The Lyre: Guest Post By Dominic Deep

I lie.
It helps me think.
And I think it's very important that you know I'm a lyre, or you would find me very confusing.  Although, you'll find me very confusing any way.  It's not my fault.  I was born that way.
I was born dead.

She's in front of me.  Walking like a penguin on stilts.  Only short.  It would be entertaining to watch if I were the type to be entertained.
I can only see the back of her head, her knitted hat, but I know her face is tilted up, looking into the sky.  I better catch up with her before she runs into a lamp post.  It wouldn't be the first time.
I take wider strides, till I'm by her side.  I stay close to the side walk edge, but stiffen, feeling her too close.  Always too close.  Never close enough.
"Good morning Domino!" Her raspy, but high and happy voice chimes.
"Morning Qym."
It's the same thing every morning as I go to school and walk Qym to work.  Morning Domino.  Morning Qym.  And no other sound in the early morning but her breathing and the soft squeaking and clicking of her metal legs.
Qym lost her legs five years ago, but that's not the important thing about her.
Here's something that may come as a surprise to you.  So I'm warning you in advance.  I also want you to pay close attention to what I'm about to tell you.  Your not going to understand.  But maybe you'll salve the mystery if you look very very close.
Qym is dead.
I'm talking to a dead girl.  She doesn't know she's dead, she's still stuck in the past.
I listen to her breathing.  The very faint, squeak  of her metal knee joints bending.  Click-click  of her bent, plastic feet.  Things I hear every morning and never pay attention to.  I say goodbye to every move she makes.
It throbs in my head like a clock.  Gone.  Gone.  Gone.  Gone.
Maybe living people really are just dead people.  Maybe everyone's a ghost.  Not just me.  They're all ending up like me in the end any way.
All ending up like Savy.
We're passing the grave yard on our left.  It's small and pathetic.  A wired gate surrounds the grassy garden of stones.
I can't make myself not glance through the gate at the little flat stone.  I can just barely see it.  It's the closet one to the gate, probably not important enough to get a place in the middle, or a stone taller then the tips of the grass.
I've memorized the lable.
Selvester E Burns  2016-2029  Rest In Peace
I wish I could have written Savy a better epitaph.  No one would let me though.  He would have liked it if I wrote his epitaph.  I guess Savy and I never really discussed the subject of death until two minutes before it came.
Here's another thing you need to know that you wont understand, and I don't understand it either.  So if you don't want to read any more after you read this, I understand.  If I had to read my own life as a book, I would have stopped reading.
Here's the thing.
Savy isn't dead.
It's wrong, I know.  It's been wrong from the beginning.  For one thing, I can't be dead.  It's obvious because you've just witnessed me walking and talking.  Qym also cannot be dead, for the same reason why I can't be dead.  And lastly, Savy can't be alive because...Well...He is dead.
I'm starting from the beginning.  I'm going to sum all this up in a few sentences.
My name is Domino.
I don't exist.
And that's how I broke reality.

Cat's, Whales, and Alligators

The following dialogue twas recorded from a true event.  More like, many true event's all compiled into one.

"So, Dr. Elemis, what's your favorite animal?"

"Cats."

"What?  You like cats?  What's so great about a cat?  Cat's are evil!  All they care about is sleeping and tarring you apart!  I once heard of a cat that almost murdered a child!  All cat's deserve to be burned in hell!"

"But that's what makes them so fantastic."

I normally don't like answering the 'what's your favorite animal question' because it makes me feel like a five year old.

So next up, an entire blog post on my favorite animals!

Weeeeee!!!!

Cats.

Perhaps they match my personality.  We have much in common I suppose.  (Small, hairy, stuck up, skittish, takes little matters too seriously, etc.)

"How could you like cats?  Cats are evil!"

Oh course they're evil!  That's what makes them so complete!  Imagine what Loki would be like if he weren't evil!  He would be bland, boring, and unreal.  But his evilness adds to his spunk, his cuteness, and his soul.

Thus if a cat were sweet and perfect, they would be a thousand times less wonderful.

"Dogs care about people.  Cat's don't care about people."

Yes, dogs can save your life, and cats normally can't.  But I haven't been in a lot of life threatening situations (Except that time Squimp and I were trying to be ninjas and we landed on our heads on the tile floor...)

...What was I talking about again?

Oh yes.

I haven't been in a lot of life threatening situations.  But I have been depressed.  There's not a lot you can do to comfort yourself when your depressed I've found out, and company is usually scarce.

I don't know what it is with cats, but they always know when I'm sad.  Maybe God whispers in their ears, "Go jump her lap.  She'll like that ." 

And they do.  It's so comforting.  Once I went through a rather scary time, and in the same moment my one dear orange kitty (Mulligan) ran away, never to return.  I've found out that cat's add much to the comforts of life.

A while later,  I was in the animal shelter, surrounded by cute fluffy kittens.  All with large eyes and little paws like tinny pom-poms. Mewing and cocking they're heads in casual, kitten manner.

But I could look passed this cuteness, because I was rather distracted by a different cat.

He was gray, small and weeny, but larger then a kitten.  He extended his little arms as far out the bars as they could go, toes separated, claws extended, and he screamed at me.  The room was filled with his pitiful mews like sirens. The little fluffy kitten below his cage gave me a sweet little mew, but the loud one over head reached down from the bars and smacked him in the face.

Hes perfect.

I scratched his soft gray face, and he purred like a lawn mower.

I melted.

Purring is my dope.

We named him Loki.
I once heard that cat people are the lonely, unsocial, single, geeks with no lives....
I wouldn't say I fit that description really...
But who cares any way??
There's a reason lonely, unsocial, single, geeks with no lives like cats!  Because cat's are medicine for loneliness!  That doesn't mean they'll cure you, but they help a great deal!

My next favorite animal:

Alligators.

I don't know why they're so special.  Maybe because I used to be scared of them...Which made me love them more...It's logic. You wouldn't understand.

I think it started with the book, 'An Alligator Ate My Brother" that I would always get at the library at Alabama when I was about 3.  Twas a thrilling book about an alligator what got into the house, and none of his family believed him when he said there was an alligator in the house.  Then the alligator ate his toys.  And his little brother.  So the kid jumped from his bed onto the alligator's back, causing the alligator the vomit back all his toys.  And his little brother.

I haven't found that book sense I was 3, but ah!  I can see those illustrations like it was yesterday!  The kid with his determined sneer, his knees tucked up for a canon ball, and the alligator with his eyes bulging out of his face and a confetti of toys exploding from his wide open jaws!
So any way, that sprung my love of alligators.
And it spread.
A boring movie would automatically become exciting as soon as an alligator appears!
I created Puddle the Alligator for a kids book I wrote.  My main character was Cricket Betel Bug (the little girl) and her pet was Puddle. (The alligator). And he was so cute and fat and loving and loyal and gray and melancholy, just what my dream pet alligator ought to be!

My next favorite animal:
Whales.
Whales!!!!
When I think fantastic and beautiful and aw striking, I think whales.
And you're thinking of the little chubby cartoon painting on your dentists wall.
Look at this.

It's.  Huge.
Looks at this:

It gives me chills.  Goosebumps.  Imagine sitting in your little boat, fishing, out on a the flat open ocean.  It's quiet.  The sea is black.  You can't see under it, only the sun reflecting off the waves.  But you're right on top of a huge, endless world of water.  Your on the roof of a world of creates you may not even know exist.
Then BOOM!
THOSE explode from the water!
Look back at that picture.
Feel small?
I like the feeling.  I like fantastic, scary things that makes your skin crawl, makes you feel like a little helpless morsel on a big ride.
I love all whales.  The largest ones are the best, but then you get these guys:

It's like an underwater panda!  Sure, they're dangerous, but they're also extremely cute.  

I live in the mountains, and have never really experienced a lot of ocean.  Maybe that's what sparks my interest of it, and the creatures in it so much.  It's mystical.  Alien.  Dangerous.  Beautiful.
What do you think of when you think God?
He's great and powerful and created the heavens and the earth and yata yata yata...
Sometimes when I think God, I think something wimpy like:

But I should think of the most fantastic, huge, magnificent thing I know that makes me feel small.  Like the ocean.  And whales.  And the universe.
I should have that same feeling when I think of God.

What's your favorite animal?