He’d left behind the idea of being handsome years before, although some women said he was once. Burdick stood tall against all odds, his parents both short, and boasted black hair around his crown with shirts, plaid to work, plaid to bed, and plaid to play. Broken up by a worn pair of levis that fit badly. Tonight he got the scissors and cut up another stilted letter he’d written to his mother. Just a short note to tell her of his shenanigans, his latest capers, but when it leaned toward an open rumination of his short feet in relation to his new shoes, too big, he decided the letter would do better cut up and pasted to the living room lampshade. He would papier-mâché it later. The scissors cut slowly and Burdick studied his every move to make sure it was not a snowflake when finished, just a simple creaming of the pulp, he thought.

“What cha havin’ tonight, Cowboy?” the waitress said, ready to take his food order.
“The usual,” he droned, eyes-crossed while cutting the letter, the remains flooded his elbows on the table.
This response was considered unacceptable by the waitress as if Burdick had said something that inferred she was psychic or something weird like that.
She lowered her hand and eyes and said, “Come again?”
She didn’t mean it. She turned and walked away. The waitress went behind the counter looked at Sam, the cook, standing behind the kitchen window, overlooking the restaurant, and threw down the order pad.
Sam said, “What’s he want?”
“I don’t know something to go with that mess of paper. I guess.”
“Charge him for that,” Sam replied. “Fuckin’ weirdo.”

After he was finished, Burdick quietly wished he hadn’t cut up the letter, it was a good one. It described other things of importance like his job and the weather. He also wrote, and rather poetically, of the potent steadiness he’d gained in his hands and shoulders. Burdick pieced together the letter for a while but gave up, pulled out another paper, and began again.

Earlier that day, Burdick held a dead dog’s head in his hand and stared at its lifelessness. It’s dark inside death – to understand that and stay alive, you have to fight that. Stay on the power side before they walk all over your part of the sidewalk. I know it sounds stupid, he thought as he stared at the furry head – it fell out of his hand like a waterfall. Normally Burdick took notes, checked boxes on forms and assessed conditions. Burdick wrote only one paragraph about the German Sheppard’s health, growth and final moments, he should have included something about his own distractions.

Tonight he sat alone with Tinker’s carcass and could not take his eyes off the loose, stillness of a useless entity of dry contents. It was dark out and he should hurry home, but all the one-last-looks turned into outright staring into Tinker’s dead eyes. Burdick wanted to try killing an animal himself, with his own hands. See it die from the last wag of its tail to the deadening in its eyes. The struggle would be a “validation” to life’s moisture pasted together to make a unique being. That was why he stared at the dog; he was trying to fathom its pasted workings.

“I’ll have a chicken salad sandwich with tomato, French fries and catsup. Hold the mayo and onion…” Burdick shouted to the waitress while intently writing. She stood not far away from him – behind the counter.
“How do you want the bread?”
“Toasted. Dark.”

She came in near closing time at The Mars Diner, roaming into the restaurant, past Burdick, sitting in a booth a few down from his. She was a wandering beauty with a strolling, lost appearance, like someone walking down the aisle of a huge grocery store looking for the one can of chili she likes, not realizing she was in the dog food aisle. The objective truth is – she is a beauty. If this truth does not live a life mired in a destructive reality. This means she got that beauty and destroyed it piece-by-piece. Alone, she read a paperback book by Stephen King while ignoring the waitress altogether. The book was good. Finally, she looked up from the black print, looked out the smudged window, at a much better story, one painted with color and quick story twists. It’s a radically beautiful night, she thought.

Down the street, there is a hospital with an excellent behavioral health unit where she had just spent the last seventy-two hours on a mandatory hold. Considered a danger to herself, she spent the whole time explaining to the doctors the absurdity of staying alive, calling life the ultimate obstruction to happiness. When they stopped writing notes and checking boxes, she gave them a paragraph worth of rationalization.

 “True, I tried to kill myself. Is it better I let someone else do it? Then you’ll find it less offensive? Would that make it alright?” The doctor held her hand for a moment, when he released it; it fell out of his hand like a waterfall.

Those were her words verbatim. They bounced around her head as she sat looking out the window, gauze bandages around her wrist, still new; in fact, the hospital’s patient identification bracelet was there too. No doubt, “DO NOT RESUSCITATE”, written in red letters, monopolized the bulletin board above her hospital bed, during her stay. She seemed to be strolling through life, through days in a daze, looking for the one person who would do her that homicidal favor. No one was answering the call.

The waitress – who never strolled – came to her table.
“What’ll ya have, sweetie?”
“I don’t know… what’s good here?”
“What is it tonight? What’s good here?”
“What’s your name?” the waitress asked.
“Laura.”
“Laura, see that man over there?”
Sam was looking back at them.
“Yes.”
“He’s gonna cook it for you. Think anything he makes could be good?”
“I see what you mean.” Laura thought for a moment. “Oat. Meal. Oatmeal,” finally came out.
“All that and she orders oatmeal. Hey, Sam,” the waitress shouted on her way to the counter, “oatmeal. I tell you Sam, its all freakin’ weirdoes in here tonight.”
“What’d I say?” Sam responded.

Laura was not weird and neither was Burdick. Here on Earth, they are known as creative non-fiction. They were good fictional characters taken from a bad, reality novel. Not characters that are forgotten by the writer mid-way through the book, or left on the cutting room floor by a director who wipes his hands on his pants afterwards, while whispering “Whew, glad that’s over,” when he’s finished. But, two lost wanderers roaming the stars of realities fringes. Two who happened to fall into a sudden black hole, a vortex, a blender that stirred them both until they were spit out as two whole human beings run amok on a planet they know nothing about. Nothing except helping decrepit carcasses of “Tinkers” raveled up in barbed wire. Dr. Morgan cut that dead dog loose one hair at a time and Burdick remembered helping pull the serrated body free. Laura, being well ahead of Burdick in her life’s lessons, had begun to try to get out – to go back to the stars.

When the waitress walked over to Burdick and asked, “what else she could get him,” his response set off a meteoric reaction better remembered around a grave by gossipy diggers.

This is where weirdoes collide.

“What else is there?” Burdick naively asked.
“What else is there? Oh my God! You weirdoes are out in full force tonight. Sam! Check ‘n see if it’s a full moon.”
“It’s a logical question,” Burdick responded.
His voice got louder as his spine got straighter.
“When I was a kid there was always rice pudding on the stove at night, ya got that back there? Or hot chocolate with marshmallows, or an after dinner aperitif, what about that?”
“Sam,” Burdick shouted, “got some wine and cheese?”
The waitress was staring a hole in his forehead as he spoke looking up at her large girth. Before she could speak Burdick said, “Where are the menus anyway? How do you expect me to order when I don’t know…this is the Mars Diner? It should be called the Mars has no Menus Diner.”
“What does he want?” Sam shouted trying to see over the bar, at the conversation.
“I don’t know, but spit in it whatever it is,” the waitress yelled back toward Sam, over her shoulder.
“Oh my God! I’m right here, I can hear you. Where am I? Hell?”
Just then, Laura stood up, wandering towards the ruckus.
“What do you want? This ain’t your business…sit down!” the waitress said.
“Hello. I’m Laura,” she said to Burdick. They shook hands.
“Oh God!” The waitress put the order pad, along with her hand, on her hip, “Leapin’ shit, bright ass meets big weirdo. I’m sure you’ll both have wonderful lives together, get married in the middle of Times Square with red go-go boots on.”
“We’ll both take that rice pudding now,” Laura said with a wispy quality to her sweet voice, “and could you sprinkle a little cinnamon on top of it?” Her hand mimicked her intent.

The waitress was probably right. They were the types to marry in an unconventional way, but Burdick liked her instantly when he saw the year-old scars around her neck from where she tried to hang herself, and the gauze around her wrists. He stood up to help her timid body sit in the booth.

“Can I help you?”
“Yes, I believe you can.”
“I believe I can, too.”

Later that night in Burdick’s apartment, they papier-mâchéd the letter against the once red lampshade together. It turned out pasty looking with a lumpy smoothness – better described as peaks and valleys. Once they began, Burdick regretted it because the paste covered the other papier-mâché he’d done with the last stilted letter he’d written to his dead mother.

The lamp lit-up nicely. The dull light hid the stains on the carpet and gave the room a “walking-on-the-moon” feeling. At the kitchen table, side-by-side, they smiled at each other. Laura never once noticing the absurdity of the situation, as she sat engulfed in the textures and the feeling of the goopy, homemade paste on her hands. Once the glue intermixed with the small remnants of red paint lining the lampshade, the paste took on a red hue. Laura sat in awe of it, squeezing it between her fingers, the sight – mesmerizing. Burdick sat watching her play, there was a reminiscent quality, a familiarity, in Laura’s loose laugh.

“Can I touch you here?” Burdick whispered as they sat. “Right here…” Burdick, pointed, looking directly at her neck where the scars were. He placed his hands around her small neck completely covering the scars with his outstretched hands. Burdick sat in awe of it, squeezing it between his fingers, the sight – mesmerizing.

“…is that okay?”
With a reminiscent quality, a familiarity, Laura whispered back, “Yes.”