#quantum fates

Brain Curds are barely-edited fiction, poetry, or just about anything else - drafted in a day or less. It’s four-hundred fifty-one degrees out here! HELP!

Part 64 of an experiment in progress. Refer to case logs.

I must have slept for weeks by the time I heard the phone ring at 6:25. Five minutes before my alarm was supposed to go off.

Groggy and sick to my stomach, I reached over to answer it.

“Can you hear me?” A familiar voice was broadcast from the earpiece.

Under no illusion of unfamiliarity, but quite a bit groggier than the first time around, I replied: “What?”

“Can you hear me?” Celeste repeated.

“… Yes?” I looked around the room. Just as expected, she was standing in the corner, facing away from me. I mean, she wasn’t, really, but I could see her just like I used to. It was almost comforting after all this time.

“Good. What do you remember?”

I smirked. She was totally clueless. Finally, I had the upper hand!

“I don’t know… I just woke up. Do you mean anything specific?”

“Let’s start with the basics. Do you remember your name?”

“Yeah, of course I do. What kind of question is that?”

“What is it?”

“Uh…” I feigned total ignorance. “Gee, you know, now that you ask me, I’m actually not quite sure.”

“Oh… uh-huh…” Celeste shuffled between some papers. “Let’s try something else, then. What did you have for dinner last night?”

“Pizza. No, wait. I had a cup of Jell-O.”

“Huh?”

“Actually, no, the Jell-O was dessert. Yeah, I had both of those.”

“Since when do you eat Jell-O?”

“Since I found out it was made of animal parts. Why let all that cherry-flavored goodness go to waste?”

“I’m pretty sure the cherry flavor isn’t from the animal parts.”

“What do you know? You’re just some random woman on the phone. You’ve got no credibility.”

Celeste groaned. “Alright, let’s try something a little more straightforward: how old are you?”

“My mom said not to tell strangers how old I am.”

“Your voice sounds pretty deep for a preschooler.”

“Are you calling me immature?”

“Are you calling me immature?” She parroted back in a mocking voice. “Come on, just tell me how old you are. I need it for… data… research… purposes.”

“Honestly, it’s really hard to say. If I had to guess… I think this is the second time I’ve been sixteen.”

“… Huh?”

“Yeah, at least the second time. Maybe the third. It’s a little spotty.”

She raised an eyebrow and turned toward me. “What do you remember?”

“I remember you asking me that question.”

“Ugh…”

“Am I passing this test, Celeste?”

She rubbed her forehead and covered her eyes. “I was worried you had major brain damage, Tracey! Why would you pull a prank on me at a time like this?!?”

“Still Trevor, here. I think. Sorry.”

“Oh, no… seriously?”

“Today is the same day you called me the first time around.”

“Ugh! Why can’t you move on from this time period, Tracey? Why?!?” Celeste paced back and forth. “Listen, I was really hoping I’d get something new out of trying this again. If I could find Tracey in a time period after I met her, maybe she’d actually listen to me. Or at the very least, if I got you again, I was hoping you’d be a blank slate and I could just leave you to your own devices. Don’t take this personally, but you are the last version of yourself I wanted to see running around in there.”

“No, of course, how would I take that personally?”

“Honestly, though? It’s good to talk to you again.” She gave a pensive smile. “I missed you, kiddo.”

I smiled back. “That’s nice.”

“What, you didn’t miss me?”

“I was a little busy not knowing who you were, actually.” I crossed my arms. “Thanks for that.”

“How else was I supposed to save your life, huh? You didn’t exactly help yourself.”

“And I don’t plan on helping myself now, either.” I rolled over in bed and covered my face with the blanket. “You have no idea how exhausting it is to re-live your life over and over. I’m sleeping in today.”

“But… But it’ll screw up the timeline! You’ll drift away again!”

“Whatever.”

“You have to go to school! You have to spill coffee so Serenity slips and falls! It has to happen!”

“I don’t even want to see Serenity.”

“But…” Celeste got mad. “Trevor, if you screw up the timeline today, I’m resetting you to the morning to do it over! Don’t think I won’t! I’ve gotten pretty good at these controls!”

“Great. Do it. Just let me sleep.”

Celeste sighed. “Fine. Take as many todays as you need. Just call out for me when you’re ready to live again. I’ll see you then.”

She blipped out of earshot and I began a many-weeks rest that was sorely needed.

Penned 2025.07.30

Brain Curds are barely-edited fiction, poetry, or just about anything else - drafted in a day or less. This Brain Curd number is a palindrome - make a wish!

Part 67 of an experiment in progress. Refer to case logs.

I ran to the boys’ bathroom and slammed the stall door behind me. I gripped my head in my hands and began hyperventilating. “That wasn’t supposed to happen that way.”

Celeste popped in and leaned on the wall. “Yes, it was.”

“What?” I looked up at her, shaking. “No, no, last time it was my fault. I kicked the cup over. This time, Mr. Holt knocked it out of my hand!” I punched the divider. “And I only kept the coffee because you told me I had to!”

“You know, if you ask me, this was his fault the first time around, too.” She shrugged. “If you were allowed to keep the coffee on your desk, it wouldn’t have happened. But that’s not important. What’s important is that it happened, and since it did, we’re still on track to stay in this timeline.”

“Geez…” I gripped my head. “How many more people have to get hurt just so I can catch up to being in a coma?”

“Not too many.” She shuffled through notes. “And most of that crap you got up to without me was in another timeline anyway. It doesn’t count.”

“Doesn’t count?” I slapped my chest. “I know what I did, Celeste!”

“What did you do?”

“I…” I almost couldn’t say the words. They came out as a squeak. “At homecoming, I… I kissed her, and she didn’t like it.”

Celeste’s face softened. “Oh.”

“Yeah.” I looked to the cracking grout between the floor tiles for kinship. “I’m not a good person, Celeste. I’m not worth all this.” I facepalmed. “I’m not even good enough to be my father’s son. Do you know how our last interaction went?”

She nodded. “The bicycle incident, right?”

“Yeah. How am I supposed to talk to him again after that? If it counts what he did that never really happened, then it counts what I did.”

“The bicycle incident happens in every timeline, Trevor. He’s… he’s just like that. A ticking timebomb.”

I sighed. “But I still have to help him, right?”

“For the sake of the timeline… probably, yes. We can’t take that risk. There are no more do-overs.”

I rubbed my eyes. “Man… if only I could talk to… wait…” I started smiling again. “Wait, wait, I know what to do!” I ran off as Celeste babbled.

“Trevor! What is it? What are you doing?!?”

There was only one person who could help me now.

Penned 2025.08.04

Brain Curds are barely-edited fiction, poetry, or just about anything else - drafted in a day or less. Serenity has slipped on a puddle.

Part 66 of an experiment in progress. Refer to case logs.

My coffee’s roasty aroma smelled like dread. I knew exactly what this cup would do to Serenity when it inevitably spilled on the floor. And there she was, running to class with books in hand, just in time to be late.

The bell rang, and Mr. Holt moved to close the door. Like clockwork, Serenity just barely didn’t make it inside.

“Wait, wait!” She yelled out, sticking her arm through the door.

“Sorry,” Mr. Holt sighed. “You’re too late. Go get a tardy slip.”

She reluctantly removed her arm from the door frame, pouting, and stormed off. Holt closed the door, and his gaze found me.

“Trevor, no drinks in class.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“Pour that in the bushes.”

I put it under my desk instead. I felt sick about it. Everything I’d put her through before… was I really going to let it happen again?

“Alrighty, class, today is the big moment, the one you’ve been waiting for. The Revolutionary War!” Holt covered his mouth and imitated a cheering crowd.

By now I was used to time skips. I wasn’t even disoriented when I leap-frogged over his question for me.

“Taxes,” I replied to a question I still couldn’t quite recall.

“Not a bad answer.” He almost held his arms out, but paused. “Trevor, didn’t I tell you to throw out that coffee?”

“Uh…” I’ll admit, that kind of threw me off.

Serenity knocked on the door, holding a tardy slip up to the window. Mr. Holt let her in.

“What took you so long?” He asked.

“I went to all this trouble to get a tardy slip, I figured I’d use it.”

He scoffed. “It’s your education, Ms. Roe. Waste it if you see fit.” then, he turned back to me. “Trevor, pour out that damn coffee and if I see you bring one in here again, you’re going to the principal’s office.”

I picked up the cup from the floor and looked at it. “But…”

“Give me that!” He swiped at it but his fingers didn’t lock onto the outside, knocking it over onto the floor just in time to flow beneath Serenity’s shoes.

She slipped and fell on her back, sending her books flying.

Mr. Holt was in shock. “Are you okay?”

“No…” She moaned.

Mr. Holt tutted as he walked to the phone to call the nurse’s office.

“This is why we don’t have drinks in class.”

Penned 2025.08.04

Brain Curds are barely-edited fiction, poetry, or just about anything else - drafted in a day or less. Is it falling apart, or is it coming together?

Part 63 of an experiment in progress. Refer to case logs.

If this is death, it’s boring. How many times must I watch myself die before I can finally rest?

First, I slit my own wrists and bled out. Then I got devoured by timeflies as a little kid. And now, trapped in a coma, I had a seizure. And despite seeing all of this happen, despite remembering every moment of it, none of these people were really me.

I mean, one of them has to be, right? I have to be my inner child, or the teenager I’m becoming, or the woman I’m supposed to be. I have to be one of them or I’m nothing at all - just a recording, or worse, a tape head playing back a recording, an interchangeable tool to translate something meaningful into something to be understood. But I don’t really understand any of it.

Sure, on a logical level I can recall what they experienced. I can remember the strain of eviction; I can remember when he moved in with his aunt and uncle and that his father was not invited to join them; I can remember the pounding heartbeat in his chest as he demanded his father be allowed to sleep on the couch and was still told ‘no’ just as well as I can remember the sensation of packing a backpack with essentials but two minutes later.

I can remember the hum of electrical transformers as Trevor and his father slept under the refuge of a bridge and the imprint of a zipper on my face when I awoke before the sun. But I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to remember any of it, not without a chance to change it, yet no matter what I did it all ended exactly the same: darkness, cold, starting over again. Every beat was all just as inevitable as any other and the unyielding tide dragged me deeper into the current.

Surely I’ll be born again any minute, but with any luck I won’t know it. If I can’t change what happened anyway, I deserve the comfort of ignorance. At least that way, maybe I’ll make it to my death all in one piece.

~

I jolted awake as if falling, and fell out of bed to match it. I took the deepest breath of my life as I reached out to the wall and my mattress. Tangible. I could see them, I could touch them, I could smell them, and all the pieces fit together. I was back in my bedroom at my grandparents’ house. I tripped over myself to get to my dresser and pulled out the bottom drawer, searching frantically for it, throwing articles of clothing all about the room until at the bottom of the drawer I saw it: the butterfly hair clip.

A tear ran down my face as I held it in my hands. The cool metal warmed at my touch until it matched my own temperature. For a moment, my toe didn’t hurt. Nothing did.

I tried to stand up, but the blood all rushed to my feet and the room spun. I aimed for the bed as I passed out.

Penned 2025.07.30

Brain Curds are barely-edited fiction, poetry, or just about anything else - drafted in a day or less. Turns out, four-hundred fifty-two is exactly the number of sprinkles below the display case where nobody ever sweeps.

Part 65 of an experiment in progress. Refer to case logs.

“Hmm…”

Dressed in my pajamas and slippers, I pondered the display case. I’d tried every single individual one of these pastries over the course of some countless repeated days, and my favorite by far was the third apple fritter from the back. But maybe I was in the mood for something else.

“Lemme get… that bran muffin.” I pointed to it.

The woman behind the counter approached the muffins with her tongs and picked one up.

“No, no, the one in front of that one. Thank you.”

I made the short walk back home with my prize in a white paper bag. These were no ordinary bran muffins, no, because on the bottom was a layer of candied pecans that by all measures of goodness ought to be on every bran muffin - unless, I guess, the person eating it has a nut allergy. This particular muffin of the dozen baked this morning had roughly ten percent more nuts. That’s why I picked it.

I yawned as I climbed back into bed and began devouring breakfast. Something nobody ever tells you about time loops is that it’s more comfortable than it looks. I always have clean sheets and clean underwear without doing laundry. I can spill a soda on the carpet and it’s gone the next day. And while you might think this sort of life would get stale, I always found ways to keep myself busy.

For example, so long as I remember what page I left off on, I can read books just like anyone in linear time would. The same goes double for catching up on shows I missed back when I had to worry about tomorrow.

My favorite thing, though, was how easy it was to avoid speaking to my Dad. One simple text, well-tested, was plenty to get him off my back for the day: “Feeling sick, not going to school.”

And it wasn’t entirely false. I didn’t remember the last time I went to school. This day in particular was a day just for me. And I was content to live it over and over and over. It was a day without burden, without harm, and sure, it wasn’t the best day of my life or anything, but I was fine. Just fine. It was a place I could take a breath, and if I spent all day just breathing? So be it.

“Oh, honey…” Grandma squeezed my cheek like she always did. “I hope you feel better soon.”

I smiled back at her. “Me too, Grandma. Me too.”

And the truth was, I already did feel better. But I knew that would go away the moment I stepped out of my chronological nest.

I was running out of stuff to watch, though. There was only one thing on Netflix I still wanted to see, but… I’d been watching that with Celeste. I couldn’t finish it without her.

“Celeste?” I called out.

She popped in. “Yes? Is today finally the day?”

I shook my head. “Nope, still resting. Wanna watch Death Note with me?”

“Ugh.” She rolled her eyes. “Trevor, it’s been a month.”

“Are you sure? Because I feel like it’s been longer.” I leaned back and took a sip of canned sweet tea. “It’s doing wonders for my health, though.”

“Yeah, I mean it’s been a month for me. How long you’ve been doing this is between you and the control logs.”

I shrugged. “I guess we’ll never know, then. I stopped counting.”

“Trevor, you do realize what it means to be in a coma this long, right?”

“It’s bad?”

“Yeah, it’s bad!” Celeste’s voice cracked. “Tracey’s brain - your brain - is deteriorating! At this rate, I don’t know if you’ll wake back up.”

“Whatever.” I rolled my eyes. “I’ve got everything I need right here. And right here, nobody gets hurt, nobody dies, and nobody has to do anything for somebody else who doesn’t appreciate them. I’m safe and the world is safe from me.”

“Oh, please, Trevor. This isn’t real life!”

“Neither was my life before! In case you’ve forgotten, I just finished re-living my childhood. And now you want me to re-re-live a few weeks of high school that just happened! None of it makes any sense, Celeste, why can’t you see that?” I slumped against the headboard. “I’m not getting out of here. I’m not going to wake up. Why go through all that suffering again - why hurt the people around me, just to die trying?”

“Because it’s not going to go like it did last time.” She sat at the foot of my bed and patted my leg. I could almost feel it. “You and I both learned a lot from that mess. It’s time we take what we learned and we use it to bring you back. So you can have a real life.”

I bit the inside of my cheeks and tears came to my eyes. “No. I’m not ready.”

“It is unfortunate, then, that you must be.” The Ferryman stood in the corner, tall and imposing as ever.

I crossed my arms. “I don’t remember inviting you into my room.”

“See, here’s the thing…” Celeste rubbed the back of her neck. “He’s been hounding me about all this for a couple weeks now. Turns out this loop is really screwing up the time stream.”

The Ferryman gritted his teeth. “Your relentless fracking of the plains of time is beginning to form sinkholes. If you do not cease immediately, all life within this time stream is in danger of collapse.” He growled. “I cannot permit that to happen.”

Celeste shrugged. “So, uh, yeah. Tomorrow you’d better plan on making the day count, because it’s gonna stick this time.”

I gripped my sheets. I was beginning to actually feel sick.

Penned 2025.08.04

Brain Curds are barely-edited fiction, poetry, or just about anything else - drafted in a day or less. There’s nothing quite like gardening.

Part 72 of an experiment in progress. Refer to case logs.

“Oh!” Ocean jumped up. “I thought that was you! Quick, get inside before someone sees you!”

“What?” Emily whisper-yelled. “You can’t bring him in here!”

“Don’t worry, he won’t tell anyone. Right, Trevor?”

“Right,” I nodded, awkwardly climbing through the abandoned shed’s window. “Your secret is safe with me.” I wasn’t entirely sure what that secret was, but I had an idea.

“Don’t come any closer!” Emily squealed.

“Trevor,” Ocean said, “Could you stand in that corner and turn around?”

I shot a thumbs-up and followed her instructions. There was a rustling sound behind me, then a zipper.

“Okay, you can come over here now!” Ocean beamed. “Trevor, this is Emily. Emily, Trevor.”

“I’m sure we’ve met,” I replied, extending my hand.

Emily looked at me with suspicion. “Have we?”

Now that I thought about it, maybe we hadn’t really talked before. She wasn’t the same Emily who played the cowardly lion - there was no cowardly lion now.

“It’s a small school, isn’t it?” I replied, pulling back my hand. “We must have talked to each other at least once.”

Ocean interrupted. “We were just about to smoke. Wanna join us?” She waved a joint in the air.

Emily grabbed it. “That’s my weed. I brought it for the two of us.”

Ocean leaned her head on Emily’s shoulder and looked up at her with wet, shiny eyes, sticking out her bottom lip.

“Oh, fine.” Emily lit the joint, took a puff, and stuck it out toward me.

I shook my head. “No, thanks, I really shouldn’t. I used to have a problem.”

She rolled her eyes. “You can’t get addicted to weed, you know.”

“Right. Well… more for you, anyway.”

Ocean tugged at my arm. “Hey, you wanna know how I found out your name?”

“Was it legal?”

She blinked a couple times. “Maybe.”

There were more important things I wanted to talk to Ocean about, but none that I cared to say in front of Emily.

I shrugged. “Go ahead.”

Ocean took a hit and giggled. “My step-dad is an illuminator. Wait, that’s not the right word…”

“What does he do?”

“He draws.”

“Illustrator?”

“Yeah, that’s it! He’s an illustrator. You’ve probably seen him doing characters on front street. Sometimes the police department hires him, too.”

I’m pretty sure she meant ‘caricatures’, but I thought it best not to interrupt her.

“Anyway, I described your face to him and he drew this…” She rooted around in the big pocket of her backpack, which I just now noticed was covered in an assortment of pins.

She pulled out a pencil drawing of me that was more flattering than I expected, but still looked like me. Well, it looked like me if I had slightly softer features.

“The next day, I took this picture around and asked everyone who it reminded them of and took notes. That name, Trevor, was the number one answer.”

“What were the other answers?”

“Two girls said you looked like Kristen Stewart. I can kinda see it.”

I blushed. “Uh… huh…”

“I don’t.” Emily butted in as she exhaled smoke. “I mean, maybe in the drawing I guess. But not your real face. So don’t worry about it.” She coughed. “You don’t look anything like a girl.”

I gulped. “Thanks. Uh, Ocean?” I scratched the back of my neck. “Do you have a Snap?”

“Mmm-hmm!” She showed me her phone. Her account was called @MakingWaves.

“Cool,” I smiled, trying not to get too excited. “Uh, I’ll text you later?”

“Sure!”

I got up and walked to the window. It didn’t look like anyone would see me climb out. “Nice seeing the both of you!”

I tripped over the window sill and landed on my chest, which didn’t feel great. I nearly inhaled sand when I saw a pair of feet standing in front of me, but it was just Celeste.

“How ya feelin’?” She smiled.

Better, I thought. Honestly better.

Penned 2025.12.21

Brain Curds are barely-edited fiction, poetry, or just about anything else - drafted in a day or less. Side tangent, but my god is PowerDirector one of the worst, most unstable pieces of software I ever had the misfortune of using. At least it isn't Adobe.

Part 71 of an experiment in progress. Refer to case logs.

As I climbed the stairs of the men’s home, I was accosted by a cloud of vapor.

“Hey, dude.” Dad greeted me and immediately took another puff.

“Hey.” I set my backpack on the floor and grabbed a folding chair.

“Doesn’t that smell just like Fruity Pebbles?”

I sniffed the air, thick with vegetable glycerine and propylene glycol. “Actually… yeah. It does.”

“Right?” He smirked. “But look at the bottle.”

He held it up so I could read it. The glass bottle, full of viscous yellow liquid, was labeled ‘Froot by the Loop’.

“It doesn’t taste like Froot Loops at all, does it?”

I shook my head. “No, no way.”

He set the bottle down. “I’m going to have to put that in my review. I’m really starting to build a following. Have you seen? I have a hundred subs now.”

“That’s crazy,” I replied, not particularly impressed. It was nothing I hadn’t seen before.

“And I made a new intro in PowerDirector.”

He hit the space bar on his dinky laptop and tilted the screen so the colors wouldn’t look as washed out. The words, ‘The Vapist’ floated up onto the screen atop a backdrop of the harbor before fading out. It was the same as last time I saw it, yet almost came off as charming.

I golf-clapped.

“Thanks. I spent a couple hours on it. Stupid thing kept crashing. Chase has been bugging me about getting these reviews out, but I gotta up my production quality first.”

“Chase?”

“The vape juice guy. He sends me review samples, so I owe him some kind of feedback. Right?”

Somehow, my father was downright agreeable today and it threw me off. Usually, the world owed him everything, but now all of a sudden he was acting like a normal member of a functional society. Downright uncanny. I unzipped the middle pocket of my backpack and pulled out a plastic-wrapped burrito.

“Oh, nice! Score!” He reached out for it, but stopped short. “Is this for me?”

“Uh…” I felt my eye twitch. I placed it gingerly in his hand. “Yeah…”

He ripped open the cellophane and took a big bite, but stopped chewing after a few moments. “It’s cold.”

I was dead silent. Was this the moment he’d start berating me again?

He looked at the package, then at me. “Do you think I can microwave it in this? We’re out of paper towels.”

I looked at a stack of napkins on his desk.

“Oh, good idea.” He took a napkin, used it to swaddle the naked burrito, and walked toward the kitchen.

What the fuck is going on?

“If you’re asking me -” Celeste popped in. “And I think you are - I’m pretty sure you’ve come across some rose-tinting. There are two schools of thought on this, and Tracey was headmaster of both of them. One is that it’s a coping mechanism from your brain to make it easier to follow your timeline, and the other is that it’s some sort of pollution of the timestream. Either way, I’m pretty sure this is good news. It won’t be so bad, see?”

I nodded, creaking my teeth on my dry lower lip. Dad came back with his burrito.

“So, you got any dinner plans tonight?” Dad even swallowed before speaking. “It’s been a while since we got takeout from Mr. Zhan’s. Egg foo yung and Step Brothers would hit the spot.”

I gritted my teeth. “No, sorry, I’m having dinner at home today. Probably steak again. And I won’t be going back out afterwards. Plus… I have to do my homework.”

That last part was a lie, to really push the envelope. He knew as well as I did that I always finished my homework in class. Dad would have called me out before, even if a given day was a legitimate exception.

“Oh…” He took a final bite and tossed the napkin in the garbage. “Alright, I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

Well, then. I guess he’s really gone. I fished around in my backpack and pulled out two green bananas. “Here’s something for later.”

“Sweet. Green ones are my favorite.” He took them and placed them on the desk, then stood up to hug me on my way out.

Walking home was disorienting. This wasn’t the past I remembered anymore. It wasn’t even the past I remembered remembering. In what way could this path possibly lead back to the future Celeste came from?

I cut through the big abandoned lot to give me more time to wander. The gravelly dirt crunched under my feet as I slowly perused the area. There used to be a plant nursery here, but now it was just a fenced-in area with an abandoned shed in it. Nobody was around, really, though I felt li I was being watched. I stopped. The wind blew through the trees of the mini-golf course next door, but I could hear voices in the other direction.

“Is he gone?” A voice whispered.

Brown eyes peaked over the peeling windowsill and darted back down. “No. I think he noticed us. Shhh.”

I debated whether or not to walk over and interrupt whatever it was they were doing in there, but I had a good feeling about who I’d find. I flipped a mental coin and it came up heads.

I peered inside, careful to avoid the spider web at the top right corner of the window. Two shadowy figures hid behind a turned-over wheelbarrow. I smirked.

“How you doin’, Ocean?”

Penned 2025.11.18

Brain Curds are barely-edited fiction, poetry, or just about anything else - drafted in a day or less. Let me out. Please.

Part 61 of an experiment in progress. Refer to case logs.

The buzz of hair clippers grazed my skull. Yet again, I was in the middle of the monthly routine of shearing my head. It felt like the last time had just happened, but clumps of inch-long hair were scattered on the kitchen floor.

“Don’t move.” Dad held my head still with his hands. “Okay, look down.”

I tilted my head.

“Not that far down!” He moved my head to the position he wanted it in and drew a line on the back of my neck with the clippers.

I struggled to keep still. Maybe I was shaking.

“Do you want to be bald or are you just bad at listening? Hold still!”

It’s a good thing Dad isn’t a real barber, I thought to myself. Though at least if he was, he’d have a job. Lately, money was tight, so he insisted on not paying other people to do what he could do for free. I just wish he knew how to do something other than this.

The whirring stopped and he shoved a mirror in my face. “Pretty good, huh?”

“… Yeah…” It was the same as it was last month, and the month before that. I looked like a fuzzy bowling ball. I got up to go shower and get the itchy hair off, but unfortunately someone was already in there.

“Yikes! Occupied!” A high pitched voice escaped the cracked-open door before it shut. That was Genevieve, merely the latest of many roommates we’d been forced to take on. Dad moved into my room and she got the living room. I had no privacy anymore, so it was just as well that I got rid of the clothes I kept under my bed.

Through some sort of covert accounting, Dad managed to pay our rent with what Genevieve paid for the living room, and usually there was some left over. I figured that was adequate payment, given how much she stunk up the place - not just with her decaying rose perfume, but her wilted lily personality. She was the human equivalent of a large wine glass screen printed to read, ‘I’ll Just Have ONE Drink.’ The walls were covered in her spray-tan handprints, left behind in the course of maintaining her balance.

At least she had a job, though. Dad didn’t seem especially interested in trying to get one anymore. He decided he was fed up with the ‘rat race’ and would rather find some other way to make his money. He split his time between making YouTube videos and selling cheap crap on eBay. Neither looked especially lucrative. I managed to avoid getting pulled into his vortex until summer, when he finally came clean to me that if we didn’t find a way to make money, we were going to be evicted from the apartment I grew up in.

“I’ve tried everything, Trevor. You’re my only hope. I know if we work together, we can do this.”

So, that was how I spent my summer vacation: learning how to drop-ship counterfeit merchandise from a Chinese website. In other words, scamming and up-charging. In his words, ‘running a business.’

By the nature of drop-shipping, we never had our hands on the product unless we were sampling it or got it back as a return. Everything was shipped directly from a warehouse in China. But by the second month, we had a lot more inventory than we could handle. It turned out nobody wanted fake earbuds, or knock-off iPhones, or cheap jewelry made out of rust. We had to hold a yard sale, in the end. And with these ‘goods’ right in front of them, our customers decided they weren’t interested. All we managed to sell was a lamp.

“I’m sure you two will think of something, Michael.” Genevieve nursed a cosmopolitan. “You’ve always scraped by.”

He crossed his arms. “It might help if you paid your rent.”

She disagreed and they got into a fight. She decided to leave and we recaptured the living room for ourselves, though the whole place was such a mess that Dad kept sleeping in my room anyway. Home felt empty and crowded at the same time, and there was no place else to go.

Penned 2025.06.26