tired: replacing your head with a wasp’s nest and all your thoughts with the angry rustling of paper

wired: replacing your head with a bee’s hive and all your thoughts with the slow drip of honey

1) You can always tell if your child is destined to overthrow you. Honestly, most soothsayers make this call based on whether you act like a jerk when you ask about what forces threaten your kingdom. Always tip!

2) Playing music for a baby makes it smarter. Nope! Not with your musical taste, poseur.

3) The fae want to swap a mushroom baby for your child as soon after birth as possible. Actually, the fae are quite patient and have even replaced teenagers!

4) They only let experts write these articles for mothers. Actually, any idiot can just write anything.

1) That strange figure standing among the fruit trees, just there. Can’t you see it? When the lightning strikes, briefly?

4) The unknown fate of numbers 2 and 3.

5) The known fate of numbers 6 through 10.

11) Life’s fleeting nature. Every bird and bug, every enemy and friend, just ripples on water.

12) The taste of your own tongue. It curls back. What are you?

13) The crying sound the number 8 makes. It’s just looking for attention. QUIET DOWN, 8!

14) Lists from health/beauty magazines that make you think your life could be better if you just read one more list.

15) Capitalism.

1) Find a young orphan vegetable. They’re pliant and learn fast. Teach it the art of camouflage. How to be still. To mask its scent. To distract. If you see it, strike it, until it learns you will only love it when you think it’s gone. Its desire to please the only source of love in its life will drive it to perfection.

2) Shape a vegetable into a spoon or fork! Use it to shovel melted cheese into your face. More! MORE!

3) In the pale moonlight, cut a bouquet of Maiden’s Wort. Cure it in otter bile. Consult TANFORTH’S FOLLY vol. 3 pp. 18 and cast INVISIBILITY FOR BEETS.

4) Wrap ’em in bacon.

Either in Story Mode, or with a party of friends, take a journey of discovery into a high definition world never before experienced on your console or computer!

Select your character and perks, then navigate a family funeral, marking relatives for sympathetic comments, nodding knowingly at anecdotes and racking up points by handing facial tissues the bereaved.

Metacritic: 82
Redleaf Funeral Home: “It’s… accurate.”

COMING FALL 2018: GRAVESIDE SERVICE [DLC $14.99 (preorder discount)]

1) Their offering to the bog witch on their friend’s behalf was insufficient. Even now, their friend’s mouth is filling with mud,  a crone’s cracked heel pressing down on their back, pushing them down into the muck and their offering— maybe a $20 iTunes card?— chucked dismissively under the roots of a mangrove. Bog witches prefer physical media!

2) Our friend’s phone is possessed. An 18th century dandy has entered the in error, distracted by its bauble-esque qualities. An 18th century dandy knows nothing of texting!

3) Did we text the wrong person?

4) Our friends don’t exist when they’re not physically present. This entire world is an illusion. Or maybe their friend’s phone died?

Pity the poor Australopithecus ghost, stuck in a loop of regret and unfinished business, walking the paths it walked in life which are now sadly dozens of feet under new sediment, a haunting witnessed only by tunneling creatures with dim eyesight and no sense of the wonder.

—

You may dislike the President, but I admire his form. Not many people know this, but he’s made from a single sheet of flesh, carefully folded and crafted by a talented Flesh Origamist. If you were to unfold him, he would stretch halfway to the moon, which would be a good start, especially if it’s the further half away from us.

—

A million angel chorus, singing full-throated for aeons, but if you could record it, and could play it back at a faster speed, it would resolve itself: The words “I’m soooo booooored” repeated in slow variations, lazy chords weaving in and out, over an over eternally.

—

Nobody talks about how Santa, a powerful thoughtform, manages to take over the minds of millions of parents to make them do his bidding annually. They sign To/From cards on his behalf. They purchase toys with their own money! Gladly!

Your garden variety psychic sensitive or card-guessing ESPer is no match for this monster from beyond the snows.

So we just let it happen, year after year. We celebrate this psychic parasitism. Only in these summer months, when he’s weakest, can we even post about it, disguising it as jest.

1) While you are still an idea, unformed, before you’re drawn to this material plane, influence one of your parents to be an octopus

2) Distribute 2-for-1 discount coupons to every hair on your legs. Thanks to financial incentives, your hair will keep doubling until you have a smooth pelt like an otter.

3) Replace your legs with mathematics. Run your hands along smooth sine curves and explain to the curious that your lower limbs are now leg-orithms.

4) Let two seals attempt to eat your legs, but ask them to stop at the hips.

1) Jerry the Dracula – Runs that nightclub where they got the red strobe lights and the blood showers go on at 3 a.m. out there on Route 4. Real nice.

2) Maybelle Dracula – Just a sweet lady, full up with stories. You’ll find her luring in folks with sweet tea on her white porch, friendly as you please, but them folks don’t come back.

3) Chuck the Double-Dracula – College boy, says the word for ’em all ain’t “Dracula” but “vampyr” so we call ‘im DOUBLE-Dracula. Heh. College boy. Nice, otherwise. Helps folks with their taxes and whatnot.

To all runner-up Draculas: better luck next year!