Author: Bukkhead

I'm the writer here.
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The Week in Music

Postaday for January 31st: Playlist of the Week. Tell us how your week went by putting together a playlist of  five songs that represent it.

I get up in the morning and get on the internet, check the weather forecast and yesterday’s news. Use the bathroom, wake my wife up, have some coffee, send my wife out the door, and get on conference calls. Write a bunch of back-dated blog posts, gobble something for lunch, more con calls, greet the wife when she comes home. TV, dinner, TV, bed-time. Every day, all week long. Unless John Cage has been composing concertos for creaky office chair and Keurig machine, there is no playlist to describe such a week.

So let’s make a playlist for the way I’d like to the week to go:

  • Meximelt (live version) by Southern Culture on the Skids
  • Make Total Destroy by Periphery, covered by Zombie Frogs
  • Triad by Tool
  • Smash by Avishai Cohen
  • Lionheart by Emancipator.

Monday starts off with a surf-guitar offering. A rolling riff and tight drumwork get the week going with a lot of energy, setting up high productivity and not a little creativity to keep that mile-long to-do list under control.

Tuesday rolls right into a drum-and-piano instrumental cover of a heavy metal screamer. Virtuosity not only substitutes for rage and anger, but overcomes it, rendering even the most mind-numbing conference call worth the time and endurable .

Wednesday picks up where Tuesday left off, taking that virtuosity and rage and weaving it into a complex, multi-layered and nuanced negotiation of the otherwise disparate forces that threaten to thwart getting the job done. Guitar and drum cooperate, fight, cooperate.

Thursday seeks to simplify the complexities that had built up over the previous days, eschewing noise for a return to a rhythm-driven reminder that the job’s just a job. A bouncing piano floats on a tide of driving bass played on multiple bass-instruments, with a sharp drum set to stitch it all together.

Friday eases way back, takes the remaining energy and closes out the week with a quiet piano above drums that roll without rocking, drive without hurtling. Quiet interludes in vox and synthesized acoustic guitar foreshadow a peaceful weekend, while lingering strings  suggest the promise of the restful sleep to come, reward for a week’s work well done and necessary rejuvenations for the week ahead.

Saturday and Sunday are just a lot of Weird Al Yankovic.

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I Didn’t Even Want the Five Things I Did Take

Postaday for January 30th: Burnt. Remember this prompt, when your home was on fire and you got to save five items? That means you left a lot of stuff behind. What are the things you wish you could have taken, but had to leave behind?

Oh for fuck’s sake.

You want to know the truth? None of that stuff I recovered was all that necessary. Most of my computer stuff is saved in the cloud. Those books I grabbed aren’t all that good anyway. My engraved watch is nice, but I hardly ever wear it anymore, and the marathon it commemorates wasn’t that fast. The bottle of rum is so easily replaceable as to make me laugh, and I totally made up the part about my wife’s potato salad. It’s my mom’s recipe, and she’ll make it any time I want.

And as for that wedding album— I just needed a punch line. We have all the pictures on the computer, and like I said, that stuff’s all backed up in the cloud.

Don’t get me wrong, it was real fun running back into that fire. Nevermind the fact that if I hadn’t woken up when I did, I’d have died in it. Or that my wife seemed to be perfectly okay— she, apparently, made it out with plenty of time to spare, while I was left to snore away in the heat and smoke on our living room couch.

I’m being sarcastic, by the way. It wasn’t fun at all.

Nor was it fun dealing with the insurance people. Act of God, my ass. We finally got a check, for my half of what everything was worth. My wife keeps saying its my fault, that I didn’t demonstrate enough regret at all the things I left behind, all the things I didn’t save.

Well, sue me for not having an emotional attachment to crap. It’s all replaceable. Okay, maybe I like the way my ‘500 Mile Award’ Nike shirt felt after years of wash and wearing. I can buy a new one, but it’ll be new-shirt stiff, you know what I mean. But how am I supposed to use THAT to get a better settlement out of the insurance company?

What, I’m supposed to feel bad about the TV and the bed and the refrigerator full of fat-free Greek yogurt? Sorry, but not sorry.

The day before I that damned fire, I’d gone for a nice long run. Never synched my GPS watch, though. Now I’ll never know what my average speed on that run was. So, there. That’s the one thing I regret. Not.

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Save the Best for Last

Postaday for January 29th: Burning Down the House. Your home is on fire. Grab five items (assume all people and animals are safe). What did you grab?

Heat cocoons, heavy and thick, but a sweet spear of cold beckons, pulls, a line of oxygen, collapsing fast as I stumble out of the room, bounce off a doorway, through the hall. Out the front door and all is smoke and choke and black, I’m falling, dropping out of the haze and the heat onto the cold wet grass, thank god.

Something shifts under my head. I crane to look up at a tower of canvas and crude stitching. A gloved hand is thrust in my face. I grip at and I’m hauled to my feet. My knees buckle under the sudden head rush. When my vision clears, a muffled voice behind sooted plexiglass shouts something that ends with, “do you understand, Mr. Edwards?”

I open my mouth to reply, and cough a thick gray cloud, ripping my lungs to pieces, twisting my gut into knots. Finally I manage “What?”

The roar of the fire subsides a few notes as I’m pulled closer to the road. Bystanders bathed in shifting blues and reds, wide eyed andf cringing against the hear of the blaze. “I said you have to go back in there! Mr. Edwards! Your family and pets are safe, but you have to go back in there and bring back five things! Do you understand?”

I blink a few times, my eyes somehow finding moisture inside themselves. “I don’t have any pets!” I yell.

“Okay, good! Five things, Mr. Edwards!” He grabs my shoulders and spins me around.

“Why?” I manage to shout. Just turning to face the fire, it’s tripled in heat, and too bright to look into.

“It’s for the daily prompt! Now go!” He pushes me, and like a fool in rush while angels stand aside cowering, I go back into my burning house.

Sweat pops up on every inch of body, a refined mixture of water and sebaceous secretions, covering me in a protective coat of wax. I throw an arm up against the searing brightness, hide my mouth in the crook of elbow against the smoke. Through the front door and up the stairs, with each step rising the heat gets hotter. Down a dark hall that’s more smoke than fire, into my office. Yank my computer from below my desk, cords flying as they pop out of peripherals. All my photos, my word docs, my stupid video games. I hurl it at my office window, hoping someone outside might catch it.  The computer punches through the glass, and the sudden intake of air sets the entire room on fire— the blast launches me out the door and back into the hallway.

Five things? Think! I crawl on hands and knees towards the guest room. That’s where the book case is. Books. If they’re not so much ash right now.  I grab few rare paperbacks, old dime-store copies of Ross H. Spencer’s early works. Not because they’re valuable. Just because they’d be hard to replace. I haven’t read them in years. Shove them down the front of my pants.

My breath is labored and heat has sapped most of my strength. I crawl across the hall into my bedroom. Reach up on the dresser and pull the watch winder down, which bounces of my head. A hot wetness, I’m bleeding. One eye closes against the sting of it. I rip the watch out of the winder. A gift from my wife, to congratulate me for my first marathon. She had it engraved.  Shove it in my pocket.

Crawl out of the bedroom and to the stairs again. I try to stand up as I descend them, a feat in combination with the flames that results in my tumbling all the way down. I lie at the bottom for a moment. The books in my pants have afforded me a few odd bruises. I stand up and move around the corner. Into the living room, the small bar there. Open it, grab a rare bottle of premium rum we got on a trip to Puerto Rico. Tuck it under one arm, trip over a burning beam that falls from the ceiling. Am I even breathing anymore. Go through a doorway.

Into the kitchen. This is where the fire must have started. This is insane. This is an incredibly stupid reason to risk death. I open the refrigerator, and grab a half-eaten bowl if my wife’s potato salad. I’m lucky if she makes it once every few years. No way I’m letting this one go to waste. No damn way.

And the rest is momentum. I’m blind at this point, my skin and muscle and bones a collection of white-hot rocks scraping together. I’m running as wood and glass and stone and brick explode around me. I’m careening across the porch, my shoes in flames and dragging behind me as fall, one more time, onto the crisping lawn.

The fireman catches me, hauls me towards the street. He’s pulling my saved items from me, pounding me on the back in congratulations, shoving an oxygen mask in my face. I have never consumed anything more delicious. My eyes are shut but I can I still see the white hot flames dancing.

A nudge on my shoulder. I open my eyes. My wife’s face. Pristine, untouched by the fire. “What about our wedding album?” she screeches, her eyes wide.

I turn to the firearm. “This stupid prompt. Is it set in stone? Can it be six items?” I start to cough, my stomach a clench ball of knives.

The fireman just shrugs. “It’s your word-count, pal.”

I grab my wife, kiss her fiercely, and then run back towards the flames.

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Porpalmanogism

Postaday for January 28th: Play Lexicographer. Create a new word and explain its meaning and etymology.

A palintext is a context created such that a particular word has the same meaning when spelled backwards. For example, consider the following sentence:

He worshiped a canine.

With this sentence, a dog is a god.

The water coursed through the moldy pipes, a lupine creature darting through a forest.

With this sentence, a flow is a wolf.

The word palintext is an example of a portmanteau, a word created by fusing two words together, to create a meaning that combines the words’ meanings. In this case, palintext is a portmanteau of palindrome and context. A portmanteau can be considered a neologism.

Sometimes the creation of a palintext requires the creation of a neologism. For example:

I created a creature that scans for small objects for the purpose of retrieving them, specifically small spherical objects that have been thrown some distance. I did this by way of repeated conjoinings of somewhat similar creatures, until I achieved a creature with four legs, a longish snout, and short hair in either blonde, brown, or black. The scanning is not unlike radar, and since the small objects retrieved are balls, that roll, I call this creature a rolled radar ball retriever, or rodarbal for short. My wife insists on calling it a Labrador retriever. But then, she’s insane, and requires medication.

In the above, rodarbal is a neologism and a portmanteau. A word created in this way merely for the sake of creating a pallintext is porpalmanogism.

In so far as most pallintexts are terrible, all portpalmanogisms are truly awful, and their creators should be, at the very least, insulted repeatedly, perhaps even burned at the stake.

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This Is a Prompt I Don’t Want to Follow

Postaday for January 27th: Embrace the Ick. Think of something that truly repulses you. Hold that thought until your skin squirms. Now, write a glowing puff piece about its amazing merits.

Well, no, I’m not going to do this one. I’m not going to respond to this prompt. The first thing that came to mind was some kind of worm thing I saw on a brief video. Some sort of deep-sea worm, although it was being held in a person’s hand, so I don’t know how it was still even alive. It squirmed around a bit, you know, the way big fat pink worms with pointy orange heads do, sightless and shiny. And then it seemed to spit out this white fluid that spread and branched like fast-growing roots, instantly coating the hand of the person holding the worm,.

There’s no way I’m going to “hold that thought until my skin squirms.” That’s not happening today. Do you even know how the brain works? We see things, and they enter short-term memory. Later, they enter long-term memory by way of dreaming. That’s what dreams are: cognitive interpretations of our brains’ making novel connections between recent sensory input and already stored memory. That novelty is our organization and retrieval system. For all I know my brain will arbitrarily associate this spit-worm’s branching proboscis fluid with, I don’t know, a bike ride through Stanley park, and every time I think about Canada, I’ll get queasy. No thank you.

That’s all I need, having a dream in a few days where I’m sitting in front of my computer, pounding out my 32nd blog post in five days, fingers numb until they elongate, branch out to cover all of the keys, and then intertwine with them while I try to describe the four-person bike I road though North Vancouver on a warm day in 2005. The shade-dappled asphalt, the smell of the sea and garlic fries from the kiosk where we stopped for a snack, that fat worm wriggling around with one pink end wrapped around the guy’s ring finger and the other end slowly opening at the end of a brief reverse-peristalsis shudder and a phlegmy ejaculate groping, reaching for prey.

To think that the same evolution, over 2 billion years, led to my brain and its ability to see, absorb, memorize and use a thousand different disparate facts a day, led as well as this deep-see worm’s ability to see, sense, pursue and capture microscopic plankton to sustain itself for the sake of survival and reproduction. It’s incredible. It’s disgusting. I want no part of it. Count me out.

Nor will I write about spiders, the smell of freshly cut mangoes, the Republican party, or a crazy person’s toenail collection. Not going to happen.

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The Sky Is In The Ground

Postaday for January 26th: Free Association. Write down the first words that comes to mind when we say . . .

  • home
  • soil.
  • rain.

Use those words in the title of your post.

There’s a smell in the air like cherry-flavored magnesium citrate, or maybe that’s the tequila on his breath. Last night was the last night he’d dedicate to doing the things he wouldn’t be doing anymore until he decides to do them again: liquor for his bowels in glass bottles with screw caps, pharmacy bought, chugged and chased with medicine for his head, a thirty dollar fifth for a sixth of his day. Thank god for math, thank god for four hours of darkness before dawn. The sun rises too damn early this time of year.

Clouds and trees argue in his peripheral vision and his sweat’s a thing for stinging his eyes back into focus. Blues in his ears, reds in nostrils, greens in his guts, yellows in his spine because old age is chasing him with fangless mandibles, incisors lost to the sweet decay of not finding laughter funny anymore.

Running three miles but call it half a ten K since he’s training for a 20 K which is half a marathon.

His woggling belly, his belly woggling, the way his belly woggles, the woggles in his belly. Aforementioned and never forgotten, a weight like the moon and his greasy innards an ocean that waxes his orbiting gut and wanes any hope of having ever been been young.

Mystery loves inconstancy and the clouds win, whip the trees, pelt the streets suddenly, sweetly. He cuts through a park to hide beneath the loser boughs, and as the sky penetrates the ground he shivers, longs for that easy chair, that tequila bottle, that ability to feel at home in his own body.

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Half a Towel is Still a Towel. I Think.

Postaday for January 25th: Enough Is Enough. When was the last time you were ready to throw in the proverbial towel? Did you end up letting go, or decided to fight on anyway?

I thought I was going to be running a half marathon next Sunday. I had run one, a month or so ago, with a friend, and feeling high from our accomplishment, we agreed to do another one. This one came up, and we agreed to do it.

But I never signed up, and neither did she. I should have suspected something when she didn’t call to do a few training runs. SHE should have suspected the same thing.

I figured I’d show up and limp through the course and be a good friend. Supportive and all that. So I sent an email asking if we should car pool, and she admitted she hadn’t signed up, and I could only think, THANK GOD.

This friend of mine, I have to explain, is a very busy person. She’s got a lot on her plate, and the last think she needs is trying to coax ME along this need-to-run path. So I don’t blame her in the least. And I know for a fact that if I HAD signed up, and if I was going on Sunday, she’s sign up right there and run it with me.

She’s a better runner than me, and wouldn’t need as much training as I do. I know this. And I could have, even though we hadn’t signed up yet, asked her to go ahead and run with me anyway. And she’d do it.

But, like I said,I was relieved. My training has been abysmal. I could survive the darn thing, but only just. I’d much rather skip this one.

To our credit, we’re going to go for a shorter run on Sunday, anyway. So I guess we’re only half throwing in the towel. Or throwing in half the towel. It’s a proverbial towel, so we can rip it proverbially in half, I guess.

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Grunner and the L’Elf

Postaday for January 24th: Once Upon a Time. Tell us about something that happened to you in real life last week — but write it in the style of a fairy tale.6

All good stories start with “once upon a time,” and this one is no different, except for the first five words, which don’t count, as this opening is nothing more than a lampshade. By happy coincidence, our hero is called Grunner Lampshade, and he was, as our story begins, the saddest hairy bunny bear in the land.65

One day Grunner was running through the streets of Seattle. The sun was shining and the breeze was laughing. But poor Grunner, he didn’t even notice. He was desperately searching for something. And the more he looked, the more he ran. And the more he ran, the more anxious he became. Would he ever find what he was looking for?

There was sweat on poor Grunner’s brow, and a fire in his hair bunny bear chest. But all seemed lost. And then, as he made his way along Roosevelt, just south of 65th street, having spent so much time climbing up from the depths where Harvard ave runs into Eastlake, can you guess what Grunner saw?

Why, it was a Liquor Elf! “Hello!” said the l’elf.

Grunner finally stopped running. The l’elf was dressed in nothing more than a pair of shorts, which for this story we’ll call a loincloth. He smelled of booze. “Hello,” said Grunner, cautiously.

“Can you help me? I am lost,” said the l’elf. “I come from a far away land called Las Angeles. I am here visiting a friend. I went for a run this morning, and now I can’t find my friend’s house!”

Grunner put his hands on his hips. What he didn’t say was, “You smell like booze, Liquor Elf! I bet you just woke up in some stranger’s house after a night of excess and glee.” Instead what Grunner said was, “Okay, I’ll help you. What do you remember?”

The Liquor Elf scratched his curly crown. “Um, 94th and Dayton?”

Grunner smacked his head. “Oh no! That’s three miles from here!”

The Liquor Elf smacked his forehead. “Oh no!”

But then Grunner forgot that he was looking for something, and said, “Well, I guess I can take you there. Come on!” And off they went, running west instead of north like Grunner had been running before.

Up one hill they went, and then down another, and around a green lake (called Greenlake), and then up a very steep hill, until they arrived.

“Here we are!” said Grunner.

“Oh, thank you so much! I never would have find it without you!” the Liquor Elf said. He waved, and disappeared behind a small house.

Grunner went up the hill a little further, to Greenwood. He decided to walk to his house. And you know what? He found what he was looking for! A great big smile, the whole way home.

The end.

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You Don’t Need Kentucky to Have a Derby

Postaday for January 23rd: Easy Fix. Write a post about any topic you wish, but make sure it ends with “And all was right in the world.”

Jason Edwards bursts out of his front door! He doesn’t even bother closing it behind him! He skips across the porch, down the three steps and into the sunshine, across his lawn and leaps! across the flower bed into the driveway. Runs up the drive way. Arms pumping. Untucked unbuttoned Hawaiin shirt flapping. Look at him go!

He’s to the street! Cuts right, looks for cars. Listen for cars, only hears the pounding of his heart and the wind in his ears. Crosses the street so that he’s running against traffic! If there was any traffic! But there is no traffic! His house is halfway down the block and he’s covered that half!

The cross street is busy! The cross road is at a funny angle, it confuses cars! An opportune pause as two cars turning left try to figure out who should go first! Jason Edwards darts between them! He’s next to the abandoned coffee stand now. And now he’s next to the gas station. And now he’s in the 7-11 parking lot. His feet are slapping the asphalt. He’s pounding right towards the front door.

The guy who works there sees him coming. He’s already ready. He knows what to do. Jason is on fast approach. He pulls up so as to not break through the door’s windows. He hauls the door open. He cuts a sharp right, up the aisle past gun magazines and phone cards and gift cards and miscellaneous car interior supplies. You know, cigarette lighter adapters for phone charges and stuff. He’s at the back wall, where they keep the drinks! The first one’s full of milk products!

And now he shuffles left. He doesn’t bother to turn, just shuffles left. Hands tap the cooler handles, one two three, He’s opening the fourth one! He’s grabbing a 20 oz plastic bottle of Mountain Dew! It’s cold in his hand! He closes the door, the bottle instantly humidifies, his hand is wet! He doesn’t even notice!

Jason Edwards is moving with precision. He’s turning to jet up the back aisle. He makes a left at the coffee machines. He all but leaps forward, all but lands right in front of the frozen burrito selection. There’s so many to choose from. His eyes dart over bean and cheese, cheese and chili, green chile, green bean and cheese. Wait, no, he read that last one wrong! It’s beef and bean! The wrapper is red! He grabs the beef and been frozen burrito in the red wrapper!

But it’s not really frozen! It’s only refrigerated! This bodes well for Jason Edwards. His hand is in his back pocket. How is that possible if he’s carrying a cold refreshing Mountain Dew and frozen  I mean refrigerated but pre-cooked beef and bean burrito! He’s holding them both in one hand! Folks, they’re keeping each other cold! He’s fishing out his wallet.

He’s already been run up at the register. He swipes his credit card as he runs by! He hits the door, hears the register beep the beep of credit card transaction approval! He’s out the door! The guy behind the counter adds his receipt to the stack of receipts he keeps for him in case he ever comes back in a more leisurely fashion!

He’s outside! He’s running across that same parking lot! Past that same gas station and abandoned coffee stand! And now he’s crossing the intersection! Oh my word, there’s no traffic! He’s got half a block to go. The sun is shining off the bald spot on his head. He’s got the Mountain Dew in one hand and the burrito in the other! The burrito is getting warmer! I can’t beleive it! It’s warming up in his hand as he runs!

He’s at the driveway! He turns left and runs down the driveway! He leaps the flowers, goes across the lawn, up the porch steps! His front door still open, has been open this whole time! Can you believe it! He slams the door behind him, darts up the stairs, three steps, eight steps, twelve steps, fifteen! Down the hall to his home office. Bounces off the door frame! Lands in his office chair! And the crowd! Goes! Wild!

Jason Edwards is sitting in his office chair. He chest rises and falls rapidly as he gets his breath. He carefully, almost gingerly, sets his warmed-up burrito and cold Mountain Dew on his desk. Carefully, almost gingerly, opens the Mountain Dew. Cautious against the foam. But there’s no foam. Just that effervescent aaaaaah.

He takes a long, slow pull on the bottle. Tears open the burrito, slides a bit out, takes a massive bite. His mouth is full of beef and bean burrito. He wiggles his work computer’s mouse. His work computer wakes up. After a few seconds, a reminder pops up, telling him he has a conference call. In 5 minutes.

Jason Edwards sits back, relaxes. Takes another swallow of Mountain Dew. Takes another bit of burrito. Wishes he’d written this in past tense. But, that was okay. He’d done what he’d set out to do. Which is all any man can ever hop to do. And all was right in the world.

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Radio Silent Cosmonaut

Postaday for January 22nd: Fireside Chat. What person whom you don’t know very well in real life — it could be a blogger whose writing you enjoy, a friend you just recently made, etc. — would you like to have over for a long chat in which they tell you their life story?

Laika is dressed in a cheap white dress shirt, no tie, a black jacket, black slacks that have flares and have seen better days. Her shoes are scuffed, and her socks are too light for this outfit. A cigarette dangles from one hand, idly, the ash too long, precarious. She sits in a beaten up canvas director’s chair, slouched into it. On her head a fedora with a white band— a generous viewer would say the band matcher her socks. She gazes at me, a half-smirk on her face.

I’m in the other director’s chair, in my tweed and loafers. I’m not stylish; I’m unassuming. My hair’s slicked back, in the style, and my horn-rimmed glasses are frosted so as to not catch the overhead lights. Mark, our camera man, gives me a silent count down- three, two, one go.

“Hello and welcome. With me in the studio today, we have Laika. Hello Laika, it’s good to have you here.”

She ashes, takes a drag, remains slouched. Her voice is gravelly, low, but undeniably feminine. “Thanks man, likewise, likewise.”

“Let’s get right into it, Laika. How old are you.”

She takes a deep breath. “I’m three, going on four. Of course, I was born back in, like 1989, sooo…”

“Right. If you had been born in 89, you’d be, what,” I do some math in my head. “99, 2009, 2019, you’d be-”

“Yep, 26, how about that.”

“But you weren’t actually. Born I mean.”

She takes another drag, smirk, leans forward to put out her cigarette. “No, man, I guess I wasn’t. I’m a, what do you call it. A fantasy.”

“That’s right. You’re the daughter I would have had if I’d been, ah, a little less cautious as a teenager.”

“Yeah man. You know, you got, like, classmates who are grandparents now?”

“Ha! Think of that!”

“Think of that, man.” She pats her pockets for her cigarettes.

“Indeed. So you’re three, going on four. Why that age?”

“You mean, why not 26?” She asks, and peers at me with one eye closed as she lights the cigarette and inhales.

“Yes.”

She shrugs and eases back once more. “You were, what, 17 when you would have had me? Life’s weird, man. But you know what, things work out. Maybe some of the details would be the same, but more or less, the you you are now is the same you you woulda been.”

“Except for those three years.”

“Except for those three years, man. So here I am. Talking to you. Your daughter Laika.”

“Why Laika, do you think? Isn’t that a Russian name?”

“I don’t know. I mean, yeah, it was the name of that dog they sent up into space, the Russians. Sad story, really. She was a stray, and they picked her up, you know, and fed her and trained her and all that. Treated her okay, I guess. Had to get her used to smaller and smaller boxes, since they were going to, you know, launch her into space and stuff. But she was a good little thing, took to the training. Smart. One of the scientists, though, I don’t know. Took her home to play with his kids, just the once. Said he wanted to do something nice for her. I guess that’s sweet.”

“But she died up there, ran out of oxygen, right?”

“No, no,” she shifts around in her chair, switches the cigarette to her other hand. “That’s what they said, but actually there was a problem during the launch, and her, uh, fan broke. She got overheated, died a few hours into it.”

“That’s,” I take off my glasses for effect, rub my eye. “That’s very sad.”

She takes a drag. “Yeah, pretty sad.”

“But, anyway. You probably weren’t named after the first animal in space.”

“Nah, probably not.”

“Another question, Laika— you’re only three years old. Why am I talking to what appears to be a grown-up?”

At this she chuckles. Shows her teeth. She’s got one snaggle-tooth, like the father she would have had if she’d ever been born. “You wanted my life story, man, short as it was. But kids can’t talk, not at that age.”

“And neither can dogs.”

“Nope, neither can dogs.”

I turn to the camera. “Well folks, I want to thank you for sitting down with us today.” I turn to the daughter I never had, never, truthfully, ever came close to having. “And thank you, Laika.”

“My pleasure.”

“Good night.” Mark counts me down, the fade as the credits come up, until I’m not on the screen anymore.

I go find a drink somewhere.