Spidercamp

It makes me lonely and I don�t want to stop feeling lost and lonely

I've got the camera so Im in charge.

The kids are rehearsing their Christmas play. It's as awful as I'd hoped. It's wonderful. I snap a lot of photos from the orchestra pit so the kids loom over me like distorted giants. They'll like that. When I'm looking at them with my eyes only, I am stabbed by how much I miss six-year-olds. Seven's good too. Oh, and four, my god, four years old with jokes to tell. I can't take it and I go back to looking through the lens.

Robin asks what I'm doing and I say, just freezing some ghosts. She asks if I am the ghost myself, you know, there have been rumors. I laugh and say, what, do you think I'd choose a disguise this dumb, do you think I'd be so obvious, the ghost posing as ghost-hunter? She smiles and says she knows. I know she does. She lets me be.

Later I slide back into invisibility. It kills me that the public still finds this difficult. It's so nice in here. Across the room I see Chief is flirting with some girl again. Nothing new. Except when she turns, I'm surprised - it's the one with the clean midwestern face, the one he's never pestered before. They reached a truce early on, she punched him I think, earned his respect, earned exemption from his leers and advances.

I go closer to discover he's making a mess of it. He stutters, laughs at nothing. She is not mystified. After all these years he wants to ask her to dinner and doesn't know how.

But the radio is on and his commanding officer hears Chief stammering at the girl. He interrupts in a crackle: Chief you idiot go on and ask her already, or else turn off your radio, one. Trying to get some work done here and don't need your pathetic barroom advances distracting me. Besides I don't know what you're so worked up for, you'll have some drinks, screw around for a week, then she'll be on her ass like all the others. Out.

Chief stares at the radio; the girl stares at Chief. When he meets her eyes his face goes hot. Because she's different to him than the other girls, the temporaries, and now they both know it.

I circle around them, unseen. I take the necessary photographs. I can prove these things happened; I was the documentation; I was there.

I'm Not Tipsy I Am On The El

tonight on the way to the grocery store four things happened in a row: we discussed the alarmingly fresh scent of the car smell-maker thingy, i suddenly really wanted a golden delicious, i shared an interesting fact about the new beverage i am drinking in the, er, videogame, and a word in some song jumped out at me like i'd cranked the volume. all about apples. are apples haunted for me now? that's all right it's a good ghost.

at the grocery store i saw phantoms in quick succession: someone who wasn't that guy who lived down the hall in college, a girl i was sure i recognized, someone else who was 93% my german professor. then the cashier at checkout was named ruby and had a gold tooth and i was suddenly very tired of taking mental notes about all this stuff. and just as i realized i was not required to, ruby flashed me a golden smile.

intardnet quest #8743: crazy stupid scifi book

The day before I quit the living shit out of my job, I found that I just could not muster up a good goddamn about my boss anymore. On most levels I never had, at least not since she'd skewered with her complete idiocy my insane dreams of a daycare program run by a competent, intelligent, non-stabworthy adult. But even after all respect and loyalty for one's boss are gone, there is still the enormous, excruciating middle ground where you (I) have to try to appear to live up to your boss's ideals, in the name of keeping peace, keeping the job, and keeping the kids safe.

The day before I quit, I found that I only cared about one of those things any more. I sat on a bench and felt the rest dissolve out of my head. I let myself lose the struggle to keep up with my boss's insane standards of behavior, I gave up the constant doomed fight to fulfill the always conflicting, usually nonsensical, idiotic, fussy, neverending daycare regulations of state, church, and school. I lost these battles and I forgot them.

I let the kids play on the playground and I did not hassle them about a thing and I leaned back and I closed my eyes in the god damned sun.

---

After a while of doing that I enjoyed the novel luxury of boredom. This new kid, Daniel, who I saved once (he only wanted to be left alone, and the others circled like sharks; preteens, nature's cruelest animals) offered me his library book. I accepted

Age range: upper end of middle school. 7th/8th grade-ish.

Plot: it is THE FUTURE. Orphaned boys are used as commercial lab rats by the man. This includes skin tests for cosmetics and focus-group stuff - the boys occasionally catch a break by being allowed to watch music videos all day instead of getting soap put in their eyes or whatnot.

Main character is named after the neighborhood where he was found by the orphanage gestapo: Something Hill. All the characters have cute nicknames (a bit like Holes in this respect, and the work-camp stuff. & the writing style is similar to the Goosebumps/Animorphs stuff - it definitely has the feel of being one in a series).

The boys climb ladders to their beds in cardboard tubes. The ladders retract in a few minutes so they have to climb like mad to get to bed.

Acoustics + morse-code-style knocking system allow the boys to talk between their cubicles after lights-out. One kid is Wizard or Doctor or something as he's the one with all the answers. They ask him, what do we do about these chemical burns? His answer: chew your disposeable dinner tray and apply it as a salve.

The Hill kid and another boy are handcuffed and in an auto-propelled transport thingy on their way to a day of hard shitty labor. Ridiculously heavy foreshadowing about Hill�s upcoming escape. The transport wrecks just as the other boy is getting himself in trouble for not knowing how to shut his yap, using sarcasm on the warden.

I don't know the title, and I would like to know what happens. Does anyone out there know this book?

---

....update: FOUND! The Supernaturalist, by Eoin Colfer. Thanks to a synopsis written by a kid in Rome. Damn I love internettes!

a yellow dress and hiking boots

Seven gray pickup trucks park me into the gravel lot and I'm frustrated, late for work, no! worse! late for Dr. Doyle's bio class! Goddammit.

I dash into the classroom and she's already started the lesson - she? Oh, right, the other Doyle, I'd forgotten. Her hair is long and I don't recognize her at first.

Oh I know. I guess I really should get a haircut. I've just been so busy. It's been a year, you know.

I know.

She props her feet up on the desk, leans back, closes her eyes. The class is rapt. She loves her job.

Pop quiz: call Finland and tell them everything you know about passion.

I laugh, surprised.

It's no joke. Finland needs to know.

She smiles and says, There is no need to worry, ever. She smiles and says, Miracles don't just happen, you have to make them happen. I gather the white lilies to me and breathe in; I wake up.

i understand i asked for this

The black dog tears out of the woods and I know it will come straight for me. The vicious little bastard leaps at me, looking to clamp its horrible teeth into my thigh, but I snatch it out of the air and hold it by the neck at arm's length, snarling and twisting.

I am very busy and I already have a dog and he is a GOOD DOG.  You are a VERY BAD DOG, I say. It swings scrabbling in the air and tries very hard to bite my wrist. I sling it as hard as I can; it disappears into the woods.

I don't have time for that shit, I have tomatoes to harvest. They're all over the place, in the yard and in the driveway, a few on the roof, one even thriving on the end of a pinched vine squeezing up through the porch boards. No matter what growing conditions they�ve subjected themselves to, they're all disturbingly, uniformly healthy and there's not enough time in the day to pick all the damn things.

They're also as big as my head so I can only carry three of them at a time, even with the basket. I'm lugging my umpteenth load and there's Logan leaning against the horse looking disgusted.

What the hell Jess, he says.

Dude don't start. I have a lot of work to do.

I see that.

Look. It's not my fault. And did you notice the tomatoes?

Hard not to notice, he says. I stepped on five or six.

No, I mean, did you see what they're shaped like? I hold one at the right angle, so he can see it's shaped like a heart. I did this, I dreamed this because of you, these tomato hearts are all for you.

He laughs. Um, wow. That's sweet or something? But really this is just disturbing.

Fine, I say. If you're going to be an asshole you can't lean against my horse, and I make it disappear with my mind.

Jennifer, You Know Which Jennifer You Are

The tall slinky beautiful sexy young Asian model leaves a churning wake of awestruck men behind her on every Manhattan sidewalk she chooses to grace. Still, she cannot walk in shoes without sounding like a mule. She habitually skips out on the check. As elegantly as she carries herself, when seated at a table she has no idea where her elbows are. I know where one is; it is in my ribcage. Every shiny spoonful slid into her expensive mouth is punctuated by a painful jab to her seatmate. Her conversation is exponentially charming, she blushes like an angel, and she smells exactly like every other woman who pulls this shit.

it's usually wolves

This time it's a white fox, who graciously allows the five crows to peck me free of the ropes. I thank him and he's offended - it's what any civil sportsman would do. I begin my flight by tripping over a snow-buried root, nearly falling on my face. The fox is kind enough to ignore this false start. Whenever you're ready, he says, and turns his back on me, as if embarassed by my sorry attempt at escape.

I go transparent, turn off my shadow, dive and fly. I tuck in my arms, stretch long, and zoom inches from the beautiful blur of the ground. There's no noise in my ears but wind, no gaining footsteps, and I think I've escaped.

It's such a nice morning for this, he says, and he's pacing me soundlessly and without effort. He's invisible against the snow except for his dark eyes and that dog-laughing mouth. What will happen if I stop? I don't stop.