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You could marry him for real after this, just think of all the arguments you'd never have.

You've had dirty laundry on your floor for longer than this man has been alive and yet here he is, probably about to die.

Maybe you've solved a cosmic mistake, you were supposed to be him all along.

Because he is one of them.

Created to be destroyed, like a grass dog -- named and decorated and burned on the pyre.

Confidently superlative. In this case it seems fair.

They can carve it onto your shared headstone.

A shrike above the thorn.

The voice on the other end of the phone.

A star with no shrine.

Arthur Killingwire, for his poem Ode to a Worm on a Figleaf.

The description of a work of art as a literary device!

Inadequate, weak, morose!

Like a bird's nest after the snake ate its fill.

It's the vibration of the earth as a drill passes through your brain.

An invisible machine gun, ventilating him.

An offering, the boy trussed and gagged upon a bed of flowers.

There's your 'brief', operant.

Breathing gently on his chair, he could be a sleeping child, but for the wide-open, lightless eyes.

It reminds you of a cosmonaut's safety tether.

The film is monochrome and silent. The only soundtrack is the low hum of the projector as the celluloid rushes from its spool.

A promissory note the length of recorded time -- signed by every soul on the universal registry.

Nonsense words he's making up on the spot.

The thinking man's masturbation.

Suddenly sentimental -- the emotional quick change of a ravaged alcoholic.

Suddenly sentimental -- the emotional quick change of a ravaged alcoholic.

Like a sorcerer who's spilled all his magic on the floor.

Lapping the air like a giant child's tongue.

In some distant parts of the world, EMTERR is euphemistically called 'the Kindly Ones'. Using their true name directly is reserved for curses and insults.

An image, its negative, the image again.

The child found mutilated, stuffed into the plumbing of a hot tub.

In his mind's eye, a gigantic Lolita Calista-faced train hurtles toward him.

A woman you will never see gets you off.

The outline of a woman. More specifically, her left thigh.

Spoken with awe and reverence.

Does he mean Ultra Violeta... you could hardly describe her as 'mountainous'... maybe in talent terms...

A crumpled paper airplane of a man.

Neither of you know much about socks. But unlike him, you can improvise.

An absurd reality demands an absurd performance to match.

Scaly reliefs and cracked plates, like some diseased armour.

The way he intones the word 'Mother' suggests a primitive monotheist before an image of his graven god.

That's a lot of scepticism around 'reported' and 'disappeared'.

More intimate than a static image -- you create a new picture of her in your mind every day.

A decent imitation of Cengiz Balik's style of free verse, but they could have gone harder with the adverbs.

It's like you're entering the putrid lands of some dark fantasy.

She was his psychopomp. She carried him away from this world.

A lullaby of resignation.

668 skill checks - ZERO PARADES field manual - Page 6 of 14