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.’

As a semi-retired software engineer and an often hated critic of the many apps that come from overseas, especially from the Asian theater, I still receive my share of ‘try this and tell me what you think of it,’ requests.

Some are so stupid that I send a polite email to the developer saying ‘no thanks‘. Others, like the makers of the mobile app, ‘Yeshi,’ I promise a quick spin around the Superhighway.

Because I am into slang words, I know that ‘Yeshi’ is a phrase meaning that a dead person can’t until rest until the circumstances of their death changes. Call me intrigued as I install the app to my phone and touch start the moment it is uploaded.

Where I am from that moment on…well, let’s jus’ say that my last detailed memory is of sitting on my back porch, in my favorite, well-faded University of Nevada-Reno t-shirt, drinking a can of Hamm’s beer and smoking a Camel Gold. That’ll change, too.

In an altered, but very familiar reality, I’ve returned to my childhood home, a home that hasn’t been a part of my life since I was 20. I’m parked across the street, the nose of my truck pointed in the wrong direction as I sit, observing the old place.

In the drive is my old man’s 1964 Chevy pickup. There’s also the gold-colored Opel station wagon, that I still think of it as an embarrassing piece of shit. In front of the house, by the sidewalk is my 1968 Dodge Charger, one very cool car and chick-magnet.

“Odd,” I think, “This is exactly how it looked when I last saw the place.”

By now I’m out of my truck and walking across the street and somehow I already know what I will find beyond that unlocked door.

The first time, if that really is the case, I joined four faceless, shapeless figures around our old oak table, the same table we had all through my childhood. At least three of the people stood on one side of the table, with a fourth standing at what I concluded to be the head of the table.

On the table is a standard sized cake, like the one my mother used to bake for each of our birthdays, with white moldy frosting and several candles, too many for me to count. Looking the cake, candles unlit, it begins to heave up, and then it erupts with maggots.

These maggots crawl over the table in every direction and quickly turn into flies and soon the entire house is clouded by the black, buzzing and biting pests and I’m forced to wake up. By this time, I’m sweaty, chilled and panting like I jus’ ran the 100-yard-dash and I’m on my bed now , with no recollection of how I got here.

But this most recent slip into this alternate reality comes with out my having to use YeshiApp. It also comes with three new features.

The first is the sight as seen through the sliding glass door of the old rusty green and red swing set which is standing idle in the backyard. The other thing, the more profound thing, the thing that takes my breath away are the people, dead members of my family.

“Hi,” my brother says to me. I know it’s him because he’s the one with the severe damage to his head, from where he blow the back of his skull out with a shotgun. I find him the most difficult to look at, as he’s missing a part of his tongue, several teeth and his eyes are crossed, but outward, as if he were trying to look at his ears, which one hangs loosely from his scalp.

Mom is rail thin, a near-skeleton, like she was when the cancer took her life. I was with her the early morning she stopped breathing and I had to wrestle dad to prevent him from doing CPR on her, which would have been against her wishes.

“I’m doing fine,” she says taking my left hand in hers. It’s the same words she used to say as she lay in bed and in pain, after the hospice gal told us her ending was near. What remains of her lips are a waxy-yellow and tattered.

My father is there as well. He smells of Vitalis hair tonic, automobile grease and burnt tobacco, but seems genuinely happy to see me as he grabs my left shoulder, giving it a squeeze like he used to, before his third and final heart attack.

“Let’s go work on your car,” he wheezes breathlessly, “When we’re done here.” His broken nose, from his semi-pro boxing career, has fallen off, leaving a triangular cavity between and below his still, blue eyes.

“Sorry, I wasn’t here to…” I start.

“No worries,” he interrupts.

Then there’s Sissy, who is standing between them, smiling like Alice’s Cheshire Cat, but not disappearing. I hadn’t seen her with both of her legs and absent her wheelchair since I was in my early 20’s.

“Told you I almost as tall as you,” she giggles. I can see the veins in her neck where they collapsed and have left deep inverted lines in her skin. Her heart had failed after so many years of unhealthy living.

My eldest sister isn’t here. She’s still alive.

That’s the third thing — and it hits me hard, like a punch in the gut: “Does this mean I’m not?”

Then it also occurs to me that the kitchen window is open. Has it always been open?

No. The flies would have found their way outside, had it been.

I think about jumping out of it.

Not a far jump, we’re on the ground floor of a single floor house. As I make up my mind to do this – a raven lights on the sill and begins pacing back and forth.

Then they join each other in singing to the tune of ‘Happy birthday to you…,’ “The show must go on, the show must go on…” and as if on cue, maggots burp up like a water fountain in an Esther Williams movie, from the rotted cake and begin to turn into flies.

The raven is enjoying the feast of a lifetime as it squawks, “Ye-Shi,” between beak fulls.

As I look around in terror once again, I see that I’m clutching my cellphone in my right hand, the speaker is on and I can hear what sounds like Asian coming from it. One male voice says, “Ye,” the other, a woman says, “Shi.”

“Yes-yes,” I understand, one says in Korean, the other Chinese. I’m awake, but can’t close the app.

Heading north on Highway 101, and as we crossed the bridge spanning Big Lagoon in Humboldt County, I saw rather a large man in a ghillie suit standing chest deep in the water, partially obscured by reeds. When I saw him, I recalled how as a child, I’d seen an elk swimming, head and antlers above the lagoon’s surface.

I watched the large man for as long as I could.

Once I couldn’t see him anymore, I turned to my wife. She was already looking at me and asked, “What?”

“I’m afraid to say, you’ll laugh at me.”

“Bigfoot, huh?”

A non-believer. I said nothing more about it.

Two days later, heading southbound this time, I looked to the place where I’d seen him standing and there was no one there.

“California’s idea of dining-in is eating outside,” I kept thinking each time seeing a restaurant serving guests in their table, chair and tent-covered parking lots. It was stated in jest and mostly in my head.

Having said it once to my wife was enough after she told me to ‘knock it off,’ which I did. We were traveling in the same car.

Later, as we sat at an eatery, enjoying an early evening dinner, I proceeded to see myself dining at a sidewalk cafe along the Avenue des Champs-Élysées in gay Pair-ee. My wife refused to buy into my wanderings.

July 2020 has been a rough month, as a number of friends and acquaintances have died.

On July 3, Dorothy Chubbuck passed away in Roseburg, Oregon. She was what we kids called a ‘track mother.’ Her son, David and I ran track when we were in high school and this is how I came to know her. I also worked with her daughter Ann, when she was the receptionist at KPOD radio station. Mrs Chubbuck, as I always called her, was always full of the best encouragement and never had a cross word for anyone. She was born on August 22, 1931, in Randle, Washington. She was 88.

Cheryl Chapman passed away at age 59, in Seattle, Washington, on July 18, 2020. She was born November 12, 1960 on Oberlin, Ohio. Her family moved to Crescent City at some point in 1965. Cheryl and I  attended high school together. Described by some as hard working and a perfectionist, others called her a free spirit. Cheryl was both, with an infectious smile to boot.  She also lived in Reno, Nevada for a while, where we became reacquainted. If I recall correctly, she was married at one time to another classmate of ours, Scott Chapman.

On July 10, Sandra Nuss, 82, passed away in Crescent City, California. She was born on August 11, 1937 in Richmond. California. I knew Sandra, or Sandy as she preferred to be called, because of her daughter Lora, whom I live with briefly back in the very early 80’s. Sandy was a singer, (performing professionally with country music singer’song writer Chester Smith in the 50’s,) an artist, historian and an excellent genealogist. She attended Hollywood High with actor Marty Milner, of ‘Route 66’ and ‘Adam-12’ fame.  She would never tell you this though, because she was too modest.

Steve Redmond passed away July 24. Born in King City, California on January 17, 1963, Steve is another classmate from high school, though in my brother Adam’s class. The very first time I met him, we were seated next to one another on a pep-rally bus headed to Gold Beach, Oregon. We remained friends ever since. Recently, he and I had talked about how he is listed on-line in the ‘Humboldt-Del Norte Wrestling Champions and All County Wrestlers’ site for the year 1981, in the 167 pound weight class. A few years ago he contracted pancreatic cancer and like the fighter he was, he battled it right up to the end. He was 57.