Less than a month into socialism and Bernie bails out.

Shaving kit, check. Three pair of underwear, check. Three tee-shirts, check. Three pair of socks, check. One pair of pants, check.

All the bare essentials one needs for a two day trip home in a single bag. Check.

Seven that morning, check-in counter, 90-minutes before boarding: “I’m afraid there will be a fifty-dollar charge for your carry-on.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Sorry, sir, but that’s what it will cost for your carry-on bag.”

“No one told me it would cost anything extra for less than ten pounds of clothing and an effing shave kit!”

“Sorry, sir, but it’s company policy.”

Decisions.

While out flying a kite this afternoon, a guy actually asked me, “So you’re flying a kite, huh?”

“Nope,” I answered, “Fishing for birds.”

He returned, “Catch anything yet?”

I shit you not!

The time continuum does not really exist, never has; it is simply a science-fiction writer’s construct. I learned this, this morning as I ran into myself coming out of a grocery store.

I looked at me with as much surprise as I did when I recognized that stupid look on my face, that one that is so familiar to me. We stood there, dumbfounded, lost in our surprises as other shoppers move by us in rapid succession without seeing either of us.

“How are you?” I finally asked.

“I…I…I’m…” I stuttered, learning that I was using my voice.

As I stepped back to allow me to exit the door way, I vanished, evaporating like a million-upon-million pixels into the wintry atmosphere. I never got the chance to answer me or ask me how I was doing.

From there, my entire day has been a series of a thousand micro-shifts and wavy distortions, much like heat coming off asphalt, and all of them in my mind. And now, this evening, as I lay in my bed, it comes to me that I might be singular to only me and how I am the one who vanished.

Perhaps I’ll still be here come morning, or maybe, I’ll be here when the sunrises.

The patrol of guardsmen, dressed in their desert camouflage, is easing through the higher sagebrush, each with their M-4 Carbine held at the ready. Their eyes squint against the blazing sun, searching for their human prey, this one, who is in violation.

While they makes almost no sound, their shifting movement give their positions away. And because they do not know it, nestled motionless in the sand near their passing boots, the last one moves by me.

Unfortunately, one ‘tail-end-Charlie’ will never return to his family again and I will survive to hunt and to be hunted one more day.

“Gotta cigarette by chance?” my new neighbor asks as he sit down on the sidewalk’s edge, a few feet from me.

“Sorry, no I don’t,” I answer.

“’Bout to have myself a nicotine fit if the wife doesn’t hurry up home soon.”

I think about asking him if he has a beer, as a joke, but then I think better of it.

A pearl white Escalade cruises by. The woman behind the wheel acts as if she doesn’t see us as we get all neighborly by waving at her.

From the other direction comes a woman walking her dog; a Bull Mastiff. She guides him off the sidewalk, not wanting to deal with us two lumps of humanity or perhaps knowing that her dog will either want to make friend’s or rip our faces off.

Half right. The dog takes a shine to me, licking my face and begging for a belly rub, but only after he growls brutishly at my neighbor.

“Don’t take it hard,” I say to him, “Little kids and dogs love me. It’s women who find me unattractive.”

The woman pulls hard at her dog’s leash and leads him away without a word.

“Did I say something wrong?” I asked.

“Damned if I know, buddy,” he answers.

We both laugh. But the chuckles end quickly as his wife wheels into the drive and he goes into their house behind her without a word.

I smell my right arm pit, then my left, wondering if it’s me.

Then I have a wonderful idea. I race into the house to search the freezer for a hidden bottle of Sangria that I find tucked behind the ice cream sandwiches, a bag of mixed vegetables and an ice-encrusted box of fish sticks purchased last year.

Once outside, I return to my spot on the sidewalk, twist off the bottle’s cap and take a healthy gulp. No sooner had the mouthful reached my stomach, a cop slows to a stop, rolls down his window and commands, “No open containers in public.”

Quickly, I retreat ten feet backwards into my yard of dormant winter grass. The cop roll his window up and continues to move down the road.

My mind drifts to the idea of laying back and falling asleep. Instead, I take another couple of gulps from the bottle.

Here comes the cop again, this time from the opposite direction. The glare he gives me as he passes tells me how badly he wants to stop, provoke me into doing something stupid, so he can put his nickle-plated bracelets on me and race me to jail.

I raise my bottle in salute to him and watch as he slips beyond the parked cars lining the street.

Another couple of mouthfuls and I put the cap back on. I then lay back and close my eyes, allowing the warmth of the alcohol course its way through my entire body.

When I awake, it’s raining and must have been for sometime as I’m soaked clean through to my skin. I get up and go inside the house.

“I can be jus’ as bored in here as out there,” I say as if the world were listening, “And I can do it while dry and warm.”

They called her
An Ice Queen.

Claimed she had
No heart beat,
Refused to bleed.

But I watched
As she menstruate
Through the snow
For their sake.

Her sudden death
Came very slowly.

“Before you is a box and key,” the tribunal inquisitor said to the newest ten initiates, “You’re to keep both with you at all times. Guard your box with your life. Do not unlock it, open it or even look in it. Those are your instructions. The Great Society shall see you again in 40 days.”

On the fortieth day, the ten gathered before the tribunal, each with their box in hand. Nine of them were dismissed immediately, which left the tenth initiate confused as he had violated all the rules given him regarding entrusting of the box.

The greatest infraction was having unlocked, opened and the looking inside of the box.

“Were you disappointed?” asked the inquisitor.

“At first,” answered the initiate, “But after some reasoning I realized that the hand-hewn stone is meant to convey a meaning and I understand that meaning to be ‘foundation.’

“That is correct, but why did you open the box in the first place?”

“Curiosity. I needed to know what was so important that I was told to guard it with my life.”

“And did you think it was worth it, guarding it with your life, I mean?”

“No.”

“And why is that?”

“It is merely a symbol of something that can actually be torn down and reformed again.”

“That’s an interesting observation. So any other thoughts regarding what you found in the box?”

“Yes, imagination.”

“I don’t follow.”

“I used my imagination to unlock it’s final truth.”

“And that would be?”

“You rely far too much on man and not enough on God,” the initiate returned.

“Very good!” the inquisitor exclaimed, “Now that we have put your membership to a test, we shall put the same to a vote.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

“Why?”

“Because you have nothing more to offer me.”

“That is quite insulting, sir!” the inquisitor exclaimed.

“Perhaps,” the initiate countered, “But what beyond ‘curiosity,’ ‘reasoning,’ and ‘imagination,’ can you offer me in your Great Society? A place? Position? Wealth? Those things I can find for myself.”

The chamber remained stunned and silent as their would-be initiate walked from it.

Their neighbor Kelly came over for a visit, something that was severely frowned on. It was the sixteenth day of a 40 day quarantine, where everyone was supposed to remain a certain distance from each other and to isolate in their homes, save for the trip to the store for the essentials.

“Thought you said your husband was out in the garden,” Kelly commented.

“He is,” Sarah replied.

“I don’t see him,” Kelly returned, as she looked out the kitchen window once again.

“I promise you, Kelly,” Sarah stated, “He’s out there. You jus’ gotta dig a little deep is all.”

Quickly becoming my dogs. Get yelled at for getting too close to strangers, falling asleep on the couch at all hours, wandering pointlessly about the house both day and night, getting excited about car rides, constantly searching for food and staring out the windows.