She touched the little box in her pocket and smiled.

She touched the little box in her pocket and smiled as the subway train destined to carry her out of Brooklyn rushed into the Church Avenue station, blowing her carefully groomed hair over her eyes. She tucked the hair behind her ear, holding it down with the earpiece of the glasses she’d been holding her hand. The train squeaked loudly to a stop as the sound of the braked steel wheels sliding along the track echoed loudly through the station. She patted a tear on her cheek away with the hoodie she was wearing as she waited for the doors to slide open.

“Now boarding: B Line to Bedford Park, stops in Lower Manhattan and Central Park. All aboard for the B Line”

The automated message blared through the empty station as Allison stepped onto the nearly empty train. She took stock of her surroundings while carefully selecting a seat that looked clean. She wasn’t expecting many people on the train at this time of night, and she wasn’t surprised to find that the only people she was riding with were a pair of homeless gentleman sleeping near the back of the car. She was careful to be quiet as she sat down, clutching the plain messenger bag she uses as a purse substitute close to her chest, both hiding and protecting the box in the pocket of the hoodie.

Her right hand held the bag to her chest as her left hand cradled the felt-covered box in the hoodie pocket. As she ran her fingers over the seam and hinge of the small box, her thoughts carried her far away from the train now barreling through the New York subway system. She thought back to her lonely apartment in Brooklyn where she had been not half an hour earlier, holding her cat for comfort as she nervously picked up the phone and dialed a number.

“Can I see you tonight? I have something I need to tell you.”
“Of course. When will you be here?”

She could almost see the numbers jumbling in her head as she attempted to estimate the timing of the late-night subway trip.

“About 45 minutes. Do you have any wine?”
“Wine? Maybe. I could go get some?”
“No, it’s okay. You don’t have to. I’m going to leave now, see you soon?”
“Of course, love.”

She hung up the phone as she felt the goosebumps build and disperse on her back, the tingling sensation betraying the confidence in her mind. “It’s now or never” she thought to herself.

Station after station blasted by the window as the vision repeated in her head, her nerves calmed by the gentle rocking of the train and the texture of the tiny box. Eventually the train pulled into the 125^th Street station where she stepped off. She breathed a heavy sigh as she stood for a moment on the platform, recollecting herself and attempting to regain her composure as she patted another set of tears from her cheeks.

The walk from the station to his apartment was a short one, covering only five blocks. His upscale Manhattan apartment building flanked on either side by commercial real estate that had been renovated to contain Business Law specialists and Stock Advisor’s offices. She stepped up the white marble steps and approached the buzzer panel. She pulled a hand mirror out of her bag and double-checked her makeup, remembering as she did so that she’d opted to skip the mascara that at this point would have been smeared around her eyes, and run down her cheeks. She’d managed to stem the tears on the train, containing her joy and excitement as her nerves took their place. There was another heavy sigh as she pressed the buzzer next to the listing for apartment 6D: James Grant. The “kachunk” noise of the deadbolt being electrically pulled away caused her to jump as she pulled open the door and stepped inside. The door closed behind her with a resounding thud.

She walked up the six flights of stairs to find the door to the apartment propped open for her. She stepped in and closed the door behind her. She walked down the short hallway to find James on the couch in the living room playing Madden. He finished the play he was in the middle of and paused the game, turning off the TV as he stood up to greet her. As he set the remote down, she approached from behind and wrapped her arms around his stomach, smelling the sweet odor of his cologne mixed with his pheromones, a scent which had entranced her for the past five years every single time she had hugged him. He twisted around in her arms as she loosened her grip and kissed her.

“Hey you.”
“Heya!”
“You sounded excited on the phone, what’s up?”
“You may want to sit down for this.”
“Oh…kay…”

She held his hands as they both sat down on the comfortable suede couch. The smile he had when she had entered the room faded into a look of confusion at the formality of the situation.
“Don’t worry, it’s good news”
He still had his worries as he watched her pull an envelope from her bag. She slipped the contents out and handed them to him.
“Read it aloud.”

“Dear Ms. Jones:

You have been selected for admission and are authorized to report to the United States Military Academy, West Point, New York on 2 July, 2015, before 10:00 A.M. Daylight Saving Time…

You got in!”

His voice grew with excitement and pride as he read the letter, throwing it aside when he was done as he leapt across the couch to hug her.

“Congratulations, Alley. I’m so proud of you.”
“There’s something else I wanted to talk to you about too.”

He awkwardly crawled off of her and went back to his adjacent seat as she grasped his hands again.

“This is going to be a little… unorthodox, but bear with me.”
“Always.”
“James, how long have we been together?”
“About four years.”
“Four years is a long time, James, and you’ve been there for me even longer than that. You’ve always been there, encouraged me, driven me further than I’d ever imagined I’d go. Without you, this wouldn’t have ever happened.”
“Psh, you’d have made it without me. I didn’t do anything but encourage you. You’ve done all of this.”
“No. You’ve done more than you’ll ever know. So much of what I’ve done was because I knew you believed in me. So many things I’ve been afraid of, and so many times I’ve been ready to give up, you’ve come through and with a few words made me feel like I can take on the world. This hasn’t been an easy four years for the both of us, but we’ve made it. You’ve been my muse and my guidance, and I don’t think I could ever live without you so…”
She reached into her pocket, pulling out the small felted box.
“I know this is a bit of a faux pas, what with picking out both rings myself and all but…”
“Wait, what?”
“Shh…”
“Okay.”

“James. I love you. Will you marry me?”

The Chemical Sunrise

This world thrives on chemicals.

A chemical to wake you up, a chemical to put you to sleep. Chemicals to clean your hair of the oils that hold it in place and yet more to then hold it where you want it. Genetically modified broccoli grows larger due to chemicals, laden with more to keep off the bugs that eat it. They preserve, protect, destroy, grow, shrink, kill, save, relieve, smell, taste, and change the color of our everyday existence and without them we may not survive.

But with them, we may destroy ourselves.

We have chemicals to control our thoughts, squash our intelligence, grow our tolerance for pain. Others make us faster, stronger even. The chemicals can turn a man into a genius, or into a blubbering fool... and yet, these chemicals keep our world together. Glue holds together our buildings, Gelatin holds together our food, poisonous plants color our caffeine-filled energy drinks and life-saving medicines infect our bread.

Pleasurable chemicals are addictive, helpful chemicals taste foul. Chewable vitamins crumble their chemically-processed body building blocks into our stomachs that are simultaneously pushing bile back into our appendices that are useless today because we've chemically removed the need for the  previously life-saving organs.

But you know, and tell me if I'm wrong about this... You know that we're doing it to ourselves, right?

That this whole chemically-altered world we're living in now was our choice?

In our blindness, we sought to eliminate death, disease, pain, foul flavors, bland scenery, cold nights, cold bodies, bad food, e-coli, mold, mildew, disease-carrying pests, difficult bowel movements, insomnia, night terrors, mental disease, fatigue, drowsiness, laziness, vitamin-deficiencies, poisons, contagions, learning disorders, stress, blindness, dysentery, and depression and instead replaced it with something far more worse for the human condition.

A lack of Hope

As we sit in our chemical cars, looking at the sunset turned blood-orange from the chemicals in the air streaming from the plants to create the chemicals we pump into the tank every day we don't have hope that tomorrow will come. We know it will, and because of that we've lost our hope that tomorrow we come. We've lost appreciation for today because we all know that tomorrow will be more of the same. 

Life is easy now;

Another day after yet another Chemical Sunrise.

The big red light switch part two

   You have no idea how much this bothered me.

My mother took me to a fancy restaurant. We were supposed to meet my cousin here for dinner to "celebrate" her graduation. It wasn't quit a celebration. A bit of a reunion really, but I didn't care. All that was going through my mind was the fact that there, in my room of the hotel, was a bright red light switch, and I didn't know what it did. I felt the sting of pain in my stomach that indicated that I was hungry. Made sense, I hadn't eaten since breakfast when my mother pretty much force-fed me pancakes made on the hotplate we'd been cooking on in every hotel room for the last four months. I looked at the menu nervously, trying to gauge by my mother's reactions to different suggestions exactly what I was allowed to order without expressly asking what I could and could not have. My mother had always taught me that asking what I was allowed to do was rude, and that I should just "know" especially when it came to things having to do with money.

Tonight, she was in rare form. My mother was being subtle, letting my cousin actually decide what she was going to eat. I, on the other hand, seemed ridiculously restricted. We'd gone to Das KrabHause, which wasn't the fanciest restaurant in town, but it was definitely above the Burger Haven we'd eaten at the last time she decided we had enough money to go out. I sat at the table shuddering, taking in her reactions.

"Lobster Minestrone? That sounds pretty good." I said, her expression soured.

"Or maybe Shrimp Fettuccine Alfredo?" A smile. There's my dinner!

"Yeah, I'll have that."

There was a lot of boring small talk, revolving mostly around my cousin and her graduation. Mom asked a lot of questions. My cousin was living with her boyfriend after having been pretty much kicked out of her father's house out here. We hadn't met him yet, so my cousin sat shyly answering questions, but you could tell that she was getting more annoyed by the minute at my mother's questioning.

My cousin turned to me, "What about you? Are you excited to graduate someday?"

I hadn't really thought about it, I was still 16, another two years to go. My mother had picked up this idea called "UnSchooling" where I learned about all of my subjects through life experience. It was supposed to be a better way to learn because I picked up real life skills instead of just wandering around learning about history and calculus and geography. Instead I was learning about thing I wanted to know about.

Which was great, until I stumbled upon something as dastardly and mysterious as the red switch. Darn, I was trying not to think about it, and now I can't get it out of my mind again. What could it do?

The red light switch part one

(A multi-part story based around an actual red light switch. Note that the switch definitely wasn't as interesting as this one was, I just decided to use it as a basis for a short story.)

I sat on the bed in the Embassy Suites. The room around me wasn't anything like any of the rooms I've ever stayed in before. This particular room was like a living a "living room" of sorts, with a TV, pull-out couch, chair, desk, and closet. Through the door next to the chair, I can see a slice of the Kitchen, complete with all the appliances, but no dishes, pots, pans, or silver.

I sat, toes tapping on the floor beneath the bed. My legs were too long to swing under this one. Mom was taking a long time to get the two toddlers ready to go to the restaurant downstairs. So I went through my list of the things I do every time I'm in a hotel. Bags in? Check. Soap in the bathroom? Check. Bed arranged? Yep. Lightswitches... Ah! There's something I can do!

I bolted up, getting all of my energy mustered for the one thing my mother lets me get away with in the hotel rooms. We stay in them a little more often than I'd like, usually on the road for months at a time. My mother calls it wandering, but I really know it as "running away from the family." This time, however, we were out for a reason. My cousin, Jennifer, was graduating from high-school. This trip had a little more purpose behind it, so for some reason my enthusiasm for checking out the hotel room had been subdued. I went into the kitchen, flipping on the light switches one-by-one, checking to see what each one did. There were four in this room. Two by the door, and two by the sink. The two by the door controlled the two ceiling-mounted lights that lit the spacious kitchen area. The top switch by the sink, a light mounted below the cabinets, the bottom, the disposal. This process continued throughout the rest of the suite without consequence until I went snooping around in the living room for the switches in there.

I'd gone clockwise around the suite, my routine to make sure I didn't miss any. The lights in the living room were on a boring dimmer switch instead of a regular light switch. Everything was normal until I spotted one last switch, hidden behind the TV. This switch was mounted on the wall at about eye level. It appeared that the switch had once been in a double power box, the kind that could hold two different switches next to each other. This switch didn't have a mate, however. Instead it appears that the maintenance team had fashioned a cover to hide the open switch-slot. It also didn't appear to be your standard, run-of-the-mill light switch. It was red. 


Now at first this didn't stop me. Okay, so they only had a red light switch left in the shop, no big deal, but I wasn't so easily convinced the second time I glanced at it. This light seemed fishy... It was mounted in the wall just like every other switch, but it seemed somehow intentional. My mind was racing, could it have been anything dangerous? What if the light switch was a makeshift replacement for a fire-alarm pull that wasn't labeled? Maybe it was a test switch for some piece of equipment somewhere else in the complex. I looked around and double checked what was in the room.

Everything seemed to be working, the TV turned on, the mini-fridge under the makeshift entertaining sink seemed to be running, all the lights worked, the outlets were all pumping power, there wasn't anything else in the room this switch could operate, but there it was hidden behind the TV, very clearly in the 'off' position.

I reached for the switch again, hesitating slightly, when my mother called out from the other room. "Paul, you ready to go? Let's get this thing over with." she said. Hailing me away from my new obsession.

Jar of Hearts

Tonight as the light flashed across your face, I was again reminded of how beautiful it was.
Your hair flowing like a frame, your eyes wide with youthful wonder and energy.
Always I find myself staring, remembering that I'm not your number one.

I'm always in the back of your mind, while you are all around me. On my phone, in my mind, even in my arms. So close, but I know. I'll never be the man you want, and I can accept that, because what I have is a friend.

And that's a gift for a lifetime.