Us interns here at But I digress thought we'd start a new feature. We're fielding questions about anything in life and getting answers from the man himself, BlackNapalm. Enjoy this first installment:

Dear BlackNapalm: There's this really good writer and everyday awesome guy here on Blogstream. Unfortunately he stops writing, sometimes for months at a time. Everyone always tells him how much they miss him. Any advice on how to get him writing again, consistently. Well, because he's so dreamy!
-- signed: Misty, Yuna and POH

Dear MYPoh: Have you tried hitting him upside his head? Seriously, he hears your love. You're reading this post, aren't you?

Dear BlackNapalm: Why do guys like big breasts? I mean, isn't there more to life than big breasts?
-- signed: flat chested in Minneapolis
Dear Flat: More to life than big breasts? BlackNapalm thinks not. If you got them, squeeze them. Actually, he was just thinking about doing that exact thing minutes ago with the woman he loves.

Do you have a question for BlackNapalm? Just post it here and he'll answer it.

Salvation, part 1
A short story by BlackNapalm
(With special thanks to Colo)



The top floor of the building contained an office suite that, ironically enough, was named Mind over Matter.
Inside the main door to the suites was a small vestibule that housed a desk and a small chair. On the desk was a telephone. A small red button was attached to the desk next to the telephone. Nothing else was on the desk; to say it was neatly arranged would be an understatement; no, meticulous perfection would be a better description, but even that seemed to fall short.
Behind the desk, a long hallway led to the back of the office suite. On each side of the hallway were six doors. The whole office suite was painted white and sparsely decorated.
Even the doors to the 12 rooms were white, and the whole suite spewed forth a virginal quality.
One wouldn’t know about the dastardly deeds that went on in those seemingly virginal rooms unless one experienced those dastardly deeds first hand. But then, those who experienced them usually didn’t see the outside world again.
They were either shipped out to long-term care facilities, where they would spend their days with drool leaking slowly from their mouths, body limp, and head pointed at a wall, eyes vacant or muted, barely breathing, more lifeless than anything; or to a morgue, where they ended up on a cold slab shoved into some drawer in the wall, forgotten forever to the rest of world.
John Roberts knew of the experiences in the rooms – he was a veteran of the cuts and slices, the prongs and devices, the whips and chains, the pains of the experiments. His body bore the scars of those tests, which left a pattern of web-like marks stretching from his head to his toes.
Most people have images of tortured people from episodic television shows or warped horror movies. In those non-real images, a person might have scars laced across his back, presumably from some type of whip or other torture device. John Roberts certainly wished his scars were the realistic touch of some Hollywood makeup artist. No, his were real, and the pain behind them fresh.
But what made John Roberts’ patchwork of scars remarkable – or maybe unimaginable – was that virtually no part of his body was pure skin anymore. Even his scars had scars, and some of those scars had scars.
The only thing the horrific scientific tests didn’t leave scarred – and the warped doctors, or scientists as they liked to call themselves, surely tried to leave no part of men and women untouched, physically or emotionally – was his mind.
John Roberts’ mind was as sharp as ever. He worked diligently to make sure his eyes never betrayed him. The eyes were portals to a man’s mind, the easiest betrayal to a man's true intentions, so he made sure no scientist or doctor got a glimpse of his true mind.
This was a good day for John Roberts. His torturers put him in one of the non-padded rooms. That was a rarity these days. Mostly, he spent a lot of his time in a straight-jacket, tied to the wall. Sometimes, his torturers hanged him from the ceiling, upside down, from his straight-jacket, hours at a time, the blood pooling in his head.
The only light in the all-white room was from a little 6-by-9 window, and depending upon the time of day, the light was more like shades of gray. Nonetheless, John Roberts liked the window because it was slightly below eye level and he was able to see outside into the real world.
The room he was in was bare, no furniture, nothing. For days at a time, he slept on the floor with no blankets, no pillow, nothing, his naked body against the cool floor. His body still hurt from the torture session earlier. He stretched, letting his arms linger over his head, holding his stretch. He moved his head in small circles, slowly working a kink out of his neck.
He stood and walked over to the window and saw what he expected.

Hey I am looking for ideas for my next story. What I'd like to do is have people send my cool photographs. I will select one and base my next story from that photo. That's basically what I did with the tree. I found a cool photo of that tree and then decided to write about it.

The Lucky Tree, part four and the final part, will be out in the next couple of days. In the meantime, send me some photos!!!!

The Luck Tree, part 3
A story by BlackNapalm



He stood in front of the mirror, staring at himself.
The scar was barely visible above the white shirt and bow tie.
The rope that he tried to hang himself with left a burn that scarred him even to this day. The scar was a reminder of what he tried to do that day and the events that led up to it.
The man staring back at him in the mirror was a different man today. He had changed, with a little help from her, of course. She had saved his life, turned out to be his salvation.
One of the first things he did after that fateful day was stop drinking. Actually, it wasn't quite that easy, and he didn't stop right away.
But he had stopped — eventually. So today, in front of the mirror, his face looked healthy. The lack of alcohol led him to rediscover a love with food. He had actually gained weight, and that wasn't a bad thing.
He grabbed the tuxedo top off the hanger, slipped into it and looked in the mirror again.
He looked handsome, even if he said so himself.
“Let's do this thing,” he said.
He walked out of the small vestibule and into the church.

**************

She couldn't believe this day had arrived.
With all she had been through, the thought never crossed her mind that she would find love again.
The vivid imagery of her husband's death, he the ever heroic man who saved a boy from a burning home, was etched in her memory forever.
And then there was this man. She would never forget the first time she saw him, either. The details of that day were as fresh as if it had just happened ....
She remembers the planned early morning visit to her husband's grave was supposed to be her last visit there to the majestic tree. She was going there to plant some fresh flowers and to say goodbye. After two years of grief, she was ready to move on.
She remembers a giant tree limb on the ground next to a couple of broken bottles of Jack Daniel. She thought That was strange. And she remembers a man with a noose around his neck lying on top of the unmarked grave of her husband. She thought that was bizarre.
To say she was flabbergasted would be an understatement.
She could tell that the man was alive, even though the noose strangled his neck and drained the blood from his face.
She put down her package and kneeled next to the man.
Putting her hand on the man's chest, she shook him gently.
“Hey Mister. Are you all right?”
No answer.
She looked at him and noticed an envelope protruding from his shirt pocket.
Thinking it might be of some help, she grabbed it and looked inside.
The envelope's contents contained a piece of paper, an old photograph and a newspaper article.
On the piece of paper were two neatly typed lines:
“I can't stand the pain any more.”
“Please forgive me.”
And he had signed his name in a neat scrawl.
The newspaper article was short but contained the story of a family – save the husband – who was killed by a drunken driver. The article also contained a small head-and-shoulder shot of the young woman who was killed.
The photograph was of a husband and wife and their two kids. The woman in the photograph was the same one from the newspaper article. The man obviously was the same man as the one lying on the ground with the noose around his neck.
It didn't take long for her to put two and two together.
A sudden sense of loss overwhelmed her, actually mirrored her own grief. She definitely could empathize with this man.
“Hey mister,” she said, shaking him a little harder this time.
He stirred, his breathing quickened, but he didn't wake up.
She moved up his body and removed the noose from his head. She wiped blood from a small gash on the side of his head.
Even though she endured similar pain and loss to this man, she couldn't imagine it overwhelming her enough for her to take her own life.
She felt such pain in the immediate days after her husband's death. Her love for him almost turned into hate as she battle the swirling emotions within her. She blamed her husband for his stupid actions. She cursed him.
But she never felt like killing herself. Then again, she didn't have any kids.
She wouldn't know what she would have done if she lost both her husband and her kids, if she had any.
Suicide might have been an option, as it was with him.
“Hey mister,” she said again, shaking him for a third time.
“...Whaaa,” he mumbled.
The sudden answer startled her, and she fell, landing on her back with her arms and legs sticking straight out into the sky.

**************

As he stood at the altar, waiting for his lovely bride, he recalled the first time he ever laid his eyes on such beauty.
The suicide act itself might have been the stupidest thing he had ever done, but the end result was her. So a little bit of genius came out of that failed act.
He remembers driving a car with his family, a happy little picnic ahead of them. He remembers a car slamming into them. He remembers his car entering a deathly roll. He remembers funerals, days and months of grief and pain so deep that he became a victim to himself and the bottle.
He remembers months and months of heavy drinking, depraving his body of all the essential nutrients and feeding it a slow death by alcohol.
He remembers finding the most exquisite tree, a giant among ordinary trees. Yes, he remembers thinking that tree would be his salvation, his way out of the pain.
And he remembers his suicide attempt. He remembers throwing the rope over the tree branch, putting it around his neck and kicking the chair out from underneath himself. He remembers a crack and a sudden, sharp pain.
The first thing he remembers after the long darkness was a beautiful woman. He initially thought that he was in heaven and that the beautiful woman was his wife.
The woman wasn't his wife, but she, yes she, would be his salvation.