The Laws of Average Page 16

  When You’re Dead You Can Do Whatever You Want

  Promise me the moon. No, seriously, go ahead. Okay now grab it. It’s smaller than you think. Hold it in your hand but don’t give it to me. Put it wherever you want, and it will stay there (I promise), but you can never give it to me. That’s what makes a promise a promise. Promise me you’ll keep this promise. Which is about keeping another promise. Now promise that you’ll never ever ever come back. This shouldn’t give you any trouble, not a single ounce of it. Where you are is a place where trouble is only a figment of someone else’s imagination. See why they call it Heaven?

  TREVOR DODGE is the author of a previous collection of short fiction, Everyone I Know Lives on Roads (Chiasmus 2006), and a novella, Yellow #10 (Eraserhead 2003). His stories have appeared in print and online journals such as Sleepingfish, Gargoyle, Notre Dame Review, Plazm, Golden Handcuffs Review, Hobart, Gobshite Quarterly, Natural Bridge, Nailed Magazine and Portland Review, among many others. He collaborated with Lance Olsen on the writing anti-textbook Architectures of Possibility: After Innovative Writing (Guide Dog 2012) and hosts the creative arts podcast Possible Architect. He is fiction editor of the literary journal Clackamas Literary Review, lives and teaches in Portland, OR, and can be found online at: www.trevordodge.com.