The middle-aged woman wandered up and down the ragged beach, a place so forlorn and uninviting, that others, even locals, often refused to go there. Her bare feet pressed into the blackish sand as the waves crashed in to the rocky shoreline.

He had driven her there, and now he watched helplessly as she rushed about in her grand madness and hopeful giddiness. Some how she knew, she always knew and she had told him and this was the day.

“I’ll finally learn how to make perfect cucumber sandwiches, and wonderful teas, and flavorful biscuits,” she stated gleefully.

“You already know how to do that,” he pleaded, “You don’t have to do this.”

“Oh, but I do, its always been my dream,” she said.

Finally, she disrobed, dropping her dowdy house dress in the surf and stood quietly, head lifted to the overcast sky, arms away from her naked meaty sides and stout legs slightly apart. She was waiting.

Then it came, that eldritch thing with tentacles and wings and leathery skin and a multitude of eyes. It took her within a menacing claw and tenderly drew her to the churning, chilly Pacific.

“Wait for me,” she called back, a happiness in her voice.

“Okay,” he called back, less enthusiastic.

“Promise?” she asked.

“I promise,” he answered.

Then she was gone, taken beneath that those vulgar dark waves and from this upper world. He stood near where she last been, hands in his jacket pocket and head hanging down, chin on his chest.

He tried to cry, but found he couldn’t. Instead, he felt something akin to relief.

With a heavy sigh he turned, dragging his feet, glancing behind twice, making his way to his waiting car. Once there he looked out over the raging gray sea, mist rising and disappearing beyond the crags they tumbled on.

Then a thought struck him, “Perhaps, I shouldn’t have made that final promise.”

Fact: Women spend more time wondering what men think about then men actually spend thinking.

Officer James Herrod pulled into a parking spot about 30 feet from the food truck and picked up the microphone: “Robert One-18 to dispatch.”

“Dispatch,” a voice from the radio spoke, “Go Robert One-18.”

“Yes, dispatch I’ll be 10-7 at the corner of Main and Third.”

“10-4, Robert One-18, have a good lunch.”

“Roger and thanks.”

---

She had her ‘Seattle briefcase’ slung over her left shoulder as she walked from her car to double doors of the County Health Department building. For the last seven-years Janelle Stewart had been doing the same tedious job and once again was wishing she’d chosen another career path.

Janelle dropped the backpack at the side of her desk, picked up her coffee mug, one with a Batman emblem on it, and made her way down the corridor to the break room. She poured herself a cup of java and looked out the second story window with a sigh.

“Hey, young lady,” Stan, a bald-man in his early fifties said as he entered through the door. He looked at her and could tell something was wrong.

“What’s wrong? Anything I can help with?”

Janelle turned and smiled, “Oh, no. Jus’ gonna be another long day.”

“Understood,” he said in his usual chipper voice.

She could never tell if he was really that happy or if he was simply faking it. Janelle could never fake it, knowing that she wore her moods in the open.

“Have a better day,” Stan smiled as he left the room, his coffee cup filled.

She turned and walked back to her desk and sat down. Janelle quickly thumbed through her appointment book, looking at the five restaurants she had scheduled for inspection and the one mobile food vehicle on her list.

The mobile food vehicle was the third visit listed.

---

James was hungry and had decided that tacos sounded like the perfect lunch for the hectic day he was experiencing. He was waiting in line, three customers behind a construction worker, who was paying for five tacos.

He watched as an attractive brunette slowly got out of her car and walked to the back of the food truck, entered and made her way to the front-end of the vehicle. Then he saw the sudden flash of flame as it flared up and enveloped the length of the open window.

The woman, who he believed to be the owner, dropped a metal lid over the blaze. As this happened, he felt an odd sense of dizziness rush over his person.

James chalked his dizziness up to the fact that he hadn’t eaten since leaving his house at around four that morning,  was tired and stressed from a job, that after seven-years, he no longer enjoyed.

---

With two inspections completed, at eleven that morning, Janelle wheeled into the parking lot of the shopping center where she knew the food truck, ‘Taco Time,’ with it’s oddball tag-line, ‘Where the food is magic,’ would be parked, selling its popular Tex-Mex cuisine. She could see Amy Michaels, the owner, and her assistant Jose’ Oliveria, in the vehicle’s long window, serving a line of at least six people.

Amy saw her as she approached the truck. Janelle could see that the woman had a forced-smile on her face.

“I promise to stay out of your hair and to be as quick as possible,” she stated as she stepped up and into the vehicle.

“Okay,” Amy said. She was busy putting the final touches on five tacos.

Janelle slipped by Jose’ who nodded, acknowledging her. As she turned to watch the two work, a low pan of grease burst into flames, causing her to turn her head to avoid being singed.

---

James grabbed his forehead with his right hand, his gun hand, and looked down. Much to his surprise, he was no longer wearing his service boots, but rather a pair of much-too small red Reebok tennis shoes.

---

Janelle looked at Amy, who was closest to her. Amy was staring hard at her, as was Jose’ and both had strange expressions on their faces.

“How in the hell did you get in here?” Amy barked in surprise.

“I…I…I,” Janelle stuttered, her voice deeper than usual.

In a panic, Janelle rushed to the back of the vehicle and down the stairs. She caught her scattered reflection in the diamond-patterned aluminum siding of the truck.

“What in the…” she said, in shock after seeing herself now clad in the dark-blue uniform of a police officer.

She quickly rushed over to the only police cruiser in the parking lot and leaned against the vehicle. Her mind reeled as she came to understand that she was no longer a health inspector, but now a male police officer.

---

Across the parking lot, a brunette woman, who was standing in line, suddenly fainted to the asphalt.

Monday comes and it is already Friday.
This month is over and the year is up.
Many years are gone, leaving nothing,
Where waiting for later is loss of time.
So take full advantage of what is left
It is already too late for the going back.

The battleship gray door was locked, possibly barred from the inside. And since it was a metal door, listed as fire proof, it was going to be hard for Steve to breech it.

It wasn’t the sign on the thick thing that read, “Meet the person responsible for your life.” No, he believed that the room beyond held a possible treasure.

Hour after hour, Steve worked the door over. He used a sledgehammer on the frame, then broke off the knob while pounding on the massive slab of metal.

“Fucking thing,” he growled.

Finally, he went and got some of the dynamite he’d stolen from a mining shack a couple of weeks before. It would be the perfect solution to getting beyond the door.

“I knew it would come in handy,” stated as he balanced the quarter stick of explosive against the center of the door and lit the fuse.

The ensuing blast left his ears ringing. It took him nearly half-an-hour to recover his balance as finally approach the now destroyed door and to finally get a look inside.

On the wall over a large, face-high mirror were the words “Choices, Success, Words, Actions, Thoughts.”  That was it.

“I’ll be a son-of-a-bitch!” he screamed in anger.

The mirror was shattered and the irony missed.

Joe Biden is so close to picking a female vice-presidential running mate, that he can smell her.

At least during the 1918 pandemic they still had cocaine in their soda.

A Xerox copy of a handwritten letter sent anonymously and without a date, via the US postal service, to the newspaper I used to work for, but never taken seriously:

“All I did was step off trail long enough to empty my bladder and now, I’m lost. Where Andy and Ryan went, I don’t know and I never did catch up with them. Bilateral tinnitus is affecting me in the worse way. The hum, like the sound made by a tuning fork, is buzzing around in my head, a maddening cacophony of highs and lows. All of this is strange, and that’s why I’m taking time to write it down. And when I say strange, I mean it in the ‘paranormal’ sense, a word I wouldn’t normally use because I wouldn’t want to be thought of as nuts. But I think I’m gonna die and I don’t have time to worry about what anyone thinks. Four different times I saw would-be rescuers. The first two times, I turned in their direction and walked down a hill and into a small gorge only to come out on the other side, with no one around. The third was that damned helicopter. It buzzed over me twice, both times as I whipped my yellow safety vest over my head like a lasso. They never saw me, thought I clearly saw their faces inside the craft. That’s how low they were over me. It was seeing the house, across a creek, lights on in late afternoon, that I finally figured out that something beyond this worldly plain is going on. As I walked down into the flats towards this creek, because of the landscape, it dropped from sight for a couple minutes and when I came to where I am certain I should have seen it again, both the house and creek was gone. Confused, I looked back and saw the creek, saw the house, and found that I had somehow passed them. So, I turned and head back again, only to have them reappear behind me again. As I continue to trudge through these granite strewn mountains, I’ve also learned that the hum, the forks, grow louder or duller, depending on my direction. So whatever is happen, whatever is doing this, I am being driven in a singular direction. Though weak from continual walking and a lack of food, I am overheating. I took off my boots, socks and jacket, hoping to cool off, but must have forgotten them because they are no longer with me. This brings me to another thing, I have the sensation of being in bubble or maybe a four-sided triangle. When I walk, my feet don’t touch actually the ground. I can’t feel the shards of rock or the bushes as I plod along. However, when I stop, I can feel the earth beneath my feet. That is how I can sit here and write this. Soon I will find a large rock and with my vest as a marker, place the rock on top of it and my day-pack with the hope that it’ll be found one day. And I hope this note, letter, whatever you wanna call it, helps explain what happened, though I don’t know exactly what is happening to me now. My cellphone hasn’t worked in days, I’m out of food and water and I am still being driven forward. To where, I don’t know. All I can think is that after I mark this note with my vest and the rock, I will continue to wander until I’m dead. Finally — to my wife, son and daughters: I love you, take care of each other as best you can. Ryan and Andy: Me getting lost ain’t your fault. I go with God now. Goodbye, everyone.  — yours, Kris”

A single sperm supposedly has 37-and-a-half megabytes of DNA information in it, which means a normal ejaculation could represents a data transfer of around 1,587 gigabytes in about four seconds, and that’s a lot of information to swallow.

It was reassuring that the restroom was the same as it had been all those years ago when he was a student.

“Well, maybe the toilets have been changed out,” he smile, “but at least the water still rotates left-to-right when flushed.

It was one of only two restrooms – and still labeled ‘boys,’ the other ‘girls’ — in ‘A’ hall. Back in the day they were never open for general use during regular school days, but always open for a special event.

He washed his hands in the fountain-style sink, while looking up at himself in the mirror. He looked  tired, sallow and pale.

“Nerves,” he thought, as he took a deep breath to relieve the butterflies in his stomach and the tightness in his chest.

He reached inside his dress jacket and into the left-hand interior pocket for his speech. He’d written it before leaving his motel room.

They were only to be used if he were asked to say a few words, because tonight, he was being inducted into his Alma mater’s Hall of Fame. He slipped them back into his pocket, turned on the cold water, splashed his hot, sweaty face, pulled a couple of paper towels from the dispenser and dried himself.

“Ah, good, there you are,” said the youthful and current principal of the school.

He pointed down the end of ‘B’ hall and started walking that direction.  Dutifully, the former student followed.

He was surprised to see where the buses picked up and dropped off students had not changed. Nor had the small snack stand changed, the one that stood by the doors next to the weight room.

“Stand here,” the principle stated, “And when you here your name, walk through those doors into the gym. The stage will be on your left. And congratulations.”

He gulped another breath and felt the pain in his chest slip away and his sickly stomach settle. He quickly adjusted his tie and brushed at his jacket and pant leg, sweeping away lint that really wasn’t there.

Then he heard some speaking and the gathered crowd begin clapping. At his name, he pushed on the handle and swung the door open, stepping into the basketball gym, turned auditorium for the evening.

Smiling and waving, he half-jogged, half-walked across the parquet flooring and up the two-steps to the raised platform. A quick glance showed a metal folding chair next to a wooden speakers stand.

While he noted these, he returned his focus to the crowd that cheered and clapped as he came on stage. All smiles, he waved and pointed at people, though he couldn’t really see their faces, before he sat down in the folding chair.

All too soon the crowd grew quiet. And since there was no speaker at the podium, he took the time to look around at the faces that sat, not only before him in individual seats, but also the couple of hundred that sat in the wooden bleachers on either side of the gym.

Over the heads of those that sat in the folding chairs, much like his, save for the slight padding they had and he didn’t, he noted the video camera. Its tiny red light flashed, indicating that it was recording the scene before it.

He felt a wave of panic engulf his being. He felt for the speech in his pocket and pulled out a piece of folded paper towel, the same kind he’d used a few minutes ago in the restroom.

“Did I put the towels in my pocket and wipe my hands on my speech?” he asked himself, wanting to chuckle, but couldn’t.

Then he began to study the people in the crowd. Much to his surprise, both of his parents sat directly in front of him, his step-dad, his mother’s second husband, to her left and a baby in her lap. He also saw his brother and sister.

Next to them were his grandparents, both sets and their second spouses. He was surprised to see his Aunts and Uncles as well as his in-laws. He looked beyond them; at the neighbors, teachers, employers, coworkers, friends and girlfriends.

And as he recognized each face, a brief video rapidly filled his head of interactions, good and bad, he’d had with that person. He tried to shake it off, but he knew they were almost all here, almost all the people he knew, almost all the people he’d been close to at one time. Missing were his wife, their son and his family and his sister and her family.

Then there came a faint sound. It was like that of a wind chime, the rustle of leaves on a tree as the wind pushed through them, the bark of a dog, the crunch of gravel under foot, the neigh and snicker of a horse, the squeal of a tire, the bray of a mule, the chug of a farm tractor, clucking chickens, a babbling stream, a baby crying, laughter, a long sigh, a cat meowing and purr, paper shuffling, rain on a roof, and distant thunder.

Much to his amazement, it all worked well together like a perfect melody.

It was quickly followed by the delightful odor of fresh baked bread, mowed grass, cinnamon, paint, chocolate chip cookies, an old dusty book, horse and cow manure, baled hay, new leather, gasoline, peppermint, his wife’s perfume, puppy-dog’s breathe, garlic, burnt toast, rain, brewing coffee, salt air, pine trees, apple pie, crazy glue, and wet-dog. Again, it all fit together; a wonderful brocade of aroma.

Then the auditorium echoed with the repetitive shuffle of seated people coming to their feet. He stood too, though he wasn’t sure why he was doing it, other than perhaps he believed it was expected.

And while everyone looked at the already open double-doors, waiting for someone or something to make a grand entrance, he looked back and down at the chair he’d been sitting in. Across the back of it, stenciled in red letters, he read, ‘Bema.’