“He left a note.”

“What does it say?”

“It says, ‘They’re gonna tell you that they found me, and that I am dead, but don’t believe them, even if they show you a body.’”

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If you’ve spent any amount of time talking to me, (and I mean any amount – I open conversations with strangers by bringing this up) you know that I’m pretty obsessed with the hyper-realistic face mask technology utilized by the CIA.

I’m also pretty sure this is where George R.R. Martin got his inspiration for ASoIaF’s “Faceless Men.” The thing is, though, this is real and not actually magic. People would be freaked out if the government confirmed the Federal Reserve Bank sent lieutenants out to enforce its will, using face stealing magical murderers, but nobody cares if intel agencies wield a similar but somewhat more mundane version of this ability.

Well… if you acknowledge that this tech exists, then its potential uses are enormous. You could use the masks for the purposes for which the CIA openly admits to using them – namely to allow spies to hide when cornered in a tight spot. But a little creative thinking opens up other possible uses, too. If you’re thinking altruistically, you could give burn victims their old face back – in a manner of speaking, anyway. You could use them to create a wider range of body double options for famous people. A nefarious group could use a person’s face, on someone else, to outright replace that person if he/she is becoming inconvenient. (I assume this is cheaper and more effective than cloning people.) You could put one of these masks on a dead body and convince even a person’s loved ones that he/she died, when in reality they just buried a mask of their loved one’s face on some other person’s body. (Maybe in that scenario their loved one is permanently off the grid of society now, for one reason or another.)

We know this technology exists. Yet almost nobody builds the knowledge into how they view what might be happening around them, in the world. Maybe it’s just easier to take what we see at face value, even if we know that it might be false. You probably can’t convince your friends and loved ones to switch from handshakes and hugs to pulling on each other’s noses, as a greeting, to make sure nobody is someone else in disguise.

Ryan Brown’s vibrating cell phone wakes him up with over fifty notifications, all of them asking if he is okay, and nearly all relaying that they saw a story on the news about someone with his name jumping from the Brooklyn Bridge late the previous night.

Ryan is quite shaken, though, and far from “okay.” He distinctly remembers jumping and has no idea how or why he is back in his apartment this morning.

_________________________________

You sometimes hear people say that it would be fun to attend your own funeral, just to see who shows up, how people react, etc. I guess this story is kind of an adjacent idea.

About 20 years ago, someone who shared my name and age died in a relatively well-publicized car accident just outside of my hometown. Quite a few people reached out both to me and also to my parents. All of that produced a strange mix of emotions, assuring people that I was fine and being touched that they reached out. You don’t always know how many people care about you.

A couple of months ago, I saw a story on the news about a woman who was planning to jump off a bridge, only to be talked back by Jon Bon Jovi. That real story seems almost as incredible as my fake one. I don’t know if there’s a celebrity I’d most want to see in my darkest moment, but it would be hard to top Bon Jovi under those circumstances.

If you ever have self-harming thoughts, please reach out and talk to someone.

Suicide Hotlines in The United States

The waves crashed into my legs, almost knocking me over, but I righted myself and continued staring out at the endless blue water. Of all the ways I might have died, doing it alone on an island, thousands of miles from another living soul, was not a fate I had ever contemplated.

“On the bright side,” I thought, turning back toward the island, “I do have all of these dead people to keep me company.”

_______________________

Mike saw that the cute barista who had smiled at him, and filled up his to-go coffee cup, had also drawn a little heart next to where she had written his name. This small gesture led to what became an almost daily ritual of stopping by her counter on the way to his office and purchasing a small heart on a to-go cup filled with coffee.

After a few days of these early morning visits, Mike noticed that the stranger in front of him in line picked up a cup signed “Dave ❤️” – an observation which led to a marked decrease in his morning caffeine intake thereafter.

__________________________

It is amazing how small gestures can sometimes redirect behavior in large ways. It is also amazing how much it can sting to realize that a small gesture is, in fact, small.

While running his fingers down the middle of his back, looking for the exact origin point of his nagging ache, and intending to dig his thumb into the muscle there, Walter’s fingers feel a small lump of tissue just to the left side of his spine.

He freezes, and suddenly a rush of recent memories flood into his mind, including an odd morning two days prior when his left leg had been numb upon waking.

He then considers whether he should ask his wife to look at the spot or if he should visit the doctor first, alone, to have it looked at, just in case it turns out to be nothing.

I once had a pilar cyst (not a big deal, as I later found out) on my back, that I discovered in this manner. In my case, I asked about it and was told it had always been there. I’d just somehow never noticed it because it’s hard to get a really good accounting of what’s happening in the middle of my back, you know?

It’s weird to think that lumps of tissue, growing where they shouldn’t, should be so scary. And yet…

It’s also interesting how open you can become (or not become) regarding your own body and its oddities while in a long term relationship. Depending on the circumstances, that openness might shift strongly in one direction, or the other, even between the same two people. Eventually, even in the best of cases, your body stops working properly and you cannot really hide that fact. The best person to help is the one you are with the most. Yet it’s also true that the person you are with most often can be the most impacted by those changes. Your “lump of tissue” is to a great extent theirs, too. Your bad news is their bad news.

I guess the alternative is for people to hide their injuries and then once sufficiently sick, to wander off somewhere alone to pass away. That’s a rather bleak thought.

Originally published April 15, 2022

“This is a beautiful old car and you’ve taken great care of it, so do you mind me asking why you’re selling it?”

“To be honest, I don’t want to,” the old man began “but my kids are telling me it’s time, I don’t want to fight with them about it anymore, and God help me if something ever happens to prove them right.”

I had a lot of feelings about his answer and the look in his eyes when he gave it, and I wanted to tell him I was sorry, but instead I just said that I was thankful to be the lucky guy he is selling it to, before handing him a check, wishing him well, and driving away.

If we are very lucky, most of us will eventually end up on both sides of this type of exchange. Of course, it does not feel like luck, for most people, to be on the latter end.

Writing this story was a bit like “adventures in compound sentences” to get it in under the limit, but I think it worked even if it also feels like I cheated.