The Dark Balloon

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Keyboard cat and you.

“Get me my drink,” keyboard cat says to you.

You stare at keyboard cat, his 5-o’clock shadow, and his red drunken eyes, wondering whether you had ever loved him.

“Whatareya staring at? Get me my drink,” keyboard cat says.

“No,” you say, with a quiver in your voice.

“Whatdidya just say? Didya say no to me?”

Keyboard cat just stares at you until he throws his whiskey glass, which slams and explodes against the wall against your left ear. You cringe.

“I FUCKING,” keyboard cat begins, “WORK 10 FUCKING HOURS A DAY TO PUT FOOD ON THE KIDS—FOOD ON THE TABLE,” he shouts.

You pull your kids closer. You tell yourself you’re just trying to protect them, but deep down you hope he’ll take out some of his anger on them before he hits you.

He undoes his belt and pulls out his ring of keys. You shiver, close your eyes, and wait for the catchy piano music that never comes.

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We didn’t think.

A woman, on the internet, posts about her anencephalic baby online [link omitted] and how she comes to understand it through her fundamentalist Christian faith. Anencephaly is a heartbreaking condition; anencephalic babies are born without “a major portion of brain, skull, and scalp” (Neurology Channel, no pictures). The link makes its way to MetaFilter and atheism.reddit [link omitted]. Both threads turn into disasters.

The mark of a strong community is a common sense of ethics. The ability for MetaFilter to self-police is unparalleled. And, while MetaTalk and the human moderator system seem suspiciously formal and un-internet, their existence prevent the unreadable, repulsive train wreck on reddit where the shit about sex dolls, atheism, and reddit’s own sense of smugness continues even after the woman asks the people to stop.

“I think this is the saddest thing I’ve read today.”

That there’s nobody to moderate reddit, that having comments like those exist on your website with a negative number standing next to it with your tacit approval, betrays a deep misunderstanding about how communities work and how much the people behind reddit are responsible for the monsters they’ve created at the feet of their indulgent, selflish, bullshit laziness.

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Lateral puzzles #2: The complicated drink.

A man walks into a bar and asks for a drink. The bartender pulls out a gun and points it at him. The man says, “Thank you,” and walks out.

In this answer, everybody dies.

Charles rushed into the nearest bar. He looked at the bartender, straight in the eyes, and rattled off a long list of words that constituted a fancy drink served, traditionally, as part of a week-long celebration of sexuality in some Eastern European duchies. He hurriedly drank it and tried to leave.

“Not so fast, Charles,” said the bartender who, while saying this, pulled out a gun, which was dozing peacefully between the bourbon and the vodka.

“That’s a cat, Simone. But thanks anyway.” He walked out.

The bartender cursed, but it was too late. Charles had made his escape. The bartender threw the cat (Dr. Whiskers) away and leapt well over the counter, hitting the floor running.

They ran through the city night, passing by an old woman who unbeknownst to her was about to die of old age peacefully, 20 years from now. The old woman fed the pigeons because her children never called. She glanced at Charles and Simone as they ran by.

They ran through the city night, passing by the statue of Wilhelm, the city founder. Wilhelm, who had imbibed an immortality portion to prevent death only to have his political enemies bronze him to a supposed death, heard the pit-pat-puts of the footsteps on the cobbles. He sighed and re-derived the Grand Unified Theory for the 1.48e18th time.

“How’s it going, Wilhelm?” said the old woman, tottering past the man with the golden body.

“Fine. You, Agnes?” said Wilhelm.

“My back’s acting up real bad.” The old woman grunted and shuffled away.

Wilhelm loved Agnes. She was funny, and he knew she was beautiful because her voice was beautiful and even if she wasn’t he would still never stop looking at her, and if this wasn’t love what was? Wilhelm tried to send all his love to her. His love, honed by not having felt anything else inside the statue for all these years, was so strong it caused Agnes back to chronically ache. Agnes, feeling the pain every time she walked near the statue, eventually stopped frequenting Wilhelm at all in a twist of cruel, Pavlovian fate. Their love—for it was mutual—drove them apart.

Say “I love you,” goddamnit, Wilhelm thought to himself. But the embarrassment would be too much, even for a man trapped behind bronze. And so his love, like him, sat pure, cold, and untouched.

They ran through the city night, entering into a dead-end. Simone cornered Charles into an alley. “Why did you run?” she screamed at him, somewhat incoherently. “You know I need the money. I trusted you. I trusted you!”

Simone waggled the gun at him.

“Careful. Careful. You’ve never shot anybody before.” Charles tried to project a soothing tone of absolute care.

“I shot a man once, just to see what the police would do,” Simone said.

“What did they do?”

“Bleed, mostly.” But that’s not what her heart said. Her heart said this: “I love you.”

“I’M NOT HAPPY,” Charles screamed, incoherently. His heart said the same. And his hypothalamus agreed and added, “Why must I always be defined by whom I am below?”

Charles, a deer in the headlights, stared at Simone—a beautiful shaking woman with auburn hair and a gun in her hand pointed at him, shaking because she wished she had a bronze mask, shaking because it was cold inside and outside her, shaking because she knew why he was unhappy—, Charles being a man who only had the thoughts of Eastern European Carnivale running through his head, but a man, a man who had lived alone ever since his family died in the fire and he had found misshaped love in auburn elsewhere, a broken man with big brown eyes.

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Just John v. Susie, part two of a one-part series

“Order, I demand order in the living room!” A gavel, the household’s only cooking device, pounded on a makeshift sound block, which would be more commonly known as “a book.”

John (Just John) and his friend Maxwell stopped whispering to each other as the proceedings began.

“Prosecuting counselor, do you have your paperwork ready?”

“Yes, your Honor,” Maxwell ventured. He just wanted to see John’s new mattress, which John had received for his recent ninth birthday. He suspected this was all a test of his manners. His mother had made him take a class about manners to build his character. Maxwell didn’t know what character in the abstract meant, but he assumed it was the same as resentment.

The Honorable Chief Justice John Roberts peered down at John and Maxwell from recliner sofa on which he sat. The boys stared down at the floor nervously. The sofa creaked; the floor wished it belonged to another owner.

“Is Maxwell Hensington your counselor, John? You know I don’t approve of him.”

“He’s my friend,” John shot back. Then, checking himself, he said, “Your honor, I think it befits the circumstances—namely the lack of young … very young attorneys—that Maxwell be my counsel.”

“Very well. And, you, defense? Do you have your paperwork ready?”

It was chaos over by Susie’s makeshift desk. Her lawyer, Maria from across the street, had not brought her briefcase. It was too heavy, and—besides—her father was using it. She wasn’t even supposed to cross the street. Like Maxwell, she was here to see Just John’s new mattress. Supposedly this one had 5% more springs. She wanted dancing lessons, but she only got math textbooks.

“Math is like dancing, but with the brain. It’ll get you a real job,” her parents said.

“You know what’s more like dancing? Dancing.” But she kept this thought to herself and took her “good-time quiet & focus” medication.

CJ John grew furious at the incompetence of the defense, and his anger casted a silent pall over the room only interrupted by his only too-audible screaming at the defense counsel.

“I don’t want to play this game anymore,” Maria said quietly.

“You think this is a game, counselor? I’m charging you with contempt of this court.”

“This is just a dining room,” she shouted.

“You’re so wrong. It’s a living room. It’s a living room!” And he would not stop repeating it. Spittle flew from the recliner throne and splattered like the corrupt maggots of a rotting judiciary branch.

At long last, he too grew silent. He cleared his throat.

“I’m so sorry,” he said to the jury.

Thirteen young boys and girls from the neighborhood stared at him with eyes the shape of flying saucers on steroids. They quivered in your folding chairs. They began to realize perhaps today wasn’t the day they were going to see a new mattress. A mattress! Such a better gift than math textbooks!

“Stop quivering,” CJ John commanded. “You’re scratching our wooden floor.”

Just John sat embarrassed in his chair, face in his hands, his heart in his throat, and all his other organs in the wrong places as well.