#83: The Tragic Realization of Temporal-Dimensional Travel

Before I could clamber to my feet, two of the Megaton Mice had grabbed Kozmik Kat by the whiskers and were flinging him around the clearing.
        “Hey, you guys! Cut that out!” I shouted. But the other two had clamped onto my ankles. For their size, they were strong. “Ouch! That hurts!
        I shook them off; they went rolling toward the rubble pile. But Koz wasn’t faring as well. “Guys! I’m a different person now!” he cried, as one twirled him by his tail. “I would never chomp your brother today—really! He even tasted lousy, compared to other mice. I haven’t touched one since!”

#82: My Excellent Adventure with Kozmik Kat

I had often wondered what caused readers of popular fantastic fiction to spend as much time, if not more, poring over the writings of Emil Reardon Ryerson, Grover Edwin Honath, and Henry Potsdam Lipschitz, and memorizing shelves of information of completely made-up worlds like Whagool or the Daemonic Ravines of New Hampshire, or the Antediluvian Age, and yet be unwilling to put the same energy into public school, and later a master’s degree in history, philosophy, or French Medieval lit?

#81: Views from Olympus

“What up doe, Banky?” I said as I entered the Troy+Thems hall.
     Few people get my sense of humor to begin with, and my white colleagues weren’t sure they had permission to laugh at a black woman doing her impression of a racial stereotype. But Rubber Brother loved it.
     “Ha! Buckwheat from The Little Rascals,” he chortled. “Clarissa, that breaks me up every time you do it!”

#80: Escape-Ism From Flung-Into-Ness

At first, I wasn’t sure why I had been so rough on Trent over breakfast.
     True, I did have a lot on my mind, and men can have such rotten timing. And he was being awfully presumptuous, making plans without keeping me posted. I suppose he also thought he’d been loyal to me all this time, just to still be thinking of me, and then finally, after long indecision, acting upon it. Still, it wasn’t like he’d been trapped in another dimension all this time; he could have called, or borrowed a car to see me, or written me letters.