Guest Writer

“Oyster bay Adam

“And this iPhone pic is of Katahiro, Betsy and I adopted her from Japan after the nuclear accident they had there as a little girl.”

“Wow, really? –that’s unbelievable…she’s gorgeous.”

” Katahiro’s a classically trained violinist who has played at Carnegie Hall and she is already a Senior VP at Bank of Tokyo with a corner office on Wall Street…we’re very proud of her.”

“I can see why. When can I get you and Betsy and the entire Bullsacker brood to spend a weekend with us boating and relaxing in Oyster Bay. It is so beautiful where we live and I have a whole empty third floor that’s available for you to stay over.”

“Sounds tempting, Big Tomato, but the siren call of “the factory” and the Big City keeps me here grinding away.”

“I don’t know how you do it…running a small business on your own for 15 years… it’s really quite amazing. You must be the smartest person I know.”

“Hardly that– perhaps I’m the stupidest or most stubborn.”

“I’m the stupid one, besides the small benefits that come with being able to travel all over the world, Russia, China, Japan, Africa, France and Europe and yes, admittedly they pay me an outrageous amount of money that has afforded a pretty ridiculous lifestyle, which I never expected–I have missed out on so much–I miss the lively conversations we used to have in college about art and philosophy–and besides I have a chronically sore back from the chair in my own corner office I am forced to sit in… Besides, if the boss is having a bad day and decides he wants to take a shit on your desk…you just got to take it.”

“Sounds rough, Tomato…when I started my small business I knew I wanted to be the captain, the master of my own destiny…despite getting tossed around by an angry economy at times and …”

“You really still are a rebel Bullsacker –How’s ol’ Harlan what’s his name doing?”

“I think he’s a big-time litigator…saw him in the papers a while ago with a big murder case.”

“Card shark, that one…oops, looks like someone is texting you.”

“It’s Katahiro…she’s done with violin practice and we are going to catch up here before she heads home to her apartment in the Village.”

“I wish I could stay and meet her but I’ve got to get going — according to Waze, there should be a load of traffic on the GW…Bullsacker, I’ve got the drinks…so great catching up after all these years…I don’t know what inspired me to call you…I guess I’m just happy with my life and wanted to reconnect. Do think about Oyster Bay.”

“You got it. Dinner’s on me next time.”

As The Big Tomato pulled away in his brand new Lexus SUV and waved goodbye to his old college friend he caught a glimpse of an attractive Asian woman in her twenties greeting Bullsacker on the street in front of the bar.

“Hey Daddy! Where you want to go?”

“Right down this alley over here is great.”

“Got any candy?”

“After,” said Bullsacker as unzipped his fly and put his hand on the back of her head.

“Mmm… that’s it…I love when you swirl your tongue like that”

“yeah, Mr. …just for you.”

Story by Adam Kluger, Artwork by Dreck

ENFP by Adam Kluger, Artwork by Dreck

“He’s an ENFP.”

“Really?”

“That’s what the tests show.”

“Very rare”

“Especially for this line of work”

“Obama, Bubba–both ENFPs”

“yeah, doesn’t mean a thing…so was Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde and Huxley.”

“So you don’t think the tests work?”

“I didn’t say that…but you have to admit some of the questions on those tests are a bit outdated.”

“Such as?”

“Do you see cars outside your window?”

“Well do you?”

“That’s not the point.”

“What is your point?”

“Nothing, forget I said anything.”

“Well at least we’re going to earn our money this time.”

“Maybe more than that.”

“I think this place is getting to you is what I think.”

“Hold on, (taps her ear) yes, yes…we’re ready– you can bring Mr. Brown into intake.

The three of them sat at the table and discussed goals, protocols and not much else.

Mr. Brown was given a briefcase with his name on it and other items for his use along with instructions for the event to take place later that night.

Brown left. White and Black stayed.

“Well?”

“Definitely an ENFP.”

“And?”

“Hopefully he doesn’t screw the pooch.”

“and if he does?”

“Let’s just trust in the process.”

“Back here at eighteen hundred.”

“Do you really need to ask?”

“No.”

“Then why did you?”

“Just a feeling.”

“Maybe we need to re-test you“

“Maybe.”

Later that night Black, White and Brown met back at intake.

“Well? So why are you here,” asked Black.

“Had to abort,” replied Brown.

Black nodded and closed her eyes. White’s government issued Luger sprayed Brown’s brains all over the bullet-proof intake window.

It’s not that Black had a distaste for wet work. She just didn’t like the nightmares.

“Well, that’s that, I guess,” said White.

“Yep, unfortunate business this one– and I’ve got to admit that you were totally right,” said Black as she slowly started to reach for the loaded Luger resting on her lap.

Story by Adam Kluger Artwork by Dreck

Sun Beams and Alchemy (and Photo Gallery) by Christopher J Ananias

When the world is a dark pit, and you find yourself locked up with lunatics. Sometimes, a person needs a slice of sunshine. So that’s what this series of photos will try to capture, but alas, it’s hard to catch a sunbeam.

Then again, I don’t need my baseball glove or butterfly net. Not when I have this magical weight around my neck. It’s left the dark room behind, this is true, but I have my own just in case.

I try to explain this alchemy, as if to a five-year-old or my giant German shepherd dog, to these folks on the ward, but they just cock their heads. I talk about apertures, f-stops, and blinking eyeballs.

No respondo, Ernesto just gazes away from me and talks to people who aren’t there. All of their heads turn, and I finally have an audience.

I’m free again, on Antabuse, so I’m back with the camera therapy of nature and sunshine. The technology that I couldn’t explain to them—resting in my hands. Like a thousand picture books.

The shutter is eager to slide over its mechanical eye, snapping pictures of the sun and everything under it, but you have to be careful taking so many pictures of God.

(Farm Sunrise)

(CO OP)

(American Flag-Vet MIA)

(Kestrel)

(Landscape)

Words and Visual Music by Christopher J Ananias

One More Language Game by Dino Alfier

Ludwig Wittgenstein is buried in the Ascension Parish Burial Ground, in Cambridge, UK, not far from where I live. His grave attracts its share of that tiny subcategory of gravestone tourists who happen to be interested in philosophy. I’ve visited his grave on several occasions over the years.

The austerity of Wittgenstein’s gravestone (an unadorned, epitaphless slab flush with the lawn, bearing the simple inscription: LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN 1889 – 1951) has always seemed to me a fitting token of the austerity of his thought.

Sometimes visitors place little tributes on the stone: flowers, a handful of coins, a pinecone, or even cupcakes. The most frequent tributes, however, are tiny toy ladders.

In the second-to-last paragraph of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein’s first book, he writes:

‘My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it. He must surmount these propositions.’

Hence the miniature ladders on his grave.

He then concludes, rather haughtily:

‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.’

This admonition possesses the irrevocability – and silence – of a tomb, as if it were possible to say all there is to say, to exhaust the totality of the sayable.

On one of my visits to Wittgenstein’s grave, I saw one of these ladders, a straight ladder propped against the urn-shaped flowerpot that sits at the head of the gravestone. And only on seeing it, did I realise that I’d always thought the ladder Wittgenstein writes about to be not a single straight ladder but a self-supporting double-sided A-frame ladder, that is, a trestle ladder. Why? Perhaps because I thought that with a trestle ladder, I could cross over senselessness in an orderly (a sensible) way: I’d climb one side of the ladder believing that Wittgenstein’s propositions have meaning, and then, having at last recognised their senselessness, I’d climb down safely, and much the wiser, on the other side. There you go. Job done. That way, sense and nonsense would remain neatly separated and there’d be no risky cross-contamination.

But as I now reread what Wittgenstein wrote, I realise that he doesn’t say to climb down the ladder. No, you must throw away the ladder––so to speak. Yes, so to speak. But that’s precisely the problem: what does it mean to speak so? Where do you end up once you’ve climbed out through, on and over Wittgenstein’s senseless propositions? Would you be standing on a thoroughly elucidated, stable platform? But how could a platform resting on senseless foundations be stable?

The more I think about it, the colder my feet get about throwing away that ladder. And perhaps a trestle ladder is not such a bad idea after all.

But by 1945, more than 20 years after the publication of the Tractatus, Wittgenstein had completed the final manuscript of his last book, Philosophical Investigations, in which he rejects his earlier grand claims about senselessness and his haughty admonition to be silent.

Now Wittgenstein says that our making sense of the world involves what he calls language games, and that although we can’t form a perfect picture of how the world is, we can stitch together a makeshift patchwork of family resemblances of the world we experience. It’s impossible to say all there is to say, not because our languages are somehow inadequate, but because language games are open-ended: their rules can change, the game board can shapeshift, and you can always play one more game. Even though I hardly understand what Wittgenstein is getting at here, the expressions ‘language game’ and ‘family resemblance’ suggest an altogether homier and more human-scaled world than that of the Tractatus.

And the miniature ladders that sometimes appear on Wittgenstein’s grave seem to me to embody this change of mind that he sought to justify in the Philosophical Investigations. It’s as if these little playful tributes were saying that we can only climb diminutive ladders of senselessness, piecemeal senselessness in a vast plateau of meaningfulness (mostly?) of our own making––so to speak.

Dino Alfier

Linda King Review by Adam Kluger

When my best friend, a book publisher, would host an annual guy’s weekend for high school and college friends at his house in Millbrook, in upstate New York. I would always take the couch in the library. On the book shelves were great authors like Hemingway and Salinger, and also various books by Charles Bukowski.

“Check out this Bukowski. I think you’ll like it.”

The book was Post Office. The opening line was something like, “It started as an accident.” Bukowski’s first novel was a humorous account of the down and out author’s life working in a post office and I was immediately hooked.

I would go on to read everything I could find by Bukowski. Women, Love is a Dog from Hell, Ham on Rye, Factotum and on and on —all of Bukowski’s poetry, prose, short stories and correspondence. Whenever a new title would show up at the Astor Place Bookstore,

I would snatch it up along with books from his literary hero John Fante, like Ask the Dust.

Over the years I have become an avid Bukowski aficionado/enthusiast enjoying Mickey Rourke’s portrayal of the Los Angles underground legend in the movie “Barfly” and Bukowski’s own performance in Barbet Schroeder’s wonderful 1985 documentary film, “The Bukowski Tapes.” When Bukowski passed on in 1994 it was a major blow. We had lost arguably one of the greatest writers of our time.

So, it was with great curiosity that I discovered on Facebook recently that one of Bukowski’s longtime girlfriends, sculptress and poet Linda King, was going to be appearing in a literary-arts event in 2026. We exchanged emails and Linda mailed me a copy of her old book, “Loving and Hating Charles Bukowski: A True Story,” along with a new photo-book of her wonderful sculptures.

The great thing about Bukowski was his ability to make readers feel something very real with his humor, flow and honesty. Always entertaining, thought-provoking and resonant. Linda King’s no holds-barred recollections of her volatile 5 year on-and-off love affair with the famous street poet, 20 years her senior, is honest, revelatory, heart-warming and heartbreaking at the same time with intimate love letters and poems between the two interspersed throughout the book as it reflects the nature of the underground writers scene in Los Angeles in the ‘70’s and the depth of a couple’s enduring love for each other through constant break-ups, infidelities, drunken fights, jealousies and the desire the be together again and again. This book is one of the most entertaining and insightful looks into the real Charles Bukowski, written by a courageous young woman who was both his muse and object of affection. I loved reading this harrowing account of a relationship that traverses from heaven to hell and back chapter after chapter. It is full of beautiful poetry and real insight into Charles Bukowski by the woman who may have known him best of all. If you are a Bukowski fan, or have ever had your heart broken but someone you love with every fiber of your being —you will love this book. I know I did

Post-script:

Linda King was kind enough to text me this note after I sent her this short review:

[Wow! That is a great review of my book. It is being translated right now into French language. They might like to use it on the back of the book or part of it. I just got off a long trip…tomorrow.

But thank you for you words.-Linda King ]

Adam Kluger

The Poet by Adam Kluger (Art by Dreck)

The city was hot.

But not like last week.

Humid, sticky, murderous.

Bart walked the streets.

The warm stench of urine wafted up from the grates over the subway.

Trudy was working.

She was always working.

Usually, Bart enjoyed taking a stroll around the city.

His mind would fire with interesting thoughts like fireflies in

the woods at night.

Today he went to the local Schlockbusters looking for a movie.

It was hot in the store.

No air conditioning. No good movies either.

He went to a local Great Buy. Nothing good there either unless you had four grand and change to spend on a flat screen TV.

Nothing in the music dept. no new CDs or music videos.

Then he went next door to the bookstore.

All the new books looked the same. They looked like a scam. Like something unreal.

The famous faces on the covers were all ugly and self-important.

He made his way over to the classics section hoping for inspiration.

Bart flipped through a book by Ernie Humdinger on writing.

Even when old Ernie tried to sound humble in his letters to other writers… He still came off as a pompous jerk.

Perhaps he should have written a book entitled “How to take yourself too seriously.”

Or better yet…How to be your own worst critic…kablam!

Bart walked past the homeless guy with the face of a crocodile outside of the drugstore. He would stay there every day and sing to himself. Not a great job, but seemed like he had tenure at least.

The world just was not creative anymore.

There were no great writers, musicians, filmmakers or intelligent life forms in all of Hollywood.

Every day a stupid new reality show was being perpetrated on the public.

The latest had a bunch of rich kids on a cattle ranch.

It was a rip off of another rip off of an old idea that was re-heated and re-cast.

Bart felt like he was inhaling sand and chewing on sawdust. To make things worse…everywhere he looked it seemed like new strange little birds were crawling in the dirt or in the bushes or flying over his head just a little too close for comfort.

An uneasy day.

Even the letters he strung together on his computer didn’t seem to

fit.

He tried to write a poem:

That’s What Happens

They come to me

at the strangest times

these images

of alligators playing croquet

a psychedelic Buddha

pink and white undies

underneath that blue and green tartan skirt

they come like lightning bolts

and dripping water

images of

leopard headed monkeys

with emerald eyes and tails

that never end

in the shower

or on the john

they crawl through my windows

with slimy tentacles

slippery and silent

pigeons explode inside my brain

horses and hippos

bathe in pools of

rainbow-glo blood

I guess that’s what happens

when love

goes away.

He immediately crumpled it up and threw it out the window. Fuck this Goddamn building he thought…no goddamn AC! The anger seared through him… another poem was making its way into his brain…he grabbed a pen and a piece of scrap paper.

Not An Artist

really bad poetry

keeps pouring out of me

like peacock blood

unicorn vomit

and mermaid gas

really bad poetry

like a mountain

of fool’s gold

is easy to mine

but useless to all.

really bad poetry

flows from this pen

ruining perfectly good

loose-leaf paper

words with

no order

or rhythm

or depth

dance away from my

fingers

and glare back at me

with righteous indignation

bad

bad

bad

bad!!!

with no purpose at all

just to fool a fool

who is

not an artist.

Again, Bart crumpled up the paper and threw it out the window. He stood up and looked at his reflection in the metal lamp pole on the desk. Distorted. He grabbed for another piece of scrap paper.

Roxy’s Cat

You’re asleep

I just know it

while your cat

patters about on a

black velvet carpet

of night

you’re asleep

I just know it

while my heart screams

your name

I listen to my air conditioner

it tells me to stay calm

be a cool cat…

while time washes me down the drain

my face

my smell

my laugh

my love

you’re asleep

I just know it

that water dripping

in my bathroom

told me so.

Once again, Bart crumpled up the poem and threw it out the window.

He walked over to the refrigerator.

Opened it.

Looked in.

Closed it.

Stood there.

Took his pen and wrote a note on the pad attached to the door with a magnet.

Then he went into the bedroom.

Packed a bag and never came back.

Adam Kluger (Art by Dreck)

Indeed, There is Balm in Gilead by Michael Bloor

Though there was a rumour that his grandad had been Benito Mussolini’s food taster, Andrew was a proud Scot. In his retirement, he took up volunteering part-time, at Innerpeffray, Scotland’s first free-lending library (established in 1680). Andrew loved to brag gently to foreign visitors that Scotland was the first literate nation in Europe, thanks to the Presbyterian Church which believed that it was the duty of every Christian to study the bible. And, to do that, the peasantry had to learn to read. Not that there were lots of foreign visitors, because Innerpeffray Library was off the beaten track, at the end of a no-through road in rural Perthshire. Summer Thursday afternoons were the exception – that was when a coachload of Dutch tourists would appear every week.

When he’d first started volunteering at Innerpeffray, Andrew had found this regular Thursday influx of (largely elderly) Dutch folk a bit odd. He’d once asked Eunice Drummond about it; she’d been volunteering there for many years. Eunice shrugged and said they’d been coming to Innerpeffray all the time that she’d been at the library. She thought that each group would’ve been staying the night at the Crieff Hydro Hotel, some miles across country. Or maybe they were on their way to the hotel…? She wasn’t sure.

How the Dutch had got to Innerpeffray wasn’t really a matter of acute interest to Andrew. He rather enjoyed an audience, and this Dutch audience understood English very well, even when spoken with his Glasgow accent. He would ask them to picture the strangeness of the idea, in the seventeenth century, that one should allow casual callers of all classes to turn up at the library and then go away again with a book of Shakespeare’s sonnets under their arm, books back then being a luxury item. And, having pricked his audience’s interest, he’d show them one of the old Borrowers’ Registers, which recorded not just the book borrowed, and the name and address of the borrower, but also the borrower’s occupation. They could see farm servants, weavers, quarriers, road menders and the like, borrowing works of philosophy, history, literature and theology, to carry miles back to their wee cottages to read by the dim light of their cruisie lamps.

On this occasion, most of his audience had eventually drifted away from The Borrowers’ Register and gone over to where Andrew’s colleague, Ronnie, was displaying the library’s set of Mercator’s Atlases. Ronnie had an atlas open at a page mapping seventeenth-century Holland, and was inviting visitors to locate their homes. Andrew’s attention was drawn instead to a Dutch couple peering into the glass case containing the library’s copy of Hollingshed’s Chronicles, a history of Britain first published in the sixteenth century. The book was open at the page illustrating Macbeth’s meeting with The Three Witches, a scene which Shakespeare was later to borrow and make famous.

The couple were elderly but vivacious, even vivid. Andrew was on his way over to them, to offer them a bit of background on Hollingshed and his Chronicles, when the woman let out a chiming peal of laughter. It stopped Andrew dead in his tracks.

Although the woman had her back to him, he recognised her by the laugh instantly, from fifty-odd years ago. It was Mila’s laugh. His mind went back to a tousled tent on The Lido in Venice, and the ever-green mystic meeting there of lips and legs. For a moment or two, he watched the two of them by the display cabinet, leaning into each other and whispering, in the time-honoured tradition of library conversations. It was plain to see that they were a happy couple, enjoying each other and their holiday in Scotland. Whereas his time with Mila in Venice, all those years ago, had not ended well.

Deliberately, Andrew turned instead to a small Dutch group who were puzzling over the library’s copy of the 1602 ‘Treacle Bible,’ so called because Jeremiah 8.22 reads ‘Is there not treacle in Gilead?’

Later, after the coach party had departed, to the Crieff Hydro or elsewhere, and the library closed down, Andrew climbed into the car for the short drive home. He was smiling. He and Dorothy were planning a sunny evening meal in the back garden, just the two of them. He was looking forward to it.

Michael Bloor

*This story was developed from an essay on Innerpeffray Library, and the books therein (‘A Favourite Place: Innerpeffray, Scotland’s oldest free lending library, established 1680’), published in Literally Stories October 28th, 2023.

Extra Credit by Bill Tope

Ralph sat in the back row of the classroom, slumped in the too-small desk, watching his instructor and taking notes in his cramped, pinched writing style. She was sure a looker, he thought, stealing a glance at her legs, her tiny waist and at her long, curly dark hair. Clearly, even apart from the apparent difference in their ages, she was out of his league. He sighed and dotted an “i.”

The pretty teacher introduced herself and asked the students to call her Allie.

“How many of you,” asked Prof. Allie Evans, “took this class as a part of a major in English?

Half of the 17 students, nine male, eight female, raised their hands. Allie smiled.

“How many of you are studying Creative Writing as a part of a vocational pursuit? As a part of learning to write better as a part of your job?”

All the rest of the students, apart from Ralph and one other, lifted their arms.

Allie nodded, then looked closely at Ralph and then at a pretty woman in her 40s. The teacher consulted a roll sheet/seating chart.

“What about you?” asked the teacher, addressing the raven-haired woman sitting in the front row. “Ms…Wiseman…why did you enroll in this class?”

“Please call me Betty,” said the woman. “I’ve always been an avid reader, since I was a little girl. “Lately, I’ve become interested in actually doing the writing myself. I guess I was curious about the nuts and bolts of writing fiction. So, here I am.”

Allie smiled again and nodded. She turned back to her seating chart. “And…Mr. Phillips…is Ralph okay?” she asked.

Ralph nodded. “I’ve tried writing some short fiction over the past year and, like Betty, wanted to delve into the fundamentals of fiction writing.”

“Have you ever got to the point where you submitted any of your writing?” Allie asked.

Ralph nodded.

“How did that go?” she asked next.

“Jury’s still out,” he quipped, and the class chuckled. He added, “I’ve been published twice so far.”

“Congratulations,” said Allie. “If you hear any more on work you’ve submitted, please let us know.”

Ralph nodded again.

“One rhing, about grades,” said Allie to the class. “A letter grade is just that: a letter. It says only that you successfully completed your classroom assignments–or didn’t. I’m required by the university to tender a letter grade, but I think they are not necessarily reflective of what you’ve actually accomplished. Bear in mind that the very successful writer Stephen King failed abysmally in the one creative writing course he took.”

A woman raised her hand. “Is that true?”

“Of course not,” said Allie. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

_____

A week later, the professor told the class: “Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll want to meet with you, one on one, for a brief dialogue. The purpose of this meeting will be to divulge your particular interests in writing and how this course will best serve those interests. It’ll be very informal and last around 20 minutes. Oh. And the university journal, The Argus: you can earn extra credit by volunteering your time as a slush pile reader. Let me know if you’re interested.

As the class became engaged in a “free write,” Allie turned up a leather-bound appointment book and drifted from student to student, arranging appointments. When she got to Ralph, near the end of class, she asked what would be convenient for him and he replied, “Any time. I’m retired,” he explained. The class, which ran on Tuesdays and Thursdays, from 2-4pm, then concluded and Allie asked him if that afternoon would work for him. He agreed that it would.

After everyone else filed out, Allie asked him if he’d like to join her in the university coffee shop, where they could enjoy a cup while they talked. “Or is it too late for coffee for you?” she asked.

Ralph said, “I drink coffee all day long.”

“Then you’re a natural writer,” she told him with a smile. They walked the short distance from the classroom building to the student union, to the coffee shop.

Allie was very informal in her questioning, asking about the breadth of Ralph’s literary interests and what his ultimate expectations were with regard to writing. He listened attentively to her questions and answered as best he could, but was frankly more interested in Allie than in her queries. Was she flirting with him, he wondered. He told her he had been divorced for almost two years and had two daughters, fully grown. He didn’t mention that he missed his ex- dreadfully.

“If you’ll pardon my asking, Ralph, how old are you?” she said. He told her.

______

“Your next assignment,” said Allie one afternoon, “is to get together with at least one other fellow student and collaborate on a short story. I’ve taken the liberty of selecting a partner for you, based on age, which is superficial, but it’s a pretty reliable parameter, in terms of personal history and perspective.” She handed out a slip of paper to each student, with the name of their partner on it.

A hand shot into the air.

“Yes, Betty?” said Allie.

“How long of a story do you want?”

“Whatever length you and your partner feel comfortable with,” replied the teacher. “I’d prefer at least flash fiction, which for our purposes would be from 500 to 1,000 words.”

“How long do we have to complete the assignment?” inquired Matt, a 30-something man seated in the middle of the classroom, whose presence seemed to radiate sexuality.

“I’ll give you two weeks, or four class periods,” said Allie. “You may want to meet outside of class to complete your assignment; in fact, I’d say it’s almost a must. The questionaire I distributed last time showed that of the 17 students enrolled in CW, all but two of you are unmarried.”

“We’re all adults, Allie,” another woman pointed out.

Allie smiled. “Precisely, Priscilla,” she said. “This is another course, like any other. This is your assignment; it’s homework.”

“Tell my wife that,” muttered another student. The class laughed.

“I suggest you take your laptops and meet in the coffee shop in the student union after class,” said Allie. “I met with a student there for our dialogue last week and there was very little traffic after this class let out. When you turned in your class schedule, I saw that no one has another class after this one and I presume that most of those who are employed don’t need to report back to work after this class.”

No one raised an objection. “So, any questions?”

No one had any questions, either.

“Alright, time for a free write.”

Ralph gazed across the classroom and observed that Betty, the student whom Allie had selected to partner with him, was headed his way. This was expected, since she was obviously the student closest in age to him.

“Hi, partner,” she said brightly, approaching his desk as the class let out.

“Hi,” he answered back, instantly noting that her ring finger was bare. She made the same appraisal of him and they both smiled.

Ralph came to his feet and they filed from the classroom. Entering the coffee shop, the same waitress approached their table and smirked at Ralph. “Will you be having your usual?” she asked.

“Yes, thanks,” he said.

“Come here often?”asked Betty.

He shook his head no. “Just once before,” he replied.

Betty ordered. She took out her laptop and booted it up.

“Maybe we should introduce ourselves a little,” suggested Ralph.

“Okay. I’m Betty Monroe, unmarried, 42 years old. I live in the city. I work as a copywriter for a Fortune 500 company. Although I write for a living, I’m taking this course in order to strengthen my creative approach to writing.”

“Ralph Phillips,” said Ralph. “I’m unmarried–now, and I retired two years ago.”

“What did you used to do?” asked Betty.

“I was a chemical engineer for 25 years,” he replied. “I own a couple of proprietary patents and so I retired.”

“How old are you, Ralph?” asked Betty pointedly.

“In two months I’ll be 55,” said Ralph.

“I see,” said Betty cooly.

“Is there a problem?” asked Ralph.

“It’s just that, well, our world view won’t be sympatico,” Betty began.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’re practically a full generation older than I am, Ralph,” she said. “I mean, I wasn’t even alive when they landed on the moon, whereas you were.”

“Betty, this isn’t a dating service, it’s a creative writing course.”

Their drinks were served.

“Certainly, I know that,” snapped Betty with overt hostility.

“Then what is it?” said Ralph with hostility of his own.

“I would like a more contemporary perspective from a writing partner,” she said bluntly. “You’re just too damn old.” She rose from the table, her coffee untouched. Folding up her laptop, she stalked off.

Walking back to the classroom, where he’d forgotten his raincoat, Ralph found Allie still there, typing away. He briefly described the incident at the coffee shop.

“Not to worry,” Allie said brightly. “Another student dropped out, leaving a second student without a partner. It happens.”

“So who’ll partner up with me?” he asked, doing some rapid arithmetic.

“I will,” she said. “You’ve had work published before, so you were probably too advanced for Betty anyway. She would’ve been intimidated by your track record.”

“If you say so,” muttered Ralph, remembering the scene with his erstwhile partner.

“At all events, Betty will have the youth she sought,” said Allie with a crooked smile.

“Do you want to go to the coffee shop?” asked Ralph.

“No need,” she said. “We can do it here.”

Ralph took a seat at a desk near Allie’s.

They performed their introductions. When it came to the age question, Ralph was surprised. Allie knew Ralph was mid-50s and Ralph figured her for mid-40s. He got it wrong by 10 years.

He said, “And I would’ve sworn you weren’t a minute over 30,” he said gallantly.

“I’ll be 53 after the first of the year,” she assured him. In response to his look, she brandished her naked ring finger.

They both smiled.

______

Ten days later, Ralph sat at what had in fact become his regular table in the university coffee shop, tap-tap-tapping away at the fiction on which he was collaborating with Allie. He paused to sip from an iced coffee and glanced up in time to spot Betty threading her way through the tables to the rear of the shop. In her wake walked Matt. the 30-something stud muffin from the class. Matt looked up, spied Ralph and waved. Ralph returned the greeting, but Betty, observing Ralph, spoke shortly to Matt, who then sheepishly averted his eyes back to his companion.

Ralph only chuckled and returned to his laptop. He was joined soon after by Allie, who took no notice of the other two. Betty spied her, however, and her lips became a thin, unsmiling line.

“Hi,” Allie said as she settled herself at the table.

“Hi yourself,” said Ralph.

“Your number one fan is at the table near the back,” she whispered.

“I didn’t think you saw them,” remarked Ralph.

“I’m a teacher,” she explained. “I see everything.” She smiled at him as though she knew a secret.

The secret was that they had become lovers only the night before. Her eyes twinkled.

“Looking good, professor,” whispered Ralph.

“Feeling good,” she agreed.

“Can I get you anything, Allie?” asked Ralph.

“I’ll take another helping of what you served last night; or was it this morning…” She erupted with laughter that sounded to Ralph like ice tinkling in a glass tumbler.

Ralph glanced at the other table and spied Betty observing them with a jaded eye. Allie looked too and said, “My, she looks perturbed.” She smirked.

“I wonder what her problem is?” said Ralph.

“Maybe her young Adonis can’t get it up,” suggested Allie, who laughed all over again.

When Betty and Matt glared at them, Allie feigned seeing them for the first time and waved. Reluctantly, the other couple returned the greeting.

“Ah, youth,” murmured Allie, catching the waitress’s eye and placing her order.

“Did you complete the outline for our short story, Ralph?” asked Allie, suddenly all business.

“Just finishing up,” he announced, turning the computer so she could see.

“No, that’s alright,” said Allie, “I’m come look over your shoulder.”

Betty’s eyes were sharp as gimlets as they absorbed the closeness of teacher and student. Allie came around the table and leaned far over Ralph’s shoulder, their cheeks almost touching.

Ralph felt a little awkward, but not Allie. “I could take you right now, Phillips,” she said in a low, heated voice.

This struck Ralph as funny and he made a smart remark about doing it on the table. Allie turned to face him, her brows lifted provocatively. “I’ll get on my knees and suck your cock,” she threatened in a stage whisper.

“Ssh,” he cautioned. “They’ll hear!”

Allie turned her face back to the laptop, but dropped her hand, unseen by the others, into Ralph’s lap and began kneading his privates. Ralph gasped.

“Don’t tell me you never got it on in a public place,” she chided, increasing the pressure on his genitals.

Ralph’s head swam. “Al…Allie, please, stop.”

“Oh,” she murmured with a pout, releasing him. “You’re no fun.”

She went back around to her own seat. Ralph’s face was red and he was breathing hard. Allie took the laptop and turned it so that it was facing her. She typed a few strokes and pushed it back towards Ralph.

It read:

“Is your dick hard, lover boy?”

He nodded mutely.

Allie pursed her lips. “Goody,” she said.

_____

They were having supper at Allie’s; aside from being a beautiful woman and a professor and an award-winner author, she was a gourmet cook. Ralph shook his head. How did he get so lucky? he wondered.

“What are you thinking?” she asked, spotting the gesture.

He told her, but her reaction wasn’t what he’d been expecting.

“Luck had nothing to do with it,” she said matter of factly.

“Fate?” he asked. “Destiny? Kismet?”

“I don’t believe in any of that horseshit,” she said gruffly.

“Then how do you explain it?’ he asked.

She looked at him somberly for such a long moment that he became restive.

“I told you I’ve never been married,” she went on, filling in the gaps where his thoughts had been percolating. “Didn’t you ever wonder why I never pressed you about ex-wives, significant others, children and the like?”

“Well, sort of.”

“You were married to your high school sweetheart in 1994,” Allie said. “She died tragically in an automobile accident four years later. You had no children…”

Ralph’s jaw grew rigid. Was he being stalked? he wondered.

“You can find out anything on the web,” she added, easing Ralph’s mind a little. “Then you married Gail Fisher, a high school biology teacher, in 1998. You had two daughters, Beth and Kris, now 20 and 19 respectively…”

“What’s the point of the summary, Allie?’ Ralph asked, stemming the tide impatiently.

“The point,” said Allie, stepping forward, “is that I want to marry you!”

“What?” he yelped, taken by surprise.

“I’ve taken you to my bed, many times, over the past month,” said Allie. “I let you kick the tires, look under the hood, take my chassis for a spin around the block.”

“How can you say you want to marry me?” asked Ralph. “We barely know one another.”

“You knew Gail only two months before you proposed,” she reminded him.

“Yeah, things like that,” said Ralph. “How do you even know that? It’s not on the web. Only Gail and I know that…” He paused as a light dawned in his eyes. “You know Gail,” he said slowly.

“Right the first time,” said Allie. “I met Gail in junior college back in the 90s when we were both undergraduates. We kept in touch. Literally,” she added wistfully.

“What do you mean?” he asked, dreading the answer.

Allie ignored the question. “Gail always told me, ‘I’ve got this hot guy. He’s hung.’ and she was right.” Allie smiled saucily.

Ralph frowned. Who was she kidding? he thought. He had always been only modestly endowed, at least according to the women he’d known.

“And she said this guy could go all night,” said Allie.

Well, okay, maybe that was true, agreed Ralph to himself.

“We used to compete for guys,” Allie went on. “But she told me to stay away from you, and then you were married, and so…”

“But now?” he prompted.

“Gail emailed me a while back and told me that her divorce had been finalized and it was open-season on her old man.” Allie tittered lightly.

“But how did you even know I’d enroll in your class?” asked Ralph.

“That was serendipity,” admitted Allie, “but when Gail told me you were taking the class, I shuffled class schedules around just enough…” She smiled complacently.

“So what now?” asked Ralph.

Allie shrugged. “Honeymoon in Hawaii?” she suggested, only half kidding.

“What makes you think I even want another wife, Allie?” Ralph asked.

“In me you’ve got a woman within three years of your own age, so our memory set and social perspectives are sympatico. I’m a well-compensated, tenured professor, so you know I’m not scoping you out just to get your dough. Plus, I’ve got a killer bod’–you’ve got to admit.”

Ralph nodded unconsciously. It was all true.

“Plus,” she added, “I like to go all night.”

_____

Ralph stood uncertainly under a beacon of light, squinting against the glare. Slowly he moved forward, out of the light, and suddenly it was dark as midnight. The roar of an engine caught his attention and up to him sped a sports car. He couldn’t see the driver for the dim light. Abruptly the vehicle slammed on the brakes and drew to a halt. Ralph gasped. He fell forward, over the hood of the car and could hear the cooling engine ticking.

Next Ralph found himself in a parking lot behind some retail stores. He observes two vagrants, a young woman and an even younger man, rummaging through a dumpster, caching items in a large black trash bag. They pay him no mind. Suddenly, Donna Lee, a woman Ralph knew as a teenager, appears and the other woman begins softly singing. At the conclusion of the impromptu concert, Donna Lee applauds politely. She tells the pair that she’ll take them to the bus station and buy them tickets home. The three disappear out of Ralph’s vision.

Ralph startles awake and Allie is there in bed beside him. He tells her his dream and asks what it means.

Rather than explain, she says, “You can use your dreams and bizarre half-memories in your writing, lover, but don’t include a dream in the text. That is a faux pas and a cop out and an outdated literary technique.” Then Allie goes down on him.

_____

In class several days later, during a free write, Ralph is immersed in the creative process. He pays no attention to the rest of the class. He hears Allie say something from the front of the room, but he pays it no mind. At once the rumble of conversation increases and Ralph hears whistles and cheers and applause and his name.

He glances up and everyone is looking at him.

“Congratulations, Ralph, old man,” says Matt, slapping him on the shoulder.

Ralph stares stupidly.

“I hope you’ll be very happy!” he hears Betty say.

Another student asks Ralph, “When’s the big day?”

“For what?” asks Ralph, still out of the loop.

“Your and Allie’s wedding, man,” says yet another student. “Allie just told us,” he said.

“Like iron filings drawn to a magnet, Ralph’s eyes lock with Allie’s. She’s running her pointed tongue over her pink lips.

Ralph gulps.

_____

Ralph is in Allie’s bed and they just got high. Ralph peers closely at the soapstone pipe Allie always proffers.

“What kind of pot is this?” he asks. He has forgotten to inquire about their purported wedding. He learns from the class that everyone will be in attendance.

“The park is a great idea for a wedding, Ralph,” said Mary, a 30-ish student in the creative writing course. “Good thinking. Allie told us it was your idea.” She smiled and her mouth looks so wide he’s afraid she’ll swallow him.

Ralph asks Allie again, “What kind of pot is this?”

She shrugs. “The kind that gets you high, I guess. Why? Does it taste weird to you?”

Ralph tires to form an answer, but he is having difficulty organizing his thoughts, a sensation coincident with his deepening acquaintance with Allie.

“No, it’s fine,” he says, and sighs.

“I can’t believe you didn’t get high before we met,” she remarks.

“The firm I worked for could fire you for cause if you got busted for smoking pot,” remembered Ralph. “Besides, it was illegal most everywhere until just a few years ago.”

“Wanna smoke some crack?” Allie asks him out of nowhere.

“No,” he says positively. “That shit is addictive and it is still illegal. You don’t do it, do you?”

“No,” she replied. “But one of my students gave me a dime bag and told me how to smoke it.” He looks down at a couple of small white rocks Allie holds in her palm.

Ralph shakes his head no.

“Okay, baby,” says Allie agreeably. She tosses the crystals into the waste basket.

Ralph wants to tell Allie about the personality changes he’s been experiencing, but doesn’t want to worry her. So he says nothing.

There is but one class period left in the course, and Allie is sitting up in bed reading manuscripts created by her students and submitted in lieu of a final exam.

“How do they look?” asked Ralph, seeing Allie chuckle.

Allie only shakes her head and shuffles through the pile.

“I invited someone over tonight, Ralph,” she tells him.

“Tonight?” he asks. “It’s getting sort of late for guests, isn’t it? We’ll be going to bed soon.”

“That’s the thing,” replied Allie. “I want us all to go to be together, you know?”

Ralph knew that in her colorful past, Allie had been a player, but he hardly expected that life to continue, and if it did, to include him.

“Who is it?” he asked cautiously.

She hesitated a beat and then said, “Gail.”

His ex-wife!

“You talk about her in your sleep. You told me you’re still in love with her,” she pointed out. “And she misses you too, Ralph.”

“Allie, that part of my life is over. It’s behind me.”

After a moment, he asked, “Did you and Gail ever…?”

She nods.

Ralph blew out a breath. “Whew!”

She is looking close at him. She narrows her eyes.

“So what do you expect to happen here tonight, Allie?” he asks with morbid curiosity. Oddly, it seems to him, Ralph doesn’t feel at all turned off at the prospect of making love with both his former wife and his girlfriend. And he iss still in love with Gail.

“I can see you’re intrigued,” noted Allie with a smile.

Ralph couldn’t help himself; he grinned. “Well,” he said, “a Ralph sandwich. What’s not to like?”

“Then try this on for size, lover,” said Allie. “She’s bringing someone with.”

“The electric spark died instantly. Feeling proprietary about both his ex- and his current girlfriend, Ralph didn’t want to share.

Seeing Ralph’s distress, Allie smiled and put him at his ease. “You can relax, Ralph. Gail is bringing another woman.”

“How will that work?” Ralph wondered aloud.

Allie smiled. “We’ll just play it by ear, okay?”

_____

When the other couple arrived, Ralph noticed obliquely that there was someone, a slender, 30-ish blonde, in company with his ex-wife, but Ralph only had eyes for Gail. She looked good: a few pounds heavier, but it suited her, a positive contrast to the whippet-thin physiogamy she’d had for the years of their marriage.

Gail introduced Petula–‘Pet’–to Allie and Ralph, but it didn’t really register. He couldn’t take his eyes off Gail. Her hair, still dark brown, was longer, the lines in her face sharper, but she looked, Ralph decided, damned good. The two couples sat around drinking wine for a while, but Ralph didn’t taste his. The gathering was friendly. Pet addressed Ralph.

“So you retired early, Ralph. What do you do to fill your days?”

When he didn’t immediately respond, Allie touched his elbow.

“Oh,” he said. “I take classes at the university. That’s how I met Allie.”

“That’s how everyone meets Allie,” said Gail with a little smile.

Ralph found the remark jarring. Another reminder that Gail and Allie been intimate? he wondered. Feeling suddenly left out, he grew quiet again.

“Hey,” said Pet, “I’ve got some blow. A full gram,” she added.

Allie perked up, but Gail didn’t react. She was watching him.

“Are you into illegals now, Ralph?” she asked in a neutral tone.

Ralph remembered Gail as being almost reverential about treating her body “as a temple,” and how she’d seldom even drunk alcohol during their nearly 20 year marriage. He looked at her curiously. Then was relieved when she didn’t partake. Pet sprinkled the translucent crystals onto a small mirror and cut them finely with a razor blade. Allie participated with enthusiasm, as did Pet, but Gail concentrated on watching Ralph.

Of course, Allie pulled out her stash and they smoked some pot. Gail did participate here. After a few minutes, the voices became a soft murmur and Ralph felt himself nodding off. When he awoke, Gail was sitting on the sofa, watching him.

“Where…where are the others?” he squeaked out.

“Allie took Pet upstairs…” said Gail, “…to see her etchings.” She laughed.

“They went up to bed?” asked Ralph bluntly.

“Uh huh. How does that sit with you, Ralph?” Gail asked.

“I…I don’t know. I’m confused.”

Gail didn’t say anything.

“I feel,” said Ralph, “totally at sea.”

“I’m not surprised,” replied Gail, taking up Allie’s small dope pipe. “How often do you smoke this shit?” she asked.

“Every time Gail and I are together,” replied Ralph. “Sometimes two or three times a night. What?” he asked, “it’s just pot, right?”

Gail drew the pipe to her nose and sniffed. “Not quite,” she said.

“Then what is it?” he asked.

“Peyote,” she answered. “Mescal buttons,” she added. “Probably blended with a little PCP or opium.”

“I…don’t do hallucinogens,” protested Ralph rather fecklessly.

“Okay, Ralph.”

“You mean,” he said, “that Allie has been drugging me with hallucinogenic drugs? Is that why I’m seeing things, imagining things that don’t really happen?”

“You were always good at math,” she told him. “Put two and two together.”

“Why would Allie do that?” he asked.

“I haven’t spent that much time with her over the past couple of years,” said Gail.

“She said she knew you from back in the day,” said Ralph.

“I was a bit of a wild child in my undergraduate days,” allowed Gail. “Then I settled down and married you. I figured all the craziness was behind me.”

“And now?” he asked.

Gail took a moment to answer. “I’m still in love with you, Ralph. I never fell out of love with you. It was the empty-nest syndrome and your retirement and the sudden closeness all the time. I felt like I was smothering.. I want to give us a second chance. How do you feel about that?” she asked.

“I think…I…God, you look good, Gail!”

She smiled.

“How do you feel about Allie? she asked. You’ve become a fixture in the other’s life over the last few months. Are you in love with her, Ralph?”

“It’s been like rush week back in college, too much, too soon, and now I learned that she’s been feeding me psychedelics…I don’t think I would categorize it as love. I’ve been lonely this last two years,” he admitted. “I guess I was trying to fill up the spaces, you know?”

Gail nodded.

“What is, uh, your relationship with Pet?” he asked.

“She teaches at the same high school that I do,” explained Gail. “She’s a lesbian and I told her my intentions with respect to you, and offered to fix her up with a crazy-sexy woman who made good bread. Pet is a bit of a loose cannon and I thought they’d hit it off. They did.”

Ralph sat contemplating what Gail had told him. As if reading his mind, she said, “I think you have about outlived your shelf life with Allie, Ralph. She’s used to more…variety…in her love life, if you know what I mean.”

“How did your plans for me figure into everything that Allie did, Gail?” asked Ralph.

“Ah,” said Gail, waving a finger at Ralph, “that would be telling.”

Ralph stood. “Let’s get out of here, go back home.” For the first time in two years, Ralph was again considering their former domicile as a home.

“I like the sound of that, Ralph,” said Gail. “Should we leave Allie and Pet a note?”

He shook his head. “I think they’ll figure it out. I’ve got the feeling that this is what at least some of you had planned all along.”

Gail stood as well. Ralph approached his ex- and kissed her lips gently, and then with more passion.

“Umm,” she said.

As they drifted to the door, held tight in one another’s arms, Gail asked, “What grade did you you get for the course?”

“An E,” he replied at once.

“You mean, you failed’?” she asked.

Ralph shook his head. “No,” he said. “I got extra credit.”

Altamira by Tony Dawson

The cave of Altamira is one of the Palaeolithic

wonders of the world, a prehistoric art gallery

where Stone Age fauna can be found depicted

in careful detail by the cave-dwelling artisans.

The vivid colours and charcoal were preserved

by a landslide that sealed the opening for millennia

until discovered in 1868 when during a hunt,

a gun dog scrambled its way inside the cave.

Once discovered, access was unrestricted.

I visited the cave almost a century later

in 1966 and still remember marvelling

open-mouthed at how bright the paintings

of the polychromatic bison and aurochs looked

and how the bulges in the rock were used

to make the beasts appear three-dimensional.

For the last twenty-four years, to preserve it

from the damaging effect of visitors’ breath

on the ochres and charcoal of the murals,

the cave has been closed to tourists.

To prevent the paintings from deteriorating,

the cave is now open only to researchers

so that they can determine the techniques

employed by cave dwellers of the Palaeolithic.

They have revealed that the shapes of the animals

were first outlined with a flint tool, and then painted

over a period that lasted some twenty thousand years.

It’s as if the themes of an artist like Rosa Bonheur

had magically stretched all the way back for millenia,

to be suggested by those gifted Palaeolithic artisans.

Tony Dawson, 7 August 2026

The Great Debate Between Good and Evil by Frederick K Foote

(Today Mr. Foote returns with one of the things he does best–a dialogue –The Eds.)

Cicero: Dear audience, please prepare yourself for a spectacle unlike anything the world has ever seen or heard.

I’m Cicero Webster. I’m your host tonight.

Tonight, live on our stage. We have a debate for the ages without commercial interruption. This presentation is being carried by most major streaming, television, and radio outlets. For the next two hours, prepare yourself to see Evil and Good in their inaugural debate.

Viewers and listeners to the right of me. We have Mr. Good, a blonde, blue-eyed, six-foot-one-inch-tall White male in a custom white tuxedo that literally glows. He’s crowned with a silver halo.

To my left is Ms. Evil, a five-foot-nine-inch dark-skinned Black woman in a form-fitting red sequined dress and red heels. The tips of twin red horns stick out from her natural hairstyle.

We will start with each party providing a brief definition of the concept they represent. Mr. Good has won the coin toss and has elected to start.

Good: Thank you to the billions that are looking and listening for joining us tonight. Thank you, Cicero, for hosting, and thank you, Evil, for making this event possible.

And now, to my definition.

Good is an activity that promotes the well-being of humans and nature. Good thoughts and good intentions are weightless in the world of actions.

It is our good deeds and efforts that define us.

I yield the floor to the elegant Ms. Evil.

Evil: Ahh, Good, you are resplendent and gorgeous in your glowing garments. And your halo is absolutely divine.

To Cicero and all our audience, I welcome your kind attention and thoughtful consideration of our words.

Evil is hateful or harmful acts committed by humans for the actor’s satisfaction, or gain, or with utter indifference to the impacts of the actions on humans or other life forms.

Equally important is the duty to oppose evil in your sphere of influence. The failure to oppose evil is evil.

You are all familiar with evil. It is part of your everyday life.

Cicero: If these definitions are satisfactory starting points, would each of you give your best example of good and evil in the last century? Evil, it is your turn to take the lead.

Evil: It was a six-year season of blood, brains, brawn, and guts mired in the trenches, smothering the beaches, and the macabre fruit of every remaining tree or shrub.

It was the invasion of Poland on tracks, wheels, and soaring wings of steel, with shells, bombs, and bayonets, that watered and sowed the blood-sodden soil with the sweet meats and tender flesh, and glistening bones of 250,000 corpses, a grand death dance to open wide the gates of hell on Earth in WWII.

Invasions, battles, sieges, retreats, firebombing, atomic bombing, death marches, the rape of millions of women by Axis and Allies troops, “Comfort Women,” Unit 731, and the mass murder of 13 million human beings because of their race, culture, physical and mental ability, or ethnicity.

And this banquet of butchery establishes record numbers of 20 million military deaths and 40 million civilian deaths.

This war was a symphony of acrimony, hatred, hubris, and greed in a monument to the endless capacity of humans to do violence to one another.

It is evil incarnate.

[Evil has changed from her red gown to green camouflage fatigues, boots, and a steel helmet. She is holding a shovel and a sign, “The gravedigger is the final victor.”]

Cicero: Well spoken, Evil. Good, the floor is yours.

Good: Evil, your words move me, touch my soul, and terrify me. Yet, I find goodness in the world. Lift every voice and rejoice. In 1900, world life expectancy was 32 years. In 2026, worldwide life expectancy is 73.66 years. Forty-one years of life is a glorious bounty worth taking a minute to savor.

We are living testimony to our good work, our incredible ingenuity, and our commitment to our communities.

[Good has morphed into a garbage worker’s white overalls, gloves, and work boots.]

Cicero: Do you have any comments or questions at this stage?

Evil: The hunting-gathering societies that preceded and still coexist with us had life spans of 70 or more years if they survived birth and infancy. Perhaps civilization had negative impacts on life expectancy that we have just corrected over the last century.

Good: Whatever the context, we have documented the good we have accomplished.

Evil: Dear audience, if you are of the opinion that good and evil are distinct and separate and opposite entities, please let me tell you that is not the case. We are devious and deceptive in our presentations, and you will have to watch us carefully. But you will soon understand that our differences are overwhelmed by our similarities.

Good: I adamantly disagree with that proposition. Without good and the distinction between good and evil, civilization falters, and the world runs to ruin. We can separate good from evil as clearly as we can see the difference between day and night. Hitler, from your WWII example, is a case in point.

Evil: Hitler was one person who had the support of millions in his racist, nationalist, imperialistic campaign of conquest and genocide.

And even those who did not support Hitler but failed to oppose him fall into my category of evil.

I think 90% of the German people fell into these two categories of evil.

Yet it would be difficult to say that these millions had not a grain of goodness in them. Don’t you agree?

Good: We are talking about Hitler as a uniquely evil person beyond a doubt. Most people would agree on that.

Evil: Most people are evil. We have demonstrated that with our Germany example. The value judgments of a cabal of evil are questionable at best.

Good: Dear, dear, Evil, grant me this one concession that people of the world recognize Hitler is one of the truly great evils of our time.

Evil: Does he lack even one grain of goodness?

Good: Even if he does, it utterly fails to compensate for his crimes against humanity.

Evil: Hush now. Tread carefully, for you are on the precipice when you declare even an odious human such as Hitler an inhuman thing undeserving of human concern. At this moment you start to glow evil.

Good: Evil, why are you supporting the alleged humanity of Hitler? Answer me that.

Evil: To prove my point. To win our debate. Evil is everywhere and in all of us, given the opportunity to express it. You are all subjects in my kingdom. Bow down.

Good: No! No! Goodness is the hope and the foundation of the world. Without our goodness, without our families, without our caring for each other, without our raising our children to adulthood, there would be no humankind, and this is the essence of goodness—our caring for each other.

Evil: [Applauds] Bravo. Good. Dear Good, you do understand that most domestic abuse, most child abuse, most false indoctrinations, such as religion, racism, and nationalism, occur within the family.

Family miseducation provides the foundation for every Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin.

And I know you have seen the DNA results that show that the rate of incest is higher than we had assumed.

Family values in action by the good families of the world.

Oh, and don’t forget Cain and Abel and Joseph, and his brothers, Hamlet, Macbeth, and too many more dysfunctional evil families to mention.

Good: Evil, I’m not claiming that the family or any other human institution is perfect; we all know that is not so. What I’m claiming is that, for the existence of humanity, the family has been the good, the good platform we stood on and still stand on.

Evil: Let me whisper a secret to you, Good: What you are missing from your account is the fact that this is the good and evil platform of family.

And at this point, I suggest you concede the debate to me, for you have admitted that all human endeavors are imperfect and therefore subject to and contain the seeds of evil.

[Evil is now dressed in a red bikini, flip-flops, and a bathing cap with a towel over her shoulder.]

Good: NO! Never. God is good in perfection.

Evil: God! No, you didn’t. If you are referring to the Christian God, if you are referring to the one who destroyed the world once and has threatened to do it again, has destroyed six or more cities and slaughtered thousands. If that is your exemplar of good, you are deranged. Your God is the evilest creature I have ever encountered.

I will speak no more on that.

Good: That is the most despicable and disparaging comment I have encountered from a creature of reason that professes respect for the beliefs of others.

Evil: Oh, please, Good. Don’t play dumb and innocent. If your God exists and its bibles are its true words, they are its proud public confessions. If it is a myth, shame on the myth makers for promoting mass murder and genocide.

Good: God moves in mysterious ways beyond the comprehension of man.

Evil: Rubbish! You supposedly understand your God’s goodness and eternal love that is erected on this platform of evil and destruction. You have an enormous, apparently immeasurable capacity for understanding.

Come, Good, forget the debate. Come with me to the beach. And we can discuss good and evil in a more relaxed setting.

Cicero, I’m going to blow this joint. Thank you all for listening, and we await your comments.

Good: I reject your arguments against God. They demonstrate the true nature of evil. You would deny humankind hope and salvation.

Evil: Save it for the next debate. I’m beach bound.

Good: I will not leave millions in the lurch. We shall have this out here and now.

Evil: Your true believers will be unswayed by logic and truth, and doubters will still have their doubts.

Cicero: Perhaps you could return for another debate. That would allow us to evaluate the overwhelming responses we are receiving.

Evil: Of course, Cicero. Possibly at the beach next time, but not too soon.

Good: So be it. I will settle for a second match. Evil: A dip in the ocean might just cool my temper.

Evil: Good, Good. Why don’t you be black for the afternoon? It would be gratifying for us to be on the same page for a change.

Good: I can do you one better than a change in my skin tone.

[Good turns into a dark chocolate brown woman wearing a white bikini.

Evil: I like your style, Good. Let’s take in the ocean air.

[The pair disappears from the studio.]