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Josh Czuba

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by Josh Czuba

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Fiction writer helping you take back your mind with creativity.

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4/11/2026

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June 21, 2026

American Insomniac (short story)

<html>I have not slept in three and a half weeks.That’s 25 days and 25 nights. 600 hours, almost.Maybe it’s been longer than that.I don’t know.What I do know is I am well past the current world record. No need to congratulate me. I am approaching the upper limit of sleeplessness the human mind can handle before it expires.Expires, as in: dies.I’ve got just under an hour til the lights flicker off one by one, frontal lobe to brain stem.59 minutes.Which gives you and I just enough time. Everything I’m about to tell you is true. I am going to tell you things I’ve never shared with anyone. I have nothing to lose.The first step to recovery is honesty. I read that in a self help book. You have to start by telling the truth. You have to accept something is wrong with you. That you can’t figure it out all by yourself. If you want me to say it, I’ll say it.I need help.I am beginning to hallucinate shadowy figures creeping in from the corners of my vision and they’re not making very nice faces at me. I’m sick to my stomach with dread that I deserve what’s coming for me. I’ve done things I’m not proud of.Let’s start with the Facts.That which can be: Measured, Observed, Proven.Fact. I am a twenty seven year old American male living in a country far, far away.I used to be an accountant. Now I’m something else.I stand five foot seven inches tall and weigh one hundred fifty five on a good day. Pounds.I am only a little insecure about my height.Did you know over fifty percent of men in the Western world lie about their height?I never do. That’s one line I won’t cross.Fact. I have not slept a wink since the last US major holiday.At first, I thought it was too much caffeine. Or not enough exercise. Something simple, straightforward, easy to fix. So I cut out the coffee. Picked up jogging. I tried herbal remedies, over the counter medication, under the counter medication, a taser.I can now tell you with confidence my problem is not in any way simple, straightforward, or easy to fix. Please do not offer suggestions. I’ve tried it all.I’ve tried the mantras, the yoga, the glass of warm milk before bed.I know too well all the rhythmic breathing exercises that have ever been invented.Box breathing. Nadi Shodhana. In. Out. In. Out.I’m an expert in visualizing and then counting one by one an endless series of ovine shapes, always white, cloud-like things that go Bah.I’ve authored countless little high-pitched aphorisms you whisper to yourself in the dark to ward off the dread of what yet another night of no sleep will do to you.The first night you say to yourself: It's fine. It’s just one night. It happens to everyone from time to time. You say to yourself: Sure, you might be a little tired during the day, but hey! You’ll sleep like a baby because of it!But then you fail to fall asleep for the second night.And a small, dark voice in your mind begins to entertain the possibility that maybe something is really wrong with you. Like maybe you have some hidden problem, lying in wait, something way deeper and more malignant than you could ever imagine.It’s on the third night you think to yourself: Surely at some point my body will just knock me out, right? Animal instinct will kick in and I’ll just pass out. Basic survival function, right?But when, nope, that doesn’t happen, and you instead plod through another day of debilitating, soul level exhaustion paired evenly with red alert, panicked, cold sweat, wide eyed vigilance, and at this point are petrified of even the thought of attempting to lay down to pretend to sleep, when on that third night you lay there once again, it’s then you begin to wonder how long this might go on before you die. Before you blip out of existence.A halogen light bulb pushed to its limit.The answer, in our case: about 54 minutes.So, you start taking all number of sleep medications in, frankly, irresponsible doses.You take Temazepam and Trazodone and Zolpidem and several popular brands of melatonin gummies.The hours of every night begin to follow a pattern.You lay down. Close your eyes. Breathe. Try to ignore the ticking of the digital clock. Roll left. Roll right. Lay on your belly. Lay on your back. Sit up. Get up. Turn the lamp on. Read. Turn the lamp off. Close your eyes. Count sheep. Count cows. Count whatever you want. Turn on the radio. Turn off the radio. Turn on the white noise machine. Turn on the brown noise machine. Masturbate. Get up. Take a hot shower. Drink a warm glass of milk. Lay down. Get up. Take a cold shower. Drink a glass of cold milk. Masturbate. Read. Lay down on the couch. Lay down on the floor. Bang your head against the wall and then the headboard and then your desk and then the floor itself. Masturbate. This time, leave the tie around your neck when you’re done and get back in bed and pull on it as hard as you can to try and deprive your brain of oxygen so you can maybe then drift into a hazy, suffocated slumber. None of it works.As every true insomniac knows, the harder you try, the worse it gets. Which of course leads you to the bizarre act of trying to not try to fall asleep.Taoists call this process: Wu Wei.Americans call this process: Impossible.But one way or the other, you must stop trying. You must learn to surrender.I suppose that’s why I’m here.I’m surrendering up control to a higher power. Don’t let that get to your head.Fact. When I first arrived in this city with nothing but the clothes on my back, I had nowhere to stay. No plan. I figured I’d figure it out along the way.Lucky for me, I happened upon a young woman who happened to live alone.She had a lovely little studio apartment all to herself in the center of town and I happened to move in just as she happened to be moving out. The whole thing worked out.The young woman who used to live in my apartment had a flair for interior design. She’d managed to turn this small, dingy hole of a place into something totally livable and nice.I’ve kept it just the way she had it. Haven’t replaced a single piece of furniture, wall hanging, ceramic bowl, or potted plant. I haven’t changed the overhead light bulb. It could go out any moment now. The yogurt lid from the day she left this place is still in the trash.After she left this place, people came by looking for her. They’d knock at the door, ask me, Do I know where she’s gone. They hadn’t heard from her.I told them things like, I wish I could tell them.Friends, coworkers, one time lovers, they all came by to check on the young woman.Did I happen to know where she might have disappeared off to.I wish I could say, I’d say. Then I’d shrug, like this. Then I’d close the door.Visits like these dwindled as the months wore on. Now, no one comes at all.Fact. I don’t have many friends.Correction. I don’t have any friends.That’s the honest truth. I keep to myself. Nothing’s wrong with me. Nothing’s wrong with me. Nothing’s wrong with me. I’m just the kind of guy who can survive on his own.The young woman who used to live in my apartment had these bright green eyes that seemed to me distinctly feline. They lit up when she spoke. Her eyes. When she opened the door, she smiled wide, like really wide, like she was just thrilled to see you, even if you had only met once before, the day prior, at a cafe, in passing, and only briefly at that. She had a rare good nature about her, this young woman. I got the sense from talking to her she was the type of person who would go out of her way to help other human beings. Type of person to notice a cat trapped up in a tree and stop what she was doing to fetch a ladder. Or rush unfazed into a burning building to retrieve a child that wasn’t even her own.Her name was Harriett, I remember.Or Ellen.We’ve spoken only once since she left this place.I’ve made mistakes. I wish I could forget them. I can’t. They follow me.And you might say, Well, hey there, don’t beat yourself up, everyone’s made mistakes. No biggie. Have you considered cutting yourself some slack.But you don’t understand.These mistakes lie well outside the realm of normal or reasonable or “no biggie.”I am a liar. That’s my diagnosis. There. I just did your job. How much do I owe you.Fact. I’ve lied to everyone I’ve ever met.It’s not that I can’t help it. I can help it. I choose not to.I lie about inane, stupid, meaningless things. I have this thing where I introduce myself with a fake name. Every time. I don't know why I do it.Hi, My name is Devin/Carter/Jeremy/Phil.In the moment of first impression, you can be anyone you want.Most people don’t lie about things like this. Most people don’t lie about anything. They’ll say they don’t believe in lying. They’ll say they tell the truth because lying is wrong. But that in itself is a lie. The truth is: they’re afraid. Of bending reality to their will.They can’t stomach it. That’s why they give themselves away. They scratch their face when they lie. Scratch their nose. Avoid eye contact. Shift their stance left to right, back and forth like they have to piss, bad. They stutter.I don’t do any of that.I say what needs to be said in a low voice, without breaking my gaze, and people buy it. Every time. I’m not trying to brag. I’m just giving you the Facts.Fact. I remember every lie I’ve ever told.That’s the only way to get away with it. You have to remember everything.When you lie, you enter into a cosmic deal with the universe. A binding agreement between you and all the powers that be. Sure, you can bend reality to your will, no problem. But you have to keep track of the details. Who else is going to do it? Not God. No.You won’t find him here.Like all good things in life, you have to do it yourself.Fact. Every night, lying in bed, sleepless, instead of counting sheep, I play a little mental VHS tape of every lie I’ve ever told. Starting from the early days.<hr/>Mom, I don’t know what happened to the birthday cake, really. When I got here it was already missing a chunk.I did let the cat out on schedule, Mrs. Atkins, I did. And rest assured, the gate was closed and locked. So no, I don’t know where the poor thing is. Really.I love you. I really love you. Hey, look at me. Do you hear me. I haven’t felt this way about anyone before, maybe ever.Are you 100% certain you closed the back gate? Because I’m certain I did. And I don’t mean to make you doubt yourself here, but consider that even the smallest margin of error on your part would have been enough for the poor thing to get out. No, I did not see where it went. I have no idea.Did I plagiarize my paper along with seven of my friends’ papers for money? No. Why would I do something like that? And what proof do you have?Baby, I’m not pretending. I know it’s not always easy to get through to me. But I’m telling you the whole truth. Nothing but. Look in my eyes. You can see, right? Take my hands. Come here.Yes Mom, I’m definitely going to be using the funds for college. But I want to make the payment myself. As a gesture of personal financial responsibility. So would you mind just wiring the full amount over to my personal checking? Thanks. Love you.I’m not going to leave you, baby. I’m with you for the long haul.Mrs. Atkins. I really am sorry about your cat. And the state you found her in. It’s a horrible thing that’s happened. It hurts me to see you hurt like this. Which is why I’m offering the next three months of my baby plus cat sitting services for 10% off. No need to thank me. It’s my pleasure.My name’s Carter/Aaron/Alan/Rick. It’s a pleasure to meet you.I love you.<hr/>I realized early in life that lying was maybe the only thing I was really good at.The only downside, of course, is the fear of being discovered.You start to feel as if you’ve cheated the universe. Stuck the powers that be with the short end of a shitty deal and accrued for yourself something like a high-interest cosmic debt of, like, galactic proportions, and it’s only a matter of time before your credit defaults and the universe sends its collection agency (in the form of Karma or Fate) to break your legs or kneecaps or in some oblique way punish you for trying to pull a fast one over the very fabric of reality. And it could be any second that you hear a sudden knock at the door or a piercing ring on the telephone and, Oh, look who it is, it’s Karma/Fate here to pull the rug out from under you and bring that leaning tower of make-believe crashing down upon on your dishonest head, suffocating you in its rubble. Any second now.But hey. All that aside. Don’t let anyone tell you it’s not profitable.Here’s another fact. Lying is the single most valuable skill on this planet earth. Our whole civilization is built on it. We don’t call it lying, of course. We have other names for it.Positioning. Storytelling. Spin control. Mass media marketing.Want to make a shit ton of money? Learn to lie. Lawyers, politicians, corporate consultants. They know this better than anyone. Because when the real world is made up of information... when the very thing we call “reality” is nothing but pixels and data centers and zeroes and ones... when the “truth” becomes only that which can be influenced, bought, and sold… the liars, or sorry, the marketers, are the only ones who tell the “truth.”Truth is not something you can touch or feel or see. It contains no calories.Truth is what you can get people to pay for.Anyway. What was your question. What do I do for work.I guess you could say I’m a salesman. That sounds right. A man who sells. I talk to people on the phone and get them to invest in my product and/or services.Perfectly legitimate vocation. One of the oldest jobs in the book.Fact. Jesus Christ himself was a salesman.The young woman who used to live in my apartment left behind a black leather address book on the coffee table when she left this place. Every page was full of names, numbers, and addresses of people she used to know. One hundred fifty friends, family members, distant relatives, long-ago schoolmates.I used the computer in the young woman’s office to find out as much as I could about each name in the book before reaching out to them directly on the rotary phone.Every good salesman does his research.Today I’m calling the young woman’s old employer, a florist from the small, middle of nowhere Midwest town she came from.The trick is to call someone who’s not close enough to know the young woman’s parents. Someone who hardly even remembers the young woman herself.The florist picks up the phone, says Who is this.I ask her if she remembers the young woman. I mention the young woman by name. Ellen is her name, it turns out. I was right. The florist says No, she hasn’t heard from Ellen in years, she says.I tell her I wanted to reach out and introduce myself. I tell her I’m Ellen’s fiancee, and that We’re planning our wedding, actually.Florist asks if she can talk to her. It’s been so long.I tell her She’s out running errands right now but I’ll have her call you back as soon as she gets home, and that We’re overjoyed to invite you to our wedding. It’s at Niagara Falls this June and we’d love for you to join us. No pressure either way, just please RSVP by April 31st.You tell her The Save-the-Date is already in the mail. That the young woman who used to live in my apartment sent it over just yesterday, But I couldn’t resist calling everyone on the list to break the exciting news.Recall: there’s over one hundred fifty names in this black leather book, and on a good day I’ll get through about ten of them. So far today I’ve talked to the florist, the young woman’s old high school math teacher, and one of her old childhood friend’s Mom, Aunt, and Father.The young woman gathered so many names and numbers in these pages. She must have been quite the people person.You share a few intimate details about the young woman with the florist. Cheeky, gossipy things to make the conversation feel real. Things like: how she’s become so frazzled with all the wedding planning. How you find it adorable. How we just endured our first serious lover’s spat over where to host the wedding and how the both of us had to learn to compromise. But now, on the other side of the horrid conflict, our love bond has grown somehow even deeper.Saying things like this makes the florist more inclined to believe you when you get to the important part: Well, it’s been so lovely getting to know you, Miss [insert whatever the old bat’s name is, refer to the address book if you’ve forgotten] And I can’t wait to meet you face to face in Niagara! Oh, and one more thing.Shift your tone of voice. Like so.Ellen begged me not to mention this and I really wasn’t going to. But… our cat Delilah was struck by a fruit truck, if you can believe that, and her back half is totally paralyzed. In lieu of any wedding gifts, we’re just asking folks for donations to her recovery. And I really do hate to ask. I do. But her treatment is scheduled for next week.The florist will say, Oh no, I’m so sorry to hear that.You’ll say, The poor thing can’t move at all. We’ve been pushing her around in a low-friction laundry basket. It’s just awful. If we don’t get her the operation she needs, she’ll be... oh god...Leave a pause here for dramatic emphasis.But, you know, there is some hope. If we can just cover the down payment for the treatment, we can save her life. We have to get it in by tomorrow.Mention once more how much the young woman loves the cat and how sorry you are for bothering the florist about money because really this is not at all how you were raised, not at all how you like doing things, and if anything, Don’t even worry about the money, please just come to the wedding.That’s what matters most.But they’ll all say Yes.The florist, the old schoolteacher, the long-ago friends, all of them will say, No, Please, I’d be happy to help, and then you have to almost deny them the pleasure of helping out financially, because you’re so “embarrassed” about having to ask in the first place, until they’re the ones demanding you let them transfer over anything from 1 to 4 thousand dollars as a lump sum amount to save poor little Delilah’s dear little life.And when they finally get you to let them send the money for the paralyzed cat, you send them an encrypted private payment link over email. You never explicitly tell them to pay you over the phone. You just stay on the line. You make small talk about logistical details of the wedding, as if you forgot you were just talking about poor little Delilah, and you go on and on like this until the florist or whoever sends the payment just to get off the line with you, and you’ll say Thank you so much for saving little Delilah’s life and she’ll say, You’re welcome, and you’ll both hang up at the same time.I make about ten of these calls a day. I’m aware that one day I will run out of names in the book. But as every salesman knows, you’ve got to get while the getting’s good.And plus there’s always Eloise. Eloise is the young woman’s maternal grandmother.She lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and has stage four dementia and clearly not enough trusted family members checking in on her.If she had trusted family members checking in on her, they’d come to to find she’s been sending off her retirement savings account in three thousand dollar increments every Tuesday for the last two months, when she (every Tuesday,) gets a call from her dear granddaughter’s new fiancee introducing himself in a bright chipper voice and inviting Grandma Eloise to their upcoming wedding, always and forever to be held at Niagara Falls.She’s always so happy when she hears the news. Nothing less than geriatric ecstasy, each and every time. Which, at this point, is there an argument to be made that maybe I’m doing her a real service by giving her a ring every Tuesday? I mean, who else is making her smile on a regular basis? Certainly not Trina, her dialysis nurse. Who else offers her even one small dose of human connection in her otherwise dull and rapidly dimming interior life? Who else calls and checks in on her and says her name back to her once a week, every week, without fail? I talk to her more frequently, probably, than her own son.Or the young woman who used to live in my apartment. Certainly.Does that not warrant at least some kind of financial reward?And you might say, Well hey, all this sounds fine and good, but like, how do you sleep at night?And to that I say, very funny.But you don’t know what its like. To go almost a month with no sleep. How could you.You don’t know what it’s like to spend a full three hours staring at the same faint crack in the ceiling, begging God above for the love of God to conk you out. And to know, in your heart of hearts, he’s not listening. You don’t know what it’s like to sit up and stand up and put the same day’s clothes back on your unwashed body in the darkness of early morning.To take monumental care not to glance at the digital clock on the night stand or the microwave oven on your way out of the apartment. To drift down the empty streets of an empty city, peering into lit and unlit windows, unsure what you’re looking for.To feel the distinct churning in your guts, that vague hunch that someone or something is always right behind your back, as if sleep itself follows you now, taunting. But when you glance behind you again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again it is always only open air behind you.It’s on one of these night walks where I first see her.The young woman who works in the bread shop.She’s closing for the night. Or no. It’s early in the morning now. She must be opening the place. I see her unlock the door and I think about saying Hello, but I don’t.The young woman who works in the bread shop is there four days a week. She’s got a warm smile when she greets her regulars. She walks along the water alone after work, sometimes whistling. She lives across town in a brick building. On the third floor. There’s a lamp that casts a yellow glow out her window. Just one pinprick of light in a city asleep. She’s the kind of person who has cats, probably. I haven’t seen them. Just a feeling. She’s not the type of person who would talk to me. Not me. Never me.But maybe she’d talk to Jeremy Winthrop.Jeremy Winthrop practices what he says in the mirror before he says it. He’s one of my favorites. I haven’t taken him out for a spin in some time. He’s the kind of guy who would talk to a young woman like her.The young woman who works in the bread shop has a habit of going to one particular bar after work. A local spot on the water. That’s where I go up to her. I’m not the type of guy who’s capable of approaching a woman in a bar, but today I am Mr. Jeremy Winthrop, who is.I say hello. I buy her a drink. I ask her questions about herself and probe for a niche interest, like the Roman Empire or endangered animal protection or speed cubing and Wow, would you look at that, I happen to be interested in exactly the same thing. What are the odds of that. I invite her to come back to mine. She smiles, nods. She’s way more receptive to the notion than I might have guessed. Looks like Jeremy Winthrop’s still got it.And then we’re in the apartment, some time later, and she won’t look me in the eye. She doesn’t comment even once on the interior design. She goes out of her way to offer to make drinks for us, even though I’ve just offered to make drinks for us. She goes into the bathroom.I put my hands in my pockets and take my hands out of my pockets. I stand up and sit back down. She closes the door to the bathroom and turns the overhead fan on. I take the opportunity to go through her handbag that she’s left on the coffee table. In her bag I find a collection of small knives, zip ties, an opaque plastic bottle full of gasoline, a pantyhose mask.Then the door opens and she comes back into the room with drinks. I scramble back to my spot on the sofa. She offers me the drink in her left hand. She initiates a toast and we both take a sip. It’s just a little too bitter. I know what’s going on. I can see everything. I drink my drink.It takes thirty seconds for my eyelids to start fluttering.She whispers to me, Don’t go to sleep yet. Stay with me a little longer.I ask her what she’s put in the drinks. I ask her if she’s here on behalf of the universe, as in, like, is this my cosmic debt finally defaulting.Are you the collector, I ask. Here to punish me for my crimes against reality.She just smiles at this. Does she think I’m cute? Hard to say.I can’t think straight. For the first time in a long time, my head and eyelids grow heavy. They blink and then drop. When I open them again I’m restrained at the waist and ankles by black elastic tension cords. The young woman is in front of me. She makes it clear to me in one terse sentence that I am to confess.If I confess, I’ll be set free.But I have to be honest. I have to tell her everything. Things I’ve never shared with anyone.I tell her I’ve never done this, I’m no good at this, I don’t have much time.The young woman who used to live in my apartment sits down in the apartment and waits for me to speak. She looks the same as she did. I’ve kept the place exactly as she had it.I open my mouth to speak as the light blinks out.</html>

June 17, 2026

The Boy Who Lives In The Basement

<html>When I was a kid in school there was a boy I knew who disappeared off the face of the earth and to this day no one knows where he went.He was the only child of the Leavitt family. They used to live in this town. Before you moved here. The kid’s name was Eric. We weren’t good friends but we’d said hello a couple times.He didn’t disappear the way you think of people disappearing.He wasn’t kidnapped or stolen or killed. He didn’t run away in the middle of the night.What happened to Eric was stranger than that.It started when he was a boy.His grandmother came to live with the family in their little house. She had grown ill and could no longer care for herself. Her lungs were all wrong. She had to wear tubes in her nose and lug around a big clanking machine that made horrible noises to keep her alive.She meant well. But she was worrying woman.She worried about everything. About things that had happened in the past, and things that could happen in the future. She’d worry that a car might fly off the road and crash through the kitchen wall right now, this instant. She’d worry little Eric hadn’t eaten enough for dinner.Here, have some more honey. He needs to eat. He’s a growing boy.More than anything, she worried about her things.Grandmother Leavitt had so many things.Hundreds of old dolls, faded black and white photographs in rusted metal frames, ceramic statues whose eyes followed you, every birthday card she’d ever received. She kept all of it.She kept things no one would ever in their right mind think to keep. She brought all her things with her into the house until there was hardly any room to walk through the hallways.When you visited, you had to be careful to watch your step or you’d trip over an ancient rocking chair, a mildewy pile of decades-old newspapers, maybe a wood crate full of baby dolls, some of them missing eyes.Every inch of space in the Leavitt home was swallowed by Grandma’s things.But even that that didn’t stop her worrying.The very day she set foot in there, she found something new to worry about.Little Eric Leavitt.The only child of Mr. and Mrs. Leavitt, he became the focal point of his Grandmother’s worry.She couldn’t bear the thought of anything ever happening to her grandson. He had become one of her precious things, one of her dolls, something she had to keep out of the light, out of reach of anything that could leave a scratch.She didn’t let him play outside. She never let him off on his own.Even seeing him get on the bus to school drove her crazy. Think of all the horrid things that could happen to Eric at school, she’d say.She tried everything to keep Eric at home.If the boy let out as little as a sniffle, his Grandmother insisted he needed to spend the day at home, or the week, to get back on his feet.When he stayed home from school, his grandmother fed him cookies and salt water taffy and fried eggs and anything and everything Eric wanted. She’d stuff it down his face like that would keep him safe from the dangers of the outside world.They’d sit together on the sofa and watch old black and white television programs til Eric’s parents returned home from work.And still, Grandmother Leavitt worried.Her worrying grew worse with age. So did her breathing. She let out these long, rattling breaths that sounded like some wild animal, close, circling.Her voice was old and strained, always getting in the way of things. Her smell preceded her by at least two rooms. But what can you do? You can’t kick out family. Where else would she go?But then one day, they woke up, the Leavitt’s, to find her body stiff and dead in her old wood bed. There was a look of disbelief frozen on her wrinkled, bloodless face.Her oxygen tubes must have fallen out of her nose during the night.Her eyes were wide open when it happened.They buried her that very week and carried on.Shortly after the funeral, when she was underground, Eric moved into his grandmother’s old room. In the basement. His parents found him in there before dinner. He told them this was going to be his new room, and they said it would be too cold for him, but Eric didn’t leave.The dark room was stuffed with all of Grandma’s things.And after Eric moved in, he did not leave.A week later, he got a little under the weather himself. He developed a sniffle. A real sniffle. The sniffle became a stuffy nose and the stuffy nose became a sore throat and not long after he was at home in Grandma’s old, wood bed with tubes in his nose. With every breath came a rasping growl. It started soft and grew to a loud, rattling thing by the end of it. He wore the tubes in his nose day and night. It was a good thing they had kept the oxygen machine after Grandmother died. Eric ate cookies in bed. He watched black and white programs on her old television.He did not go out to see his friends. Pretty soon, his friends stopped checking on him.All Eric did was stay in his room. In his bed. Not even dressed. He produced the strangest noises from behind the closed door. Don’t even ask about the smell. His parents brought him breakfast, lunch, and dinner on a tin tray. They’d leave the tray at the base of the door and take a few steps back from it, holding their breath. They’d hear him coming from several feet away. The door would open a crack and a pair of pale hands, hands that hadn’t seen sun in who knows how long, would snatch the tray and yank it into the darkness of that room.Then the door would close again.His parents could hear him from the dining room table which sat squarely on the patch of floor above Eric’s chamber in the basement. Ghastly noises. Growling, sniffling, the shuffling of furniture. Heavy things being moved across the floor. What was he doing down there? And always that rasping cough they could not get away from.He kept the lights off in that room so neither of them knew when he was awake or asleep.Months and years of sickness changed his voice. Anyone’s guess how or where he was going to the bathroom. In the mornings, Mr. and Mrs. Leavitt woke to find the refrigerator raided, empty sometimes, nothing but scraps left behind by whatever beast could have done this.Every night, the noises. The Leavitts couldn’t sleep. The sound traveled up and always seemed to find them. They tried a white noise machine. Ear plugs. Piling pillows over the sides of their heads. But they could not get away from the coughing, hacking, rasping. The floorboards of the basement room bumping up and down. Nails being hammered. Loud, deep creaking from the bowels of the house, their home itself beginning to cough.It was all they could do to hold each other tight til the sun came up.One night, Mr. Leavitt got out of bed and said Enough, and he went downstairs to the basement with his tool bag. He carried down heavy wooden clapboards and nailed them over the door. As if that might conceal the noise. They didn’t care about the things they’d left inside the room. They just wanted to try and forget about it. Carry on.But at night they heard it still. There was no escaping the noise.The Leavitts themselves stopped showing their faces at neighborhood parties. They stayed at home. They ate dinner, the two of them, and tried to ignore the sounds from below.They cleared the table.One day on his way home from work, Mr. Leavitt missed a turn and drove his car clean off the edge of a sheer cliff face. He died in the resulting crash. Mrs. Leavitt mourned privately. After the funeral, she left everything in the house exactly as it was. She left the clapboards nailed to the basement room door.Mrs. Leavitt was left alone with the noise. Not just coughing now. Other things. The distant whine of old television programs. The shattering of plates. The deep, intestinal groan of a capsized ship. Was the house sinking into the earth?There were also smells. Every night she could sense the odors of food she hadn’t cooked in years. Mrs. Leavitt learned to ignore these things. She learned to live like this.Time went on. She grew to be an old woman herself.And it was many more years later, you see, before Mrs. Leavitt finally ventured down into the depths of her own home to face what she’d chosen to forget.It was her son’s birthday. The day she went down there. He would have been how old now.She was a very old woman and not so steady on her feet. She did not know why she was doing this. But she brought a treat with her. A cupcake with a candle in it. Something special.She used her late husband’s hammer to pry off the nails of the clapboards on the door.In that room, that long dark room, everything lay exactly as it was. Nothing had changed. Except for all the things. Grandma’s things. They were all gone. Where had they gone?From the doorway, Mrs. Leavitt could see a square of pitch black beneath the old wooden bed.She crept up to it and pushed the bed aside to look at what it was.A big gaping hole that went way, way down into the earth.A spiral staircase winding down into the black.Each step made of mud and twigs and twisted hair.It went down so deep you couldn’t see the bottom.Mrs. Leavitt took a breath. She put her slippered foot on the first step, and then the next, and down she went into that hole in the floor, into the place she had left behind.How long she had to climb down into the depths no one knows. But long after she could no longer see her own two hands in front of her, Mrs. Leavitt saw a light at the bottom. A spark, something. It was the faint yellow light from one of Grandmother Leavitt’s old lamps.She descended the mud steps faster now to get closer to that light. There were sounds. Sounds that got louder as she stepped into the faint light.Scurrying feet, the frantic scratching of bare skin on wet earth. Hushed noises of some creature she could not yet see. It was when she reached the bottom that she saw what had been waiting for her all this time.All of Grandma’s things were here.The porcelain figurines, the clothes, the photo albums wrapped tight in plastic, the precious heirlooms, the ancient furniture. Dolls without eyes. All of it and more gathered here at the bottom of everything. There was so much of it. So much more than she remembered. It was stacked on top of each other. It formed walls and piles and long, shadowy hallways.All the things they’d left to rot.The scurrying was coming from inside here. Mrs. Leavitt could hear the footsteps but she couldn’t see who or what they belonged to. They were getting closer now, creeping through this labyrinth of forgotten things.Until Mrs. Leavitt turned and down one of the long corridors of junk, hundreds and hundreds of feet below that very room where she had once nursed her son, she saw the thing.Pale, gaunt, hunched over its precious things.Its breath came out as a rasp. Face and neck concealed by long, matted hair.She could see every knot in its twisted spine, skin so thin the bones were bursting out.The thing ran its bloodless hands over the walls of its things. So much stuff.Where had it all come from.Mrs. Leavitt knew at once she should not have come down here.She took a step back and then another.On her third step, her heel caught a shard of glass and released the faintest breaking noise.The thing turned its head and a pair of pale, cataract eyes locked in on Mrs. Leavitt standing there. It just looked at her. There was maybe the faintest hint of recognition in its eyes.But Mrs. Leavitt had already turned and begun to flee. Her bones and tendons were old, she could go only so fast. But she pushed with all her might towards the stairs that would take her back up, out of this place, away from this thing and all its things.Following just a few feet behind her was the rasp, the thing that had followed her. She could hear harsh flapping footsteps on the mud floor. It sounded as if it was running, or crawling on all fours, like an animal.Mrs. Leavitt reached the stairs and scrambled up. It was a much longer way than she remembered. How deep had she sunk. The thing was just behind her, even closer. All it would have to do is reach out and its long, thin fingers would reach her hair, her throat.Mrs. Leavitt did not stop. Her lungs burned. She held in a cough. She could once again start to see the light above, but just at that moment slipped on the earthen stairs and fell to her knees.She grunted and pushed herself back to her feet as the desperate, starving thing behind her closed the distance. She could smell it now. Feel its breath on her neck.She felt its hand catch her ankle, grip it tight, but she kicked hard and managed to yank free from its dead, cold hands. She kept scrambling. So did the thing. She was sure it would take her again. But somehow she reached the top of the stairs and managed to climb out of that gaping, black void she found in the floor.She rushed to the basement door, just as the thing clamored out behind her. She slammed the door shut and threw her thin frame against it. She could hear the growls coming from just the other side. The pounding of its body against the door. She tried to shut it out. The sound of the thing throwing itself against the wood. As if it felt no pain. She could hear its growls and recognized it as speech. It almost sounded as if it was saying Please, Please, Please.But Mrs. Leavitt did not let it through the door.She kept her full weight barricaded against the force of the thing. She reached down to the floor, picked up the hammer and began to nail the clapboards back onto the door. The whole house shook from the struggle.It took her a long time, but Mrs. Leavitt nailed each heavy wooden board back onto the door so that nothing could ever escape.Then she tossed the hammer aside, and turned away from the noise.</html>

June 14, 2026

Confessions of a Pyromaniac

<html><hr/>It started when I was a kid.I stole matches from the kitchen junk drawer. Birthday candles. Anything with a fuse. I gathered bundles of dry twigs from the yard and kept them in a locked toy chest under my bed. I stood on my tippy toes to take the kitchen lighter from its place in the world. Just to hold it in my hands for a minute. My parents told me cut it out, quit it, and I did for a while. I used to hate getting in trouble.But you can adapt to anything.<hr/>Every fire is made from three elements.One: fuel. Things you can burn. Scrap wood, dry leaves, a three story bungalow in the suburbs. Anything and everything you’d ever want to remove from this earth forever.Two: oxygen. Air to feed the flames. Fire is a living thing, like you and me. It needs to breathe. Nothing catches in a vacuum.And three: combustion. The spark to light it up. If you build the fire right, you never need much. Just a tiny nip of heat in the right place and you can burn the biggest building in the world down to a thin black sheen of ash that drifts away to nowhere in the first slight wind.Everything good I’ve ever done in this life has been the product of these three things, combined in the right amounts in the proper order.Here is the trifecta my entire world rests upon.Fuel, Oxygen, Combustion.Father, Son, Holy Ghost.<hr/>Adam Eleanor lives at 1337 Pinnacle Park Lane.It’s a three story bungalow made of wood, and drywall, and three other types of insulation.The wood of the house is very dry. It will catch quickly. If I had to guess, the whole thing could be engulfed in ten minutes, start to finish. I don’t know how I know this, but I do.It’s a warm night in late May and the breeze across town is strong.Adam Eleanor is throwing the last party of high school tonight.Everyone’s invited to the last party of high school. Even me.Unfortunately I can’t make it to the party. I have plans.<hr/>In the first grade, I’d get home from school, dash up to my room, and set fire to my homework.I’d tear it up into tiny jagged triangles and light them off one by one with the matches I’d stolen at breakfast, while Mom wasn’t looking. The next day, I’d tell my teachers the dog ate it.But we didn’t have pets.One afternoon I accidentally set off the overhead smoke alarm and my parents rushed in to find me in the act. I still remember their faces. How they froze in place in the doorway when they saw me there with that burning teepee of multiplication tables and charred matches between my legs. The moment they registered once and for all this was going to be a whole thing. The cold recognition of what was now the capital P Problem they’d have to deal with for years to come.I remember before there was anger, scolding, punishment, before I feigned shame and contrition and endured the long time-out and first visit to a clinical specialist, before all of that, there was something else in my parents’ eyes. Something no Mommy or Daddy should ever feel toward their firstborn son.When they looked down at me in my room that day… for no longer than a fleeting moment…They were afraid of me.<hr/>On the walk to Adam Eleanor’s house I already know This Is A Very Bad Idea.I know this because I’m saying to myself again and again, This Is A Bad Idea, This Is A Bad Idea. But whenever I say to myself This Is A Bad Idea, I always end up doing it. It’s like a fundamental law of the universe.I’m dressed all in black and have my hood up. No one would ever think to stop me. I’m in the suburbs. I think about if maybe I can still stop myself from doing what I’m about to do, but the little click’s taken place in my mind. The switch has been flipped.You can always feel when the decision’s made.<hr/>I was nine years old and it was February and I turned the gas stove on and held my left hand over the fire for eleven seconds without moving. I could feel my skin melt and curl in on itself like a marshmallow you leave to die on the stick.I was tall enough now I didn’t have to stand on my tippy toes. I could just reach right over the electric blue flame. Most human beings have a built-in animal instinct to pull away from the heat. But I guess I’ve always been a little different. I have a patchy tattoo of mottled pink flesh right here to prove it.It’s not that I didn’t feel the pain. Those were real tears in my eyes. I just didn’t pull away from it. I could stay inside of it. Transmute it, kind of. It didn’t get me off though. I had to get my kicks from lighting other stuff on fire. Everyone’s got their thing.Most kids do things like: go to soccer practice or choir or chess club.I did things like: set off homemade fireworks in lidless public trash receptacles after dark. Sneak out way past my bedtime with my pockets full of lint from the dryer machine. Collect trash from the streets of my town and burn it all down to ash. Burn anything I could get my hands on. Even my own clothes if that’s what it took. Tell myself each and every time I lit up that this was the very last time I would ever light up.Shame, guilt, self loathing, these gifts came early. They come with the territory.I’d tell myself, This has to stop. This is very bad. This is not a good habit I’m developing here.But then again, nobody got hurt. Not yet, at least.These were the early days.<hr/>There’s a narrow window of time where Adam and his goons are out buying surplus liquor for the party and the house is empty. I have fifteen minutes to get inside the house through the back door, prepare the building for its dramatic conclusion, and bounce. I don’t have to worry about cameras on the door or anywhere else because Adam’s already taken care of that. The windows are draped and there’s no visibility from the front. I slip around the side, unlatch the gate to the backyard, and stroll through to the sliding door.Yes, it is always this easy to break and enter a home in the suburbs.Except can you really call it “breaking” when everything’s unlocked?<hr/>Valentine’s Day of third grade is when I really knew I had a problem.Picture it.All the kids milling about depositing bullshit Hallmark offerings into brown paper bags.Stickers, lollipops, little candy hearts made of colored chalk. You remember. There’s not much sentimental value to the ritual when you keep in mind every child is required to give one to everyone. No discrimination. Everyone gets a trophy.We’re 10 minutes into the festivities when Emily McBride yells out to the whole room, Who left a match in my bag? And everyone stops what they’re doing.God forbid someone exercise a little originality.Teacher looks inside Emily’s bag and frowns. Then she checks Arthur Dennison’s bag. Her forehead creases cut deeper into her face. She checks the next bag. The next. The downward slant of Teacher’s eyebrows becomes parabolic. She marches up to the front of the class and says Alright, who wants to speak up? Who put all these matches and fuses and homemade pocket explosives in everyone’s paper bags?No one says anything.So Teacher pulls the age old, Come forward now and you won’t be punished.Which, for the record: that promise has been kept exactly zero times in the history of elementary school.No one? she says. Alright then.She instructs the class to empty their bags. The perp will obviously be the only one who hasn’t deposited a match/fuse/pocket explosive into their own stash. Surely. Everyone groans and empties their bags. And sure enough, it’s in my brown paper bag they find something unexpected. Two things, actually.First, no one in the class has left me even one chalky pink heart or Hallmark card or offering of cheap candy. What happened to “No one gets left out on Valentine’s Day?”What they do find is: a small translucent bag of, what is that, gunpowder?, a juice box full of pure grain ethanol, two individual sets of flint and steel, and a tangled mess of unidentified multi-colored wires.Both my parents pick me up from the office.They say things like: Haven’t we talked about this, and We thought you were feeling better, and We’re not angry, honey, we’re just disappointed.There’s nothing I can say to get out of this one. I have to face the music. I have to go back to the listening experts that very afternoon.Later that night I hear my father break down into tears from the other side of the wall. Him and Mom are in their bedroom. I hear him collapse into these low, racking sobs, muffled by Mom’s arms wrapped around him. I can tell he’s been holding it in.No matter how well he hides it, my father’s cries have a way of echoing through the thin capillaries of our house. I grit my teeth and force myself to hear it all. I deserve this.There is something very, very wrong with me.This is the night I hold my arm over the stove. The first time.<hr/>I’m dousing the floors, walls, and ceiling of the Eleanor estate in odorless combustible fluid.It’s a kerosene base with a number of other compounds mixed in to hide the scent. I’m not going to walk you through the whole process right now. I have a fifteen minute window, remember. But if you really want to hear about it, I prepare it at home in my room in small batch micro brews. It’s fast drying so I can cover every corner of the house and the kids won’t notice they’re standing and breathing in potent flammable aerosol spray until it’s ignited. I’m dousing the family photos hanging in the hallway. The marble countertops. Even though marble doesn’t burn. I don’t care. Douse it all. My nose drips a single tear of blood.I sniff it back up into my face.<hr/>By the time I was 10, I’d learned how to keep my habit under wraps.How to lie to therapists, psychiatrists. Listening professionals.The trick is: you can’t ever be cheerful. When they ask you how you’re doing, how you’re feeling, you can never tell them just ‘good.’ They won’t buy it. You have to be a little unhappy. Not too unhappy or they’ll dig deeper. Adjust your medication. Diagnose you with something else. It has to be, Well I’m mostly good, but I’d feel better if…You have to be specific.My REM sleep has been inconsistent.I haven’t had much of an appetite.Sometimes I drift off in class.But then you have to say you’re working hard to feel better. You’re doing everything you can. You may not feel great, but you’re fighting like hell to get there. They appreciate this. You need to wince slightly while you talk, careful not to evoke self pity or melodrama. You need a certain “grin and bear it” disposition in the face of your psychic angst.This is how you lie to people who say they care about you.<hr/>When you’re lighting up a suburban home, you don’t actually have to cover every inch of it in combustible fluid. Just the crucial parts to ensure the flames spread. The doorway. The porch. Most of the kitchen. Ceilings. Cover the basics and you’re good.You don’t actually have to go out of your way to douse sentimental items like the Eleanor family photo albums and antique dresses and this old wooden rocking chair you can tell was hand-built by someone in the family. That’s just a Me thing.When I’m done with Mr. and Mrs. Eleanor’s bedroom, I move into Adam’s.Here are the quarters of a perfectly well adjusted young male. A kid destined for OK things. He’ll go to college, work out 3 times a week, get married one day to someone he likes and says he loves. He’ll live with his parents for most of his twenties.But such are the times we live in. Have you seen the economy.I douse his room.Translucent, odorless aerosol fuel all over his checkered bedspread. All over the action figures he still has displayed on his desk. His computer. All of it must go.I finish off the can on his soccer trophies and then take out the next receptacle from my backpack. I need to pace myself. There’s a whole lot of house left.So much real estate, so little time.<hr/>Another thing you learn with a condition like mine is how to smile so no one looking has any reason to question it. You learn how to live out loud. How to use enthusiasm as camouflage. You learn to play happy in a subtle way. To never look like you’re trying.Don’t smile too much. That’s a dead giveaway. Just a halfway smile and a thirty percent glint to your eyes. Laugh, but not heartily. Maintain eye contact with whoever’s listening. Nod at a constant rate, only slightly. Learn to ask adults questions that make them talk about themselves. Ask about their work, their interests. Keep your eyebrows furrowed and bottom lip clamped down with your two front teeth. Let them talk and talk. That’s how you avoid getting asked about yourself, your problem, how you’ve been feeling lately.Smile and nod and ask questions and they won’t ask if you’ve had any recent episodes.<hr/>If someone was looking real closely, they’d see the floor and walls of the house kind of shine.They glint very slightly in the overhead light. But no one looks closely these days.I take three of my precious minutes to disable all the home’s smoke alarms. It won’t matter anyway. Force of habit, I guess.I do one more pass over Mr and Mrs Eleanor’s bed. I refrain from pocketing any of their jewelry, watches, or expensive, easy-to-pawn tchotchkes sitting on the nightstand. I don’t need it. Stealing is not my compulsion. Different strokes for different folks.<hr/>I’ve never lit any animals on fire. Just so you know.Never anything living. Or nothing with a central nervous system, I should say. I have no interest in hurting, killing, or maiming. My problem has nothing to do with aggression. It’s not a sexual thing. Not in any direct way.It’s more like communion with a Power Greater Than Me.I want to feed it, this God of mine, the flames. I want to watch them eat and swallow and disappear whatever stands in their way. Until both consumer and consumed are gone, dust, ash. You know what I mean?In the beginning, it didn’t matter what I set fire to. I’d burn anything I could get my hands on.Then last Thanksgiving I lit up one of grandma’s old photo albums and felt what that was like. Torching something of sentimental value. It’s a whole different cocktail. A more potent experience than you can possibly imagine, unless you’ve tried it.From that point on, I could only get my hit from burning precious things. Heirloom furniture. Sister’s clothes. Mother’s clothes. Best friend’s father’s prized stamp collection.Doesn’t matter what it is. It just needs to matter to someone else.That’s how vices go. They escalate. You develop a tolerance. You start off burning scraps of your math homework and open your eyes one day to find yourself setting fire to Adam Eleanor’s family home.After a while, you just need something stronger.<hr/>Party people will be back at the house in five minutes.I skip out the back door again. I leave a trail of fluid across the yard in a zig zag. I resist the urge to spell out a message. No. This act requires no words. Let it speak for itself. I trail it out to the the edge of the yard and then hop the fence into the neighbors’ yard.The neighbors are Ronald and Cara Bronner, both retired and not super involved in the community. Around this time of the evening, they’re both typically tied up with senior night pickleball which is why they’re not home to see me emptying my extra can of fluid in a thick puddle in the middle of their lawn.A lot of getting away with it depends on nailing the details. Getting the little things right. You have to pay attention. You have to know how people tick.Tomorrow, when it’s over, when there’s nothing left of the house, when the emotional vibe at the Eleanor’s has evolved from general horror, shock, and awe into the coping mechanisms of suspicion and investigation, they’ll notice the burnt black trail of dead grass leading from the charred remains of their home right into the Bronner’s backyard, and given Mr. Bronner’s recent age-related personality shift, they’ll have nothing to do but suspect the worst. Suspect the obvious. What else would people do?What would you do?<hr/>It makes sense to go out with a bang like this. My cover’s starting to slip anyway.Last month I set fire to the full contents of my backpack inside a trashcan outside the school. I did it during lunch time after what had been a rough morning. The smoke came out black and floated up to heaven. All the kids in the North Caf crowded at the window to watch. Before security got to me, I’d made it out to the football field and doused the turf in kerosene all the way up to the forty yard line. They didn’t even have to tackle me. I was already on the ground. Hands up above my head, fingers together, clasped tight, as if in prayer.<hr/>Samantha, Dorian, Yasmin, Clark are the first to arrive. It’s 10:30 PM.They’re followed closely by everyone else. Kids I’ve gone to school with since before my problem reared its ugly head. They arrive in threes and fours. Jared. Allie. Carson. Quinn.Kids I’ve learned world history with. Gone on ten years of field trips with.Here’s seventy adolescents right on the doorstep of the rest of their lives.Here’s me standing six inches behind the neighbors fence, watching the most epic, final party of high school gestate and be born just before its grand demise.From the back side of the house I can see clearly into all the rooms. For some reason, the back of the house is all glass. I see kids getting it on in each of the bedrooms, one on every floor. It never takes long for it to come to that. The kids drinking inside look like they’re imitating parties they’ve watched on television. Keg stands, beer pong, backwards baseball caps.I wonder if they are pretending or if they actually enjoy this and the movies just happen to get it right. Does art imitate life, or what? Don’t ask me. I’m just a guy with a raging problem.And about a thousand fluid ounces of combustible fluid waiting at home. Leftovers.I’ll have to get rid of that when I get back.Anyways.<hr/>Tell you the truth, it’s been a bender of a week.Tuesday night, I burned to the ground the World War One monument in Alden Park and biked away before anyone saw me. They don’t have cameras at Alden Park. Well, now they do.What I did was I dusted the whole thing in thermite which is a powder of aluminum and iron oxide and you can use it to melt metal. I blew the mixture out of a homemade contraption I’d fashioned out of the family garden hose.Took me less than 30 seconds to cover every bronze edge of the thing, then use a good old fashioned match to ignite it.I indulged myself and stayed put for a full sixty seconds, watching the angular faces of our town’s veterans melt down into shiny putty before I got back on my bike and pounded the pedals home, arriving just in time to watch the story break on the evening news.<hr/>11:11 PM will be ignition time here at the Eleanor estate.I’m not into manifestation or anything. I just think it would be pretty funny. Imagine Donna Hardfeldt executing a private tarot reading in the first floor bathroom, eyes closed tight in total spiritual focus when her seance is interrupted by the dense and sudden smell of very real smoke and for a moment she’ll wonder, hey, is that my candle? And then she’ll open her eyes and step out of the bathroom and learn the truth at the same time as everyone else.Ten minutes on the clock.<hr/>Every time I do it it’s the last time. Every time it’s “tomorrow I’ll change.”Tomorrow I’ll come clean. Get myself together. Lock in. Figure it out. I’ll work out and read books and do something else to blow off steam. Something well adjusted. Normal.By making each and every time I do it the very last time I ever do it, I get the best of both worlds. I get dopaminergic release plus the satisfaction of knowing I’ll fix myself tomorrow.It gives the whole experience a delicious finality.Ride high on the locked in imaginary future while reveling in the uninhibited thrill of doing the horrible, toxic, very bad thing, right now, today.And because it’s the last time every time, I have to use up all my supplies every time. So I don’t have any leftovers. So I’m not tempted to do it again tomorrow. This is always a bit of a challenge because I tend to over purchase supplies because my eyes are always bigger than my stomach. But I manage to do it. Every time.<hr/>Seventy five 18 year olds chug and snort and try to dance. Unfortunately most of them grew up in families that didn’t possess a basic sense of rhythm. So the big kids inside just kind of slosh around like the cheap drinks they’re trying not to spill.<hr/>I already have my 6 AM alarm set for tomorrow. Tomorrow I’m going to lock in.To lock in, I have to complete a select handful of rituals. I have to wake up early and go downstairs into the family home gym that used to be my Dad’s office. I have to do no less than one hundred chin-ups and two hundred push-ups and then take a cold shower and then put on all black, unbranded clothing and sit on the floor of my room where I used to flick sparks of flint and steel right onto the knotted hard wood below and I have to just sit there with my eyes closed and meditate for twenty minutes which means try very hard not to think. I have to say to myself Don’t Think, Don’t Think, Don’t Think.But it’s usually no use because my thoughts usually drift to girls or what I’m going to light on fire later, and please don’t be alarmed by those streams of thought being next to each other. They’re totally different urges and would never cross paths at the same point in the evening.Relax. It’s like thinking about sleeping with Sydney Sweeney and then separately thinking about the delectable munch and pull on a fresh mozzarella stick.Both awesome things. Tantalizing in different ways.Do you get what I’m saying?<hr/>11:04 PM. From behind the house, I can see into all the windows.It’s a beautiful tableau of drunk teenagers. Adam Eleanor himself is leaned up against a banister that can’t support his weight. He’s talking to Genevieve. Or trying to. Genevieve Holt. Say her name a million times and it won’t be enough. It’s hard to see her face from here, from behind the wood slats of the fence, but I’m trying. I can imagine her laughing, nodding, giving to Adam with her eyes more than the time of day, which is now 11:05 PM.Kyler Berry, a sophomore, attempts a keg stand but is unsupported by anyone so he folds forward and crashes down onto the coffee table below. He lands flat on his back with a smack and stays that way. No one looks into it.There’s something cliche about all the red solo cups. Something insincere about this whole affair. It’s a high school party that’s too self aware. The place is wreathed head to toe in tropes. I mean have you actually ever been to a party with a keg?Right. I didn’t think so.<hr/>Tomorrow I’ll figure it out. Tomorrow I’ll get myself together. Tomorrow I’ll clean up my room and my habits and my life. Tomorrow. These are things I tell myself.<hr/>People have isolated into cliques. They’ve found their little intra-party tribes. No one stands alone. Except for the guy behind the fence. But enough about me, right.<hr/>11:09 PM. Genevieve’s standing closer to the bannister now. Adam’s got a smirk on his face like he’s thinking of doing something cheeky. I still can’t see Genevieve’s face. But now he’s leaning in, getting close. There’s that moment where they’re about to kiss. Body language shifts. She flicks hair out of her eyes.<hr/>Twelve years ago, when we were in the fifth grade, Adam and Genevieve played a game of tag, just the two of them, and I watched it happen. The game went on for months and months and it was clear-as-day fifth grade flirting. Only one time in my life did I ever manage to sit next to Genevieve on the bus and when I tried to talk to her the words came out stiff.<hr/>Tomorrow I’ll find a better hobby and try to make something of my life. Tomorrow I’ll write handwritten apologies to everyone I’ve ever wronged. Tomorrow I’ll surrender up myself to a higher power, something that isn’t the flames. Tomorrow I’ll<hr/>Adam’s leaning in for the kiss. I could just strike the match right now. One fluid motion. I could watch it burn for a moment.<hr/>What bothers me about these people is that they did not have any involvement in turning out the way they are. It was not through any sum of their own personal choices they were born pretty, glistening, shiny people. They never had to develop personality as a survival mechanism. They didn’t work to become hot, naturally well-liked people.Although I guess I didn’t choose my predicament either.Maybe we’re all just born the way are and it’s up to us to learn to deal with it somehow.<hr/>I strike the match and hold it in front of me. This is the moment of greatest potential energy. Maximum tension. Everything in the whole universe hangs in the balance in a moment like this.I’ m not looking in the window anymore. I drop the match. It mingles with the pool of fluid I’m standing next to and shoots out across the lawn in the zig zag I left behind. I press my face into the slats of the fence and keep my eyes open, refusing to blink.There is water in my eyes but I don’t let it spill out.I hold it there.<hr/>Children rush from the home in droves. None of them work together.One dude shatters a window with a chair to escape though this is not in any way necessary. There are two sets of open doors to run through. He dashes out into the yard and almost sees me behind the fence, but takes a hard left and wraps around the house that way. He’s followed out the window by many others.Adam and Genevieve are lost in the mass exodus. I have to stop my eyes from searching for them so I can watch my flames eat the house. Wouldn’t want to miss the main event.Remember why we’re here.It takes nine minutes and forty seconds for the tendrils to take the house. To swallow it completely. How’s that for accuracy.<hr/>I get home and lock my bike in the garage. I take off all my clothes and stand naked in the living room. I leave my clothes lying there in a loose pile. My parents are asleep by now, but I wouldn’t care if they found me like this. Tonight is supposed to be rock bottom.My nose is bleeding again. I drag my feet into the bathroom, turn the shower on, cold. I don’t even gasp when I get in. I just stand there under the stream with my head down.I drop to my knees. Clasp my hands and bow my head. I realize too late I don’t know how to pray. I get off my knees and turn the shower off.I do thirty pushups on my bedroom floor, naked still. I put on pajamas I used to wear when I was younger and drift into the kitchen to cook some ground beef. I put on the television so there’s noise in the room. The news is on and they’re covering the Eleanor house fire.I turn off the TV.Tomorrow I’ll get it together. I’ll wake up real early and go for a run and then take a cold shower and I won’t go on my phone, not even once, and I’ll make breakfast for Mom, tell her thank you for everything. Gratitude is the attitude.I’ll get rid of my supplies. I’ll put them in a bag and drop the bag in a lake.I just need to get a little momentum going in the right direction and I’ll be OK. That’s all it is.I just need to get myself together and stop doing things like binge eating cereal and scrolling on my phone and burning down the childhood homes of kids I don’t care for. I should start reading again. Certainly. That’s a no brainer. Fill my brain with all kinds of good things so I don’t have any room to think of the bad stuff anymore.That would be a good start.<hr/></html>

4 total episodes available

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What is Josh Czuba?: Fiction writer helping you take back your mind with creativity.
How often does this podcast release new episodes?: This podcast updates daily.
Where can I listen to this podcast?: This podcast is available on 4 platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. You can also use the RSS feed directly.
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