The Novella Life of Illuscia Nester Himawari

FROM: n.case Tuesday, 3:11 pm more crap from our bogus leaders Hey Dave, Usual crap at the meeting so you didn't miss anything. District heads are giving the go-ahead on that math program. Nobody saw that coming, right? Thirty kids to a classroom, no time to work with any of them individually, Career Ladders busywork in addition to grading classwork and putting together lesson plans and progress reports, and now first thing after Christmas Break we'll also have to organize songs and dance routines and plays and crafts that'll help teach our kids math. This job was so much fun in the eighties. What the hell happened? And this Sandra Barnes crap on top of all that. Sixth grade is already short one teacher without George getting the boot, and all for giving a female student a congratulatory pat on the back, which I WITNESSED as a harmless gesture. Yes, Judy brought it up again, and the district jackasses were dodgier than last time. You, me, Judy and Al are probab...

The streets, roads and dusty lanes of Colombia have been fertile territory for myths and legends since before the arrival of the Spaniards. Tales of 'La Patasola', a one-legged wailing banshee that forever sought her child, and of 'El Duende', a backwards-footed goblin that led travelers to their doom, nibbled at the corners of journeymen's ease for centuries. Although these stories mainly troubled those living in or passing through rural areas, the growth of cities brought with it a new breed of urban legend rooted in the primal distrust we still harbor, somewhere deep inside, of modern technology. An example of this is the phantom bus that allegedly roams the city's streets at night. Supposedly, young women who board it alone are found mutilated in overgrown outlying fields a few days later, a frozen look of abject terror illustrating the moment of their last, tormented breath. That being said, given that you're certainly not a young woman (a...

On the 25th March, at 14:57GMT, the world stopped for 27 minutes and 54 seconds. No one noticed at first. Those that eventually did were ordered to keep quiet. There was no sudden jolt, no collapsing into unconsciousness, no transition into utter darkness and back again. Nothing. For everyone, time had appeared to pass as normal, one second moving uneventfully into the next. Birds flew, people talked, the wind and the rain blew and fell respectively - nothing had occurred to indicate that anything untoward or unexpected had happened to the inhabitants of the Earth. Only those who looked beyond our planet and its ring of constantly chattering satellites now found that the rest of the universe told a different story. NASA and related space agencies noticed first. Signals to ongoing missions beyond those in orbit around the Earth were all off by almost 30 minutes. Frantic investigation revealed that the same time discrepancy was occurring for all incoming signals. Naturally t...

I could never sleep well in hotels. I guess that’s somewhat of an understatement; I could never sleep well in general, but hotels were the worst. Just the thought that the previous occupant of this bed is a complete stranger was repulsive in my mind, but that’s beside the point. What I’m getting at is how this lack of sleep in hotels changed my life. Christmas, we were spending Christmas in a shitty hotel and not with family, great. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I didn’t enjoy the all you can eat buffet of soggy hash browns and grits for Christmas Eve dinner. Of course the first snow of the season had to cancel our flight down to Virginia. It was Christmas Eve and I was trying to sleep in this bleach saturated room; my minds wandering, wondering what happened in here to cause such an excessive amount of bleach needed. The room was nothing out of the ordinary: two beds, one for me and my dad and another for my sister and mom, a bathroom, and a stained microwave that ...