But when I was a child, I relished going out into the snow. I would stand as far up the snow-covered driveway as possible, bright red plastic boat sled pulled to my chest, and run towards the back yard. I’d launch myself into the air, land with a crunch in the snow, and slide at great speed down the slope of the yard towards the woods, seeing how long I could stay on before having to throw myself out of the way of the oncoming briars.

Then I would lie there and let the thick, perfect silence fill my ears like frozen cotton. The sky was an empty grey, unfinished. Only my puffs of breath hinted that the world existed at all.

A few years ago a scar mysteriously appeared on my right arm. It was the rune Raidho, backwards. I showed this to people and they immediately began weaving incredible theories which they defended as a logical explanation. One friend explained that I must have gotten drunk some time back in college and as a gag one of my friends decided to carve the rune into my arm. I somehow forgot about it until I saw the scar almost a decade later. His mind recoiled at the thought of something just appearing from nowhere, which it had.

My therapist studied the scar very intently. I presented my theory about a demon leaving my body and he suggested that it left the scar as a mark of its passage. This seemed a more reasonable explanation than the drunk college night scenario.

The scar has been fading gradually over the years. Only the long back of the R is visible. What, don’t *your* scars disappear too?

So I don’t really have a use for your status quo. I shouldn’t have to apologize for the things I have witnessed, for the damage done to me. There should have been real help. Not the doctors trying to sell me some drug.

I get my nipple pierced.

I win the Alibi’s Short Short Fiction contest with the story “The Numbers Game.”

I buy an SUV, a black 1998 Isuzu Rodeo.

I move to an apartment (3320 Wyoming NE, Apt 4307, 87111) and begin dealing with the divorce.