Carmen Catrambone 41. Daniel Weiss

thing. You always asked what i wished for, but I thought if I told you it wouldn't come true. UnfortunateIy, my superstition didn't make a difference. For the 3 weeks after you left I would lie on my broken blue rocking chair while my 56lonely velvet roses wilted, and expected you to come home with a lingering scent of whisky mixed with ferocity; the way you did every night, waiting for you to prick me with your unhesitant thorns. But I have to remind myself that you are gone forever, and can't protect my garden. You left it here all alone.

For the first time since you've been gone,I didn't force my body to pass the rickety door to the garden. \rly worn out purple sandals made a squeak with every step going through the curved rocky path to the garden. But without you here, the flowers don't sprout like they used to. They seem to be staying in the dirt where they feel safe and invulnerable; they don't want to be seen or open themselves up to a world that might hurt them, where there's nobody there to protect them. You were supposed to be here. They depend on you.

It's been a while since 1've written to you, i've been pretty busy since I'm practically prancing to the garden everyday now,taking advantage of the beautiful gift I was given. The flowers are absorbing the fiercely blazing sun and the skies valuable tears of aspiration,while they overpass their hedged potential. The robins and sparrows are fluttering around and dropping subtle hints of summer down their path. IvIy life cycle seems to be overcoming this detrimental point of desperation. Although,l can see my garden still misses you. It still doesn't feel completely protected from harm,but it's independence is finding its way to the light through dirt, darkness, and irreversible damage. Nothing bad has happened since you've been gone. In fact,this morning while I was removing the controiling silver wired fence, I noticed the iilies sprouting with ambitions, the daffodils revealing overwhelming vibrance, the orchids flourishing with glory, and the sun and clouds working together. The petais seem to sing sweet songs of freedom and I can even hear the flowers joyous rooting. I wish you could see what I've accomplished without you.

{a

-Carmen Catrambone

41 th" O(rouen s O(oun o Jinnil. by Daniel Weiss

A tall, worn-down looking man with a thick gray beard and a suit appears. He cleors his throat, and paces around the room in silence for a few moments before speaking: Jesus wasn't lying,you know. All that stuff did actually happen. The bible,surprisingly, is nonfiction. Yes,l flooded the earth; yes,I created humanity; yes,l do hear it every time you use my name in vain, and no, for fuck's sake, Mlississippian #3472,1 am not "out to get" specifically you because you've had a bad day. But other than that, for the most part, the supposed "myths" are true. And frankly, the entire story is a bit of a mess if you ask me. Now first off,l need you all to understand something very important about me: I was very,very young when all of this happened. Well--relatively speaking,l suppose I was ancient at the time,but what's important is that it was only just after I had created humanity. Life on earth was my little passion project. First came the single-celled organisms.which were kind of my test guinea pigs, and I let them grow and change as my ideas got bigger and crazier. Soon enough there were fish and trilobites. Everything was turning out as I had hoped. I even had some creatures walking on land. With legs. God,legs were a strange idea. Soon I was throwing legs at everything I saw. I got smashed one night and gave these fucking noodles a hundred legs each. You humans started calling them centipedes. Funniest thing I'd seen all month. The next morning.when I'd sobered up,l thought the idea was just too good not to keep. But yes, eventually these creatures got further and further along until I was finally ready for my masterpiece, my magnum opus:the human. And lesus Christ--the entire project's flopped. Why do you think I'm talking to you all now? I'm not supposed to interact with my projects. I'm supposed to remain something of a folk Iegend. A concept. A maybe. A haunting suspicion in the back of people's minds, existing for humans only as a vague idea fuelled by faith and faith alone. Well hey,l guess this is your proof. Surprise everybody! I'm real, and you're aII dumbasses. So why am I here? It's because, frankly, it doesn't matter anymore. Congratulations, everybody. You've made God a nihilist. You ruined yourselves. You were apes. You were beautiful and intelligent, but at the end of the day,you were still apes. You foraged. You hunted. But it wasn't long before you began to hack the system. It started with farming. I thought you were just curious,like a baby human first exploring the world, shoving anything it can into its mouth (and yes,by the way,l made babies stupid for fun). But it went further than I'd expected. A few of you watched plants a little too closely and figured them out. I didn't think you'd do that. You weren't supposed to do that! It stopped being birds that shat seeds from the sky, and instead, soon, you were ruining perfect ground and placing the seeds yourselves. The old lifestyle entirely died out. You all switched to farming. You found the code,and you were never meant to do that. You weren't meant to figure out seeds, to figure out fire, tq figure out any of it. Because the fact of the matter is,well,you're humans. Your preferred state of nature had,for

eons, been ignorance. You loved ignorance! It was a happy time! You were glad not knowing how thingsworked,and you were fine with hunting 1nd gathering. And I was happy toot tvty project wa-s workingout! Any conflicts were minor tribal coilfli.ttl "nd my-enchanting vision was coming to its glorious fruition. And then you weren't so satisfied, and then it was too late for me to stop you. Next up came the stone age. Needless to say,stones are hard. I made them hard. It was my way of making the world untouchable. Like what I suppose you humans would call "solitary confinement,,. It was my way of making sure you humans,with all your strength and intellect,wouldn't be able to destroythe beauty I'd crafted around you. You were supposed to be ituck and unable to ruin it. The earth was a beautiful wallpaper painted with mountains and ravines and rivers and snow,but you weren,t meant to try to change the paint on the wall! So,l made it out of stone. I created the earth, and how stunning it was! rial? And how better to protect it than by making almost all of it out of a damn near indestructible mateISigh.] But you figured that one out too, didn't you? You always were the smartest ones,l suppose. And before you ask, no, dolphins aren't that smart. And then after stone,you picked up bronze. You weren't meant to harnesi fine metals. Fine metals weren't even meant to exist outside of their states in ore. I didn't even know it was possiblel You melted away the stone,which I'd never even thought of doing,revealing such beautiful metal! cracked a code I didn't even program. And all the while,Christ above,all thJwhile,you prayed. you You thanked me. You praised me!Olivacus Prolletti,a prominent merchant fro* Rb*","ctual-ly said to me in one of his more memorable prayers that I hadgifted you all with a world of wonders to explore and things to discover. I didn't do any of that. You all were fusi so incessantly curious that youwent out and found things you weren't supposed to find. IApause.] Everything else followed suit. Onward came steel. And then gunpowder. And then drugs, and politics, and genocide, and guns, and world-domination, and empiris, ond bloodspill, and minarchieqand dictatorshipq and for fuck's sake, aII of it was in my name! So why am I talking to you all? ing It's because I finally cracked. I'm done. I'm hanging up the hat. I'm being other work. Quitting. I'm sick of the crusades and the walls on the borderr "let go." Leaving. Find"i-ra tnJ.ivil wars,ind

all of it being in my name. You're not my passion project anymore. You're my mistake. It,s ironic that you fear the machin_es you've created gaining consciousneis and destroyingyou--that's the plot of that popular movie, eh, Terminator, right?--well, yes, that's awfully ironic. neiauie you mock youiselves. You mock yourselves. _

that it You've is in my gained consciousness,and with name,you defile your creator. every sword you stab into another human while uttering Consider this my letter of resignation. Enjoy your peaceful nonexistence, humans.