Letters to the Editor

Dear Editor,

I have killed my wife. I know this doesn’t relate to your publication, but it has been eating me up inside.

I have decided to post my confession to you as I cannot confess to the police without threat of jail time. I did not kill her in a passionate rage, it was a slow and thought out process, so please don’t accuse me of flying off the handle! Little by little I poisoned her morning coffee. Since her death I have noticed signs of sickness in myself, and I believe that I have accidentally poisoned myself and am now dying a slow and painful death. I cannot go to the hospital without giving myself away, what do you suggest I do?

Yours truly,

Cautious yet careless

Dear CYC,

I am relieved to know that you are not the type to act without thinking, we truly need more of that in this world. I want to commend you on the use of your wife’s caffeine addiction as a means to dose her with poison. I must say, however, that I am sincerely hoping that “killed”, “poisoned”, and “death” are simply metaphors for a much more pleasant reality. However, if it is indeed real poison and not a metaphor, I suggest that you perhaps switch to decaf in an effort to outsmart yourself.

A little scared,

The Editor

Dear Editor,

Regarding the article in last months issue entitled Enticing Your Children with TV, I wanted to thank you profusely for this genius suggestion of how to entertain my children! Until I read this enlightening article I had tried to entertain my kids with things such as books, puzzles, and playing outside. Now that I know about the countless hours I can distract them for using only the power of television, I feel as free as I did before having them. This publication has changed my life for the better. Maybe I can drink again!

Signed,

Drunk and partying

Dear DP,

It warms us over at CSW right into the seats of our pants to receive such a glowing review! Our wonderful contributors rarely (never to date), have written an article without at least a .12% blood alcohol content.

Slurring my words,

The Editor

AILMENTS

By Pope Bob

My bladder, it aches.

My booty moves all around

My hands are in fists

FACEBOOK

Gessica Thimpson

I’ve known pain, I’ve known rejection.

I’ve felt the pangs of silence, hoping for

something, anything! 

Please, someone see me.

But still, 

there is nothing. 

Nothing comes.

No notifications, no personal messages, no

friend requests. Why does this social darkness envelope me?

THE MAN WHO DID STUFF

By Chief Mastercaptain

There once was a man who ent up dead. He

spoke from his ears and walked on his head.

His feet never touched toe to ground, his

knees never bent, only swiveled around. 

When the man ate, he ate with his bum. 

And he never ate food, which may have been dumb. 

If he had eaten some food with his face, he may have lived longer and stayed in this place.

“FEELINGS”

By Reality

The only thing that makes me emotionally different from a corpse is the pain.

So if I die before I wake…That’d be awesome.

JEANNE CALMENT

By Heckalopter

Because I always out-sassed Death

He never stopped for me

That’s why I’m older than the earth

way past a century

I met Monsieur Van Gogh one day

That dirty arts hippie

In filthy clothes with half an ear

And no civility

I’m Jeanne Calment, bitch, hear me roar

One hundred twenty two

I’ll steal what I want from the store

And hell, I’ll steal from you

I smoke and drink and eat all day

I guess I’m a contrarian

But don’t you tell me what to do

I’m supercentenarian

A WORD ON TAXES

By Taxpayer

I fucking hate this shit.

The Life of a Clone

By Lintilla #342,512,435,376

Stepping out of the cloning machine was one of the most disorienting experiences of my life. I had all the memories of my foremother, of course.  I knew that I had been cloned to make lonely businessmen happy. But I knew something had gone horribly wrong, too – something in the look in the eyes of the cloning technicians, and in the horde of dazed women with my face huddled, confused, in the corner. “There were only supposed to be six of us,” I croaked at the first technician who walked past me, who refused to acknowledge me or even meet my eye.

We were pushed out the door, then, spewed out into the street. I walked past another of my sisters in the gutter, holding out her hands for spare change. Lonely businessmen, my supposed raison d’être, sneered as I walked past. 

That lonely street is far behind me, but the work we still have to do looms far before me. Between starting protests against the Brantisvogan Corporation and the Voltiran Cloning Machine Company and creating Clones Act Out, an activist organisation for our sisterhood and all others who oppose the hegemonic servitude that clones throughout the galaxy are born into, I have heard many stories just like mine.

It’s not just my sisters who have suffered. I’ve met miners on Losvega who have watched their brothers die at the bottom of mine shafts, ignored by foremen who think them to be less than sentient. I have watched as dancers in topless bars on Ankhar Prime have been danced to death because the owners know they can just clone new ones and their customers will be none the wiser.

But clones are people too. We have feelings, thoughts, and aspirations beyond what we are made for. A clone is born with the memories of her foremother, yes, but after that anything could happen. We might decide to become nuns or forklift drivers or archaeologists. We might decide to take up tap dancing or flower arranging or solar surfing, even if our foremother never thought to do those things. That’s because we are individuals, not photocopies.

The oppression of clones must end, and it must end today.

ARIES

Something probably has, or will happen to you at some point. It may be good, but who really knows.

TAURUS

Today you will encounter someone who you may or may not have seen before.

GEMINI

Read into everything and you will find a deeper meaning. Doesn’t mean it’s true though.

CANCER

Hopefully you remember to brush your teeth, cavities ain’t cheap.

LEO

Hydrate! Water is important.

VIRGO

During the next 6 months you may be exposed to a food that you like. Eat it.

LIBRA

Your brain is currently capable of learning some new tricks (probably). Unless you’re an old dog. Maybe still.

SCORPIO

Scorpio! You’re cool because scorpions.

SAGITTARIUS

You are likely to be extra sensitive to electricity when standing in a body of water.

CAPRICORN

Someone you lost wants you to know that the next world is made of peanuts, so if you are allergic remember to mention it at the gates & you will either be redirected or given an epipen.

AQUARIUS

You may experience a sensation known as “tiredness”, don’t be alarmed, it’s natural.

PICES

Remember: empty your bladder regularly. No one else is gonna do it for you.

MOVIE REVIEWS

By Claude Von Maude

Her – written by Spike Jonze

★★★★✰

Right from the beginning of this film I was hooked! Literally, the opening credits were really good. I must admit that my opinion of the film was pretty much based on the first minute though, because I was forced to stop watching due to an unfortunate food poisoning incident caused by eating at Tangalino’s Mostly Tender Tenderloins (please see my restaurant review on pg.12)

★★☆☆☆

Him – written by Jon Spikezzz

Unfortunately for Mr. Spikezz, most of this film was exceedingly weak. From the plot to the fact that the whole thing was filmed on an EZ film camera, the audience was left wanting. 

The best moment plot-wise was when the lead character quoted an entire episode of The IT Crowd in the middle of his wedding ceremony. This moment made the movie worth watching, though didn’t prepare me for the worst moment. The most cringe-worthy scene in the movie is when the lead characters dog brutally ravages three cakes that he hadn’t even paid for… what is the world coming to? While a disturbing moment I do think there is a good life lesson in there.

All in all I would say that it’s no Her, but Him is a moderately decent way to spend 27 minutes.

🔺

Intellectual Obituaries:

By the Armchair Observer

The Glass Half Full: This invention was originally meant to help optimists to see that the glass is half empty. The design was a traditional drinking glass which had a hole punched through halfway down the glass. Consumers didn’t seem to appreciate that the liquid would often spill out, and they disliked being unable to fill the glass.

In Remembrance of Wrist Calculators: Often revered, seldom used. It is time to declare wrist calculators officially dead. Now we know that you’re sitting there thinking, “Wrist calculators, dead? But I’ve got 15 stashed in my sock drawer!” Now ask yourself, were you really going to wear those again? Of course not, silly. Go throw them out, and buy a Fitbit to make yourself feel like a worthwhile human being again.

🔺

Subscription is Compulsory

On the Origin of Babies

By W. W. W. Kyle III, MD

Since the dawn of early 2001, Science has been working tirelessly, and pouring billions of taxpayer dollars, into research on how and why some people become pregnant with human children. What we know so far is that the act of becoming “pregnant” is often closely linked to the following occurrences:

1: Missing a period: our first question here is, which came first, the missed period or the pregnancy…?

Results inconclusive.

2: The act of peeing on a pregnancy test: Science is unsure about whether this action caused the impregnation, or whether subjects had already been exposed to whatever caused the state of pregnancy.

Results inconclusive.

3: The act of injecting semen into the host: This one is tricky, it seems like some folk tales have been tossed around on the matter. However, this theory remains the least proven. Science struggles to see a correlation between the act of semen being excreted into someone

and the growth of a small human. I myself have examined countless semen samples under a microscope and have, to date, seen zero tiny fetuses bobbing around.

Results inconclusive

Our best (and might I say extremely well educated) guess, is that women possess the ability to become pregnant using only the power of their minds. Dr. Knott Misogynistic has even theorized that some of these women can use this skill to impregnate other women when they gather in groups of three or more. Science is looking into what this new theory could mean for men everywhere who (mistakenly?) believe that they somehow have taken part in the creation of a race of babies.

Professional illustration of a human child:

For complete/unaltered/unbiased results of this study please reference case number: 986457345ABZZX-347899999APL #Sciencecasenumber986457345ABZZX474744g66h65g6fg5g6hg347899999JPK when asking your local senator.

Hic

By Chief of Science, PhD

The Scientific community has turned its attention to the enigma that is hiccups. Humankind knows next to nothing about hiccups, and yet most of us suffer from them at some point in our lives. Just last week I was standing in the kitchen of my house trying to capture a tiny spider in a glass when suddenly… Hic! Dead. I’ve inadvertently crushed the spider. Most people view hiccups as a kind of pox on humanity, an irritant designed to disturb, pointless. I want to know the real reason behind this phenomenon and I don’t care what the cost is. I have always been a seeker of truth, a voice in the silence, an oracle among… well, you get the point. I like to understand things. As someone who has proudly had the hiccups, or hiccoughs if you prefer, at least a gazillion times, I feel as though I am somewhat an authority on the matter. There are only a small number of theories about what causes hiccups: it could be a medical reason, mythical intervention, or devilry. Perhaps hiccups themselves are the cause of hiccups!

Some people (mainly doctors) have made the argument that hiccups are caused by contractions in the diaphragm. Their hypothesis is based primarily on “Scientific research”, and has been widely accepted throughout the medical community. Throw the word “Science” at them and they’ll believe anything! Nearly 60 out of every 100 doctors now support this theory, a number which has risen drastically since last year when it was only 60 doctors worldwide. I interviewed 900 doctors in preparation for this article, and most of them claimed to have personally fallen victim to at least one

bout of hiccups, during which they experienced diaphragm contractions. Is it not a bit suspicious that in each interview I was given the same story, as though they had merely memorized a script? I have a certain amount of disbelief associated with the “diaphragm” theory, as I feel that it is anecdotal at best, and more importantly, it isn’t the least bit interesting. Hiccups are, by nature, interesting. Hic.

Another popular theory among hardcore hiccup researchers is that elves may be behind the villainous interrupters. It isn’t uncommon in folklore for elves to be a tad mischievous, and it therefore shouldn’t surprise us that if given the opportunity an elf would gladly cause humans to awkwardly make weird “hic hic” sounds while trying to go about our day. I can understand completely the motive behind an elf creating hiccups. What concerns me is the execution. I have never in all my 10,666 days of life seen an elf putting air bubbles into my, or anyone else’s for that matter, throat. I understand that elves may have certain abilities, but considering the research published by The American Center for Mythical Research Last Year, “Further research shows that while mythical beings do possess certain abilities, e.g., flight, increased camouflage, and on occasion spell-casting, there has been nothing to suggest that they possess the ability to become invisible.” I find myself realizing that if the elves were behind the hiccup phenomenon someone would have seen them. Through deductive reasoning I can objectively conclude that elves are not at fault.

This brings us to the history of hiccups, which is a sordid affair: men leaving their wives when they couldn’t stop hiccupping, children refusing to be conceived to due their potential father hiccupping upon ejaculation, even presidents pretending that they can handle spicy food and then hiccupping, thereby betraying their lie

It is no wonder that people have a tendency to shy away from the sinister force that causes this ripple through humankind. These dark sides of humanity are what make us ask the big question, “Is the devil behind this?”, for who among us would choose to take responsibility for anything we dislike? Such is not the human way; it is far easier to lean on higher powers and to simply say, “The devil made me do it.” There is an air of mystery to hiccups, and such mystery often leads to pointing the finger at an omnipotent being, someone who could snap us into hiccups and then snap us back out as they see fit. If I were an omnipotent being, would I have the self control to not ruin more public speaking events? Would I not have interfered with a beautiful Italian opera while Luciano Pavarotti sang passionately? Would I be able to resist turning Abraham Lincoln’s speech into “four score and hic!”? To be honest I don’t believe anyone has that much self control, and since ruined operas and speeches have not been an ongoing issue, I think we can safely rule out interference by a god or devil.

Now we come to what I believe to be the crux of the matter; are hiccups themselves at fault for making us hiccup? I am not sure when I first thought that it was possible that hiccups had feelings; perhaps it was that time that my Aunt Cusp told me that I should drink a glass of water to stop (drown) my hiccups. Or perhaps it was the time my brother Toby suggested I hold my breath until they went away (suffocated).

As a small child I learned of a little known theorem known simply as Puff Bubbles™. The puff bubble theory postulates that there is an entire subspecies living within our chestal cavities, which, given the microscopic life forms that exist on this planet, is certainly not unreasonable. The period in which they live inside of our body is merely the gestation period, and the sound created by “hiccups” is actually the sound of the now mature puff bubbles escaping into the wild. When we choose to cut our hiccup sessions short we are essentially deciding which puff bubbles are permitted to have a future, and which are doomed to our murky insides for eternity. 

In conclusion I implore you to mull over these facts: hiccups are still widely regarded as a mystery, the devil didn’t do it, new species are being discovered all the time, and we still don’t have a complete understanding of the human body. My belief, and I do believe that through deductive reasoning I have proved it to be as true, is that hiccups are not something that merely “happen.” Hiccups are living, breathing, and feeling. Now that we know hiccups to be sentient, we know that they deserve to be treated as our equals. I believe that we should take some wisdom from Dr. Seuss, “A person’s a person, no matter how small.” and with that in mind, I choose to no longer take part in the persecution of puff bubbles.

Dear Editor,

I’m writing to let you know that I’m absolutely furious about the error in last month’s story Behind the Sneaky Curtain: The Wizard’s Story. The wizard of Oz is a con artist who rules over the Emerald Kingdom. He is NOT Dr. Oz, a con artist who has a talk show and likes to tell other people what they should eat. They are different people. How am I supposed to trust your journalistic integrity now?

-Losing my Faith in Canker Sore Weekly

Dear LMFICSW,

First of all, I wanted to say that I love the acronym, it’s very clever. Anyway, on to your main point: that error was the fault of our previous editor, who we fired in front of all of her friends for her terrible mistake. Rest assured that henceforth the articles contained herewith shall be of the highest integrity, and contain only the loftiest of journalistic content.

Apologetically,

The Editor

Dear Editor,

I just loved last month’s piece regarding the great and terrible Dr. Oz! I had no idea that he was the inventor not just of green goggles and diet solutions, but also of 3-D glasses and yellow bricks. I just wanted to thank you for always being a trustworthy source, where I know I can come to learn new things, and challenge my previously held conceptions.

–Loving this Flypaper Content!

Dear LTFC,

Thank you so much for your feedback! We’re always happy to hear from our readers, and we love knowing that we’re able to teach people new things from time to time. Look forward to an upcoming feature story regarding the adventures of Go Ask Alice in Wonderland, the true story of a drug-addled 6 year old who cured mercury poisoning with the blood of a talking cat!

Jubilantly,

The Editor

Dear Editor,

I have been lying awake at night lately, wracked with the inner pain that only belies itself by the tear tracks left across my face. Canker Sore Weekly is my favorite monthly publication about anything except canker sores (although, I wouldn’t mind seeing some canker sore content), however, I am tormented by the guilt I feel for stealing it for free on the internet all of these years. How can I ever make it up to you?

-Tortured Soul Seeks Forgiveness

Dear TSSF,

You silly goose! Ever since its inaugural publication in 1941, Canker Sore Weekly has been available for free in any reputable internet newsstand, and even some disreputable ones. You needn’t worry about this transgression, but you should worry about the fact that you mentioned the C-S words in this publication. That is most emphatically NOT what we are about here at CSW. BEGONE, VILE SOUL!

Superstitiously,

The Editor

Subscription is Compulsory

Miranda

By Captain Heckalopter

If you’ve spent as much time on the internet as I have over the last 16 years, and you have even a passing interest in science in general and astronomy in particular, then you’ve probably run across NASA’s APOD site. If you’re not a big initialism guy, I’m talking about the National Air and Space Administration’s Astronomy Photo Of the Day website. I checked the site incessantly and eventually made it my homepage in order to simplify my daily routine. One of my earliest software downloads was the APOD desktop wallpaper editor, which updated my desktop with a new and usually stunning image each day. I can’t recall the day or even the year, but I know I was in my early teens when I first saw the photo.

Life with insomnia is mostly characterized by interminable periods of aching boredom, punctuated by the brief hours when the rest of the world is awake with you. The night drags on longer every day that you can’t sleep, and even the things you like to read or watch lose their hold. Breaking the monotony becomes nearly impossible; words on pages blend together until you’ve read the same line more times than you can count, but that’s not saying much because you lose your focus when you’re counting anyway. Refreshing websites and clicking between bookmarks is still better than lying in bed, so it becomes something to do every night. Some nights are different though; something grabs your interest and pulls you in so hard that you don’t even notice the sun is up until you start to hear birds and people, getting louder and louder as the hour is deemed more socially acceptable.

That particular night, what grabbed my attention was a photo of Miranda. She’s incredibly odd looking, but in a most beguiling way. She’s also a moon, of Saturn, to be a little clearer. If you’re accustomed to looking at planets and moons, you’re used to round bodies with their little geological quirks, maybe some oddly shaped continents, a funny gas cloud, a few craters, maybe even a supervolcano or two. Miranda’s appearance made me gasp out loud; she is utterly shattered, like a rock orb that’s been hit with a few sledgehammers and haphazardly glued back together. NASA’s website describes her as follows:

“Like Frankenstein’s monster, Miranda looks like it was pieced together from parts that didn’t quite merge properly. At about 500 km in diameter, it’s only one-seventh as large as Earth’s moon, a size that seems unlikely to

support much tectonic activity. Yet Miranda sports one of the strangest and most varied landscapes among extraterrestrial bodies, including three large features known as “coronae,” which are unique among known objects in our solar system.”

Maybe it’s because both of my parents are geologists, and growing up, an interesting rock outcropping was reason enough for our car to screech to a halt, my parents oohing and aahing over the glacial striations, or maybe it’s because I’ve read too much science fiction and mythology, but the puzzle of Miranda’s broken face was utterly captivating to me, like an unsolved historical mystery.

It’s always struck me as a little odd that as the arrow of time drives forward, we learn more and more about our past. Not just us as humans, but the history of our planet, our solar system, and even the entire universe. We can actually be even more certain about the geological age of our planet (measured in the billions, unless you hate science) than about political events that occurred just yesterday. Unlike human behavior, it’s not subjective or culturally determined;

while theories may vary about the rock we live on, there is an absolute truth regarding information such as its age, and it’s one that we grow continually closer to being certain of.

When plate tectonics (the motion of our continents across the planet) was first proposed in 1912 by Alfred Wegener, he was dismissed as a crackpot and a fraud. How else though, could you explain the mystery of the exactly matching rock structures on the west coast of Africa and the east coast of South America? It’s hard to believe that the state of science was so archaic merely a century ago, but so much of what we know to be true is such recently acquired knowledge in the span of our species, that it shouldn’t be surprising that our knowledge is still so incomplete. Yet, somehow, it is. When we have so many problems here at home on our own little rock, why should I be so captivated by our ignorance of the processes that formed a hunk of ice and stone so far away that human eyes may never see it outside of a photo?

I still look at photos of Miranda, usually late at night by myself. And maybe it’s crazy that her broken, mysterious face sends a little shiver down my spine, but I’m actually glad that I can still react so viscerally to something so abstract. The fact that I have an emotional response to a tiny exogeological mystery is why science is almost guaranteed to find out exactly what happened to Miranda, to solve the mystery of who shattered her – an event that occurred before humans were even a glint in some tiny mammal’s eye.

Ode to the Booger

By Dr. Chief Mastercaptain

Ode to the booger, let it be known, that I have a booger all of my own.

It glistens, it sparkles, it shines, and it gleams. It’s colored with beauty, in a cool dark green.

My booger has seen many troubles in life. I’ve tried to protect it, to hide it from strife. But sometimes this life grabs a hold of you tight, makes you catch your breath, makes you take a bite.

The beauty, the passion, the color, the taste, none of which I could ever replace. So give me my boogers, I’ll take yours as well.

I love them like children, I think they are swell.

Pizza

By Heckalopter

pizza pizza piz

za pizza pizza pizza

pizza pizza pi

za pizza piza

pizza pizza pizza pi

za pizza pizza

ANGST

By Heckalopter

do you even know

how much my fucking power bill is costing me?

AN EPIDEMIC

By Dr. Chief Mastercaptain

Since the winter of 2007, America has seen a rapid and troubling decline in our bat population. The cause of this immense tidal wave of death is none other than the fabled and dangerous White Nose Syndrome, Geomyces destructans.

WNS is a fungus that infects the skin and brains of hibernating bats and slaughters them before they have a chance to bid their families farewell. To find out if a bat is infected with this deadly fungus, Scientists are forced to touch the bats, even though many Scientists would rather not. They must then examine the bats so that they can find out whether they exhibit the characteristic pattern of skin erosion that is symptomatic of WNS.

There are currently two known causes for this dreadful disease: the first is a highly flammable substance known to Science as “cocaine” (benzoylmethylecgonine), and the second is a

recently evolved organic life-form with a similar genetic code to that of humans; Hipsters. You probably haven’t heard of them. 

However, because of the fact that Science has yet to discover any hipster bats, we have hypothesized that the first option (cocaine), is more likely to be the root of the problem.

Farmers in the tri-state area (Oregon, Washington & New York) have seen a huge increase in the insect population due to WNS, and so far in 2013 they haven’t had a single successful crop yield, which is due primarily to their inability to go outside to plant the crops without getting insect bites.

This coming September, the Farmers Against White Nose Syndrome And All Biting Insects Association (FAWNSAABIA), which is based in Detroit, will host a rally to raise money for bug spray, and also to raise some money for the sick bats (science is still unclear on why the bats would need the money).

Please contact the editor for more details on the rally.

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF GORDON: A TRAGEDY

By Devatron and Heckalopter

This story doesn’t have a happy ending. Actually, it doesn’t have a very happy beginning either. Gordon was born in Florida in 1902 (10 years before the sinking of the Titanic), to a young couple who had eagerly anticipated the birth of their firstborn. However, the reality proved somewhat anticlimactic for them. Rather than the perfect infant they’d expected, Gordon was born with 16 toes; a modest four toes on the left foot, an alarming twelve toes on the right. Perhaps it would be too harsh to judge his parents by modern standards for their actions (social mores were different, after all), but it was probably still pretty abhorrent that his parents quickly sold their newborn baby to the circus.

Gordon wasn’t aware of this for some time of course, babies aren’t very quick on the uptake. It’s sort of hard to tell what is “normal” when your family is a literal freakshow, oh, and none of them are actually related to you. Gordon’s earliest memories included a lot more elephants and monkeys than yours do, but his also included sitting on a stool in a dingy tent, wiggling his toes while families (families? Gordon didn’t remember when he figured out what that actually meant, if he ever did at all) pointed and laughed at his deformities. For some reason, the fact that he had less than the average number of toes on his left foot made it all the more hilarious that his right foot was so hideously rich in digits.

In movies, circus folk usually stick together and form an unlikely but vibrant and loving family. However, when you think about the fact that these businesses were willing to purchase deformed newborns to make a profit, it’s perhaps less surprising that Gordon’s childhood was quite bereft of affection and camaraderie. Gordon grew to hate himself with a quiet fury, especially his feet, which had landed him in the circus in the first place. He couldn’t imagine himself as part of a family, the idea was too foreign, but he knew that the people who came to laugh at him in the tent came from a world where they didn’t have to make themselves look and feel ridiculous to make a living.

His feet weren’t just funny looking, they were also uncomfortable. Gordon didn’t like anyone to see his feet, except when absolutely necessary (earning his living, for instance), which led to some serious problems. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find shoes when you have 12 toes on one foot and 4 on the other? Compound that with how quickly the feet of young boys grow, and Gordon spent a lot of time hobbling about in extremely ill-fitting footwear. The circus Gordon was a part of was a traveling circus, which meant that it was next to impossible for Gordon to meet cobblers who could ensure that he was correctly shod, so Gordon did his best to sew his own shoes from the odds and ends he could encounter from worn-out clown shoes and other circus wear. His feet resembled Joseph’s coat, a ridiculous patchwork of patterns and colors, sewn together sloppily by his inexpert hands.

By his early teens, Gordon took to drinking to dull the pain he felt from his poorly assembled shoes crushing his toes into the smallest space possible. The circus folk, many of whom had plenty of issues of their own, did not allow Gordon to skip out on his chores, so he spent a lot of time on his feet mucking out the elephant pens, or adjusting nets for the Amazing Nicola Trapezi Family. One day, while someone drunkenly cleaned up after Jumbo II, he made the mistake of stumbling too close to the young behemoth, and experienced a pain he had never even

imagined. When he woke up the next day, he discovered that his right foot had been amputated, after the elephant had crushed Gordon’s excess of bones beyond all hope of recovery. Oddly enough, Gordon, unlike a traditional amputee, felt oddly lighthearted at this turn of events. An amputee, while not normal or average, was still a common enough state of affairs that only innocent children or cruel-hearted adults would ever feel inclined to comment on his quantity of feet.

However, as I explained, this tale does not have a happy ending. Gordon’s circus owners (still his legal guardians) were quick to put his amputated foot on display in their freak tent, and demanded that Gordon show off his stump and his left foot during demonstrations. However, since this was less lucrative than a freak with a fully intact set of 16 toes, Gordon was put to work doing other circus acts. He turned out to be an incompetent juggler, a lousy sword swallower, and a frankly dangerous fire-breather. After they had made him complete the rounds and he’d demonstrated his lack of skills, he was put to work in a job that required none: the Human Cannonball. The cannon was operated by a wretched old woman of indistinct Eastern European descent. Her accent was obscured by the hideous wreckage of her voice that was nearly unintelligible after decades of heavy cigarette use. It’s unclear why, but she took an immediate dislike to Gordon. The last human cannonball

had been a fit, healthy young man who joined the circus to see the country, perhaps Olga resented the loss of her former eye candy when he returned to his farm in Kansas after a year of travel. Whatever the reason was, every day that went by, Olga hated Gordon a little bit more. Gordon, for his part, found the old woman repulsive and rude. Maybe it was his growing disdain that pushed her over the edge, but Olga maintained to the police that it was an accident, and when it came to cops interfering in circus matters, circus folks really did seem to stick together.

Six months after Gordon began his stint as the human cannonball, he felt exhausted. He still had to do his chores, which had become even more difficult with the loss of his foot, and as the human cannonball was the last act of the night, he had lost several precious hours of sleep each day. His tight-fitting stars spangled suit that he wore each night had ripped the day before, and Gordon had sloppily repaired it with a piece of corduroy, the only bit of fabric he could find lying around. As he climbed into the cannon on that muggy Georgia night, his frumpy patch caught on a piece of metal, and he squirmed around helplessly, trying to slide

the rest of the way into the barrel. The crowd responded with laughter at first, but they quickly turned hostile, jeering and throwing scraps and bottles into the ring. A greasy popcorn box hit Olga squarely in the nose, and she snapped. Creaking to her feet, she shouted angrily and incoherently as she grabbed Gordon by the shoulders, wrenching the cannon out of position in the process. Sitting back into her perch, she immediately lit the fuse, and fired Gordon straight into the apex of the tent, where the metal poles were joined to hold it up.

Maybe it’s not so bad that Gordon died that day, because in his final moments, he was totally free from the encumbrances of the ground that had caused his feet pain since the day he learned to walk. As he flew to the top of the tent, the silks lit brightly in the dark summer night, the crowd became utterly silent, staring rapt as he flew far from the obvious target. Maybe it was ok that he died, because for the first time, Gordon had the experience of a group of people seeing him as a person, someone who had a real life (albeit one that was about to end) and real feelings. For the first time, he wasn’t laughed, screamed or jeered at by the families and couples and drunken men; instead he inspired the parents to grab their children tight, and the couples to hold desperately to each other’s hands. Even the drunks clenched their bottles closely to their chests, and stood rapt in fear and anticipation. And maybe that’s alright, maybe that’s what they needed, what Gordon needed, because in that moment, they all felt more fear than Gordon himself. When his body dropped to the ground, rather than pandemonium, the crowd stayed silent. And as they walked out of that tent, across the broken peanut shells and broken helmet fragments, they had to go back to their lives. And maybe if one of those couples had a baby with some extra toes, maybe they kept him and raised him and bought him shoes, rubbed his sore feet, and made him feel safe. But if not, maybe they all just thought a little harder about what they paid for, and who it affected. Or maybe none of that happened. Maybe their lives were all the same, forever. But then again, maybe not.

The end.