Sleep Tight

Last week, the kids got sick. Then they gave it to me and I got sick, too.

Now, this really never happens. I never get sick. I am immune to everything! But this thing the kids found and dragged home last week, it even took me down. Our fevers climbed so high that music turned architectural and our iphones looked like blurs.

What else could I do? I tucked the kids into bed and I pulled up a chair and told them stories.

I told them stories I’d written (and some that I’d stolen) and I described worlds I’d made (and some I’d visited), and I gave them the sorts of warnings that good parents give their children at one time or another growing up.

One of the things was a story and a world and a warning all in one.

This is how it went:

Phantom Fins of Pharmacology

What’s that? You say you’re scared? Of course you are scared.

We’re all scared. Every one of us is. Sure, we all sit around laughing but we’re terrified – trembling in our boots, really – and it all has to do with the fish.

And why wouldn’t we be scared of the fish?  I mean, just look at what we’ve been doing to them: Overfishing to the point of population depletion. Toxins in the waters. Dead oceanic zones. Dead delta zones. Generations of Bettas just flushed away by irresponsible first graders.

Try to imagine it!

Can you?

[…]

Well, it’s happening!

The Thing in the Tree

I confess my sins to the thing in the tree.

I do not even know what it is, this thing. This thing up there. It’s probably some kid from the school, I’d imagine. Frat pledge. Giant owl outfit.

I mean, that poor kid. He probably believed, going into all this, believed he just had to sit up there in his costume for a few nights. That he’d stare down at the track and think about calculus or Fall Break or girls. That everybody would leave him the hell alone and that soon enough, it would all be over.

Little did he know. Now he’s got some dykey, middle-aged mother of three-and-a-half pouring her heart out to him every other night.