Medulla Animus

"So, what are we seeing you for today?" Doctor Marta sat at her keyboard, ready to take notes. "Well, I think I strained my soul," Ophelia said. "It hurts when I try to learn new things or think about — ow — vegetables."

"Can you rate the pain on a scale of one to ten?"

"Maybe a three? Or a four?"

"How'd this happen?"

"Well, uh, I was helping my friend move furniture, and we tried, uh, working together to make it lighter."

"Okay, lie down on the table." Marta pulled on nitrile gloves with a red-ink pattern on the palm. "Tell me what hurts." She moved her palm over Ophelia's skin. "What were you moving?" she asked.

"Uh, chest of drawers, bed, things like that. My friend, uh, she's moving."

"Mmmm-hmmm. Well, you definitely have some inflammation in the medulla animus. I'm going to send you for an aura reading just to be sure, but it should clear up on its own. I'd like to give you this literature on safe soul-merging—"

Ophelia reddened.

"—and remind you about our free soul shield program. Do you want to take any?" She held out some individually-wrapped soul protection.

Ophelia took three.

The King's Wizard

The king's wizard sat in her tower, the tallest in the great castle, staring into the fire. She'd once thought the tower a sign of respect for her wisdom. Now, she wondered whether it was to keep the strangeness of magic as far away from the throne as possible. She stroked her beard. Why did she advise the king anyway? The king had many advisors: advisors for war and for commerce, for politics and for the harvest. He had a royal huntsman, official advisor of the hunt! He preferred not to think about magic, so the wizard had little to do.

And if the king didn't need her, why did the wizard stay? Why continue to think of herself as the king's wizard? Serving the king afforded her comfort and safety. Were those worth feeling so adrift, having command of great creative forces but having no use for them?

No. The wizard packed a few things: a change of robes, a comb for her beard, a week's food and water. She left all the gold and silver objects littering her chambers. She wouldn't be beholden to the king any longer than she must. She would be her own wizard now.

112 West Elm

"Oh, my God!" Jack hollered from the street. Ben leaned out the window of the garbage truck and looked back at his partner. "What?"

"It's, it's..." Jack's gorge rose and he fought off retching. You've gotta come see this.

Ben swung down out of the cab and walked toward Jack until he could see the arm dangling limply out of the waste bin. "Huh," he said. "I guess they didn't need him anymore."

"Who— who does that?" Jack demanded.

"The folks at one-twelve West Elm, I guess." Ben shrugged. "They should've used the yard waste bin, though. Compostable, right?"

"How can you be so, so calm about this? Someone put a body in the trash! We have to call the cops or, or something."

"No cops," Ben said. "They'll complicate everything, and the family will wonder why we didn't take care of it like we're supposed to, and—"

"Oh, hey." Jack had crept close and poked the arm. "It's fake, like one of those things they put out around Halloween. Thank God, right?"

"Yeah, man. Can we get on with it?" Ben headed back to the driver's seat.

"Uh, hey," Jack said. "What did you mean, 'like we're supposed to?'"

A Funny Thing

It's a funny thing, being able to travel through the power lines and appear at the other end. Gives a person all kinds of ideas. Naturally, Jerry's first idea was finding all the places he wasn't supposed to be. First it was his neighbors' houses, while they were out. Then government buildings while they were closed — first libraries and schools, then post offices and courthouses. Then, of course, it was banks. It's a funny thing, having to catch a criminal who treats any exposed wire as an escape hatch. Gives a person a terrible case of the nerves. What if I've left an outlet uncovered? What if I don't open the main breaker in time? But Detective Maron hadn't forgotten anything. When the criminal appeared in the vault in a shower of sparks, the detective threw a switch. Nothing appeared to change, but all the wires in the vault now went to just one place.

It's a funny thing, being trapped in a computer's logic gate. Just feeling the silicon boundaries hemming you in, sensing nothing but the quantum effects of loose electrons, wondering if anyone on the outside is ever going to switch it from AND to OR...

Not Joseph Gordon-Levitt

"Oh my God, are you... are you Joseph Gordon-Levitt?" His face lit up the cereal aisle like a light bulb. "Uh, no, I'm not," I said. "But thanks. He's a good-looking guy."

"No, you're totally him," the man said. "I'm  Alex, Alex Winger. It is such a pleasure to meet you. I loved you in that movie, the one where you and Bruce Willis fought."

"Oh, you mean, um," I snapped a couple times, "uh, Looper? I thought that one was all right. But again, really, I'm not Joseph Gordon-Levitt."

"I get it, I get it." Alex bobbed his head. "You're trying to keep a low profile." He leaned in and whispered conspiratorially. "I won't give you away."

"Thanks," I said, "but I'm really not him. My name's—"

"Oh, I get it, I get it, no worries." He looked in my cart. "Hemorrhoid cream?"

"Uh, yeah?"

"No worries, Joe, no worries." He backed away, smiling. I turned back to the cereal, then heard the snap of a camera phone. He was gone before I turned around.

The next day, the Enquirer's front page read "Joseph Gordon-Levitt on Fire — in the Rear!" Somehow, I felt I owed Gordon-Levitt an apology.

Explaining Depression to a Six-Year Old

"So, you know how it feels when you feel sad?" "You mean like when I fall and hurt myself?"

"Not like hurting yourself, well, not like hurting your body. But something that hurts your mind. Ummm..."

"Maybe when I couldn't find my Ninja Turtle blanket and really wanted it?"

"Kind of like that, yeah. So, it's like feeling sad like that, but all the time."

"Always?"

"Well, sometimes it's all the time, and sometimes it's not. But when it's really bad, it's all the time."

"You should do something you like to be happy. Like play video games."

"I do that sometimes. And sometimes it makes me happy. But a lot of the time, it just distracts me from feeling sad. It's not what will really make me happy."

"You could do the thing that will really make you happy. What is it?"

"Heh, that's a good question. I have a lot of trouble figuring that out myself."

"Maybe you lost something you really like, like my blanket?"

"In some ways I did, yeah. Maybe if I knew what was missing I could try to find it."

"I'll help you look."

"Thanks, buddy. You're helping me just by being here."

The Whipping Tree

When he failed, the boy did not cry. He'd learned that early on. He took a quiet moment and walked into the woods nearby. With a stick from the forest floor, he laid into a young oak tree, lashing at it over and over until its bark was torn and its flesh dripped sap. The boy hurt the tree until he no longer had the strength. He returned to the weighing eyes of his father tired and dirty from the woods, but never with his face streaked from tears. Each time failure threw him down, he suffered, and the tree suffered with him. Each failure marked the tree with scars and streaks of residue sap the boy spilled. He continued to pass his failures on to the tree, fewer each year, until he stopped striving, stopped driving himself to be something more, just to avoid the pain.

Years later, the boy returned to the tree a man. What had once been a young oak was now a mature tree, tall and strong despite its wounds. The man touched the bark, feeling the marks he had left on the tree so long ago, and cried, mourning the boy who had tried.