You are twenty six miles from the Promised Land, and you’re so close that you can taste the founts of milk and honey waiting for you. You left the land of your birth three days ago, slipping into the darkness like a thief in the night, on to the bigger and the better. You left a note for your mother, telling her not to worry, telling her you’d be alright, and you’d write often and she should watch for your face on television. You asked her not to let your father call the police to get you back, not to let him see the note at all. You loved her and you knew she’d understand. 
He knew you where you were going though, he even knew when you left. Your transmission’s just a little too squeaky. He was planning on fixing it this next weekend, to celebrate you being ungrounded for sneaking out. Or, more to the point, being caught sneaking back in just before sunrise. But he couldn’t control you, and he couldn’t keep you in that town with just one traffic light. And so you headed to Los Angeles with nothing but the car that, face it, might not make it and the fifty dollars you’d gotten from your grandma for your birthday.
You drove straight through the night and the next day, finally pulling over and sleeping for a bit in a rest stop outside of Colorado Springs. It was cold in the mountains — you hadn’t been planning on that. You regretted leaving before your father could finish fixing the heater, but that would be months since he wasn’t going to work on it in May. Who knew there would be snow before you made it to California? You’ll have to remember that for next time you run away from it all in the middle of the night on a whim: plan ahead, pack for all seasons.
Nevada is boring, flat, and sandy. Vegas was entertaining to drive through, but you were pressing on toward your goal. You weren’t going to become a famous movie actress in a town full of showgirls. You keep on moving. Your car starts to sputter as you cross the state line before your goal. On the one hand, you’ve reached California. On the other, you are now stuck on the side of Interstate 15 in the middle of nowhere. You aren’t going to let a little thing like a lack of transportation stop you from getting to LA. You start walking.
It’s hot now. You are sweating. You hate sweating. You think about sticking out a thumb. You think about the sort of people who would pick up a hitchhiker out here. You decide walking isn’t so bad, you can buy a bottle of water at the next gas station. After all, there must be one soon. You have a headache from the sun. You can barely see straight. A car stops in front of you and you’re too relieved by the prospect of air conditioning to even care that you might end up buried in a shallow grave in the desert. But the man that steps out isn’t going to hurt you. He runs up to hug you, water in hand, knowing you wouldn’t have thought ahead enough to bring some. Your father helps you into the cool car and pulls through the median to head for home.

John sat in his third period class keeping himself awake through Mr. Dell’s lecture by imagining ways that knowing how to graph the coefficient of a correlation was ever going to be useful in his adult life. The only theory he managed to come up with was if he somehow managed to be a contestant on a game show called “Are You Smarter than a Statistics Textbook?” And even in his imagination the clear answer was that no he was not. He imagined that the show would still manage to be hugely popular, though no one would know why. He’d probably become a minor celebrity just for appearing on it, plagued for weeks by people asking where they’d seen him before.
His mind wandered down the path of fleeting fame as his right hand idly carved a tic-tac-toe board into the white plastic desk. He put an X in the center and wrote “Do you want to play?” above it. He tried to get the attention of any of the kids next to him to challenge them to the game, but they all actually seemed interested in the math lesson. They’d definitely make it farther on the show than he would.
John forgot about his game pretty much as soon as the bell rang. He headed to World History, which he found only slightly less boring than math. History, at least, would give him general knowledge for when he ended up on Jeopardy or played Trivial Pursuit. He didn’t think about the game at all until math the next day when he moved his notebook and noticed someone had written “It’s on!” and drawn an O in the upper left corner. He couldn’t believe someone was playing with him. He wrote “Who is this?” and took his turn.
The next day the game had continued, and the notes with it. “You’ll find out when we’re done.” John set a meeting place, after school the day they finished outside by the flagpole. His opponent agreed. On the day it became clear they were going to end in a draw, the desk asked him if he wanted a rematch. They spent another week playing to another standstill and John demanded that he must know who he was playing, since there was no more room on the desk for new notes. His opponent agreed and the message that morning said to meet that afternoon.
John stood by the flagpole for almost forty five minutes waiting to meet his tic-tac-toe sparring partner. He kept thinking about leaving, but was too curious. Finally, just after four, as he was laying on a bench watching the clouds float by, he noticed a shadow over his face. He sat up to find Mr. Dell standing over him. The teacher asked what he was doing.
“Waiting for a friend.” John replied.
“I’m glad you think of me as a friend, John.” Mr. Dell said. “But I would really appreciate it if you paid attention during my class instead of trying to beat me at tic-tac-toe.” He walked away, leaving John speechless.

My Uncle John, when he was my age and wanted to miss school, used to lay out in the middle of the street late at night, right on the middle line. He’d spread his arms out and bite down his lower lip and wait for a car to run over his fingers. You can’t take notes with a broken hand, you can’t do homework. He figured it was a sure fire way to keep himself out of school for awhile. It worked, usually. Even after Grandpa figured out what he was really doing. He’d be punished, and knowing Grandpa that meant a belt, but at least he wouldn’t be in school.
The best I can manage is a day or two off by claiming I have a headache or my stomach’s upset. I don’t have the commitment necessary to follow in Uncle John’s footsteps. Also, I fear pain, pretty much more than anything else. I may not even fear anything else, really. Needles, bees, large mammals, women, it all goes back to the fear of being hurt. But then again, I think Uncle John might be a sadist, or at least marginally insane. I mean, he used to go fishing with M80’s for crying out loud. Just scooping fish up off the surface. That’s just not right.
My mom has always said I’m just like her brother, at least until he was finally committed. But I think it was really just my amazing powers of procrastination that made her think I was like him. I have to say, I’m pretty good at it. I do my best work under pressure, writing essays between midnight and three in the morning on the day they are due. It’s just how I work. Though, in retrospect, that specific strategy probably wasn’t a good idea for my big senior year project. I was used to crapping out three to five pages max, this one had to be twenty-five not including the works cited page which I honestly had no idea how to even make.
It was 2:15. I was working on my third bottle of Mountain Dew and sitting in front of the computer trying not to let YouTube distract me. My eight required sources were splayed out, open to random pages so I could pretend that I knew what I was doing, My eyes couldn’t focus on the words anymore, they were heavy and so were my hands. I needed sleep, but I was only halfway through page eleven.
Mom popped her head in and asked what I was doing up so early. I looked at the clock and realized it was after four. She saw my clothes and asked if I had gone to bed yet. I told her I had to finish the paper. She shook her head and said I was just like John. She went back to bed. I stared at the blinking cursor, thinking about Uncle John. I put on a black jacket and went to lie down in the street.

The ad said “computor geek wanted” and the fact that ‘computer’ was misspelled was a warning I ignored because I’d just entered my seventh month of unemployment. When you’re desperate for work, you do things you normally wouldn’t. Someone using a computer to post a help wanted ad online ought to be able to spell computer correctly. I emailed him and set up an interview for that Friday at nine in the morning. I figured I’d meet with him then hop a bus for my parents house for Christmas. He told me to call Friday to confirm that he’d be in this office. I did, and he was.
I got a ride down to his office from a friend who knew someone in the area that he could kill time with during the interview process. I would have taken the bus, but I couldn’t scrounge up the dollar fifty I’d have needed. I knocked on the door, still not entirely sure what exactly the job was, or what the man I hoped would soon be called “boss” did. There was no answer. A BMW screeched to a halt beside me and a man jumped out. “Are you Jacob?” I nodded. “Never get married.” I told him I’d keep that in mind.
He introduced himself, Stephen Silverman. He was the number one rated property rental company in the city and he was looking for someone to do office work and update his website. I could do both of those, I assured him, as we sat down at a table in the single bedroom apartment above a storefront synagogue that he used as his office. “Are you familiar with Microsoft Frontpage?” I tried not to roll my eyes as I told him that I could use it, yes. He was having some trouble with it and wanted me to take a look. I used notepad to divide a webpage of property listings that would have printed out into a small novel into multiple pages that Frontpage could actually open. He was impressed and he asked when I could start. I told him immediately.
We spent the next half hour hashing out more details of the job. He got to the part where it would be my job to drive around the city and take pictures of his properties so he had a record of their condition, which seemed like it was a bit outside the “computor geek” job description, but whatever, it was a job. I told him I didn’t have a car. He didn’t believe me. I told him I could walk, bike, or bus most anywhere I wanted to go. He told me he’d hire me right then and there if I had a car. I must have physically shrunk in with my rejection, since he quickly added that he’d also hire me right there if I had long blond hair and large breasts and laughed a bit. I wasn’t consoled.
“Look, you’re not ideal,” he finally said, “But you’re all I have for now. I have a few more interviews, but you’ve impressed me and the job is yours for now. What do you say we get started right away? Obviously, I’ll pay you for your time here today.” He said it like he had expected me to be thinking that I’d work for free. I needed the money even if I only had the job for a week, and the listing said it paid fifteen an hour, and that would pay rent for the month in just a couple days. I agreed to his terms.
It was already one in the afternoon, and he wondered if I’d packed a lunch. I hadn’t been planning on staying after nine thirty. He offered me bologna and bread from a small fridge below one of the desks. After lunch he had me relist all his houses on Craigslist. After I finished that he wondered if I could find software to sync his secondhand Palm Pilot with his computer. I went to work, but after forty-five minutes, I realized that it was five o’clock. I told him I was sorry but I couldn’t find a program that would work and added that I needed to get going.
He wanted me to stay longer, get more done. I told him I couldn’t, thinking about my friend waiting outside and wondering what he might have been up to. Silverman asked me to come back on Monday. I told him I’d be at my parent’s house, considering it was Christmas Eve. He was disappointed, and said to come back Wednesday, but call in the morning to make sure he needed me still. He’d pay me at the end of the week, even the fifty he said he owed me for the day. I left at five thirty, my friend was still outside, or outside again after leaving and coming back multiple times. We drove straight home.
At 5:35, the man had relisted for the job I’d been hired into, complete with the same misspelling of computer. It lowly occurred to me that he’d wanted to keep me there to get all the computer work done that he knew I could handle and still avoid hiring me. I felt used. I left town. On Wednesday I called him and left a message about how I didn’t think it would work out and I’d pick up my pay later. I never went back. I didn’t want his money.

“I stopped by the Delaware Gazette today.”

“Oh, how did that go? They offer you a job?”
“Mom, you know I hate journalism.”
“Well, I thought you said they had an editing position open that you might like.”
“Yeah, and Devin keeps trying to get me to apply, but it’s sports editing on Friday nights after the high school football games end, so it’s like midnight or later.”
“Well, why were you there then?”
“I had to get him my rent money before Monday.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, I think he was trying to interview for the editor thing while I was there. And he kept talking about the high energy newsroom which only had two guys and a police scanner in it.”
“Sounds like they might actually need you.”
“Well, they can have me when journalism stops being all journalistic and starts being entertaining to me. I’m a poet. Writing news is just tedious.”
“Well, my smart little poet, rhyming couplets don’t pay bills.”
“I know how much you love bringing every conversation back to how I’m wasting my intelligence and talent because I’m not writing for a living, Mom, but I enjoy being a waiter. Plus, I actually had a real reason that I’m telling you this, not just because I want to set myself up to walk into the bear trap of your unmet expectations.”
“Oh? And I thought you just loved me so much you liked to provide me with opportunities to worry about you.”
“Well, I do, but this isn’t one of them.”
“What is this then?”
“OK, so I was walking out of the building after finally finding Devin and dropping off my check and I see this big metal bust across the street. And you know I love history, so I had to go investigate.”
“Who was it?”
“I’m getting to that, be patient.”
“Sorry.”
“It was Rutherford B. Hayes, he was born in 1822 right across the street from the Delaware Gazette, according to the plaque under the bust.”
“Well, that’s interesting. I had no idea.”
“Not really interesting, no. You haven’t heard the best part.”
“Oh, good, because it’s not that good so far.”
“Behind the plaque and sculpture isn’t a house or anything. Apparently, Rutherford B. Hayes was born in a BP gas station.”
“Well, that can’t be right.”
“I know! If he were born in a British Petrol he could hardly be an American President. Totally unconstitutional.”
“No, I think he probably wasn’t born in the BP, hun.”
“You’re right. It was probably a Clark station back then. BP didn’t make it into the US market for a while.”
“No, I think it was probably a house before it was a gas station.”
“I’m not sure. This would explain his hard line stance on a Public Slurpee Option and frozen burritos for all, despite the opposition.”
“Well, it’s a very controversial issue. It would be hard to provide junk food to the entire post-Civil War nation, given how much money they just spent quelling the rebellion.”
“But think of all the poor newly freed slaves! Don’t they deserve free burritos and cheap fountain drinks?”
“And you say you can only write poetry.”

There’s a bear mask hanging on my wall over top of a broken barometer. I have a soft spot for puns, especially obtuse visual ones. The mask looks realistic, except for the obvious lack of eyes or any body part outside of the face. I bought it from a costume shop I found while idly driving the countryside in a desperate attempt to get out of the city and clear my head. I ended up in a little villiage I didn’t even know existed until I was there, and I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if it turns out that it doesn’t.
The costume shop was like one you might read about in a Goosebumps book or see on ‘Are You Afraid of the Dark’. It was poorly lit, the walls covered in masks of politicians and monsters, movie stars and mythical creatures. The floorspace was entirely full of racks and racks of full body costumes, save a small amount of space set aside for an electric chair I hope was a replica and an even smaller amount of space left to navigate the store.
As I walked in, a bell rang and a skinny, ancient woman came out from behind the curtain that led to the back room where I assume she captured children’s souls and trapped them in the masks. She was sweet in a way that made my palms sweat and had me constantly shifting my weight from foot to foot wondering if I would have the gaul to kill her if she tried to take me out. I never turned my back to her as I asked about the animal masks hanging high on the wall. They were for sale, she said, for $10 apiece because she could no longer replace them. Someone had come in once and complained that she had them at all, since they were made in Mauritania by child workers. I briefly wondered how that costumer had known, but was pulled back to the situation when she went on about how the plastic was poisonous or some such nonsense. She didn’t believe any of that, and even if it were true she was still selling them since she’d paid for them. I bought the bear, since the grotesqueness of the goat and the giraffe was going to haunt my nightmares for eternity anyway.
I got it home and hung it there on the wall and more or less forgot about it for a few months. Then one day, my mother stopped by with my brother’s two month old nephew to visit and she told me about how they’d been to the zoo the day before and the kid really liked the bears. As he danced in a circle in the living room to music I’m sure was beautiful in his head, I went back to my room and grabbed the mask, crawling out from around the corner with it on.
I guess he was expecting his uncle, not an animal. As he completed a turn and saw the bear at the corner he freaked, yelling “No, no, no, no, no” as he buried his face in my mother’s thighs. I tried to calm him down, to show him that it was just me in a mask. I encouraged him to hit it and see that it wasn’t real. But he was having none of it. Instead, he cried and cried. And secretly, I was glad I wasn’t the only person who was scared of the mask.

I’m not sure how long I’d been in the alley. It had to have been a few weeks. It’d rained a few times, and dried up between them. There was mildew in my clothes, that was for sure. I could smell the mold, I could feel the stiffness of my gingham dress against my legs. My face was dirty, my left eye was hanging on by what might have been a single thread. I was in bad shape, existing at the whims of Mother Nature, silently riding along with Father Time.
I’d made it to the alley in the mouth of a dog. Well, my arm was in his mouth, the dog wasn’t really big enough to lift all of me. He’d found me in the sand box at the park where I’d been buried and dug up again by a half dozen or more young boys over the course of a few days. That’s when my eye came loose, I think. Though honestly I’m not sure. I was distracted at the time, my mind wandering back to the events that left me in that dirty, dusty mess. Why had she left me? She had shown so much love before that, so much care. I had been her favorite, but now I was nothing.
But I knew why. I never thought it would happen to me. I never thought I’d be the one to disappear. I’d outlasted other replacements before. I’d even survived the kitten. But suddenly she was too much of a big girl for a doll like me. She needed something made of hard plastic that could Googoo and Gaga and pee when you pressed a button. I was no match for the never ending march of science. She’d been neglecting me for weeks, and I was terribly excited when she actually grabbed me on the way to the park that morning. Which is why it hurt even more when my existence slipped her mind and her mother shooed her into the car while I helplessly watched.
There was a man who parked his car over top of me. I’d seen him every day since I’d arrived in the alley. He’d seen me, too, I knew, but he didn’t really acknowledge me. I was only garbage now. But then one day, his eyes lingered longer than before. He still left me there under the car as he walked into the house, but I felt like he actually cared for a moment that I was there.
A few hours later, as the sun was setting and the street lamps were humming on in the alley, he returned and dropped to his knees beside the car. He reached under and picked me up, examining me, poking my eye. He held me in his arm like I was a real baby and we walked inside. In those brief moments I dreamed of the shelf he would set me on, of his daughter to whom I would soon belong, the fun we would have together. As we entered the back door of the house, he dropped me in the kitchen garbage. I saw his face a few more times as he shoveled more refuse on top of me before finally tying me in with it.
The next time I saw the light was when the sun crested a mountain of debris above me in this landfill. A couple of seagulls stole my eye. At least I can’t smell the mildew on my dress anymore. I just smell generic rot.

The camel trudged steadily across the arid, shifting sands, plodding east toward home. He’d walked the route a thousand times before, and while he was by no means an intelligent animal, he was clever enough to know where there was plenty of food and water waiting without anyone leading him to it. The sun was high enough there was barely a shadow below the animal. He anticipated the coolness of night when he could lay down and relieve the strain on his thin legs form the weight piled up on his back.
There were still a few shadows that caught his eyes though as he pressed on toward home. Dark blobs circled him constantly, sometimes bigger on some passes than others, but always there. The camel was also smart enough to know what those shadows meant and to know that he should keep moving in order to keep them small. But he also knew he was too weak to outrun them. He hadn’t had water since he’d found a well two days ago, and he hadn’t had food in over a week since he’d found a handful of rotting berries at a dried up oasis, probably fermented judging by the zigzag of his tracks for a few hours following eating them.
The weight was getting heavier on his back with each struggling step he took. He longed to be home. He dreamed of the trough by the well full of water, the dried grasses piled in the stable. He pressed on toward the food. The shadows circling him were larger today. He heard the hissing of the creatures as they got closer. He hastened his step, and the shadows grew smaller again. He could keep them away for now, he just had to show signs of life. He would be home soon, especially at this pace. Rarely had the camel moved so quickly without his master’s whip on his rump. The whip he did not miss, though he longed for the food that the master provided.
The camel knew that he was close. He had seen these passes before, the sand had given away to rocks, and the familiarity of his hooves clopping on them reminded him of days gone by. The thinness of the pass also meant that the vultures had backed off. He could relax and move slowly, which was good since he lacked the energy to move very fast at all. It was just a little further to the camp, and the camel and the vultures both knew it. He left the thinning pass into the open plain and the vultures began to dive at him, snatching at the weight on his back. He sped up as much as he could.
There was a bang, then a thud. One of the vultures fell before the camel, startling him but he was too weak to react. There were more shots as the other vultures retreated. The camel entered the camp to throngs of his master’s family flooding toward him, shouting for help and crying out and wrestling the weight from his back. As they mourned over his master’s body the camel went to the well and then the dried grass. The vultures fed on their fallen comrade.

The snow is falling hard in big wet flakes that are filling in my footprints almost as quickly as I am making them, which isn’t very fast at all considering everything is already under about a foot and a half of traffic-stopping whiteness. I abandoned my car on Route 42 when I hit a patch of ice hidden under the snow and ended up breaking a tie rod while trying to regain control. I guess it could have been worse; I could have hit a tree or flown into a ditch. I could be dead.
I’ve been walking, I guess, for an hour or so. I have no idea how far I’ve made it. I can’t see my car anymore, for sure. The only inclination I have that I am still on the road was the fact that the snow is pretty flat here. It’s late, and with the snow I can’t see much farther than the edge of power lines running the side of the road, but I swear there was a farmhouse I passed a few miles before the ice. I figure I should have been there by now. I pull my arms inside my coat and rub my ribcage, remembering the advice Bruce Wayne gets in Batman Begins about not wasting energy rubbing your arms. I can’t feel my face and there’s snow and ice caked in my hair.
I see black number ahead seemingly floating in the air: 2592. I head toward them and find that they’re attached to a mailbox. That means there’s a house around here somewhere. I turn off the road and trudge through even deeper snow. It’s up to my knees now, and the wind’s started cutting through my coat like I’m naked. I can’t feel my feet anymore. I’m afraid they’re probably black from frostbite. I’ll lose one or two after this. Where is that farmhouse? It shouldn’t be this far from the road. Then, maybe I’m not that far from the road.
The top line of a barbed wire fence stops me. One of the barbs is in my thigh, though I only notice when I reach into the snowdrift to pull it out. The pain gets worse as the blood rushes to the wound. I step over the fence and keep moving. It’s not much farther. It can’t be. I’ll be there in just a few more minutes. It only seems far because I’m moving so slowly in the snow.
I’m an idiot. I bet the mailbox was across the street from the house. I’ve only been wandering through an empty field, not toward a warming fire and a telephone. I turn around, though I honestly don’t even know what direction I’m headed anymore. I might have gotten turned around. I can’t stop though. I have to find the house, or at least my car. I need shelter.
It’s getting warmer. I mean the snow’s still coming down, but I’m actually feeling hot. I take off my coat. It’s not bad at all anymore. It’s like the snow’s stopped being cold. I’m burning up. I take off my sweatshirt. I’ll just go back to the car and find the house in the morning. All I really need is a phone to call AAA. Wow, it’s hot. I rip off my jeans and boxers. It’s not like anyone’s going to see me. Why isn’t the snow melting? It’s really hot now. I’m still sweating and I’m naked. I should sit down. That might cool me off a bit. Wow, I can feel my heart. Why can’t I feel anything else?