PEETZA INNA HAWZ!

This is really nothing more than a placeholder post, but at the same time it's much more as there is so MUCH going on in the head now that I know The Story ("Crazy Joe and Marcus")  was lost in the big computer fry of earlier this year that if I don't put something down here there is risk of utter meltdown and total forgetfulness of what was going to be the Story I Wrote That Time.

It starts like this:

Ema is a girl, 11.  She live with her grandparents, in a small wooden house near a creek.  There are no near neighbors.
Crazy Joe is her Grandpa.
Marcus is her dog.
Crazy Joe don't talk much, since the accident.  It involved a shotgun, and a ghost.
Gramma don't talk at all, bein' as how she's busy with Crazy Joe's care.
Joe's cackling and talking to Lil' Joe, all the time. Nobody thinks he right-minded.
Ema goes to the creek, with Marcus.  He's the level-headed one, and just sits and cools himself.  She falls in while watching him roll around, and falls and falls,  way below the bottom of the creek.  She loses her breath.

Hits the roof.

Opens her eyes, mind flips, belly becomes back, and all the people in the yellow-gold big arching vault she can see, now above her, are made of pipes.   The hall is a dome of brass, in a town hall of sandstone, there is a forever-deep pool in the center of the square. Inhabitants are copper, engaged, personable, caring, dependable, loving.

They have families, loves, lives, and seem to be happy.

Except that they can't die, but want to.  They throw themselves off the highest balcony of the town square into the deep pool, but are rejected as unsuitable by the water.  Nobody can die, not even the sick or tired.  Children taunt the water, worried mothers snatch them back, but even if the babies spin helplessly in the darkness they can't die, they are simply thrown back to the World.  There is no dying, no release.

And then there's Joseph.  He's meat, like her.  And 20 years older, but still a friend, because of their off bodies.

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*and someplace in my brain I dreamed the ending.  Joseph and Crazy Joe  knew each other, time travel was involved and love was in the offing, old friendships were healed and sins forgiven,and I've lost it all except for this bit, which is weak, but is what my head thought up n ad which I think would still be kind of entertaining if only I could remember what I use to think I'd never forget.

Hi, welcome to my brain.