Split House

Everyone called Elloise mad when she insisted on taking half of everything during her divorce from her husband Earl. Half of everything isn't uncommon, half the money, half the possessions, and in these respects, she was reasonable. She took half the books, half the dishes. She took one of their two dogs. With singular items, however, her madness showed. They had only one house, and she wanted half of it. Earl proposed they sell the house and split the proceeds, but Elloise was not satisfied. She wanted half the house. He protested, but she ignored him and took a chainsaw to the walls. In the end, she had half a house. She was crazy, they would say, certifiably nuts. Then one day, she met a divorced man named Ray who also owned half a house. They talked, they fell madly in love, and with a little carpentry, they were able to make a new house out of their two literal broken homes. The neighbors agreed, theirs was a relationship of pure insanity, but all relationships and all people have their insanity, and as Elloise and Ray would say, love is finding the crazy that matches your own. 

Originally mailed to J. Dunn from d'Iberville, Mississippi

Planning Purgatory

The Industrial Revolution played havoc on God's civil engineers. Oh sure, Heaven and Hell were always pretty easy to organize. The people in Heaven were always treated like kings only much much better, and Hell was set up to treat its residents like some combination of prisoners and peasants, only worse. That way everyone felt appropriately awarded or punished. Purgatory, post Industrial Revolution, however, was a nightmare. It used to just be luke warm gruel and a typical day in the fields for the poor and for the wealthy a calf that was kind of fatted followed by a jester who had a couple of good jokes, but were all pretty obvious. Differences between men and women, the quality of tavern food, and complaints about work. With the rise of the middle class, and then further, the striation of the upper, middle, and lower classes into their own self contained upper middle and lower classes and the number of purgatories that God's civil engineers had to coordinate became a hydra to slay, for each slice of the population had to have an afterlife carefully blanded to their own life experiences. A hundred tv channels was a perfectly fine purgatory for the lower-middle class, but was practically heaven to the upper-lower. Supermarket beef wellington and chicken cordon bleu for dinner each night was hell for the lower-upper class, heaven for the middle-middle, but perfectly so-so for the upper-middle. Purgatory's designers breathed a sigh of relieve that at least a long work day with stupid co-workers stayed consistent through each level. After carefully constructing the Nine Circles of Purgatory, funding for the afterlife skyrocketed. Too many special orders, too many administrators. “Maybe it would save us money,” the engineers said to God one day after a budget cutting meeting, “if we just re-widened the gap between the rich and everyone else like the good old days.”

- Originally mailed to M.J. Navoy in Picayune, Mississippi

Tin Men

Once a beloved but clumsy wood cutter, the Tin Man had become a monster since he took control of the forest in a bloody coup. People dreaded the coming of his “justice” which fell upon them as quickly as the blade of his axe. He was a heartless tyrant who cared nothing for his subjects. There were attempts to overthrow him, but most weapons the poor peasants could fashion deflected effortlessly off his metal body, and they learned soon enough that the few that could puncture his iron hyde did nothing, for the Tin Man was as hollow as he was heartless, a foul ghost trapped in an empty metal suit. So great a dissatisfaction cannot go unaddressed, however, and though they dared not speak their thoughts aloud for fear of his axe and they could no more assassinate him than change his mind, they resorted to an anonymous protest, crafting men of tin cans and leaving them hanging from the trees of the forest and the poles in town.

- Originally mailed to J. Cox of New Orleans, Louisiana

Zombie Training

“Be ready, son,” my father would always tell me, growing up. “The zombie apocalypse could happen at any time.”

All fathers have their obsessions. Sports. Model trains. Grilling. His was zombies. At bed time, he would tell me stories of people planning and surviving, or not planning and dying, stories of people keeping a level head and surviving and people panicking and dying. Every night, he would give me the adventures of Goofus and Gallant: Undead Nightmare edition. While other boys' dads taught them to catch a ball, mine taught me to make a headshot from fifty yards with a pull string, compound, composite, and cross bow. He taught me wilderness survival and took me camping the way many fathers in rural areas did, but the advice was different. Sleep in a tree so Zed can't get you. Walk in the stream so Zed can smell you. Don't use guns unless you have to. Guns are loud, and will attract Zed.

At seven, just in case, he gave me an air pistol and would randomly stick targets in unexpected places to keep me on my toes, and at ten, he gave me a real pistol, taught me to shoot just in case (a bow simply will not do you any good within striking distance). I learned to strip and clean my gun blind, learned to make my own ammo. My friends called him weird. So did I when I hit my teens.

But to this day, every time I step outside the cabin and put an arrow through one of their heads before I even consciously realize one was shambling toward me, I say a little prayer of thanks for everything he taught me.

- Originally mailed to P. Walker in Diamondhead, Mississippi

Getting Rid of Fairies

Terrance's bathroom had a serious fairy infestation. He couldn't turn on the lights without seeing them flock to the mirror to primp and preen and admire their wings. They would take the caps off of his toothpaste to use as cups. They would destroy his cotton swabs to make dapper walking canes, even though they rarely walked. They would hack his wash clothes and hand towels to ribbons to make dresses and they would use his lotions to, well, to moisturize their skin, which wasn't weird so much as annoying, because that lotion was his, darn it. He considered hiring the Ghostbusters to deal with his infestation, but the cost of supernatural pest removal, even pint sized sprites like these pixies was cost prohibitive on his retail cashier salary. Thinking himself a clever man, he fashioned a “Protected by Ghostbusters” sign and ensured their commercials ran continually throughout the day to discourage the tiny menaces. His plan failed miserably, however, because it hinged upon one tiny logical flaw, one reasonable assumption that as it turned out was completely false. He assumed if he put up the warning sign and played the commercials, they would be fearful and leave, but he assumed wrong. What he should have assumed when dealing with fairies is that they do not care in the least about anything he does.

- Originally mailed to A. Perkins in Metarie, Louisiana

Wrestling Flies

Phinneas, the current world heavyweight fly wrestling champion, pinned Hector “the Nectar Protector” to the mat and went in for the Pinned Wing submission hold, only recently taken off the banned move list and only then due to a clerical error. Hector buzzed in rage and spun hard, trying to shake his opponent free so he could fly to a better vantage and swoop in for the pin. Phinneas clung tight and spun with him, throwing the Nectar Protector off balance. Things weren't looking good for the underdog and people's champ. That's when Hector had his brilliant idea. Dragging Phinneas on his back, he charged for the edge of the mat. The rules said they couldn't be outside the ring for more than ten seconds without being disqualified, but that was plenty of time. He dove off the edge. With Phinneas pinning his wings, he couldn't fly, but if his opponent kept him in that hold, neither could Phinneas. It was a dangerous game of chicken they were playing as they plummeted to the floor. At the last second, Phinneas broke free, and Hector, who always made in aerial precision what he lacked size zipped in like a bullet toward Phinneas, who blinked first and changed course to avoid a head on impact. Hector used the moment to pull an immelmann turn and come in square on Phinneas. Inches above the table, Hector latched on to his opponent's wings and put him into the dreaded Pinned Wing. They both crashed, but at such a low altitude, Phinneas took the brunt of the crash, and Hector, triumphant, held the pin for the full ten seconds. He had done it. Hector the Nectar Protector was the new world heavyweight fly wrestling champion.

- Originally mailed to J. Germany of Biloxi, MS

Hidden Style

You would never know it to look at the guy, but Hansel Feinstein was a sharp dressed man. He kept his trouser creases so sharp they could cut. He coordinated his various ensembles like a special forces surgical strike. He had no fewer than fifty sets of cufflinks for every occasion and he kept a man on retainer just to keep his closet of shoes, from loafers to wing tips and every other piece of footwear imaginable, polished and ready to go at a moment's notice. He had closet after walk in closet dedicated to shirts alone with every possible attractive combination of cut, cloth, and color. His suit guy was so talented, Italian tailors imported from him. Hansel was a clothing god.

But it never did any good. His silk double breasted charcoal pinstripe, a textile work of art, never swayed a single negotiation, though its very appearance could make the hardest CEO yield to anything. His two-tone zoot suit with the white gold and pearl buttons could make the most chaste women chase him, but they never had a chance to, for they never saw it. Hansel's drive for the perfect outfit was so acute that though he wore his exquisite clothes constantly, he could never reveal them for fear that a touch of dust here or the wrong lighting there might ruin the effect and present him in an unrivaled but still inferior light. And so the world's best dresser walked the earth in a protective plastic suit, no one ever the wiser at the immaculate clothing hidden beneath that sixteenth of an inch of yellow vinyl.

- Originally mailed to J. Womack in Brooklyn, New York

The Crystal Skull

Spencer Escobar always held a keen fascination with the legend of the crystal skulls of ancient Mesoamerica. He wondered at their mystical powers and arcane origins. He pondered their purpose and delved deep into the recesses of the internet for any facts, theories, rumors, or gossip he could find about them. So devoted was he to the crystal skulls that he visited every known collection and exhibit, drank only Crystal Skull vodka. He even saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls more than once and swore up and down to any who would listen that the movie was actually good, making him the only person on record to do either. No scientific evidence or analysis could persuade him. Crafting techniques were too modern? Made by a now extinct advanced civilization. Materials were from the wrong part of the world? Aliens aren't concerned about oceans. Dating techniques revealed they were made in the 19^th century? What a mystery! The ancients who made it could have been time travelers, or used some other yet unknown technique! He refused to have his beliefs debunked. His biggest wish was to one day discover a crystal skull of his own. Then he could prove they were not fraudulent, as he would know his was no forgery but a real authentic piece of legend. As it happened, he found himself at a Halloween party, and there in the punch bowl, he saw one, laying among the red mix of fruit juice and rum. He rushed home to get a proper case, something that would keep the skull safe from damage or theft, something that would let the world know this was his find and they should not touch it. Naturally, he had planned for such a find years ago, but alas, when he returned to the party, the skull was gone. His only clue as to who had stolen it was the punch itself, which was a bit more watered down than when he had left.

- Originally mailed to J. Lawrence in Roseland, New South Wales, Australia

The Fire Demon

The young fire demon had been very good that year, or so she told her parents. She ate up all her fuel. She started several notable fires, including one three alarm blaze. She had even begun to learn to fight other fires using only herself. She had, by all accounts, been a very good fire demon and thus, she deserved a very special treat on Burning Night, the evening of the first cold snap of the harvest when all the fireplaces around town got their first good blazes since the previous winter. All she wanted was a riding log of her very own, perhaps some white oak or hickory that would burn hot and last a long time.

A week before Burning Night, a great rain came, and a fire the young demon had worked so hard to start went out with a splash and a sizzle. Dejected, the young demon hung her head in shame, knowing that with such a complete failure to get a good burn going she would have a very dull holiday indeed.

And then, to her surprise when she rose with the moon on that first cold snap in November, she saw such bounty in the fireplace that she could scarcely believe her eyes. A whole fire pit full of every type of log imaginable, from maple to dogwood, and ash and birch and pecan. All night long and well into the afternoon the following day, she danced from one log to the next, riding away and glowing bright with each new bit of wood. She had never been happier.

- Originally mailed to D. Murphey from Ocean Springs, Mississippi

Gourmet T-Rex

“Falafel” Tim shouted as he lunged through the dense foliage of the park. “Gimme, gimme, gimme!”

Alas, Esmerelda Marcos, who at that time was enjoying the very falafel Tim smelled, did not speak dinosaur, so all she heard was a terrifying roar and the thunderous sound of dinosaur footfalls slamming against the jungle floor. Naturally, she ran, taking her food with her.

Dejected, Tim trudged back into the forest, once again deprived of a good meal. Being an epicurean T-Rex was harder than one might imagine. He had no money with which to purchase funnel cakes and curries and fine wines and his tiny hands could neither pull discarded plates of kung pao chicken from trash bins nor lift them to his mouth if he wanted to. For the unfortunate circumstances of his birth, being a fifteen foot tall seven ton giant lizard with a reputation for brutal carnage, he would never know the joy of fois gras, beef wellington, or chicken cordon bleu.

It was disheartening, he was so hungry. Alas. At least he could always count on the staff of the island park to provide him with veal tartare, even if it was lacking in spices and he had to mince the meat with his own teeth.

- Originally mailed to S. Gill of Ocean Springs, Mississippi

Plush Godfather

Gertrude ruled Bed Town with an iron fist, from Pillow Heights, down East and West Side to South Central. Only Cold Foot Flats where even blankets wouldn't go lay outside her dominion. She ran snuggle rackets, engaged in blanket smuggling, temperature fixing, beating pillows who refused to fluff up. She would trade favors for preferential placement on the night light side. If it was underhanded and comfy, she had a hand in it. All the plushies of Bed Town trembled before her and did as she said.

One day, a newcomer, Fluffy Bunbun rolled onto the bed with an eye toward taking the number one snuggle spot. When Gertrude saw him sitting there on the down pillow by the end table lamp, her pillow, she knew she could show no mercy, or else risk losing her once unquestioned control over the bed. In the night, when Suzy, the mayor of Bed Town, was fast asleep, Gertrude sent her boys Teddy and Mrs. Diggles to handle Fluffy Bunbun personally.

Fluffy Bunbun protested as he was torn from Suzy's sleeping arms, but they would not hear his pleas for mercy.

“Tonight, he sleeps under the bed, behind the clothes Suzy hid from her mother,” Gertrude said, her voice as icy as the bottom side of the pillow.

“No!” cried Fluffy Bunbun. “I'll never be seen again!”

“Not until cleaning day, three whole days from now,” chuckled Gertrude. “By then, she will have forgotten how excited she was to get you, and you'll be just another toy. I control cuddle distribution in Bed Town.”

Fluffy Bunbun wanted to protest, but it was too late. He had already fallen to the floor, all but forgotten. Three days? May as well be three years when it came to six year olds.

- Originally mailed to M. Taylor in Seoul, South Korea

C-Block Scout Troop

In prison, a group of C-Block lifers sat around one afternoon lamenting their life choices. I shouldn't have robbed that bank. I shouldn't have shot that guy. I shouldn't have tried to sell five kilos of coke to that cop. Then they began to reflect farther back, to look at the decisions that led them to their various lives of crime. After tracing their way through their past, through their criminal twenties and delinquent teens, they finally reached childhood, and somewhere between talks of failed parents and bad schools, they all realized another thing they had missed out on. All of them had either been pulled from Scouts programs early or never been a Scout at all. It was a shot at redemption, they decided, but how could they do it? There weren't exactly woods in the prison yard to go camping in. That's when Inmate #54363-A, who founded a tech company and then embezzled away everything, came across the idea of telecamping. Using a CraigsList ad for a Scout Master, the band of criminals met Roger Acorn, who always wanted to be a Scout Master but had also missed his boat many years ago. Through the wonders of modern telecommunications and prison ingenuity, he taught them everything a scout should know. Navigating by the stars. Making knots with rope (made from sheets). Knife (or in this case, shiv) safety. How to build a proper tent (more sheets). They could build a fire in theory. They knew which berries to eat and how to catch a fish if they ever made their way into the world again. After earning their eagle badges, they realized they had all the tools they needed to escape prison and live as free men in the wilderness. They realized this, but they didn't do it, for they had also learned a thing or two about integrity and responsibility, and spent the rest of their lives in prison not because they had to, but because they knew they should.

- Originally mailed to D. Nichols of Cambridge, Massachusetts

The Shopping Demon

Oh the ridicule Beelzebub endured every year come late December when he haunted the halls of the uptown mall, searching for the best deals on clothes and shoes and sunglasses. The other denizens of the infernal pits would torment him for this (verbally, of course, not the blades and fire and acid sort of torment reserved for their day jobs, because who wants to take their work home for them?). Not that they had a problem with shopping. No, demons loved the infatuation people had for mindless consumption and consumerism. It was like gluttony and greed and pride and avarice all rolled into one, and on Black Friday, they could even squeeze in a little wrath. Few activities aside from genocide and DVRing Jersey Shore* could be so evil. No, they teased him for going to Christmas sales.

“I'm just shopping to over commercialize the religious holiday. Just trying to undermine the message of goodness and generosity and care for one's fellow man by spreading the enthusiasm for rampant selfishness.”

But they knew the truth. He was an amazing demon, but his shopping addiction had nothing to do with it. Sometimes a demon just wanted a stylish suit.

*Jersey Shore may not seem so evil, but it is actually a lynchpin in one of the more diabolical and secretive of Hell's nefarious schemes too complex to discuss in this post card. 

Originally mailed to M. Wilkes in Ridgeland, Mississippi

The Lost Jetpack

The Hyperion Hotel had a strict lost and found policy. A guest who left any items behind had thirty days from check-out to claim any forgotten items before they were turned over to the house keeping attendant who found it. Naturally, when Helga Oglethorpe went to clean room 208, she did her best not to get her hopes up. There in the closet was a jetpack, and not just any jetpack. This one belonged to Air Commander, Centerville's own superhero. Ever since she was a little girl, she wanted to fly, and here in her hands she had everything she needed to do so. But how could she keep it? Air Commander was her hero, the hero of millions, in fact. Without the jetpack, who was he? She placed the jetpack in a box and sealed it before turning it in to keep its contents a secret. She mulled it over as she waited the required thirty days, and when no one claimed it she took it home.

She wanted to fly it so desperately, but Air Commander needed it back. He hadn't been seen in a month. She knew his secret identity, he had checked into the hotel under the name of ace reporter Tom Hawkins. Maybe she could fly it, just once, to his house to drop it off, but no. That would reveal his secret identity if anyone saw her, and who wouldn't notice a cleaning lady flying through the air on a borrowed jetpack and landing in the lawn of a local celebrity? She thought about bringing it over in the box or calling him on the phone to let him know she had it, who knows how he would respond to discovering she knew his secret. She could mail it in an unmarked box, but he would no doubt suspect it was booby trapped and never use it anyway. She couldn't think of how to return in safely. No, she decided. The only way to get the jetpack back to him on his terms was to fly around town, using it as much as possible and wait for Air Commander to come to her.

- Originally mailed to M. Blackwood in Los Angeles, California

The Heart of a Tomato

When I was five years old, my brother used to tell me that plants have souls and feelings just like people do. I didn't believe him at first, because how can you? A plant doesn't talk.

“Does too,” he would say. “When you hear the wind whistle through the trees, that's not the wind, it's the trees.”

Plants can't move.

“Have you ever seen grass sway? Trees rocking back and forth?”

Plants can't cry. How can they be sad if they can't cry?

“You've seen sap, haven't you?”

How do you argue against that when you're five? He had an answer for everything. He even told me about plants that grab flies and plants that will move to face the sun. When I asked mom about it, she patted my head and reassured me he was only teasing me, and that grass was not sad when I walked on it because it did not, in fact, have any feelings at all. I asked her about the fly eating plants and she said they were real. I asked her about the sun chasers and she said they were real too. I asked her about how the trees howled during storms and rocked back and forth, reminding her that I howled and rocked back and forth during bad storms too.

“That's just the wind,” she said dismissively as she added beans to a simmering pot.

I asked her about tree sap, and she confessed she didn't know what purpose it served. That was how I knew my brother was right. He had answers to all of my questions, which meant he knew more than my mom.

“He's making stuff up,” she told me. “That's what brothers do. If he doesn't know the real answer, he lies so you'll think he's smart.”

I almost believed her, too, until I saw her cut a tomato in two to add to the pot. I had seen the heart of the tomato and knew my brother was right after all.

- Originally mailed to P. and D. Goff in Madison, Mississippi

The Angry Vine

The Tomicraw people had a myth about the end of the world. They believed that the gods made the world for all mankind to enjoy save for one plant, a leafy vine that kept to one tiny patch of dirt in the forest.

“Do not touch this vine, for it is a plant of anger,” warned the gods.

But people did not know what anger was, for the world was still peaceful in those days, and they did not understand the danger. Thus, when two young lovers strolled through the forest one day, mindful only of each other, they thought little when they accidentally stepped on the plant, crushing the vine to the dirt.

Though the plant brimmed with anger, it had never had an opportunity to grow until then. When it was brought low to the earth, it reached into the dirt and took hold, and this was its first runner. As the lovers returned to their village, and one tripped on the runner, and was angry at the other for not warning her, and the plant grew. And families quarreled over who was at fault, her for not looking or him for not telling, and the plant grew, and soon it had reached the fields where crops grew and overtook them, and the farmers were angry, and they looked at the fields of other farmers whose land was not blighted, and from their anger grew envy, and in the night, as their babies cried for hunger, desperation grew, and from that grew theft, and the vine grew. In the morning the other farmers rose and saw what had happened, and they too became angry at the first for bringing the vines to the edge of their lands, and from their anger grew hate, and from their hate grew violence, and violence grew to war, and all the while, the vine spread, covering everything in its path.

The world, the Tomicraw said, would end when the vine finally covered the world completely. Scientists laughed until the vine spread and began choking out native plant species, which disrupted entire ecosystems leaving only vines in their wake. And they were angry at the Tomicraw for not warning them sooner. And the vine grew.

- Originally mailed to P. Mathis in Hattiesburg, Mississippi

Cool Cops

The Marion County Police Department, in an effort to improve their approval ratings among the key 18-35 demographic began to bust into parties not to break them up, but to crash them. At first, their efforts met with failure. After all, most parties, or at least most good parties, see people running for the hills at the first sign of those flashing lights. By the time the police made it up the drive, only two or three people remained, and only rarely were those people conscious. Still, they persisted. They made small changes to their approach . Instead of saying “Who has drugs?” they would ask “Who has some drugs?” No longer did they say the music was too loud. Rather, they would ask if the music was loud enough. They made beer runs in record time. They replaced sirens with dubstep, and suddenly instead of driving up in a cop cruiser, it's like they were a rolling rave. They carried six-packs instead of six-shooters. They learned to DJ and dance and mix drinks. They loaned out handcuffs to people feeling frisky. In the end, it worked. For the first time in history, police had a record 89% approval rating among teens and twenty-somethings.

Excited at having succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, the police set out to use their new found influence to tell kids about the dangers of drugs, binge drinking, hooliganism, and other unsafe behaviors. These efforts failed, however, as their target audience had been told since birth not to give in to peer pressure. To prevent Operation: Cool Cops from being a total wash, the MCPD revamped their plans, and Operation: In Like Flynn resulted in the largest bust of minor drug traffickers, under aged drinkers, and drunk drivers in state history.

- Originally mailed to T. Switzer from Biloxi, Mississippi

The Good Space

Having been bound by a geis long ago, David Higgleson needed to park close to the front of wherever he went or a horrible doom would befall him, much as happened to Cuchulainn whose geasa to never eat dog meat and to always accept hospitality doomed him when he was forced to accept a dog meat dinner. But what could David do? He had wanted to see Red Eyed Monster play in concert for years, and there wasn't a parking space to be found anywhere by the time he arrived to the sold out show. Low on gas and half way through his tenth circuit around the massive parking lot, David came to a startling, life changing realization. His geis only demanded he park close to the front. It never said he needed a parking space. A two hundred dollar parking ticket, plus towing expenses was a lot better than downfall, doom, and death, he reasoned. Finding the closest spot to the doors he could, he maneuvered his car like a champ and made his way to the show.

He was not the least bit surprised when he found a parking ticket on his windshield after the concert, for such was the trade off for staying alive. He was, however, a little pleased with the note written by the cop who left the ticket, in which he praised David for parallel parking between those two trees like a real pro.

- Originally mailed to J. St. John of Picayune, Mississippi

Easy Paleontology

Bill had always wanted to be a paleontologist, but everyone told him it was backbreaking work fraught with disappointment. He'd heard bone diggers complain all the time about researching dig sites, breaking out the picks and shovels, chipping away ever so carefully through layer after layer of rock all on the hopes that they might find some fossil, which they would have to painstakingly excavate over the course of weeks, months, or sometimes longer. They would complain about the risks of shipping the fossils back to universities and museums. They shared horror stories of bones being damaged or lost all together, of skeletons being assembled incorrectly.

He never found it to be particularly difficult. In his experience, skeletons could most reliably be found in museums, particularly natural history museums and children's museums. Often times, there next to the other skeletons that paleontologists had labored for months and years over, he would find a wood frame, already pre-gridded, brushes waiting, and without fail beneath a thin layer of sand, dinosaur bones. He didn't even have to ship them. They were already in the museum. He just brushed aside the dirt and called the display complete before setting off for another museum in another city to do the work others said was so hard. He could do several complete digs in a week.

“Paleontology isn't hard at all,” he would say as he dusted off the dirt of his second skeleton of the day, conveniently located on the fourth floor of the Orlando Science Center. “Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.”

- Originally mailed to S. Johnson in Lafayette, Indiana

Super Model Dinosaurs

Life as a super model was almost everything Edmont and Cera had ever wanted. The work was easy. They went to the gallery and posed from sun up to sun down, while everyone, men, women, and children, fawned over them and took their pictures. Their pictures beamed, bright and glossy on billboards and magazine covers and promotional items for their managing museum. People came from all over the world to see them. They were magnificent, and they knew it.

It wasn't all sunshine and roses, however. They didn't get to travel as much as they would like. They didn't get to travel at all, in fact. They would never see Paris or New York or Milan. They would never share the Fashion Week runways. They never got to wear the best designers. For that matter, they never got to wear anything at all. They were only ever hired for nude work, and some days it took all they had not to feel degraded. Most of all, however, they disliked the diets. It was not uncommon for models of their fame to look emaciated, but for fear of being replaced, Edmont and Cera felt compelled to eat so little as to remain down right skeletal.

Still, they were stars. It had taken a long time—sixty-five million years to be precise—but they were finally famous.

- Originally mailed to P. Wilkinson from Vancleave, Mississippi