PATIENT INTAKE FORM (Redacted)
PATIENT ID: 1347-X
CLINIC: Cleveland Women's Health
DISCHARGE DATE: Sept. 2030
HOME ADDRESS: 14 Hemlock Lane

Jacob stares at the address.

END OF CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTATION

The house sits modest and quiet on Hemlock Lane, its peeling paint catching the early evening light. The porch light glows against the approaching dusk.

Jacob walks the path slowly, each step feeling predetermined, like a sequence running its final command. The concrete feels solid under his feet, more real than anything he's left behind.

He raises his hand and knocks.

Footsteps behind the door, then it opens to reveal a woman in her late forties. Beautiful in that aching, ordinary way. She looks at him like he might be selling something, or like she might know him from a dream she's tried to forget.

Jacob doesn't flinch. Doesn't smile. The moment stretches between them like eighteen years of silence finally breaking.

"Hi, Mom."

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Next week: More files from the vault...

The Stupid Tree

by J.R. Clubb

INT. STUDIO – DAY

Single camera. Static. Medium close-up. Soft light on my face.

A faint flicker. Barely perceptible.

The kind you notice when you're staring too long.

I look normal. Almost.

I'm not used to being on this side of the camera.

There's a damp patch beneath my left armpit. I'm hoping it doesn't show. I'm hoping I don't look too old. I don't want to wear glasses and look even older, but I won't be able to see the teleprompter without them and I'll just be squinting like an idiot. How's my hair? It's sitting weird at the front. I got a tooth pulled last week—does it show when I smile? I look tired.

I try not to move. I hit record.

J.R. (calm, even-toned, trying not to lose it)

You know what no one tells you when you say, "I want to make art"?

They say, "Oh cool. Yeah, follow your dreams Bud."

But with that little knowing smile.

Like: "Poor thing. Wait 'til he reads the comments."

But I go ahead anyway.

(I shift. My back cracks, just a little. I wince but don't acknowledge it.)

I make my stupid little thing.

I post it.

I wait.

And then they come back and say:

"Yeah, but if you do it like that, no one's gonna see it. No one's gonna send you camera bags to review. If you want people to buy your LUTs, you've gotta do BTS POV. But hey... I guess you're doing it for you or whatever? That's cool."

Fine. I'll start a stupid YouTube channel.

Make content. But—

Be different.

Be real, but also mysterious, without trying too hard.

No avatars. No HeyGen fakes. No voice clones.

Just me.

Motivated lighting. Key at 45. Negative fill on the other side. Nice shadows. Nice depth. RGB Aputure tube to separate me from the background.

At the end of the video, I'm supposed to say: "Let me know in the comments!"

And I mean it. Please let me know. Just one real comment that isn't another goddamn crypto scam.

But nothing.

Crickets.

Not even the bots want to touch me.

So I buy more gear.

I try adding music to my "films."

But not The Song.

Not the one that actually made me feel something.

That one costs money. And it'll get flagged.

So I find something that kinda sounds like it.

Royalty-free.

Which brings me to this week's sponsor:

(I sit up straight. Spine stiff. The smile starts genuine, then hardens into something plastic. A micro-crack appears at the corner of my mouth.)

Audiio.com

Link below.

(The smile flickers. For half a second, I'm looking at myself from outside.)

Then I throw on motion graphics. AI-generated b-roll. AI-written voiceover.

And nothing.

So I throw my kids in the mix.

Before they're too old and washed up.

Before the comments come: "idk this feels cringe now," under a clip of my daughter doing a cartwheel with her whole heart.

Her whole heart.

I add captions.

Because no one watches with sound anymore.

Even though I bought that $500 Rode mic. Even though I spent an hour EQing it just right.

They're watching on mute. In cubicles. Pretending to work. Wishing they had my life.

The life I hate.

Somehow hating me for it.

(I shift in the chair again. One leg's asleep. I try to ignore it.)

So I slap on a lens flare I downloaded for $9.99—just to make it feel like a memory.

I turn their fleeting childhood into content.

But not too much.

Can't be exploitative.

Gotta hit that balance.

Between authentic and cinematic.

Between sharing and exploiting.

Between living and uploading.

(A bead of sweat rolls down my temple. I let it. But it hits me in the eye and keeps rolling down like a tear and now it looks like I'm crying.)

And so I automate as much as I can.

Because there's not enough time.

Not enough me.

So I let AI help.

Then I let AI do more.

Until I'm sitting quietly, while the machine makes my art.

(I stare just past the lens now. I wipe away the sweat/tear. Slight eye twitch. A glitch in the performance.)

And I pretend I'm still in there somewhere.

Then one day—my kid laughs.

And it sounds... off.

Compressed.

Like it came from a stock library.

Like Audiio.com

Link in description.

She blinks weird. Just for a second.

Then says: "Dad, can I run the mid-roll ad?"

I ask, "What ad?"

She says, "The sleep gummies one."

And I pause.

(I scratch my jaw. My nail snags on stubble that wasn't there this morning.)

And I think:

Are my kids AI?

Is my wife AI?

She's been especially sycophantic lately. They've all been uncharacteristically laughing at my stupid dad jokes.

Is anyone real?

Or are we all just content now?

The machine spits us back out, optimized for engagement.

And deep down we're grateful our lives finally generated enough data to matter.

Like and subscribe.

EXT. PARK BENCH – DAY

35mm film look. Overexposed. Flat light.

Nothing sharp. Everything soft in the wrong places.

I'm sitting.

Sandwich in hand.

Mustard.

Tree.

Staring out.

(A dry breeze lifts the corner of the napkin I didn't use. It flutters against my thigh. I don't stop it.)

J.R. Voiceover (soft)

But it wasn't enough.

Every day, the same.

(I chew slowly.)

So I ordered a dumb phone.

Dug up my old point-and-shoot.

Loaded some expired film.

I came to the park to take a picture of a stupid tree.

A photo no one would see.

And that was the point.

I sat on a bench and ate a sandwich.

No post. No story.

Mustard on my face.

I left it there.

(I feel it drying. I don't wipe it.)

I let it be my yellow flag of resistance.

And for one brief second, I thought: "Maybe this is the post."

(Beat. I catch myself.)

No.

Nope.

Shut up.

(I sniff. Wipe my nose on my sleeve. Glance around like I've said something aloud.)

Couldn't I just be?

No one cared.

I lifted my mustard face to the sun.

Tried to connect with the trees.

Even if they looked boring now.

Even if everything was ruined.

Even if my life had no meaning unless someone saw it.

(My hand moves toward my pocket. Pure muscle memory. Just the dumb phone now. But the habit is stronger than the intention.)

And of course—

I checked my phantom notifications.

Because what if the tree went viral?

What if someone shared it... ironically?

"yo real tree "

And wasn't that worse?

(A kid laughs nearby. For a second I think it's mine. It's not. Real laughter. Uncompressed.)

The stupid tree didn't care.

Didn't need my validation.

Maybe stupid was the last smart thing I could do.

Maybe the stupid tree knew something I didn't.

(I close my eyes.)

In a forest, a tree falls.

No camera. No documentation. No sound.

Just gravity.

Just silence.

Just...

(The sound cuts out completely. I open my eyes and look directly at the camera. For the first time, I see myself seeing myself. The performance drops. What's left is just a man on a bench, point-and-shoot in my lap, wondering if this moment, this one right now, is the only real thing that's happened all day. I jam my tongue into the hole where my tooth used to be.)

FADE TO BLACK.

The irony isn't lost on me that I'm posting this story about not posting things. But maybe that's the point. Maybe the only way out of the performance trap is to perform your way out of it.

Or maybe I'm just rationalizing because I need the dopamine hit of your notification.

Either way, here we are.

A real question for real people: When was the last time you did something (made something, saw something, felt something) without documenting it? Without the little voice asking "is this content?"

I'm curious if anyone else feels trapped in this weird loop where living and performing have become the same thing. Or if you've found a way to just... be. Without the camera rolling.

Leave a comment if you're actually there. Bonus points if you tell me about your own stupid tree moment.

Leave a comment

Hey Fam,

This story starts with a documentary crew interviewing an old Jewish street photographer about his life’s work.

So yeah—script format made sense.

I’ve always loved film. After art school, I moved west to attend Vancouver Film School. Spent a lot of time staring at Courier 12.

When I started writing The Lost Roll, I imagined it as a short film disguised as a documentary—anchored by 24 black-and-white photos from a fictional New York street photographer, sometime between 1970 and 1980.

And sure, I am a photographer. But was I really going to leave my family for six months, move to New York, and try to recreate twelve iconic street shots from the ’70s?

And when you write a script, you’re always thinking about the budget. Quietly, I think we write for the version we could actually make ourselves.

So I shifted.

Something simpler. More theatrical.

A one-man performance. A chair. A wall of prints.

The darkroom is the audience now.

Still a script. But honestly, it might be a play.

Unless Netflix smells a limited series.

Or A24 calls with a number and a dream.

In that case—

Let’s do lunch.

THE LOST ROLL

By J.R. Clubb

ACT I: CITY SERIES

Warehouse loft in Lower Manhattan. Industrial windows. White walls. Concrete floor. Two softbox lights and a boom mic on a C-stand surround a sagging armchair. Opposite it: a director’s chair.

LEN ROSNER (87), legendary New York street photographer, slumps in the chair, nearly invisible in his trademark beige surplus jacket, film-stuffed cargo pants, scuffed New Balance sneakers, and pigeon-streaked bucket hat.

Behind him, twelve framed black-and-white photographs blur softly out of focus.

Len’s right hand rests in his lap, finger curled around an imaginary shutter button. Always ready.

LEN (to the audience/crew)

Love the outfit, huh?

It's called Jewish camouflage. Nobody notices a guy in this much beige.

Yeah, well, now they do.

Hashtag WhereIsRosner. Right?

Yeah, it was funny at first. But now every kid wants a selfie when they spot old Len in the wild, except now it's screwing with the work.

Sound of a clapper. Len sits up straighter.

Okay. Yeah.

Looks out to camera. Or audience. Or something.

My name is Len Rosner.

I'm eighty-seven.

Yes. Still working. One frame a day.

That's the Rosner rule. Always has been.

No spray and pray. No shoot five and pick one.

Because that's life, right?

He gestures faintly behind him to the 12 framed photos.

Twelve frames. Twelve years.

Back then? Wild.

You’d see a naked woman, completely out of her tree, running free down Fifth Avenue, screaming about God or Nixon. That is, until some poor schmuck runs up, throws a coat over her. Covers her tits like that’s the sin.

Same thing happened to my Aunt Elaine. ’77. Hit the street in all her glory. Full frontal breakdown. They booked her for indecent exposure. Few days later, she killed herself.

That was New York.

We let things hang out.

Now? Everything gets the coat.

That’s gentrification for ya.

Or maybe it’s me.

Maybe I got old.

Maybe I’m the coat now.

He laughs once, not bitter, just surprised.

That's when I knew the Len Rosner Decade was done.

Married? No.

Kids? Didn’t make time. Heck if the light was good, I'd skip lunch. Dinner too.

Had a cat once, but I forgot to feed it. So it split.

Regrets? No. Not exactly. I mean, I did what I came to do. Right?

He swivels back to the wall of photos. Twelve black-and-white frames. Identical borders. Hung with mathematical precision.

That's my City Series. Twelve Frames from the Street. 1970 to 1980.

He smiles proudly.

The Len Rosner Decade.

FRAME 1: CHINATOWN JACKFRUIT

Wide shot. f/11. 1/250. 1973.

That’s Mott Street. September. 3:42 p.m.

My back is screaming. Seven hours crouched on a milk crate.

But the light is finally right.

It slides off the awning, pools on the sidewalk like a snare.

Then she steps into it.

Old woman. Cart full of jackfruit.

Doesn’t see the trap.

Len claps once.

Got her. Clean kill.

I pack up.

Back home.

Hot bath. Two Advil.

Dreams of jackfruit.

Disgusting fruit, by the way.

FRAME 2: CAPTAIN AMERICA

Medium shot. f/5.6 at 1/60. 1972.

Wall Street. A rainy day in March.

I pre-focused on the crosswalk. Dead center.

Then here he comes. Pinstripe glory. No umbrella.

Briefcase up like a shield. Guarding his shellacked hair.

Wall Street Captain America.

HERE TO SAVE THE DAY.

He inhales.

You could smell the dirty money from here.

FRAME 3: EYE IN THE FRAME

Medium shot. f/8 at 1/125. 1975.

East Side. June. 10:20 a.m.

Light bouncing off the glass. Just enough into the alley.

I’m parked there on a folding chair. Three hours.

That’s New York.

You sit still long enough, you turn into furniture.

Then this kid shows up.

Climbs the scaffolding like it’s a jungle gym.

One eye finds me through the slats.

Locked in.

I take the shot.

He doesn’t flinch. Just stares.

I give him a little thumbs up.

He disappears.

I pack up. Walk to Katz’s. Pastrami on rye. No mustard.

Good day.

FRAME 4: CAT ON A WIRE

Wide shot. f/8 at 1/100. 1976.

That’s Alphabet City.

Fire escape shadow cutting clean across the second-story sill.

I’m lining up the shot.

Then this cat just wanders in. Saunters dead center.

Sits.

Looks straight down the lens.

I squint.

Think: is that my cat?

Cat looks pissed.

Like he remembers I’m the guy that stopped feeding him.

Time to ruin the shot.

Can’t blame him.

We lock stares.

Nobody blinks.

I take the shot.

Click spooks him.

He bolts.

(beat)

Good cat.

FRAME 5: RICH VICTIM

Wide shot. f/11 at 1/250. 1971.

That’s Midtown in April.

Empty lot where a building used to be.

I was shooting negative space. Shadow lines.

Sun hits the far wall at that angle for nine minutes, tops.

Then she cuts through mid-frame.

Didn’t touch the ground like the rest of us.

I punch in. Just the heel. Pure leather.

You can’t see it in black and white, but it was blood red.

I can still picture the trail of bodies

just out of frame.

FRAME 6: MAN IN THE MIRROR

Medium shot. f/4 at 1/200. 1974.

I’m at Ninth and B. Early morning.

Broken mirror leaned against a pile of black trash bags.

Frame looked good. Just needed something.

I waited three hours.

Garbage truck pulls up.

I think, shit. Missed it.

Then the garbage man bends down.

Whole body shows up in the mirror.

Light hits the glass.

Smacks him in the face like the Holy Ghost.

I make the shot.

Truck rolls on like nothing happened.

Always more trash in New York, am I right?

FRAME 7: RICH VICTIM #2

Low angle. f/5.6 at 1/250. 1977.

SoHo. October.

Steam rising clean from a grate.

I check that steam every year. Best in the city.

Chef’s kiss.

Had the frame set. Just needed the right victim.

Here she comes.

Bags. Boots. The whole shebang.

Steam hits step four. I take the shot.

Black and white works like an X-ray.

Strips her to grain and ghost and shape and shadow.

The rest?

A song and dance for nobody, really.

FRAME 8: TABLE FOR GONE

Telephoto. f/2.8 at 1/320. 1978.

Old diner window. Midtown. February.

Shot it from across the street.

Coffee still steaming.

Lipstick on the rim.

Crumpled napkin.

Fork hanging off the table.

Got lucky on this one.

Caught the woman leaving.

Walked right into the frame.

Black tears down her face.

I almost felt bad.

But I liked the shot too much to care.

FRAME 9: BIRD ON THE LINE

Medium shot. f/5.6 at 1/125. 1970.

That’s Delancey. August.

Unhooked the payphone. Let it dangle. Just to see.

Waited three hours. Nobody touched it.

Then out of nowhere, a parrot lands.

Right on top. Bright green.

Just stares at me.

Like it’s disappointed.

Like it knows me.

Animals know.

Same with kids.

Everyone else? Too in their heads.

Fine. Good. That’s how I like it.

Don’t wanna be seen.

Anyway—

Easy shot.

Pretty bird did all the work.

FRAME 10: CEMETERY GATE GHOST

Wide shot. f/4 at 1/30. 1979.

Green-Wood. December.

I was trying to shoot the cemetery gate.

So cold out the shutter stuck.

Thought I’d blown the shot.

You know the Rosner rule. One a day.

Figured I’d burned it.

Went home defeated.

Week later, I’m developing the roll.

Get to this frame—and there he is.

An old man.

Just inside the gate.

Looking straight at me.

He looked like a ghost

seeing a ghost.

Sometimes I think film sees what the eye can’t.

Something magic in the chemicals.

FRAME 11: FLOOR SEVEN

Medium shot. f/2.8 at 1/100. 1980.

Midtown hotel. Elevator bank. Afternoon.

Most days I just frame the empty space

and wait for the truth to wander in.

That’s what most photographers get wrong.

They don’t wait long enough.

Elevator opens.

Woman gets yanked out.

Six dogs. Six leashes.

Daylight slaps her in the face.

I click—pure reflex.

Dogs drag her into the street.

She probably never knew she was the shot.

Maybe she’ll see it now, when this thing airs.

Or maybe she’s dead.

And who cares.

FRAME 12: FROZEN DINNER

Wide shot. f/4 at 1/60. 1980.

Houston and Allen. February.

Wind so bad it hurt to blink.

I’d been posted up across the street.

What felt like days.

Wrapped the camera in a plastic bag.

Sat on a bus bench with a heat pack on my back.

Fingers gone after ten minutes.

Held on for thirty.

People blur past—hoods up, heads down.

Center of frame: the bus shelter.

Frosted glass. Twelve figures packed inside.

Whole city in motion.

But they stay sharp.

Huddled in their little glass box.

Urban Eskimos.

Back home.

Hot bath.

Three Advil.

Good night.

ACT II: THE MYSTERY ROLL

INT. STUDIO – DAY

The energy shifts.

LEN moves to the side table. Begins organizing props with mathematical precision.

The archive room. Everything in its place.

Labels printed in tight, even script:

“62 – Bowery / North Shadow / April 3rd Light.”

“17 – Canal Street / Morning Fog / Figure in Distance.”

Negatives in sleeved rows.

Contact sheets in chronological order.

Chemical bottles aligned.

Three Leicas, side by side.

Nothing out of place.

LEN moves through his archival process. Measured. Methodical.

A drawer catches.

He pauses.

Slides it open—slowly.

Inside the seam:

A ROLL OF FILM.

Wrapped in kraft paper. Bound with green painter’s tape, faded and brittle.

He lifts it.

Turns it in his fingers. Slowly.

Black Sharpie across the tape:

DO NOT DEVELOP

He stares.

Considers.

Waits for a question.

LEN (to audience/crew, laughs nervously)

This yours?

Oh.

No… not like me.

I’d never leave a roll undeveloped. Never not print. Never not archive.

(beat)

Then—quietly, almost guilty—

He peels the tape halfway.

Wraps it back.

Slips the roll into his pocket.

Back to work.

STUDIO – NIGHT

The crew is gone. The studio is dim.

Len stands at his desk.

He pulls the roll of film from his pocket. Turns it in his fingers. Studies it.

He opens a tall cupboard. Tucks the roll behind a box of expired fixer.

Closes the door.

BATHROOM – LATER

He brushes his teeth.

Stares at his reflection.

BEDROOM – NIGHT

Len lies in bed. Still. Awake.

The digital clock beside him glows: 3:11 A.M.

He sits up.

Swings his legs to the floor.

STUDIO – NIGHT

A hand opens the cupboard.

Finds the roll of film.

Peels off the tape.

DARKROOM – MOMENTS LATER

Red light floods the space.

He moves mechanically. Reel. Tank. Developer. Agitate. Stop. Fix. Wash.

He hangs the negatives. Waits.

Threads one into the enlarger. Focuses. Sets the timer.

Slides a sheet of paper into place. Exposes. Drops it into the tray.

He rocks the tray gently.

White turns to gray.

Gray darkens.

A figure appears.

A woman. Pregnant. Reclining on his bed.

CLOSE ON LEN’S FACE

Clocking what he’s seeing.

Eyes slightly narrowed.

STUDIO – LATER THAT NIGHT

The darkroom door opens.

Red light spills into the studio.

Len crosses quickly. A little unsteady.

He lays the wet prints on blotting paper. One by one.

Edges squared. Spacing exact.

He breathes.

Pulls out the logbook. Lines it up.

Straightens the corners. Adjusts the lamp.

Uncaps the pen. Sits. Spine straightens.

He reaches into a drawer.

Pulls out a small cassette recorder.

Sets it beside the logbook.

LEN (under his breath)

Okay.

He presses record. A soft click.

Red light glows.

LEN (into recorder)

Log initiated. Archival process commencing.

Mystery roll. Found undeveloped.

Kodak Tri-X 400. September 1977.

Twelve exposures. Leica.

Note on the roll reads: Do not develop.

My hand writing.

No memory of shooting these images.

FRAME 1: THE BED

Wide shot. f/2.8 at 1/100.

Window light through gauze curtains.

That’s my bed.

Same water stain on the ceiling.

Looks like Elvis if you’re lying on your back.

Room’s mine, yeah. But the light feels off.

Pregnant woman reclining on the bed.

Unknown subject. No clothing. But comfortable.

Looking straight into the lens. Not shy.

She trusts the photographer. She’s smiling.

The whole thing feels… familiar.

Not just the room. Her.

I know that feeling.

That shape.

Like I’ve been in that bed with her.

Like I remember trying to arrange our bodies

so we wouldn’t squish the baby.

Jesus.

He flips the print. Clears his throat.

FRAME 2: THE RING

Close-up. f/2.0 at 1/250. Natural light, left side.

Pregnant subject again. Reclined. Her hands bracing the belly.

Another hand rests on top of hers. Larger. Male. Wearing a ring.

Green stone. Oval cut. Maybe a school insignia.

He looks down at his own hand.

Same ring.

He places his hand over the photo. Fingertips align.

He presses, gently.

Then recoils. Quick, like from heat.

Shakes it off.

Flips to the next print.

FRAME 3: THE SPRINKLER

Wide shot. f/5.6 at 1/100. Backlight. Summer sun.

Two boys running through a backyard sprinkler. Just underwear.

Spray arcs across the frame. Air looks wet.

One mid-jump. The other caught mid-laugh.

I can hear them.

That sound kids make when laughing turns into screaming, then back again.

I can feel the mist.

On my face. On my arms.

I mean—I can imagine.

He pauses. Flips to the next print.

FRAME 4: BOY’S FACE

Close-up. f/2.0 at 1/250. Sharp.

One of the boys from the last frame. Looking straight into the lens.

Lips stretched wide. One eye squinting.

Like he’s trying to crack someone up behind the camera.

Len chuckles softly. Covers his mouth with the back of his hand.

He’s got my eyes.

Her freckles, though.

He leans in. Brings the photo close. Hovers. Then presses his lips to the boy’s forehead.

Then he blinks. Pulls back. Looks at the photo. A little stunned. A little spooked.

What the hell am I doing.

He flips to the next print.

FRAME 5: OLD WOMAN IN CHAIR

Medium shot. f/5.6 at 1/60. Indoor light.

Older woman, slumped in a kitchen chair.

Cigarette in one hand. Curlers in her hair.

Another hand, blurred, reaching in from behind.

Adjusting something.

The old lady’s looking straight into the lens.

Len tilts his head.

Could be her mother.

He lifts the print. Inhales slowly.

Perm solution. Mixed with cigarette smoke.

Burns my nostrils.

Linoleum cool under my socks.

Radio mumbling some silly song.

The whole place warm and stale.

Like someone just stepped out for a second.

I think she said something.

“Can you take these damn curlers out now?”

He shakes his head, softly.

What am I talking about?

He lowers the print. Flips to the next one.

FRAME 6: THE COMPASS

Close-up. f/4 at 1/100. Shallow depth.

Kid on the floor. Cross-legged.

Same face as before. Mine, maybe.

He’s holding the compass open in both hands.

Pointing a finger northeast. Toward the window.

Light pouring in across the floorboards.

Long, steady lines. Like it knows the way.

Len opens a drawer. No hesitation.

Pulls out the same brass compass.

He holds it in his palm. Closes his hand around it.

Sits still. Eyes shut. Waiting.

Then clicks it open. Looks northeast.

(beat)

Huh. Well… that’s odd.

He sets the compass down. Straightens a little. Next print.

FRAME 7: DEAD BIRD

Close-up. f/2.8 at 1/250. Natural window light.

Small bird. Could be yellow. Or white.

Hard to tell in black and white.

It’s lying in the kitchen sink.

Wings tucked. Neck bent.

No blood I can see. But it’s dead.

Len leans in.

Runs a finger slowly along the photo.

Traces the curve of the body. The tilt of the neck.

Why would someone take this?

A dead bird. In a sink.

His eyes flick up. Something clicks.

It was flying around the kitchen.

Must’ve gotten in through the window.

Kids were shouting. Laughing.

She grabbed a broom—not to hit it. Just to guide it back out.

Until—

Len lifts both hands and claps them together. Sharp.

Smack.

It hit the glass.

Dropped dead into the basin.

I can still hear it.

That thud.

Everyone just… went quiet.

One of the kids said—

“Daddy… is it dead?”

(beat)

Len blinks. Shakes his head, small.

No.

That can’t be right.

That didn’t happen.

That’s not my memory.

(soft)

Is it?

He flips the photo face-down. Gently.

Palms it for a second. Then moves on.

FRAME 8: THE DOCK

Wide shot. f/5.6 at 1/500. Backlit. Motion blur.

Lake. Late afternoon.

Dog mid-jump. Frozen above the water.

Big ears. Wet fur. Mouth open. Looks like it’s smiling.

Len leans in. Squints at the print.

Lab mix, maybe. I don’t know dogs. Never had one.

I don’t know this place either. Never did much vacationing.

This doesn’t look like something I’d shoot.

Too easy. Too happy.

He sits back. Nods once. Like he’s settled something inside himself.

Not mine.

Flips to the next frame, glad to be back on firmer ground.

FRAME 9: SUNSET

Wide shot. f/11 at 1/30. Highlights blown.

Sky’s gone. Nothing for the grain to grab.

Amateur hour.

What kind of idiot shoots a sunset in black and white?

He frowns. Starts to scoff. Then stops.

Probably looked better in person.

Maybe the kids were there. Leaning on my knees.

Her head on my shoulder.

He squints. Looks again. Something shifts.

It wasn’t about the sky.

It was about the moment.

Except—

I wasn’t there.

He flips the photo. A little too fast.

FRAME 10: THE KISS

Mirror shot. f/3.5 at 1/60. Slight motion blur.

Reflection off center.

She’s kissing my cheek.

I’m in the frame.

Same face. Just younger. Happy.

He startles—like he’s been caught in the shot.

Leans forward. Squints. Blinks once, hard.

That’s me.

He says it out loud before he can stop himself. Then softer—

That’s me?

He slowly lifts his hand. Presses it to his cheek.

Right where her lips landed. Like the warmth might still be there.

I look like I belong there.

Like I was someone you’d kiss for no reason.

He closes his eyes. Tries to call it up. Nothing.

Opens them again. Looks back.

If it was real, then I was happy.

He flips the print. Slowly. Like he doesn’t want to let go.

FRAME 11: FAMILY PORTRAIT

Wide shot. f/5.6 at 1/30. Tripod. Self-timer.

Man. Woman. Two kids.

He leans in. Squints.

That’s my face.

That’s my body.

Arms hugging them in close.

Like I know them.

Like they know me.

But I don’t.

I don’t know these people.

He looks closer. Backpedals a little, like the photo might lunge at him.

What the hell is this?

Beat. His voice cracks, trying to keep itself calm.

I never had kids.

I never—

This didn’t happen.

Or I’ve lost it.

I’ve lost it.

Maybe it’s finally happening.

I’m at that age where everything goes out the window.

He exhales. Unsteady.

Or maybe I’m dead.

And who cares.

Len barks a single dry laugh. Bitter, self-aware. A callback without joy.

He sets the photo down. Doesn’t write a thing. Doesn’t log it.

Fine.

One more.

FRAME 12: EMPTY BED

Wide shot. f/2.8 at 1/60. Same room as Frame One. Morning light.

My bed. Again.

But this time—

No woman. Just an empty bed.

Corners tucked tight. Pillow centered. Flat.

Curtain drawn halfway. Elvis water stain.

Len sits still. Looking. Still breathing.

He reaches for the recorder.

Stops.

Just lets it run.

END OF ROLL.

INT. STUDIO – LATER

Twelve new prints on the wall.

The City Series is gone.

In their place: the mystery roll.

Family. Moments. Glimpses.

Still black and white.

Softer now. Warmer. A little crooked.

Len sits in the same chair.

Same setup.

Softbox lights. Boom mic.

Everything in place.

But the air feels different.

He faces forward.

Framed by the twelve domestic prints behind him.

This time, they are in focus.

He sits still. Eyes low.

Outside, morning light creeps through the blinds.

Forgiving light.

A breath.

He straightens.

Looks out to camera. Or audience. Or something.

A flicker of a smile.

LEN

Okay. Yeah.

My name is Len Rosner.

FADE TO BLACK

Thanks for reading The Lost Roll.

I think this one’s a sweet story. Maybe it’ll be a film one day. Or a play. Or just this.

For now, I hope it played like a movie in your mind.

Maybe this is as good as it gets. And that’s okay. Like life, right?

We just enjoy what we’ve got while it’s here.

Let me know what your thought in the comments. I read every one.

Leave a comment

P.S. Big thanks to Chris Zabel for becoming a paid subscriber for the year. Really appreciate the support, pal.

And if you loved this story as much as I did, pass it on to a friend. Always means a lot.

Share

(Not the promised story about the reclusive Jewish street photographer in 1970s New York. That one’s done. Absolutely finished. Just marinating in its own doneness. Why would I lie?)

I almost let the streak die today just to see what kind of psychological spiral it might trigger. But instead, out of the digital fog, comes a tender little offering: a video of my kids reviewing the new white cheddar vegan Cheetos. Not sponsored. Yet.

I’ve been dipping into video lately, testing setups, learning to shoot and edit, making plenty of mistakes. Still lots to figure out, but I’m excited to add this medium to the creative toolbox. Also a great excuse to catch these fleeting moments with my kids before they glitch into full on eye-roll mode.

The script will return next week unless another urgent vegan snack review takes over. A YouTube channel might be forming. Stay tuned if you enjoy snacks.

Want more videos?

Tap that “Leave a Comment” button below. Tell me what you think, drop your favourite snack, or just type “more please.”

Leave a comment

Peace out,

Rad Dad.

Sometimes: one week is not a lot.

Not a lot of time to write a great story. Or even a good one.

Even if I try to rebrand it as “fast fiction,” like that makes it sound intentional.

I made this back-alley deal with myself: one story a week.

Rain or shine. Good or bad.

Why?

Because without some kind of constraint, I’ll rewrite until the cows come home.

And when they do, I’ll invite them in, offer them herbal tea, and ask if they’ve got notes.

I’ll tinker. I’ll fuss.

I’ll press little eyelash kisses onto the story’s belly for months,

until said baby turns to me and says:

“Dad, please stop. My friends think it’s weird.”

So: constraint. One week. No do-overs.

But then comes the moment.

The moment I realize the thing I thought would be finished… isn’t.

Not yet.

This week, I wanted to add narration. Test out my brand-new microphone.

The character’s an 89-year-old Jewish New York street photographer.

Not exactly low-hanging fruit for a first stab at voice acting.

You don’t just wing that. You stretch. You warm up.

You do 89 takes.

You become the man.

And this week?

I was not the man.

So now I’m standing at the crossroads.

Faced with three equally awkward options:

Option 1: Send nothing. Hope you don’t notice. Or assume I’m dead.

Option 2: Send a little note that says: “Sorry, nothing this week.”

Risk wasting your time with an empty digital envelope.

You sit down. You open the email. There’s nothing in it.

So now you delete it.

But your Trash is full. So you empty that.

Which reminds you the real recycling bin is full.

So you lug that outside, dump the little bin into the big bin and drag that down the driveway.

And now you’re outside, on a Sunday, holding a bin, realizing it's not recycling day.

The neighbour sees you.

They awkwardly nod, smile and wave.

You awkwardly nod, smile and wave back.

You both know: something’s not right.

Option 3: Pretend everything’s fine.

Say, “Of course I have something,” and throw together a desperate something.

You become that kid who didn’t read the book for the book report:

Catcher in the Rye is about catching. But not really. It’s more about rye.

Or worse: Trump at a press conference doing book report:

NO ONE RESPECTS CHEKHOV MORE THAN ME. PEOPLE ARE ALWAYS SAYING THAT. TREMENDOUS WRITER. WROTE THE CHERRY TREE. A LOT OF PEOPLE SAY THE CHERRY ORCHARD IS ABOUT CHANGE, WHICH I LOVE, UNLESS IT’S CLIMATE CHANGE, WHICH IS FAKE NEWS. WE DON’T LIKE THAT. AND SUBTEXT, NOBODY KNEW ABOUT SUBTEXT BEFORE ME. I SAID, LET’S DO SUBTEXT, AND NOW EVERYBODY WANTS IT. TREMENDOUS DEMAND. EVERYBODY’S CALLING ME. WRITERS. BOOK PEOPLE. THEY SAY, SIR, THANK YOU FOR INVENTING SUBTEXT AGAIN.

Or this week. Option 4: The classic.

The eternal.

The one we all reach for eventually:

The Dog Ate My Homework.

More specifically:

CHEWY AND THE BOUNCY BALL

by J.R. Clubb

Upon return: dog.

In house.

Uninvited.

Unconcerned.

Unleashed.

Could be the neighbour’s.

Breed: Retriever.

Subtype: Golden.

Fur: Blond. Glorious. Doing that shampoo-commercial thing, but also—very, very smelly. Like a dog who’s recently swum in a sewage creek with RFK Jr. (shirtless, but still in jeans, doing that Kennedy thing where everything’s a photo op that ends in quiet American tragedy).

By the time I reached my desk, the dog was already slobbering on my laptop.

Final Draft open.

My new script torn to shreds like an old slipper.

Keys H, G, P, and M: jammed by mud from the dog’s paws, fresh off under fence tunnel operation.

EXCERPT:

INT. BACKYARD – LATE SUN

CEWY enters. Fur all bouncy.

e looks at sky, very wide-eyed.

CEWY (V.O.)

Life is wild, ya?

Sothin lands in your face. A leaf. A ball. A scent of fox.

You run. You run an’ yell. You say: “I do!”

But den—BIRD.

An now you feel feely.

You bite air, but air no et you back.

I stared at the screen, unsure if the dog was rewriting my script or casting a latin spell.

INT. DOG PARK – EAVEN

CEWY RUNS. A BALL BOUNCES. SOMEONE YELLS. NOODY LISTENS.

Renamed my main character CHEWY. Same name as dog’s collar.

Opening line now reads:

“Y NAE IS CEWY.”

Replaced my central object (Chekhov’s camera) with a half-chewed tennis ball.

Deleted the opening monologue about generational grief and replaced it with:

[INTENSE BARKIN AT OWN REFLECTION / VIGOROUS TESTICLE LICKIN]

Which, I admit it—was more emotionally honest.

EXT. OFF-LEAS PARK

Cewy runs — yes, always yes

Squirrel zoos up tree

Someone screams “Cewy, no” but it’s too late

Cewy leas into public fountain

Water sakes off fur in slow otion

CUT TO:

slow-o close-up — the ball.

It bounces.

Te tennis ball angs idair.

Listenin.

A ause in te caos.

Tie stretces like a wet leas.

WERNER ERZOG (V.O.)

Te do ursue te ball not for joy,

but because it as to.

In its bouncy see-saw lies a found desair.

Still—it runs.

CEWY LEAS INTO FRAME, TONUE FLAIN LIKE A FLA OF WILDNESS.

Half the lines now read:

“Snif dat juicy butt.”

And here’s the part I don’t want to admit, but will because I believe in literary honesty:

It works.

The missing letters create a strange constraint—

stripping language down to the wet, yelping core.

Without, the script becomes… what?

Something between haiku and howl.

Something butt-forward, but also… butt-brave?

Chewy looked up.

Sneezed, or smiled.

Then: a single nose-click on “Save.”

Over desk.

Through fence-hole.

End of scene.

So.

That’s it. That’s the truth of it.

I know how it sounds—

The classic: “Oh no! My screenplay was rewritten by a mysterious dog who might be a ghost!” cliché but whatever.

I’ll be back next Sunday with something that took longer. (Because that means it’s good, right?)

In the meantime, the archives remain untouched by muddy paws:

👉 jrclubb.substack.com

J.R.

What do you do when the thing isn’t ready?

Do you:

– Fabricate a dog-myth and pretend it’s a metaphor?

– Go silent and hope readers assume you’ve transcended?

Let me know what kind of deception you prefer:

🐶 1 bark = “We get it. The butt-sniff is eternal.”

🐶🐶 2 barks = “More divine canine scripture, please.”

🐶🐶🐶 3 barks = “We love you. You are Chewy now. Run.”

🐶🐶🐶🐶 4 barks = “Chewy was never dog. Chewy was always god.”

Leave a comment

🌊 Eight Arms of Mothers

This week’s theme: The Mothers.

A mixtape for the hands that patch the sails and pack the snacks.

🎵 Song on loop

“Janet” — M.T. Hadley

“She was diagnosed in the summer / and she died a year later.”

Hadley sings about caring for his mother through illness, about the loss that follows, and the ache that remains. “I still have my memories of a good woman,” he says.

He carries her voice, her kindness, like a light in the dark.

“My mother told me to be kind / And she told me to be true /
And when I wake up in the night / I will always think of you.”

This song is for my friend Dave, who lost his mother recently. The pain doesn’t go away. And why would you want it to?

That’s where the love lives now.

📖 Mom Book

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong — a letter from a son to his mother. Lyrical, visceral, and fragmented. It reads like memory: nonlinear but intimate.

Though it’s rooted in the immigrant experience, it speaks to something universal—how we try, and often fail, to tell our mothers who we are, what they meant, and what we became because of them.

🎬 Mom Movie Moment

A Woman Under the Influence (1974) — dir. John Cassavetes

Gena Rowlands gives one of the greatest performances ever captured on film.

This is not the soft-focus version of motherhood.

It’s raw, erratic, luminous—

a woman unraveling while trying to make dinner.

Mental illness, devotion, confusion, and tenderness.

It’s not always easy to watch,

but it’s unforgettable.

🌙 Found Objects As Art

Title: Mom Thing That Shouldn’t Be Holy but Is

Keeping mints in her purse during church.

💡 Mom Wisdom (That We’ll Pretend Not to Believe Until We’re Older)

From the mouth of Franny:

“It’s not about being right. It’s about being kind.”

“There are good people. And there are annoying people.

You don’t have to hang around the second kind.”

🧸 From the Kids: Franny & Truman

I asked my kids what they love most about their mom.

Franny (age 8):

“She’s loving and inspiring.

If I think I can’t do something,

she’s there for me.

She has inspired me to be a better person,

and if I didn’t have her,

I’d probably just be

some selfish girl.”

Truman (age 5):

“Hugs.

Because she’s the best ever.

And nice.”

🫁 Health/Wellness Micro-Moment

Box Breathing

My fave when I’m stressed or can’t sleep.

Breathe in for 5.

Hold for 5.

Breathe out for 5.

Hold for 5.

Repeat until zen.

It slows the heart, calms the nerves, brings you back.

Navy SEALs use it in combat.

Moms use it in minivans.

It works.

❓ Now I Get It

What’s one thing your mom did when you were a kid

that drove you absolutely nuts—

but now you catch yourself doing it too,

and driving your kids nuts in exactly the same way?

Leave a comment.

Leave a comment

Now to this week’s featured poem:

The Boat Keepers

Two mothers.

One had washed up on the rocks of Newfoundland—

like a fish that knew too many lullabies.

The other had a finger stained with beet juice,

pointing toward someone

who forgot to close the fridge door.

Both tender but firm,

like a well-timed “NO.”

Made of myth

and last night’s leftovers:

probably lentils

hiding under mashed potatoes.

They don’t ask for much—

just that you remember the soy milk.

They reminded you five times.

And still, somehow,

you forgot.

(But that’s OK.

They’ve been soaking nuts all day.

They’ll just make it themselves.)

Because that’s what they do.

I found Wednesday

folded between the pages of my mother’s Bible—

pressed there like a butterfly made of Sundays.

She sat at the edge of my childhood

like a lighthouse disguised as a woman,

scratching maps into my back

with fingernails that had once defeated sea monsters—

tracing circles, waves, and stars

until my eyelids grew heavy.

Her hands always moving:

fixing, folding, brushing, building.

She smelled like hairdresser scissors—

warm metal and peach shampoo.

The kind that shaped our bangs in the kitchen

while my father blasted Elvis

and wept for a childhood that never let go of him.

My mom didn’t quiet the chaos—

she shaped it,

stacked it,

kept it spinning

just long enough

for the rest of us to grow up safely inside it.

My wife arrived

during a summer so hot

the sky melted sticky under our bare feet.

She smelled of rose hips,

colloidal silver,

and answers you have to steep in boiling water.

We collided in the health food section—

somewhere between kale

and karmic rebirth—

and made a pact to live forever.

An act of resistance

against the math of aging parents and late fertility.

We promised to raise goblins

with wild hearts

and library cards.

To build something strange and permanent

from good music,

Tongkat Ali,

and animal rights.

Love was declared

like a counter spell

against extinction.

Sometimes,

they exist in the same minute:

My mom in the pantry, making sourdough bread.

My wife in the bath, summoning stillness—

blue vervain, moon water,

and the sacred spell of unavailability.

But then,

the worlds collide—

the lighthouse keeper meets the storm conjurer.

My mother teaching my wife

how to read weather in a person’s shoulders.

My wife showing my mother

how ashwagandha can make memories bloom backward.

The lighthouse woman learns

new ways to bend light.

The herb-gatherer discovers

ancient methods of standing firm.

Mothers, plural and magnificent.

Me, singular and bewildered.

I asked them both

how they stayed steady.

They shrugged.

Tapped the ground.

Measured the weather in my eyes.

“Someone has to keep you dreamers tethered,”

they said.

My mother passed on the back-scratch patterns

to my wife

like a family recipe for sleep—

that now quiets both me

and our children.

Time bends all relationships

toward intimacy

or absence.

Now,

my mother’s hands, once so steady,

tremble.

The lighthouse keeper

who helped us all sleep

finds herself

adrift in the midnight hours.

So now my wife brings her

blue bottles of lemon balm,

dropper jars of valerian root,

sprinkles magnesium powder by her bedside

like offerings,

whispers routines into her ear:

warmth before bed,

no screens,

lavender on the pillows.

I used to think time

was something I could outsmart,

outlive.

Now,

I just hope it wears soft shoes

when it dances

with the people I love.

They don’t request gratitude.

They just do what’s right.

They ask if I remembered soy milk.

I did not.

But I wrote this instead—

a thank you

for the women

who keep us from sinking.

Love you, Mom.

🐙

This has been Eight Arms: Dispatches from the Drift—

a weekly tangle of memory, music, and oddities.

Thanks for being here to feel it with me.

If this made you think of someone—

a friend, a sister, a fellow floater of boats—

send it their way.

Exit Polls

by J. R. Clubb

Somewhere, a bell rang.

The election was called.

Three weeks to decide.

That’s how we do it here.

Locked inside.

Screens: dark mode.

Echo chamber: airtight.

Beliefs bubbled.

Hot takes fermented.

Cabbage radicalized into sauerkraut.

“Just tell me I’m right,” I whispered to my sycophantic AI.

YES: You are right.

YES: They are wrong.

YES: Here is meme. Enjoy dopamine squirt.

Polls: strong.

Outcome: inevitable.

Landing: smooth.

But when I looked out the front window,

the lawn signs didn’t add up.

Either someone was rearranging reality,

or my algorithm was lying to me.

Votes tallied.

And yet.

It didn’t feel like winning.

It didn’t feel like losing.

It just felt—

PFFFRBT.

The house unpressurized

and burped me out.

Sour Cream and Opinion-scented.

As if to say:

Election cycle complete.

Now go touch grass.

The door clicked shut behind me.

Just me.

In my boxers.

On my driveway.

Wait—what?

Sunlight slapped me in the face.

I tried to toggle the screen brightness.

Nothing. Had to resort to old-fashioned squinting.

Scroll finger twitching, trying to swipe.

I just wobbled there.

My peripheral range wide open.

Unfiltered atmosphere coating my teeth.

Pollen-laced air scraped my nose holes.

Birds chirped with reckless neutrality—

like they hadn’t been up all night refreshing the results.

I staggered down the driveway to fetch my bin.

Across the street: Mike.

Pink, hairless knees. Taut calves.

That look people get when they’ve been right for too long.

He folded the sign carefully,

like a sniper disassembling his scope,

and slid it in the trash.

He looked up. I looked back.

Braced for a dirty look.

Got the nod.

Then came the wave.

Then the smile.

What the heck?

And worse—

It felt… good?

Two adult fetuses in boxers,

each surfing their own slab of poured concrete,

trying to reboot the ancient ritual of neighbourliness.

“What day’s yard waste pickup?” Mike asked.

“Zone 2 is May 3,” I said, with no idea how I even knew that.

I blinked. He blinked.

Good.

I dragged my can back to the side of the house.

The trees were budding.

Flowers unzipped to show off their privates like it was perfectly normal.

The breeze licked my neck.

A little familiar. A little inappropriate.

Everything shimmered like the world had slipped into something more comfortable.

Everything a little swollen with hope.

A little rude with joy.

Had it always been like this?

This obscene?

This—

beautiful?

I stepped off the driveway. Let the street take me.

I passed a puddle shaped like Alberta draining into a storm drain.

A teen failed a kickflip with monk-like grace.

I gave him a thumbs up for effort.

An old man Windexed bird shit off his patio furniture.

We nodded.

Waved.

Smiled.

I even had the urge to throw in a small bow,

like I was in a tea ceremony.

What was this?

A woman cut her lawn without listening to a podcast.

Another scraped last summer’s meat off his barbecue,

looked up, and blinked like it was just another Tuesday.

Nods grew longer.

Waves turned into salutes.

Smiles started to linger too long,

like we were remembering how faces work.

Then more people leaked out.

Dripping from garages, basements, sheds.

Onto the street.

Not to argue.

Just to walk.

“Nice day,” someone said.

And it really was.

One guy wore a bathrobe

and carried a pineapple like a severed head,

entirely unfazed by the wasp circling his ear.

A woman dragged a folding chair,

just in case she needed to sit and remember how legs work.

A man hoisted a toilet plunger wrapped in a plastic bag like a torch,

lighting our way.

A toddler on a tricycle declared:

“I’m the moon now!”

No one fact-checked her.

“Hello, moon,” we said.

There were no sides.

No slogans.

Just this soft parade of unplugged avatars,

newly returned to their earthly bodies.

Still wet and twitching with phantom notifications.

Somewhere behind us, the algorithm wheezed,

trying to catch up.

Trending now.

Breaking news.

Urgent update.

Our phones pinged,

and we swatted the notifications away like flies.

The algorithm tried again.

THE ELECTION WAS RIGGED.

I felt mine buzz in my pocket.

For a second, I almost reached.

But the breeze was too damn nice.

So I kept walking.

The Moon rang her little bell—

and it sounded like the beginning of a civilization.

More faces, new to the light of day.

Hands: clutching brooms. Leashes. Children’s hands.

An understanding between us.

We didn’t cheer.

There was no music.

Just a low sound, almost human.

Someone humming.

A half-remembered anthem

from before we all got rewired.

Maybe just the sound of coming back to ourselves.

No one said it out loud.

What we’d almost become.

We didn’t need to.

It was there,

in the nod.

In the wave.

In the smile that said:

Yes, we lost track of ourselves.

But we held the artificially drawn line.

For now.

And then:

a dog took a shit on a lawn.

The man holding the leash shrugged,

gestured vaguely at his boxer shorts.

The universal symbol for no doggie bags.

We all saw it.

No one said anything.

We just kept walking.

[Editor’s Note]

Thanks for reading this post-election unity message. If you’re still drifting through the haze, brain buffering and scroll finger twitching, here’s what’s been on my radar this week. Just a few things that helped cut through the static and remind me what it means to be human.

🐙 Eight Arms

1. 🎧 Adrianne Lenker – “Oldest (Live)”

“I am the oldest I’ve ever been / And the youngest I’ll ever be again.”

A gentle reminder that every moment is a hinge.

2. 📖 Think Again by Adam Grant

Rethinking isn’t weakness. It’s wisdom.

After an election, the instinct is to double down. To dig in.

But Grant argues for intellectual humility. For holding beliefs loosely. For approaching others not as opponents, but as collaborators.

The point isn’t to agree.

It’s to stay curious long enough to understand why someone sees it differently.

3. 🐸 Strange observation

A small rock, undisturbed for who knows how long, until I kicked it and finally noticed it had been there all along.

4. 📺 Rich Roll x Dan Harris (YouTube)

Last week, Rich Roll sat down with Dan Harris to talk meditation, meaning, and mental habits.

One question from that conversation stuck with me (see #5).

5. 📝 Quote I can’t let go of

“Are you sure?”

Dan Harris uses it to check the stories we tell ourselves.

“That guy’s a bad guy.”

Are you sure?

Adam Grant reframes it: What if I’m wrong?

Treat beliefs like hypotheses, not identity.

Argue like you’re right.

Listen as if you’re wrong.

They’re wrong.

We’re right.

It’s always been this way.

But what if you’re wrong?

Maybe the real work now is rethinking.

Or better—reconnecting.

6. 🧠 Tech/AI/art curiosity

Ask your AI to argue against you. Not for fun—for clarity.

Pick a belief. Make it defend the other side. Political or personal.

You might be right. You might not. Either way, you’ll see more of how someone else got there.

Half the country voted differently. They’re not stupid. Not evil. Just standing somewhere else.

If AI can help you see that, even for a second, it might be its most useful trick.

Try this:

“Play devil’s advocate. Challenge my idea. Poke holes. What am I missing? Where could this fail? Be brutally honest.”

7. 🧘‍♂️ Health/Wellness moment

Meditation. Not to escape, but to return.

Dan Harris says even one minute matters. Not monk mode. Not clearing your mind. Just noticing when it wanders, then guiding it back—like a hand on a kite string.

Curious where to start? Sam Harris’s Waking Up app is surprisingly not annoying.

Here’s a 30-day guest pass:

🔗 Waking Up Guest Pass

A few quiet minutes to help calm the clatter.

8. 🕯️ Question for the reader

When the world divides, what helps you stay connected to your fellow human?

Hit reply = I’d love to hear what grounds you.

And if this post-election moment resonated, consider forwarding it to someone who might need a little reminder of our shared humanity.

Morning. Evening. Something in between.

You decide.

Welcome to Eight Arms, dispatches from the drift.

Each week, a small gathering of music, books, dreams, and oddities collected from wherever the week wanders.

Every issue follows a loose theme.

This week’s: 🐸

A mixtape for curious minds, full of what I am reading, hearing, noticing, or making.

Sometimes I will sneak in a short story or poem too, like a note folded into a pocket.

Today it is a poem.

Subscribe now

Eight Arms 🐙

Pick an arm. Any arm.

🎵 Song on Loop

“I’ve Done Drugs (Out of the Mist)” — The Frogs (1989)

From It’s Only Right and Natural, a homemade album full of wild, tender, absurd songs.

Like a frog channeling Lou Reed through a haze of bad mushrooms.

📖 Book I’m Reading

Tenth of December by George Saunders. (Author of Lincoln in the Bardo.)

A collection of short stories that catch you off guard. Tender, strange, hilarious, aching.

It feels like reading fiction for the first time again.

He brought me back to writing and to short stories most of all.

🐸 Strange Observation

My daughter told me her friend’s dad keeps a box of random insects.

When he’s bored, he blows on spiders to make them fall asleep.

Then he places two sleeping spiders face to face in a “battle box,” taps each one three times, and watches them wake up and fight.

No one asked for this information.

But now I live with it.

🔗 Strange Phenomenon

In Magnolia (1999), Paul Thomas Anderson made it rain frogs.

No reason. No warning.

Just a reminder that the world can break itself open whenever it feels like it.

🌀 Sentence I Can’t Forget

“Time’s fun when you’re having flies.” — Kermit the Frog

🤖 Tech/AI/Art Curiosity

NotebookLM — Google’s new AI that turns your notes, links, and YouTube dives into a full conversation between two podcast hosts.

Deep, detailed, weirdly useful.

A secret weapon for writers and researchers.

🧘‍♀️ Health/Fitness/Wellness Micro-Moment

Sinking into frog pose (Mandukasana) at dawn.

The ground cool against your palms. Breathing like a tide going out.

🌱 Wonder For You

What sacred little creature have you stopped believing in without meaning to?

Thanks for reading Eight Arms. 🐙

If you want to pull someone else into our tangle of silk arms, send them here: https://jrclubb.substack.com

Pick an arm.

Onto our feature presentation:

Manual for Raising (and Being Raised by) Goblins

Two goblins. Sticky. Loud.

Unlicensed magic leaking from every orifice.

A voice once full of lyricism and lust, now mostly used to yell:

“Stop licking the rat.”

One rule: KEEP THEM ALIVE.

1.

I remember a time when nothing happened.

It was between two summers that didn’t like each other very much.

I was someone else.

I kept changing my mind

like a butterfly trying to land on an eyelash.

The sky smelled like canned pineapple

and Mexican bus stops at 2 a.m.

where nobody got picked up.

And nobody got home.

Their phones, long dead.

So they stared into the dark

like it was a new species they’d never seen.

Someone looked up,

saw stars,

reached to scroll.

Nothing happened.

And that felt holy again.

2.

My watch keeps 3 times:

Yesterday.

Today.

And Whatever Comes After This.

That’s when the goblin-ferret came.

She had a sweet face,

like it hadn’t yet heard all the bad news in the world.

The hospital said, “Congrats.”

But the nurse winked at me,

and I didn’t know what that meant at the time

until the universe folded me in on the joke.

Franny collected frogs.

She kept them under the sink,

lined up like thoughts you only think while brushing your teeth.

I asked her why.

She shrugged,

licked the air,

and said,

“Because they need someone who believes in them.”

So she gave them names.

Steve. Big Mouth. Buttcheeks.

3.

The second goblin arrived

during an ice storm so cold

the sky made a sound like a molar cracking.

It knocked out all the electricity in Northern Ontario.

Truman smelled of peanut butter.

But there was no sign of toast.

He looked me in the eyes,

saluted,

and said,

“We must rise to the occasion, soldier.”

Then he pointed to the dog—

red and wide-eyed,

painted with beet juice.

The dog looked at me

like it had questions.

Concerns.

I wasn’t about to get involved.

War was declared.

So I saluted back.

Because sometimes

there’s nothing else to do

but pretend

you understand

the strange, militant beauty of children

when they start organizing

against everything you stand for.

4.

April, maybe.

The clocks were suspicious.

Always blinking on the stove.

Always lying.

I woke up in the kitchen at 3:17 a.m.

Soaking wet.

Wearing a life jacket.

Water skis.

And the memory of a band I used to love

but couldn’t name without crying.

The goblins were asleep,

curled in their nests

dreaming of sandwiches they forgot to finish.

I whispered,

“I used to write poems.”

The fridge didn’t answer.

Just kept snoring like a ghost

trying not to wake the dishwasher.

5.

The fridge calendar gave up around May.

It only spoke in jam smears now—

mostly shaped like minor celebrities

I once thought mattered:

Crispin Glover.

Vincent Gallo.

Richard Brautigan.

(They still matter.)

I yelled for the goblins,

“Hold each other’s hands.”

As they crossed the street to the library,

fingers interlocked like a small religion

that worships only books with pictures

and perpetual snack breaks.

They believed in dried mango

and things that came in tiny bags.

Truman pushed Franny into a shrine of Dog Man books.

The librarian perked up,

adjusted her glasses.

The air changed.

6.

I tapped my watch.

It said “Eight Years.”

Holy shit.

Time does fly.

They played serious.

Like it mattered.

They declared war on dust bunnies

with the confidence of generals raised by ferrets.

They named their kingdom:

MAYBE.

Franny said,

“Only enter if you know the password.”

I guessed:

Steve. Big Mouth. Buttcheeks.

(The password changed hourly.)

Truman pointed at a dandelion.

“Lellow.”

(Oh, yellow.)

I didn’t argue.

Some words just want to be held

exactly the way they are.

Please don’t change.

Please don’t change.

7.

I used to write poems about women with serious eyes.

Now I write down the dreams

the goblins whisper when they sleep.

One of them said,

“You be the tree,

I’ll be the storm.”

I sat there,

watching them breathe,

like they were made of lellow dandelions

or tiny fingerprints on my eyelids.

And for one electric second—

a universe became still.

They were kind.

They were sweet.

They were innocent.

And I thought:

This is the whole goddamn thing.

My job:

Just keep them alive.

Tidal Closing

Keep a frog in your pocket this week.

Even if it’s invisible.

Especially if it’s invisible.

I’d love to hear:

Which arm called to you?

Hit reply and tell me.

Or just send a single word. (Or a frog emoji.)

Let me know you’re out there. 🌿🐸

Dear Wandering Saints in Digital Robes,

It’s Easter Sunday, sacred in that quiet, peculiar way where one wakes and partakes in the ancient rite of tucking waxy chocolates into tufts of grass, while squirrels observe from the branches, quietly judging your methods.

Then one dons beige and sidles into a pew like a tourist among the devout.

Life update:

This week I’ve embarked on a grand reordering of the mind. I’m learning Notion in hopes of building better systems. (If you’re not familiar: notion.com.)

I’m building something called a second brain. Right now, it feels more like a fourth appendix. Tasks. Projects. PARA (shoutout Tiago Forte). Linked databases that lead to other databases that whisper “you’re not doing enough” inside three nested toggles. I’m reading his book to try and make some sense of it all.

I’m trying to wrangle the whole circus: tasks, notes, goals, books I’m reading. Always chasing smoother systems, a little automation, a touch of AI magic. Anything to carve out more space to write. Or unplug. Spend time with the kids.

I might ditch HoneyBook and go full Notion. They just hiked the price by 40%, even though they know I’m already neck-deep in the Subscription Abyss.

(But hey, while we’re here… please do subscribe to mine. 😅)

Subscribe now

Next week, I’ve got two new stories simmering. But for now, I want to try something different.

What’s stirring in you lately?

What aches a little? What glows weirdly in the dark? What keeps poking the creative part of your ribs when you’re just trying to make dinner?

Hit reply to this email, or drop me a message on Substack.

Ask me anything — art, process, productivity, wellness, impostor syndrome, parenting, self-doubt, perfectionism, ambition, legacy, or something more slippery and unnameable.

Maybe it’s about how I write. Or how I get unstuck. Or how I juggle creative work and family without accidentally writing an invoice on a frisbee.

Big stuff. Small stuff. Tender, ridiculous stuff.

I welcome it all.

Hit reply. Drop a line. Let’s talk life.

I’ll start featuring a few responses in future letters, along with my take. It might be practical, poetic, or just a strange kind of company.

This is the work. The weird, slow unfolding.

And I’m grateful you’re here for it.

We’re all out here trying.

Let’s be out here trying together.

Ever your fellow wanderer,

– J.R.

Today, we crack open the Book of Vincent,

a sermon about a pastor who ran out of faith

but kept preaching anyway.

So grab your coffee.

Slide into the back pew.

This is Vincent’s Last Sermon.

Amen, and enjoy.

—J.R.

Memorial for Reverend Vincent Harlow (1961–1998)

will be held April 14th at 7:00 p.m.

at New Morning Baptist Church,

corner of Ashland and 131st.

Pastor Harlow served this congregation

and the surrounding neighborhood

for seventeen years,

from Sunday sermons upstairs

to weeknights in The Drop,

a basement rec room he opened

for local youth in need of something to do

and somewhere to go.

He is survived by no immediate family.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made

to the Youth Outreach Fund

established in his name.

All are welcome.

Come as you are.

I.

God’s Boot: THUNK.

Came down hard.

Caught him in the mouth.

Vincent hit the concrete.

Sanctified by blood.

One eye already folding shut.

The other, squinting up to make out a face.

But all he got was light.

The kind that don’t help you see nothin’.

He raised a hand.

Shielded.

“Show yourself,” he said, voice shot.

No answer.

No You did good.

No You carried the cross long enough.

No Come home. Your wife and boy are waiting.

No nothin’.

Just a ladder with no rungs.

Nowhere to go but down.

Back on knees,

like a man who forgot better—

THUNK.

The boot again.

Harder.

Back on ass.

Red at the gums.

Another hole in his smile.

He reached toward the drawer.

Stopped short.

Grabbed the Bible instead.

II.

Bible: THUNK.

On the desk.

Cracked open.

Spine split.

Pages flailed,

fish out the net,

on the deck,

gasping.

THUNK.

THUNK.

Each flop, a new page.

A verse.

A maybe.

“To those who long for death, but it cometh not?”

THUNK.

“I praised the dead which are already dead more than the living which are yet alive.”

THUNK.

“My soul is full of troubles: and my life draweth nigh unto the grave.”

THUNK.

Bible flopping.

Pages turning.

Like they had something urgent to show.

Then didn’t.

Vincent leaned in.

Palm to psalm.

Combing the fine print.

Looking for the loophole.

Something that said:

If your boy burned up screaming,

and your woman died reaching for you,

then yes,

you may follow.

No sin.

No cost.

Just home.

But all he found:

Exodus 20:13: “Thou shalt not kill.”

Checked it again.

Deuteronomy 5:17: Same thing.

Tried a softer voice.

NIV: “You shall not murder.”

Hmm.

Murder.

Sounds personal.

Sounds angry.

But if it’s himself—

is it murder?

Or mercy?

Can grief count as motive?

Can love?

Would God forgive?

Better ask Him.

So he yanked open the drawer.

He pulled the gun.

Then he stood.

III.

Boots: THUNK.

On the desk.

Vincent rose.

To get closer.

Face to face.

Man to man.

The desk creaked.

Warned.

He didn’t care.

The bare bulb.

It clipped his skull

and kept swinging.

Each pass a sting.

Each sting a singe.

“If you’re not man enough to come down and face me,” he said,

“Then I’ll make my way up see you.”

A broken laugh, thin and cracked.

One last desperate bluff to make God show His hand.

Gun to his head.

The cold shocked him.

The pressure, worse.

His knees almost gave.

He closed his eyes to get the guts.

Imagined:

The blast.

The doorway.

Wife.

Son.

Arms open.

Home again.

Whole again.

But—

what if—

The blast.

The door closed.

No wife.

No son.

No trial.

No appeal.

A life for nothin’.

He dropped to his knees.

The gun slipped.

Clattered.

Skidded across the floor.

He didn’t chase it.

Didn’t even flinch.

He put his hands to his face.

Not to cry.

Just to cover what was left.

And sat there,

quiet,

until it came clear:

There was no answer.

There was no one.

Just Vincent.

Alone.

In the dark.

Talking to himself.

And for the first time,

he believed it.

IV.

Fist: THUNK.

On the door.

Vincent turned.

Samuel stood in the frame.

Gun raised.

Held it with both hands.

Steady like he’d held one before.

Vincent squinted.

“Samuel?”

He didn’t answer.

Just stood there.

Still.

Breathing slow.

“That my gun?”

Samuel nodded.

“Yes, sir.”

Vincent swallowed.

“What are you doing?”

Samuel shrugged.

“Been watchin’,” he said.

Vincent took a step forward.

Palms up.

“God don’t hear my prayers either,” Samuel said.

Another step.

Samuel watched him.

Didn’t flinch.

“You helped me when nobody did.”

Vincent raised his hands higher.

Gentle now. Like calming a dog.

“Put it down, Sam.”

Samuel didn’t move.

“Now I’m helpin’ you.”

“No, Sam—”

A crack in his voice.

“Not like this—”

V.

Bullet: THUNK.

Mid-sentence.

Vincent dropped.

Back bent.

Blood blooming from the hole in his head.

The room didn’t change.

Just got quieter.

Samuel stepped forward.

Knelt beside the body.

Wiped the grip with his shirt.

Placed the gun back in Vincent’s hand.

Tucked the finger on the trigger.

Just right.

Stood.

Looked down at him once more.

Then walked out—

like a prayer where you forgot to say

amen.

This week, no story.
No painting. Just the palette.

The next story—The Sandwich Eater—needs more time to bake.
It’s rising slowly. Dense with satire. And sourdough.
A love letter from the ruins of wellness culture.

It wanders through biohacker wastelands, body-fascism temples, tradwife pipelines, and the slow death of being human in a world obsessed with tracking everything.

Stay tuned.

And I know that might bum out a few of you.
Some of you have told me this newsletter’s become a Sunday ritual:
Coffee. And a weird little story.

As one reader (shoutout Roger) put it:

“I really enjoy the stories. Honestly the best is to get up Sunday morning, have a coffee and read them.”

(Love you, Roger. Never change.)

I hate breaking the streak.
But I think it’ll be worth the wait.

Writing on deadline is hard.
But it’s a necessary kind of hard.
Otherwise I’d spend three weeks polishing a sentence and still say meh.

I try to write about art, culture, and whatever strange intersections spill out of that.

Sometimes it’s challenging. Sometimes it’s tender.
Sometimes it’s so disturbed my wife gently asks if I really plan to post it—
worried her friends and family will finally realize how truly demented I might be,
and, by extension, start questioning her judgment,
then her taste in general,
and eventually revoke her access to the family Wordle group chat.

But that’s the thrill.
That’s the point.

To write like your parents are dead.
To write like your wife unsubscribed to your Substack months ago.
To write until your pants fall down and you trip flat on your stupid face.

That’s where the comedy is.
That’s where the art lives.

But YOU—
You don’t point and laugh.
You help me gather the pages, pull up my pants, and say:

“Hey. You got this, pal. Keep going.
We’re all rooting for you, you big dumb goof.”

Or, to quote one generous reader (shoutout Shane from Aslan Organics):

“Dude. Your writing is just so inspiring.
Outside of normal. I love that.”

That means more than the algo gods will ever understand.

So. Ten posts deep now. 👏
Ten weeks of strange stories about memory, grief, obsession, regret,
plus ghosts, raccoons, AI dominatrixes, alien abductions,
one man trapped in a chair, and an island ruled by a beard.

This newsletter started as a dare:
Hit publish. No hiding.
Write something strange. Something alive.
Every week. No matter what.

And somehow, it’s working. (I think).
But still—I cry into my keyboard at least once a week.

So when you reply—when you comment, or tap the heart,
or pass a piece along to someone else—
it’s not just “engagement.”

It’s a flare in the fog.
A blinking light from another shore.
It says:

“I’m here too. I heard you. You’re not demented.
You’re just… operating on a wavelength only accessible to dolphins and failed magicians. Don’t listen to your silly wife. She’s just mad you keep outing her in the stories.”

Tiny milestone:
I got my first paid subscriber this week. (Shoutout to Jaclyn.) 👏
Made this weird little corner feel more real. More alive.

If you’ve ever thought about supporting this work by sharing, subscribing,
or tossing a few coins in the jar—
it means more than I can say.
Helps turn these whispers into conversation.

This isn’t my full-time job.
Yet. 😆
But I’d love for that yet to poof.

Subscribe now

If you’re new here (or catching up), a few favourites:

📚 Gladys
Memoir, memory loss, a cardigan soaked in regret.
A woman writes her way through the fog of dementia.
Seems to be everyone’s favourite so far.

🥪 The Triangle
An unfinished writer washes ashore on an island ruled by a beard, a raccoon, and a squirrel.

🪑 Artist In Chair
My most recent. A man slumps in a gallery chair. Is he performance art? A washed-up genius? Or just drunk? The crowd decides.

You can find the full archive here:
👉 https://jrclubb.substack.com/archive

If something here touches you, share it.
Help me grow this weird thing that lives in the space between us.

I’d love to make this a part-time job.
A full-time calling.
Every share, every new subscriber, every quiet yes helps me inch closer.

And every week, I’m trying to make something that feels, at the very least, like effort was made. Paint was squeezed out. The brush hit the canvas with intent.

That’s something, right?

J.R.

Subscribe below and find all 10 stories here:

The Silk Arms of Glad Success

A wandering exploration of creativity, storytelling, and the strange, messy process of making things.

By J.R. Clubb

This week, Artist In Chair asks:

What happens when the artist becomes the medium?
(When the body becomes both canvas and crime scene.)

An artist, glimpsed through the windshield grime of his own physical being—blurred, distant, strangely familiar. An art critique conducted by vultures, mid-feast.
A post-mortem in real time, rendered mostly in dialogue.

Thanks for peering in,
J.R. Clubb

Title:
Artist In Chair
Oil. Blood. Bone. Whiskey. Dust. Wood.
Various materials. 2025.

A man slumped in a chair, partially obscuring a large painting.

“Is he part of it?”
“I think he’s just some old guy.”
“No, that’s the artist. Has to be.”
“Performance art?”
“God, I hope not.”
“He hasn’t moved since we got here.”
“Should we wake him?”
“Is he even breathing?”
“Jesus. That smell.”
“He smells like the loading dock at Gagosian.”
“Look at the boots.”
“Vintage or cowboy?”
“Dust caked. Like thick.”
“Probably curated.”
“No. That’s real dust.”
“Marlboro ad real.”

“The chair. Very Duchamp. Obviously.”
“Oh, you think the chair’s the piece?”
“No.”
“Look at the figure. He’s not quite sitting.”
“Slumped. Like a priest at a dive bar.”
“He’s doing that thing. Letting the body collapse just enough to look unplanned.”
“Weekend at Bernie’s.”
“Not helpful.”
“Notice the asymmetry. Left shoulder dips slightly.”
“I was told there would be wine.”
“There was. I think it’s gone.”
“Of course.”

“Is that blood?”
“Could be paint.”
“Crimson Red?”
“Too dark. It’s dried. Flaking.”
“That’s blood.”
“What are you, a forensic pathologist?”
“Look at the jeans. Fossilized. Oil. Grime.”
“A life’s work reduced to uniform.”
“I’m getting Lucian Freud after reading too much Cormac McCarthy.”
“I’m getting out of here.”

“The hair is thinning.”
“Classic male pattern.”
“Genetic collapse.”
“Inbreeding?”
“Would explain the ears.”
“Sunspots too.”
“Or bruises.”
“…What are you all staring at?”

“The eyes. Now that’s something.”
“Vacancy as critique.”
“Of what?”
“Presence. Or the lack.”
“Maybe he’s squinting inward. Wants us to look deeper.”
“Sure.”
“I met someone like this once. VA hospital. Claimed to be Willem de Kooning. Nude. Tube socks. Asked me for a cigarette. Ate it. Never broke eye contact.”

“Lips cracked. Mouth constricted.”
“A self-imposed silence?”
“Intentional muteness.”
“Does he still have a tongue?”
“I can’t see.”
“Wait—are we allowed to touch him?”

“Seventy-five?”
“Fifty-nine at most.”
“Age isn’t linear for men like this.”
“Time didn’t do this alone.”
“The cirrhosis makes it harder to decipher.”
“Does anyone have the time? My driver’s circling.”

“He looks like my uncle.”
“Mine too.”
“I hated my uncle. Mean in that casual, recreational way. He’d say, ‘You’ll grow into your face,’ then wink, like that made it a kindness. Like I was lucky to be insulted by someone charming. I’d laugh, pretend it was funny. And every time I saw him, I’d try to puff my face out but he’d just make the same joke. With the same stupid smirk as this guy.”
“Jesus. Do we all have the same uncle?”
“We are the same uncle.”
“Is that what this is?”
“I hope not.”

“The wrinkles. Exquisite line work.”
“As though carved with the back of a brush.”
“A palimpsest. Layered. Still bleeding through.”
“A terrain of collapse. A topography of loss.”
“Realism rotting into abstraction. Form surrendering to wound.”
“Exactly.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I don’t know. It feels good. It feels right. You should try.”

“The hands tell a story.”
“Fingers stained. Cadmium yellow. Pack a day.”
“Right hand poised. Trigger finger curled inward. Contemplating suicide.”
“Possibly. Look at the left—gripping that glass. Thick. Cloudy. Scratched.”
“Could be drinking himself to death?”
“Whiskey?”
“Turpentine and vodka.”
“Definitely a drunk.”
“Bukowski as painter.”
“Sometimes clichés work.”
“I’m okay with it.”

“Sweat glistening on his brow. Varnished. Yellowed.”
“A sign he’s alive?”
“Or recently dead. Still warm. Almost sacramental.”
“Prepared for burial.”
“Honey, we only have the babysitter until ten.”
“Did his shirt just shift?”
“A breath, maybe. Or just the last of it escaping.”
“Rejoicing.”

“We know he’s an artist.”
“Probably another paint-chucker. Post-Pollock. Big gestures. Bigger ego.”
“Less painter, more mechanic.”
“Accident disguised as intent.”
“Please—let’s not debate abstraction now.”
“Still a disappointing stereotype.”
“Or a disciplined throwback.”
“Mean drunk.”
“Hit his wife.”
“She hit back.”
“Then she left him.”
“And he spiraled.”
“Exactly why it feels tragic.”
“Exactly why it’s American.”
“God I hate America right now.”

“But look at those detail brushes clenched in his hand.”
“Good catch.”
“If he’s throwing paint grenades, why sable tips?”
“Signature?”
“No, he never signs. The art speaks for itself. Untitled. Unsigned.”
“He’s on the run.”
“No, he’s circling back. Revisiting earlier figurative style. Small. Quiet.”
“He can’t paint big anymore. Look at that shoulder—blown out from too many throws. The process finally outpaced the body.”
“Mommy, I have to go pee.”
“Not now, sweetie.”

“Did he just blink?”
“No. Just an aftershock.”
“Eyes open or closed?”
“Just slits.”
“Glazed.”
“Not blind. Just finished seeing.”
“Or seen too much.”
“Affair? Addiction? Dead kid?”
“Dead dream.”
“David Lynch dream. Divorced-dad Rothko. Sleeps in a shed full of lawnmowers. One painting of a screaming horse. You know the type.”
“…Not really.”
“No.”

“Where’s he from?”
“Wyoming?”
“Ohio. Factory town.”
“Brooklyn?”
“No. Palette’s Midwestern. Dust tones. Exhaustion hues. Rust-belt ochres. Gaunt yellows. Backroad beige.”
“Yeah. Dust and trucks. Real gristle country. Whiskey by ten. Smokes by eleven.”
“History hidden in the brushstroke.”
“That’s why we’re here to peel back the layers.”

“He’s been through something.”
“No, he is something.”
“He’s the American dream.”
“A fraud.”
“Midnight Cowboy. Came to New York to be devoured.”
“Got clean. Didn’t last.”
“Whatever followed him here never left.”
“I think he’s sad.”
“What’s that honey?”
“The man. He looks like when Daddy got in trouble for hugging the babysitter.”

“You’re all idiots.”
“Excuse me?”
“He’s just some drunk who stumbled in. You’re desperate for meaning in your pathetic lives.”
“Enlighten us.”
“He’s wasted. Passed out. End of story.”
“While holding fine brushes?”
“You really don’t get it.”
“Pretentious pricks.”
“Oh, spare us your working-class hero bullshit.”
“Yeah, go back to Jersey, fuck face.”
“Fuck you.”
“Wait—he just moved.”
“What?”

Silence.

The glass rises. Tips. Empties.

Cigarette to mouth. Lit. Burns.

He stands. Parts the crowd.

Opens a door no one noticed.

Leaves.

They’re stunned.

The chair—empty now.

They look. Finally, to the canvas.

“Oh.”
“Now I see.”
“Interesting.”
“Big.”
“Ugly.”
“Honest.”
“Abstract.”
“I knew it.”
“Layered.”
“Yes—years compacted. Forgetting. Retrying.”
“Something under there. Trying to crawl out.”
“I see him in it.”
“I don’t see anything.”

Silence.

No one follows up.
Bored.

A shoe scuffs.
A throat clears.
Someone exhales a little too loud.

They shift, almost in unison,
back to the chair.

“Should we make sure he’s okay?”

Someone slams open the side door.

Night waits outside. Heavy contrast.

They follow into a narrow alley.

One fixture buzzes overhead, casting a low, sodium wash.

He’s there. Back turned. Pissing against a dumpster.

Steam rising like a new religion.
Striking pale concrete.
Splattering like sparks.

“God. That arc.”
“God-tier.”
“Piss Christ revisited.”

The wall reacts.
Colour deepens on contact:
from chalky white to Payne’s grey.

Piss steam mixes with cigarette smoke.

A phone clicks.
Shutter flash.
Blurry.

“Can you smell it?”
“No.”
“Any blood?”
“He’s clean.”

They move closer.
A semicircle forms.

“Wow.”
“Bigger than imagined.”
“Impressive.”
“Mommy, I’m gonna pee my pants.”
“Hush. Not now.”

He finishes.
Shakes it off.

Zips up.
Flicks the cigarette at their feet.
Spits.

Turns.

Steps into the street.
Disappears around the corner.

They stand there.

Someone picks up the man’s cigarette butt.
Holds it up to the light.
Sniffs it.
Takes a drag.
Coughs.

“Where’s he going?”
“Is this part of it?”
“There’s something we missed.”

No one answers.
They want it anyway.
They follow.

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This week The Lost & Negligibly Loved includes a mixed tape of unhinged calls.
The kind that starts with a whisper and ends in, “Maybe I shouldn’t have picked up.”

You know the kind. Too many drinks. Too much honesty.
Someone whispering into a motel phone like it’s God.

Disclaimer: This one’s not for everyone. And should only be read after midnight.
It contains references to sex, ovaries, regret, cults, and White Russians made with breast milk.
RATED R.

For anyone left: enjoy the giddy, nostalgic nihilism of eavesdropping on other people’s post-midnight unravellings.

xo,
J.R. Clubb
Operator and Curator of the Emotional Phone Line That Should Probably Be Disconnected

P.S. I made a playlist for the songs featured in the story log:
The Lost & Negligibly Loved Playlist

CALL LOG ARCHIVE: THE LOST & NEGLIGIBLY LOVED

Medium: Landline
Era: Late 1980s
Condition: Poor
Recovered From: Payphones, motel phones, mom’s cordless etc.
Voiceprint Tag: Drunk + Stoned + Horny + Glittery Sadness

📞 CALL #7102 - Voicemail

Time Stamp: 2:22 AM
Duration: 47 seconds
Mood: Quiet devastation
Scent Profile: Menthol, gasoline on hot asphalt, Jägermeister
Song: “All of This and Nothing” – The Psychedelic Furs (1981)

CALLER:
I remember you carrying me on your shoulders—
walking to the courthouse.

Custody week.

Your hair smelled like mint.
No—gas station menthols.
Newports, probably.
You smoked them to quit.

I think you kept me up high
so I wouldn’t see you crying.
So I could see everything else.

The guy pissing behind a Civic.
A plastic doll face wedged in a gutter.
The courthouse getting closer.

But I just kept staring at your neck—
the way the hair curled around your ear.
That mole behind your jaw
you probably never knew was there.
Greys where there hadn’t been.

And I thought—this is it.

All of this.

And nothing.

[A passing car stereo—booming, warped, like it’s underwater:]
A telephone that lies…
A mirror you can look in…
You didn’t leave me anything…

[Breath in. Glass hits teeth. Swallow.]

Anyway—
just wanted to say I was thinking of you.

That’s all.

[Click.]

📞 CALL #10725

Time Stamp: 1:43 AM
Duration: 12 minutes, 38 seconds
Mood: Drunk + low-voltage lust
Scent Profile: Absolut Vodka, cranberry juice, cherry ChapStick
Song: “Just Like Honey” – The Jesus and Mary Chain (1985)

CALLER 1:
Tony liked it neat.
Said I looked clean when I shaved—
like a hotel bed after the maid’s been through.

Crisp corners. Clean.

He liked that.

But me?

I like it rough.
Overgrown.

I want you to get lost in it.
Long enough to get teeth snagged.
Choke on it.

Wet.
Warm.
Sweet.

Just like honey.

It’s good.
It’s so good.
It’s—
God, it’s so fucking good.

What about you?

CALLER 2:
[Lighter flick. Inhale—slow. Quiet exhale.]

CALLER 1:
Mm.
Yeah.
Okay.

So you’re one of those.

I’m gonna have to do all the work here, huh?

Fine.

[Rain kicks in harder—
like fingers drumming on a motel window.]

[“Just Like Honey” buzzes in through the radio—
just the drumbeat.
Slow.
Thudding.]

📞 CALL #221

Time Stamp: 1:56 AM
Duration: 19 minutes, 03 seconds
Mood: Laughing through the breakdown
Scent Profile: White Russians with breast milk, citronella, hairspray
Song: “Warm Leatherette” – The Normal (1978)

CALLER 1:
I heard they washed the bones with jungle rain.

Sometimes I wish I believed in something that hard.

They don’t make cults like they used to.
Venezuela. Wherever.

CALLER 2:
I couldn’t.
Mosquitoes love me.

CALLER 1:
Just give me citronella
and someone to tell me what to do.

I’d do anything for warm weather.

CALLER 2:
Me too.
Anything.

I’d eat a banana in public.
Eyes closed.

CALLER 1:
That’s disgusting.
I like it.

CALLER 2:
I’d wear jean shorts and flip-flops
to my custody hearing.

No fucks.

CALLER 1:
Fuck yeah.

I’d pull down my pants
and let you spank me.

[Beat.]

CALLER 2:
...What the fuck?
Take it easy, Lena.

[CALL DROPPED—
like a drunk off a barstool,
trying to toast the void.]

📞 CALL #9552211 – VOICEMAIL

Time Stamp: 3:31 AM
Duration: 1 minute, 12 seconds
Mood: Shame as sentimental artifact
Scent Profile: Spilled gin, lime soda, iron
Song: “Candy Says” – The Velvet Underground (1969)

CALLER:
Mom said your life flashes before your eyes when you die.

But what if it skips the parts I actually loved?

Like that cab ride—
Billy’s fingers inside me
while the driver faked a migraine.

“Candy Says” playing on the radio.

Or when I bled through my pants at your dad’s.
Used his fancy towel.
Folded it backwards.
Never said a word.

That’s when I’d whisper:
Record this.

To God.
Or whoever’s in charge of the red button.

That’s the shit I wanna see.
Not the bluebirds flying.
Not the Disneyland mouse ears.

The weird shit.

Mom also fucked with me and said kisses were finite.
Like a roll of film.

So I spit-wet fingers
to make fake lips for Grandma.

For the sweaty uncles.
For Dad, sometimes.

Saved my lips.

Let boys kiss me, sure—
but kept my mouth still.

To fool God’s math.

God, I miss you.

[Line picks up:]

UNFAMILIAR VOICE:
Who is this?

[Click.]

📞 CALL #9552211

Time Stamp: 2:07 AM
Duration: 10 minutes, 19 seconds
Mood: Icy resentment, horny logic spiral
Scent Profile: Bartles & Jaymes, Giorgio Beverly Hills, plastic sweat
Song (on TV in background): “This Is the Day” – The The (1983)

CALLER 1:
She killed his baby last year.

And he still shows up
like a dumb moth—
circling her porch light
with his dumb face
and his stupid fucking sports coat.

Get a fucking clue.

CALLER 2:
Her friends say he’s ugly but rich.
Looks like someone’s dad on a jet ski.

But also—
I’d sit on his face
just to piss off my mom.

CALLER 1:
Now that he’s finally ready to marry her,
she wants to be seventeen again.

Dishes in the sink.
No groceries.
No toilet paper.

“Just use a paper towel, babe,
but don’t flush it.”

Jesus.

[Ice clinks.]
[Someone farts on a plastic chair—
audible regret.]

CALLER 2:
I’d give up everything
for someone who called me babe
without the ironic affect.

CALLER 1:
Babe.

CALLER 2:
Yes.
Like that.

[Laughter.]

CALLER 1 (soft, half-mocking, half-sincere):
“This is the day, this is the day / your life will surely change…”

CALLER 2 (joining in):
“This is the day, this is the day / our life will surely change…”

[More laughter. Then quiet.]

📞 CALL #612221973 – PRANK

Time Stamp: 3:56 AM
Duration: 2 minutes, 03 seconds
Detected Mood: Acid trip: the good part
Scent Profile: Burnt hair, aquarium slime, Zima
Song (played over broken speaker, distorting):
“I’ve Got Drugs (Out of the Mist)” – The Frogs (1989)

[INDISTINCT AUDIO:]
Laughter.
Snarling?
Fake animal sounds.

[Song bleeds through speakerphone—tinny, warped, underwater:]
“I’ve got a suitcase full of drugs I can turn you on
Would you like to come along?”
(I’d like to come along…)

[TV in background—too loud, too cheerful:]
A commercial for adult diapers.
Someone says “leak protection.”
Someone else laughs like they’re dying.

UNKNOWN VOICE:
Who the hell is this?
Do you know what time it is?
Don’t call here again!

[Beat.]
[Giggling. A snort. Something glass breaks in the distance.]

[Then—shouted into the phone, full glee, blown-out:]
“I’VE GOT DRUGS! (CAN I COME WHEREVER IT IS, MAN?)”

[Click.]

📞 CALL #724 – VOICEMAIL

Time Stamp: 4:12 AM
Duration: 6 minutes, 18 seconds
Detected Mood: Regret bathed in neon
Scent Profile: Warm lint, citrus softener, Midori
Song: “Frank’s Wild Years” – Tom Waits (1987)

CALLER:
You had the wrong shoes.

I lent you mine.
Too small—
but you wore them anyway.

Wobbling down the sidewalk.

We passed neon OPEN signs.
Twenty-four hour laundromats
where everyone hangs out,
but no one does laundry.

I didn’t say record this.

Didn’t want to sound like a freak.
Didn’t want you to know
it meant that much.

Every time I said anything—
you laughed too early.
Left too early.
Came back too late.

So I just shut up
and enjoyed the view.

[A dryer thuds rhythmically in the corner.]

I’m at the laundromat now.
Wondering if you—

[Glitch. Line warps like a cassette melting in the sun.]

SYSTEM VOICE:
The number you have dialed
is not available at this time.
(Or ever.)

[Silence.]

[Then the low hum of “Frank’s Wild Years,”
bleeding from the laundromat radio.]

Well Frank settled down in the Valley
And he hung his wild years
On a nail that he drove through
His wife's forehead
He sold used office furniture
Out there on San Fernando Road
And assumed a $30,000 loan
On a little two-bedroom place
His wife was a spent piece of used jet trash
Made good Bloody Marys
Kept her mouth shut most of the time
Had a little Chihuahua named Carlos
That had some kind of skin disease
And was totally blind…

📞 CALL #1188

Time Stamp: 5:03 AM
Duration: 00:17
Detected Mood: Uncorked rage / emotional detonation
Scent Profile: Drakkar Noir, spilled takeout, melted phone cord
Song: “Right Brigade” – Bad Brains (1982)

CALLER:
No—you listen here, pal.

I’ll drive over right now and fuck you up.
What’s your address?

[Click.]

Hello?

Fuck.

*69

📞 CALL #001899

Time Stamp: 3:21 AM
Duration: 11 minutes, 14 seconds
Detected Mood: Gentle existential disconnect
Scent Profile: Hospital soap, red wine, microwave mint tea
Song: “Lazy Calm” – Cocteau Twins (1986)

CALLER 1:
My face got worn in this year.
Like jeans.

I’ve probably only got a few good years left.
Just math.

Gotta get out of bed.

CALLER 2:
I’ve been sleeping with the light on.
Charlie’s afraid of the radiator again.

CALLER 1:
That purple Armani suit I stole from Jim’s closet—
still smells like him.
Reminds me of him.

CALLER 2:
I miss him too.

CALLER 1:
Fuck I hate funerals.

CALLER 2:
They raised the price of stamps again.
Everyone’s pretending it’s fine.

CALLER 1:
I hate hospitals even more.
Five hell-days.

Jim lying on his good side like—
Take this part first.

CALLER 2:
Did you know you can mail ashes in the regular post?
They just put a sticker on the box.

CALLER 1:
Gotta get out of bed.
Love recklessly.

Right now.
With whoever I can.
Whoever you can.

That’s what I say.

CALLER 2:
The laundromat’s open 24 hours.
Will you come with me?

I don’t want to be alone tonight.

CALLER 1:
Yes.

But I’m not bringing the suit to clean.
Not ever.

📞 CALL #1027833

Time Stamp: 6:42 AM
Duration: 3 minutes, 57 seconds
Detected Mood: Afterglow. Soft-core ecstasy come-down.
Scent Profile: Glowstick syrup, sugar ash, sweat, lingering body odour
Song: “To Turn You On” – Roxy Music (1982)

CALLER 1:
If you were here, I’d hold you.
Like really hold you—
like how slow dancing got invented.

Like someone needed to be held,
and there was music,
so they just stepped forward
and made a whole sweet thing of it.

A melting twist of selves.

Like—
one of those cones from the drive-thru.
Chocolate and vanilla,
swirling together.

Nobody ever bites first.
They just lick, really slowly.
Hoping the song never ends.

CALLER 2:
Did you just make that up?

CALLER 1:
Yes.
(Laughs)
I think so.
I don’t know.

CALLER 2:
It’s good.
You should write it down.

Or don’t.
Sometimes things can just exist.

(Beat)

Hello?

CALLER 1:
I’m here.

CALLER 2:
I love this part—

[From the radio, low and crackling:]
Then I wonder is it fair / Now you're on your own
Who cares about you / Except me, God help me
When things go wrong / I do anything to turn you on
Must phone me, you know me / When things go wrong
I do anything to turn you on…

[Somewhere outside, a dog starts barking.]

[Neither of them says anything.]

📞 CALL #1077114022

Time Stamp: 4:14 AM
Duration: 4 minutes, 06 seconds
Mood: Delirious reverence, childlike horror
Scent Profile: Melted rosary plastic, wine cooler breath, electric blanket exhaust
Song: “I Am a Baby (In My Universe)” – Daniel Johnston (1982)

CALLER 1:
She didn’t speak ’til she was eight.

Her voice never caught up with her face.
So on the phone, she always sounded like a kid.
She’d pick up, and I’d ask—
“Can you put your mommy on?”

CALLER 2:
Poor thing.

CALLER 1:
She wanted to grow up too fast.
Wanted to get pregnant so bad—

She strung fake plastic ovaries on a rosary.
Prayed on her knees
to Fertility.
God owed her.

CALLER 2:
Jesus.
There are easier ways.
Like getting laid.

[Silence.]

[A voice—maybe from a radio, maybe from inside the line—begins to sing, cracked and distant:]

I am a baby in my universe / I’ll live forever
I am a baby in my universe / I’ll live forever…

Oh, I’m only 22 / I’ll live forever
Oh, I’m only 22 / I’ll live forever / Forever…

I am a baby in my universe / I am a baby in my universe
I’ll live forever… Forever… Forever… Oh…

📞 CALL #22420005

Time Stamp: Unknown (Late. Long past reasonable.)
Duration: 47 minutes, barely remembered
Detected Mood: Horny malaise
Scent Profile: Goldschläger, crusted lip balm, Marlboros, hand spit
Song: “Your Wedding” – Smog (1993)

CALLER 1:
I’m thinking of dying my hair red.
Colour of a scraped knee.
A bloody badge of honor.

CALLER 2:
Ugh. No.
I hate redheads.

CALLER 1:
Why?

CALLER 2:
Too many freckles.
(Fake laugh)

[A lighter flicks twice. Doesn’t catch.]

CALLER 1:
Shut up. Why don’t you come over?

CALLER 2:
I can’t. They’re running the chemical spill siren again.

CALLER 1:
Just come over. I’m horny.

CALLER 2:
I lost my socks.

CALLER 1:
Shut up.

CALLER 2:
Okay.
I’m drunk.

CALLER 1:
That’s good, right?

CALLER 2:
No.
I’ve got the spins.

[Silence. The refrigerator kicks on. Someone sits down too fast and regrets it.]

CALLER 1:
So why’d you pick up?

CALLER 2:
Don’t be like that.

CALLER 1:
Fine.
Keep talking.

CALLER 2:
What are you wearing?

CALLER 1:
Fuck you.
(Pause. Softens.)
Jeans. T-shirt.
Cute pink bra.

[CALLER 2 gags. Then again. Then it happens—slow, deliberate, a wet flood of everything recently swallowed. Sour, sudden, louder than it should be. An exorcism of the wrong kind of fluids.]

[CALLER 1 turns up the radio.]

I remember
Entering you
Entering you…

I’m gonna be drunk, so drunk at your wedding
I’m gonna be drunk, so drunk at your wedding
I’m gonna be drunk, so drunk at your wedding…

[Click.]

💤 SYSTEM NOTE:

Emotional phone line has exceeded maximum capacity.
No further messages will be saved.
Please hang up and go the fuck to sleep.

Goodnight.