Each day just waiting to be written.

My hand on the knob of the front door. Jone’s body pushing against it, his legs restless, twitching, like a bull waiting to be released. I open the door and the world is cool and bright and thin, and the first thing Jones sees is an abandoned door lying face down on the ground. He is lifting it, like Hercules, “Come, Daddy, Come!!”

We enter into worlds unseen. Down cobwebbed staircases by candlelight we travel with Superman, a friendly werewolf and sticks. Spiders join us in the forest beyond the waters. And then we are back before our house, slamming the door down on the zombie armies in their moaning pursuit. I catch my breath, look up the street toward daycare. Right at eye level, not three inches away from my face, two sparrows rocket by. One after the other. Like two kids chasing one another on bikes. When was the last time you had that feeling? To be traveling at full and effortless velocity, your body stretched to the perfection of its desire, of its necessity? And Jones, glowing beneath me, now identifying the chalk faces on a brick wall—this world always unfolding in the smallest, most beautiful ways.

The heat sat upon everything.

Oppressive and exhausting, it slowly disabled the day’s options. You couldn’t go outside. You couldn’t get comfortable. You couldn’t even think straight, and every time you moved it was as if this thing, this heavy, unseen entity, was wrapping itself just a little more tightly around you.

It was a long weekend and most of the people in Toronto seemed to have vacated the city for cottages. As Rachelle, Jones and I drove through the city to the Ontario Science Centre, we passed empty streetcars on empty roads, and on very rare occasion a person—always appearing slightly dazed, as if they’d just forgotten where they were going. There was a distinctly post-apocalyptic vibe in the still, dirty air, and it all felt as much a dream as not.

The Science Centre was very crowded, though, and it was filled with people just like us, people looking for a place that was open to the public, air-conditioned and entertaining for young children. We were all lucky, all of us there, lucky to have such a place available to us, lucky to be able to use it, and lucky beyond the known margins, too, lucky in ways none of us could even imagine.

But still, it wasn’t easy. It was crowded and loud, even chaotic, and Jones was so excited that he ran in crazed and unpredictable zigzags, and after a few hours we felt like cats chasing the red dot of a laser pointer. And as it approached noon, the children, all exhausted and hungry now, began to throw tantrums. It was like artillery going off, like fireworks.

One child would explode into tears, another one would kick a juice box out of a parent’s hand, and another would just flop face first on the floor and begin kicking his feet, screaming. And so it went, a spreading contagion that was simultaneously hilarious and crushing.

We managed to slither and bounce through it all to find a passage that led to descending escalators. There must have been two or three of them, each one travelling deeper and deeper down and through the wooded ravine the Science Centre was built into.

It was like being submerged in a forest, and the air became cooler and lighter as we descended, and when we stepped off into the refreshing, muted light of a wide open museum space, we were transformed.

About fifty feet in front of us rotating light projections were being cast onto the floor from the ceiling. Ladybugs. Stars. Race Cars. Mysterious fish. Geometric patters. All the children dancing beneath and within this light, and everything was beautiful and quiet and astonishing, like we had just been led to an illuminated cave full of dolphins at play in the purest waters.

**********************************

The other day President-elect Donald Trump gathered his cabinet together for a round of golf and some frank talk about America.

A transcript of their conversation in the locker room of Trump National Golf Course in Westchester, NY was leaked to the press:

*******************************

Wilbur Ross, Commerce Secretary:

Hey, you bitches know Florida, right?

General James “Mad Dog” Mattis, Defense Secretary:

Total smoke show.

Jeff Sessions, Attorney General:

That baby got back!

Mike Pence, Vice President-elect:

Testify!

Donald Trump, President-elect:

I love her coasts. Superb coasts. The best coasties in all of America. I love to get right in there, stick my face in the them and just splash them all around.

Reince Priebus, White House Chief of Staff:

It is no Russian propaganda that you sir, are the the greatest man on the planet!

Jeff Sessions, Attorney General:

You da man! Big dog always huntin’!

Ben Carson, Housing and Urban Development Secretary:

She ever let you into her Everglades?

Donald Trump, President-elect:

Let me tell you, her Everglades are very exclusive, like so, so super exclusive that you wouldn’t even believe, and let me tell you, I have been to her Everglades many, many, many times. She can’t get enough. When I’m with her, I make it rain.

Reince Priebus, White House Chief of Staff:

You’re the RainMaker, sir!

General James “Mad Dog” Mattis, Defense Secretary:

I once had a layover in Delaware. Did some real drilling there, let me tell you, yeah, some real drilling.

Donald Trump, President-elect:

Delaware?! She’s a village bicycle. Disease infested. Strictly bottom-rung. Not even a 6 out of 10.

Jeff Sessions, Attorney General:

Yo, you better get yourself checked by your doctor, could have the crabs.

Donald Trump, President-elect:

“Brain Surgeon!” Give The General here an examination, tell us if Delaware gave him the clap.

Ben Carson, Housing and Urban Development Secretary:

I can tell from here he’s got SDD, Small Dick Disease, and that it’s terminal!

Mike Pence, Vice President-elect:

That sick burn pleases the Lord!!

( High-fives and laughter from all)

Reince Priebus, White House Chief of Staff:

Anyone playing Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare?

Wilbur Ross, Commerce Secretary:

Fucking rules. Took three Ativan and played it for eight straight hours last night.

Reince Priebus, White House Chief of Staff:

Zombie mode is the tits!

Donald Trump, President-elect:

Okay, okay, girls, let’s focus. Listen up. Okay. There’s a black guy and a Mexican in a car. Who is driving?

(The cabinet is silent)

Donald Trump, President-elect:

The cop!!

(The cabinet howls with laughter!)

Jeff Sessions, Attorney General:

You got to Tweet that one, President-elect!

Donald Trump, President-elect:

Okay, who lost that round of golf? Was it Ross the Loss? No? “Brain Surgeon”? Was it you? Bad Hombre Priebus? No, okay we’ll make it Sloppy Second Pence. Pence you’re today’s loser and have to buy us all dinner. Has to be an exceptional meal, super exceptional, the very best, and if it is, I’ll bring out those Sarah Palin hot tub pics I was telling you about.

I don’t believe that this crime was committed by a hacker collective known as The Impact, as has been reported, because The Impact can be nothing other than the name of a (white) B-Boy dance troupe from back in the 80’s.

At any rate, I think that the bloody-minded terrorist group ISIS, who really knows how to tear at the fabric of Western society, was responsible. They want to expose our corrupt ways and force our children to watch us shriek at one another while washing dishes after dinner. But no, no, I am not going to let terror win. When our leaders called upon us to shop in order to fight terror, I shopped, and now, when it is clear that we must continue our adulterous ways in order to stave off terror, I will be adulterous. I am for the troops, and with that in mind, I have just joined Ashley Madison.

This is my profile page:

RaccoonDrumCircleSexMachine

“Renaissance man”

Age: 36 (Leo)

Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Height: 6’0″ (183cm)

Weight: 190 lbs (86kg) – Average/medium

Languages Spoken: English

My Limits are: Undecided

Status: Attached Male seeking Females

Gender: Male

Ethnicity: Caucasian (white)

Smoking Habits: Not specified

Tell me more about yourself:

I love puppies and animals in general, although I have never cheated on my wife by using them as sex slaves. By the way, raccoons are my favourite animal, and I am pretty sure they’re my spirit guides. Sometimes, I like to dress up as one for sex.

Besides that I do martial arts; extreme martial arts. And Parkour. I also play the drums, and it’s like I play the drums better than Satan, it’s like I’m having sex with those drums, it’s like a drumgasm! ( LOL!!) I’m also taking some college classes, one on zombies in popular media, because I love zombies and meeting young women who would normally be outside of my sphere. I work as an Uber driver (another great way to meet women and find out where they live) whenever my wife starts screaming at me about whether the forks are clean enough or some other bullshit.

Preferences and encounters I am open to:

I am on a quest– not just for sex with a female partner who is not my wife, but for all things. I will do and try anything. Some people say that I am fearless, as fearless as an urban raccoon. Would somebody who isn’t fearless spend just over a week in the woods searching for Bigfoot? I don’t think so. A person with fear would cringe from that challenge, but not RaccoonDrumCircleSexMachine! I went to the woods. Will you go to the woods with me?

What really turns me on:

Honesty would have to be number one, and a close second would be to see a Bigfoot man and a Bigfoot lady going at it.

What I am looking for:

I like chicks who dig passionate drummers, as well as submissive Goth types who are into role playing, but mostly I just like really hot babes. Here are some examples:

No Asians please.

Cuba, I guess, was a bitter pill. Our frail efforts at visiting the “Real Cuba” as opposed to the “Tourist Cuba” only served to prove that we don’t like the real Cuba, and neither, of course, do most Cubans. We stayed in three different cities, two of which (Havana and Varaderos) are tourist centres, so the crippled, interior poverty of the country was  absent from our experience but only hinted at as we took a cab from city to city, passing by thatched roof homes with working donkeys living on the front porch. Our time there was one guided by hustlers, zombies and dead-eyed bureaucrats. Of course they would hate us, seeing in us only a mythic, superhuman capacity– one that was randomly dealt– to change their circumstances without damaging our own in the least. There’s an obscenity to wanting to have a fine lobster dinner in such a context, a very obvious one, and that tension was everywhere, invisible yet humming. We were billboards from the west– white, covered in corporate logos and sufficiently arrogant as to not know a word of Spanish. You know, I wanted to feel some sense of gratitude for my “charity” but what I felt was resentment and entitlement, which is probably the way that it should be. But in each small moment when we encountered what we hoped was the milk of human kindness or just a native curiosity about another human, it quickly revealed itself to be a prosaic, economic transaction.

The world is unfair in many, many ways.

Last week in Toronto, a guy opened fire in the Eaton Centre (a large, downtown mall) killing one person and injuring seven. The other night, some other gangster dude was running about the city Tweeting to police about the various things he was going to do with a machine gun.

And of course, this isn’t even including the zombies.

Turned on by bath salts or something, they seem to be staggering all over the place, either chewing the face off of a person or ripping their still beating heart from their chest. And then just to ratchet up the I’m-Living-In-A-Horror-Movie feeling, the murderous psychopath Luka Magnotta exploded into the news, mailing parts of his defiled lover all over the place.

It’s enough to make you jumpy.

Apocalyptic jumpy.

This morning  I was awoken into the end times by the front buzzer and the demonic screeching of our dog.  When the buzzer goes off all the fur on her back spikes and she explodes into an angry shriek of barking. I really, really hate that. It’s like having a small, disobedient bomb going off in perpetuity right beside your ankle. It makes me anxious.

At the door stood a strange looking man holding a package.

I wasn’t expecting a package.

The guy didn’t look like a delivery guy, either, he looked  like one of the guys that collect’s bottles from our recycling box.

Suspicious Looking Guy: Are you Michael Murray?

Me: Yes. What’s this?

Suspicious Looking Guy: It’s a package for you.

Me: I’m not expecting a package.

Suspicious Looking Guy: Well, maybe this is your lucky day and you’re getting a nice surprise!

Me: Or maybe it’s a partial rib cage.

Suspicious Looking Guy: Could you just sign here, please?

Me: You don’t look like a delivery guy.

Suspicious Looking Guy: I’m a freelance courier, and anyway, what do I look like to you?

Me: Like somebody who might know a murderer who liked to send body parts through the mail.

Suspicious Looking Guy: You’ve been reading about the Luka Magnotti case, haven’t you?

Me: So you know him?

Suspicious Looking Guy: (Laughing) No, of course not. What do you think you’re getting Gwyneth Paltrow’s head as a gift or something?

Me: I’m just a little disoriented and edgy right now. Your arrival just woke me up from a creepy dream.

Suspicious Looking Guy: Would it comfort you if I watched you open your package?

Me: I don’t think so, but okay.

And so we both sat down on our sofa and he watched as I opened the box, which was a care package sent from my mother containing vitamins, soap, an article cut from a newspaper on somebody I went to high school with, and a squeak toy for Heidi, our dog.

Suspicious Looking Guy: Do you feel better?

Me: This is really starting off to be a weird day, you know?

Suspicious Looking Guy: Yes, yes I do know.

And then he saluted, shook his head and walked out of our apartment.

The person on the other end of the connection was just going to get taken advantage of, “fucked-over and left to rot, dammit!!” His manner was so florid and over-the-top that I wondered if he was actually communicating with anyone other than himself, the phone serving merely as the magic portal for his interior dialogues.

On the patio at the Second Cup sat three teenagers. “Did you hear about the cannibal in Miami?” the Asian girl asked. Smiling, she leaned forward and relishing each word she slowly added, “He ate the face right off a guy while he was alive!” A campfire ghost story told over steaming cups of coffee.

Two other teens, both younger, walked toward toward me. One of them was heavy and had the wounded look of a bully-magnet. He was upset that his younger brother was getting his own bedroom at an earlier age than he did. The look of hurt and anger on his face was so sincere that it was both funny and sad, and then after a moment, a little bit scary. Engrossed in his own misery, he passed by this flier posted on a newspaper box:

A little further up the street a Native man was selling dream catchers on the sidewalk. The woman he was talking to looked enthusiastic and hopefully flirtatious. She had a last-call hue to her, and braless beneath her sundress she was hoping that the sunlight was catching in all the right places. The man was looking at her, a little bit pleased with himself, “ Chile?” he responded, “I used to sleep with a couple from Chile a few years ago.”

A skate boarder, cut off by a car, shouted curses and banged his fist on the trunk. The car came to a stop and everybody on the sidewalk slowed down– curiosity, anxiety and excitement now humming like a hydro wire. The window of the car powered down and an open-palmed hand emerged followed by the face of a middle-aged man. “I’m sorry,” he said, “it was my fault. I’m getting old.” The skate boarder, taken aback, wasn’t sure what to do, so he just got back on his board and slipped invisibly into traffic, as if a fish free from the hook, now cutting deep into familiar waters.

A woman who was probably around 50 hadn’t been paying any attention to this little drama and was walking through the cluster of pedestrians stalled on the sidewalk. She had a salon tan and was wearing red jeans and jangly jewelry. Speaking firmly into her phone she said, “I love you. That’s all. I love you.” And then she flipped her phone shut and smiling to herself, or to anybody who cared to notice, walked past the Shopper’s Drug Mart and turned the corner.

Yes, I’m alive.

????

No, nobody is eating my face.

You don’t believe me?

You think the killer has my iPhone?

Of course.

If I was a face-eating killer I think I’d stop to text with the victim’s husband.

It’s only polite.

You want me to prove I’m myself?

Ok.

How would you like me to proceed?

My favourite animal?

OK.

Satan.

Yes, he is.

How do you know Satan isn’t an animal?

They call him the Beast and in pictures he has horns.

Is 2.

Is 2.

Another animal?

I like baby sloths.

Your remind me of a baby sloth.

Ok.

I’m glad you believe it’s me.

Why r u so spooked?

Yes, the news is scary right now.

Lots of weird murders.

That Magnotta is a bad man.

It is like the world is ending!

Really?

You think our downstairs neighbours are face-eaters?

What do you think a face tastes like?

If it tasted like chocolate, I might eat one.

No!

No!

I am not going to eat your face!

Or tear out your still beating heart.

I don’t have the zombie disease.

Alright, you devise your escape plans.

I hope it involves a speedy boat!

And maybe a giant bird.

I’m not making fun of u.

But be realistic.

U don’t have a driver’s license.

How r u going to escape the zombie apocalypse?

Honestly, u’d be the first they ate.

I know you used to be good at sports.

But that was a long time ago, honey.

Zombies won’t know about your “reputation.”

They just want to eat your face.

You just bought a boat on-line?

An inflatable raft?

Yes, I’m sure it was a good price.

And that you will float to safety when the apocalypse comes.

Can zombies swim?

Well, maybe you should look into that.

Yep.

Yes, I bet they would post the video of your face being eaten on-line.

No, not as an example.

Just so they could admire their work.

They’d savor you, I bet.

Well, they’d probably come up from the basement where they’ve been living.

Through the open window where you have the AC.

Is the AC on now?

It’s not even hot.

Jesus.

You are a money waster!

You’re wasting money and making yourself vulnerable to zombie attack!

Yes, they’ll come through the open window!

And you won’t even hear them because of the AC racket!

And then your face will be gone!

Yeah.

The dog probably licks your face just to clean it for the zombie attack.

Gotta go now!

C u soon.

Just finishing a beer with the girls.

Please cancel your boat order.

xox