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Imagine this as a sitcom. It’ll be a killer.

We have Nancy and Bob Henderson, the parents of five children who live on an average street in an average town. The funny thing about them is that the five kids have no heads, which will make for a great laugh track when the Henderson’s head over to Granny’s and Granny opens the door to the Henderson Family and Bob and Nancy Henderson festively say, “Happy Thanksgiving!” except for the children, who just stand there with no heads between their shoulders, like holiday turkeys dressed in autumn flannel.

The funny thing about Granny is that she’s a transvestite and the Hendersons are a little embarrassed by him (a running sub plot) and Bob says, “Remember when you wore a suit, Father, just like all the other Dads?” which will lead to a rather poignant scene where Granny and Bob hug in the backyard and agree to let bygones be bygones after Granny reminds Bob about all the persecution he endured wearing dresses in high school and how he had to hide his true self from his army buddies, but we ease off the poignancy by then moving the lens of the camera to the children and to Nancy, who’s weeping, watching Bob and Granny hug each other and reconciling, and the kids just standing there with no heads between their shoulders.

One funny episode might involve the children, who are all twins, trying to communicate to their parents that they want friends over to spend the night but it’s impossible for them to do this as they can’t write or speak and Bob and Nancy have no idea what the children are trying to tell them with those funny arm jerks and that frenetic hopping, which is all a secret language that the children have learned over the years but have keep hidden from their parents and now regret (another running joke). The children, by the way, also communicate by scratching each others’ palms and by punching each other.

The laugh track’ll go crazy as the audience watches the children try to convey their aims to Nancy and Bob, and Bob and Nancy misunderstand the messages and bring home a pony (”Oh, you want a pony,” Bob says), give the children a swing set or a trampoline (one of the children tries it out and goes flying into the bushes and crawls out with a squirrel chattering in the space between his shoulders), or load the children into the RV for a cross country trip (”That’s what they want, Honey; they want to go on vacation!”), which is the way the episode ends: with the RV turning out of the driveway and the children lined up in the back window all headless and pathetic, Bob and Nancy beginning a travel tune, maybe something like “the ants go marching one by one, Hurrah . . . ” and then the credits fly.

The audience’ll be on the floor.

In another episode, Granny is staying over at Bob and Nancy’s because the studding of her house is being reduced to powder by termites. The episode begins with Granny sneaking a lover up to her room and suddenly Granny stops, shakes her head at the lover and says to the lover out loud, “Don’t worry about the children, they have neither eyes nor ears and Nancy and Bob sleep like the dead.”

But the kids do know because they understand the meaning of vibrations and the remaining space of the episode is driven by the children playing tricks on Granny’s lover. For example, while the lover sneaks in to the bathroom, one of the children, who’s hiding inside, opens the shower curtain with a gap-toothed pumpkin balanced in the crook between his shoulders, and the lover runs from the bathroom screaming. That’s just one example of the tricks the children play on the lover, who is perpetually hiding under Granny’s bed in the guest room when Bob and Nancy come in to ask, “What’s the matter, Dad? We heard screaming.”

The final scene shows Granny’s lover moving quietly through the house and out, and as he departs the yard, the camera moves to a window where the children are standing headless but satisfied not watching but watching the lover disappear off set and the credits fly.

The ratings’ll go off the charts.

The audience’ll want to know what this headlessness is all about but the sitcom will naturally avoid explanation as explanatory narrative is typically uninteresting and doesn’t suit comedy but the reasons for the disfigurement might factor into scripts as a diversion (as an aside, we might simply write in that the children understand the vocalizations of the people around them by interpreting vibrations on the surface of their sensitive skin). One episode, perhaps a powerful season ender, might involve one of the neighborhood kids, the only child of Chefs Henry and Tina, who becomes curious about why the headless children appear so fun-loving, have such cool and plentiful toys, and take so many interesting trips.

So, after an afternoon on the trampoline and rides on the pony, he tells one of the headless children that he wants to be just like him. Then maybe his parents will bring him a pony or purchase him a trampoline, take him to amusement parks, and so he tells one of the headless children that he’s going to go right home and use one his parents’ butcher knives to cut his own head off. The remainder of the episode will involve the children trying to make Bob and Nancy understand their friend’s impending decapitation but Bob and Nancy, of course, understand none of this, so the children take matters into their own hands and take off down the street toward their friend’s house with Nancy and Bob chasing after them shouting, “Is it a cat you want?” or “Oh my, Honey, the street lights!” and the dog too, yapping, and the credits will fly until next season.

The advertisers will come in droves. The audience’ll be on the floor.

One day the earth cracked in two. There was a great rending noise at the separation point followed by tremors. A reporter was reporting on a crime when he looked down and said, “What the hell? Look at that crack. Was that there before? Get the camera on that.”

But as people can only see a few miles in any direction, most considered the crack a local phenomenon. The band at the high school lined up at the crack in the field. The band teacher said, “Don’t get too close. We don’t know how deep it goes.” One of the trumpet players blew a note into the crack and everyone listened to the echo.

Climbers came to the crack in a mountain and leapt across and continued on their way. In the suburbs a family watched as all the water in the pool disappeared in a great silver swish along with the youngest one’s rubber duck. “God, I’m glad none of you kids were in that,” the mother said, amazed.

Cruz dragged his girl friend Maricela from bed. “Come on. Look at this crack.”

She said, sleepily, “Not now, Cruz. Maybe tonight.”

“No,” he said. “The one outside.” On the porch, she accepted a cup of coffee and observed the crack in the yard, a three foot wide fissure. The dog kept leaping across it and barking. They left the porch and followed the crack in Cruz’s car and parked at a higher point on the road outside of town.

“Look at it, Cruz. It cuts across the floor of the desert,” Maricela said.

“It reaches to the edge of the earth,” Cruz said. “Or maybe it does. Look at the other side of the crack, the bushes, the hills. They look like they’re moving farther away from us. My god.”

Just then, Cruz’ cell phone went off. “There’s a crack? Yes, Mama. How big is it? The cottonwood’s fallen into the river? Ay,” Cruz said. “Te llamaré pronto. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Your mother has a crack? Why didn’t you tell her about this one?”

“I didn’t want to scare her,” Cruz said.

Maricela phone rang. “Hola,” she sad. “There’s a big crack in your yard? Shaking? Like an earth quake? Yes, Papa. Well, how big is it? Your car? Is she okay? No, I don’t know. Maybe Cruz and I can come down soon. Sure. Yes, I love you too.”

Maricela pocketed the phone. “Everyone has a crack,” she said. “Your mother and my father. He said he almost had a heart attack because my aunt had just gotten out of the car and then, boom, the car fell into the crack. He says it’s that big.”

Cruz said, “It’s either everyone we know has a crack and there are many cracks or this is the same crack, which would be even more amazing. Look how far it goes and it’s getting wider. Look at the dunes. They’re drawing away from us.” Cruz kneeled and touched the ground delicately with his fingers as if feeling for movement deep inside the earth. “But what makes this odd,” he told Maricela, “–if this is the same crack, then the crack has somehow traced a vector that links us with those we love, a strange connector.”

“Call Edwardo. Ask him,” Maricela said.

Cruz called his friend Edwardo. “He’s not answering. You, you call Henry and Maria.”

Maricela called Henry and Maria. “No answer,” she said. “Call, Jaime or Hector.”

“Jaime, Jaime. Is there a crack in your yard? There’s a crack? The whole other side of the block? Fires? The lake is spilling in? All of it? They’re dead? Oy, I’ll call you back.”

Maricela had her face in her hands.

“It’s confirmed then,” Cruz said, walking to the edge of the shoulder. “This is the same crack and it’s everywhere. It’s everyone’s crack. I’ll bet that if I call James in London and he calls Susan in Tokyo, they’ll all tell the same story. A crack has opened in the earth but somehow, impossibly so, it’s appeared for everyone. It’s swallowing lakes. At this moment, the oceans are disappearing, draining into this impossible crack. The coast lines will dry up and the mountains will crumble and soon the earth will divide down the center and who knows what will happen after that.”

“I don’t know,” Maricela said. “But it’s growing wider and I feel a tremor under my feet.”

A moment of warm, unique silence passed. Maricela said, “Look: birds. Cruz, look at all the birds coming. All kinds. I’ve never seen so many birds.”

My father was leaving, he said, for the last time. He had his zeppelin ready, the great bulk of its rigid, air-filled canvas swaying above the house and the field, the loose ends of its creaking, mooring ropes drifting through the wheat like corded anacondas.

“Why?” I said, weeping.

“I have things to see on the other side of the world,” he said.

“Take me with you,” I said as he patted my head, affectionately.

“You have school and a life to lead, a whole life ahead of you to lead.”

His lover, my mother, cried in the house. She was preparing his last meal at home, our last meal with him. Everything in me felt empty, like the air above a landlocked sea. From inside the house you could hear of the wind breaking against the massive ship. Outside, great flocks of birds settled on the engines and fans.

“When I untie, Old Jenny will virtually shoot into the sky until atmosphere, gravity, and the engines slow it to cruising speed,” my father said. “And once airborne, there’s no getting her down till the time comes.”

After dinner, he said goodbye. “Sleep late. I’m off early. I’ll always love you.”

“Take me with you,” I said. “It’s school enough for a life time.”

“Your whole life is ahead of you,” he said.

Early morning came blue and cold and still, the moon a quiet gray ball in the sky. I climbed to the peak of the roof. In the round cabin windows, which my father’d reached by a one hundred or more foot flexible ladder, I saw orange lights. The engines roared to life, the propellers spinning. The lanyards released with a sound like steam. One of the ropes came near and I leapt for it.

As my father had said, the ship rose quickly. A sharp pain exploded at the base of my spine with a sudden tug on my arms. Beneath my hanging feet, I saw our house turn into a match box, a typewritten L. Soon, I wouldn’t be able to breathe. My arms would fail. I wondered if my father would know or if he knew. I started to climb, the great airship catching the light of the sun.

(Inspired by the stories in Flight, edited by Kazu Kibuishi)

It’s morning and a crowd of people is in the street. I have a conflict: I work for the state and the state has claimed these crowds, these people, illegal, and I work for the state and must enforce its declarations. But I’m also a human being and these people in the streets are human beings and they are shouting, “Freedom. Freedom. Freedom.”

I carry a shield, a baton. I work for the state who has declared these people illegal. There in the crowd is my brother and my sister. My neighbor’s brother and sister are nearby. But at my back is the state in which we all live, which has provided me work, education, and safety from our powerful enemies. The state claims that these crowds are bringers of chaos, and chaos is the enemy’s sword. Order, according to the state, is more important than any one life or twenty lives of even maybe a thousand. Order is the mother of the future. Order is the father of the past. I hold order in my baton. The state and order are at my back.

But what about my brother and my sister and my neighbor’s brother and sister who stand before me? What about them? Do they hate order? Do they hate the state? Do they want chaos or just another kind of order, another kind of mother and father, who speak and act differently? We ate last night without speaking. They know I work for the state. They understand I am a human being. They don;t know what I think of them. My sister would not look at me.

I have a baton, a shield, and I hear orders. My leader says these are the enemy. My brother and mister are agents of chaos. I and my baton will teach them the truth. The sun is strong and the voices of my brother and sister come at me. They don’t sound like they did when we played as children.

The state shoves at my back and my brother and sister call to me. I want to live. I want the state to live. I want my brother and my sister to live. I want them to look at me when we eat. I want to eat and laugh with them.

I hear orders coming from behind. My brother and my sister and the crowds are singing now in the street. We approach each other, one side armed, the other holding signs. We are singing the same song, the police and the crowd. It’s a beautiful song. We all used to sing it in school.

Morning-time, the children planted flowers in the desert, long rows of flowers under clay cliffs and a wide blue sky that reminded some of the older children of oceans.

But they had trouble finding water. They had to walk miles to a river with polished stones at the bottom, round as drowned heads. They carried water back to their gardens in buckets. One of the children had to stay behind because he grew tired and could walk no further, and he was very small.

The children stored the water in barrels, and they watered their flowers in the morning as the sun rose and when the wind passed through the little houses and whispered.

At night the coyotes prowled. The children locked their doors and listened. They heard snuffs at the windows and thresholds. They heard paw steps. Scarecrow shapes danced across the moonlight on the floors.

Mornings later, they found that the flowers had bloomed, fluffy reds, yellows smoking with bees, purples slapping at butterflies the size of paper planes. The children praised the water they’d drawn from such long distances. They wept their sacrifice. Some of the children even thanked the coyotes because the prints they made in the sand looked like letters.

“Do you think they’ll ever come home?” asked a girl, as the children admired the flowers.

“Maybe they’ll see them and come home,” said another girl.

“I miss them,” the girl said. “Maybe they’ll be here in the morning.”

The three thieves considered their next move.

“We lost Jimmy in the department store job, Bobby on the bank job,” said the Leader, who stared at a 7-11 across the street.

“And there’re only three of us left,” said the Second in Command.

Which left the Third in Command to say: “Well, which one of us will go next do you think?”

“If it’s me,” the Leader said, “you won’t have a Leader.”

“Or, if it’s you then I’ll become the leader,” said the Second in Command.

“And then I’ll be next in line,” said the Third Thief.

“Jimmy knew all about bombs,” said the Leader. “Now we have no one who knows about bombs.”

The Second Thief said, “And Bobby knew all about safes. Now we have no one who knows about safes.”

“That’s not good,” said the Third Thief. “I don’t know anything about bombs or safes.”

“And what do you know about?” said the Leader, but not really in an interested way.

“Guns,” said the Third Thief. “I can shoot a gun. Hell, you know that.”

“So can I,” said the Second Thief, as if everyone could or should know how.

“Well,” said the Third Thief, “if we lose you in the next job at least there’ll be someone in this crew who can shoot.”

“If I didn’t know no better, I’d think you were plotting against me,” said the Second in Command. “You been plotting against me forever.”

“I’m not plotting against you,” said the Third Thief. “I just want to know if they’ll take you down next. I need to prepare. It could happen. It could be me. Anything could happen.”

“I think you are. You want to be me, who’s Second in Command. You want me out of this outfit. Maybe on the next job, you’ll lock me out or push me into the line of fire or forget to give me the signal.”

“What signal?” said the Third Thief.

“You know, the signal.” The Second Thief shook his fist and made a few other motions.

“Oh that signal,” the Third Thief said.

“Quit it,” said the Leader, who was watching the 7-11, the people entering, people pumping gas, how every movement had a part to play.

“He started it,” said the Second in Command, “thinking he’s the only one who knows how to shoot a gun.”

“I don’t care who started it,” said the Leader. “Now, should we do something big or small? A 7-11, a bank, do some houses?”

“Houses,” said the Third in Command. “We should do houses.”

“Bank,” said the Second in Command. “We should do a bank.”

“I’m thirsty,” the Leader said.

“Well, if we do houses we can get something to drink there,” said the Third in Command.

“Like what?” the Second in Command asked.

“Water maybe. A coke. Liquor. Whatever they have in the refrigerator,” the Third in Command said. He scratched himself under his chin. “It’s hot in here.”

“Open a window,” the Leader said. “If we do houses we’ll need to find the houses that we want to do. And shooting isn’t going to come in all that handy if we do do houses. We don’t want anybody dying.”

“Neither would bombs come in all that handy,” said the Second in Command “But without Bobby, we won’t be able to get at the insides of the safes,” the Second in Command added, appearing to change his mind.

“I’m thinking 7-11s,” the Leader said. “Then you all could shoot if it came to pass that we needed shooting done just in case. Like if the cops showed up or the cashier didn’t do what I said. It could get tense. 7-11s and houses are different. There are different rules.”

“Like when we did those convenience stores in Reno,” the Third Thief said. “When we met Bobby and you shot that guy behind the counter and his dog.”

“I didn’t mean to shoot him,” said the Second in Command.

“But you shot him just the same,” said the Third in Command. “Boom, right in the face. Remember how loud it was, like an explosion, and all the smoke. The guy just dropped behind the counter. It happened so fast. I didn’t know you’d shot the guy till after it had happened.”

“Well how else would you have known it?” the Leader said.

The Third in Command said, “It was just that I wasn’t expecting it. So it was only after it happened that I expected it.”

“I didn’t mean to shoot him,” the Second in Command said. “But I could tell he was going for the alarm. He was going for the alarm. I had to shoot him and his dog that wouldn’t stop yapping even after we opened that package of bacon.”

“All the smoke,” said the Third in Command. “It was a lot of smoke. And we only got a few twenties out of the thing. All that trouble for a few twenties.”

The Second Thief said, “If the dog had just eaten the bacon.”

The Leader was looking out his window at the 7-11. He tapped his fingers on the wheel. “Maybe we should do houses. We can’t do a bank because we lost Bobby. And we have no one to cook up distractions and take out walls. You all should maybe learn about safes and bombs.”

“So,” said the Third in Command, “which one of us do you think’ll be next? We lost Bobby and we lost Jimmy. Who do you think’s next.”

“I’m thirsty, too,” said the Second in Command. “I’ve been thirsty for freakin ever.”

Once upon a time, in a land far away, wise men came to a king and said, “For our relief from famine, disease, and rampant job loss, a child must be birthed in the Pool of the Moon tomorrow and then promptly killed.”

“And where shall we find such a sacrifice?” the King asked.

“The Queen is with child, your excellency. She’s scheduled for birth tomorrow. Remember the famine, the disease, and all the unemployed.”

“I decree it so, though it saddens me,” the King said.

The wise men said, “Such a birth will bring the kingdom good luck. The child must be killed and the blood must turn the face of the moon red.”

“I get it,” said the King. “Inform the Queen.”

The Queen, who had spies everywhere, fooled the wise men and her husband by having birth induced in the morning. She paid a mysterious traveller to rush the child from the kingdom, wrapped in a colorful serape, and to safety.

“Do you have it?” she asked a maid, once the child was gone.

“Yes,” her maid said, bringing a piglet.

The Queen hid the piglet under her clothes, went into the water covered in a black cloth, as the ritual required, and pretended to give birth under water, and when her screams grew loudest, she raised a knife and stabbed the piglet underwater, who had already drowned. The King and the wise men saw the moon turn pink and were satisfied, murmured the proper prayers, and departed the Pool of the Moon, proclaiming an end to the kingdom’s sorrows.

The mysterious traveller rode all day and all night, indeed for all of several weeks, and entered a neighboring kingdom, which was known as the Enemy Kingdom, and gave the child to that kingdom’s Queen, who had no children.

“This is my enemy’s child. How could we raise such a beast,” the Enemy King said.

The Enemy Queen, who loved the child, told the King, “Think of the revenge. Years to come this child will kill his father, your enemy. To make things even better, he might even marry his mother, and have sex with her that they will both enjoy, thus making knowledge of such sex a bitter pill indeed.”

“As always, you are a genius,” said the Enemy King.

But the Enemy Queen could not imagine her son having sex with his real mother as she saw, as he grew into a man, a boy whose face meditated over the flowers, a boy more given to Jazz music than incest and fratricide.

On his sixteenth birthday, the Enemy Queen told her son that he must flee the kingdom with his Quartet.

“But mother,” he said. “I have gigs in town.”

“My son, you must depart, and flee your father, who will soon send you to the Enemy Kingdom to make war with the King there and murder him.”

“Then we must make peace with our enemy,” the Son said. “It’s simple.”

“Peace is an unknown concept to us,” the Queen said.

The King, who had his spies everywhere, learned of his Son’s plans for peace. “Then he shall be killed, the traitor, if that’s his intent.”

Early morning, the Queen said, “Did you bring it?”

“Yes,” the Son said, “A goat for slaughter. Do you think this will work, mother?”

“Blood is blood,” the Queen said, “and these Kings, they’re never very bight.”

“Where will I go?” the Son asked.

“Anywhere but here,” the Queen said.

Just as the King and the guards burst into the Son’s room to murder him, the Queen screamed, swung her sword, sliced through a body covered by a white sheet, and kicked her son out the big window and into a rushing river below.

“I’ve murdered our Son for his treacherous thoughts,” she said, her arm sleeved in blood. “His heart was too full of peace.”

“Your deeds will be sung for years to come,” the King said. “While my means of revenge have gone into the river, at least we know that the Enemy King’s son is no more.”

The son was guided into the kingdom of the enemy by a mysterious traveller. This traveller told the son, “You must hide in the Enemy Kingdom, take on a new identity, and never reveal it.”

The Son with his Quartet found an apartment and lay low. The wind blew hot and the streets were covered in dust. They walked the city dressed as merchants. The Son, growing bored, asked at a local tavern if they could entertain the night customers.

“How will you entertain them? This is a rowdy bunch, and you, you are so young and small.”

The Son, now known as the Band Leader, called his crew together and they played a short song by building a rhythm on dirty glasses, beer kegs, and utensils. The tavern keeper said, “This is amazing. You shall play tonight and we shall see what comes to pass.”

“Huzzah,” said the drummer.

“What he said,” said the Son. “We are but poor players and we shall serve you, Tavern Keeper.”

The first night, the crowd settled into the music after grumbling and then refused to leave the tavern, they so loved this new sound. “What is this music?” they wanted to know. “It refuses to leave our ears. It’s like birds, stones, and water all wrapped into one sound. It reminds us of love, disaster, and the fact that we don’t have jobs and our children have disease.”

Soon word spread throughout the Kingdom and to the ears of the King and Queen, who ruled without children, the Queen refusing the King’s advances as she feared his wise men.

“Bring the musicians,” the King said. “I would have a royal concert. My people have come awake. And new markets have been created. What are these music machines, these turn tables? What are these iPods, laser disks, these warehouses for storing goods, and inventions that have cured disease. My people are working, inventing, and spreading their ideas throughout the world, even into the Enemy Kingdom.”

“They bring immorality,” the wise men said. “Lust for music is the same as lust for the unwed and these inventions are the inventions of demons.”

“Bull shit,” said the King. “Bring the players.”

The Quartet was brought. The Band Leader’s players huddled about their equipment. The Son whispered, “Play like you’ve never played before.”

And they did. The King and the Queen and even the Wise men shook in their chairs and followed the beat with their chins. The King and the Queen danced, and after the performance, the King declared the band leader his son and the other members of the band his new Son’s brothers.

“You,” said the King, “shall inherit this land, Band Leader, for I have no one else to provision it to.”

“Yes,” the Queen said. “I shall love you as only a mother can.”

“I will love you like a father and you like a mother,” said the Band Leader.

“And now, guards,” said the King, “inform the wise men that they come to the Pool of the Moon tomorrow, for we have much to discuss with them.”

Cruz loved bean dip. Bean dip and fritos. He usually bought one container of bean dip and ate it with disciplined slowness. He’d once rushed through the bean dip and, after a light lunch, filled his plate with corn chips and encountered just two substantial remaining scoops. He’d had to put most of the chips back. The chips made depressing clatter sounds as they fell back into the bag.

Cruz decided one day to purchase two containers of bean dip. This, he figured, would free him up to eat better helpings of bean dip on his chips on a more regular basis and without having to worry about running out at an inappropriate time.

“I bought two cans of bean dip this time,” he told his girl friend, Maricela. “This way I don’t have to worry about running out at a time when I really want it.”

“Okay,” Maricela said, “but you may find that this is a good way to generate complication in the ongoing story of your life, Cruz, which some writer may express in small chunks.”

“Nonsense,” Cruz said. “This’ll solve all my problems, at least in regards to bean dip.”

Cruz opened the first can of bean dip and loaded up his corn chips with big tasty helpings. He didn’t even worry about keeping the inside walls of the can clean, curling the smooth paste onto the chip by curving it against the edge. It pleased him that he could eat half the can and not have to worry about running out.

“This is heaven,” Cruz said. “Why didn’t I think of this before.”

Marcela just shrugged and dipped her chip into the bean dip.

“Have more,” Cruz offered. “Remember there’s another can.”

But when Cruz opened the other can after a ham sandwich, he found that the original problem appeared again, like the repetition of shapes in two facing mirrors.

“This is amazing,” Cruz told Marcela. “You were right. This is indeed a complicating element in Cruz’ story, albeit trivial, but perhaps relevant to other areas of life which may bear further investigation. We killed that first can of bean dip as if it had been free. But now that I have the second can opened, it’s just like having purchased one can in the first place. I’m just going to run out again if I don’t ration each helping.”

“That’s what I tried to tell you before,” Marcela said, “but you wouldn’t listen.”

“That’s another issue altogether,” Cruz said. “Regardless, I must pursue this phenomenon. Next time I’m at the store, I’ll purchase three cans of bean dip, perhaps four. This should solve all my problems.”

“At least as they regard bean dip,” Maricela said.

“Of course. This has nothing to do my other problems.”

Marcela said, “But you already know what’s going to happen, Cruz. Why make yourself crazy? Why make me crazy?”

“Making myself or you crazy is another issue altogether,” Cruz told Maricela. “Yet another conflict in the story of Cruz’s life.”

“And mine,” Maricela said.