"No One Is Alone" - Bernadette Peters

Dream - He was screaming. The slobbering, maniacal sound an ice pick against my adrenaline-frozen brain. “I’ll fucking do it!” He cried.

“Don’t. Just put the gun down! Please,” my friend pleaded. “Look at her! She’s already seeing the light.”

I had closed my eyes. Before, terrified and scatterbrained when I had first seen Him burst in with tear-stung eyes and that silver gun, Where the hell did he get that? I had thought. Now, seeing down the barrel of the inevitable, I let go and closed my eyes and felt light, lifted. For a second, I thought I really could see the “light.” Where usually you close your eyes and there is only black, it was very bright—almost yellow. I suppose I was “ready,” whatever that means. Then I felt the presence of death shift from me. I opened my eyes and saw Him redirect the gun toward His own head.

“No,” He sputtered. “I won’t kill her.” The shot ripped me awake.

"Gloomy Sunday" - Billie Holiday

"Heavy In Your Arms" - Florence + the Machine

"Rabbit Heart" - Florence + the Machine

"Cosmic Love" - Florence + the Machine

Oh, my love. I have died.

"If I Die Young" - The Band Perry

The Census Dwarf

Here's a little story for you, reader, courtesy of Him.

So there's this guy at work. And he's an older middle-aged guy. He's got a kind of soft southern accent, and he just kind of sashays around the office without any real purpose. So he's pacing back and forth in front of the supervisor's office while he was in a meeting one day. And the people in the office were laughing about something, and the guy continues to pace in front of the office. Eventually, the supervisor says, "Hey, SouthernComfort. Can we help you?" And SouthernComfort pops his head in smiling and drawls, 

"Well, I think I have a story that's funnier than yours." And they're taken aback, you know, and say, 

"Ok, well go ahead I guess." 

So SouthernComfort begins: "So, you all know I come from a small town named Tinytown (Not a real place, reader. You know the deal.). Tinytown doesn't have more than 400 people, so every-one kind of gets to know each other, you know. Now the thing is, there's ne-ver been a dwarf in Tinytown. So come census time, the census people send a... a dwarf. A Census Dwarf. Now, in Tinytown there's a  boy; I guess he's not much of a boy 'cause he's about 25. But he's got the Down's Syndrome. Now he's pretty high functionin'. I mean he lives on his own and everything. His mom checks in on him every once in a while, but for the most part he's fine on his own. Now this census dwarf comes up to the house of the boy with the Down's Syndrome and the boy gets real excited. They're talking and the boy is smiling and he kind of... well, he corrals the census dwarf into the house.

A couple hours later, the mother gets a call from the boy and he says, 'Momma, momma, I caught a leprechaun.' And I guess this kind of stuff goes on all the time 'cause she didn't think much of it and laughed, hung up the phone. And so a couple hours go by and he calls again still ramblin' on about the leprechaun. And then she hears a voice yell in the background. So she heads down to the house and she finds the poor Census Dwarf locked in the closet! And she lets the little guy out and let me tell you, he was none too pleased. I guess the boy had ushered him on inside, and they were talking a bit, and he kind of corals him into a corner and then slams the closet door shut. He told his mom that he couldn't find any Lucky Charms, so he was just feedin' him Skittles one by one under the closet door."