AB Intra

Ihave a T-shirt that says, “Guns don’t kill people, stories do.” It was given to me by the students in the first-year seminar class I was the peer advisor for in college. — Hohle

The death of Gabriel West is a mystery. Gabriel West is a mystery, and mysteries are my weakness. They beckon. They lure. Solve me. — LOUIS

T

he mermaids were really good. Some of them had studied water ballet at the Y. They also had a good sense of humor. Like how one day I walked in and one of them had a sign that said: Sorry, out of donuts. I about lost it.
— LEIGH

He remembered that a Manitou’s spirit could be in a person but also in a tree or a rock, or a boat, for that matter. He knew taht if he said that the boats had spirits in them, Kevin would think he was crazy and trying to be mystical, so he didn’t say anything about that. — ZEPEDA

A

n older BDF soldier was often at the roadblock when I went by, a big, jovial man. Once he became familiar with my routine, he used to laugh out loud at the skinny, long-haired young lakoa and his stop-watch routine. “What,” he would demand, “are you saving time?” — SMITH

D

octors, nurses, and medical researchers take blood samples and write notes in charts, but their findings are all the same; the children are perfectly healthy except for the fact that they are starving to death. — SHARON

E

ventually, the protests and the arguments died down and she told herself engaging online had all been useless. People like that would never change. At this point, she only kept her Nextdoor account so she could send links from the free section to her Buy Nothing mom group. — CANFIELD

T

he Nobel Institute keeps secret, for a fixed number of years, the identities of those who were nominated but did not win the Peace Prize. It is a number of years deemed, it seems, a trusty proxy for obsolescence. — CHOUNDAS

A

bout two years ago I began receiving a series of strange, typed letters. They were unsigned, and without any return address. They were postmarked from all different cities in western Europe. They consisted mainly of poems — poems about philosophers. At the time I had no idea what to make of them. — GLAGE

B

efore we’d left, I’d hastily filled the final page and the pink page attached to the back cover of my Strawberry Shortcake journal in an atypical, hyperbolic: What is happening I HATE my life and I HATE everybody!!! Please God if you exist help me I’m sooo confused!!!  — PATTERSON

N

ot not a couple, also not not like sisters in Jane Austen: months ago, in the rainy season, we chased a neighborhood Hollywood heir, of good parentage and pleasing countenance, up Moon Canyon, asking for shelter. That was for Kathleen. — SCHULTZ

S

till, whether they were pole vaulters, speed skaters, or college football players, there was no way to prepare for the fantastical trials awaiting them on the show. Certainly none of them had ever flown on the back of a squawking pterodactyl or kayaked through a serpent-infested swamp. And few had ever shot arrows at a cyclops. — sPIEGEL

S

ome guy’s bought a jet engine at auction for five thousand dollars and hooked it up to a portable toilet which now goes upwards of fifty-four miles an hour. Why, I don’t know. I don’t have time to read the whole article before the barber’s throwing his barber’s sheet on and telling me to lift my legs so he can sweep. — GUISTA