Next week, Deb. (Unless you mean real revenge. In that case, I've got a list for you....)

Next week is good.

Well. Not much singing to me on this one yet, but here's a shot, all about sameness.

A man walks into a bar.

It's familiar, every inch of it. He's never actually been in this one before, but somehow, it doesn't matter; twenty years on the road, three marriages gone bad, two kids whose college he's paid for but who both refuse to talk to him, and it doesn't matter. Jake's Night Out in Emeryville is Tiny's in Detroit, or Closing Time in Miami.

The booths, the stools, the worn floor, even the clientele; surely he's seen that bartender before, in another bar, in another city?

He heads for a seat, in search of pretzels, beer, oblivion.

A Man Walks Into A Bar

Ed and Jack were screwing around at lunch with the nerf football—who could fling it farthest, make the highest, most dramatic leap to catch it. The rest of the crew just watched and catcalled when the ball got dropped, or a bad pass was thrown. Now and then one of them would make a half-hearted grab for it. But most of them were smarter about rest times. Construction was hard work—they'd save their energy for the job.

But when Jack turned and dove after a squiggly pass, no one was prepared for his abrupt halt, nor the silence just before he started screaming.

She's jubilant - he's reaching for her neck, but too hesitantly. She unwraps her legs from around his waist, and he knows it's too late. One of her hands is at his wrist, and the other grabs his tricep. Her hips switch out to the side, and she swings a leg up and across his face and back down. He's flat on his back now, and she pushes lightly on his wrist, bending his elbow against its nature.

He curses, and taps her leg too hard.

She smiles. "What? You know the arm bar is the only lock I can do."

ita, I'm not in the mood to smile. Stop it.

Heh. ita's is a cool take on the literal theme. I love Bev's.

In other news - this should probably go in Literary, but it won't - I'm cleaning the office and just found Harlan Ellison's phone number, in Nic's handwriting, on a sheet of paper from about ten years ago.

I'm very close to doing an Aliens on this office: taking off and nuking the site from orbit.

Sometimes it's the only way to be sure, Deb.

We don't know Harlan Ellison, except as an old GeNie-ite. Why would Nic have his phone number?

And there's a long email printout to Nic, from Jeffrey Eugenides. I am willing to bet that this is a different Jeffrey Eugenides, because I know Nic's never read a word of his. It's all about guitars.

I think I did something very peculiar and science fiction-y to my office while I was cleaning it out. We seem to have wandered from This Universe's Chez Grabien into some Last Action Hero-like alternate universe, where people with no earthly reason to be writing Nic emails suddenly start swapping occupations, or something.

This is mildly creeping me out. I think maybe I should go write something, for the sake of normalcy/

OK. More. Very creepy headspace.

"I'd like to thank all the little people..."

The last thing he expected was to be nominated for a Darwin award. And really, the inevitability of that nomination was not the most meaningful thing to pass through his mind before going into a coma.

It was no one's fault but his own; the "Warning! Hard Hat Area!" signs extended for several blocks in all directions. Yet he'd ignored them, late for work, taking the shortcut to his office, his eyes cast down to avoid the driving rain.

He went into the swinging half-ton of exposed steel girder at a very fast trot.

What a stupid way to die.

(edit: just realised, similar theme to Bev's, if a different POV. I like hers better.)