Release the eelhead!

  Ollie             T he field was lush and green, with tall grass ready to be cut for the season. He looked out on the 26 acres of what would become hay for the cows and took in the view. He sat there on his tractor, thinking of all the friends he had left in the city years ago and how they would never see such beauty as this. The wind had a gentle breeze that made the field look like a green blanket rippling through the air. This was the one field he liked to mow, as it was on top of the mountain that slowly declined toward the valley below that it overlooked.  There was a brook that sat at the bottom of that valley that he swam in during the hot summers. Looking down and along the valley, he saw it was lush with trees and patches of fields ready to be cut. It was a beautiful site, he thought, would be a perfect sight for a house, dismissing the thought of how hard it would be to reach this spot in the winter. Most rur...

  The Delivery             "Listen, you really don't want to do this," he explained to the gentleman, pointing the gun at him. He was trying to address the man behind the gun, but his eyes couldn't see past it. It was like he addressed the weapon as the person, not the person behind it.             "You walked into a situation you were never supposed to leave from, Mr. O'Brian." The gentleman's voice said from behind the void of the gun.             "Well, I mean, shit, man. I was just here to drop off this package for Mr. Johnson in exchange for another package to bring back," O'Brian said without trying to expose the current fear flowing through his body. He surely couldn't die yet; he had just signed up for a whole new year's worth of comics to read.          ...

                 He awoke from deep sleep to the smell of smoke and the crackling of fire. With the grogginess still dancing in his mind, he thought he was dreaming. The illusion of the dream quickly and terrifyingly snapped him into reality with a burning sensation in his lungs. Panic kicked in, and for just a moment, his mind betrayed him with thoughts of dying right here and now in his bed.                         He began to stifle the thoughts of death and become an overcooked human tater-tot. The bedroom only had one door in or out with a closet that housed mementos from his childhood. Then, the thoughts of trying to save all those physical memories flooded over him with brief flashes in his mind. He tried to push those out of his head and think of getting out of the room, most likely through the window. He knew that would work as he was on ...

     Sometimes, you get comfortable and relaxed in your surroundings. Then, you're abruptly reminded that life isn't fair and that comfort withers away into anxiety and sadness. This is the constant in life. It'll never entirely go away, no matter how good things get.      I've dealt with sadness and depression most of my life; it is the norm for me. From the moments I have absolutely no reason to be sad to actual events that bring on the sadness. This is my life cycle, and I ride out the highs and lows because I believe this to be the normalcy of living. I have been this way since I was little, and back then, I did not really know how to handle it properly. Shit even as an adult, I didn't know how to handle it properly.     Mental health seems to be a shunned topic. That was something I was taught to believe in. Not knowing where that stemmed from. So, for most of my life, I have just dealt with it independently. I remember talking with...

Just a Mundane Day It was just a day like any other day. Nothing special, just a day in mid-July at around 70 degrees. The sun was out, the skies were blue, and birds were perched high atop light poles shitting on the cars below outside the hospital window. But unfortunately, this month wasn’t starting too well for most folks. David Bowie had just retired from his Ziggy Stardust stage persona, and they just found out that President Nixon had secretly recorded incriminating conversations and Bruce Lee had died. The world was just shit at that time; you need to learn that right from the get-go. What the birds were doing to the cars below was reminiscent of the current events. Things just happen, and that’s how I came to be in a world that was shit and, thus far, hasn’t changed so much since then. They even stopped making metal Tonka trucks, so it’s gotten a lot worse. What was wrong with lead paint anyway? It tasted great!!! So there I was, bare-assed naked and thrust in...

            Computer building became a hobby for me only several years ago. Prior to that, I owned Apple computers and never even thought about building one from scratch. It wasn’t because of laziness; I enjoyed the OS X environment operating system, and you couldn’t make an Apple computer from scratch at the time. They are so clean and easy to use and designed beautifully. Also, back then, they were almost bulletproof concerning computer viruses.             One day, during my journeys through the vast internet, I found myself coming across a website. Tonymacx86 is a site dedicated to installing an OS X operating system on PC parts that you can readily buy. The place was clean and easy to use, like Apple’s OS. The guides were complete and written out as an easy step-by-step for a clean installation. Kind of like following along with Lego build instructions with photos of where your screen should...