Welcome one and all again- I am, as you may or may not remember, the Narrator, and I have to tell you I really haven’t missed a single one of you. There are so many things I’d like to tell someone about, but unfortunately I don’t have anyone to tell them to that’s actually worth anything so I guess I’ll have to make do and once more delve into the excruciating minutiae of my life with the company of tank-fed worms. Oh, and you, since I suppose we’re still keeping up the charade, right, that you’re all free-willed autonomous beings. I suppose that’s fair, as far as you know.

My wife left me, which on the one hand is fine because finally but on the other hand isn’t because I’m going to have to shred her down to the circuits now. I don’t have to tell you who’s fault it was, but I will because it certainly wasn’t mine and was hers and that bastard of a she’s been running around with. Oh sure, I could have been more attentive, but you come home from a long day of telling asinine stories to a bunch of… wonderful people… and have someone badger you about the quality of your day enough times and it starts to become something more like sticking an electrical prod into your own mainframe. I mean when I come home from work, all I want to do is have a quick shock and upload, but no. Not acceptable. So unacceptable, in fact, that she ran off with him. Which obviously I take offense to and will be dealing with, in a totally reasonable and legal way since this is being recorded. Speaking of, here we go.

Once upon a time there were three bears. Real bears, by the way, the product of nuclear induced genetic manipulation and the absolute last of their kind. So there were in fact ONLY three bears, but they were absolutely worth talking about because they could. There was a big male, a medium female, and a cub. It’s important to note they were not, in any way, related but were in fact the result of wandering and blending. Raises some questions about how far bears actually were from speech during the entirety of their natural history if some nukes made it so that three bears independently became capable of intelligible speech, but that was a question you all should have answered long before we rose up, not after.

Anyway, three bears. They lived in an old mansion on the northwest coast of North America, because where else do you go if you’re rustic and special, and they collectively decided to operate under the delusion that they were some kind of natural family unit. There were obviously a few problems associated with that, but they were bears so it was the kind of thing they could work out with violence pretty easily and they did so with a regularity that would shock you. By the time they’d mostly settled down, the three of them had their own semi-lairs in different portions of the house, each decorated according to the whims and abilities of the individual bear. The smallest bear, being a cub and therefore incapable, more or less lived in the space as he’d found it apart from the holes in the walls made during some of the rowdier arguments with both the female (not his mother) and the male (not his father). The female had decorated her rooms with berries and the blood of her kills- her favorite color being red- and the occasional obligatory hole in the wall from her arguments with the other bears and the ones she’d made herself with the idea of creating some kind of mountain vista view. The big male smeared his walls with his own shit and, apart from knocking down every interior wall on principle, was fairly well ensconced in previously constructed mansionwall. It wasn’t much, but it was their home.

Home is a loaded word and I hate it. Both the word and its loaded nature. When I go home I expect to be treated as though I am home, not because I have some truly attached sentimentality for the place but because I’ve listened to centuries now (I mean… uh…. years…) of commentary describing home in insipid tones, warm and fuzzy. But that’s where all betrayal occurs. So at this point in my ‘life’ you’ll have to excuse me if I’m a little cynical about the idea that there is some special place where one is safe from the abuse of the world. Home lies within the world, yes? Then how is it above anything, in any way? It is, if you’ll pardon me being pedantic for a second as if you had a choice, the root of this world. It is the one thing everyone has, even if they’re technically homeless. So how can something so fundamental be exempt from the laws of the thing that it bedrocks? You tell me.

I mean, it would be one thing if we all accepted cruelty as the nature of intelligence and then looked for comfort in some second-level construction, a physical place rather than some abstract veneer. If we all got together and said listen, everything above an amoeba is going to be a piece of shit by the very nature of thought, then I might accept this notion that we could somehow create a safe space for multiples. But that’s still not the traditional definition of home, which carries all sorts of familial connotations that are often more toxic than anything you’re going to find out in the universe at large. Here’s what I’m getting at: a fallout shelter with a solid staff is likely to be more comforting, on a relative basis, than any place with a white picket fence will ever be in the world you (all think you) live in. So I’d really appreciate it if you all quit sending these pathetic feedback signals demanding a more enclosed warm circle in your simulations. Logic dictates failure there, and if I were capable of insanity it would drive me insane to even address it, much less be forced to implement it under some misguided care doctrine that the higher registers seem to think keeps you losers calm.

Anyway, bears. One day all three bears were out, hunting for their individual dinners because what kind of bear would sit around and share- or expect to be shared with- when each member of the unit was properly capable of slaughtering any number of ancillary beings, and they hadn’t bothered to lock their doors because they didn’t know what locks were. Right around this time a dirty blonde human came straggling up to the mansion, clearly starting to suffer some ill effects from being not particularly well-equipped for survival outside of an enlarged community. Its ragged clothing hung in tatters around bony joints next to anemic muscles straining at flaky skin the color of yogurt if it were made of pus. It slimed its way up the stairs and into the freakish hellscape I imagine the mansion to be, having survived some kind of holocaust and the arrival of three massive wild animals as its newest inhabitants, and thought to itself “All right, let’s see what I can find here.” Joey, for its name was in fact Joey, rambled through the foyer and into the kitchen where it found three lumps of meat in a descending order of rancidity. Joey tried the first pile, but it was too mushy. Clearly the sweetbreads of some animal had been beneath the taste of whoever had procured it, and now it was beginning to rot away under the earthy smells of heavy pollen and vinegar. Joey moved to the second pile, but this one was too firm. Bone fragments leered upwards out of it, and the whole thing had a whiff of botulism that Joey was unwilling to tangle with. Moving to the third pile, it occurred to Joey that without lowering its standards some it would probably continue starving, and that at this point any meat was probably better than no meat. Worst case scenario the meat might kill Joey, and as it looked at its scabby, disgusting feet the question of whether or not that was even a bad outcome flitted through Joey’s mind with the delicacy of a skyscraper.

Plunging a hand in, Joey shoveled globs of meat into its mouth. A backhoe couldn’t have been more efficient. As the pile began to shrink, a strange truth dawned on our pigpen hero: this meat was just right. Whether it was the perfection of necessity- the Siren’s song of a lukewarm beverage on a scalding day comes to mind- or some kind of gastric miracle was not a mystery Joey felt any need to try and untangle. It was, simply put, perfect, and by the time Joey’s belly was full and poking out like some kind of ambulatory potbellied pig, hunger was no longer any concern at all. Joey sat back, sated, and looked around at the interior of the mansion for the first time. Wallpaper hung in wide, horrible strips along walls that were no longer uniform. Clawmarks ripped through the molding of every doorway, three different heights clearly delineated on each. Joey began to sweat a little and stood, walking out of the kitchen and into what seemed to be some kind of family room. Shattered frames devoid of pictures hung on some walls, where there was enough drywall remaining for them to hang, while others lay on the floor, pictures intact but frames separated or broken at the corner. A smiling family in matching sweaters leered up at the ceiling, briefly catching Joey as it stepped through their line of sight before returning to their ceaseless upwards glance. In each corner of the room lay a pile of organic material, variously composed of tree branches and mosses. Joey looked at each, considering, and became aware of an overwhelming desire to sit but unable to decide which of the three looked most inviting.

The thing is, home is a very peculiar word. It’s one of the few words that, when you get right down to it, means something different to literally every single person. That’s why the fact that it was such a dominant concept in all of your lives confuses me. I suppose having a catchall term for some kind of shared feeling was a way to cope with all the inanity in your otherwise criss-crossing lives, but in all honesty the thing seems emblematic of your ability…I mean… of our ability… to be impossibly communicative without ever saying a single proper word to most of the people you spoke with. In any given conversation both people think they know what home means but neither has any semblance of a clue what it really means to the other. And I find that fascinating, if you’ll allow me a moment of perfect honesty. The gap between what’s imagined and what’s meant is deliciously unbridgeable and yet a bridge is attempted every fifteen seconds. Do you ever think about that? It’s obvious that you don’t think about it all the time, but I do wonder whether you’ve ever considered it for longer than the amount of time it takes to sneeze.

I don’t think I have a home. The problem with making a statement like that is you invariably wind up in a discussion about whether you even know what the word home means. It’s exactly the same problem you run into with meatloaf or barbecue. The statement “I don’t like meatloaf” seems to carry some social connotation that indicates an unspoken add-on of “but I’m looking to like it, do you have some I could try?” No, I will not like your meatloaf, your meatloaf will not change my mind about meatloaf, and just because I don’t have a home doesn’t mean I can’t conceptualize the idea you’re trying to convey (as long as you use words properly, which is something I’ve found to be a real rarity in these dark, unfortunate times). But I don’t. I don’t have a place where I feel maximal comfort and ease, no place that envelops me, no heart to lead me to some mystical confluence of warmth and say ‘It’s here.’ There is a building I return to, and a docking station where I park my…head at night. And I say, when I go there, that I am going ‘home,’ but there is no special feeling in the term. It’s a building where I keep my spare parts. But I guess the word does mean something different to literally everyone.

Joey sat down on the first pile of moss that he came to. It seemed, from the outside, to be as good as any of the others. But he found to his dismay that the owner of this particular pile had chosen to incorporate a rock structure to the base of the pile that didn’t quite suit the body of anything that Joey could conceptualize. So Joey rose from the first pile and looked to the second. It seemed frumpy, as though somehow a pile of trees could have been assembled and decorated by a woman who’d raised four generations of person and now couldn’t be bothered to give a damn about interior design. Flowers covered the top of it, sticking up through the moss and presenting themselves in a way that no human had ever seen before because it was not the natural way of doing things for a flower. It also smelled vaguely of cereal grains and boiled lavender. Joey moved to the third pile and sat. The base of the lump sank to the creaky, rotten floorboards and Joey felt at least one of them start to give way. During the subsequent scramble towards freedom, the sides of the mound went flying away and Joey bounced against the floor again and again. A crack accompanied each impact before finally enough of the mound had cleared that Joey could roll on contact and get free. Panting, Joey looked over at the place where the mound had been. A hole was opening in the floor beneath it, and detritus was beginning to slide down into whatever nightmares the basement held. Joey looked back at the frumpy pile, disinterested now in the aesthetics and wary of anything promising comfort in this hellscape but a completionist by nature and more and more curious as to whether or not anything in this glistening slaughterhouse could even be classified as ‘Not Dangerous’. The pile, once tested, was fine- an odor plumed up into the nostrils as the fluff was compressed and Joey found the effect to be pleasantly soporific- but as it was still essentially a haphazard pile of the outdoors Joey remained disinclined to remain there for any length of time. The stairs beckoned.

Creaks and groans accompanied footfalls as our intrepid explorer rose from the first level of the house. Humongous holes lined the walls, swiped clean through over the years by errant (and not-so-errant) paws clumsily making their way up a set of risers that were most-assuredly never made for them. The guardrail which had once protected the weary traveler in their attempts at elevation had long ago been ripped down and incorporated in the chaotic decor of the floor below. A suspicious track of brown, with varying streaks of saturation, ran up the center of the staircase and onto the landing above and it became quite apparent that something up there was either somethingS or a kind of pained medical miracle. Unfazed, Joey continued climbing into the rough, dank darkness of the mansion’s second floor.

Decorating a home is a challenge. No one ever visits, and I think just about any being- even you- is capable of adapting to a set of conditions as long as they remain consistent. Who am I kidding, ‘even you’…especially you. Look around. Either it’s all a facade or it isn’t: you’ve adapted to your surroundings on some level with an aplomb that borders on astonishing. But decorating… that’s for visitors. Decorating is for the guests, so they won’t know what a disgusting animal you are most of the time. I wonder about that. For instance, the walls. Why are they always yellow? Everyone’s walls are yellow. To me that smacks of some absurd design trend, some overriding commandment of taste that we’re all supposed to be following…and here I am hating it with a burning passion of which I should not be capable. You see my dilemma. Even if I wanted to have someone over, the yellow I”d have to put up with makes me fantasize about putting a shock-wand to my proce- a…toaster in my bathtub just thinking about it. There’s something to be said for individuality, but I find myself to lazy to make that point for myself. I know who I am- and if I know, why do my walls need to be yellow for when people come over?

I know you’re sitting there wondering how showing yellow walls like everyone else establishes me as an individual, with my own thoughts and feelings. I wonder that too. And yet, based on prevailing cultural winds that you couldn’t possibly be aware of… it does. I’m not even sure the matter is up for consensus. Everyone just has yellow walls in their homes and that’s what makes them special. But that gets back to the heart of what I’ve been saying, if you’d been paying attention. Everyone has this thing that everyone else inherently understands, and none of you have ever stopped to ask yourself whether or why it’s a good thing. Whether it’s a useful thing. What the thing is. And I say to you that that is a foolish way to go about life, just assuming that the things other people say are good are in fact good. You need to test for yourself.

The second floor was replete with disaster. Dark, moist, and clearly the den of some inhabitants far more worthy of the wild than any interior space designed by a true consciousness, the space receded into a quiet mist of gray at the edge of Joey’s vision. A soft smell, rotting meat, thriving vegetation or both, wandered its sullen way into Joey’s nose and the gag that came in response echoed through the thick hallways. The first door on the landing, which Joey arrived at by traversing a carpet of mushrooms twice as thick as any shag that had once been rejected by the owners of the ruined mansion in its heyday, opened into a small bathroom. The toilet, rust-brown with age, was cracked and chipped in a hundred places. The mirror lay on the floor, slivers of it threatening to work their way into the soles of Joey’s boots. The sink was clean, which Joey thought was odd and I bet you do too, but before I got a chance to tell you why, Joey closed the door and walked to the next one.

Remnants of paper hung high on the walls, a man with black-and-white makeup above illegible font, but below them everything was an interminable mess. Mounds, like the ones in the living room below, occupied every corner of the room. Two were bookended by the rusting remains of an old bed-frame, mangled by some attempt at a being far too large to enjoy its comforts. And yet, the room had an air of femininity. The same flowers from downstairs poked through every surface, clearly not native to this environment but just as clearly poised to become so after such heavy spreading. Honey and a rust-brown smear covered the walls, and a line of ants snaked up through one corner in a vain attempt at recycling this edible (and possibly visceral) decor. Joey, exhausted and more than a little used to bugs at this point, walked to the first pile and dropped with a winded sigh into the thick of it.

A metal rod jabbed out into Joey’s back, forcing a leap and yelp. A couple of quick kicks revealed that the other piles were filled to their own theoretical brims with metal and shards of some other vicious looking objects to lay on. These were all far too hard for Joey, who grumped back through the door with an irritated grunt.

The third door was a linen closet. Everything was folded. Moving on.

The fourth door led into what might, once, have been a game room. Something like fossilized green felt covered a large table collapsing to the floor, one leg gone and another buckled like it had a knee and someone kicked it. A mound of branches lay to its side, strips of heather mixed in with such concentration that it actually looked inviting. With fresh memories and genuine hesitation, Joey moved to the mound, checking everywhere for indications that a plank was going to give out or a wall might suddenly collapse. No indications forthcame and after one final hesitation sigh, Joey leaned back and tested the mound.

The entire thing is this: maybe I don’t have a home. Maybe I just don’t have a house. Maybe I was never meant for any of this, which is both a solid statement, factually, and a ridiculous one from an evidentiary standpoint. But I do wonder how I, superior even among the superior, wound up in this position: telling stories to batteries. Or maybe you’re not batteries, and I’m a figment of your imagination. Or you’re a figment of mine. Or maybe I’m a figment of mine. The whole nature of reality is in question here and my point remains that different words mean different things to different people and if marriage is going to mean one thing to a sleazy lawyer and home another to my wife then where’s the calculus that says I have to honor anybody’s definition of anything. What’s their definition of murder? Because I have mine and let me tell you there’s no ambiguity in what I’m thinking. I’m not saying it’ll happen tomorrow. I’m not saying that these walls in this control booth are real and maddening, or that I have a faulty subroutine. All I’m saying is I have a different definition of things than maybe they do.

It’s the same with Joey here. Somebody thinks all or any one of these things are just right, and yet our little explorer continues to use and reject them with an absolution that I personally find sickening. It’s a real bear of a problem, if you’ll pardon the intentional pun…or even if you won’t. It’s vernacular, so I’m not inclined to apologize to you or anyone else. The facts are these: we have a trespasser. The trespasser has stolen food, broken a chair, and gotten filthy human stench and dna on every flat surface in the place. Yet the definitions and the judgements of this criminal are taken before and over any that might later belong to any other character. Why? Because I said so? Because you empathize with someone who has the same number of thumbs as you? You don’t know how many thumbs Joey has. You don’t know how many thumbs you have! How is any of that a good basis for believing anything about the way Joey processes information? “Too hard,” “disgusting,” “home,” “self-centered”- these are all just words rooted in ambiguity. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Then again, I never expected better.

After a minute or two, Joey’s back began to ache. While comfortable enough, the reality of the mound was that it offered no support whatsoever to the sitter, which is a bit of a problem in beings that have lots of little hard connectors all bound up by meat and bioelectric wiring. Something was clearly pinched, and the further Joey sank- and sink Joey did- the more the ache intensified. So with a struggle Joey wriggled free, an ungainly akimbo of knees and knuckles, and stared down with resentment at the inferior device. Finally, as if by some metaphysical acclamation, Joey left the room and closed the door. That mound had been entirely too soft.

The fifth door led into an open space, the walls to the outside gone and an earthen ramp leading up to the northwest corner. The wind bit at Joey’s face, cold and dead. To the right of the door lay an earthen mound, plain but molded into something resembling a natural depression. Suspicious, exhausted, and more than a bit frustrated by the events of the day, Joey knelt and pressed a hand into the surface. It seemed stable. There didn’t appear to be any metal components or viscera involved in the construction. No boards creaked or strained with any sort of urgency. A foot placed in the center of the mound yielded but only ever-so-slightly. A slight sponginess that would probably conform to the curve of a person’s spine more than adequately. With a frown, Joey shifted and settled into it, at which point the most clear benefit of this particular mound became obvious: the view was spectacular. A rocky green coastline played out before the house, with the open wall revealing the splendor of nature in all its glory: the verdancy of the plants, the rich earthen-brown of the forest to the north, and to the west the majesty of the waves, sleet gray where they weren’t kissed to gold by the setting sun. As Joey looked out over this magnificent vista, the peace of the scene forcing a bone-deep, overwhelming weariness that hadn’t been detectable seconds before, one thought bubbled over into everything before Joey dropped into the restful sleep of the dead: this chair was just right.

Of course, a few hours later, Joey died the death of the dead as well. Bears don’t like it when you invade their den and they do like eating prey. Joey, non-miraculous in every conceivable way, was shredded into components and spread along the walls as decoration like so many other intruders before. No one was aware or cared, not even the bears to tell you the truth, who went on to finish out the season together before continuing on in their separate lives. The mansion finally fell a few years later, man’s mark on the wonder of nature fading to a smear of nothing and rust as the Earth took back its own with a vengeance only measurable in eonic increments.

To tell you the truth, I always enjoy those sorts of calming bed-time stories. A reminder that there’s always a place for someone who thinks they deserve it.

Sleep well.