Ten years ago, on the set of a doomed action movie, director Doniel cast an unknown named Jackarind Bellows as the lead. When Jack insisted on performing a dangerous stunt himself, Doniel made a fateful decision that resulted in a terrible accident. Though Jack survived, he vanished from Hollywood entirely. Now, after a decade of exile in “director jail,” Doniel has made a shocking discovery: Jack—now going by Jackie Bellows—has become one of the industry's most powerful executives. Read previous installments here.

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East of La Brea

Once every couple months, Doniel traveled east to visit his old haunts. After their first child was born, he and Nell had moved from Silver Lake to Beverly Grove, and the migration took a toll on him. He was sure some part of him had died the moment their moving truck crossed that invisible boundary running down La Brea Avenue, arbitrarily cleaving the city into two aggressively isolated, mutually indifferent tribes.

So a half dozen times a year, Doniel took a little pilgrimage, driving the 15 to 90 minutes back to the only part of town he had ever really considered home. There was the art gallery in Eagle Rock where he and Nell had first kissed. The bridge in Ferndell where he’d first put his fingers inside of her. The rooftop in Little Armenia where they’d first tried MDMA. Every one of these trips down memory lane was not an effort to relive the past so much as an attempt to reclaim some part of him that he knew, deep down, he wasn’t getting back.

On this particular Tuesday, he decided to revisit the bar on Vermont where he’d taken Nell on their first date. It was, of course, gone. Its proprietors had been evicted years earlier, after a private investor purchased the building. The main floor was now a bleach-white coffee shop with a few too many tasteful ferns hanging from the rafters. There were no prices on the half-page menu, but there was a $70 coffee table book prominently displayed near the register that Doniel perused while waiting for the clerk to look up from his phone. The book was “autographed” by the coffee shop’s owner—a man nobody had ever heard of—and featured several dozen photos of the shop’s five “signature lattes,” only one of which had any espresso or dairy in it at all.

Doniel ordered the $18 latte and sat with it in the corner. He couldn’t help but wonder: Who was this place for? Who was this city for, anymore?

While it had long been fashionable to complain about Los Angeles—and there was always plenty to complain about: the homeless population, the perennially soaring retail prices, a housing market so out of touch with reality that it had become almost otherworldly— Doniel couldn’t shake the feeling that something even more fundamental had changed. Like the city was actively trying to purge the very essence of artistry. Artists had always been near the bottom of the totem pole, an odious but necessarily tolerated aspect of show business. But what kind of genuine artist could afford to live in Los Angeles anymore? What aspects of its culture would any independent thinker actually find attractive?

Lately, though, there were whispers. Large swaths of unwashed youth had been spotted congregating and camping on public beaches. Just that week, Nell had rushed into Doniel’s study, nearly in tears, with the latest report. “The police aren’t doing anything. Mick’s husband threatened to run against the DA if she doesn’t put a stop to this. These kids are breaking the law.”

“Maybe they’re socialists,” Doniel suggested hopefully.

“They’re doing drugs. Look at this.” Nell held up her phone. It was a Facebook post, in all caps—something about HELL IN A HANDBASKET—accompanied by a photo of an AI-generated baby crying in the sand, with a cartoonish, medieval-looking hypodermic syringe jutting out of its face. The post had 60,000 likes.

“That baby has six fingers.”

“Don’t be cruel, Doniel. We need to do something about this.”

“Why? We don’t live near the beach.”

“But we go there.”

The last beach they’d gone to was in Santa Barbara, eighteen months earlier. But Doniel didn’t protest. He knew what she meant. She might like to go to a public beach in Los Angeles, at some point, and she wanted it cleaned, policed, and ready for her arrival, should she ever choose to act on such a whim.

Privately, Doniel found the rumors of drug addled teenagers fornicating in the sand exciting. Maybe we’re finally getting somewhere, he thought. Maybe these teenagers were trying to reclaim the city. Maybe we should let them.

The sound of a ringing phone cut through the benign, ambient hip hop blanketing the cafe. Doniel looked down at his cell phone. His breathing stopped.

Jackarind Bellows was on the line.

He’d heard about the meteoric rise of a new executive, but it never occurred to him that Jackie Bellows might be Jackarind Bellows. Even in the incestuous swamp of multi-hyphenates that was Hollywood, it was rare to see a promising actor transition into a promising executive. To say nothing of Jackie’s insane trajectory— rocketing straight to the top of the food chain with seemingly zero help, zero nepotism, and zero public awareness.

It had been three weeks since he’d sent a congratulatory note to Jackie. He’d dashed off the email with intentional haste. It was something he knew he had to do, and he also knew that agonizing over it would only draw out the discomfort. There was no acknowledgement of their shared past, the accident, or the intervening decade. Just a handful of choice emojis and some kudos for his success with The Crayon Movie.

Congrats on 🖍️🖍️🖍️ New franchise? 🤩 Love it! - Don

He was loathe to sign his name, and regretted doing so almost immediately after pressing “Send.” An email thread in Hollywood was a race to the bottom; Who could be more pithy and disingenuous? Self assuredness was prized over clear communication. In fact, the more vague someone was, the more powerful they probably were. Doniel’s email, unsurprisingly, went unacknowledged. Until now.

Doniel took a deep breath, then answered. “Jack?”

“Hello Doniel.” The voice was deep, with a sort of grainy gravitas that seemed predestined to get even more gravelly, more grave, with age. How old was Bellows now? Thirty? If that? “And it’s Jackie, now. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Oh. No. I don’t mind. Wow. It’s great to hear from you, Jackie.”

“Listen, I don’t have a lot of time, but I was hoping you could stop by my home. There’s something I want to discuss.”

“Oh?”

“It’s 1270 Shadow Hill. I’ll see you soon?”

“Well, sure, I mean, what time-”

But Jackie had cut him off with a clipped, “Sounds good,” and hung up.

Doniel made an effort to quickly down his drink, but found it revolting. He left it unfinished and headed for the door. On his way out, he passed a sign reading, “We kindly ask that you bus your own table.” He paused, teetering indecisively, trying to remember how much over 20% he had tipped, and whether that entitled him to some amount of leeway on the “self-bussing” policy. He looked up to see a humorless, unblinking barista staring back at him from behind the counter.

He turned around and bussed his own table.

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Doniel is a film director who believes he is under someone's hypnotic influence. Ten years ago on the set of Paradise Five, he cast an unknown young man named Jackarind Bellows as the lead. When Jack insisted on doing his own dangerous stunts, Doniel had a car door welded shut to stop him. The plan backfired when the car started on fire with the young actor trapped inside. Read the previous installments here.

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Director Jail

They shut down the production immediately. At first it was just for a week, then for the rest of the month, then indefinitely. Jackarind Bellows had suffered serious burns and extensive facial scarring. When Doniel went to visit him in his room at Cedar Sinai, he’d nearly recoiled at the sight of the boy.

“The good news,” Doniel said, as if it were his place to say anything at all, “is that they can do amazing things these days. Skin grafts. Reconstructive surgery.”

“Yeah, they tried,” Jack said.

Doniel frowned. He’d heard nothing about any surgical procedures.

“I told them to go to hell. I don’t want it.”

“You don’t want… surgery?”

“I don’t want to pretend to be something I’m not. I don’t want to walk around with skin from my ass glued to my face while everyone smiles and tells me how great I look.”

“I’m not sure exactly how it works, but I don’t think that’s-”

“I don’t want it!” The boy was screaming now. “This is me!”

And there it was. The dawning realization that Doniel’s worst fears had been correct. The boy was deeply disturbed. And now, if he got his way, he would be permanently disfigured as well.

Doniel left him like that. Alone, snarling is in his hospital bed. It would be ten years before he saw his face again, in that very building no less.

Over the next several weeks, the studio began its investigation of the “on-set incident.” If Jack refused surgery, then it was his own fault. Doniel had done what he did to try and save the boy’s life, hadn’t he? And Jack was alive. Wasn’t he?

When the investigators sat Doniel down and asked him about the welded metal found on the car’s driver-side door, he had surprisingly little trouble saying with a straight face, “I don’t know anything about that.”

It helped that, for once, a tragedy had worked in his favor. Some 36 hours after the accident, the production’s award-nominated stunt coordinator had been found by his wife in their guest bedroom with a needle in his arm, dead of an overdose. Or perhaps it wasn’t the accident it appeared to be. Perhaps his share of the guilt had weighed on him so heavily that he’d taken his own life.

Perhaps.

When the special effects technician was asked about welding the door shut, he explained that the order came directly from the coordinator, and the trail went cold. The only question was whether or not he had told anyone the full story before his untimely death. There was no way of knowing. All Doniel could do was wait.

At first there was the expected flurry of paperwork—statements to sign, lawyers to consult, insurance forms to fill out. The production was dead. Now it was just a matter of waiting for a lawsuit from the victim.

But it never came. If the studio preemptively settled with Jackarind Bellows, nobody told Doniel. He sat in fear for two years before realizing the other shoe might never drop.

If there were whispers about his culpability, he didn't hear them. He didn't hear much of anything anymore. Overnight he had become radioactive in the industry. His own agent had stopped taking his calls.

As usual, when it came to matters of emotional turmoil, Doniel’s brother Cooper was worse than useless. The brash, abrasive quality that made him so successful in business made him a horrendous companion in times of psychological strain.

“You’re in rough shape. It might be a lost cause,” he told Doniel several weeks after the incident. Cooper had stopped by to help Doniel understand just how much trouble his career was in. Of course, Doniel needed no convincing.

“I mean it, buddy. You’re fucked. It will eventually blow over-”

“I know.”

“-but then again, maybe it won’t.”

Cooper had a perpetually restless air about him, like he was dying to pace around the room, any room, but was just barely able to restrain himself. It gave others the feeling that Cooper had one foot out the door at all times, which created an unnerving sense of limbo, regardless of whether you wanted him to stay or go. At this particular moment, Doniel would have liked him to go.

“You can get out of director-jail. But you need to be a fighter. And let’s face it; you’re not a fighter.”

“What? I’m a fighter.”

“No, Don. You’re a cuck.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“You took your wife’s name, for Christ’s sake. I don’t judge you for it. But let’s be honest, you’re a bit of a soyboy.”

“I’m not really sure what we’re talking about anymore.”

“We’re talking about you!” Cooper was screaming now. “Stop being such a cuck and go take what’s yours! Pick up the first blunt object you can find and just start beating people to death with it. You need to do whatever it takes. You understand?”

Doniel did not understand. But he needed to be alone now. For days, weeks, months. Maybe years. And Cooper wouldn’t leave until Doniel reassured him that he’d been heard.

“I understand now. And I’ll take that under advisement. Thank you, Cooper.”

They didn’t speak again for the better part of a year.

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Family Man

The ensuing decade felt more like a century. The interminable awkwardness of power players avoiding him at the grocery store slowly gave way to an even more disconcerting phenomenon. Soon they were no longer avoiding him, because they no longer knew him. Soon after that, the power players became faces that Doniel himself no longer recognized.

He’d been frugal all his life, as frugal as someone could be in a city like Los Angeles. It was paying dividends now. His family wanted for little. They didn’t have to sell the house—though downsizing was never far from his mind—and while it might have been helpful if Nell had gotten a slightly higher paying job, her work as a part-time unlicensed physical therapist combined with his occasional gigs directing commercials for potato chips and gambling apps allowed them to keep their heads well above water.

Now Doniel had more time than ever to focus on his children, though they were, on the whole, indifferent towards him. If he was being honest, the feeling was mutual.

The notion that any of the Sherman children were equipped for a life outside the entertainment industry was a fantasy that Doniel and Nell liked to entertain from time to time, but which was in no way borne out by the facts. It wasn’t so much their lack of even the most rudimentary math and science skills—though that was growing more apparent and seemingly irreversible with every passing year. It was something else, something far more abstract and depressing.

Doniel’s brother Cooper had said it best one night. They’d invited him over for dinner and, after the children all went to bed, he sat at the table frowning, brow furrowed. “Something about those kids,” he said. “They don’t have… the ‘It factor.’ You know what I mean?”

“I’m sure I don’t,” Doniel said, his voice rising in anger.

But, of course, he knew exactly what Cooper meant. And he couldn’t agree more.

The children’s disappointing trajectories were only accelerated by the undue influence of their privileged, entitled peers. It didn’t bode well, for instance, when their eldest son Tarragon announced that his high school’s valedictorian had decided to forego higher education in order to start a “disruptive consulting agency” that would pair designer apparel brands with his father’s celebrity clients to create “high end, co-branded, athleisure footwear experiences.” The endeavor was a massive failure, until being acquired several years later for low-eight figures by a talent agency looking to diversify its portfolio. It was exactly the sort of industry-adjacent faux-entrepreneurship that Doniel worried might end up being the best case scenario for his middling children, should they ever try to break out on their own.

So when Randall James was born, some seven years after Doniel’s career imploded on the set of Paradise Five, Don was determined to do everything in his power to give the boy a long, fruitful life as far from the entertainment industry as humanly possible.

Tarragon, Jenna, and Jordan scoffed when Doniel came home with a stack of high-minded early education materials, books like Quantum Physics for Babies, and Day Trading for Toddlers. Doniel read the books to Randy over and over and over, hoping to see some sort of spark behind the infant’s cold, dead eyes. But there was no spark.

“Whatever you’re trying to do,” Nell told him, “just… give it time.”

But time was of the essence. Every day that passed, Doniel could feel his child absorbing the vacuous Hollywood culture that surrounded them through a kind of catatonic osmosis. Doniel only grew more determined.

“What the hell is that?” Jenna, then nine, asked when he brought home a “DIY Computer Engineering Kit” for his young son. The kit was intended for pre-teens, and Randy was still a toddler, but by now Doniel was convinced the boy was a tactile learner and needed to be engaged as such.

“It’s not for you,” Doniel told her. It came out sounding like an admonishment, but truthfully, he’d meant it as more of an insult. She failed to absorb the intended cruelty.

Randy showed little interest in the toolkit until one day, nearing his third birthday, when he was left unattended in the playroom for several hours. Around noon, Randy’s blood-curdling screams echoed through the house. Don rushed into the playroom, only to find that Randy had re-discovered the toolkit in the bottom of his toy chest and used its working soldering iron to conjoin several circuit boards into a sort of techno-punk Peter Pan hat. He’d put the hat on his head before the solder had cooled.

On the way to the emergency room, Randy announced to his father that he no longer wanted to be a costume designer.

“You… wanted to be a costume designer?”

Randy squirmed as he adjusted the icepack against into his badly burnt scalp. “Not anymore.”

“I’m impressed you got that soldering iron to work. I don’t think I would even know how to do that. You could be an engineer. Or, like, a welder.”

“What’s a welder?”

“You don’t want to be a welder. But you could be. That’s my point. You can be anything. You’re strong and smart.”

“No…” Randy countered, his voice trailing off as he gazed out the window. Doniel waited for a follow-up that never came, then drove the rest of the way in silence.

The parking valet outside the emergency room seemed in good spirits. “Right this way, sir,” he said gesturing towards the lobby. Doniel tipped him generously and walked in. They walked through the metal detector, and Randy scampered off to find a seat while Doniel checked him in.

When Doniel came to join his son on the plush couch in the room’s far corner, the boy was holding a glossy issue of The Hollywood Reporter that he’d plucked from a stack of periodicals. “Daddy, what’s a super agent?”

“There’s no such thing as super agents, Randy.” He took the magazine from the boy and flipped through it. He reached the end, flipped backwards absently, and was about to close it when a picture caught his eye.

His jaw dropped.

He’d heard about the meteoric rise of a new executive, recently promoted to President of the town’s oldest studio. But he hadn’t paid much attention. Not until now. On page 2, in a spread on the studio’s latest premieres, there he was. That jagged scar running down his race. “Studio Head Jackie Bellows Attends the Premiere of the Crayon Movie.”

Jack Bellows. Returned from oblivion. Staring through the camera lens, through the ink and paper, directly into Doniel’s soul.

Some part of Doniel knew: this was the beginning of the end. His past had come back for him. If he was smart, he would run for his life. But all he could do was stare.

He pulled out his phone and shot off a text to his neighbor, a prominent talent agent.

“Can you get me Jackie Bellows contact info?”

The response came in immediately. “Lol. Sure. One sec.”

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Doniel is a film director who believes he is under someone’s hypnotic influence. It all started ten years ago on the doomed set of an action film called Paradise Five. Upon being hired, he immediately recast the lead role with an unknown young man by the name of Jackarind Bellows. Read Part 1 here.

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Stuntman

Tragedy struck early.

Doniel always thought the best part of working with nobodies was that they rarely showed up on set with “big ideas” of their own, at least not the kind they couldn’t easily be disabused of. Unfortunately for Don and the young man himself, Jack Bellows was not quite so malleable. He did, in fact, have big ideas of his own, the most persistent being that he believed he should perform his own stunts.

No, he didn’t have a speck of formal training in stunt work, only the unshakeable, semi-conscious belief shared by so many young men and women that he was impervious to harm. And from such a point of view, it made sense; if you were trying to make a name for yourself and also believed yourself invincible, why wouldn’t you do your own stunts?

It was obviously out of the question. When Jack insisted and re-insisted, Doniel went so far as floating the idea to his producer. The response was predictable: under no circumstances would the star of a 160 million dollar movie perform his own stunts.

The major set pieces weren’t to be filmed until midway through production, which gave Don at least two and a half months to put the kid off.

“Focus on the small stuff,” he told Jack. “It’s the moments when nothing’s blowing up. When the music is silent. The script is out the window, the camera’s pushed all the way in on you and every single eyeball is watching and waiting. Those are the moments when stars are born.”

Jack handled such moments adeptly. He had a natural charisma and animal magnetism that never waivered or faltered, even under pressure. He lit up every single frame he was in. He elevated the material far above what it had any right to be. He was brilliant.

But his obsession with stunt work continued.

At first Doniel assumed the boy just wanted something interesting to talk about at press junkets. Instead of asking, “Who is Jackarind Bellows?” they’d be asking, “Did Jackarind Bellows really jump off a four story building?”

But as time wore on, Don began to suspect that his star’s preoccupation was more deeply pathological. There was something existential about it for him. It wasn’t enough to be the pretty face. He needed to be the body and blood of Christ personified. He needed to feel the blows. “Hit me!” he yelled during heavily choreographed fight scenes. “Really hit me! Harder!”

Was it masochism? A thirst for cinema vérité? It didn’t make sense. Doniel began to worry that the boy was deeply disturbed. Even more than that, he began to worry that denying him his request might jeopardize the production in unforeseen ways. He let the matter simmer for two weeks before delivering the bad news on a Thursday.

“Insurance made up their minds. You can’t do the stunts. And if you insist on jumping off a four-story building, they’ll shut us down.” This wasn’t entirely true, but it got the point across. Jack frowned, nodding a little.

After a few moments, his eyes lit back up. “What about the banister scene?”

“The banister scene” was an outlandish sequence that saw Jack’s character wearing soap shoes, grinding 60 feet down a long and winding banister straight out of Sunset Boulevard while firing two enormous pistols at a group of mercenaries who had just burst in the front doors of his family’s mansion.

“You can do the banister scene, of course.”

“No wires.”

“No. I mean- yes, wires. You can’t grind down a banister without wires. Especially while firing guns. I don’t even think it’s physically possible.”

“It’s possible. I’ll prove it.”

“No you will not,” Don said calmly. He explained, yet again, how many millions of dollars were hinging on Jack’s well being. “A lot of people’s livelihoods are tied up in this. It’s not just you on the line. It’s all of us. You’re willing to take the risk, but it’s not your risk to take. Do you understand?”

Jack stared at him with a sociopathic emptiness that Don found more unsettling by the second. “It’s my body. My choice.”

“Your body, yes. Your choice, no. You signed a contract. After reshoots, if you want to shave your head or go skydiving without a parachute, you’re free to. But right now, we need you in one piece.”

Jack sat back, frowning again. Don paused for a moment. He was a people pleaser at heart, and his lead actor was displeased. Surely there was some small bone he could throw him? He stood there, one foot out the door of Jack’s trailer, his lips pursed, ready to say more, but hesitating. The weight of that moment wouldn’t hit him for some time. But it would come to be his greatest regret. Those few precious seconds of hesitation, he would eventually realize, were his last opportunity to salvage the life he’d always wanted. It was his final chance at salvation, if only he left well enough alone, if only he walked away.

Instead, he squandered a lifetime’s worth of ambitions with just a few simple words. “I’ll tell you what,” Don said. “There is one stunt you can do.”

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The Accident

It was originally envisioned as a one-shot: a camera mounted to a pursuit vehicle tracking the green Jeep Wrangler as it tore down an abandoned stretch of unpaved Southern California road at 90mph. The script called for Jackarind's character to kick open the door and tumble from the speeding vehicle moments before it hit a conveniently placed storage container—buried in the dirt at just the right angle to serve as a ramp. The Jeep would soar through the air, crash into a building full of enemies, and cause a massive explosion that the story editor was still struggling to justify after nine rewrites had rendered the elaborate set piece nearly incoherent.

With Jackarind taking on the stunt work, they’d have to break it into three distinct shots. First, the high-speed tracking sequence. Then, at a much safer 25mph, they'd film Jackarind performing the jump and roll from the moving vehicle. Then, with the production deeply behind schedule, most of the crew would pack up and move to the next location while second unit shot the Jeep hitting the ramp and the subsequent explosion. It would actually be simpler this way. Efficient. By the book. Safe.

The stunt coordinator spent a week drilling Jackarind on the mechanics of rolling from a moving vehicle. By day four, his body was covered in purple bruises, but he insisted on more and more practice, never once letting up on the intensity of his training.

On the morning of the tracking shot, Doniel felt his stomach turning. That mischievous, insubordinate glint in the kid’s eyes. Doniel couldn’t put his finger on it, but he had the sinking feeling that the whole production was suddenly at risk.

When he caught up with Jackarind in wardrobe, the boy was putting his stunt pads on beneath his shirt and pants.

Jack looked up, startled, as Doniel walked in. “Oh. Hey.”

"I thought the pads were for the tuck and roll," Doniel said. "You don't need those today."

"Yeah, they’re just in case."

"In case of what?"

"I don’t know.” Jack shrugged. “To protect me."

The way he’d jumped when Doniel had first walked in— it was like he’d been caught red-handed. Doniel’s dread hit a fever pitch. The kid was actually going to try jumping out of a speeding car. Even at 75 miles an hour, it would almost certainly be fatal. Again, Doniel found himself at a crossroads.

Again, he chose the wrong path.

Doniel left and found his special effects coordinator immediately. He whispered something into the man’s ear.

"What? You're kidding."

“No. I’m not. Do it.”

There was no roll cage in the Jeep, no need for it on this particular day, but the Wrangler was still heavily modified. The suspension had been beefed up with heavy-duty coilovers and reinforced control arms, massive off-road brakes were installed, and an upgraded cooling system was added to handle the abuse. The undercarriage had also been reinforced with steel plating to protect vital components.

So the sight of a welder working on the car didn’t give Jackarind pause as he strolled onto set. "Get in on the passenger side," the stunt coordinator told him. "They're still working on the car."

Jack got in on the passenger side, slid over to the driver’s seat, and fired up the engine.

Soon enough, the cameras were rolling. The Jeep hit its marks, kicking up clouds of dust as it accelerated down the dirt road. Doniel was in the pursuit vehicle, eyes glued to his handheld monitor. He watched every twitch of Jack’s face. He watched as Jack licked his lips, grinned, and then went for it.

He threw his weight against the driver's side door, to no avail. He didn’t hesitate. He did it again, slamming his shoulder harder into the door.

“Cut!” Doniel yelled. But Jackarind didn’t slow down. Again he crashed his body into the door with all his might. Again nothing happened.

“Cut!” Doniel yelled again. The pursuit vehicle slowed but the Jeep never did. Jack wasn’t giving up. “Oh dear God,” Doniel whispered to himself. He was sure that his plan would work. When the door wouldn’t open, Doniel thought—when Jack realized that it had been welded shut from the outside—surely that would be the end of it.

But it wasn’t. Never taking his foot off the gas, Jack slammed into the door one last time, his grip on the wheel faltering. The Jeep swerved, catching the uneven ground at precisely the wrong angle. The whole vehicle pitched sideways, propelled into a violent roll. The Jeep rolled once, twice, three times, a blur of motion and debris, each impact crushing the frame further, rupturing the fuel lines.

When it finally stopped tumbling, flames were already spitting out, licking at the undercarriage. Inside, Jackarind fought frantically with the driver’s side door as black smoke and fire filled the cabin.

But the door didn’t budge.

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Prologue

It isn’t exactly a nightmare. But it is the last dream Cooper Thomas will ever have.

Chapters 1-2: The Trance / Paradise Five

A film director begins to suspect he's under someone's hypnotic influence.

Chapters 3-4: Stuntman / The Accident

A director confronts his star's dangerous obsession on the doomed set of his film.

Chapters 5-6: Director Jail / Family Man

After ten years in exile, a washed-up film director's past comes back to haunt him.

Chapter 7: East of La Brea

A trip down memory lane is cut short by an unexpected phone call.

The Trance

It was 18 months before Doniel began to suspect something was amiss. His wife had said it off-handedly. A throwaway line that hit him harder than it should have.

“It’s like you’ve been hypnotized.”

It was over dinner. Nell made the soup he had once told her tasted like SpaghettiOs^®. She’d been deeply offended. It was a celebrity-endorsed recipe that required expensive, exotic ingredients from an over-the-top health store in Beverlywood. She’d spent hours painstakingly preparing it. She’d even purchased a $280 mini-blow torch to sear the mini-meatballs. But it tasted exactly like SpaghettiOs^®, and he’d made the mistake of saying so. Then he slowly backed into a lie that SpaghettiOs^® were his favorite childhood meal and the comparison was actually a tremendous compliment.

An even graver mistake. From then on, she began making the meal every month. And each time she would say, “I made your favorite!” There was a non-trivial chance that she knew he actually hated the soup. But he couldn’t be sure. So he kept his silence.

Nell asked him how his day was. Though it was really more along the lines of, “You look terrible. What did you do all day?”

While he would normally settle for a generalized account of his day, he felt strangely compelled to launch into a beat-by-beat breakdown. It didn’t last long. “I got to the studio early. Waited for the commissary to open. Got my coffee and bagel. Went to the editing bay… I got drinks with Bill, you remember Bill-”

“You got drinks in the middle of the day?”

“No. At six.”

“You were editing for 10 hours?”

He felt his typical knee-jerk reaction bubbling up. Ten hours editing was not unheard of. It was practically par for the course at this stage of post-production. The movie had to be finished. But something about her question disturbed him.

When they’d first met, she’d been curious– never fascinated–with how the entertainment industry worked. She couldn’t believe how many people it took working thousands of hours to produce what was, on the whole, pretty mediocre content. The curiosity had turned to resentment after the birth of their first two children. But there was no resentment now, over the clinking spoons and slurping of SpaghettiOs^®. She was clearly just concerned. There were bags under his eyes. It looked like he hadn’t slept for days. He understood her concern. He’d seen his reflection. Couldn’t explain it, honestly.

She probed further. “Did you at least get lunch?”

He couldn’t remember getting lunch. He must have skipped lunch. They were working on a particularly important sequence. Which sequence was it? What had they actually done today? What had they done yesterday?

“I think I skipped lunch. I don’t really remember.”

“They’re working you too hard. It’s like you’ve been hypnotized.”

And there it was. The tingling hairs on the back of his neck. The delicate unfolding of a newborn revelation, just beginning to blossom.

His son Jordan spoiled the moment. “Mom. I need $600. Ray’s family is going to the Iron Giant musical and tickets are $500. Plus concessions. I need to go.”

“Did they invite you?”

“No. But I told them I was going. If I don’t, I’ll look like a liar.”

A smaller voice from across the table: “But you are a liar.”

“Jenna, be nice to your brother.”

“I’m being nice.”

“Calling someone a liar is not nice.”

“Neither is being a liar.”

The conversation never came back to Doniel. He was relieved.

That night he dreamt of being locked in a dark box. He had captors, but they weren’t there. It was just him. Trapped, alone. The dream was feverish and unending. He woke to find himself huddled over a toilet, vomiting. He didn’t remember going to the bathroom. Had he started sleepwalking? How long had that been happening?

He peeled himself off the floor, drank a glass of water, and went into his study. He didn’t dare go back to bed. He just kept hearing Nell say those words. Over and over.

It’s like you’ve been hypnotized.

The visceral agony of late-night nausea seemed to seal it. The missing time. The murky memories. The unexamined compulsions. His revelation unfolded fully. He was not himself. He was sure of it now. He was under somebody else’s spell.

He didn’t know the why, where, when, or how of it. But he knew exactly who. He knew the man responsible for what was happening to him.

Paradise Five

They’d first met ten years earlier on the set of Paradise Five. Doniel’s brother Cooper had warned him not to take the job. It was the kind of picture they made all too often. Based on tenuous intellectual property and with an eye-watering budget large enough to doom the project to commercial failure under anything less than the most ideal circumstances, it featured a cast of relative unknowns, save some “marquee names”—one-time B-listers in the twilights of their careers who had shifted to supporting roles in corporate franchises. The movie was anchored by its lackluster star Taylor Lansing, a 19-year old thespian whose on-screen charisma had been generously described by Variety as that of a “brooding, very attractive, dead fish.”

This was around the time that the town resorted to mining IP from ‘sensational podcasts’ and ‘viral subreddits.’ So the fact that Paradise Five was based on a decently-selling graphic novel seemed like a home run waiting to happen. The script was ludicrous. It centered around five recently orphaned plutocrats who used their inheritance to fund vigilantism by way of high-flying stunts and hyper-stylized violence. It was the sort of premise a drunken ten-year old might have conceived of while playing with action figures in the bathtub. Still, Doniel was convinced that this was his big break. It might have been, too, if things hadn’t gone so tragically wrong.

“If you do take the job—and really, please don’t—you need to put your stamp on it as quickly as possible,” Cooper advised. He was a producer, both in practice and in spirit. And despite his misgivings about Doniel’s first big directing job, he couldn’t help but offer his little brother some sage advice. Bearing Cooper’s words in mind, Doniel decided his first order of business was to address the bland leading man. Taylor Lansing had accrued enough credits for studio executives to convince themselves that he was a commodity. So much so that they’d foregone any screen tests, a stipulation Taylor’s agents had smartly insisted upon. The idea that Taylor Lansing could actually act was the sort of mass-delusion that worked only so long as audiences played along, and Lansing didn’t have the box office receipts to back him up. All his success had come from huge franchises that would have flourished with anyone on the one-sheet. Paradise Five, Doniel feared, was far more “execution dependent.”

When Doniel came on board, the project was alarmingly deep into pre-production, so he’d had to fight hard to recast the principal actor. One of his more candid pitches was along the lines of: “Imagine the story just as we have it—the script is perfect, really, though I have a few notes—imagine the whole thing just like it is, but instead of Taylor Lansing… it’s literally anybody else.”

To shut him up, the powers-that-be gave Doniel latitude to conduct a small talent search, so long as the production’s start-date didn’t change and the burgeoning star never got wind of it.

At the behest of Cooper, Don did exactly the opposite. He conducted a massive, continent-wide casting call. And when there was no blowback from Taylor’s camp, Doniel had Cooper call the actor’s agents directly to tip them off.

“You want him to know. You want him so pissed that he quits the project. Otherwise the studio will shoot down anyone else you bring them. I don’t care if you find the next Marlon Brando— if it’s between an unknown genius and a rotting raccoon with credits, they’ll go with the known quantity. Rule #1 - always give the studio options. Rule #2- never let them choose the wrong option. You need to take the kid off the board.”

Of course, Cooper had glossed over just how contentious the whole process would be. There was a cascade of phone calls with screaming executives and panicked business affairs personnel. More than once, Doniel was convinced he was on the verge of being fired. But the storm passed and the plan worked perfectly. Taylor Lansing dropped out, gracefully citing scheduling conflicts. He’d recently been offered a role starring opposite a digitally-recreated Carey Grant. It had awards-season written all over it and his reps had convinced him it was the better career move. Meanwhile, Don’s epic casting call proved fruitful. He found the perfect leading man: an unknown Canadian by the name of Jackarind Bellows.

Again, Cooper reiterated rules #1 and 2. “Give them the illusion of choice. Bellows is one option. But you need a second option. Someone deeply unpalatable. Maybe that kid from the toy movies. He’s got a massive drug problem. They’ll never insure him. Better yet- put some deformed, handicapped kid in the lineup. Try to sell it as a diversity play. But really try to sell it. Like- if it were up to you, this crippled little mutant would headline every movie ever made. He’s the future of cinema, as far as you’re concerned. But if they really want another option, there’s also this brilliant, devastatingly handsome wunderkind from bumblefuck Canada who will work for scale.”

Again, Don followed his brother’s advice to a T. And again it worked perfectly. The studio signed off. Jack Bellows became the star of Paradise Five. And the project now had Doniel’s fingerprints all over it. Something he would soon come to deeply regret.

Click here to read the second installment of Dream Wars. Thanks for reading!

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There were bodies everywhere. The ones still clinging to life moaned in agony. He moved through the swampy valley with caution, trying not to step on the tangled extremities of the corpses. It felt like the earth was trying to inhale him, the thick mud sucking him in with every step he took. He was sure that if he stood still, it would swallow him whole.

It wasn’t exactly a nightmare. But it was the last dream Cooper Thomas would ever have.

He woke up late in the afternoon and scrambled to get ready. Like all of the ceremonies, tonight’s was taking place in a walled-off compound in the Hollywood hills. He drove the Maserati there. He had a dim recollection of once enjoying the narrow, twisting hills from behind the wheel of a zippy sports car. So now, whenever he knew he’d end up in the hills, he took the Maserati, unconsciously trying to recreate a dopamine rush that seemed forever out of reach.

He showed up late. In the early days, showing up late meant you couldn’t get in. But they’d gotten lax. The only people standing watch were the private security guards, who all knew him and waved him through the gate.

They were using the old servants’ quarters and everyone was asleep in the main room, their bodies illuminated only by candlelight. The sight of them lying in their little cots— he couldn’t help but think of the dream he awoke from, only an hour ago. Even the Occarist—the sorry kid they hired to dress up and deliver the sacrament in the absence of a true officiant— was under, fast asleep. The pomp and circumstance had been exciting at first. But now it seemed like no one had the energy to do anything but go through the ceremonial motions.

The sound of a water feature trickled away in some darkened corner. The sacrament was left out at the front of the room. Cooper approached it, picked it up and brought it to his mouth. He hesitated. The chalice was unwashed, its rim sticky with grime, the potion inside glistening with a thick film of backwash. He suddenly didn’t want it. That noxious, familiar taste of wine and sedatives. The way it stuck to the back of his throat. Again, he thought of his dream, and the stench of death permeating that grotesque swamp filled with corpses. He gagged.

One of the bodies in the room stirred. He took the cup and retreated into the kitchen.

He waited until the door had swung closed behind him before turning on the lights. He dumped the red liquid out in the sink and washed the cup under cold water, rubbing the rim clean with his thumb and forefinger. He wiped it down and brought it to the mixing station, a glorified bar cart draped with an ornamental piece of fabric. There was an enormous bottle of wine uncorked, a third of the bottle left. Next to it, a bowl of powderized sedatives.

But where was the third ingredient?

He checked the drawers, the cupboards. He even checked the broom closet, trying to make as little noise as possible, but growing increasingly frustrated. He walked back to the mixing station and stared at it dumbly, as if hoping it might magically appear before him.

Only then did he notice the satchel on the ground, what looked like an old carrying case for a bowling ball. Worn leather, stiffened with age. A tarnished brass zipper partially opened. He picked it up by the handles and was surprised by its heft. He set it down on the counter and slowly slid the fly over the clunky, bucked teeth of the zipper. He parted the bag’s mouth with both hands and peered inside. His breathing stopped.

The bag was filled to the brim.

Before he even knew what he was doing or why, he zipped the bag back up and hauled it with him out of the kitchen, hitting the lights off as he did. He tiptoed through the main room, between the sleeping bodies, and out to his car.

As he drove away, he felt that long-forgotten dopamine rush. The tires gripping the asphalt. The engine whirring through the canyon. His mouth clenched in a tight, involuntary grin.

He drove west.

Click here to read the first installment of Dream Wars. Thanks for reading!

January 1st, 2021

I awoke from a dead sleep to the sound of explosions. After a few disorienting moments, I realized where I was, when I was. I was on the couch in my living room. Those explosions were fireworks. Which meant it must be nearly midnight. I sat up, hesitated, then grabbed a cigarette and shuffled outside.

The fireworks continued, though I couldn’t see most of them. I could only hear their arrhythmic, percussive bursts, and the sound of people cheering. I walked down the length of my porch and sat on the steps, looking down into the totally empty street. In the building next door, I could hear a family counting down from ten.

The counting family got to zero and shouted, “Happy New Year!” and then it was done; 2020, the worst year in modern history, was definitively over. In overcrowded hospitals around Los Angeles, people were dying by the hundreds. But there was a light at the end of the tunnel. The sound of far-off cheers amid the smattering of explosions. I began to tear up. It had been a hard year. For everyone. I found myself wishing I knew the lyrics to Auld Lang Syne. I hummed a few bars…

Should auld acquaintance be forgot…

And then, not too far away, a lone trumpeter began to play, his horn bellowing into the night. Likely the same person who, in the early days of lockdown, some seven or eight months ago, would play sweet Americana while my neighbors banged their pots and pans at 8pm sharp every night. Ostensibly to salute first responders. But also, I liked to think, just as a joyous cry into the evening, letting people like me know that, though we were stuck at home without another soul to comfort us, though the streets were eerily quiet, we were not alone. There were people all around us. And that trumpet would play the National Anthem or Amazing Grace, I could no longer remember which, and I would feel a little less alone.

But tonight it was playing Auld Lang Syne. Compassion welled up in my heart, for myself and everyone around me. For the other people alone in their homes, for the families huddled together, hoping for better times. For my parents, who I hadn’t been able to see in over a year. For Auld Lang Syne, my dear. For Auld Lang Syne. The trumpet wailed beautifully, barely audible as it was drowned out by the booming fireworks overhead, and the sound of me openly weeping.

We’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet

For Auld Lang Syne.

Happy new year everybody.

The first red flag was at a stoplight on Wilshire. Driving into the hideous setting sun, gridlocked near Sepulveda. I was dry-crying, nearly hyperventilating, chanting: “Help me God help me God help me God.”

The second red flag was also at a stoplight on Wilshire, two weeks and four hours later. This time heading east. The stoplights were blinking red. A police officer in a yellow traffic vest was directing cars.

“Maybe I should be a police officer,” I actually said out loud, to no one.

Perhaps I’d been unduly influenced by the evening I’d just spent with FBI agents in Westwood—a story best saved for another time—but it wasn’t the federal law enforcement that had inspired me. What really lit my fuse on that blustery October evening was the traffic cop waving cars across Crescent Drive at 9pm.

A few blocks later, another brilliant idea started to take hold: “Maybe I could go back to school and become a private investigator.”

This is called a midlife crisis, folks. It doesn’t always look like a tacky Porsche and a poorly concealed bald spot. Sometimes it’s as subtle as a new Substack and a few white hairs in your beard.

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The entire time that I was 36, I kept telling people I was 37. This was an attempt to lessen the blow of 37 when it finally came. It was a bad strategy, similar to my ingenious modus operandi of “never getting excited” about potentially good things on the horizon. I’ve employed that tactic as a way of avoiding disappointment for nearly a decade, only to (very recently) discover just how deeply unhelpful it actually is.

Because disappointment isn’t a problem. Crushing cynicism is a problem.

Similarly, 37 isn’t a problem. But as I sat there in the evening flow of LA traffic, it sure felt like one. “I would have been a good lawyer,” I thought. “But now it’s too late. No one goes to law school at 37.”

There are two inherent flaws in this logic— one is that plenty of people go to law school at 37. The other is that I am not 37.

I got home, blabbered to my wife about my early-onset midlife crisis, and then promptly realized— I’m actually 38.

Honestly, it made me feel better. Not just because I was finally free from the two-year nightmare of believing I was 37. But because 38 is a slightly more appropriate age to feel such ennui.

And, so, the ennui persists.

I have an upcoming series of posts next year called Never Build a River Empire. Therein, I’ll dive into what lessons, if any, can be gleaned from unrealized creative ambition. Without giving anything away, I can tell you one thing up front that I’ve learned in the process of writing it—there has been a discernible pattern in my life, and it’s not the obvious embarrassments that I revel in highlighting. It’s actually something more subtle and heartening: I try to do a lot of things.

So of course I’ve failed at a lot of things.

I’m someone who sees my failures with heightened clarity, but I usually need a third party to explain my own accomplishments to me. And yet, I am finally starting to see that, in a certain light, all of my accumulated failures are something of an accomplishment in and of themselves.

For me, trying and failing is a more effective balm for the weary soul than that narcotic ditch-dwelling-duo of inaction and complacency.1 Of course, the older I get, the more suspicious I get of new undertakings. Have I tried something like this before? Is there a clear reason it didn’t it work? Is there something I know now that I didn’t know then?

My latest undertaking is fairly straightforward: I’m writing fiction and essays that I release here on the Heated Forest. Not because I have a lot of time on my hands. And not because the world is clamoring for it. (The world rarely clamors for anything good). I’m doing it because I want to improve as a writer. Because it holds me accountable. And because I’m tired of writing things that are consumed almost exclusively by aloof Hollywood executives under the perpetual twilight-sedation of pragmatic cynicism.2

It’s all good news for you, dear reader, as I am here to pamper you with stories, essays, and esoteric scraps, both assembled and asunder, so that one of us may benefit from the shifting tideways of my heavy heart.

Which is all to say: this coming year, the Heated Forest will feature some of the greatest fiction ever written.3

It starts off on in January with Dream Wars. If the world were ending tomorrow and there was only one story I could finish editing and ship off to that big Library of Congress in the sky, it would be this one. It takes place in the larger world of a novel I’m writing called Children of Light. Dream Wars is about a film director who begins to suspect that he’s come under the hypnotic influence of a malevolent studio executive. Speed Read AI compares it to Barton Fink, Mulholland Drive, and Get Out. I don’t know about that, but I’ll take it!

Also coming in 2025 is Oxygen: a brand new short story about a father and son stationed on an abandoned mining planet. They get more than they bargained for when they find themselves on the wrong side of the grizzly, ruthless locals. It’s a survival thriller in the vein of Blake Crouch. Think Unforgiven meets Breakdown on Tatooine.

And in March, I’ll let you read a letter to my son, years before he gets to! (Are you incredibly lucky? Or just a subscriber to the Heated Forest? And is there really a difference?)

There’s plenty more on the way that I haven’t told you about. Partly because I don’t want to overwhelm you, and partly because some of it is still just a twinkle in my eye. But please know, from the bottom of my heart, I appreciate you being here, and I appreciate you reading. If you like something, let me know. If you hate something, let someone else know. Like, comment, share. Do all the things! Or sit back and passively consume. The choice is yours.

Before I go, I want to call attention to a few Substacks I think you might really enjoy.

• Muse’s Moonshine - The infrequent musings of a gifted singer-songwriter currently trapped in Boise, Idaho.

  Muses’s Moonshine

  Musings over moonshine from Muses Delight, musically known as Cactus Moon.

  By Muses' Moonshine

• A Fan’s Notes, by Nick Hornby - A music lover, author, and human being posting frequently about music, writing, and humanity.

  A Fan's Notes, by Nick Hornby

  Music, books, movies, work, football, TV and so on.

• Serious Trouble - My all-time favorite non-trivia podcast, where columnist Josh Barro and former federal prosecutor Ken White dig into the latest legal issues in politics and culture with insight and wit.

  Serious Trouble

  An irreverent podcast about the law

  By Josh Barro and Ken White

And while they’re not Substacks, here are two more, because I love you:

• The Off Ramp Trivia Podcast - The funniest, hardest-working septuagenarians I know try to stump each other every week with a grab bag of fascinating trivia that just might make you a slightly less insufferable dinner party guest. They have over 250 episodes of evergreen content, all available for free.

• Icebreaker - And finally, the award for “my favorite publication ever” goes to Salon Deputy Editor Daria Solovieva’s free, weekly bulletin on the latest news in tech and startups coming out of Eastern Europe. She’s posting stories weeks (and months) before the lamestream media pick them up, so check it out. It’s good stuff.

Well, that’s pretty much a wrap on 2024. I hope you’re en route to a holiday break that allows you to relax, breathe deep, and get ready for whatever the hell comes next.4

See you next year.

-BC

This week we have a special treat. I asked serial entrepreneur, cryptocurrency enthusiast, and billionaire’s rights advocate Chad Thomas to pen a guest column for The Heated Forest on how to succeed as a startup founder. Here’s what he sent.

Every single morning, I wake up and I pinch myself. How did I get so fortunate? How is it that I get to do what I love, every single day? My whole life, I’ve had a dream, and now that dream is fulfilled. I’m self-employed. I’m a business owner. And I am a professional writer.

Specifically- I write didactic, prescriptive LinkedIn posts about entrepreneurship.

Let’s be clear- I may be fortunate, but I’m not “lucky.” I built my business the old fashioned way; I worked hard, and I followed 5 essential principles. In this post you’ll learn exactly how I did it, and how you can take the same steps to get the same results.

Maybe you’re already knee-deep in your first startup, or your second, or your third. Maybe you got lucky once and are struggling to recreate that success with your latest venture. The good news is- there’s a formula for success. Here are the 5 things every startup founder needs to do to build a successful business.

1.) Write didactic, prescriptive LinkedIn posts about entrepreneurship.

I know, easy for me to say, right? It’s literally my job. But I’m telling you, it works. If you do nothing else but follow this one piece of advice, I guarantee your life will never be the same. 

Wealth inequality is at an all time high. The streets are littered with homeless encampments. Inside each one of those dirty little cardboard houses, there’s a person. And all of those sad, dirty people have one single thing in common:

Not one of them wakes up in the morning and chooses to write didactic, prescriptive LinkedIn posts about entrepreneurship.

And it is a choice.

It will be hard. It will take discipline. Do you think Bob Iger likes getting up at 4am and hitting the gym? Do you think Tony Robbins enjoys jumping into a 57-degree cold dip every day? Of course not. But they do it anyway.

I’m challenging you to wake up every morning and do what needs to be done. You might feel unqualified to write about being a better entrepreneur. You might be unqualified. But I didn’t let that stop me. And you shouldn’t either.

2.) Make sure everybody knows you’re an entrepreneur.

Some people act like their profession is a state secret. Their LinkedIn profiles are wastelands. They demur when you ask them their net worth. These people are imbeciles, and they’re missing out on one of the great joys of entrepreneurship: talking incessantly about entrepreneurship.

Think about how many people you speak to on a weekly basis. The guy at the store. The guy at the dentist. The girl who works for the guy at the dentist. ALL OF THEM should know that you're an entrepreneur. If they don’t know, you’re not doing your job. Speak up! Don’t be shy. Business is all about networking.

You need to build relationships, and the first step to leveraging other human beings for your own personal gain networking is making sure that everyone knows you’re a CEO-entrepreneur. So tell them. Then watch in amazement as they trip over themselves trying to serve you. It’s that easy.

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3.) Don’t waste time “building” things.

You know the type. They tweak, tinker and toil. They slave away, engineering the “next big thing,” obsessively reworking their designs until they turn their idea into reality, transforming nothing into something. These people are called Builders.

I call them losers.

Look, it’s impressive to “build” things. It really is. You know what else is impressive? Winning a medal in the Special Olympics. But it’s not something I aspire to. And it’s not something you should aspire to either. Steve Jobs famously couldn’t code. And he didn't need to. Because entrepreneurship is not about building.

It’s about doing one thing and one thing only:

4.) Talk the Talk

Anyone with legs can walk the walk. As the face of your company, your job is to talk the talk. Nothing more. End of sentence. Full stop.

It’s not about EBITDA, ROI or P/E Ratios. It's about saying EBITDA, ROI and P/E Ratios with a completely straight face.

Newsflash- if you don’t sound like a CEO, you aren’t one. But don’t worry, it’s easier than it sounds. Let me give you an example:

Has this ever happened to you? Someone asks if you’ve seen a popular film or television show. You haven’t seen it, but you lie and say you have, because, you know, you’re a sociopath. We’ve all been there.

When that person asks follow-up questions, how do you respond? Do you come clean and admit your lie? Do you clam up or change the subject? No! You double down. You keep talking. You say a thousand words without saying a single thing. You talk like a CEO.

It’s that simple. Which brings us to #5. The single most important thing that every entrepreneur and founder needs to do right now in order to succeed…

Sign up below for my free E-Book to unlock all the secrets of entrepreneurship. Including:
- From #Hustler to #ThoughtLeader: My Journey in Hashtags
- Algorithm Hacks: Why Every Third Post Should Mention Elon Musk
- BONUS CHAPTER: "Zero to Hero: How I Turned My Dad's Investment Firm Into a Thriving Business"

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“Are you writing about yourself in the past tense?”

We were in the back seat of the car on a family road trip. I was 17, and I was indeed writing about myself in the past tense.

Back then, it seemed quite clear to me that the natural progression of my life would eventually demand I document my incredible achievements in the form of an intimate memoir. For posterity. It would start with my humble beginnings as a child-genius, and eventually pass through my troubled teenage-years, including those formative days—which I was still very much in the midst of—working as a clerk in a movie store.

I figured I’d get a head start on that chapter. While it was still fresh.

“You are. You’re writing about your job in the past tense. Ben’s writing his life story, everybody.”

This was my sister. She had looked over my shoulder, sized up the situation almost instantly, and then loudly called me out on it. It was embarrassing.

Why do I still remember this, decades later? For the same reason I still remember this:

The year was 1999. I was in sixth grade and I had just secured one of the smallest speaking parts available for our junior high production of The Runt, a truly horrible stage play written specifically for intolerable junior high theatrical productions. I had only one line, which I no longer remember.1

Around this time, I was obsessed with the band Citizen King, a Milwaukee-based one-hit-wonder responsible for the song “Better Days.”

The song got a lot of play on Wisconsin airwaves. The chorus goes like this:

I’ve seen better days
I’ve been star of many plays
I’ve seen better days
(and the bottom drops out)

One day after rehearsal, I was in the kitchen, singing the song aloud to myself. My sister walked in.

“What do you think, that’s like your theme song or something? Because you’re in a play? Ben’s like, ‘Hey, I’ve been ‘star of many plays!’’”

“Shut up! That’s not why I like the song!”

It is why I liked the song. Because I was in a play. And I thought it was my theme song.

She was, thankfully, only scratching the surface of that particular deep well of shame: my alternate, imagined life. See, I used to pretend that my life was a TV show. Not like some NBC multicam sitcom. This was a movie-quality, serialized drama with comedic elements. A dramatically heightened version of my life.

The promotional materials for that week’s episode—as I imagined them—included Citizen King’s song “Better Days,” along with a lot of cleverly edited footage that made me look funny, cool, well-liked, and yes, the star of my school play.2

My sister didn’t know any of that. But she knew enough. She could sense, in a heartbeat, my secret shame. She knew just from looking at me that something stupid and embarrassing was going on in my head, and she did what any good sister would do— loudly called me out on it in front of everybody.

The very first time my sister truly saw through my bullshit, I was nine years old. I had climbed behind the wheel of my mom’s minivan—parked safely in the garage—and I was pretending to drive, turning the wheel, making engine sounds with my mouth. My sister walked out into the garage.

“Oh God,” she said, disgusted. “Stop pretending like you’re a normal kid.”

I knew instantly what she meant. I played dumb. “I’m just playing.”

“No, you’re not. You’re pretending to play because that’s what you think normal kids would do.”

How.

Did.

She.

Know.

I was indeed emulating what I believed a normal child would do. It was a hollow, joyless exercise, and I felt almost relieved when she liberated me from it.

It’s almost unfathomable that any human being could see into my soul so instantly and so accurately. To an onlooker, I was just a kid, pretending to drive a car. But not my sister. She saw through the artifice like a cheap strip of cellophane.

There’s something inherently cruel about exposing the inner workings of another’s heart and mind. First and foremost, it inspires shame, a deeply unproductive emotion. But it can also have a ripping-off-the-bandaid effect. My sister didn’t just expose me, she destroyed my illusions: My premature memoir? Never wrote another word. That episode where I was the star of many plays? Underwent extensive reshoots. Pretending to pretend to play? A laborious waste of time that I never bothered with again.

She held up a mirror for me to see myself in a new way. Being self aware without being self conscious is a difficult needle to thread, but her semi-disgusted observational digs got me well on my way. And they have clearly stuck with me.

I have paid my sister back for her cruelty tenfold over the years. I have maybe overdone it. I have taken it too far and I have done it many times, inflicting cruelty just to get a laugh, mistaking her shocked cackle of discomfort as genuine amusement, then doubling down on it. Cumulatively, I think I’ve hurt her more than she’s hurt me. But I don’t really remember much of that. Because, well, she started it.

We’re three years apart in age, which I’ve always considered the sweet spot. There was no social overlap, little chance we’d ever run into each other at school, and yet we were close enough in maturity that we could have meaningful conversations and our own code of humor, a shared language that would have been impossible if I was any younger or she any older.

In some sense, no one has ever known me as well as she does. We’ve had decades of shared experiences. We have inside jokes that I don’t even realize are “inside jokes,” because I’ve known her my entire life. To me they’re just “jokes.” Our jokes.

On Thursday, she’ll fly out to Los Angeles to spend Thanksgiving with my family. I’ve been looking forward to it all month. I love Thanksgiving, and I love spending it with her. We’ll make each other laugh, we’ll make each other angry. We’ll accidentally hurt and intentionally amuse one another, ad nauseum.

When I think about my own son, I often wish that he had a little sister or brother, for his sake. Not just as a friend, but as a healthy adversary. So that somebody could not only see him, but also see through him. Because the little lies we tell ourselves, left unchecked, can compound into delusion and dysfunction. And if nothing else, a sibling is someone you can share your delusions and dysfunction with. They, in turn, can commiserate, encourage, or challenge you. Ideally all three.

It’s a privilege to have your authenticity held so stringently accountable by someone who wants nothing more than for you to be the best version of yourself. There’s no greater blessing than a sibling who will call you out on your bullshit.

So, while I’m thankful for a great many things this year, right near the top of that list is Chelsea, my big sister, and my best friend for life.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

The final installment of my short story, Robinson. In part 3, the narrator and his sister spent weeks restoring Daisy and Gary’s home after their uncle’s passing. Ten years later, they return to the small Illinois town to see what’s become of it.

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We decide to go to the antique store before visiting the property. Alex suggested it, and I happily oblige. She came all this way, she deserves to have a little fun before the grand finale.

I wait outside, watching an old man on a bench smoke a cigarette down to the filter. In twenty minutes, only two cars pass down main street. They’re both trucks. I get a few side-eyes, as I always do in this town. Not much has changed here in the last ten years, nor will it likely in the next ten.

Alex comes outside with a paper bag of trinkets, postcards, and books. She smiles. “Want to see what I got?”

“Of course,” I lie.

We sit on the bench, sharing a 7-Up while she goes through her bounty, insisting I hold and examine every item. I feign interest for as long as it takes. When we’re done, we get in the rental car, and set our course for the house.

It’s been a decade since we mixed Daisy and Gary’s remains together and scattered the ashes throughout their property—among the leaves, beneath a tree, by an old bench where they spent countless afternoons watching birds and listening to the water and the wind.

The ashes were more substantial than I’d expected. Chunks of bone and mineral in a bed of chalky talcum powder. I dumped the last of them into the creek. They hit the surface of the water and immediately began to dissolve. I watched them cloud up the stream, then disappear forever.

We took one last walk down Rocky Road before heading out. It was strange to be there in the summer. The usually flat and bleak fields were fully alive with towering stalks of growing corn, a dense forest of vibrant green.

“I can see why they loved living out here,” Alex said. “I’ll miss this place.” 

A dog howled in the distance and she smiled. “I’ll even miss the Junk Yard,” she said. As if on cue, a few kittens ran out into the road. We picked them up and carried them with us, tickling their little chins as we walked, cooing and groping at them until they squirmed and meowed to be let down.

The Junk Yard down the road looked as desolate as ever. The howling dogs were gone, but their cages remained, rusted and leaning against the side of the trailer. Two broken down cars were parked on the lawn and there was now a couch sitting out front. A tattered confederate flag waved from atop the trailer, overhead.

As we gawked at the now-familiar spectacle, an engine rumbled in the distance, followed by the churning of rubber on gravel. The rare sound of a car rolling down Rocky Road.

We shoo’d the last straggling kitten back into the yard, then stepped out of the way as a pickup truck passed. It slowed down and pulled into the Junk Yard. Two young men in camouflage pants and flannel shirts climbed down from the truck and started unloading crates from the back of their pickup. They were our age, maybe younger. The next generation of junkers. 

We headed back to Daisy and Gary’s house, got in our car, and left Robinson for good.

The day of the auction, we were set to call in at noon. Alex called me at 9am. I plugged one of my ears with a finger. “I can’t really hear you. What’d you say?”

She repeated herself, louder, agitated. “We’ve got a problem.”

When George Banks pulled up to the property that morning, everything was set. The weather was perfect, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. As the first potential bidders were arriving, he let himself inside the house, to double check everything was alright.

It wasn’t.

George Banks found himself wading through six inches of water. There’d been a leak. A very, very severe leak. Out back, the water meter was spinning wildly.

He had to alert the auction goers of the situation. He didn’t sugarcoat it; there’d been a bad leak overnight. There would be some serious water damage and the house was being sold as-is.

Multiple times, George confided to my sister just “how bizarre” the whole thing was. They’d checked all the pipes two days prior. Nothing had been amiss.

At noon, Alex conferenced me in and we listened as the auction started, George’s assistant narrated the whole unfolding saga. The house went up for auction first.

For ten wooded acres, a free-standing two-car garage and a 3-bedroom, 2-and-a-half bath house, you could expect millions in Los Angeles or San Francisco. George Banks had urged us to banish those kinds of numbers from our head.

“This is a great property. And it’s a rarity that some wooded acreage comes on the market these days. So it’s a big deal. But this is Robinson. Keep your expectations in check.”

There was a flurry of bidding early. We listened breathlessly as the numbers climbed, and then… quickly and abruptly stopped.

Sold, for $36,300.

The auction continued, but I couldn’t listen anymore.

A few hours later, Alex called me back.

“More bad news.”

“Do I want to know? How much did the rest of it go for?”

“Not much. What we expected. But the house, I mean. The winning bidders.”

“What about them?”

“It was the Petersons. They own the property down the road.” She didn’t need to add anything else, but she did. “The Junk Yard.”

We’d just sold our aunt’s house for pennies on the dollar to the one family she would have never wanted to have it.

That night I started to cry. Then I remembered the mysterious water leak. I kept seeing that rare sight of the young Petersons unloading their truck on our final walk down Rocky Road. My tears stopped and something darker overtook me.

I smashed my TV. “Our TV,” as my wife corrected me when she got home to find our 42-inch appliance in hundreds of pieces, across multiple waste bins. “What the hell happened?”

“I don’t know,” I said sheepishly. “I lost control.”

She would quote me on that years later, during our divorce proceedings. Her lawyers pointed to it as evidence that I was unstable, that I’d made her feel unsafe, that I was a loose cannon who could go off at any minute, and that the emotional damages she was seeking against me were more than justified.

But it was a lie. I’d set out to destroy something and I hadn’t stopped until blood from my knuckles stained the walls. Those backwards hicks had broken into my family’s home and caused as much damage as they could. That whole godforsaken town had eaten away at Aunt Daisy and Uncle Gary, year after year, poisoning their spirits and choking their livelihood until they withered away and died. Then it had spit on and robbed their graves. Smashing a TV was the least I could do. It was a small placeholder for the retribution I would one day seek. I did it because I wanted to.

I didn’t lose control at all.

We park on the side of Rocky Road, just before the house comes into view. We get out and Alex closes her door loudly. I shoot her a look. “Shhhh.” 

“Sorry,” she mouths.

The sky is a rich, deep blue. The air is thick and muggy. I breathe it in deeply.

We get to Daisy and Gary’s driveway. The Peterson’s driveway.

The structures haven’t changed much, not in essence. They’re still standing. The windows of the house are filthy and curtainless. The garage where Gary’s Harley Davidson once sat, polished and proud, now houses the rotting husks of two totaled cars. The lawn is overgrown. It’s a good sixty feet from where we’re standing to the front door of the house, and every square inch of it is littered with garbage.

“Oh my God,” Alex says. “Oh my God,” she says again, but this time it sounds like she’s crying. I don’t look over at her to confirm this. I just start walking.

Several decaying tables lie on their side, clumps of weeds and grass growing out sideways from underneath them. Beyond them is a refrigerator, also on its side. The back of the fridge has been dismounted, its coils and grill laying flat in the grass.

Up ahead, a cat sits atop a stack of pallets, looking straight at me. Its eyes are old and morosely submissive. I wonder if we’ve met before, when it was just a kitten, its whole life ahead of it. And now here we are. It gives me a look, like it’s egging me on.

Do it, it seems to say. Do it.

I scan the house, looking for some sign of life inside. Then there’s a thud below me and a terrible jolt of pain as my foot catches on something. I go down.

“Oh, Jesus.” Alex is standing over me. “Are you alright?”

But I don’t think I am. My ankle is twisted terribly. I look at the big, rusty, purposeless pipe that caused my fall. I let out a low, guttural noise of pain. I’m so angry. I feel rage running through me like an electric current, my veins buzzing like copper wire.

Alex struggles to help me up. I put a little weight on my left foot and the pain is searing. I lean on Alex, pressing down on her shoulder so forcefully that she almost falls over.

“Come on,” she says. “Let’s get out of here.”

“No. No.”

“You’re hurt. And this is terrible. I don’t know what we were thinking.”

She looks nervously back at the house.

“They’re not home,” I say.

“Maybe not, but I don’t want to do this.”

Alex helps me back to the driveway. She turns to leave and I let her go. I stand, balancing on one foot. There’s something cold inside my clenched fist. I’m holding the lighter.

“I don’t want to see anymore,” Alex says, and again, it sounds like she’s crying.

A hundred thoughts go by so rapidly, I can’t make out a single one. But when they’ve passed, I’m holding the lighter out in front of me, looking directly into Alex’s eyes. There’s a flash of recognition, and I can see that she knows what I’m planning, what I’ve been planning all along.

“What? What is that?”

“Fuck these people. Fuck this place.”

“What are you going to do, huh? Are you stupid?”

“You’re not angry?”

“Of course I’m angry. These idiots have defiled my childhood. But the only thing to do is walk away. It’s time to leave. I don’t know why I even let you talk me into this.”

“Maybe because you knew what I was going to do.”

“No.”

“Maybe because you want to see it too.”

“There could be people inside. You could kill them. You could go to prison.”

“I don’t care.”

“Aunt Daisy would be ashamed of you.”

“Aunt Daisy is fucking dead.”

Something shifts in Alex, in the way she looks at me. There’s a deep sense of pity in her eyes. “I know you’re hurting. But I don’t want any part of this. I’m leaving. With or without you.”

“Then go.”

I turn my back on her and start hopping towards the garage. I look back, just in time to see Alex disappear around the bend. I hear her get in the car, start the engine, and after a few minutes of idling, she drives away.

I won’t see her again.

I stagger around the garage lamely, rummaging through piles of scrap under the workbench. I find what I’m looking for. A canister of gasoline. I give it a good shake. There’s enough.

I hobble out of the garage and over to the house. It takes nearly 10 minutes to cover about 30 feet. Halfway there, I try putting weight on my bad foot again. The pain is so intense that I almost black out. 

I get to the side of the house and uncap the canister. The stench of gas hits me. I feel lightheaded. I brace myself with a hand against the cheap vinyl siding of the house. For a second, I’m worried about leaving fingerprints. Do fingerprints survive fire? Does anything?

I laugh. As if I could even escape this inferno if I wanted to. I tilt the can and begin to pour. Along the side of the house. In the grass. Gasoline glugging out.

A sound from inside the house. I freeze. There it is again. A sort of whine. A cry. An animal? A baby?

I imagine a dog, alone, trapped inside, sitting atop familiar furniture that my rational mind knows is long gone.

I dump the rest of the can and shake it, letting the last few drips fly out where they may. I toss the canister into the grass, where it lands with a loud, hollow clang.

I pull out the Zippo and flick it to life. The flame sways back and forth. I hold it close enough to my face to feel the heat of it. I can smell my nose hairs singeing. Again, I hear a whine from inside the house. I tell myself that it’s okay. It will be quick. Only survivors feel any lasting pain. 

There will be no survivors this time.

The third installment of my short story, “Robinson.” In parts one and two, a pair of estranged siblings return to Robinson, a dying factory town marked by painful memories. While his sister believes they've come to pay homage to their family, the narrator harbors a devastating secret.

We get two rooms in Robinson’s finest hotel, then head down the street to have dinner at Robinson’s finest restaurant. We order from a laminated menu. I ask about the wine and I’m told there are two options- white and red. 

Alex shifts uncomfortably in her wooden chair. “But what kind of wine is it? The red?”

“The red wine…” the waitress pauses, her eyes drifting up, searching her brain for that elusive, scarcely sought-out information, “The red wine is, I believe, a merlot.” Her voice inspires zero confidence.

“We’ll do a bottle of the red,” I say. 

The wine gets better with every glass. And it helps us choke down the bowls of iceberg lettuce they’re serving in lieu of salads.

Alex orders the shrimp for reasons that are beyond me. It looks comically grotesque and I actually laugh out loud when the waitress sets it down in front of her. It makes her blush and I immediately feel bad.

I eat my small pizza—cheap mozzarella melted over cardboard— and drink my wine, smiling, while Alex works through her plate of wadded-up shrimp chum. She looks like she’s going to be sick, but she keeps eating. 

Halfway through our meal, the waitress comes over and asks, “How is everything?” and we say, “It’s fine, thanks,” because our parents raised us to be polite and suffer silently.

We smile at the waitress and snicker after she’s walked away, because it’s kind of funny, because it’s nice to be near each other again, and because we both somehow forgot what was in store for us when we decided to return to Robinson.

After dinner, we pick up a decent bottle of wine from the drive-through liquor store and head back to the hotel.

Mom and Dad had been gone a couple years when Alex got the call. Uncle Gary had taken a spill. He’d been out in the garage, migrating a 30-pack of Busch from the outside fridge to the inside fridge, when he’d slipped and fallen on the concrete, breaking his hip. The pain was awful and who knows what would have happened if his cell phone hadn’t been tucked in the breast pocket of his flannel shirt. Thankfully, he was able to call an ambulance. They gave him some medication for the pain and he was about to undergo surgery. He was just calling to let us know, to let Alex know.

“There’s something else,” he told her, hesitating a little.

“What is it?”

“Well, they say my liver’s got problems.”

“What sort of problems?”

“They’re saying it’s ‘severe cirrhosis’ and that I’ve had it for some time, even though I don’t have any symptoms.”

“Oh no.”

“Yeah,” he said, sounding dazed. “Doesn’t sound too good.”

We made plans to fly back to the midwest within a week and a half, but quickly moved the flight up after talking to Charlene, an old friend of Daisy’s. She’d been to the hospital to see Gary. His concept of “not having any symptoms” turned out to be a profound display of denial.

“His skin is yellow. Almost neon,” she told Alex. “It was hard to look at him at first. He’s got a long beard, down to his belly. He looks like ZZ Top. And his stomach, it’s distended. Like a Buddha belly. But he only weighs 100 or so pounds. He told the doctor he hadn’t been eating food or drinking water for at least a week, probably more. Just beer. It’s not good, Alex. You and your brother should get here quick.”

That last trip to Robinson would not end up being a quick one. Gary’s condition was serious enough that death was guaranteed and imminent. Gary’s own family had passed away some time ago, so we were all he had. 

The alcohol withdrawal subsided a day or so before we arrived. Charlene said it had been quite bad. Screaming and swearing at the staff, all varieties on the refrain, “Give me a fucking beer!” No one did and, by the time we showed up, he was docile.

His chapped lips smiled even as his eyes grew more and more distant each passing day. We made sure he understood his prognosis. He was going to die. There was no liver transplant in his future— the state required six months sobriety before a patient could even be put on a waiting list, and Gary wouldn’t last half that long.

The plan was to stay at Daisy and Gary’s house, but when Alex and I drove out there, we were in for a shock. Gary had let the place go to seed. The lawn had overgrown with weeds. There were several full-sized garbage barrels overflowing with crushed beer cans. Inside, more beer cans littered the floor— over 1900 cans, we would count, in all. Dirty dishes were piled in the sink, untouched for the better part of a year.

Alex had gleaned from her bimonthly conversations with Gary that he’d never slept in their bed again after Aunt Daisy died. But that wasn’t quite the whole story. No one had stepped foot in that bedroom for years. It was like a museum. All of Daisy’s clothes still hung in the closet. Her purse sat on a chair by the door, as if she’d just gone into the other room and would be back at any moment. 

You could hear vermin scattering around in the walls. There was a recently molted snakeskin on Gary’s workbench in the garage. Every surface was covered in dust or dirt and the house was pungent with the smell of beer, mold and body odor.

We began clearing out the house before Gary passed. At first, we did so under the pretense that he might be coming home someday, even if only for an afternoon. But he was never coming home. As that grew more and more apparent, we grew more and more aggressive in our cleaning. We hauled 30 bags of garbage and recyclables out of the house in two days, then another 30 bags over the following week. We donated boxes of Daisy’s clothes to Goodwill. We washed some of the dishes and just threw others away. 

We went to the hospital every morning. He wanted to die, though he never said as much. But I had seen the same look of surrender and grief in my dad’s eyes. There was nothing left for him here but the pain of remembering.

Gary died on a Monday and we coped by doubling down on our cleaning efforts. We found some strange things. We found almost two hundred dollars in loose change spread throughout the house, in drawers and bowls and boxes.  We found DVDs of pornography. We found a document outlining my Aunt’s wishes to have her ashes spread throughout the property. We found her ashes, in an urn, atop a TV in the living room.

We found several ounces of marijuana. We rolled a joint and shared it in the garage one night, toasting cans of Busch to Uncle Gary. It was the first night either of us had laughed in a long time.

Alex was named executor of the will and I worried that it would be too much for her. She had a demanding job and we had both already taken so much time off work. But she didn’t unravel. She never even lost her composure. 

The estate was left to the two of us and we found ourselves taking long walks in the woods, along the creek, entertaining the idea of keeping the land, of maybe even moving there, out into the middle of nowhere. But we knew that we’d never last more than a couple months in Robinson. The last three weeks had already taken their toll and I was counting the days until I could get back to California, back to my wife.

I told Alex I would support any decision she made. Maybe I was still hoping her sentimental nature would get the better of her, that she would make the unthinkable decision of hanging onto it all— the house, the artifacts, every last bit of it. But she didn’t.

“I need this to be over,” she said. “I need to move on from this. We both do.”

We agreed to sell everything.

We hired a man named George Banks to handle the estate sale. There would be an auction. The Harley Davidson, the cars, the house, the land, all of it. We wouldn’t get as much for it as we would selling it all individually, but we would get it over with.

George promised to take the entire burden off our shoulders. “You could leave town tomorrow if you wanted and we would handle everything from here on out. We hire the best contractors in Crawford County to do everything. We’ll finish cleaning the house, cataloguing the estate, mowing the yard, tuning up the vehicles. And then we’ll sell it all. I can promise you that. Every last pot, pan and bottle cap. There won’t be anything left over.”

We bought our tickets home that night. 

Our last day in Robinson was bittersweet. It was a perfect summer day as we pulled up to the ranch house for the last time. George Banks had made good on all his claims. Small crews of trained professionals had moved heaven and earth to restore the property to its former glory. The lawn had been mowed, the paths cutting through the woods had been cleared, the garage had been fully cleaned out-- though a snakeskin in the corner told us they hadn’t yet evicted the garage’s only remaining tenant. The property again looked like someone lived there, like someone had taken care of it.

We wandered around for the better part of an hour. For a few precious remaining minutes, this was still our land. But when we left, that would all be over. All of this would be gone, closed off to us forever. These cars they drove, these cushions they sat on. It would all be sold. Auctioned off to hoarders and opportunists.

My aunt had kept most of her parents’ possessions, heirlooms of our grandparents and their parents. Memories had mattered a great deal to Aunt Daisy. But she was gone now, and we didn’t want them. We couldn’t keep them. We couldn’t do anything with these memories, with this abandoned property. We could only sell it for a small sum and pay our bills and thank the ghosts of our family for buying us a new couch or a new car, for funding new memories that our own descendants might someday be cursed with and forced to discard. 

“I’m happy Dad never saw what happened here,” Alex said as we did our final walkthrough of the house. “It would have made him so sad.”

We walked from room to room, reminiscing when the spirit moved us. We both picked one trinket to take home as a keepsake. Alex chose a small wooden angel sitting on my aunt’s bedside table.

I took an old Zippo lighter from Uncle Gary’s workbench. 

I wake up and the lighter is staring me in the face. I must have set it on the bedside table before falling asleep, though I don’t remember. I shuffle into the bathroom and try to brush the wine stains from my teeth.

I bought a can of lighter fluid at the liquor store last night, sneaking it in the bag when Alex was distracted. I sit at the tiny plywood desk in the corner of the room and dutifully fill the lighter, its cotton absorbing and swelling until the fluid starts to drip out. I put the lighter back together and set it on the desk, standing open, upright.

I don’t how long I’m sitting there, staring at it, but when I hear Alex knocking on the door, it jolts me. I take a deep breath. This is it, I think.

Alex knocks again, louder. I pick up the lighter and slip it into my pocket. One way or another, these people will get what they deserve.

One way or another, this ends today.

Look for the final installment of Robinson in your inbox next Sunday evening.

The second installment of my short story, “Robinson.” In part one- two estranged siblings reunite for an unsettling journey to the small town where their aunt and uncle lived. Beneath a pretense of nostalgia, the protagonist carries a dark secret…

I can see on Alex’s face as we pull into town that she’s struck with the same sick feeling I am, this bewildering sense of- what the hell are we doing back here? Alex laughs nervously as we cross the town limits. “Oh man. Maybe this was a mistake.”

Of course it was a mistake. We shouldn’t be here. We should be moving forward, getting on with our lives, rebuilding them and working towards a better future. Instead, we’re in a place we have no business returning to.

Nothing good can come of this.

Robinson is a vast swath of negative space. It is distinctly American in its defining characteristics: it’s an ugly, lazy, charmless place. As kids, we accepted it at face value, perhaps even a little more generously. It was just a flat, rural town where it never snowed much, people spoke with funny accents, and drive-through liquor stores were the height of luxury. Over the years, we saw the town build up—the Walmart expansion, the movie theater multiplex—but at its heart, it was always a small town in the dreariest sense of the words, a smudge on the map.

The last time we were here was the week before the auction, a decade ago. That ended an excruciating three-year ordeal that all but incinerated what was left of my family. First, there was the brain tumor.

It turned out that Uncle Gary’s well-earned retirement only accentuated his worst qualities. He began drinking more. No longer being drug tested, he started smoking pot again. Most nights he spent in the living room, sitting catatonic in his big brown recliner, watching satellite sports until the first light of day.

He stopped taking Aunt Daisy out for dinner. He barely even talked to her anymore. Their plans to travel and see the world fell by the wayside as he grew more obstinate and self righteous. Hadn’t he earned the right to relax? What was so bad with staying in Robinson? What was so great about New York or Europe? What could they do there that they couldn’t do here? He didn’t want to travel. He didn’t want to go out dancing. He didn’t want to talk. Uncle Gary just wanted to be left alone.

So Aunt Daisy did something I’ve come to believe was as intentional as it was unconscious. She developed cancer. A brain tumor. A way out.

By our last Christmas in Robinson, there was a palpable sense of unease. Within minutes of arriving, it became clear that the only thing magical about Robinson was the warmth my aunt infused their home with. The warmth was still there, but the flame was dwindling.

There were little indications that things weren’t right. The usual bake-off that preceded our arrival had been foregone. The Christmas gifts weren’t wrapped with care. The decorations seemed half-hearted. Our bedsheets hadn’t been washed or shaken out. When I went to make my bed in the guest room, a spider scampered out of the bedsheet. I woke up the next morning with a strange, penny-sized mark on my forearm that wouldn’t go away for the longest time. It outlived my aunt by half a year.

On our last night in Robinson, Aunt Daisy brought out a number of family heirlooms that none of us had ever seen before. She started giving them to us. Alex got a hand stitched pillow case our Grandma made. I got one of Grandpa’s dog tags from World War II. Later in the evening, I made the mistake of asking Daisy for the WiFi password. In hindsight, I should have asked Gary, but I wasn’t used to this new, proactive version of him that Daisy’s tumor had woken up. Instead of sitting comatose in that brown recliner, he was up and about, making dinner, taking Daisy to appointments, making sure she took her medication. He was trying.

I mistook my aunt’s seeming lucidity for something more than it was. Asking for the WiFi password sent her into a flurry of pitiful activity. Long after I said, “It’s okay, I don’t really need it,” she was still stalking from room to room, going through the drawers, frustrated and panicked. 

I laid a hand on her shoulder. Her frame was so much smaller than I had ever realized. “It’s okay,” I said. “It really doesn’t matter.” She was crying now. “Do you get confused, sometimes?” I asked gently.

She nodded. I took her in my arms. “I love you.”

For Christmas, I’d asked for an electric hair shaver. Aunt Daisy had bought it for me. And that night, Alex and I went out in Uncle Gary’s garage and Alex shaved my head. She wasn’t supposed to. I’d asked her to give me a buzzcut. But when she accidentally shaved a small patch down to the scalp, I decided to go for it. Maybe I was feeling self destructive. Daisy’s condition had upset me on a level I wasn’t ready to deal with, and shaving off every last bit of hair on my head seemed like as good a way as any to deal with the feelings.

When we walked back inside the house, Daisy was horrified. She kept saying, “Why would you do that? Why would you do that?” My parents were less concerned. My mom rolled her eyes, my dad called me an idiot, and neither of them ever mentioned it again. But Daisy was deeply disturbed by the sight of me.

I should have anticipated this. Her mind was already betraying her. When my dad would mention someone from their past, she would frown, trying desperately to conjure the memory of their face, getting frustrated when she couldn’t. She would swear—and Aunt Daisy never swore—and something about her voice sounded like a scared and angry little girl.

I could hear her arguing with Uncle Gary at night. She didn’t want to take the pills. She didn’t want to go her appointments. She didn’t want any of this. For her, nothing made sense quite the way it was supposed to.

And then I walk in, looking like a distorted version of myself, sporting a dramatically unflattering new look that she herself was partly responsible for. After all, she had bought me the razor. The way she kept looking at me, it was like I had betrayed her somehow. And then- she stopped looking. She started averting her eyes.

The morning we were set to leave, Daisy had a doctor’s appointment in town. I got up just in time to say goodbye. We all hugged her, but there was a distance to her. As Gary hurried her out the door and we called out our final Goodbyes and I-Love-You’s, she wouldn’t look at us. She wouldn’t look at me. She was huddled in her winter coat, her face deliberately turned away. She waved her hand at us like that, without looking, as she walked out the door.

Sometimes now, when I try to picture her face, all I see is the back of her head, her straight brown hair flung over the back of her puffy winter coat, her hand waving back at us carelessly. I never saw her again.

It was a very bad year. We lost Mom not long after Aunt Daisy passed, and Dad never recovered. We were all so swept away in our own grief that we didn’t worry too much about how Uncle Gary was doing. He was so far away in so many ways. We never did go back to see him in Robinson.

After Mom died, Dad’s health went pretty straight down the drain. Worst of all, he was so overwhelmed with loss that talking to him became painful. Every conversation turned to Mom, to “what a good woman” she was, to how much he missed her. He resisted any talk of the future. He wanted to die. That much was clear.

Dad lived long enough to see me get married. He didn’t care much for my bride, but I think he was proud of me nonetheless.

He pulled Alex and I aside and told us to be good to one another. “Someday, all you’ll have is each other,” he said.

“Jesus, Dad,” Alex said. “That’s morbid.”

“It’s true.”

It was. By the end of the year, his prophecy came true. We buried Dad, sold the house, donated almost everything in the house to charity, and left the small town we’d grown up in once and for all. We would never go back.

But Robinson is another story altogether.

I drive around town, from end to end, and we stare out the windows in awe, pointing at the familiar sights. The town is cornered by the “four pillars of Robinson,” as my dad used to call them. To the northeast is the Robinson Correctional Facility, the first prison I ever saw, and one my imagination did incredible things with as a young boy. To the southeast is the Marathon oil refinery. This was the mythical, hellish world where Gary spent a decent chunk of his life. On our walks, we could see the refinery in the distance, those ugly, towering structures, scaffolding and chimneys belching out flames. Somehow it always scared me more than the prison. A prison I could understand, even as a child. But a refinery was inexplicable and terrifying.

To the southwest is the Hershey factory. Along with the refinery, the factory probably accounts for 80% of the jobs in Robinson. And lastly, in the northwest corner of town is the Crawford County Memorial Hospital. Aunt Daisy died there, but I never saw the inside of it until Gary got sick.

I suggest going straight to the house, but Alex says she isn’t ready. It’s been a long day and she’d rather we just take it easy tonight. “What are you planning?” she asks, and something catches in my throat.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, like, do you just want to drive by the house, or do you want to… trespass?”

“I want to to look around, yeah.”

She nods like this is what she expected. “I’m fine with that. But let’s be careful about it.”

“Of course.”

“And let’s also go to that antique store in Palestine tomorrow, if we can.” 

“Yeah. Of course,” I say. “We definitely will.”

The moment passes and I breathe out a sigh of relief. What are you planning? I wonder if she knows, deep down. Despite what I’ve told her, I didn’t come here to relax or to reminisce or to reunite.

I came here to die.

Look for Part 3 of “Robinson” in your inbox next Sunday evening.

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The first installment of my original short story, “Robinson.”

I haven’t told her that I’m going to burn the place down. She’s just been through a cruel breakup that makes my drawn out divorce proceedings seem banal by comparison. I initially pitched the trip as a whirlwind tour of days gone by, but after some discussion, it became clear neither of us want to see our hometown again. But Robinson, for some strange, masochistic reason, is a nightmare we’re both willing to revisit.

We meet at O’Hare. My flight arrived two hours before hers and I’ve been drinking away the difference. I had planned to be at her gate, waiting with a warm smile and an embrace when she arrived. Instead, I end up texting her the name and approximate location of the Mexican grill where I’m holed up. I buy a margarita for her, but by the time she gets to the terminal where the restaurant is, I’ve already drank most of it. I offer to buy her another one, but she seems irritated and anxious to get out of the airport. 

I get to my feet and feel the tequila for the first time. I have to pee. It’s only an afterthought that I think to give Alex a big hug. I almost lose my balance and she sort of pushes me off. 

“I’ve got to get to the baggage claim,” she says. “Can we go?”

I stay quiet while Alex deals with the rental car people. When we’re finally on the road, she eases up a bit. The drinks have worn down to a dull, manageable headache, and I feign the sort of joy I know I should feel in the presence of my only sibling after years apart. Before long, I feel genuinely grateful to be around her.

Two hours outside of Chicago, the initial thrill of being together again wears off,  and we’re at each other's throats. I tell her she talks too much. She tells me I’m an insensitive prick who says hurtful things, “like some kind of invalid.” The barbs don’t go back and forth long before we both apologize and begin commiserating in earnest.

Life has not been particularly kind to us these last seven years. Over the next hour, we talk about how to get out of our respective ruts, what sort of direction we’d like to see our middling lives take.

In the back of my mind is the caveat- if I don’t end up dead or in prison- but I don’t say that part out loud.

We finally bore of talking about ourselves and move on to things we’ve learned and read. Alex speaks of circadian rhythms. She says she’s determined to ‘perfect’ her daily schedule so it aligns with the principles of nature. I half-heartedly pledge to revamp my own life routines, to be more productive, to be better.

All I want to talk about is fire. How I’ve been dreaming of it. How I’m drawn to it. How I’m not entirely certain what I’ll do if there’s someone home when we get there. But I can’t tell Alex. She’d never let me go through with it. She’d never have come along for the ride. And I need her here. I always have.

I fondle the cool polished metal of Uncle Gary’s Zippo lighter in my pocket. Alex is telling me about the complicated mating rituals of Alaskan salmon—what great lengths the creatures go to to ensure that they never have to touch each other—and I absentmindedly pull out the lighter. I still have some silly Zippo tricks stored in my muscle memory, from my smoking days. I hold the lighter between my fingers and squeeze until the lighter pops open on its hinge with a satisfying thwack.

“You smoking again?” She’s looking over at me.

“No,” I say, pocketing the lighter.

“Is that Uncle Gary’s?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you miss it? Smoking?”

“I do, but it’s so low on the list of things I miss that it barely registers anymore.”

Alex lets out a little breath of a laugh, a semi-involuntary noise she makes when she decides something is clever enough to warrant a laugh, but not funny enough to actually elicit one.

“Are you still taking those pills?” I ask, giving the conversation one final thrust away from myself.

Alex murmurs. “No. The antidepressants? No. I take pills. Just for allergies.”

I want to say, “Good,” or, “Glad to hear it.” But I don’t.

“No,” Alex continues after a moment. “I had to stop taking Zeltram. It was wreaking all sorts of havoc. I cry a lot more now. But that’s alright.”

“How long have you been off?” I ask.

“About seven months.”

“Well,” I manage, “good for you.”

When we were kids, our family’s yearly trip to Robinson was Christmas as far as Alex and I were concerned. It wasn’t really the holidays until we saw that red, rusted mailbox along a silent stretch of corn fields, where we’d turn off the highway, onto the long, gravel road that Alex had dubbed “Rocky Road,” after her favorite ice cream. 

The road cut through a quarter mile of corn fields, then just around the bend, the first driveway on the left was Aunt Daisy and Uncle Gary’s house, a single story, prefabricated ranch house that I would occasionally hear my Dad make snide comments about—a trailer, he called it. But for Alex and I, it was a magical place, irrevocably entangled in our love for Aunt Daisy and Uncle Gary.

Maybe it was the relentless onslaught of homebaked cookies and caramels and Rice Krispies treats. Maybe it was the way the living room overflowed with presents, more than we could ever comfortably fit in the car, an embarrassment of riches billowing out from underneath their synthetic Christmas tree.

“Aunt Daisy always wanted kids,” Dad would tell us, every single year. “You’re the closest thing she has. I think that’s why they spoil you.”

Aunt Daisy was the angel of the family, well-loved by everyone. She was tender, kind, funny as hell and had a laugh that could brighten a room. She was warm and generous with her love. Uncle Gary was too, though he was more guarded around us. Gary drank Busch beer by the gallon and rode his Harley Davidson all around their small Southern Illinois town. After twenty grueling years as a Marathon Man, he retired from the oil refinery and spent his days in the garage blasting rock n’ roll, sitting in his recliner watching Cleveland Browns games, and wasting away at their cabin along the Wabash river, fishing and watching birds through high-caliber military grade binoculars.

He was a country boy, through and through. It’s why Daisy had fallen in love with him. It’s why they chose to live in a barely incorporated town in the middle of nowhere. Uncle Gary, and the life he provided, were just what she wanted.

For us, Robinson was a welcome diversion from life in the city, a chance to slow down, decompress, and spend time as a family. Alex and I went for a lot of walks during our stays there. Sometimes we’d trek through the wooded area that comprised most of their property, but more often we’d continue down the gravel road that led past their house. Heading further down Rocky Road, we’d find ourselves out in the vast open space, sprawling fields of nubby cornstalks on either side of us, all but dead for the winter. We’d talk or take pictures or just listen to the drizzle tapping down on our unzipped coats and the gravel crunching under our shoes.

Soon we’d hear the whine of dogs or the meek little meows of cats and we’d know we were close to the “Junk Yard.” The Junk Yard was the closest property, about a half mile down the gravel road, and believe me, it earned its moniker.

The spectacle of it evolved over the years, but it was always astonishing and grotesque. At the heart of the property was a trailer in comical shades of disrepair. The space around it was a graveyard of trash. Metal car frames, televisions, dozens of tires, decaying furniture. It evoked a sense of horror and wonder in us.

Cats and dogs roamed the property. Sometimes there were even pigs, oinking and squealing with their mud-caked snouts. A whole host of unsupervised creatures, living alone in a city of garbage. 

Most of the animals were aggressively friendly. The cats and dogs would run out to the gravel road and throw themselves at us, often following us all the way back home to Daisy and Gary’s house.

Some years, there were no animals at all. Just weeds latching onto the rusting tractors and dead, overgrown grass as it swayed in the breeze.

One year, there was just a lone dog, locked in a metal cage in the middle of the yard. He was a run-down old beast with a jagged face and murky, discolored eyes. 

Alex was a teenager then, and I was still a away from high school. She marched fearlessly onto the property and I followed timidly. We scrambled over the rusting sewing machines and bicycle frames and got as close as we could. There seemed to be a sort of invisible force field between us and the cage. We looked across the way to the trailer, its windows filthy, opaque, and dark. There was no one inside. Just the lone dog in the yard, trapped behind bars.

“What are you going to do?” I asked Alex, as we crouched a dozen feet from the cage.

“I’m going to let that dog out of that stupid, fucking cage,” she said. 

But she didn’t move. We stayed motionless, crouching on our haunches.

If the dog wanted us to help it, he wasn’t making a compelling case for itself. He was barking crazily now, his noises frenzied and aggressive.

“I wouldn’t go near that thing,” I told her.

She stood up but still didn’t move. After a minute, she turned around and stormed back to Daisy and Gary’s house.

She went to Uncle Gary first. “There’s a dog trapped in a cage outside and no one’s home and it’s barking and crying. That’s animal abuse! Someone needs to do something!”

Uncle Gary looked concerned. He put on his boots and went out to take a look.

He came back shortly thereafter. “Dog’s alright,” he said. “Sure they’ll be back for it in the mornin’.” We reluctantly accepted this. Gary loved animals of all stripes. If he wasn’t too concerned, then we shouldn’t be either. 

But Aunt Daisy seemed thoroughly disgusted. She spoke with a venom that I’d never heard from her. She hated the Petersons. They were rotten people. They used that land as a junk yard. She couldn’t count how many times she’d called the city complaining. But the city never did a thing about it. The mess never got cleaned up.

“It’s a shame,” she said. “It’s a darn shame.”

Static accosts us over the radio as the FM station dwindles in potency and disappears, the last notes of jazz coughing at us violently through a cloud of white noise. Alex flips the radio off and cracks her window, the wind masking the silence between us. It’s been fifty miles since either one of us has said anything of import. Alex has been driving this whole time and she indicates with a yawn that my turn is quickly approaching. 

The booze has worn off entirely and the headache is only a faint throbbing. I watch Alex. Her age is starting to show. Lines creeping into the corners of her face, a strange coarseness in her hands, gripping the wheel tighter than necessary. She wears mostly black these days— plain, unflattering blouses and dark, bland slacks. She always wanted to have children. I wonder if she ever will.

I feel a soft, pitying tenderness towards her. She sees me looking at her and smiles automatically. “You doing alright over there?”

I just nod, strangely choked up.

I think of what my dad said to us both on my wedding night. The reception was still in full swing when he pulled me and Alex into a boozy family pow-wow. He told us Mom and Aunt Daisy were there, smiling down on us. And for a moment as we all embraced, it really did feel like they were there, all around us.

“Someday, all you’ll have is each other.”

I wonder if things can ever be the same after this, after what I’m going to do.

We stop at a gas station to switch drivers. Alex fills the tank while I buy a cup of watered-down coffee. The gas station attendant eyes me suspiciously for no reason in particular and I can tell by her exasperated southern drawl as she asks, “Anything else?” that we’re close.

Continue reading Part II of “Robinson.”

Marion,

I know what you think about letters. I know you don’t believe in “the power of words,” but I just couldn’t mime this out for you. It’s too important.

The things that you do affect me. The decisions you make for us— I have to live with those too. I never formally agreed to your no-talking experiment, “the Great Word Embargo,” as I think you would call it, were you still speaking to me.

And you must be speaking at work, dear. That’s not an accusation, but an observation. You have half a dozen subordinates. You’re constantly checking your voicemail. Surely, at some point, you’ve called someone back.

I know what you would say, if you weren’t refusing all verbal communication— Oh it’s easy for you to say. You work at home and don’t have to talk to anybody. But, as I’ve tried and failed to silently enact for you, it’s not so much that I don’t have to talk to anybody as I don’t get to. No one calls me. I write one email a day, usually to myself, and rarely get a response. Lord knows Buster can’t talk. All day I sit in silence and then you come home, gesticulating half-heartedly like Buster Keaton on Xanax. I try to understand. I try to explain. I try, I try, I try. All day I contrive new ways to visually express my thoughts to you, but you’re so exhausted after work that you will barely keep your eyes open.

I had a dream that my father was still alive last night. This is something you probably failed to decode from this morning’s round of charades. The dream went on all night. I was working at his factory again. The factory was much bigger and was on an island. It smelled like sawdust instead of the pungent, sour sting of metal that I remember so well. But it was the same factory otherwise. Buster was there.

Dad was giving a small group of people a tour of the facilities while I tagged along. At one point on the tour he got to a huge double door. He had me open the door and there was my childhood bedroom. All of my toys were laid out, there was dirty underwear on the floor, and all of those embarrassing posters I used to love so much plastered the walls. Dad said, “And this is my son’s room, where he wets the bed and masturbates.” Everyone on the tour looked at me. My dad approached, laid a hand on my shoulder and said, “Everyone grows up, son. It’s time to stop fucking that Kelly girl.” And even though he said Kelly, I knew in the dream that he meant you.

Now I don’t have a clue what to make of that dream, and frankly I don’t care. You were always more interested in that sort of thing than me. But when I woke up, I wanted so badly just to tell you about it. To share it with you. I miss talking to you. I miss telling you things and listening to your reactions. I miss the way your tongue dances in the middle of your mouth when you’re paused, mid-sentence, searching for exactly the right word.

Words! You used to love words. What happened? When did words become the enemy? You told me, in that first desperate pantomime after the curtain of silence fell, that you felt words were becoming a barrier to true intimacy. But this doesn’t feel more intimate. It feels like we’re stuck, in that last argument, with my question still hanging in the air, unanswered:

Are you cheating on me?

Is that why you stopped talking, Marion? Is that it? Did I ask a question you were unwilling to answer?

If we were speaking, you would say I was being paranoid. And I am. Sitting in total silence for 24 hours a day makes me feel very, very paranoid.

I got a call from Brendan yesterday. I wanted nothing more than to answer the phone and talk to him, talk to someone, anyone. But our romance is too dear to me. If this “silence” experiment is as important to you as you’re making it out to be, I’ll be the first to sew my lips shut and keep quiet until such a time that you’re ready. Ready  for words again. Ready to laugh again. Ready to cry again. Oh God, Marion, when will it end?

You probably resent me for this written breach of our unspoken agreement. But you get upset even when I make urgent, nondescript sounds, like last night when I choked on that pretzel. What’s happening to us, and is there any hope? If there was one word you could say to me, just one word, what would it be? I know what mine would be…

I love you, Marion, and I hope to talk to you soon.

Always Yours,
Norman