Poor Johnny Depp by Sam Kistler

Because death is a conclusion, I killed Johnny Depp in my dream last night. He kept demanding more time, so he had to go.

The George Bush types in my brain laid wait in ambush, then overpowered Johnny while he was putting a pirate’s bandana on his head. There were three of them. They took Johnny to my childhood home where they bound him and removed his bandana. Next, they took turns donning the bandana and dancing around the living room taunting, mocking Johnny.

“Oh hey, look at me, I’m Johnny Depp. I’m an artist, I’m sooo coool.” Johnny mostly just absorbed the abuse—his only reply a disinterested look in the eyes.

The lack of emotion bristled the George Bush types, so they began torturing Johnny Depp with kitchen implements. Johnny remained cool, which only further infuriated them. Finally, one of them knocked him out with a pink marble rolling pin to the backside of the temple. Johnny fell over. The George Bushs circled around me. One of them held out the bandana while the other two poked at me with a carving fork and the rolling pin. I took the bandana and strangled Johnny. "I am the art," said Johnny as he died.

They chopped Johnny into pieces with an assortment of Ginsu knives taken from a drawer in the kitchen, big knives for the big parts, small knives for the small parts. They stuffed him into the fireplace, and hundred dollar bills were used to light the fire. Once the fire was roaring a bright orange and red, the Bushs resumed taking turns dancing around the living room with the bandana on: “I’m sooo coool, I’m Johnny Depp.”

After a while they began to fight over the bandana. The head George Bush, there were five of them now, demanded order: “Stop that, you idiots. Give me that goddamn bandana before I slam a WMD up your ass.”

The George Bush in charge then tied the bandana to his head and donned an eye patch he had extracted from his pocket. He danced and swashbuckled in front of the fire while the lesser George Bushs crouched on their knees and sulked. They stared in a hypnotic drool at the dancing fire-blades created at the expense of Johnny Depp.

When the fire was out and all that remained was smoldering ashes, the greatest George Bush made the least George Bush scrub the inside of the fireplace with a chimney sweep’s brush. He then ordered a pre-emptive air strike on my childhood home.

I woke the next morning feeling like my head had been cleaned out with a flame thrower. It's a new day, I thought to myself. Johnny Depp could demand no more time and the right side of my brain was sufficiently cauterized. A new day, indeed. I went to my job at the NASCAR memorabilia store with a Mormon smile on my face.

Sam Kistler has not been taking psychoactive drugs. He clearly doesn't need them.

21 Across: Oedipus to Laius, Nine Letters by Justin Souther

I've been doing crosswords my entire life. Or at least that's how it feels. I actually started at the age of four. It's my one true passion in life. Every single crossword, every one in the intervening thirty-two years, has been done in pen. Pencil is simply not acceptable. My father taught me that. "Only the ignorant and the insecure use pencil," he would tell me. "Real men use pen. Real men make the tough decisions, the decisions no else are willing to make, and they stick with those decisions, for good or ill. No son of mine is going to use pencil." He told me this a lot.

31 across: Curse of Frankenstein studio, six letters.

He's dead now, my father. He's actually lying here in front of me, on the kitchen floor. There's blood seeping from his head, and it's forming a puddle on the linoleum. That is sort of my fault. I guess that's the kind of thing that happens when you hit a man in the head with a hammer.

To be completely honest, I am a bit relieved. If I had done him in the living room, who knows what the clean-up would have been like. I've never had to get blood out of carpet before, but I assume it isn't easy. I dropped a Salisbury steak on the floor in there one time, and it took me hours to get that stain out. Eventually, I had to rent a steamer from the supermarket. But blood? Replacing the carpet might have been my only option. But here in the kitchen, a mop should do the trick. The hammer is in the sink, and I can just rinse that off later. First things first, however. I need to finish my crossword.

45 across: Attica, six letters.

My earliest memories are of doing crossword puzzles. I was doing crosswords before I even had a firm grasp of the English language, before I could even really spell, and those crosswords turned out to be indecipherable gibberish. But I still did them, and always in pen.

Jesus, I hope he doesn't leak out under the fridge. That'll be hell to clean up.

There are a lot of people, the foremost being my father, who would say that my skills have not improved. As well, I suppose in the sake of full disclosure, I should state that I have never actually completed a crossword.

13 down: Type AB, five letters.

There was that one time though. I'd have to say it was the best half-day of my life. After spending the first four hours of my day working on my crossword, I had finished it. I was ecstatic with a joy and pride I had never known before, or even since. I ran to my father, my work for the day completed, to show him what I had accomplished, to show him what his son was capable of. He was not pleased. Apparently it was full of mistakes. How was I supposed to know that Ike Turner didn't found CNN? It fit, sort of. Why was my father putting so much emphasis on the "correct" answers anyway? Shouldn't it have meant something that I finished? Shouldn't it? Needless to say, I received quite a berating that day.

I know now that my father was simply looking out for my best interests. It was always his intention to simply get me headed in the right direction. I remember one summer, I must have been about ten, at a friend's birthday party, I found out that I was an exceptional bowler. It was one of the few times that I had partaken in any type of physical activity, and I knew I was good. I had this extraordinary feeling of this hidden talent being unlocked from inside me. I felt like I had been born to bowl. It was a good feeling. I decided to tell my father about my new-found talent, and he simply gave me the "look." The disappointed look. He would cross his arms over his chest, slant his head forward, and look at me with those eyes. To me, at least, that look was a force of nature, like the hand of God. I got that look a lot. All he said to me, all he needed to say, was, "Why would you waste your time with such a silly, pointless activity?" And I knew he was right. Why waste your time cultivating your talents while you have a perfectly good hobby to work at?

10 down: Door from its frame, eight letters.

I was in a bookstore once, looking through paperback volumes of crossword puzzles. Standing next to me was some girl, looking through the same books I was. Out of nowhere she starts talking to me about how she likes to do crosswords at work. She tells me how when she cannot think of the answer, she asks her co-workers, or looks on the Internet. A "learning experience," she called it. I'm glad my father wasn't there, he might have decked her. Crosswords have never been about learning for either one of us. It has always been about using your own wits, your own cunning, your own skill, to complete a difficult task. Anything less would be cheating.

The crossword I am working on right now is pretty tough, if I may say so myself. It doesn't help that someone is banging on my front door. It's hard to concentrate with such a racket, it's simply absurd. I do not understand the way people act sometimes, with such inappropriate and raucous manners. It just seems rude. Whoever it is, they are at best third on my list of priorities right now, right behind my crossword and my father's corpse. They'll just have to wait or come back later, as far as I'm concerned.

55 across: Constables, Bobbies, Mounties, e.g., six letters.

Justin Souther lives in Weaverville and attends A-B Tech. He kind of decided he wanted to be a writer after watching "Secret Window," when he realized he would rather sit around on the couch in his bathrobe all day than work a normal job the rest of his life.

Writing Exercise of the Week

Ash and I think it might be fun to throw out the occasional writing exercise or prompt and see if any of you rise to the occasion.

Here's one I used when I was teaching English at the University of Georgia many years ago:

Get hold of a New Yorker magazine (alternately, you can go to www.newyorker.com). Read it, because it's chock-full of excellent writing. Then look at the cover. In 800 words or less, write a story about what's going on in the cover. You can be literal or figurative or use the cover as a jumping off point for something random. Have fun.