My Grandpa’s Most Important Lesson

I regret how little I remember of my grandfather. He died when I was ten, which it seems is unfortunately young enough that my memories of him are spotty. What I do remember with absolute certainty is the way he made me feel. Whenever I think of my grandpa, I feel a sense of safety and warmth, a nostalgic joy I do not feel for almost anything else. I remember how he taught me how to play Chinese Checkers and how it became a unique thing that I got to share with him separate from my siblings. I only really have one clear memory of an actual event, and it is unfortunately a sad one, but it taught me what I believe is one of the most important lessons I will ever learn.

My grandfather was diagnosed with cancer and unfortunately, his treatment was unsuccessful. My dad, his son, had sat down with me and explained to me that he was terminally ill, something I had accepted but, looking back on it now, I had not truly processed what that meant. It was not until one of the last times I saw him that I fully understood what death meant.

The visit started happily enough and I remember that I had just gotten a new toy that I was extremely excited about, so excited that I specifically wanted to visit my grandpa so I could share with him how cool it was. As I was showing it to him while we were sitting on the couch, I really took in how he looked. My grandpa had always been very athletic and he and my grandma often went biking and hiking, the results being obvious when you compared him with other men his age. However, by the time of that visit, the cancer and chemotherapy had ravaged his body leaving him frighteningly gaunt. The clothes he was wearing that once fit him looked several sizes too big. His hair was all gone, reduced to a little bit of stubble on his upper lip. But, the thing that struck me the most was how bad his hearing had gotten. I had to repeat what I said several times throughout the visit and I distinctly remember that being what truly made me realize how close to the end he was. I suddenly dropped the toy and started crying. When he asked me what was wrong, I could just barely choke out the words: “You’re gonna die”. My grandpa did not hesitate, he picked me up, held me, and let me cry. 

I know it does not seem like a very special reaction for a grandfather to comfort his crying grandchild, but in the years since I have realized just how kind this was. My grandpa was in pain and on the verge of going into hospice care, plus he had to deal with the anxiety and depression that comes with facing one’s own death. It would have been completely reasonable for him to ask that my dad or grandma handle it, but he chose to do it himself. I somehow still remember how he smelled and how he suddenly seemed to be the strongest man in the world as he told me it was going to be okay.

Everyone dies. One way or another I am going to be in that position myself and when that day comes, I want to be like my grandpa and be the one comforting my friends and family. They will have to deal with the pain I felt that day, of having to live on without someone you love. As afraid as I know I will be when that time comes, my suffering will be nearing its end, while theirs will be just beginning. My grandpa never knew what he did, but he taught me how to die with love and compassion, a lesson I hope I can impart when the time comes. While I wish I had clearer happier memories of him, I’m glad I retained the most important one.

The Unique Potential of Video Games in Storytelling

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Soul Drive: Chapter 2

Sarah could not remember the last time she had managed to sleep through the night without a nightmare, though she didn’t mind so much anymore, nightmares were just something she had gotten used to. Early on, she had been afraid to sleep, knowing that the same omnipresent horror that whispered in her ear during the day was waiting to greet her with a roar once she lost consciousness. However, one can only be subjected to terror for so long before one becomes numb to it. It still made her anxious, in the same way that someone feels apprehension when they see a spider in the corner of their room, but live with that spider long enough and you come to accept it, as long as it stays in its corner. It was nights like this that the spider left the corner, where the terror was no longer familiar, but instead hit her with something she wasn’t used to. Even worse, was her shame in the fact that the thing keeping her up was something normal people took as a minor annoyance.

“Normal people”. Sarah’s mother chastised her every time she called other people that. She didn’t want her daughter to think of herself as abnormal or fundamentally flawed, but even though Sarah always apologized and said that she knew that was not true, it didn’t change the way she thought of herself. Her mother was, unintentionally, proving Sarah’s belief every day. They had both gone through the same trauma, but for some reason, her mother had come out the other side stronger while Sarah had stayed the same woRThleSs PieceE oF cRAp ShE AlWAYS WAS.

Sarah turned over and checked her phone. 4:00 am. She still had two hours left till her alarm would sound. Instead of wasting time trying to get a good sleep that would never come, she decided to pour over her notecards again. She sat up in bed, hearing the birds chirping outside her window. She wondered how many people knew that birds woke up at four in the morning. She supposed that that was one advantage of insomnia, even if it was such a minor one. That’s what several of the self-help books on her shelf said: look for the small positives in your life.

Sarah reached over to her nightstand, turned on her lamp, and picked up a stack of notecards. She had a presentation to give today at school, in front of the entire class, Who weRe GoiNg tO SeE JUsT HoW StuPID SHE WAS!  Sarah took a deep breath and began running through the speech. She had gone over it almost constantly over the last week, trying to fine-tune her word choice and transitions. She had been assigned to explain the history of international disputes that led to the Glorious Conquest. She had everything ready, all the points laid out, the Insurrections, the Battle of the Black Crater, and the Divine King’s Ascension. All that was left was to deliver it.

She began to speak softly so as to not wake her Mother. Going through every point perfectly, she began to visualize herself giving the speech….in front of all her classmates. All those people were going to be listening, judging, and seeing HoW AWfuL ShE WAS. WHAT THE HELL WAS SHE THINKING. SHE HAD NEVER GOTTEN THROUGH A SINGLE DAY WITHOUT INCONVENIENCING SOMEONE, HER VERY EXISTENCE MADE LIFE WORSE FOR EVERYONE UNFORTUNATE ENOUGH TO BE IN HER PRESENCE!
Sarah dropped the notecards and clutched her head with both hands. 

“Stop.” she whimpered softly. 

WHY DON’T YOU STOP YOU USELESS BITCH! 

“Please,” She said louder, her fingers digging into her skull like a vice.

STOP EMBARRASSING YOURSELF IN FRONT OF EVERYONE, STOP TAKING UP THEIR VALUABLE TIME, STOP MAKING THEM WASTE THEIR LIVES ON YOU JUST TO SEE YOU FAIL.”

Sarah let out a grunt of anguish that was just a little too loud. In an instant there was a knocking on the far wall, the one shared with her Mother’s room.

“Sweety,” Her Mother called. “Is everything all right?”

This was enough to snap Sarah out of it, at least a little. She pulled her hands away from her head, only now noticing that her fingertips were bloody. She felt it now, the sting of the fresh cuts on her head that her fingernails had ripped open. Sarah used to do this all the time when she was younger, but now she only did it when she was truly stressed. If her Mom found out she was doing this again, she would worry and HaVe To WaStE MOrE TIMe On YOU. 

“I-I’m fine she said, grabbing some tissues from her side table and pressing them against her wounds. “I just had a nightmare.”

“Okay,” her Mother yawned.

Sarah felt a bit of relief when she heard the bed springs shift as her Mother settled back to sleep. She turned her focus back to the cuts, stepping out of bed and scurrying to the bathroom so she could use the mirror. Upon a quick examination, she found that the wounds were small and the bleeding minor. Her long hair would easily be able to cover it.

Sarah returned to her room and picked up the notecards. As she was gathering them together, she noticed a drop of blood on one of them. Her grip on the cards began to tighten in frustration. All she had to do today was speak in front of a class of fifteen people. It was a Friday in the last month of their last year of high school so it’s not like anyone was really going to pay much attention. Even if they did, who was going to remember, and no one was going to fault her for speaking, they had to, if anything they would blame the teacher, not her when HeR PresEnTATioN MaDE ThEm LauGH At HeR. 

No, they won’t.

YeS THeY WiLL, YOu KNOW HOW AWFuLL YOU ARE GOING TO BE. HOW MUCH EVERYONE WILL BE CRINGING AS THEY ARE FORCED TO STARE AT YOUR DISGUSTING FACE AND HEAR YOUR SHRILL VOICE. 

 they won’t.

THEY WILL! YOU CAN FEEL IT EVERYWHERE YOU GO, PEOPLE LAUGHING AT YOU BEHIND YOUR BACK, THINKING HOW COULD THE GODS ALLOW SUCH A HORRIFYING BEING TO EXIST.

No, they don’t 

AND THE WORST VICTIM IS YOUR MOM. SHE WORKS SO HARD FOR YOU. HOW MUCH OVERTIME DOES SHE PUT IN JUST TO MAKE SURE YOU CAN EVEN GO TO THAT SCHOOL. IT’S NOT LIKE YOU’RE GOING TO BE ANYTHING GREAT!

Please

SHE SLAVES AWAY AND SUPPORTS YOU BECAUSE SHE HAS TO, NOT BECAUSE SHE LOVES YOU!

Please

IF YOU REALLY LOVED HER YOU WOULD END HER SUFFERING

No

END EVERYONE’S SUFFERING

I can’t

YOU CAN! IT’S EASY, YOU ALREADY TRIED IT ONCE!

I…

HE WAS RIGHT YOU SHOULD DO IT!

……..

FREE EVERYONE FROM THE NIGHTMARE!

………

KILL-

The thoughts stopped when the knife slashed her arm. She kept a pocket knife under her mattress for moments like this. She hated doing it. She knew what her Mom would say if she caught her, but she had to. For some reason, cutting her arm was calming, it made the voices quiet and the world make sense. She grabbed some more tissues and sat against her bed, looking down and seeing with relief that she kept the cut shallow. The first time she did this she cut a bit too deep and had to be hospitalized.

You wanted to cut that deep.

Sarah pressed hard on the wound and winced. The pain brought calmness, it brought relief. Pain was, after all, what she deserved. The voice was right about everything it said. No matter how many books she read or positive affirmations she recited, she knew the truth. Every time she looked in the mirror she saw it. The nightmare wasn’t in her dreams or in her head. She was a loathsome parasite, a curse on the world. A living nightmare.

Seance Shark: Chapter 1

“Can I eat that one?”

“No, that’s a dog.”

“Can I eat that one?”

“No, that’s a child.

“How about that one.”

“That’s your reflection”

“Oh right! Mirrors.”

If you are like most people in this world you would only be able to hear half of this conversation. You would be riding on the subway like so many others in the city did for their early morning commute to work and think you were listening to a crazy woman having a one-sided conversation with herself, not that that would be a unique occurrence by any metric. If you were special though, you would see she was talking to an almost cartoonishly proportioned small shark swimming lazily through the air locking eyes suspiciously with his reflection.

“Still don’t believe mirrors are real?”

In a flash, the shark disengaged from the window and flopped into the woman’s lap.

“What do you think elephants taste like? He asked”

“Elephants?” she chuckled.

“Yeah, I want to try one.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve never tasted one before. There are so many things on land I want to taste. Ooo can we go to that moo place?”

“You mean a zoo?”

“Yeah, that place with all the cows!”

Her eyes narrowed. “You mean a farm?”

“So what do you think elephants taste like?”

The woman laughed again, both in amusement and exasperation. She had only met this shark spirit two months ago and in that time, they had not gotten through a single complete conversation on any one topic without starting another or randomly circling back to one they had had as long as days before. She didn’t blame the little guy though. Land was so much more chaotic than the sea and he wanted to learn everything about everything. His head had almost exploded trying to fathom a car let alone a subway system. Plus it was very cute

“Chicken,” she responded as the subway rolled to a stop.

“Oh come on Joan,” he said as he floated into the air in front of her. “You always say that.”

“Sorry Buddy, that’s just what everyone says when they eat an exotic animal…speaking of,” she said as she looked towards the people filing into the car.

As people rushed out of the train car, many of whom weren’t even at their stop and just wanted to get away from the crazy lady, new people got on, one of which was a man who had a strange bulbous creature wrapped around his neck, not that anyone but Joan and Buddy could see it.

Buddy gasped and excitedly asked, “Can I eat that one.”

“Of course, just let me double-check something,” she said as she pulled a book from her bag, one that was very old and seemed to be held together purely by luck.

She suddenly raised her head back up “You mean the spirit right?”

“Is that what that is,” buddy asked genuinely, “I thought it was a cow.”

Joan shook her head as she opened the book to the table of contents and said “Identify”.

The pages flipped on their own and stopped on a page which showed a realistic illustration of a creature that looked similar to the spirit attached to the man.

“Okay,” she said. “It looks like we’re dealing with a Dream Eater.”

Buddy gasped again. “I haven’t eaten one of those yet!”

“Well let’s see what it tastes like, Joan said as she put the book back into the bag and took out an armored glove that had sharp talons on the fingers and a rune on the back of the hand.

“Yeahyeahyeah,” Buddy said as he “swam” forward. Joan grabbed him by the tail and yanked him back, wincing as she did.

“Wait till we get off at the next stop,” she said calmly, “you’re gonna need more space if  you want to chow down.”

Buddy nodded enthusiastically, before noticing Joan’s hand had a bunch of new scratches on it.

“Oh no, I’m sorry,” he said frantically. 

This was not a rare occurrence for Joan, since the two of them had teamed up Joan had had to reign in Buddy often when he got too excited. Even as a spirit, Buddy had all the traits of a shark, including the dermal denticles their skin was covered in. These tiny V-shaped scales helped reduce drag in the water, but also made their skin pretty sharp. Though, thanks to his current form, it was more like sandpaper than teeth, a blessing to anything he accidentally brushed past in his frantic dashes.

“Hey it’s fine,” Joan said unperturbed. “It’s just a little scuffed.”

Joan gave him a big smile and put on the glove.

“Are you just being nice?” Buddy said.

Joan was surprised at this. As you have probably noticed from just the brief interaction you have read, Buddy is not the most observant and introspective being in the world. Since Joan had formed a contract with Buddy, he had taken bites out of several things including street signs, cars, buildings, trees, etc. Basically, anything that was new to him, Buddy felt a need to taste. She was worried that he might not be able to learn from his mistakes and that she would have to eventually exorcise him. This question showed that her little friend was learning and seeing that his actions had consequences, even if he was still a little too excitable.

Joan put on the glove and scratched Buddy’s head, which Buddy enjoyed like a dog.

“Come on am I ever mad?” she asked.

“No,” Buddy said. “But you never get mad at anything. Remember when Mathew got mad at you because you wouldn’t be mad at anyone.”

“Yes I do, I just don’t think getting mad solves anything. I know you don’t mean to get overexcited and I know you will get better at it as time goes on. Until then,” she moved he hand away before suddenly grabbing Buddy’s tail and pulling him back into her lap where she started to give him a fierce belly rub.

“I’ll be here to reign you in .” She laughed as Buddy thrashed and giggled.

The train pulled to a stop and almost everyone in the car rushed out in hopes of getting away from the crazy, metal-clawed woman. Joan got up and left last right before the doors shut, stepping out onto the busy platform. She had lost sight of the man, not that she cared, sharks were better trackers than bloodhounds.

“Follow me,” Buddy said as he swam over the crowd sniffing as he went.

Once the two had walked up the stairs onto street level, Buddy continued guiding Joan as she deftly weaved through the crowd, easily keeping pace with her flying shark. Within a minute she was walking right behind the man.

“Excuse me, sir,” she said as she tapped his shoulder.

The man turned around and recoiled once he realized who she was.

“Oh,” he said, “you’re the girl from the train,” he said with obvious discomfort.

“Yep, but don’t worry I’m not crazy” she responded, “I’m a medium.”

“Like… you talk to ghosts,” he asked, obviously not comforted by the clarification.

“Yes I do,” she said as she reached into the bag again and pulled out a business card.

She gave the man the card which read: Joan Baker Paranormal Investigator-Medium-Exorcist as well as a phone number and email address and the slogan, “Please hire me, I’m broke”.

The man looked like he was gonna try to run away, or at least try to end the conversation as soon as possible, but he stopped and looked more seriously at Joan, something she completely expected.

“How did you know to give me this,” he asked.

“I’m guessing you’ve been feeling depressed, have had a constant feeling you are being watched and have had terrible nightmares where something is tormenting you?” she asked.

The man was taken aback. “Ye…Yes, how did you-”

“You’re being haunted.” She said. “You can’t see it but I can and the little bugger is wrapped around your neck.”

The man rubbed his neck. “I have been feeling like something is there..”

“Well don’t worry, we can help. I just need to touch your neck with this.” she held up the hand with the gauntlet.

“Um…” The man said eyeing the talons on the end of the fingers.

“I know it looks freaky but trust me the talons are for the spirit.”

 She held his hand with her ungloved hand and looked into his eyes. “I promise, I just want to help.”

The man was tired, both physically and mentally from the symptoms Joan had correctly predicted he had and though he never put much stock into the supernatural, he had to admit she had been spot on. Besides that, he could see something in her eyes and hear it in her voice. A genuine kindness he couldn’t help but want to trust. 

He nodded to her and bent forward slightly. Joan reached up and placed an armored finger on the man’s throat. The rune on the back of the gauntlet started to glow and the man swore he heard something give out a demonic shriek. Suddenly, Joan grabbed at something wrapped around his neck that he of course couldn’t see and pulled hard. The man suddenly felt a tremendous weight he hadn’t even noticed was there lift off of his shoulders, his neck felt unrestrained, and his prevailing anxiety washed away. Joan threw the invisible thing into the air and called out “Now”.

Joan was the only one who bore witness as Buddy explosively grew into a shark the size of a car and chomped the spirit in a single bite.

“Wow, the man said as his face lit up. “This is…”

“You have been exorcised,” Joan said with a smile and an exaggerated bow.

Buddy shrank back down and floated down to be eye level with Joan, still chewing on a few final bits.

“So,” Joan said, “what does it taste like.”

Buddy paused for a moment as if in deep contemplation and plainly stated “Chicken.”

Why the Nazis Targeted the Jews-A Research Paper

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Soul Drive: Chapter 1

Prologue: Monsters

Gary loved his son, and he also loved sleep, two loves that seldom went hand in hand. His son Micheal was now 5 years old, a number that Gary routinely found himself marveling at. It still felt like yesterday that his son had come into the world as a bald raisin of adorableness, and now he was going to school and could almost finish picture books all by himself. He was also, unfortunately, at the age where he was being exposed to the gossip and exaggerations of every other child in his neighborhood, and Gary suspected one such instance was to blame for cutting into both of their sleep schedules.

“See,” Gary said as he swung the closet door open. “No monsters.”

Micheal had the covers pulled up to his face, barely daring to take a peek at the dim space filled with clothes he had outgrown and assorted storage containers.

“No monster could even fit in here with all the crap your mother stuffs into it.”

Micheal giggled at that. he was also at the age where any even remotely “bad” word was hilarious. 

“But, what about under my bed?” he said as the levity failed to take hold.

Gary groaned. He was a construction worker by trade and not the kind that got to sit in an air-conditioned cabin and operate a piece of heavy machinery. He seemed doomed to forever do the backbreaking labor that was just a little too unimportant, or too expensive, to have a machine trivialize. His back was aching just from standing there and he was all but certain that if he did bend over, he wouldn’t be able to get back up again for a few days.

“Buddy,” he said with exasperation. “Where is this coming from, you never used to worry about this stuff before.”

“Henry said that Oni love eating kids when they start school and I have to make sure there isn’t one hiding in my room before I go to bed.”

“Well, Henry is a doofus,” Gary said in a goofy voice he had carefully cultivated in his half-decade of fatherhood, one that was scientifically proven to get big laughs. Except this time, no humor was going to break through his son’s fear.

“But Dad,” Micheal said. “Henry showed me stuff about Oni taking little kids on his phone.”

“Of course they let a five-year-old have a phone,” Micheal said as he rubbed his face in exhausted annoyance. He had read the same thing many times over the past few months, with reports of Oni-related murders and disappearances occurring in the city slums, but it was all hearsay. Frankly, Aurveil was not a nice place to live with crimes and random disappearances just being a part of life, especially in the harsher areas on the outskirts of town, a place their family had luckily managed to move out of when Micheal was born. He walked over to his son’s bed and sat down, even though he knew standing back up would be a momentous challenge.

“So you know about Oni now?” Gary asked.

Micheal looked down as he fidgeted with his sheets. “Yes,” he said weakly. “Is it bad that I learned about them?” 

“No Buddy,” he said as he put a reassuring hand on his son’s shoulder. “It’s not bad that you learned about them, you were going to have to eventually. Your Mom and I just decided that telling you about them too early would make you scared for no reason.

“But Dad, what if one wants to eat me?”

“That is not going to happen,” Gary said with all the confidence he could muster. “Its true that Oni are real, but they are super rare. Most people have never seen one even when they are as old as me. I know your grandparents have never seen one and they are super old.”

Gary giggled again.

“Besides,” Micheal said as he went in for a hug. “The Knights are watching and are ready to protect us.”

“But, there are no Knights in our city,” Micheal replied.

“Hmmmmm,” Gary furrowed his brow in an exaggerated manner that always made Micheal laugh. “Then I guess I’ll just have to beat them up myself. Besides, what Oni could be worse than your Grandma.”

Gary expected that to get a hearty laugh out of Micheal, but instead of laughing, Micheal was looking up, beyond Gary’s head with a look of sheer terror on his face. Gary whirled around, the pain not even registering in the face of the horror before him.

Coming out from under the bed has an impossibly long neck that led to a bulbous, engorged head. The head was barely recognizable as human, with eyes several times larger than they should be sporting impossibly small pupils. The eyes had a quality that was hard to explain, but one that every person who had ever come face to face with an Oni and lived had described as “dead”. Below was a mouthful of jagged teeth that formed a smile so stretched out that the skin seemed as though it would snap like an overstretched rubber band. Completing this freakish visage were two small horns jutting out from the thing’s forehead.

The room became deafeningly quiet as Gary and Micheal both learned what it meant to be frozen in fear. 

“Why do adults lie?” the Oni said in a disarmingly soft voice. “I have done this so many times, just waiting for a parent to tell a lie to their children, and every single time the adult lies.”

The Oni’s face moved closer, its rancid breath breaking Gary out of his shocked silence and causing his mind to race toward a single goal: getting his son out of this alive. 

“Wh…what do you want,” Gary said in a trembling whisper.

“What do you mean what do I want? I already asked the question. Why. do. adults. ALWAYS LIE.” The bile of hatred infused into the Oni’s every word chilled Gary to the bone.

“Well? WHY!” The Oni roared as four bladed appendages sprung out from underneath the bed, all aiming at Gary’s throat. 

“Tell the truth and I’ll let you go…promise.”

Gary was just about to wet himself. He was being truthful when he said he had never seen an Oni before. Of course, he had seen them on the news and in videos taken by bystanders, and he had heard the stories of the destruction they could unleash ever since he was a child. He remembered the sleepless nights he spent as a boy terrified that every little creak he heard in his home was a monster coming to devour his whole family. He knew just how powerful these things were, with not even the power armor of Guardians being a match for them. The only thing that could beat an Oni was a Knight, and as Micheal had pointed out, there were none stationed in their city.

His only hope was to answer the Oni’s question and to hope it would keep its word.

“I…I lied to my son because I didn’t want him to be afraid,” Gary stammered out. “Kids shouldn’t have to live in fear.”

The Oni closed its eyes and let out a heavy sigh. “Every time,” it said with genuine disappointment. Its eyes flashed open and it’s dead, tiny pupils suddenly dialed to tremendous size as its mouth closed around Gary’s head.