can hear a tin bird singing with him. Its tune plays especially well amplified over modern radio.
I don’t live in the hills anymore. It has been years since I saw Sulle Scale. I discovered, as I descended at last into my senior years, that I could no longer attempt the staircases. I told people it was my poor sore old knees.
But
in truth
I developed
a fear of heights.
Author’s note: The presentation of this story has been revised to suit your e-reader. In the print edition, most of the story is presented not in paragraphs, but in staircases . . . which, unfortunately, do not render properly on most digital readers. I’ve left the final line in the form of a staircase to give you a sense of how the narrative reads on the physical page. The content of the tale, however, is unchanged, and I think it still works in this more traditional format. — J. H.
Twittering from the Circus of the Dead
WHAT IS TWITTER?
“Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing? . . . Answers must be under 140 characters in length and can be sent via mobile texting, instant message, or the Web.”
—from twitter
TYME2WASTE I’m only trying this because I’m so bored I wish I was dead. Hi Twitter. Want to know what I’m doing? Screaming inside.
8:17 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE My, didn’t that sound melodramatic.
8:19 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE Lets try this again. Hello Twitterverse. I am Blake and Blake is me. What am I doing? Counting seconds.
8:23 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE Only about 50,000 more until we pack up and finish what is hopefully the last family trip of my life.
8:25 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE It’s been all downhill since we got to Colorado. And I don’t mean on my snowboard.
8:27 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE We were supposed to spend the break boarding and skiing but it’s too cold and won’t stop snowing so we had to go to plan B.
8:29 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE Plan B is Mom and I face off in a contest to see who can make the other cry hot tears of rage and hate first.
8:33 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE I’m winning. All I have to do to make Mom leave the room at this point is walk into it. Wait, I’m walking into the room where she is now . . .
8:35 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE She’s such a mean bitch.
10:11 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE caseinSD, bevsez, harmlesspervo yay my real friends! I miss San Diego. Home soon.
10:41 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE caseinSD Hell no I’m not afraid Mom is going to read any of this. She’s never going to know about it.
10:46 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE After she made me take down my blog, it’s not like I’m ever going to tell her.
10:48 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE You know what bitchy thing she said to me a couple hours ago? She said the reason I don’t like Colorado is because I can’t blog about it.
10:53 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE She’s always saying the Net is more real for me and my friends than the world. For us nothing really happens till someone blogs about it.
10:55 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE Or writes about it on their Facebook page. Or at least sends an instant message about it. She says the internet is “life validation.”
10:55 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE Oh and we don’t go online because it’s fun. She has this attitude that people socially network ’cause they’re scared to die. It’s deep.
10:58 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE She sez no one ever blogs their own death. No one instant-messages about it. No one’s Facebook status ever says “dead.”
10:59 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE So for online people, death doesn’t happen. People go online to hide from death and wind up hiding from life. Words right from her lips.
11:01 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE Shit like that, she ought to write fortune cookies for a living. You see why I want to strangle her. With an ethernet cable.
11:02 PM – 28 Feb from Tweetie
TYME2WASTE Little bro asked if I could blog about him having sex with a certain goth girl from school to make it real, but no one