Barbara Brien

“Can I get your cell phone number so we can text like normal antisocial human beings, since we are both too fucked up to have a conversation?”
― J.P. Barnaby, Aaron

“The problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem”
― Captain Jack Sparrow

“Need a hand?”

I peeked at the figure on the horse’s back through cracks in my fingers. My eyes slowly adjusted to the light emanating from the horse, and the figure came into focus. It was Barack Obama, clad in a white toga.

He pulled me to my feet.

“Thanks,” I said. “You wouldn’t believe the dream I’ve had.”

“Try me.”

“You came to me one night, and said my friend had been hit by a train…and…is that a unicorn? I asked, squinting at the curled horn sprouting up between the horse’s ears.

“I call her Little Beast.”

I ran my fingers through the unicorn’s silken hair, which left rainbow glitter on my hand. The headache that had plagued me off and on all weekend was gone. There was no pain in my knee, or anywhere else in my body. “Is this heaven?”

“No,” Barack said. “It’s Iowa.”

And then suddenly we weren’t in the cemetery anymore. We were on a baseball diamond at the edge of a cornfield.”
― Andrew Shaffer, Hope Never Dies

“...best intentions notwithstanding, no one can control how the media communicates a story and what the public eventually understands.”
― Alexandra Zapruder, Twenty-Six Seconds: A Personal History of the Zapruder Film