Listen:
Amanda Palmer has become unstuck in time… And space too.
Now what the fuck is that supposed to mean?
Amanda is now living, and also dead. She’s out there touring, but she was also assassinated. And will be assassinated, in many different ways. And will also die of natural causes circa 2057. And also, she has never even been born.
And she is experiencing all that at once, right now. (Except, of course, for that non-existence state that comes with the “not having been born” part).
I’ll explain: in one line of possible events, Amanda was born in 1976*, lived on, and died, let’s say, in 2057. In another line of events, she was assassinated while recording her first solo album. I’m not kidding you, she really was assassinated. I should know, because I was the one who killed her. So it goes.
When I decided to kill Amanda, I didn’t know exactly what I was doing. Maybe nobody does. It came to me like a settled deal - an imperative that should be complied - like I was meant to do it. It wasn’t like any “devil made me do it”, or “I did what the voices were telling me” kind of thing - it just was the thing to be done. I would kill Amanda and there was no escaping from it, for neither of us.
I knew where she lived, and prepared a stakeout. I was just standing at the other side of street, pretending to read the paper, and probably looking suspicious as hell, waiting for her to get out of the house. When she did, I crossed over to her side, and hadn’t taken three steps of following her when she turns around and stares at me.
– You came here to kill me, right?
I was stunned.
– I tell you what: since you’re gonna kill me anyway, let me at least take a last cup of coffee and then you kill me afterwards, ok?
I was even more stunned. I thought of drawing the gun right there, in case she was trying to fool me, but she guessed that move too and continued:
– Ah, come on man, you can make it look like an accident later; I’ll even help you with it, promise. Not to mention that, if you kill me now, you’ll never find out how I knew about you, AND you’ll miss the best cappuccino ever.
I had no choice.
– Settled then, – she said ­– hot drinks are on the soon deceased.
We got to what she said was her favorite café. It was a nice place, chess patterned floor, intellectual types around, antique cash register on the corner, you know the style. She said hello to the baristas, they answered back, she presented me as an old friend, they said hello to me, and I answered back; we ordered, we sat at table in the corner, waited awhile, and the beverages arrived.
She started grumbling from above her steaming cup.
– I can’t fucking believe it, the universe must be joking with me, every-fucking-body is trying to kill me you know? Must be the price to pay, not that I’m complaining of course.
I wasn’t surprised. But I wanted to know how she knew about me, not the others.
– Ok look, here’s what­ – she said – You know the multi-universes theory?
I don’t know who was the Einstein who first formulated the idea – maybe it was Einstein himself –, but the theory is something like this: at any given moment several things are possible; the next moment, only one of these things happen; but, according to this theory, the universe sort of multiplies itself to permit the other possible things to happen in several new universes.
– And the four dimensionalistic view? – she asked again.
This one claimed that the passage of time doesn’t really exists, that the past and the future are also happening “right now”, they are just different “presents” which we have seen or will see someday.
– So, they’re all for real – she paused for a long sip, and then continued – The thing is that, believe it or not, for some bizarre reason, I’ve been traveling through all of the possible pasts, and the possible futures, of all possible fucking universes; and you know what, I’m feeling really tired about it. So that is how I knew all about your evil scheme to kill me… (she made that “oooo, scary!” mocking face) …as if that could ever happen for real.
I can’t say I wasn’t surprised, but somehow that seemed to fit right in with what Amanda seemed to be. I figure that went a long way in explaining how she wrote such kick-ass songs full of truth and wisdom, but I kept it to myself in case she wouldn’t agree with me. I didn’t felt like beginning a discussion on her songwriting merits.
– And how about you, why did you decide to kill me?
Like I said before, it was settled before I even knew what I was doing. I felt it was something I simply had to do.
– But, like, you could just choose NOT to do it. It’s just one possible outcome.
She told me everybody can choose any possibility, if they know what’s going on. That there wasn’t any imperative for me or anybody, that all the time people did things without knowing what they we’re doing, but that it was their choice, even if they were forcibly prevented to see beyond it. But that if one knows what he is choosing, he can give it up if it’s a bad idea, and do something else.
– And you know what else: one of the many things I don’t understand about this is that every time, on every possible universe, there is always some fucker trying to kill me. I’ve been killed so many times already, in so many different ways, you just wouldn’t believe; the sick things that people do, you know? It’s really bizarre.
She paid and tipped and said goodbye and we got out.
We were walking down the street, nobody in sight. It was getting late.
– So it’s really up to you, see? You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.
But I couldn’t stop it anymore – well I could, she was right of course, but even because she was right. Now it was my choice, I was going to kill her anyway.
We got near to a park. She looked up to the trees and walked towards to the biggest one, and then she stopped and turned around like she did the first time; and shrugged, knowing her eventual fate. I shot.
She fell down, but at the precise moment, she stretched her arms and held her torso up a little. She looked at the bleeding hole in her belly – and then she tapped her belly childishly like that drum bit that goes after a joke.
– Well I guess that’s it then. The last time I fell I hit my head, it really fucking hurt, so I thought ‘not this time’, hence holding myself up like this.
And then she laid herself a little lower.
– You know, we could’ve really hit off if you didn’t do this, I’m telling you because I know, you know? We’d be friends, you’ll present me to your sister Bella, such a beautiful girl, how is she by the way?
She died a little more, lying on the ground completely now.
– It would have been real nice, but hey, one’s got to do what one’s…. But I’ll be seeing you again…
She coughed blood for a bit.
– …better luck next time.


——————————————————————————————————————


A Short Story by Jason S.
Inspired by this photo taken by Kyle Cassidy


Let me tell it to you straight: Amanda Palmer was killed by Watchmen. Well, if you want to be all technical about it, the book did and didn’t kill her. The squid did. It was more of an indirect murder. Actually, I don’t know if you would call it a murder. Perhaps a little back-story would be a good idea.

Amanda came into the world without any complications. No C-section needed, no premature birth, no deficiencies, no problems in the womb, and, eerily enough, right on time. It’s as if Amanda knew what her due date was.

Her first few years breezed by. She learned to crawl, walk, and use the facilities. She experienced the pains of teething. She spoke her first words: “Ba ba.” Everything passed uneventfully – that is, until kindergarten.

It was some point after the children learned the alphabet. The children were given free time to draw things like their houses and families and such things. Now, mind you, as the children were all around the age of 5, the best drawing expected from them was stick figures in front of “houses” that resembled either something constructed by Frank Gehry or something thought up by Salvador Dali. Or explosions and fire. But you wouldn’t expect that from 5 year olds. The teacher treaded slowly around the tables, looking over each and every shoulder, saying the customary “Oh, that’s such a nice house,” – that is, until she got to Amanda.

Amanda’s house was – well, in a word – stunning. It looked like a sketch of a classical painting. The house was a majestic and domineering Victorian, with a lush green lawn. On the lawn were perfect drawn-to-scale replicas of her parents. However, there was a shadowy, human-like figure in the attic window of the house.

“Amanda, who’s that?”

“Him? In the window? Oh, that’s RJ! He’s lived in the house for years. I can see him, but my parents can’t.”

Amanda’s teacher didn’t tell her parents about RJ. He seemed like your average imaginary friend. But her parents and all of their friends and all of their friends’ friends and so on raved about her drawing, even more when they came over for drinks and had a little too much and got a bit giddy.

You’re probably wondering, “Okay, this isn’t as mind-blowing or confusing as the 5^th season of Lost, but what the hell is going on here?” Perhaps I should explain. Amanda had a gift, if you couldn’t deduce that from her flawless drawing featuring RJ the ghost, along with her punctual birth. She had psychic tendencies, which amplified her art skills, allowed her to communicate with RJ, and gave her knowledge of her birth while in the womb.

You’re probably now wondering “How do these tendencies figure into the story?” Well, whenever people write books or comics or anything that’s read by an audience, they unknowingly leave small psychic imprints that the readers slightly sense or pick up on, affecting their emotions while reading. When Alan Moore was writing Watchmen, the squid received a heavy psychic imprint, heavier than anything else in the novel. This imprint causes heavy feelings of fear and disgust in average readers when they reach the point at which the squid appears. In those with psychic tendencies, it results in severe Grand Mal seizures. And those tend to result in death. And that’s what happened to poor Amanda.

She was in her early 30s when she decided to pick up Watchmen after seeing the film, which is a poor choice if you’re a fan of graphic novels and adaptations. The proper thing to do would’ve been to read the graphic novel, see the film, and then nitpick to one’s hearts’ content. Let’s just say that Amanda chose poorly. She was lying on her bed, working her way towards the end, when she came upon the squid. The strong imprint, amplified by her psychic tendencies, immediately caused a neural overload, which lead to a gushing nose and a cerebral hemorrhage, killing her almost instantly. Amanda toppled off of the bed, landing on the floor, out of sight. The novel landed within arm’s reach and without a trace of Amanda’s blood on it. Amanda’s mother found her body when she came to let her know that dinner was ready. They were having meatloaf, Amanda’s favorite.

And that’s how Amanda Palmer died.

How do I know all of this, you ask? Let’s just say that when people read my works, I learn all about them, through a psychic connection of sorts. And I must say that Amanda was the most bloody interesting person to have read my works – well, except for that Neil fellow. And he turned out okay. What a pity. They would’ve made a fantastic couple.

A Short Submission by Kelly Smith

It was around noon when I started to catch the smell of something rancid on the air. Something told me to leave it alone, but that digging curiosity got the better of me, as it always does. You see, I had been sick and laid up for far too long. My body was screaming at me to move, somewhere.. Anywhere. So, I decided to take a walk. A walk that would land me smack in the middle of the most beastly mystery of our time. Like I said before, the smell.. It was like something straight from the bowels of hell. The southern heat has a way of makin that smell come to have a very life of it’s own. Perhaps, it’s the way our ugly souls really smell, hidden deep inside our perfumed bodies. It was ripe, pungent and my relentless need to know drug me right toward it. God, how I wish I had just walked another way. You see, I love the woods, the creek, the way the light falls in beams through the canopy above. The light, like poles we could climb straight up to heaven, and today, maybe that’s what they were used for. The ground felt great under foot after being down so long. The wind caressed me and seemed to whisper sweet nothings in my ear, How it missed me, how good my skin felt. Everything was just about as perfect as a day could get, except that smell and the nagging thought at the back of my mind that this was the wrong place to be. I found out real quick that that feeling was right. As I came to the edge of the creek I started to sit, take off my shoes. Let my feet have a little rest in the cool of the water. That’s when I noticed there was already something resting in that cool water and this would be resting there forever. She was wrapped in plastic. You know, the kind we used to pour dish soap on to slip and slide. She didn’t look like she was in the mood for any slipping or sliding though. Her hair was this reddish brown hue, the color of dry, burning leaves In autumn. The way those beams of light hit it, I could swear there were embers of a long gone fire still hiding in the strands. There was no fire though, you could tell from the translucent white film that took over the vibrancy of her irises. That milky whiteness that robbed her of clearly seeing how beautiful her final resting place was. At least, that could have been some solace. Some warmth too, could have taken that cold shade of blue off her fair skin. It truely was an odd sight to see something, espcially a person, in that frigid hue, in the heat of the day. Hell, it would have been a strange color in the snow, to be honest. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. I was quite transfixed on her stillness. Laying there in that shallow creek, wrapped up like a deli sandwich, eyes to the heavens, peering into eternity. Her mouth slightly open as if to give one parting note, one final aria. Her right arm was loose of the wrap and outstretched as if she gave her final breath trying to worm out of that plastic cocoon, poised to make one last bow. As obviously dead as she was, she was still quite beautiful. Pale skin yet unravaged, hair still ablaze, a lovely Dresden doll for all to see. The only thing that I could see out of place, besides her life, was that her left eyebrow was smudged ever so slightly. I can’t even begin to tell you why but that one little detail made me crack. Tears fell like torrents from hurricanes and a cry escaped my throat that sounded foreign and ferrell. It was then I saw that wrapped inside the plastic with her was a book. I could swear that the woman laying nearly atop my bare feet was the very same woman that graced the cover. This book, certainly, had led to her untimely end. Then and there, I decided, I must find out Who Killed Amanda Palmer.


——————————————————————————————————————


Story by Matthew Stalbaum
Inspired by this photo by Nicholas Vargelis

Of course the store was crowded on a Sunday morning – ironically enough, there’s a lot of business that day of the week.  I usually avoid that crowd, I’d rather have less people around by going a weekday instead.  Besides, those guys who show up Sunday mornings always creep me out a little.  They always wear real nice clothing, like they want people to think they’re going to church, and they walk down the aisles with these grins that give you shivers.  Hell, even the dolls start to shake and move to the back of their containers, though of course still smiling cause a sale’s a sale and they’ll pay hell if the manager catches them scowling or frowning some guy away.  I feel a little sorry for the ones who get bought up by those Sunday guys – I hear they’re into some sick shit.  I mean, my tastes are a little violent, but damn, the Sunday-bought dolls barely last a couple weeks, or at least that’s what I hear.

I was only there that morning because the doll I had bought on Friday had fuckin’ run right into the street and a Volvo hit her right in the back and tossed her, and I was gonna see if I could get my money back.  It wasn’t the guy’s fault though, the dumb broad was trying to escape and just ran in the street half naked, didn’t even know where she was going.  His insurance can cover the damages to his car, cause no one’s weekend should be ruined by some dumb doll doing something stupid.  I’d have waited some other day to take her back, to avoid going in on a Sunday, but I was afraid she’d start to rot or something, and I didn’t have no where to store her until Monday without stinking up the house. 

She was in the freaking S&M section at the store, she knew what she was in for, and I’m damn nice compared to a lot of other guys browsing that aisle.  Hell, I didn’t even mean to give her a black eye, and I apologized for it and offered some ice to put on it.  Now how many other guys would do something like that?  A handful maybe – we’re a rare breed, us nice guys.  The guy who owned the Volvo wasn’t that mad though, luckily.  He was telling me how he had a doll who just up and killed herself, just hopped out of the top story of the house and broke her neck on impact.  I told him that was a shame.  I said, “Man, it’s like they don’t appreciate anything!  We feed them, we give them a place to stay, and most of us take them out every once in a while.  I don’t understand why they do this stupid shit!  I know I’m not what you’d call a looker, but dammit, it ain’t that bad!  I’m giving them a better life than those girls on the streets just selling themselves.”  He nodded in agreement, cause he was a nice guy like me – I could tell, he didn’t give me no trouble or anything, he knew it was just a freak thing.

I don’t get how those girls get the nerve to just bypass the store and sell themselves, and for a limited time only no less!  I guess it attracts that crowd that only wants a quick pleasure, not a keeper like me, but it’s still pretty strange.  You don’t know what can happen to you on those streets anyways.  I remember reading about that Jack the Ripper guy once – don’t any of those=2 0girls see any guy could just come up and get them around the throat?  At least with a store they get made up, they’re clean, and the clientele at least has decent money and will take care of them – most of ‘em anyways, and even the crummy ones just rough ‘em up, no one just ups and kills their doll.  Those street girls should just find other work, like waitressing or something, cause those streets just aren’t safe, you know?

I had bought this one on Friday cause I’d just gotten a raise and figured I’d get myself a present.  I’d had one before her though, bought right after Juliet, my wife, died.  It took some getting used to I’ll say, to suddenly have this doll in front of you who isn’t like other women, who you don’t have to go through that bullshit process with of courting and flowers and movies and looking good and what not.  God, I was so new back then, I didn’t sleep with her for a week, just kept taking her out to restaurants and hoping she’d get a liking to me.  One day she finally asked me, “hey, how come you don’t wanna do it?  Got a sex problem?”  She was a bold one, had short brown hair and tough limbs, small but all muscle.  It probably never occurred to her that I thought she had to like me before we did any of that.  She just asked me that question straight out, word for word, and I realized that it didn’t matter whether she liked me or not, she’d still do it, so I smiled and kissed her all over her lips and neck, going down her body like an animal cause I hadn’t gotten any in so long. 

What really got me was all the things I could do with her that my wife wouldn’t agree to.  I won’t go into detail, but she never once said no.  I don’t know what they do to those dolls, but they should do it to all women if you ask me – it would’ve saved me a lot of endless and winless goddamn arguments, I can tell you.  She didn’t always smile about what I asked from her, but it didn’t matter.  She made the sounds and put up the motions, worked her hips the right way each time, so she was always worth it.  Sometimes she even forced a smile, and I know she didn’t mean it but that’s alright.

She stayed about a year, and could’ve stayed longer if she hadn’t been a bitch.  Back then I was real green to the whole doll thing, so on most nights when I’d use her she’d just fall asleep in the bed, and I, being the doormat I was back then, didn’t ever bother to wake her.  One night I got up to go the bathroom and when I came back the drawer of the bedside table was open and she was holding a picture of Juliet I had put in there when I had decided to buy the doll.  It was this picture of Juliet at a company party a year or so before she died.  She was a little big at the time, and those days she would hound me for damn near everything, but her smile in that picture was so damn…I don’t even know what, just her, I couldn’t bear to look at it.  The doll went, “hey, who’s this?”  I told her it was my wife.  “What, she leave you or something?”
“No,” I told her, “she died,” keeping my lips as tight as possible so we’ll drop the subject. 
“Well, that’s a shame” she says flippantly, and then a smile grows on her face.  “Hey, least you got me now!”  That’s what did it.   Not the actual words, but that goddamn smile she was wearing when she said them, I can’t tell you, I was so close to just smacking her across the face.  The nerve of her, going through my drawers, and then talking to me about my wife!  I clenched my teeth real tight and snatched the picture from her hands. 

“Get out” I said calmly.  I remember breathing it out of my teeth, and it felt like fire against my mouth.  My fists were balled up so tight, it’s a wonder I didn’t break that picture.  Her eyes got real big suddenly, not scared exactly but just big, surprised I guess.  She sat up and just stared at me, with those big eyes, kind of half defenseless and half shocked.  That smile was way gone now, but I still felt it – made me wince a little.  I told her, “tomorrow morning, grab whatever clothes you got and get out.”  That was that.  Next morning I woke up and she was gone, she wasn’t in my bed, wasn’t in hers, and there wasn’t the slightest trace of her anywhere.  Juliet’s picture was face down on the table, and I needed a long shower before I could pick it up again. Don’t remember how long ago that was, and I don’t care enough to figure it out.

Now here I was with a dead doll – great fucking luck.  I had to scour the parking lot for a shopping cart too, guess they were all taken by the Sunday crowd.  Sure, she was light enough to carry probably, slung over my shoulder I guess, but that felt weird to do.  I mean, she was a doll, not some old rug or something.  When I found a cart, I dropped her in and rolled it on inside, avoiding the looks of the guys around me.  Knowing those types, they probably assumed I had done the dirty work.  I thought I heard some snickers and laughs as I found the help desk.  Thank God it was near the entrance so I didn’t have to go through any aisles or anything.  I really would’ve felt bad carrying that dead doll past the others on display, watching from their plastic cases at what they could become.  I think people have done that to them as a joke before, I remember coming across videos of that on the internet, but even that’s a bit too fucked up for my sense of humor.

To just make things more uncomfortable, a woman was manning the help desk.  She had a smile plastered on her face, done up so well that I couldn’t even tell if she was affected or not by the dead doll I was bringing to her.  “Hello, what can I do for you?” she asked.  She didn’t even look in the cart, the same stupid look of customer service on her face.  For a moment I wanted to just break that smile, just do something to her so she’d stop being so damn cheerful, but I resisted the urge.  I looked away and forced myself not to make eye contact with her mindless stare.

“Yeah,” I said, “I just bought this one on Friday, and last night she tried to run away, bolted right into the street and got slammed by a car, and I was wondering if I could get my money back, seeing as how they’re not supposed to try to run.”  I would’ve told her my frustration at how she ran because of what I wanted her to do, even though she was a BDSM model, but I didn’t feel like letting the help woman know that information unless she really needed it; no need to reveal too much, you know?

“I’m sorry,” she starts, and already I’m feeling annoyed.  “We don’t give refunds unless diseases are involved, but you could exchange her for another one if you’d like.”  She still hadn’t looked at the cart I don’t think, at least I never saw her glance towards it.  Hell, she was like a robot or something!  Even dolls have more feeling than that girl had.  A guy would’ve been a better choice for that job probably, would’ve understood my annoyance and it’d have felt less awkward, but you can’t choose those things I guess.

I tell her, “ahh, I don’t really want another one right now, or today at least.  Can I get store credit or something?” 
She smiles real big and goes, “sure!”  Her enthusiasm wasn’t exactly contagious.  Something gets typed into the computer, a slip of paper prints out, and I get handed a nice IOU for one new doll sometime in the future.  Haven’t thought about when I’ll use it or what I’ll get, might go for something different, like an ethnic flavor or something.  Some guy nearby who worked there came up and took the cart from me, pushed it over to the side of the store where I saw an Employee’s Only doorway.  I guess he just took it out back and tossed it in the dump, considering there wasn’t much else you could do with it.  But she was off my hands anyhow, and I basically had a free coupon for a good time whenever I wanted. 

I’ll pick more carefully next time around, find some girl who won’t do something dumb or insane.  I swear, I get the worst luck when it comes to picking dolls.  I’ll look for some girl who doesn’t look like she’ll question or resist anything.  If I wanted that I’d fucking start dating again.

A Fictitious Letter to Neil Gaiman
by KenHazlett

Dear Neil,

A former student of mine recently contacted me with something that may merit your attention.  Or it may not, I’m not sure.  She and I have maintained loose contact since she was in my university lab class, but I haven’t seen her in years, and hadn’t had a letter or email from her in months.

Then today she sent me the following email, out of the blue.  Her email note to me was as brief as it was cryptic, as follows.

“Mr. Hazlett, I need help and don’t know who else to turn to.  Please keep the following attached document file somewhere safe and private.  If you go more than six months without hearing from me, it means that something has happened.  In that event, and ONLY in that event, open and read the attachment.  After that, you’ll know what to do.”

“It sounds weird, or paranoid, I know, but please just do it.  Do it for me.  Thanks.”

After two hours of noble restraint (a few minutes ago, now), I broke down and opened the attachment, appended below.  It was a betrayal of trust, I know, but something told me that I needed to know, and now I wish I hadn’t.  I mean, she was always seemed a little unstable in class, but now that I’ve read the document I just don’t know what to make of it.

Maybe you will.

It’s yours to do with what you will, or what you think you must.

Whatever you do, please DO NOT show or forward this to Amanda Palmer.  Or, at least, don’t do so until you’ve read and thought on it, for reasons which will become evident to you shortly.

All the best,
~KenHazlett

—-


I Killed Amanda Palmer
- a confession -

My name is Mindy Fetch.  I’m scared, and I don’t know what will happen to me, so I’m writing this out and giving it to the only person I can think of, leaving it with him in case something goes wrong or I can’t take it anymore or something.  If I’m dead, it doesn’t matter, and people should know the truth.

That I killed Amanda Palmer.

…

The thing that first drew me to Amanda was her music.  Back when I was still in school I was out on a Friday night wandering randomly near the college hangouts, and was drawn off the promenade into a Dresden Dolls show at a club.  I was instantly smitten.  She seemed sweet, but like she was in pain inside.  Like nobody understood her.  And I really, really liked the way she looked.

It also felt like we shared an unspoken bond.  I’m a bit of a musician, myself.  Okay, I’m more than a bit of one, really.  I grew up singing, playing piano and guitar and other stuff, and performing.  Making friends has always been hard for me, but somehow it was easier for me to perform in front of people, to get them to like me on stage.

When I went off to college there was no doubt what I would study.  I took a double major in vocal performance and instrumental performance with an emphasis in piano.  Earning my BA in each, I took several years off to teach privately and perform occasionally before returning to work on my MA in each with the goal of eventually earning a PhD.  Back in the academic environment, my performing skills began to blossom even more, but my lifelong failure at making (or at least keeping) friends continued to plague me.  When I was on stage I could connect with an audience, but when I was face-to-face with people it felt like I was speaking over them, or around them, but never to them.  Never.  They never really heard me, never really listened, and what they said to me about their cares may as well have been Swahili for all the sense it ever made.  And then after a while they all just stopped being around me.

But then there was that first show, that siren song calling me in.  Every word she sang struck a chord, a harmonic resonance that seemed to be for me alone.

After that I was hooked.  I drove to her shows whenever I could, even getting mistakenly let backstage one time.  I watched every YouTube video, downloaded every album, every song she’d ever put out, and each one spoke to me more than the last.  I learned to play every last one of them, and made a YouTube video of one, and I felt like she was right there playing and singing it with me.  The word ‘soulmate’ has always seemed dumb and trivial to me, and now what I felt made that word less than nothing, just an enunciated grunt or a few meaningless marks on paper.  What I felt transcended such a word.  She was what I was.  She was like the harp-maiden from the story I read when I was little, but we were both of us girls-become-harps, and our strings sang in unison.

And I learned everything about her I could.  Every interview printed or recorded, I read it or listened to it.  And I learned other things, too.  It’s amazing how much private information you can get on someone if you have a few bucks and an internet connection.

And our bond grew.  And it grew.

But then something terrible happened.  She had a show at a town only four hours drive away, so I went.  But I missed my semester piano recital, totally spaced on it.  My instructor was livid, ragged on me for an hour in his office when I got back, and wouldn’t let me make it up.  It was worth half of my grade, and I had a big fat zero for it.

Which meant a failing grade.  Which meant I lost my scholarship.  Which meant I couldn’t go there anymore.

To hell with him, to hell with all of them, I thought.  They were my past.  She was my future.

I still had several grand in student loans in the bank.  Scholarships had been covering my tuition and expenses, but the money was there for the taking every semester, and I had figured it might eventually come in handy.  And now it did.

Before they froze my student computer account, I checked her website again to confirm that she was still touring, and where she was playing next.  I went to the bank on campus, pulled out a bunch of cash, got in my beat-up green sedan and started driving to my destiny.

Every show she did, I was there, wearing different hoodies and glasses and such so that her crew wouldn’t think I was a stalker or something.  I started watching her from afar during the day, still feeling her presence even when I couldn’t see her, dreaming of her, with her, every night.

It wasn’t enough.  I needed more.  I found one of those spy stores, where I got a parabolic mike to listen to her, equipment to hear her phone conversations.  Everything.  Her life was my life.

And then she met The Fucking Writer.

I can’t stand brooding goth author types, and we had plenty on campus.  This one looked more worldly, and surprisingly fuckable for a writer, so I guess I see the physical attraction, but why was she spending time with him?  She acted, he acted, like they felt some sort of artistic connection, some unspoken bond.  Like they were on the same wavelength.  And, in the distance, my soul screamed silently in rage at the unthinkable betrayal.  How could she?  Wherever I was, I could feel her out there like a goddam beacon.  A pulsar, beating in time with me, only me, her only one.  So how could she not feel it too?  How could she spend time with that leather-clad unmusical doofus with the tone-deaf ear?  He can’t even sing, and believe me, I’ve heard him try.  I had never felt so angry, so betrayed.

So you don’t want to feel the rhythm with me?  You don’t feel what I feel?

Fine.  I know Alone.  I can do Alone.

But it means you’ve got to go.

…

Everything was planned out, planned beyond perfection.  I knew how I would do it, how I would make my escape, how I would dispose of the remains of my faithless doppelgänger, and had backup plans for my backup plans.

She was touring for her solo show, and I had now seen it countless times, from among the crowd or waiting, hidden for hours, behind the scenes.  I knew every song, every encore, every variation, every costume.  Amanda almost always had her own private dressing room.  Every time she finished a show she would come back to her dressing room, alone, walk into the darkened room, sit at her makeup table, turn on the mirror lights and look at herself in the mirror.  Every time.  It was a ritual, and I’ve never met a performer without them.

Well, this time the ritual won’t be ritual at all.  And she’ll just disappear.  Poof, like a rabbit into a hat.  Gone.

And she’ll be a legend.  The theories will multiply and multiply.  She’ll be like Elvis, or Marilyn.  She’ll live forever.  Except for the way that counts most, and that’s just fine.

Bitch.

I parked the green machine, fresh from an oil change and tune-up and general mechanical check-up, in back near the stage door.  They had parked her equipment truck by the side entrance as it was closer to the stage, so the soon-to-be-jaded jade sedan sat alone in the brick-walled alley near the loading dock steps.

Getting out, I checked that the car and I were alone, then slid the key smoothly home in the lock of the large disco-era trunk and twisted, opening it.  The double thick tarp is still in place.  Check.  Costume, hair, makeup are all set under the hat and trenchcoat.  Check.

Silently, I made my way into the theater, and strode down the abandoned back hallway to her dressing room.  She’s going to get the surprise of her life when she sits at that freshly illuminated newly mirror-less table and gets me instead of her own reflection.  Which will immediately be followed by the new surprise of her life when I slide that smooth twelve-inch blade in just above the floating rib, and upward.  Goodbye, you harpy, you siren.

Soon.

I sat there in the darkness, waiting.  All of the waiting, planning, worrying … it had been two nights since I had slept.  The butterflies in my stomach began to settle, and a peace came over me, and then I felt the fatigue wash over me like a wave.

The sleepless nights, the nights of fretting and plotting and worrying, they caught up to me there in the darkness, and before I knew it they had dragged me into a deep sleep.  And sleeping, I began to dream.  In the dream a figure was walking toward me, a figure shrouded in mist.  As it came closer, I saw that it had two heads.  Her head.  My head.  One indistinguishable from the other.  Ever since people began noticing her, ever since she got famous, people have been saying that we’re like twins, she and me.  And then I got my hair done so that her own mother, my own mother, couldn’t tell us apart.  And the mouths opened, and together they said, I said, she said “You can’t do this!  Killing her would be killing yourself!  You are one, she and yourself!  Stop this madness before it destroys you both!”

And I woke with a start, knowing that the twin heads spoke the truth.  Woke to the light in the dressing room to see myself in the mirror, the mirror that wasn’t there anymore.  I was looking at Amanda.

We sat motionless for a moment, staring, transfixed.  Then she raised her arm.  And I did not raise mine.  The scream that tore from her throat wrenched my soul, a musical voice singing terror and confusion.  She jump-stumbled backward, her elegant high heels skidding tractionless on the worn tile floor and flying up over her head, and she pitched over backward, her head striking counter behind, and then the linoleum, with twin sickening thunks.

She lay there, twisted and motionless.  A crimson halo began to spread around her head where it had been struck by the floor.  I stood there openmouthed for a moment, unthinking, stunned.  It felt as if the room had suddenly plunged below freezing, and there was a terrible ringing in my ears.  My quivering fingers felt her for a pulse, and again, and found none.  I put my cheek to her mouth, feeling for breath, and feeling nothing but still stagnant air.

And then, suddenly, the ringing stopped and there was dead silence, broken by a sharp double-rap on her door and the soft clicking of the doorknob, turning.

“Amanda?  Are you alright?”

Before I could think, I ducked behind the curtains in the corner, peering out through the crack between them.  The Fucking Writer strode into the room, and looked around, and then down, and stared at her.  And then he made a faint choking sound, lolled his head, and fainted dead in front of us.

Oh god, I thought, not again.

Oh my god, is he hurt?  He’s not moving!  Oh god.

Is he dead?

Why do I keep thinking ‘oh god’?  I haven’t prayed since I flunked out of church confirmation.  Why am I thinking about  why I’m thinking about it?

Oh god.

Okay, Mindy, I thought to myself, get a grip.  Stick to the plan.  Wait, the plan is shot to hell.  Think, dammit.  First, get rid of the evidence.  The back of the theater was abandoned, as I knew it would be with crowd and crew in front and at the side.  I went to the giant duffel, pulled out the big tarp, rolled the corpse in it like a giant plastic-and-Amanda burrito, and carried it to the car on pure adrenaline.  Shit, bodies are heavy, and she’s not even that big.  And the stupid knife in my bustier was poking me in the ribs.  Goddam it!

Peek out from behind the loading dock door … still no one but the green machine.  Good.  I drag the body to the end of the loading dock, lie on my back, and use both feet to push the body down into the trunk.  Thank god for the loading dock.  Oh, crap, her arm is hanging out at a horrible angle, like it broke in the fall.  I’m so sorry Amanda!  God, I’m so sorry!

Breathe.  Seriously … breathe.  Get a grip, bitch, this is what you signed on for, so do it.  Figure it out.

I run back to dressing room to clean up the blood-mess with the bleach and the paper towels and the alcohol wipes, load it all into the trash bag, and double-bag it.  As I haul it to the car, I can barely feel my feet touch the floor as I fly out the door to the dock, breathless, and throw the bag in with the body.

Trunk closed.  Check.  Take a deep breath.  Good, that’s about it for …

Oh, shit.  The Fucking Writer.

I run back into the room.  It’s clean, pristine, except for him.  What do I do?  Kill him?  There’s no more room in the trunk.  Oh, shit!  This is all his fault.  No, wait.  This isn’t his fault.  God, he has kids!  How do I …

He moans and rolls first one way, then the other.  He puts a hand to his head as he pulls himself into a fetal position, and then up to sitting.  His hand rests over one eye while he regards me woozily with the other.

“What in the bloody hell just happened?  It looked like a damned crime scene in here!”

I blinked at him.  Then I did it again.

“It … it was … it was an idea I had.”

“Idea?  What?  What idea?”

“An idea for … a … concept.”

“Concept?”

“Album.  Concept … album.  Who Killed Amanda Palmer.”

“Who what?  But the body, what who the …” he gripped his head, now with both hands, as if trying to squeeze the pain and confusion out like poison from a wound.

“I … I had it done up to see if you liked the idea.  Show don’t tell, uh, right?

“Just what in hades are you going on about?  What idea?  Had what done up?”

“Really realistically lifelike, isn’t it?  Or, uh, deathlike.  It’s all latex moulds and stage blood.  My friend Dave does special effects work in Hollywood and set it up.  Sorry if I scared you.

What do you think?”

He stared at me for an eternal moment, then slowly cracked a half-smile.  Putting a hand on the counter he drew himself to standing.  He was taller than he had seemed from afar.  Bigger.

“You scary mad insane lunatic!” he gasped, the sound fading into a relieved chuckle as he slowly, carefully shook his head, as if testing it. “You frit me half to death!  Lord almighty … you really don’t do anything by half measures, do you?”

He started at me, and I could see his mind adjusting, turning the concept over in his mind.

“But you know, that’s a bloody fine idea!  We could get a photographer, to take crime scene photos and such.  Maybe I could even pen a couple of stories, sell the whole thing as a deluxe-edition package deal.  What do you think.”

“Er … that sounds … great.  Perfect.  It’s like you’re reading my mind.”

“Good.  I’m glad we’re on the same wavelength.  Oh, hey, I’ve got some ideas already.  I want to jot these down.  Do you want to go get something to eat?  The doorman told me there’s a great sushi place two blocks down that’s open late.”

“No, no thanks.  I’m … I’m beat.  I’m going to get some air and then go get some sleep.”

“Well, alright, but be careful.  I think it’s not the best part of town, hereabouts, this late at night.”

“Uh, okay.”

“No, I mean it.  Take care of yourself.”

“Alright.  I will.”

“Good!  Great!  Talk to you more about this tomorrow” he said, excited, and swept from the room.

I stood dumbfounded for a few seconds.

Deal with it, I thought.  Back to the plan.

…

We drove … the car, Amanda, and I … to the abandoned machine-part plating plant where I had set up shop for the final steps of the plan.

Strapping the body to the hoist, I pulled the chain to raise it from the trunk, swung it around, and released the straps to drop it into the plating tank I had filled with quicklime (I had read about it in a book), watching it begin to froth and bubble as the body began to dissolve.  After a while, I dropped the trash bag in the oil drum, already a quarter-full of gasoline, then dropped in a lit match and jumped back.  It went up like a bonfire at the beach, then settled down to a steady burn.  Plan complete.  Done and done.

So what?  What does it matter?  I’m so fucked.  He knows, The Fucking Writer knows, and if he talks they’ll find me.  I can’t just disappear.  They’ll know it’s me, and they’ll find me.  Who the hell else could it be?

God DAMN it, I knew I never should have shown my face on the YouTube video!  I knew I …

There’s only one way out.

Oh, god.  Oh god, no.

…

The crowd is as raucous as usual, as the last notes die away.  ”A-MAND-A!  A-MAND-A!” they chant, even after two encores.

“Sorry folks, that’s all we have for you tonight.  Thanks for coming!  Goodnight!”

I leave the stage as the theater manager hands me a towel.  ”Fantastic show, Amanda,” he says to the top of my bustier “just fantastic!  So do you get a break after this, or do you have another show tomorrow?”

“No,” I sigh “it’s back on the road and another show tomorrow, and two the day after.  No breaks for a while.  No rest for the wicked.”

“Right.  Well the next time you come through, I hope you’ll come back and give us another show.  We sold out four hours before the doors opened.”

“Good.  Great.”

“Well, have a good night … or morning, now, I guess.  I’m really looking forward to the new project.  Your black-clad writer buddy and I were talking about it back stage.”

“Thanks.  Yeah, I hope it works out, too.  I really do.”

…

My folks have been dead and gone for years, and my only sister and I haven’t talked since high school.  She could care less if I lived or died.  I have no-one.  There was no one to report Mindy Fetch missing.  No report, no mystery, no crime.

So now I live as her.  This is the only way.  It’s the only thing I can do, other than die or spend my life in prison.  We went off and shot the photos for the damned book, the photos of me dead a thousand ways, and every one was a dagger in my heart, a dagger I deserved.

Oh god, I’m so sorry, Amanda!  I’m so sorry!  I’m going to hell when I die now, I know I am.

No wait.  I’m already there.  I’m in the Hades of own making, and I’m the demon and the damned all in one.  From now on, I have to perform and live the role so that no one will suspect that I’m not really her.  I thought that being her, living her life, would be a dream, but it’s a nightmare.  I’m a stage-bound Sisyphus with a microphone of Damocles hanging over my damned head by a patch cord as thin and frail as a fallen angel’s hair.

One wrong word, one wrong note, and someone could find me out.

I live in fear, trying to be flawlessly her, wondering when I’ll slip up and someone will figure it out.  I suspect that writer suspects something.  I slipped up a little just the other day, got a minor detail wrong, and he looked wonder at me with a cocked head and squinted eyes.  He may have to be next …

No!  No, god, I can’t, I won’t!  I’d rather be found out!  I’d rather die!  Christ, what would Amanda say if she could see me now?

Suck it up, soldier.  You are Amanda.

Amanda Fucking Palmer.

Who Killed Amanda Palmer
A Short Story By Amelia Howarth

I killed Amanda Palmer.
You don’t believe me, I know. Why should you? Isn’t this the site where everyone comes to tell the world how they finished Amanda Palmer? Isn’t this the place people come to read those gross, fucked up stories of how that bitch died? Sure it is, and so why should you believe me? This is one story in hundreds. Hell, one day it’ll be one story in millions. Don’t mind me.
It wasn’t easy, the kidnapping part, I’ll tell you the murder was nothing compared to the kidnapping. I knew she was going to the Acton house, see? Knew her friend wouldn’t be around to open the door. Didn’t I have his corpse to prove it, stuffed in my deep-freezer, stiff with ice before the liver mortis set in? I was surprised she had keys though and so was pretty relieved when I remembered I had left the back door open when I dragged out her bastard friend, earlier that day.
I was shaken, you know, by her reaction. After I slipped in through the back door , and grabbed a wine bottle off the side. After I’d crept up behind her. She turned round a split second before I hit her over the head with it, and what I saw in her eyes wasn’t fear. It was anger, pure, red fury and I almost didn’t hit her, but it was too late. Fucking stupid thing to do as well, blood all over the floor, scratches all down her pretty face, I remember cursing myself as I heaved her over my shoulder and carried her out to my jeep. Bleeding all over the seats, I had to get them reupholstered before I ever gave anyone a ride again.
She wasn’t dead. I mean I was scared at first that I’d killed her, it was hard to find a pulse under all that blood. She came round though a few hours later. I tried to clean her up a bit, but it was everywhere. Matting her hair together, and sticky down her chest, soaked through her black corset, so I just left her. Cuts down her face, make up smudged and stockings torn, she already looked a mess.
I’m not a big guy, I think you’d call me wiry. I’m tall you know, with those effortless muscles close under the skin that look like they’re made of steel. Still I’m pretty tough. Your dad uses you as punch bag as a kid and you learn to be. But even I was scared shitless when Amanda came round. I hadn’t tied her up or anything, just had her in an empty basement, single light bulb, concrete floor, unpainted, a chair, a table, a glass of water. What were her chances against a guy like me?
I knew straight away when she woke up. Shit, I’d been sitting there for hours hadn’t I, waiting, worrying? So when she moved her head ever so slightly, I was on my feet in a second. She sat up, dazed like, her mouth curving round not-quite words, smudged not-quite eyebrow curving up in the middle. Then she saw me. And I knew she recognised me because that look came into her eye. That fucking scary look. Shit, I could’ve been looking straight into hell, seeing into her eyes when she was all angry like that. ‘Course, I went to get out straight away, but she was fast. I left that room with scars from her high heeled boots, and I swear she would have had my eyes if her finger nails had been any longer.
She screamed all night, I didn’t sleep for worrying the neighbours would hear, but I s’pose it’s not really out of the ordinary, a neighbourhood like this, screaming like that. She screamed all night and I remember seeing red spots on the wall where she’d spat out the blood from screaming her throat raw. I dunno what she was screaming but there was a lot of fucking swearing involved, I’ll tell you. I’ve never seen a mouth so beautiful produce words so filthy. Think slugs on strawberries, banshees in an orchestra, ‘cunt’ sprayed across your local church’s front doors.
Eventually she shut up. I didn’t go down there, I won’t deny it, I was fucking terrified. I thought three days was safe, but when I went down there, the bitch went for me again. She’d punched the bulb out or something It was dark, anyway, and she jumped me. Wasn’t much of match this time, ‘course, days without food will do that to you. I know.
When I finally went down there again, with water and a new bulb, she just watched me, blue eyes hidden behind dark hair, thank god. She didn’t touch the water, but when I came back with food, it had all gone, jug smashed on the floor. I learned to use plastic after that.
I kept her down there another week, fed and watered, before I put my major plan into action. I offered her a bath, there was running water down here, I just had to hook it up. I offered her clean clothes, books, music, everything, I’d bring her it, just she couldn’t leave the room and a phone was out of the question. She never spoke to me, except once. It was about the sixth day I’d had her there and I was just about to leave the room after trying to get her wash, just to wash the fucking blood off her neck, when she spoke. One word, choked, harsh, black hatred seeping out between her teeth - “Why?”
And I couldn’t say. How could I? How could I tell her that she was the only person that made me feel anything? I’d been through so much shit in my life, my life was so full of fucked up stories and shit that in the end, I felt nothing. A life of nothing, a cardboard life, not even that. No lust, or love, or companionship. No sense of accomplishment or pride. No nothing. Even hate, I would have welcomed. Envy, I would have ushered into the house, taking it’s coat as it entered. Grief? Shit, yeah, come on in. I was ready to die, but I didn’t even feel anything strongly enough to want to kill myself. Even the desire to kill myself would have been worth living for.
I used to walk at night, at least I could feel the cold, and one day, in Boston, I heard her. Coming out the window to some underground bar, she was singing and playing piano. They wouldn’t let me in, said I needed a ticket or some shit like that, but I sat at that window and everything came back to me. Every emotion I’d missed for fuck knows how long came back to me. It was like every time I should have felt sad, instead I felt nothing, and the sadness was stored away inside of me so as I sat next to that window, I felt it, but one hundred times worse, one hundred times harder. It was like that with every emotion, fear, fury, jealousy, the good ones too, happiness, awe, I felt it all while she played. And when she stopped, so did I. Nothing again. I found out her name, Amanda Palmer, did some research. Pretty average name for someone so beautiful, someone so gifted, so talented that they could make me feel again. I knew I couldn’t carry on living like this, without feeling, without emotion. I didn’t desire her, didn’t feel anything, but I knew that I could feel again, if only I had her. If only she could play for me whenever I wanted her to. So, I took her, it was that fucking simple.
The first time I brought down a keyboard, into that stinking room, I could tell she wanted to smash it to pieces, wanted to rip it apart with her hands, fingers forcing delicate keys apart. But she didn’t. Maybe she couldn’t, maybe she loved music too much, I dunno, all I know is that she had that look in her eyes again and I knew just to leave it down there with her.
She didn’t touch it, not for days, but I reckon it got too much for her, it sitting there, unplayed, her sitting there, fingers tingling for it. But one night, I was still up, I didn’t sleep much back then, I heard something. One chord, minor, so fucking sad. It took one chord for me to break down, but it didn’t last. I had started walking down the steps to the basement, and she must’ve heard me or something because she stopped. After that, I waited, I knew it was coming and I was right. I made do with listening from upstairs, lying on the floor, just feeling. I don’t even know exactly what she played, I just know that when she did, I felt again. And that was enough. I kept her there for months, letting her play when she wanted, never forcing her. I even took a guitar down, but she never took to it. Always the piano.
One night, I was waiting to hear her, I hadn’t felt anything for hours and I remember thinking “When is that fucking bitch going to play something?!” As soon as I thought it, I started. Was that anger? Was she playing? No, just the neighbours arguing on one side, and some kid wailing on the other. Did I feel that without her? That night, I tell you, it was a fucking revelation. I was cured. Fuck, I don’t know what happened, what did it, but I was feeling again.
After that night, everything changed. I felt again, not in great gushes, not only when I heard her play, but normally, like some normal guy. It was fucking amazing. I mean, the guilt, that feeling wasn’t too great, but next to all those other emotions, I was elated, I didn’t care a whole lot for poor Amanda, stuck in that basement, wearing the same clothes for months, dried blood under her fingernails from where she’d scratched it off her neck and head. I didn’t really know what to do with her after that. I never heard her play again. I went out, got a job, made friends, fucked women, got a life for myself, you know? Whether she played again or not, I don’t know, but I didn’t hear her the rare times I was at home for longer than one night.
So, that’s how I kidnapped Amanda Palmer, and I know that’s not really what this website’s about. You want to know how I killed her, but, to tell you the truth, that bit wasn’t even interesting. To be completely honest, it was pretty damn boring. Hell, she got boring. She didn’t play piano, she didn’t sing. She didn’t look at me all scary like she used to. I brought down food and she wouldn’t even bother to throw round the plates anymore. Towards the end, she stopped bothering to eat the food. I don’t really know how it happened, but I went downstairs one morning, and she was dead. It must’ve been starvation or a heart attack or something, I dunno, I wasn’t really keeping tracks.
And I know you guys were expecting something dramatic and romantic, you guys were expecting her to go out with a bang, fireworks. I’m sorry, but it was sorta just like a candle, you know, she just burnt out. I do feel kinda bad about it from time to time, but mostly, I’m just thankful. Thankful to feel again. I wouldn’t do anything different a second time round, hell, if I saw Amanda Palmer in the street, I’d kill her all over again.

Tea and Armageddon
By Karina Cetin and Crystal Davies
Inspired by this photo by Lisa Roussel and Bec Chapman


He said upon pulling 666,666 followers there would either be tea or Armageddon; he didn’t know there’d be both.

——————————————————————————————————————


Mother Nature is a BETCH!
By Karina Cetin and Crystal Davies
Inspired by this photo by Lisa Roussel and Bec Chapman

She always said nature wasn’t her thing. She was a big city girl. She didn’t care for trees. Flora and fauna didn’t make her feel alive. Landscapes didn’t impress her like a beautiful tune on a piano, or being surrounded by paintings in a gallery.

Lately however, since a relationship began with the writer, within nature was where she found herself often. The storyteller lived his life surrounded by nature, away from busy streets, sirens, and skyscrapers. This was his retreat from his other life, forever in and out of planes and hotel rooms. Here he could relax and allow the stories to flow.

Spending time with her writer she began to develop an appreciation for nature herself.  She saw the beauty the world had to offer, beauty that wasn’t woman or manmade. Beauty that came from our creator, whatever that was. The animals that roamed his abode found a place in her heart. The landscapes took her breath away. She found majesty in the flora and fauna.

She found herself taking long walks admiring what she passed along the way. Sometimes she’d be gone for hours, lost in her thoughts and in awe of what surrounded her. One particular day when out on one of her adventures, after walking for hours she found a small park, one which was clearly abused by the local teenagers.

Broken beer bottles littered the grassy floor, shimmering as the setting sun reflected off them. She smiled. It was strange how destruction could be so beautiful. A mattress had been left, most likely stolen from someone’s front lawn. She sat here for a while to rest before making her journey back to where the writer was waiting for her. She needed to be on a plane early the following morning, she had fans to satisfy.

When morning came she did just that. She got on a plane, back to the hustle and bustle, leaving the storyteller behind. The music she heard in nature, love songs from birds and wind amongst the trees became sirens, and car horns. The trees became cold concrete structures, the soft grass now hard and cracked concrete beneath her feet.

She felt for the first time that she didn’t belong. This feeling prompted her to book a flight immediately after her show was over, back to her retreat, back to her love.

However she felt at home on stage, feeding off the energy of the crowd. Connecting with her audience and feeling the love in the atmosphere. If only she knew this would be the last time she’d feel this way, maybe she never would have made that impulsive journey back.

Stepping out of the stage door into the chill, she saw broken beer bottles smashed in the gutter. Thinking back to that afternoon in the park, where this had been beautiful to her, here she only found it cold and harsh, a reinforcement that she’d made the right decision.

On the plane as she knocked back a few Vodkas, she wrote a draft for a blog to be posted upon her return. She needed a week off to disconnect from everything. especially her ever growing inbox. She needed time to become whole again after years of being picked apart by the media, her label, by ex- lovers, and by fans.

A little drunk and still on a high from the show, she stumbled up the path towards the house. The writer opened the door, stunned to see her. She wasn’t expected back for another couple of days, and she was still in her stage clothes, not to mention a little drunk.

Despite the ridiculous hour, she decided to go for a walk to clear her head… and sober up. She was finding it difficult to put into words the reason for her return.

As she walked she confused the cold with excitement for the week ahead and didn’t notice the sudden drop in temperature. She started to feel tired, chalking it down only to the draining performance and flight she’d just endured. The dizziness she felt she thought was just the Vodka so she kept walking. She wasn’t ready to return yet.

Soon enough she was back at the park. At this time of night, and looking through fatigued eyes, the shimmering glass of the broken beer bottles looked more like an ocean and the mattress like an island in the sea. This made her smile. As she took a few more steps, dizziness engulfed her so she decided to rest on the mattress.

If these words came from the storyteller, they would read that she took refuge on her island where she fell into a beautiful dream world. A world where her big city life, had merged with the retreat she shared with her writer and with nature. She had once again become whole. She lived happily ever after.

In reality she had slipped into a coma. The alcohol and fatigue had accelerated a drop in body temperature. She lost consciousness and her body lay exposed to the elements. It was not long before her new dream world had swallowed her up. Her new found love of nature was the very thing that led to her death….

@amandapalmer I’m taking a week off to disconnect. @bethofalltrades and @indecisean will keep you all updated. Be back in a week.

By Lily in response to an audience member falling in front of the stage before With the Needle That Sings in Her Heart

She wasn’t supposed to trip. She was allowed to enjoy herself, but not to trip. She had ruined the careful preparation in the days leading up to the event, and all the schemes we had waiting in the shadows had been effectively crippled.

And worse; another Amanda had seen her. This witness had no identification number, needed no identification number. She was Amanda, Original Specimen, and she reacted to the stimuli of a perfect replica of herself exactly as we had feared; she stopped the Music.

Huddled, unlimited creativity on pause, Amanda considered this. Her carefully applied, quizzical ringleader’s eyebrows provided the only expression on her pale face; it was a blank canvas, two blue-grey eyes focused on thoughts, perfect teeth that caught the corner of her lip unconsciously.

What to do? What to do. It was too late to fix this now.

Before Amanda 29 had slipped, she had been disguised as a member of the audience. We still weren’t sure exactly how she had convinced us to let her watch; perhaps the real Amanda’s skills had also been gifted to her clones. We will look into it later. She had been wearing civilian clothes. A real treat for her too, different from the sterile gray tracksuit and optional fishnet stockings usually available to her.

One of the Performers, one that we must have forgotten to bribe, picked her from the audience to come up and be a part of the performance. He mustn’t have recognised her, with a wig and carefully applied makeup to differentiate her features from the Amanda onstage.

She was excited. She would get close to her source, her… parent?… assess word verification at report end… Who she had been learning about everyday of her deceptively short existence-span. We read her while she climbed to the stage, and knew she wouldn’t participate in the little performance she had been invited to the stage for. It was almost good that she tripped; a quick and easy end, simple for us to plan.

However, we hadn’t planned.

What are you supposed to do when an audience member who is a doppelganger of an artist on stage, falls and breaks her neck, right collarbone, and is seen by the other?
Our triumph over the situation is thanks to Brian. He’s a quick thinker, that one. Assess viability of system upgrade for VB. He paused time- couldn’t go back and visit the past because he’s not skilled enough yet – and picked up another Amanda from the Amanda Storage Facility two streets over. He chose the first undamaged one he saw, activated her with an emergency coin, and hurried back here to deposit her in the hole where the deactivated Amanda 29 lay crumpled. He fished 29 out, bundled her up and put her in his truck, all the while with her looking very much like Amanda Original Specimen, with her wig gone and her clothes in disarray.

New activated Amanda 33, with the appropriate clothing, wig, makeup, he put into the hole and told to act hurt. Time resumed, the anxious troupe of Performers peered in. They saw a startled audience member sitting down there,  cradling a supposedly injured arm.

They jumped in, helped her up. A red flame of a blush became apparent on her face and neck; not took much or it will look fake. Clambering out, they escorted her through rows of crowded seats stuffed with shocked audience members; coughs and sympathetic murmurings filled the hall. Up the lane of seats Amanda went in tow of the performers; reaching the exit door she disappeared from sight. A faint murmuring could be heard, “ Yes miss, I know you feel ok, but we need to take you in an Ambulance… regulations”

The Music began again, the play resumed. Performers returned, took their places, delivered lines with skill, presented heart wrenching ideas, all the while with Amanda Original Specimen knowing. And running through her options.

——————————————————————————————————————

By Spencer Wilson, just killing Amanda Palmer with no photo provocation

I killed Amanda Palmer.
This is an announcement.
Where you hear it, well,
Doesn’t matter as much as
How you hear it.
It could be in a mall.
(Could Amanda Palmer please come to the service desk to pick up a message?)
It could be in a fancy restaurant.
(This is for Amanda Palmer, party of one, your table is ready.)
It could be at an airport.
(Please do not leave your Amanda Palmer unattended.)
I killed Amanda Palmer.
I left her in the parking lot,
With her hair in knots and my car in a pool of excrement.
I poisoned her dinner plate,
Which she proceeded to fall into, twitching.
I brought her to the bathroom,
Where I showed her how to spend her last minutes of life,
Cold, wet, and shivering.
(Well, shivering until I stuck the butcher’s knife into her neck again.)
I killed Amanda Palmer.
I did it in the study with a candlestick.
I did it in the closet with the coat hook.
I did it in the park, with a handful of breadcrumbs
And a lot of starving ducks.
I did it for you, right?
Because now she’ll live forever.
It’s alright to become a cliché,
As long as one can admit that they have succumbed to such a fate.
But I killed Amanda Palmer,
And I planted trees.
Amanda Palmer did not look both ways before crossing the street.
Amanda Palmer did not wait twenty minutes before going swimming.
Amanda Palmer ran with scissors.
Amanda Palmer destroyed clichés,
And trees were planted in her place.
Roots grow, evolve,
Become the trunk, become the branches,
Become a great oak, a grand maple,
A shivering willow of stories.
Who killed Amanda Palmer,
And how?
It envelops us, it consumes us,
That which we do not know.
We write stories,
We take pictures,
To fill the void left by Amanda Palmer.
The bitch died and left us nothing.
I killed Amanda Palmer,
But I did not take into account
How I would kill myself.
Amanda Palmer is smoking in a pit of lye.
Amanda Palmer is rotting six feet under.
Amanda Palmer is falling through the sky from 30,000 feet,
After an unfortunate altercation with a particularly cigarette-depraved flight attendant.
And I, and we,
Sit in our dark rooms,
Surrounded by faces of the woman we loved,
The woman we knew,
Obsessed with the stories,
Obsessed with the pictures,
Obsessed with her.
I killed Amanda Palmer,
And I killed all of you.
We do not leave our houses.
We subsist only on the permanent glow of the computer screen,
The one link we have to Amanda Palmer.
She is inside us,
She is inside the circuitry
Of our minds, of our motherboards.
She lives online,
She lives where we talk of her.
No one speaks of Amanda Palmer in the real world.
No one has any need to.
No one wants to remember an Amanda Palmer of reality.
Only the fictionalized trees, stories we have created
And shared with one another
To create for ourselves Amanda Palmer.
I killed Amanda Palmer,
But I did not shoot the deputy.
She commits the crime
Of living on in my dreams.
She is the queen of my mental anarchy,
She is the leader of my internal revolution,
She will be assassinated.
I see her lying in a ditch, bleeding from her ears.
I see her curled in a ball on the kitchen floor, foaming from the mouth.
I see her crucified on the cross, leaking from her orifices.
There is no messiah in an anarchic world,
Only the Of Nazareth of anachronism.
I killed Amanda Palmer,
And I will kill again.
The taste is so sweet, so bitter,
So like a rose with thorns of bedrock,
Stuck in the ground at every possible connection,
Roots, again, stories, trees.
Leaves fall in the summer,
With Amanda Palmer crumpled on the beach, burnt to a crisp.
Leaves fall in the winter,
With Amanda Palmer torn apart by wolves in the Alaskan tundra.
Leaves fall,
With Amanda Palmer underneath, buried by the tales we tell, the stories we create,
The yarns we spin.
I killed Amanda Palmer.
She does not live on.
She is not in my dreams.
She is not the fantasy of a generation that “no longer has an Amanda Palmer”.
I do not miss her,
Merely because I killed her.
I have no guilt,
Because she is gone, forever.
I do not fear her,
I never will, I never did.
She is not a spirit, a sprite, a 7-up.
She is the oil of the future,
Moistening the gears and cogs,
Becoming what we hate,
Allowing the generations of mechanisms to flourish
And build again.
In death she is hypocrisy,
She is bone.
They inhale with her,
They drink with her,
They masturbate with her.
But she is not truly there,
Because she is not truly dead.
She is not alive,
But we love her.
She is not dead,
But we mourn her.
She is not in limbo,
But we duck under her,
For she can go low,
So low.
——————————————————————————————————————

“Eulogy” by Coraline Archer, also not in response to any photo

Welcome everyone and thanks for coming.  I know a funeral isn’t the ideal way to bring a town together, but we’re glad you’re here all the same.  There’s more pie coming and Tikki just brought out a new pot of coffee so if everyone can please settle down we can get started.

She was a strange girl, Amanda Palmer.  Her hair was always mussy, like a Page Boy gone awry.  She never shaved and never stopped humming nameless, curiously tuned songs.  She had this fantastically huge smile that could melt into sorrow in a split second.  She wasn’t tall, nor was she short, but she was anything but decidedly average.  When you saw her you knew who she was and you never forgot.

Many of you have odd memories of her.  In fact, I can’t think of a single “normal” memory at all, no picnics, no run-ins at the store, no car jumps or birthday parties or ice cream socials at the high school.  She floated around town like a ghost, always around but vanishing whenever summoned.  She didn’t go to parades, or graduations, or weddings, or funerals, though some people said they saw her in the pony corral when that circus came through a few years back.

My favorite odd memories always involve her coming in to The Pie Hole.  Every day precisely at whatever time she happened to wake up she’d stroll in, her hair stuck up at rakish angles, her painted eyebrows perfectly detailed.  She sat in a different booth every time, though I never did figure out what pattern she used to decide which one she wanted.  On occasion I’d even see her wait at the counter or switch seats when the offending patrons departed.  Only once did she come in with a guest and I still maintain it was a skirt he was wearing and not a kilt.

Amanda always ordered a cup of black tea with milk (“milky tea” she called it, said it reminded her of some English bloke she used to know) and a bottle of our “finest red” (she said it with this beautiful pompous flourish and still don’t know if she was joking or being serious).  She never ordered pie.  I wonder if she had it all planned out even back then, if she knew the pie would be her end?  It certainly made her death more interesting, I mean who kills themselves poisoned rhubarb pie?  And why rhubarb of all things?  We don’t even make rhubarb pie at The Pie Hole.  Maybe that’s why she never ordered any…

Anyway, here’s to Amanda Palmer.  She was a strange girl but we’ll miss her all the same.
——————————————————————————————————————

by Doug, freestyle killing Amanda Palmer

It said, “To be opened upon my death.”  I recognized my sister’s spidery cursive handwriting on the front of the sealed envelope.  I found it in a bottom bedroom dresser drawer along with an Art Nouveau letter opener that belonged to one of my great aunts.  The envelope was under her red socks.  My sister had a thing for red socks and wouldn’t wear any with another color. She would roll one into another and they always reminded me of red snowballs.  In fact the only time I remember my sister losing it was when she saw me and a friend using a pair of her red socks as a baseball.

But that was when we were kids and now it’s been three weeks now since her funeral.  Her death was one of those freak accidents.  She worked as a store clerk at a T.J. Maxx.  While putting out items in the decorative gifts aisle an imitation Tang Dynasty Chinese bronze vase fell off the top shelf and onto her head.  She was dead before the EMTs arrived. The autopsy showed a massive brain hemorrhage.  Now she was buried along with mom and dad at the George Washington Memorial Park in Paramus, New Jersey.  She always preferred their company to me anyway.  Let’s say we were never close as brother and sister.  But that did leave it to me for settling the estate which meant finding her Will.  I knew this wasn’t going to be easy.

My sister was one for hiding things.  I don’t know where she inherited this trait.  Maybe it comes from some long gone whacked-out relative and somehow still runs in the family. Thankfully it didn’t get into my DNA. Once while painting a room, I found my grandmother’s engagement and wedding rings  behind the radiator.  Another time I found my dad’s Bronze Star metal between sheets in the linen closet.  If I was going to find her Will, I knew I had to go through the house from basement to attic.  I decided to try her bedroom first and that’s where I found the envelope. I thought I lucked out on first try and the Will would be inside. 

Sitting on the bed I took the letter opener and carefully slid it along the top of the envelope.  To my disappointment the Will I was seeking wasn’t there.  Instead to my surprise there was a lock of hair between a folded piece of paper.  I knew immediately the lock didn’t come from my sister.  It was reddish brown and my sister was a natural blond her whole life short as it was.  I then opened up the folded paper and read it.  She wrote, “I killed Amanda Palmer.”

Holy Fuck! Amanda Palmer!  She hasn’t gone away even when disappearing without a trace.  Like it happened yesterday, everyone knew the story of Amanda Palmer.  Critics called her “the Chanteuse of Indie Rock” and “the next Tori Amos.” She was about to go mainstream with a new record label and tour.  But that all ended when she called from her cell phone that she was having engine problems on the Garden State Parkway and she was getting off an exit in Paramus.  That was the last anyone saw or heard of both Amanda Palmer and her Jeep Cherokee.   Just a couple of months ago my friend Donald and I were watching VH1 and there was a thing about the mysterious disappearance of Amanda Palmer.  I remember Donald making a snide remark about Amanda Palmer saying, “She wouldn’t have been caught dead in a place like Paramus and maybe she’s buried under the parking lot of Bob’s Discount Furniture Store.” 

But that was then and now I’m here in my sister’s bedroom with a lock of hair and a note from her saying she killed Amanda Palmer.  I began thinking my sister, thinking about what really happened to Amanda Palmer, thinking about what the fuck I should do next.  That’s when it hit me.  I have yet to look in the basement or attic.  And my sister liked hiding things.

I suppose next time I should specify tweets murdering AMANDA, not just random rockstars.  We still got some good stuff in.

Winner:  megajim:  “’scuse me while I kiss the sky,” she said, tossing her martini into the steward’s face and yanking open the airplane door

physigory: Amanda’s drink was spiked ~ with liquid nitrate

sourlullabies: your heart stops beating in the midst of shooting more heroin, as a groupie performs sex acts for you w/a sandwich from catering

xenjn: accidentally being dropped while crowd surfing at the greatest concert of your life and breaking your neck

loved_up_ferret: Miss Amanda Palmer. Strangled by a guitar strap wrapped around a piano stool, a line of coke untouched on her left inner thigh

042: I decided I should be shot out of a cannon into a volcano after death. Then I decided it would be cooler to off myself that way.

Mandaz087: motorcycle off empire state building into epically ginormous cake while strapped to exploding fireworks & blaring “chariots of fire”

dunnogr: my answer remains the same…I didn’t kill Amanda Palmer!  Don’t listen to my cellmate.  I don’t even know what a “kaiken” is…

weepydonuts:  the hotel balcony gives way due to the weight of ten groupies performing heroin fueled sex acts on you and each other

kurometarikku:  throwing a TV off the balcony of a hotel slip on the mirror you were cutting your coke on and fall into a pool.  Drown in spandex!

Yagathai:  overdose after shooting up Keith Richards’ cooked-up ashes

Yagathai:  eaten by a rabid mob of Japanese fans, who dip handkerchiefs in your blood and wear them as a badge of honor

taylweaver:  police believe excessive popping of flashbulbs caused the misstep.  As she fell, her guitar brushed the footlights and ignited.

SavannahWest:  Amanda doing a show atop a building, suddenly she stops singing, falls off the building, investigation shows she was drugged…

Shadehouse:  some psycho burnt down the yoga joint, the pens returned to her back. I took to her neck with a  ballpoint til I heard a crack

jazzyguy13:  he doused the guitar with his bottle of Jack and set it on fire, but was too wasted to notice how much he’d spilled on himself

jazzyguy13:  When a guitarist and drummer battle it out, axe vs. sticks, while hopped up on adrenaline and acid:  neither come out alive…

molly_j_moon:  beheading via platinum record discus style, garotted with guitar string or impaled on all of a row Grammy’s/awards

molly_j_moon:  Drowned in a pool of someone ELSE’S vomit! While on a toilet! In a boat! Mrs. Peacock, in the yacht with the vomit!

tiarlova:  the crowd was in a riot, wanting the show to start.  It was just afterwards somebody found Amanda trampled to death in the mud

skull_duggery:  expectations for Obama are so large that a portion of the world explodes into small pieces of hope buttons; Amanda found dead.

“Dreams” by Musings in response to this photo by Nicholas Vargelis

These days, my dreams invade my head so much that sometimes I don’t know when I’m awake and when I’m sleeping.

My days and nights go like this: Dream. Wake. Dream. Sitting on a bus. Dream. Stare at pricing spreadsheet.  Dream. “Oh hi, boss.” Dream.  Eat.  Dream.  Go down to the warehouse to check on supplies, talk to customers.  Dream. Go home.  Run.  Dream.  Watch TV.  Shower.  Dream.  Sleep.  Repeat.

The most dangerous part of the cycle, and the most seductive, is that gap between dream and wake, when the fingers of both tangle with the corners of your mind before releasing you into one world or another.  It’s the moment when you are drifting off to sleep and hear your neighbor’s footsteps as your murderer’s.  It’s the moment when you are waking and your body is arched, waiting for release from a lover’s hands and—the alarm goes off.  You are alone, the sheets are wet with your sweat.

One time, neither dream nor wake was willing to let me go, and I blinked twice during a dream about a beautiful girl with dark skin and braided hair.  When my eyes opened the second time, I was on the street, on my way to the bus stop, and the girl was on the other side, walking towards me.  I stared in shock and stopped.  She flashed a smile my way, said “Good morning,” and continued on her way.

I’ve found Amanda Palmer three times in this gap. 

The first time, I was listening to her music while falling asleep, and her voice called to me in the dark, and then, in the grocery store.

“I have to drive,” She told me matter-of-factly, as she handed me the can of chickpeas off the shelf.

“Ok,” I answered, putting it in the cart, and the rest of the dream dissolved into the night.

The second time, we were in a parking lot and were arguing loudly.  She was screaming at me but I couldn’t understand what she was saying, her voice distorted like a record being played backwards.  She just wouldn’t stop screaming and it was filling my ears, filling my body, until I couldn’t separate her rage from my rushing blood.

“Just shut up,” I said, trying to quiet my pulse, but the sound just got louder and louder.

“JUST SHUT UP!” I screamed back and suddenly the can was back in my hand and I was raising it above her head—

And the alarm went off.  I was alone, the sheets were wet with my sweat.

The third time, I was in a harshly lit room, the walls empty and white.  I looked down and to my horror, I was pushing a heavy shopping cart.  Inside was Amanda Palmer, her body bloodied and folded like grotesque origami.

I blinked twice and I was in the warehouse, surrounded by stacks of paper, covered in white.  And in front of me was a shopping cart, with a very beaten and dead Amanda Palmer inside.

Had I killed Amanda Palmer?  Was I awake?  Or had I just awoken into another dream?

—————————————————————————————————————-

“In Love With Dying Days” by Damian Herde in response to this photo by Beth Hommel

She fell and the clothes flew from her hand. So far from the concrete below, yet their meeting was now inevitable; so close to the wooden ledge, yet a lifetime of clutching could not draw it nearer.

So far, so near, so what? She’d won.

The world spiralled and gravity called to her loudly, as if she were a disobedient child needing a parent’s strong hand. He watched, and his eyes were wide. She could see them shining brightly, shock in one and dismay in the other, and she wondered why he chose to care now, at the end of the world.

His mouth was open, but she could not hear anything over the beating of her adrenaline charged heart. Wind rushed through her hair and pulled at her flowing skirt

The stillness of the moment planted the delusion that she could stop spinning and drift to the wood-lined wall. It always appeared so easy in the movies.

She clawed for the wood, stretching and willing herself nearer, and gripped savagely at empty air.

She hadn’t realised he had been watching, that he had waited for her to leave the house and had stealthily followed her to the park. She could have lost him if she had only known. Evaded him and found her lady surreptitiously, rather than provide the provocative display that drew him out in a bellowing ruination of a perfect moment.

The girl’s name was Amanda, and she had inspired her. He rushed for Amanda first, so she embraced the opening and fled without shame, shirt in hand, wiping the lingering traces of Amanda from her hands and thinking frantically.

Home was closed to her now, but that was fine. She planned and prepared and was ready. Nothing there was precious to her and she was always ready to leave at a moment’s notice.

She heard him roar and glanced over her shoulder. Her layers of clothes were a favoured indulgence, but they were simply in the way now, so she hitched up her skirts, finding speed fuelled by fear. In the parklands she had little hope of evasion, but the crush of people in the urban maze would shelter her. If she could reach it first.

But he was too fast.

His first blow failed to register pain, but the second cut through. She wavered but refused to fall, gripping her shirt tighter and taking comfort from the cool slickness of it against her hands.

‘Do your worst,’ she said, jutting her chin and holding his gaze. He broke eye contact first, and she smiled.

‘Give me the shirt,’ he said.

Her brow furrowed and she backed away. This wasn’t how it was meant to happen. He lunged for her and she saw the blood on his hands and understood.. She stepped back into empty space and wavered on the edge for only the briefest instant before toppling backwards.

She caught his eye again, somehow now so far away. He cared enough to find her. One more death for the evening, and both he had only watched, as he watched now, standing impotently at the brink of the abyss. Her shirt was sprayed with the blood of Amanda, and she smiled as she remembered how it had felt as it gushed warmly from her body, running across her hands in a soft and loving caress.

The man shook his head at the splayed out body below and reached for the radio clipped to his belt. ‘Capture has failed, the target is down. Repeat, target is down.’

——————————————————————————————————————

“Notice” by Clare Barlow in response to this photo by Beth Hommel

Found on the wasteland behind Oldmire’s factory this morning:  Miss Palmer, deceased.  Clothing disarranged and torn.  Last seen leaving the offices of Messrs Farthing, Frognall and Wyatt, lawyers, following adverse ruling in Palmer vs. Oldmire.  Application for lost wages and unfair dismissal denied, advised no further legal recourse.  Witnesses say Miss Palmer exhibited signs of severe distress, and had to physically ejected from the premises for unladylike language and threats of violence to Mr Wyatt and Mr Oldmire’s persons.  Suicide suspected, while of unsound mind.

——————————————————————————————————————

By Nathan Tavares in response to this photo by Kyle Cassidy

I first met Amanda Palmer at a party in her dorm. I hadn’t been drinking that night. Instead I sat on the window seat of the lounge, nursing a soda, because apparently it’s not a good idea to mix Ambien, Red Bull, and alcohol, as I discovered the night before. A mysterious bruise on my forehead throbbed. A large group of people were gathered around a table playing beer pong, volleying a ping pong ball back and forth a triangular formation of cups and cheering.

Amanda had been in one of my classes, this three-hundred person lecture hall with stadium seating. I remembered her sitting in the back by the wall, hiding one headphone in her right ear with her hair. And there she was at the party leaning against the wall trying to talk to a short girl. Amanda leaned towards her and squinted her eyes to shut out the noise of hooting and techno music that was pumping out of the speaker. She pointed, and then the short girl stumbled off around the corner, probably in search of the bathroom.

She had on this red shirt that had a picture of a Blackberry and read “Text me when you’re ready to FUCK.” She was alone again, nodding her head slightly with each bass beat.

I walked over to her since, we both were alone and I’ve never had a self-conscious bone in my body. Her hair was brown and chin length, and hung in short waves framing her face.

“You don’t play beer pong?” I asked. I don’t know. I couldn’t think of any other introduction.

“Not tonight.”

“Oh, that’s cool. My name is Cooper.” I offered my hand. She leaned in to shake it and shouted into my ear.

“Hi, my name’s Amanda.”

“Yeah, I think we have a class together.”

“Cool,” she replied. At the beer pong table, someone sunk a volley into a cup with a hollow plastic thud.

“Do you live here?” I asked.

“I live down the hall,” she motioned with her beer at one of the couples playing beer pong, “that girl over there. She’s my roommate.” The girl leaned forward, lifted up her cleavage, and shook her chest at the opposing team. A ball bounced harmlessly off the lid of a cup and landed on the floor. The girl’s male partner let out a primal scream and pounded his fists on the table.

“She seems fun.”

“Yeah, she’s nice.” Amanda’s roommate stepped up to the edge of table and prepared to toss the ball at the opposing team. Her partner stood behind her and rubbed her shoulders, cheering her on. Amanda motioned with her beer at them again.

“And me and that guy used to sort of date,” She offered.

“Sorry, that sucks,” I shouted into her ear over the music. Amanda shrugged.

“It’s ok. Listen, I can barely hear you. I’m going to go down the hall to get another drink. Do you want one?” I liked that she drank beer. No malt drinks and mixers. She placed her empty bottle on the window sill.

“Nah, I shouldn’t drink. I think I almost died last night.”

“You almost died? That’s a little fucked up.”

“Thanks,” A beat then, “hey, I like your shirt.”

Amanda cast a glance behind her as we left the lounge.

***

We walked down the hall. The way the rooms were arranged in Amanda’s dorm, each floor had two suites, a few rooms around a small common area. I felt the music from the lounge downstairs vibrating through the floor and she went into her room to get another drink. There was a nook in the wall with a padded loveseat and a large window overlooking the quad. I pulled my feet in and leaned against the wall. She came out with another beer and bottle of water for me. Text me when you’re ready to fuck, I read her shirt again. I imagined that as our own private greeting when we saw each other. Shouted over the cafeteria, or across the quad, startling campus tour groups. “Hey, Coop, text me when you’re ready to fuck!”  

“You really almost died?” She sat down on the window seat next to me. She too leaned against the wall and bent her feet out in front of her, inches from mine.

“Yeah, it was stupid. Sometimes when I try to sleep I get freaked out. So last night I took a few sleeping pills, only that was kind of dumb because I had been drinking. Sometime I start to panic. My heart races.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I start thinking about weird things. How afraid I am of dying. Or I’ll think about the sun blowing up or swallowing the earth, and how sad it would be to have all evidence that we were ever here gone.” I took a sip from the water bottle and shrugged. “I couldn’t sleep again. It felt like I couldn’t turn off my brain. I remember staring at my computer keyboard and it was glowing, but liquid. Like there was a chemical reaction under my fingertips. And the Christmas lights around my bed started melting. I guess I passed out. And hit my head. Which explains this bruise.”

Amanda surveyed me with a thoughtful look and took a pull from her bottle.

“I get scared of being forgotten sometimes,” She offered. She rested her bottle on the window ledge and I pulled my knees into my chest.

We spoke for hours. There was something freeing and wonderful about telling your secrets to someone who was all but a complete stranger. Somewhere along the line of our conversation she went back into her room to pull her blanket from her bed. We shared it, in the nook on the window seat, and talked about everything—music, sex, movies, comic books, what we thought about religion. She taught me some swear words in German. We talked about when we lost our virginity. Amanda, when she was fifteen and went to a friend’s prom. She hadn’t even particularly liked the guy, but she loved the cliché, going all the way on prom night. And me, I was a late bloomer, I told her. I lost it at seventeen to my friend Jamie, right before we left for college, so we both could get it over and done with. I told her embarrassing stories about myself, like that time I pissed myself at a track meet because I had pushed myself as hard as I could running the two-mile, and when I finished I collapsed on the ground and lost all muscle control. I don’t know why. I just felt like I could tell her anything and she wouldn’t care.

We dozed. Past the trees, the horizon turned slightly gray. She told me about that guy she mentioned downstairs, the guy she used to date. He used to be nice, she said. Then, she didn’t know. He got weird. Possessive and angry, then he just forgot about her. And after he stopped calling she had all but stopped eating for a few weeks. It wasn’t that she had wanted to, she couldn’t help it. Her stomach just rejected food and when she managed to choke something down she just ended up with her stomach in knots and shitting away her insides into the toilet. In a way, it was better that way, she told me. If she was going to feel terrible, it was going to be because of herself, her own body, not because of how someone else treated her.

Amanda and I curled underneath the blanket on the window and slept on and off in the curve of each other’s bodies. She was the big spoon, even though she was much shorter than I was. I liked that. I felt her exhalations on the back of my neck, and then sometime later I heard a few people stumble into the common area and make their ways into their rooms.

We didn’t do anything, not even kiss. I woke up to adjust the blanket over my bare feet and tell her about how when I was a kid I could never have any of my limbs hanging off of my bed because I was convinced that a mummified hand would reach up and drag me under the bed. She was asleep but I spoke softly anyway, our breath intermingled.

Sometime around dawn I felt her leave the window. Part of my brain was aware that she told me softly, “I’m going to my bed, you should stay here for a while.” I don’t know what I mumbled in reply. She pulled the blanket around me and then threaded her fingers through my hair.

I slept for an hour or two and then decided to go back to my own room. I folded her blanket and left it there by the window next to her discarded socks. And when they found her later, in her room, I was asleep in my bed across campus and dreaming of our lecture hall and the girl who didn’t want to be forgotten. Her roommate found her in her underwear and her “Text me when you’re ready to FUCK” shirt, sprawled on the floor. Hard blow to the back of a head, and other wounds on the side of her head and mouth, probably from her way down. Her blood seeped into the dusty carpet underneath her. Her interests were reduced to scattered knick knacks fallen from the shelf near her head.

Who killed Amanda Palmer? Some people said she must’ve been too drunk and smacked her head on the shelf above her bed. Some people told campus police about this guy she left the party with. Her roommate swore she probably did it to herself because she wanted attention. For everyone else, she was an abstract. An ideal. Yeah, some of them kind of knew her. Maybe passed her in the hallway and half-smiled in her direction. Maybe they would organize a candlelight vigil in her name.  But I fell in love with her a little that night, the two of us sharing whispered secrets and stories in the window. She was like a chemical-induced hallucination firing in my brain. Wavering and half-real, but beautiful. Staggeringly, fucking beautiful.

I remembered her especially at night, as I washed down my sleeping pills with mouthfuls of water, my heart racing, begging the sun to burn for just another day.

By Musings in response to this photo by Nicholas Vargelis

“Mommy, I want it.  I WANT IT NOW!” The little girl was really putting on a show now, her face turning red and her fists clenched with the impatience of someone used to getting her way.

“Listen, dear,” her mother replied soothingly.  “Where will we have room for such a thing?  We can’t even fit her on the plane properly. And you have all the other ones at home that you’ve stopped playing with.  They’re all huddled in the corner of your closet, hitting each other with pieces of your tea set.”

“IIIII WAAAAAANNNNT  AMMMMMANNNNDA PAAAALMER!”  The shrillness of her voice seemed to fill the entire three-hundred-story store, and many of the other shoppers stopped what they were doing to look at the spectacle.

The girl’s mother flushed with embarrassment and looked at the storekeeper who was helping them.  “Listen, she knows what she wants, you know?  She’s going to grow up to be very assertive.  Like Miley Cyrus was, when she was President.”

The storekeeper nodded sympathetically, and waited until the mother turned to roll his eyes.  He brought up a screen in the air in front of him to check availability.

“Hmm,” he said.  “We only have one in stock and it says here… damaged?”

The mother looked at her daughter, who was now dissembling a large skyscraper and flinging the pieces at other small children.  Classic movies she had seen about the character Godzilla came to mind.

“A little damaged should be fine,” she answered quietly.

They rolled her out.  The Amanda-Palmer-So-Realistic-That-It’s-Alive doll blinked twice at the mother.

“Hello!” The mother said.  No response.  “Hello!” she repeated. 

“Her talking box is broken,” the man explained.  “But,” he added, “she sings!”  He nodded at the doll.

“Coin operated boy, sitting on a shelf…” The doll began.

“Hmm.” The mother seemed unimpressed.  “I’ve heard this song about a million times, on the Really Oldies station.  Also, she seems kind of moody for a doll.”

“Oh, she can sing anything the real Amanda Palmer knew,” the man answered.  “Anything.  And she’ll perk right up when she’s with your daughter.”

The Amanda Palmer doll gave a look of undisguised loathing at the storekeeper, which he ignored.

The woman looked again at her daughter who had proceeded to the My Big Horsies and seemed to be organizing them to fight each other in an epic battle.  She sighed.  “Ok, I’ll take her.”

5 days later

“ARGENTINA BLACKBERRY MASON!  We do not beat our dolls to death!”

“But… but… she wouldn’t sing ‘Thirty Whacks’ so I hit her thirty times with my tennis racquet.”

The mother looked at her husband, exasperated.  “Now what are we going to do?  I will not have a bloody and dead doll in my house and I won’t throw it away.  It’s bad luck, I don’t care what the other women say.”

“Honey, you brought her into the house, you take her out.”

The mother pouted and thought.  “What about in the storage garage?  With all those stupid stacks of paper—”

“Listen, those ‘stupid stacks of paper’ will be putting Argentina through college!  Paper is a huge collector’s item these days… and where exactly will I have space to put such a thing? I like the organization down there.”

“Well, how about in that vintage shopping cart of yours?  We haven’t filled that yet.  And I just can’t think of any other place.”

“Fine.”  Defeated, the father started heading towards his daughter’s room to get rid of Amanda Palmer.
——————————————————————————————————————

By Lindsay Friel in response to this photo by Kyle Cassidy

TEACHING EXPERIENCE (Part I of 2)

She rolled off of him, into the crevice between his wiry frame and the wall, pushed her hair out of her eyes and smiled down at him, prostrate in his narrow dorm-room bed. He opened his eyes. They were flat and glassy, staring upward, empty, a doll’s eyes. She reached across him to pull the sheet- its elastic had come undone from the corner of the thin mattress in their afternoon tumblings- then ran her fingers through his chestnut hair.

“Don’t,” he said, barely audible.

“Sorry,” she laughed. It was pretty clear his world had been rocked. Usually, they were dazed, always grateful, sometimes they babbled nonsense afterwards, and sometimes they fell asleep. One had pretended to take it all in stride, affecting a world-weary purr to his voice as if he’d given the gift. This was a first, though, to have the one student she allowed herself per semester go completely deer-in-the-headlights. Maybe this one, she mused, would be the one that cried.

“My arm is falling asleep,” she tested, and sat up. He didn’t flinch. Give him time, she thought, they’re usually ready for round two in about 20 minutes. She crawled over him, letting her breasts hang in his line of vision for a moment, swinging her expanse of ivory leg across him (nothing, not even a blink) and climbed out of bed. She stepped into her discarded panties, pulling them up and over her hips, still no reaction. He lay there, his breathing still labored, but otherwise catatonic.

“Dr. Palmer?”

“Call me Amanda. You’ve earned it.”

“Could you please hand me my asthma inhaler?”

She looked around the room. These boys’ rooms were all the same. Posters taped to the walls, curling at the edges as it grew late in the semester, the piles of dirty clothing, the discarded soda cans and food wrappers. The smell was the same too, a bit of sweat and cheap tobacco, unwashed socks, salt and just a hint of pizza. Depending on the time of year, there might be a bit of beer, brandy or other contraband tingeing the edges of the aroma. There might be differences in the posters or the CD cases lying around, but they might as well be the same room on different days. She looked on his desk, to the right of the keyboard. Ashtray, lighter, empty pack of Camels, inhaler. Bingo. She picked it up and tossed it to him, underhand. It landed on his stomach. He scooped it up and popped it into his mouth, pressed, hissed, but his eyes didn’t move from the ceiling.

“When’s your roommate coming back?”

“Sunday night,” he said.

“Mind if I check my e-mail?”

“Go ahead,” he said, returning to his trance.

She pushed his backpack onto the floor and sat in his desk chair. The computer was on, and her department e-mail was server-based; it wasn’t hard for her to get in, check, see if anyone had noticed her missing, if any fires needed putting out. The department secretary was a big gossip, so when she left her office for lunch she asked her to look up directions quickly on her computer to the nearest Talbots, complaining about having nothing to wear to the English department cocktail party that night. That way, if she talked about her being gone for Friday afternoon, she’d be complaining that Dr. Palmer had spent the afternoon shopping, rather than providing private mentoring to the best student in her Advanced Creative Writing class.

One e-mail from her husband was in the Inbox, along with the usual pile of e-mail asking her to attend meetings, serve on committees or grant extensions on papers. Last-minute opportunity to hear a lecture, something on Ancient Greek basketweaving or Byzantine lawnmowing, something, he wouldn’t be home until late, wouldn’t have time to get home to let the dog out, could she pop over and make sure Monty got some exercise? The sad thing, it wasn’t an excuse- if he said he was going to a lecture on Ancient Greek basketweaving and wouldn’t be home till late, he really was. He’d be gone for hours, slow, reliable David, so involved in his work that he’d forgotten about the department cocktail party that night.  Sometimes she wished a freshman would climb onto his desk with no panties under her skirt and ask for an extra-credit project, just to see if his pulse was capable of racing.  Maybe then she could explain to him why she had to do what she just had to do.

One student per semester, a boy (never a girl; they talked, they got too emotionally attached, they hatched revenge plots), old enough to think he’d been around the block, young enough to send shivers down her spine and make her hair stand on end. Compliant, but not too eager; she liked the chase. Single, but not desperate. She didn’t need a cuckolded girlfriend ruining everything. The seasonal turning, year in, year out, of the same meetings, the same courses, the same bureaucratic obstacle courses, the same cocktail parties, the same brown tweed and navy blue, conversations, wine, cheese and bad breath, cracked her after three years of teaching and her therapist suggested she try doing something spontaneous. She never looked back, mailing the therapist a check with a little extra tacked on there for good measure. It wasn’t enough to mastermind a compelling plot on paper if you had no experience to back it up.  Experience was the best teacher, and for the most promising student in her Advanced Creative Writing course, she provided private study sessions. In return, they gave her their smell, their youth, their beautiful bodies, their enthusiasm. They gave her their coltish ways, their delicious testing of boundaries and methodologies, their painful learning of consequences; and then they went away. They didn’t know what they gave her, of course. She loved the quickening of her pulse, the endorphin rush, going through the rituals; the first smell, the first eye contact, the first accidental touch, the first time they came to her office hours thinking it was their idea. Some lasted weeks, some lasted a day, and they went into the next semester thinking they were the one who got away. Meanwhile, she was already evaluating the next round of candidates.

He still hadn’t moved. She didn’t hear anything; his breathing had relaxed a bit, but otherwise she hadn’t even heard the bed creak. She straightened her spine, trying to provide an embodiment of the Professorial Fantasy Image, and looked around the room for a T-shirt. A red one was balled up by her feet. She picked it up and looked at the image on the front. It had a picture of a cell phone and it said, “Text me when you’re ready to FUCK.” She snickered. They think they’re sex machines, but give them a little bit of what they ask for and they melt into puddles. He was the quietest student in her workshop, sitting off to one side, but not all the way in the back. He’d transferred here this year, from a school in another state, and he affected the look of the wannabe writer; long black trenchcoat a size too big for him, long brown bangs falling over one hazel eye, high cheekbones and delicate features. Michael Chabon called, she thought, when she saw him on the first day of class, he wants James Leer back.  He spoke little. When other students’ stories were up for discussion he asked non-threatening questions, letting the other students attack each other, staying out of the grudge match. When his own stories were read and discussed in class, he said nothing. All the time he simply listened, his hazel eyes riveted. This alone would have made him the perfect student, but then he upped the ante and happened to be an amazing writer. He wasn’t even in the running to be one of her semi-annual playmates, but his short stories had struck her deeply, as deeply as she seemed to have struck him just now. How much longer was he going to lie there, staring?

Let him relax for a few more minutes, she thought. Maybe he’ll fall asleep. There’s plenty of time. Wondering if she had enough cash to convince him to order a pizza, she logged out of her e-mail account, and went to erase the browser history. In the URL bar, something flickered and caught her eye. What was that? She went back, clicked on the down arrow. Fanfiction.com, fanfiction.net, fanfic.com, fanfic.net, lostfanfiction.com, startrekfanfiction.net, starwarsfanfic.com, hogwartsfanfiction.org, smallvilefanfic…. The list went on and on.

Her eyes glanced up to the shelf above his computer monitor, moving across the scattered objects. A book called The Watchmen, with a yellow smiley face dripping blood. A tiny white-gowned Princess Leia action figure. A Boba Fett action figure. A book with something about Sandman on the cover.  Something clicked in her head. In the search engine window, she typed a sentence from the first short story homework he’d handed in. She’d given it an A- for spelling errors and some typos, but it was a story so good she had ran it through the department copier and kept it for herself, picking it apart word by word, using it as her prototype of how to best seduce him. It had worked, or at least it had so far. If he ever spoke again, she’d know for sure.

In a flash, the search engine came up with results. Watchmenfanfic.net. She clicked on the link. It was a bulletin board of stories, all about the characters in this Watchmen thing. They were stories ripped off from this book, like children playing with dolls, playing house but with superheroes, taking a writer’s story, rewriting it in their own image, and putting it on the Internet. They were recycling other’s recycling, which would then in turn be recycled again. He had copied a story from this website and changed the names, then submitted it in class. This kid wasn’t writing. He was web-surfing, copying and pasting, and only modifying slightly to cover his tracks.

She opened his word processor, opened the most recent document. It was nearly identical to the story on the bulletin board. The word came out of her mouth.

“Gotcha.”

“Whaa?” his voice sleepily rose from the bed.

“Evan, you’re a plagiarist.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I found it,” she said. “It’s right here in front of me. Get up.”

He sat up. She turned around. His eyes were no longer glassy; they focused on her as sharp as daggers. Her heart pounded. How many lessons would she have to lead him through today?

“You’re not supposed to go through my stuff,” he said.

“I didn’t have to go through your stuff. I typed a sentence from your story into a search engine.”

“So?” She could see a red flush creeping up the sides of his neck.

“So, Evan, you used someone else’s writing for your homework. The same story came up. You changed the names and a few of the plot details, but otherwise it’s the same text.”

“Dr. Palmer, I’m not a plagiarist.” His mouth trembled, his hand was cupped around the other, which was balled into a fist. The knuckles were white. His hazel eyes were almost black.

TO BE CONTINUED.
——————————————————————————————————————

“Funny” by Corin Nguyen in response to this photo by Lauren Goldberg

Amanda was broken long before I saw her sprawled at the foot of the stairs with neck snapped and blood pooling beneath her head.

She used to tell me over tea, about her condition where her pupils would randomly lose cohesion turning amoeba-shaped, and everything she saw would distort as if reflected in funhouse mirrors.  Her funny eyes lasted seconds, but Amanda always attempted the hopeless rush to see her reflection. I feel misshapen, she said, poking her cheek and belly.  When I my eyes soften, I want to see if I look normal.

On the day I saw her body, she told me she had finished a song about a clown and a rusted angel.  That’s us, she said, all those tears make your smile creak.  She was the clown, of course.  The clown juggled words like bright red balls in time with the music and pratfall in her big left-footed shoes, but the angel refused to laugh.

Amanda was clumsy.  Her clumsy feet, clumsy arms and clumsy thoughts would catch on the unexpected and spill over you like her clumsy smile when she tumbled onto the floor.  I use to stretch my arms out to catch her, but she would brush them away.  She’d say, people fall so they can learn to get up, but I fall so I can rest a while.  She would push me away until I finally stopped reaching for her.

On the day I saw her body, she had been crying, torn photos in her hand.  I need to kiss you today, she said, but not tomorrow or the next and maybe never again.  Could you live with that, she asked.   My smile creaked less, and I nodded.

We kissed and her eyes popped wide open.  Her pupils had gone soft and egg-shaped.  On the second stair from the top while rushing for the bathroom mirror, her foot caught spilling the tumble of her limbs.  She winked at me and the serene smile on her face made me laugh as she fell.  I laughed until tears, until the rag of her body stilled at my feet.

I wanted to brush her eyes closed, but my hands shook helplessly so I left, slowly closing the door behind me.

——————————————————————————————————————

“At the Crossing” in response to this photo by Nicholas Vargelis

I wasn’t sure why she lay there in the street, very still with white skin, cold, not having seen the sun in some time. I stopped on the other side and looked back. She hadn’t moved. Was she not breathing?

It felt like a joke waiting to be played. At this hour of the morning only hardcore joggers and purposeful movers saw the sun rise.  Them and the 182 bus.

I look around, convinced there must be others around laughing at me. I don’t have time for this. This wasn’t my kind of joke, and besides the liquid had to be at the dropped off in less than ten minutes. It only lasted so long.

Still, I had stopped. She was quite beautiful. Her expression relaxed - easy like Sunday morning. She must be frigid. The summer dress was not at all right for the temperature. I should leave my coat to cover her.

No. It’s kindness like that that leads to friendliness. Friendliness leads to liking. Liking tends toward affection. Affection invites love. Love falls to heartbreak. Heartbreak breeds hatred. Hatred goes to anger, to contempt, to rage and…

I should go. The liquid needs to be delivered before it stales. That would be bad. Those who rely on me might be upset and thier plans would foul.

She’s very pretty. Did she move? Did she look at me? No. She’s staring off, ignoring me, like the rest. They won’t ignore me soon. Once the liquid is delivered the package will be complete and then people will notice.

I shake the bottle. It’s looking milky. A few minutes and it will be too late. Why haven’t I kept walking. The dress is very nice. Sweet, demure. Black dots against white- red hair splayed on the aspalt. Peaceful.  A street angel.

We could be friends. We could be more, if only she moved, breathed.

I’m late.

I set the bottle down. I’m going to lay with her a while. Company for the 182.

——————————————————————————————————————

By Dig in response to this photo by Rebecca Wood

Master Gorthag and Mr. Bultnor were asleep on a bench
In a park, in a city, as the sun started to set
Then a needle was dropped bleeding into the groove
And four eyes sprang open and two heads jerked up.

Cried Gorthag to Bultnor as he leapt to his feet
“Another is needed. Quick, grab the tools!
Another is needed. Grab the album of rules!”

“Which one is it this time?” hissed Gorthag to Bultnor
And they listened and they read and they read and they listened
“Oh it’s this one! Oh my goodness. We get to play doctor!”

So ticking and tocking their eyes started looking
Leftward and inwards and outwards and rightwards
And upwards and upwards they finally found her

Off a passage,
Off an alley,
Off a street,
Off a park

Stood a building of bricks falling fast into dark
But ten stories up a balcony glowed
Like the sun’s setting light was reluctant to go

And in it was sitting a girl on her own
Sitting and staring at the wall all alone

And Gorthag and Bultnor agreed “She’s the one!”
As they pushed through the gate, to the path. To the fun!

-  ——————————  -

Delicately swaying in the rays of the sun
The girl wondered warmly at the world far below
And a smile simmered softly then surged into sight
on the wings of a wonder that had words of delight
“My friends are returning after so long away
My friends are returning to me after all!”
And her smile blossomed wider out into the …

Night.

“Don’t friends have faces. Don’t friends have names?”

Her gaze fell to the needle stuck riding the groove
And she reached it, and gripped it, and started to lift it
“What were their names? Where are their faces?”

But needles are heavy and smiles are so taxing
And drain out your soul when you could be relaxing

And the needle and the smile slipped into the dark

-  ——————————  -

“Mr. Bultnor, let us, before we begin, recount, double-check, what you bothered to bring?
The rulers, the string and the ruby red lasers ?
The pattern, the thread, and the measuring tape?
The razors? the needles? and jagged glass splinters?”
The slicers, the dicers, and skin binding splicers?”

“I have them, every one. Oh you know me so well!”

And Gorthag, not Bultnor pulled on the bell

And Gorthag and Bultnor became David and Mark
Collecting to save your trees in the Park
Became Arnold and Clive to help read your meter
Or Dan and Laval to read the letters of Peter
Or Ernest and Kanaan to assist with your phone
Or Whoever you want when you’re lonely, alone

But as they waited, and waited, still nothing happened

So Gorthag and Bultnor, rather Lawrence and Sam,
Stepped back from the door and courteously yelled,

“Hello up there!”
“I’m Lawrence,”
“I’m Sam”
“We’ve come for the problem you said was .. a… problem!”
“We’ve come to assist you, to bring an end to this … problem!”

-  ——————————  -

But her head didn’t turn, preferring the wall.

-  ——————————  -

“No, look here’s the chit, and on it’s your name, we must come upstairs to see what’s to blame.
If you’d just buzz us in, we’ll be up in a flash.
We take payment in all forms. Give discounts for cash”

-  ——————————  -

But the needle rode on to the last of the song

-  ——————————  -

And Bultnor, not Gorthag kicked in the door
An avalanche of bad angels, played out in reverse
Tumbled upstairs without so much as a curse
And outside apartment ten ten eleven, they waited a moment

Before Bultnor, not Gorthag kicked in the door

And clattered through the room where the vinyl was spinning
To the hot brick red balcony where the girl was still sitting 

“Ah sweet sweet missy. So radiant, so fair
Here in a house where nobody cares
All left alone, to sit and to stare”

“Master Gorthag,I don’t think she listens”

“Oh she does. It’s simply the needle’s not finished.
So hurry Mr. Bultnor there’s no time to waste.
Throw me the tape, I must measure her face”

Then into the silence came, “Please … please do not”

And Bultnor looked up, and raised up an eyebrow
And Gorthag stooped down and stared into her eyes.

“Look I’d love to oblige you, but that’s simply not on.
We are who we are and there’s work to be done.
Yes, we slice and we dice and we try to be nice to the
lice ridden mice that fall into the slice.
And to slice and to dice is a vice that’s not nice

But if we don’t cut you up there’s a price to be paid
By us and not you and amends would be made.
Our souls would be rendered, and bodies burnt dry
And as we’re immortal we would die and we’d die
And we’d die and we’d die and we’d die and we’d die
And we’d die and we’d die and we’d .. do you get where I’m going ?”

And through the starlight comes quietly, “Yes, you would die”

“So you do understand why he must hold your head
And you do understand why he must hold that razor?”

And an unnoticed tear got caught in the light
And she nodded
And said “yes”
And started gently to cry

And Bultnor took hold and pulled back her head.

And Gorthag, of course, said what he said:

“Remember!
Sever the voicebox before skinning the face
Or the neighbors will hate us for disturbing the peace
Then the slicers, the dicers, and skin binding splicers
To reform her look and make her a beauty
So they don’t see a death, but a doll that’s been broken
Yes, cover the scars, pockmarks and bruises
With layers and layers of make up that oozes
From that maggotty tube zipped up in your pocket
Rip out the blonde hair with pliers and burn it
With turpentine, tar and acetone torches
Till it’s black, stick it back, and on to the finish

Where we hold up to the stars, the sharp diamond splinters
And count the sparkles inside, and watch how they glitter

Then rip them down and around and hack out her heart
Which we’ll squeeze, lick and rub till it glows in the dark

Then take up the mallet and finish the plan
And hammer her heart hard into her hand”

-  ——————————  -

When the needle slipped out, they had finished
And vanished.

-  ——————————  -

And the girl that was found eyes wide in the moonlight
Had two broken fathers and two sobbing mothers

For her blood was Amanda’s
And her face was Rebecca’s

——————————————————————————————————————

By Adrian Ogden in response to this photo by Laurie Pink

Tears could not remove
the stain you left on my life.
Maybe this will work.

So we spontaneously asked our Twitter followers to kill Amanda Palmer in 140 characters or less.  The most creative is taking home a signed poster from Ms. Palmer herself.

The winner: @fatesapprentice:  It wasn’t my fault… I only jumped out of the alleyway to surprise her with a pony! She stepped back, the bus was speeding.

And many more murders below…

@briarlaboheme:  it was professor plum, in the billiard room, with the lead piping.

@bluethrash:  Future Amanda time-traveled and met past Amanda, thus causing space-time to collapse, and that’s how AFP erased herself.

@cyndaelle:  Her eyes were glassy as I wiped the blood from my bow.She never saw it coming, poor dear.The stiff hair cutting through her delicate neck.

@sourlullabies:  Things dont look the same anymore.The look in her eyes as she gasped her last breath- not as easy to wash away as the blood was

@bluethrash:  The old buzz saw on the conveyor belt routine. Head first.

@dharma_punx:  There was a beautiful irony watching her clutch at the piano string taut around her neck - it was like watching embers fade…

@kurometarikku:  “Whats she doing lying in the road?” “I think she got hit by a bird, it went Meep, Meep” “Yes, AFP was killed by Roadrunner!”

@bluethrash:  Each time she died, AFP found herself waking up in a new nightmare, as the events of her book came true over and over again.

@musingsR:  Dropped bottle of wine/She was playing underneath/I said oops, sorry

@weepydonuts:  Clove cigarettes… She could not resist. The glass of brandy I poured… She should have.

@cynsheis:  your telling me this now? she reached to hit him, thats when he opened the car door

@insignifikunt:  Her body lay face down,her fleshy brain exposed.Not more than 100 mtrs away & in perfect unison a chant could be heard “brains”

@cynsheis:  the bitch stole my lipstick again i helped her wash it off in the tub…a bit too enthusiastically? she aint said a word since

@cyndaelle: Her eyes were glassy as I wiped the bow. She never saw it coming, poor dear. The stiff hair cutting through her delicate neck.

@chainmailchuck:  A safe fell on Amanda’s Head. It’s safe to say, she’s dead.

@charliespats:  Killing her was easy. We burned the body and ran.The hard part was the awkward conversation when we saw her again the next day.

@AmyliaRose:  She drank the wine as if there was no poison. Her screams were drowned out by her choking.The white piano keys were stained red

@insignifikunt:  for years they said:wax dont shave your eyebrows. Now its too late. She lies still, bloodied razor in hand, eyeball vanished.

@bobwait:  “The music stops, and the lady dies; arrive at 8.” We had been invited to a murder mystery. A game — or so we thought…

@insignifikunt:  thanks to yoga they fit her nicely into a guitar case,guitar string around her neck. The side of the case read nickelback.

@CourtneyFG:  how was amanda to know that it would be fatal? it seemed like a good idea to rig fireworks to go off when she played the piano.

@invein:  later,they would notice her brightly painted fingernails,her perfect hair. like she had known,and wanted to look good for them.

@_Fable_:  As the dark water rose over her face she stirred; too late. A tendril of blood drifted upwards while she sank away to the deep.

@definitelyemily:  Screams echoed from the trapdoor, followed by a hollow thud. Curiosity didn’t kill the cat, it killed Amanda Palmer.

@sourlullabies:  She looked like a fish out of water as she wiggled & writhed until she went limp, all the while I never loosened my grip.

@DoktorMocha:  As I pushed her over the edge I softly said, “Goodbye”. She replied, “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” and died.

@taylweaver:  I didn’t mean for you to fall so far. A miscalculation. But you were right about the pie. Sorry you missed it. I ate yours too.