Autumn stroked the inside of my thigh all the way back to the school. I found myself idly wondering what her dick would look like. If it would fill me up the way I was hoping Regular Dave would.

Our two car caravan pulled into the space under the school at...a time. Susan was waiting for us, casually chucking a roach under the dumpster, and pretending it was a cigarette. We pretended with her, as we piled out of the cars and apologized for being late.

“You’re not late, it’s the time it always is when you show up,” She said.

This confused us far more than our apologies had her. I tried to roll with it, “What time is that?”

Susan smiled at us like someone from a dream you aren’t sure you’re having, “The right time.”

It seemed like a real opportunity to drop this subject, and we all took it as we went inside. Autumn and I split off from the main group to grab two tubs of drop cloths from downstairs. Also so that Autumn could pin me up against the wall and lick the inside of my teeth. Twenty minutes later I had my hands in her pants, and she had pulled my top and bra aside to pinch a very erect nipple. We stopped for a moment to catch our breath. I stared in amazement at how gorgeous her face would look at 24, only twenty minutes after giving birth to twins.

She laid her forehead against mine and said, “Luvey is very excited about something.”

I pulled her in between my legs by her waistband and whispered, “My first.”

Autumn cocked her head back in surprise. I bit my lip to stifle a giggle. It started to leak out anyway, and she stifled it for me by palming a breast and nibbling my neck. When she reached my ear and took a breath to say something, I blurted, “I need you. There. Then. I need you with me.”

There was a moment when I felt her swallow whatever she might have said. Instead, “Oh, luvey. Where else would I possibly be?”

I looked across the room at the car crash that would kill her in 31 years, and whispered, “Nowhere else. Paint with me.”

We picked up the tubs and took them downstairs to the stage. Only stopping on the landing to put our clothes back together.

We had finished the forests and the only thing left to construct was the graveyard. The graves were chicken wire with Dutchmen over the top. Since they would make just as much a mess as the painting, Wee David and Bree were working on graves, and everyone else was painting flats and facades. The drop cloths Autumn and I were carrying had already been set up by the time we got there with them. We grabbed brushes and went to work.

I started on the facade of the hay loft. When that was finished I looked at the wall of the hay loft that Sarah and Big Davey were painting from a cellphone projector. I noticed the bale of hay that wasn’t painted there yet. I could feel my hands trying out each technique to get good hay. I tried the first technique to fail, and went to the back of the house, to see that it didn’t work. The next one I couldn’t figure out how I would do. I had to look at the brush strokes, and work out backwards what I had to do to make them. I applied, then went to the back to see why it was bad. There were two other techniques before I would stumble on what worked by accident.

Between the fourth and fifth time I figured out how to cross the distance from the back of the house to center right stage in one stride, and didn’t know why no one else that thought of that.

I stared at the fifth technique, the one that made real hay-looking hay. I knew I was going to do it, but I had no idea how it was done. I was trying to block out the sounds of all the grandkids playing around when I figured it out.

No, I didn’t figure out how to do it.

I figured out that it was the fifth technique I would try, and the fifth technique was going to succeed. So I just had to try something I hadn’t before and it would work!

Sarah looked over my shoulder just then thirty minutes ago, and said, “We were actually going to rag roll it, but if you can come up with something better, go right ahead.”

Okay. I don’t know what rag rolling is, so I’ll just do what I think it might be. Sarah has a stack of paper towels here, that must figure into it... I wadded three paper towels into a ball, skimmed the ball across the surface of the yellow paint can, and slapped it against the wall like I was pounding in a nail with my finger tips.

Yeah, that was it. It didn’t cover much area, but it was the working technique. I looked around to see the whole crew using it. For the foliage, the stones, for dirt, grime, and age. The wouldn't be able to do that until they could see what I had achieved with all this hay though.

Not to worry, I knew. I was about to get fl---

Flow --- the mental state of being completely present and fully immersed in a task --- is a strong contributor to creativity. When in flow, the creator and the universe become one, outside distractions recede from consciousness and one's mind is fully open and attuned to the act of creating. There is very little self-awareness or critical self-judgement; just intrinsic joy for the task.

~ Scott Barry Kaufman (Dipshit),

Scientific Director (Moron), The Imagination Institute (Good God.) (2012)

Believe me, if flow could be bottled and sold, you could charge the price in human kidneys and artists would pay it. It can’t be. No drug will even come close to the experience.

Remember in Star Trek how someone would get trapped in a different dimension or whatever? And this would be depicted as a brightly lit white room with nothing in it? Flow is like that. It’s like standing in that room and feeling the entire world around you fade away. You have the work in front of you, and you know what you need to do to finish. Your body doesn’t hurt, doesn’t get sore, doesn’t get hungry, doesn’t need the bathroom. People talk to you, but what they say isn’t important, because you have the work.

And while it’s wonderful, the most important skill you can learn (I would find) is to work without it. Because you never know when it’s going to come.

---ow.

Two hours later I sat back to look at the finished hay bale. It looked like a pretty good hay bale up close. Bree nudged my shoulder, “Come look at it from back here.”

My knees were really stiff, which was weird because it had only taken 15 minutes to finish. My neck hurt too. I couldn’t take a brake until it was done, so I was really glad I had finished it so fast.

I looked around and the grandkids had stopped...well...being here. In this time? Or just visible in time? I tried to step to the back of the house and that didn’t work either.

I took the stairs off the side of the stage instead to find that the whole crew was in the back of the house. A little hush fell over the group as Bree lead me into the center. I sat down with Autum and Bree, feeling kinda drained.

Susan was sitting two rows in front of us, her arms crossed over the top of the chairs. You might think she was in the “talk to the kids on their level” chair pose. But these were auditorium chairs all joined together, so the bottom half of her body was lounging in an, “I’m ready for some Netflix” pose.

“What do you think, Aisling?” she asked once I got my bearings.

I looked at the hay bale. It really looked like a hay bale. In fact, it looked too much like a hay bale. “It doesn’t match anything else on the stage,” I groaned.

Susan shrugged, “It looks damned good though. What are we going to do?”

Suggestions were floated. Among them: redo key parts of the painting design with the technique, dry brush over the bale with yellow paint to fade it back into the wall, burn the set down.

Our technical director was listening solemnly. Then her phone chirped. She idly picked it up to check the screen, then did a double take and began texting as fast as she could. I watched the conversation die as everyone became aware. Susan shot the text off and stood. “Babies? Here’s the story. I have an emergency I need to be out of here for, and there are rehearsals on that stage tomorrow night. We have 30 minutes of cleanup, because I can’t buy a new packet of brushes. Rachel, Dave, Bree, let me talk to you for a second before I go.”

The three of them got up and walked down the aisle a little ways, holding a tiny palaver. Sarah used the opportunity to squirm in a specific way on Big Davey’s lap. I turned to Autum as she traced little designs on my knee, “Do you feel like anything weird was happening today?”

“You mean like linear time was prolapsing on us?”

“Um. Ew. Yes.”

“I don’t really want to talk about it. We all...it was just really personal. For all of us.”

“Do you think it’ll come back?”

“I hope it---they’re coming back.”

Regular Dave was visibly trying not to grin too wide, “It’s not a big deal. Susan’s friend’s mom is in the hospital. The door downstairs will lock behind us when we leave. We just clean up and turn off the lights.” He paused for effect. It was a shitty effect. Like claymation. “Everyone check with your folks and let them know you’ll be home late.”

It was six o’clock. I could still make curfew (maybe). But to be safe, I took out my own phone and texted my mom.