We always had the best Christmas display on the block - in our neighborhood, really; some folks even said in the whole town, but we tried not to be prideful about it. Every year I looked forward to it, and every year we topped the year before. Until dad died in mid-December with the whole house set up, blinking and shining like the second coming. We could never bring ourselves to take it down, and it stayed there year-round until we sold the house a decade later, decked out for Christmas in August. As far as I know it still is.

Ben didn’t remember having been this angry about anything in a long time - and this was nothing, a little misunderstanding, a few bucks, when he had friends who’d had their bank accounts hacked and hit and runs (hits and runs?) - this was nothing at all compared to that, but he had this tightness in his chest, and his heart was racing and he really couldn’t remember having been this mad before and now he was repeating himself, his brain going in circles over some stupid misunderstanding and a few bucks which was nothing in comparison, but he really couldn’t remember.

This was a big day for somebody. I spent most of the day at work - sent some e-mails, watched some amusing videos and such. After work I got a beer, or went home and ate spaghetti, or I bought some beers and brought them home and drank them while I ate spaghetti. It was basically an average, forgettable day for me, but I like to imagine how for somebody it was a big day. Maybe they got in a fight, or their friend died, or they lost a finger in a terrible accident, but they’ll remember this bullshit day forever.

There never were dragons; of that we can be fairly certain. No, forget ‘fairly’; we are certain. After decades of study, millions of pages read, tons of earth moved, and tens of thousands of miles traveled, I can finally say this with certainty: There have been many fantastical, impressive, and unexplained beasts and many confused, terrified, and delusional people, but never has a single dragon roamed the earth. But when I am faced with the bright, wide-open eyes of a small child in the thrall of a Chinese restaurant horoscope, I will deny it to the ends of the earth.

There came a time when every song that could be written had been written. There were still singers and those who called themselves writers, but everyone who tried to write a new song, no matter how much time or effort they put into it, ended up writing the same song. We called it The Last Song, and though we did not love it, we had heard it many times and knew it by heart. The Last Song was the bane of our people, despised and ubiquitous. Like a virus it reproduced itself and sapped our strength, and we sang along.

Our neighbor was odd. He was independently wealthy (rumor had it he had invented the Chip Clip) and generally reclusive - he never seemed to have guests over, and hardly ever left his house - but from on occasion he would grab one of us on our way to the mailbox or whatever and talk our ear off about politics or TV or animal welfare (rumor also had it that he had a lot of animals in his back yard). Next time you saw him he’d just look right through you and duck inside his house. I tended to prefer those times.

I can’t feel my toes. They told me these boots would require some adjustment, that there would be a “breaking in period” (though now that I think of it they never said what it was that would be broken in, the boots or my toes), but it’s been a long time - it feels like a long time, anyway - and the only thing that’s changed is that where my toes used to be in excruciating pain, now I can’t feel them at all. So maybe that’s it; maybe these boots have been molding me and I am finally, completely, broken in.

I’ve had this awful feeling all day. Last week I told someone that I was busy tonight, and now the day has arrived and for the life of me I can’t remember what I thought I was busy with. Was I meeting someone? Going somewhere?maybe trying some new activity, like swing dancing? Perhaps there was some influential person I’d been trying to meet with for months, and I finally got a meeting and remembered it only long enough to tell someone else I had plans, but not enough to put it on my calendar. Or maybe it was laundry night.

I wrote our story on a grain of rice, and then I lost it. It took four years to learn how to write on a grain of rice. I wrote the story in six months. I then realized I couldn’t yet write small enough to fit the story on a grain of rice, so I studied for another five years before I could do it. The actual inscription took a mere three months; I guess I should have known not to work near an open bag of rice. On the bright side, I haven’t seen her in a decade anyway.

The children came in large pine chests, packed in ice and wood shavings. We’d never seen children before, certainly never had them in our house. It appeared there might once have been some instructions pasted to the chests, but they must have been lost, scraped off in transit. After several days they thawed out completely and started moving around the house on their own. We didn’t know what to do for them. We hadn’t requested them, but they were here now and we knew we had to keep them. They cleaned up the wood and melted ice while we deliberated.