The boy dragged his feet heavily through the sand that seemed to be as thick as mud, carrying his sister in his trembling arms.
She had gotten lighter since she died three days earlier, but he was exhausted because they had been walking for two weeks straight on little food and water.
Behind them the desert had already eaten up the forest they had been walking through before, leaving them surrounded with nothing more than emptiness.

Walking through the desert for days had used up the very last of his energy.
Suddenly a bolt of electricity jolted through his entire body; stunned he loses the strength in his arms, his sister’s body falls through his arms onto the sand.
His legs took one final step forward, making him trip over his sister’s lifeless body, he lands faced down in the sand.
He is out of breath and still dizzy, so he closes his eyes for what seemed like just a fraction of a second.
A strange sound wakes him, he opens his eyes in darkness, he looks around but his sister is gone.
He panics and tries to stand up but keeps falling back down, he keeps trying to get up.
When he is finally back up on his feet he is surrounded by tall grass that came up to his waist, he ran around in hopes of finding his sister.
He kept on running, calling out her name until his screams turned into whispers, “Gweneth!”
Disheartened he falls to his knees, tears run down his face.
The grass that is growing around him make the sound of a million whispers, all softly whispering her name.
He wiped the tears from his face with the inside of his arm and got back up.
Following the whispers as they became louder he trips again but this time a long blade of grass has caught his leg.
He rips it off and his eyes fall on something strange, he gets back up and finds out it’s his sister’s remains covered in blades of grass.
He gets down on one knee right next to her head and uses a small red pocket knife to cut away some of the blades that cover her face.

It was his sister, her eyes are open and the boy is filled with joy and hugs his sister.
She’s still dead, he sits with her until dawn, then cuts all the blades off but leaves her bundled in them.
He picks her up and carries her further through the grass field that seems to never end.
The ground begins to shake and big trees pop out of the ground, he gets knocked over by one and after the grounds stops to shake he finds himself in a forest.
He hears a stream of water in the distance and with the last strength left in his short legs he runs towards it.
He looks at the clear river with pebbles on the bottom and releases a sigh of relief and steps into the water.
The blades wrapped around his sister fall off her as the boy walks to the center of the river, struggling to stay upright because of the strong current.
He lays her down into the water and she begins to dissolve, he lifts his spread out fingers until there is nothing left of his sister.
He hears rustling in the bushes nearby, a deer drinks from the river, it’s peaceful.
The deer drops dead and dead fish begin to appear on the surface, flowers on the bank shrivel and die.
He begins to feel odd and loses consciousness, feeling the cold water going through his body and numbing him completely.

The girl huffed along a dirt path, she is carrying her fallen brother.
“Everything is going to be all right.”, She whispered.

“Over here you see one that’s about six months old. And as you can see the dry conditions have greatly affected it’s appeal.”, The guide explained, he walked over to the next glass display and continued, “This one is only a week old and judging by the ooze slowly gushing out of it this one’s still fresh, if you’d wish to call it that.”
“You all might want to pinch your nose for this next one, it has quite a foul odor.”
He walked over to the next vitrine with a group of German tourists listening to his every word or at least he pretended anyone did. The tourists were wearing yellow headsets that played informative tape recorded somewhere in the eighties.
Moreen and Benjamin found themselves walking in this group after they found a coupon in the hotel’s brochure that gave them 50% discount to the local museum.
They slipped out of the tour group’s formation and wonder around until they found a exhibition room that was closed off by a simple yellow tape running across the entrance, they duck and walked underneath it.
The room was filled with automatons that had the resemblance of famous people.
Benjamin read the sign that explained what the exhibition was about, the automatons would recite and act out stories and dialogues send in by students of Jefferson High School in Liechtenstein.
It seemed like the room had an assembly of celebrities that had their peeks in the eighties.
They walk over to the first set of celebs, Mr. T and Madonna looked to be in the middle of defusing a bomb.
Moreen pressed a small red the button that said ‘Press to Play.’
The automatons began making jerky movements, they began talking through noisy speakers mounted on the ceiling, the talking clearly done by voice actors began.
“Cut the blue one. No the red one!”, Madonna said moving her arm up and down with her index finger pointing back and forth between two wires.
“Shut up fool! I’ll just cut both.”, The robotic Mr. T said and moved his scissors over both of the wires.
“What if their both the wrong one and you blow us up?” Madonna asked.
Mr. T moved his scissors away from the wires and asked, “We have no other choice, any last wishes.”, There was a pause in their movements but the dialogue continued, “Fool.”, Mr T. added.
They continued but were lip-synching out of sync, “I.. I just..”, music starts playing and madonna starts singing, “I just want to have fun.. Oh, I. Just wanna have fun..”, One of her eyelids seems to be stuck during her performance and stayed that way.
Moreen and Benjamin look at each other with a confused look on their faces.
The music stops and Mr. T moves his scissors back to the red and blue wire, “I want a real heart!” He said right before cutting the wires.
Dramatic music mixed with the stock sound of explosions, blows out of the speakers. Light flashes and smoke appears all around them from a smoke machine on the floor behind them.
As the smoke clears the automatons return to their original position.

Benjamin presses the red button this time and Sylvester Stallone whose wearing his Rambo outfit starts mumbling something they can’t make out at first.
Tom Cruise wearing the pilot jacket from Top Gun starts to explain the rest, “You like her.”
The two of them are standing at what seems to be a bedroom belonging to a teenage boy, in the space between them on the wall a big poster with Farrah Fawcett wearing a kind of tight jumpsuit.
“She fills gaps.”, Rocky mumbled while continuously flexing his arm.
Tom looked confused, which was only clear because his eyebrows rotated a perfect 90 degrees downward, “What gaps?”
Rocky’s joints were in dire need of some oil as they screeched and cracked, “You know.. gaps. she’s got gaps, I got gaps, together we fill those gaps.”
Tom famous smiled appeared and believe it or not was even more creepy than normal, “You know what also fills gaps?” He asked.
“No, do tell Tom.”, Rocky said.
Tom’s raised his arm and revealed a small box and he read it out loud, “ – fills any gap!”
Rocky mumbled something the couldn’t understand and when he was done the machines returned to their original position.
Moreen looked over at Benjamin who wasn’t paying much attention anymore because he was wearing the yellow headphones.
She knocks them off his head and drags him to the next set of automatons.

Michael J Fox, Gary Coleman and the little girl from Poltergeist were sitting in a modified silver Pinto with the license plate ‘OUTATIME’
Moreen hits the button and a dialogue begins.
“The label said, store in a cool dry place.”, Michael said and pretended to be steering the car, “So don’t look at me. Besides, I wasn’t the one that ate it all.”
The little girl from Poltergeist turned towards Gary who raised his rusty eyebrows and yelled, “Stop!” His jaw remained open, Moreen and Benjamin were unsure if it was intended to stay open but the little girl started throwing up in it, green goo spew into Gary coleman’s metal mouth.
Moments later the whole thing started short circuiting and the mini delorean caught fire.
Benjamin rushed to get a fire extinguisher and quickly covered the celebrity lookalikes with a thick layer of foam, so that the fire alarm wouldn’t go off.
Moreen starts clapping instinctively and stops when Benjamin pulls her to the final set of droids.
It was clear that Chevy Chase and Patrick Swayze were reenacting the famous scene from Ghost.
They were sitting close together, Patrick had his arms around Chevy, the pottery wheel was spinning and their hands slitter over what is suppose to be clay.
They are making an ashtray together and when its done Chevy’s head rotates completely so he faces Patrick.
They make-out while ‘Unchained Melody’ by The Righteous Brothers is playing over the speakers.

Moreen and Benjamin had seen enough and exit the room and start walking back to the group of tourists.
“That was something else.”, Benjamin laughed.
The guide was still sharing his knowledge, Moreen suddenly grabs Benjamin’s hand and pulls him into another room, “Oh, look an exhibition that shows stains that look like religious icons!”

A worn out circus tent stood in the middle of a wide open field.
It once had brightly colored stripes running up and down, these were now faded by years of sunlight and covered in dirt from all the traveling.
It was once filled with gasps, screams and laughter. And all that there was left inside that reminded them of better times were pieces of popcorn, ticket stubs, candy wrappers, pretzel crumbs and an occasional moldy hotdog.

Inside the carnies are staring at the rows of empty seats.
The smell of elephant dung, straw and liquor fills the tent.

Sword swallowers rest their heads on the sharp blades they once shoved down their esophagus, amazing many with their ability.
The fire breathing brothers both swallow their torches, the strongmen smoke their pipes and think about starting a new life as lumberjacks.
They puff big rings of smoke that travel all the way up to the top of the tent where a tightrope performing husband and wife duo dream of walking away from circus life, with one foot in front of the other.
The clowns found none of this amusing and chugged down a couple more shots of vodka.

The Siamese twin girls wonder about separation surgery, the bearded-lady stroked her hand across her freshly shaved face and felt relieved.
The human cannonball promised his wife and kids he’d no longer do his death defying stunt and agreed to settle down and work as banker for the rest of his remaining lifetime.
The wild animals thought about breaking out of their cage, they kept a close eye on the animal trainers who had fallen asleep on the ground after a drinking match, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

The ringleader fixed his curly mustache so it was upright again.
He removed his top hat and sighed so loud it blew off the top of the circus tent.
Only the skeleton remained with the center ring and the ringside seats.

And when everyone was about to quit the circus, one of the tightrope walkers noticed a crowd of people was walking their way.
At first everyone was sceptic but an hour later all the seats were filled with visitors.
Some commented on how original it was of them to have an outdoor circus.

They sobered up the best they could and put on the show of a lifetime.
Except for the clowns, who were still piss drunk but were funnier than ever.

Emma had not been seen ever since she decided to fit every last thing in the dishwasher.
Her brother Twain sets out to find her. She is sitting on the floor in front of the dishwasher with stacks of plates and piles of cups and glasses surrounding her.
Forks, knives and spoons are laid out on the floor, she has arranged them based on how dirty they are so she can prioritize them as she puts them back in the machine.
Twain leaned up against the fridge to observe her, “Is this really necessary?” He asked.
“I think it is, my theory is that if I don’t do this then the world will stop spinning and gravity will gone and we will all float up into the atmosphere and be burned alive. Do you want me to stop so we can find out? What if I’m right? Then it’s all your fault we’d all die.”, She explained while placing the dinner plates onto the bottom rack.
The concentrated look on her face remains uninterrupted, Twain waits for the clinking of the plates to be over, “Yeah, that sounds neat. Let’s find out.”
She shoots him a glare to shut him up and when she knows for sure that he’ll obey continues filling the dishwasher.
He watches her almost crawl inside with her hands full of cutlery, she makes sure every inch of the dishwasher is used the best way possible.
“I’m doing this for all of us, for every boy and girl, man and woman, dogs. Cats, even grasshoppers!”, she says.
All he can see are her legs kicking out of the dishwasher.
One of Twain’s classmates walks into the kitchen to request a drink but first greets Emma, “Hey, porkie.”
Theres some rattling and clanking, “I’m not fat, I just grew up in a place with more gravity.”, She yells back at him.
“You don’t have to yell.”, Twain said and shared a high-five with his buddy.
Emma and Twain’s grandmother walked into the kitchen with an angry look on her face, or at least thats what Twain thinks, but she is so old it might just be because her face is falling off.
Emma’s hand reaches backward and she grabs another handful of dishware, “I’m not yelling, you just have great hearing.”, She said.
Their grandmother peeked into the dishwasher and looked at Emma’s work, she turned to Twain and his friend, “Don’t you two have some kind of video game to play?” She said.
They leave the kitchen and she turns back towards Emma.
Emma crawls out of the dishwasher and closed the door and turned it on.
She crouched and peeked in through the small glass window, at the water that began splashing around in the machine.
Her grandmother gave her a hug and said, “You’re such a sweet little girl.”
Emma wiggled free and went over to the outlet and pulled out the dishwasher plug, climbed on top of the kitchen counter and stood straight up on the edge.
A smile appeared on her face and she jumped forward and crashed down onto the checkerboard floor.
Her grandmother had no idea what had just happened, when she went over to check if Emma was alright she got startled by Emma’s laughter.
Emma got up with a throbbing bump on her head, “Everything’s still spinning!” She laughed.

We have been driving around, through the sun and clouds of dust.
Seen all the sights and every inch of asphalt.
She is next to me resting her legs on the dashboard, her toes wiggling about. Her fingers weave through her curly hair.

She sleeps straight till noon without moving a muscle, not even her chest seemed to move.
It almost seemed like she died and was somehow resurrected by the sunlight that beams through the treetops as we drive by them.

We step out the car on the side of the road, she stretches her body as far as it goes.
I watch her every move as she tiptoes through a small field of grass that only goes up to her ankles. My eyes follow along the arc of her back, all the way up to her fingertips that are pointing at the sky.

There are spaceships that disguise themselves as clouds.
They look down at us with their giant telescopes.
We wave them goodbye and continue on our way.

The road takes us to a beach where we kick of our shoes and bury our feet in the warm sand.
Kites get ripped apart by the wind.
Scribbling “HELP!” in the sand, pretending we are on a deserted island.
We hold hands, spinning around and around.
The whole world is a blur, we stopped when we got too dizzy.

Little raindrops start to fall on our faces, rainbows form above our heads.
The sun hides behind a vessel of clouds and doesn’t return.

Darkness falls and fireflies rise up from the dune grass, surrounding us with little sparks of light.
We compete over who can hold the most fireflies in their hands.
The light that escapes between the openings in our hands illuminates our faces.
We are glowing.

Karp is in the middle of preparing dinner for his special date with Rodina, she a tramp like himself and he has had a crush on her for years.
Together with other hobos they live on a river bank near a big bridge from one metropolis to the other.
They lived in self-made tents and huts and were surrounded by junk left there by others who figured they would make use of it.
He had always been wanting to become a chef himself, and what would be more perfect than preparing a romantic dinner for his true love.
And so Karp began making his squirrel kebab one of his specialties.
He stripped a squirrel of it’s fur and covered it in a marinade of hard to find herbs and spices.
He then roasted it above an old oil barrel using a spit made using a coat hanger.
The smell of the roasted meat began to attract a lot of other bums that more than anything wanted a bite.
Karp always wore the same multiple layers of clothing he had collected over the years which made him look hefty and well-built.
A single glance of his robust face kept them from stealing any of his food.
He made some side dishes using left-overs he had manage to find in the garbage bins of some five-star restaurants not far from here.
After he was done with those, the next thing to do was finding a quiet and romantic place to setup his candlelight dinner.
He found the perfect place right next to the river, behind some containers that had washed ashore but were now emptied out by scavengers.
Using some crates and the front hood of a car he builds a table and two chairs for them to sit on.
He covers the hood with a rag and turns two empty wine bottles into candlestick holders.
That night when the sun was setting she arrived wearing wool homemade clothes, which were the nicest pair of clothes she had.
He was wearing a tailcoat he found in the dumpster behind a funeral home that had gone bankrupt.
He helped Rodina take her seat on one of the crates he had cushioned with plastic bags and sat across from her.
Karp lit the candles and lifted the cloche from each of the plates, she was amazed by his creations and she handed him a gift wrapped in pages torn out of a gossip magazine.
He unwrapped it and was holding a brand new metal spatula, Karp hadn’t gotten such a great gift in years.
The only real downside of her clothes was that they were very itchy, so most of the night during their talks and while eating she had been scratching herself.
Rodina took her last bite of the squirrel kebab and told him, her chest was on fire.
Karp knew she was never that great with words and interprets what she said as her chest being filled with burning desire.
His heart start beating faster and faster as he went in for a kiss, but she had a weird look on her face and in front of his eyes she fell backwards and flames started bursting from her chest.
Never in his life had he seen such a thing and could not believe it was because of her love for him.
He grabbed one of the cloches and ran to the river and filled it with water, ran back to her and tried to put the fire out by pouring water over her chest.
The opposite happened and she started glowing a bright red color.
His heart was still pounding but began to skip beats, she whispered his name and he kneeled down next to her.
Rodina looked terrible, she then said that she loved him and thanked him for the romantic dinner.
Karp got closer to her ear and told her his heart had grown rusty.
And at that same time his heart stopped beating.

Karp woke up in a familiar place, his chest was still hurting but he manages to crawl outside.
Outside he sees a crowd of vagabonds standing around the barrel he used as a kitchen the day before.
They all had sad looks on their faces and gave him their condolences.
Rodina’s mother walked over to him and while crying her eyes out she handed him the spatula. Her other daughters took her away from Karp, so he could be alone to mourn. He looking into the barrel and noticed the flames were a different color then the day before.
The day before he had filled the barrel with firewood and now it seemed like it was all gone.
Karp then noticed a green kind of liquid at the bottom of the barrel, at first he couldn’t understand what it was, until his mind connected all the dots.
He pushed the hobos aside and began scraping the coal and dust of the barrel using the spatula Rodina had given him.
When he was done he stepped backwards..
He stared at the barrel with a big skull and bones symbol on it, and his chest began to hurt again.
The hobos started falling to the ground screaming and bursting out flames from their chests.
His chest began to hurt more and more and he took of all the clothes from his torso as he ran towards the river.
He looked down and saw his chest glowing a bright red color, and knew it was too late.

Gilbert Tucker had a way of narrating everything he witnessed on an ordinary day.
Observations others might miss, his inside voice was much like a good TV reporter, and he was the only one who was could hear it.
His favorite place to report on was the mall, and today being his day off work he drove over there to simply walk around.
After parking his car Gilbert starts walking to the entrance and notices the sliding doors were out of order so people were using the normal ones next to it, to get into the mall.
This wasn’t interesting enough for him, not until a fat gentleman got stuck in the doorway.
“Obese man gets stuck in shopping mall doorway, firemen arrived minutes later to break him free using hydraulic scissors.”, His inner-voice said.
The man looked over his shoulder over at Gilbert who at first thought the man had heard what he thought, which was off course—impossible.
Gilbert gave the man a kind nod who then backed up and walked in sideways.
Gilbert followed him inside, the mall was filled with noises and people doing their necessary shopping.
Gilbert starts walking the same route he always takes, first down some shops then directly up to the second floor.
He stepped onto the escalator and looking ahead his inside-voice starts narrating again, “Will the single mom get her stroller and kid up the escalator past the teenage wannabe gangsters at the top?”
She manages to get past them without much resistance but when Gilbert tries it he bumps against one of the girl’s legs.
He apologizes but some of the teens in clothes many times their own size, starts pushing him around and begin calling him a pervert.
The pushing stopped when a attractive girl in a skirt so short her tush showed, walked by them.
Gilbert wanted to walk away but one of the guys made him trip and bang his head against a planter, “Man falls victim to gravity when will he learn..”, He stopped himself before he could finish that narration.
He got up and felt the pain of the big bump on his head.
Glad the thugs had left him alone he keeps on walking and sees that one of the shops had a very long queue in front of it.
He observed it from a distance for a moment, “Woman pays only with nickels for her new pumps leads to long queues at one of the mall’s shoe shops.”
Some of the people waiting in line turn their heads towards him and whisper something to each other.
He takes no notice of it and keeps on walking around some more but because of his pounding headache decides to go back down the other escalator that lead to the kids playground.
It had been conveniently placed in the middle of a lot of shops aimed at kids and places with sugary consumptions.
He bought a popsicle in one of the shops and walked over to the playground.
A lot of parents with bags filled with boxes and toys sat on the benches around the playground, he sat down on one and held the popsicle against the bump on his head to help keep the swelling down.
And like always he began to read the advertisements on the shop windows, “Who wouldn’t want a bite out of that bun!”
He then looked over at the kids playing on a seesaw, “Little girl and boy bouncing up and down, up and down, up and down!”
Some parents began looking at him but he didn’t notice.
“She slides down and her skirt flies up like a miniature monroe.”, He narrated watching a girl going down the slide.
He suddenly felt like the light were dimmed and he looked around him, “A crowd of angry parents stood around him, he felt like he was shrinking down to the size of a pea.”, His trembling inner-voice narrated.
Parents, including strollers formed a crowd around him and were shooting him evil glares, “And then he realized he wasn’t just narrating inside his head. He was also speaking them out loud.”, His inner-voice whispered.