Rebecca McNutt

Directing a funeral isn__ about death at all. Funerals are for the living, not the dead.

There was nothing Mandy had wanted more than to give her full attention to the world of Personifications and ignore those who ignored her in society. She__ wanted to talk out loud to Alecto, to have conversations in front of other ordinary people. Unfortunately, to do that in front of ordinary people would only prove her insanity, and although Mandy was naïve at times, she wasn__ stupid.

All the whackjob psychologists out there will tell you that grief is a process. Some say it has five stages. Others say that grief should only last two years at the lost, otherwise it's "abnormal". Putting an expiration date of grief though is like putting out the flame on a burning candle. It might stop the candle from melting down and falling apart, but in the long run the candle goes solid, freezes in a catatonic state. Take away a person's grief and guaranteed they'll only be a frozen shell of a human being afterwards. Grief is only love, it's nothing to hide or send away with happy pills and mother's little helpers. Grief is a lifeline connecting two people who are in different realms together, and it's a sign of loyalty and hope.

I don__ like psychiatrists,_ Alecto told her. __ot because they don__ think I__ real, but because they have no idea what they__e doing.

Life is stress by definition.

Grief is NOT a mental illness or an emotional disorder. Anyone who tells you otherwise has never experienced it for themselves.

We__e losing society to apathy, to digital technology, the people who care about nobody else but themselves. They share every little detail of their stupid lives online as if the world even gives a damn_ digital technology is getting smarter and society is getting dumber,_ Mandy whispered in a voice filled with disbelief. __ociety is_ it__ slipping away.

Alecto isn't a person! He's just something that society made and then threw away, a memory that refuses to die.

Mark, trying his best to distance himself from the cruel and pathetic 21st century, hadn__ listened to the news reports, not even when the dark green jeeps and helicopters showed up in town, men dressed in identical uniforms, just like in school, always standing with stony faces, setting up shelters and warning signals and food storage boxes. And as the public service announcements and racist propaganda bloomed onto the screens in every classroom, Mark__ only observation was that the United States still had such a long way to go. When times were dire, they resorted to using inaccurate stereotypes and ignorance as a weapon, with an impressionable society always willing to believe without further question.

Mandy smiled cheerfully at an overweight kid in a gold sweater and pink skirt who was chasing her little brother around along the boardwalk. When she was that age, on sunny days she__ be out on the boardwalk with Jud and Wendy, buying rainbow sorbet from the ice cream shop and placing paper boats into the harbour. She felt like a ghost, drifting past the shell of her own childhood.

What are you doing?_ Alecto asked in surprise, stepping back. Laughing brightly, she dragged him towards the greenhouse, the shattered glass reflecting rainbows as brilliant as a million Kodak flashcubes, glittering as they were cascaded through the breeze. __ee, don__ be afraid of the glass, it can__ hurt us,_ Mandy laughed, spectacularly eccentric, her eyes reflecting the fallen glass.__ wasn__ afraid of the glass, but this isn__ a very secluded place that you just decided to vandalize,_ Alecto cautioned, smiling despite his words. Before Mandy could reply, she heard loud whispering in the air, behind the trees_ it sounded like a group of people, all whispering in unison_ __omebody__ out there,_ she exclaimed nervously.__eah, you__e right,_ Alecto replied. Suddenly a sharp new vibrancy seemed to fill his eyes and he smiled coldly, taking the tree branch from Mandy and rapidly smashing in all of Mrs. Matthias_ stained glass house windows with it. Blue, green, yellow, red, turquoise, purple and an array of other colors showered through the sky noisily, sounding like wind chimes and crashing waves. __hey__l go away,_ he told her, glancing up at the sky.__Alecto, do you like me?_ Mandy questioned, holding out her arms like a lopsided scarecrow as the glass fell through her dark red hair.__eah, sure,_ he answered.__ill you be my friend, then? A real friend, not just another person who feels sorry for me?_ Mandy asked.__Alright, Mandy Valems,_ Alecto agreed.

Life is so funny sometimes that you just have to laugh.

photographs are very interesting, and you can look into them a million times and still find a new meaning in them, something in the past that was caught in the film itself_

_Maybe I__l be watching super-8 home videos,_ Alecto told her, smiling bleakly. __ love my super-8 camera, it__ an Eastman Kodak one_ Kodak stopped manufacturing them, the world went digital and now Kodak has stopped making Kodachrome film and all kinds of traditional film products_ it__ sad._ __ell, uh_ well, have fun watching your home movies then,_ Mandy finished, but she didn__ have the slightest idea what he was talking about.

How promising today's generation is. They can whip out their cellular phones like sheep, instantly take a million digital photos of their cat and then just delete them. But I'd like to see these kids try to artfully use a traditional film camera or make a super 8 home movie. Traditional film takes integrity, nostalgia, effort, patience and imagination - things that the 21st century has very little of. Everything these days, even a superior medium like film photography with an extensively vivid history and an iconic meaning, is becoming disposable in this age.

Oh, I__ Chrissy Mackenzie, I__ from Vancouver but I came here to study environmental journalism,_ the girl exclaimed with way too much enthusiasm. __ou got any advice?___earch me,_ Mandy muttered, spooning another ice cube from the empty glass on the table in front of her. __ like pollution, I write in favor of it, and environmental journalism most often implies that it__ in favor of all that __o green_ hippie crap._ __h, well_._ Chrissy seemed taken aback, offended, and Mandy sighed a fourth time. __amn it, I__ really sorry,_ she apologized, smiling dismally at the aspiring writer. __t__ just been a really lousy day for me and I wasn__ really thinking. My advice? Find your own cause to represent, not one thrown out into society by a ton of environmentalist dopes. Find something new, something you think could be improved, and work from there._ Chrissy smiled with a look of total ecstasy as if the words of some nobody woman were important. Mandy momentarily noticed the groups of laughing, drunk, giggling people, all acting childish_ and for a moment she wished she could be them.

In her eyes was the reflection of everything that mattered: old diners with neon signs, vinyl records, celluloid film, drive-in movies, Pears soap, department stores, her brother__ old blue Camaro car and the smell of coal dust in the rainy sky of a summer lightning storm._And all the nice bright colors of the past that she thought were gone for good came flowing back into her life like a wave of nostalgia flooding over her, reds, yellows, blues and greens drenching her gray memories in psychedelic ribbons and glittering fireworks._She hoped that the world would always hold those miniscule yet beautiful, deep and mysterious traces of memory.

I don__ want anything else bad to happen,_ she whispered, her voice choked with tears. ____ so sick to death of bad things happening, of seeing bad things that happened in the past! And I__ guilty of so many things. I__ sorry that I killed Mrs. Matthias and wrecked her stupid greenhouse back in the Eighties and I__ sorry I left you here alone while I went around the world.___ wasn__ alone though, I knew you were doing what you wanted to do and that you were still alive, so I wasn__ really alone, I knew you were still there somewhere,_ Alecto told her. His damaged smile and downcast, sorrowful eyes were draped in the shadow of the night, saving Mandy the trouble of seeing.