Tomorrow...

Genre: Fiction
Inspiration: Enlightenment

Gordon had been waiting for "tomorrow" for the better part of seven months now. Not tomorrow, as in the day after today, but "tomorrow"; a concept, or premise that was meant to be the day after "today" but never seemed to materialize. The "tomorrow" Gordon waited for promised more than "today" (which is yesterday's tomorrow), ever managed to deliver.

The tomorrow he waited for was promised seven months ago by a powerful and odorous Psychic; Madam Consuela. Consuela - in addition to a glandular problem which made her smell like a meat locker 4 days after a summer power outage -had powers of insight beyond regular comprehension. She had told Gordon that "tomorrow" would be the day that everything became clear to him - murky rivers of thought would be as clear as mountain springs, gloomy skies of reflection would be upper-atmospheric in their crispness, and cataract obscured logical conflict would be laser corrected to 20/20 hawk-eyedness. Aside from the astute and richly imaged metaphorical prophesy, Gordon's epiphany came from never having realized that he was quite that stupid. He'd only gone to see Madam Consuela because his friend Arnold had told him that her stench exceeded that of any creature (alive, or dead and bloated on steaming asphalt). Experience the stench he did, but he never expected to be enlightened... furthermore, to find that all of this time he'd been crippled by a lack of clarity was icing on the cake.

So Gordon had been waiting with baited breath. Since seeing Consuela he had actually become quite frustrated with the degree of his stupidity and was eager to shake it. Seven months later; today, the day on which he'd payed the very last installment on the prophecy which by sheer coincidence had cost exactly the amount of his life-savings, he was certain that tomorrow was the "tomorrow" he was waiting for.

The Farm

$1,000 for the first person to find the chicken in this drawing....

Right.

Genre: Fiction
Inspiration: Case study

Jen wasn't a model of consideration. Because of this it wasn't news to her that various people preferred not to spend much time with her, but she blamed them; they were too lazy to make the emotional commitment it took to better themselves in the ways Jen saw necessary. The difficulty was that she wanted to be around them - around anyone. In the company of others, it became abundantly clear to Jen that what others would perceive as failures in her life were entirely out of her control.

For example: last week she had been shopping with Martina - a co-worker that she had befriended and her phone rang while they perused the selection at Town Shoes. While silently judging the awful pumps that Martina was trying on, and secretly hoping that she would buy them so that everyone in the office would see how fat they made her legs look, she snagged the phone from her purse and answered. Answering was a mistake as it turns out - Stephen, who she had been seeing for 4 months had reached the end of his rope that morning when he found a bag of potato chips he'd bought in the garbage, unopened. The call was abrupt and to the point. After learning where to shove her "controlling, ego maniacal self-centeredness" Jen hung up in arrogant disgust but felt slightly warmer as she saw Martina paying for the shoes. It was a small victory considering Martina's choice to browse the upstairs section instead of in the basement had caused Jen cell phone signal to stay in tact and therefore resulted directly in her current emotional distress. She made a note to punish Martina further. If she had been able to avoid the call she was confident that she would have avoided the breakup through careful manipulation of Stephen.

It wasn't the end of the world she convinced herself (again); Stephen was a pig. He had the foundation of a strong and worthy partner but chose to poison his soul with trans-fats and charitable notions. With no patience for those sorts of endeavors - she understood the notions, but execution was never practical as part of a desirable lifestyle - Jen had immediately set out to adjust Stephen's perspectives (as she had done with others many times before). She had begun to suspect over the last few weeks that Stephen's constitution was too weak for her reforms, and that day he had confirmed it for her. Just as well.

Jen had never imagined her future as her present had manifested itself. It was a failing of humanity and community that every potential companion in her midst fell so drastically short of her exacting standards. There was no question of reasonableness; as a successful, beautiful, well adjusted psychologist of 47 she knew she was better qualified to judge.