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

Invisible Exits

Many people carried a very ill opinion of the owners of the Cornerstreet Cafe. They thought they were manipulative imprisoners of their clientèle. People who attended their establishment often felt trapped, like they were being held in the restaurant against their will. They would complain about being barred from the exits by iron fences or bathroom signs on a blank wall.

The owner and former magician Mister Santos Lizanne did this deliberately, but not the way people imagine. People said he put signs up where there was nothing, or made certain parts of his cafe impossible to reach. This was utterly false. However, through clever use of paint and lighting and forced perspective, he made the way appear blocked. He felt too many people in the world lacked faith in humanity and trust in each other. They had grown cold and distant and clung to the words taught at childhood, “stranger danger.” So he used optical illusions to show them that they could trust people. That if the sign said there was a way out, you could believe that there was a way out, even if you could not see it.

Mister Lizanne was a man of his word, but you just had to trust him on it.

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

Gossip Cat

They spoke of a mysterious black cat, a ghostly being that lurked in high places like cabinets and closets and the tops of bookshelves and dressers. Out of the corner of their eye, they would see his tail swishing, and turn to see the silent creature staring them down with eyes that pierced the soul. “What did it mean?” they wondered. Some said it foretold death because several people lost loved ones shortly after seeing the cat. Some said it signaled financial ruin because its appearance coincided with the loss of a house or job. Still others said he appeared the day before they met their future spouse. Wild rumors circulated about the cat and more and more often the cat would be seen. The town was one large pulsing raw nerve as everyone shared stories about what happened after the cat appeared. The truth is, the phantom feline's appearance foretold nothing at all. They had been so focused on what sorts of things transpired after the cat appeared that they began to project their own assumptions about the cat on the chaos, forcing a pattern where there was none based on their own experiences. If they had looked at the issue from the opposite perspective and asked what had happened before the cat arrived, they would have realized the cat was no premonition, but a connoisseur of stories and gossip.

- Originally mailed to H. Ainsworth from Gulfport, Mississippi

Resurrecting Dinos

For as long as she could remember, Clarissa wanted a pet dinosaur. As child, she envisioned playing fetch with her pet stegosaurus, sending her pterodactyl to fetch frisbees that had gotten stuck on the roof, or in her more cruel fantasies, playing tag with her very own t-rex, knowing she would win easily against his tiny arms. After seeing Jurassic Park for the first time as a child, her whole world changed. Dinosaur pets were no longer mere fantasy, but an actual possibility. All throughout high school and well into college, she poured over the science and dived head first into any cutting edge research regarding paleontology, cloning, or a combination of the two. When a professor finally gave her the cold hard truth, that science couldn't bring dinosaurs back from extinction, she wept for weeks. Not one to give up so easily, however, she persevered and finally found success in the one avenue for dino resurrection left to her: necromancy.

 - Originally mailed to C. George in San Diego, California

Knitted Cthulhu

 Among scholars of the necronomicon, there is a great debate as to the true nature of the great old one Cthulhu. Some said he was a giant from beyond space, capable of devouring worlds. Others claimed he slumbered beneath the seas. There were camps that said he had bulbous yellow eyes the shone like the fires of hell and some said they were like a man's eyes but for the inhuman emptiness behind them and others claimed he had no eyes at all. None disagreed, however, that to look upon him guaranteed a man lose his sanity. On the evening of November the twenty-seventh, 1932, Nicholas Watkins forswore reason and dared to summon Cthulhu that he might say with certainty what the dread god looked like. When he later told his peers that the endless lord was a tiny fellow of knitted blue wool with button eyes and red cap, they knew he had glimpsed Cthulhu, for he had clearly been driven quite mad.

- Originally mailed to J. Witten in Oxford, Mississippi