It Conquered the World. A classic Sci-fi film.

Don't believe it. It doesn't conquer much of anything, but as a child I found it frightening!

The Gnobs Tree, "A Giddy and Gnobs Story."

A Gnobs Tree must always provide a shade

For the baby Minotaurs when it sprouts in the Spring.

For neither dale nor glade

Will provide the peace and quiet Gnobs brings.

-- A quote by Sir Thumbledore Giddy

Gnobs stood in the position he took every spring when the baby Minotaurs sprouted from the horns of their mothers in twos and threes, then were planted in the ground until they could become big enough to walk on their own. His green skin and large red lips were blended perfectly into the tree form he had shape shifted into for the occasion.

Giddy leaned against his pal. He was a knight of King Edward's Court and a very unique individual. His armor was his real skin. Only his face was made of flesh. Everything else was not. 

Giddy liked the Gnobs Tree look that Gnobs had assumed. Usually he took a shape that could be so outrageous it was frightening, or so crazy you couldn't stop laughing, like the time he had a dragon growing from each of his fingers who fought with each other, or the time he turned his nose into a licorice stick to tease a giant. That hadn't worked out too well for either of them once the giant caught hold of Gnobs nose, he didn't want to let go.

Only quick thinking on Giddy's part saved the day, but it had cost him a day's wages to purchase the muffins that finally coaxed the giant away from Gnobs nose.

Right now at that moment Gnobs body was made of a nice, rough-looking bark of red and blue shades, but was soft enough not to hurt the scalp of a tender child should they decide to climb him, which they always did after a few days. He looked up into Gnobs face, which was made of wood and fresh sprouts of leaves and tiny branches, with eyes that were hooded with whorls of deep burnt wood, so that he had a kind of prosaic look, or perhaps more that of a wistful poet about the burst forth in the song of words that they were borne to bear forth to the world.

"I'm thirsty." Gnobs complained.

Out the window went Giddy's wistful thoughts.

"I'll get you some water."

"Not for thattttt!" Gnobs immediately uttered.

"Then for what?"

Gnobs looked down at his feet which were wide roots above the ground and against which dozens of baby Minotaurs sprouted, the Mommy Minotaurs tucked next to them to keep them warm and happy.

"You want to be cuddled?"

"Why not?" Gnobs responded.

"But you're not a minotaur!"

"I have feelings."

"Keep them." Giddy warned. "You'll be through with your job on the morrow."

"But who will hug me then?"

Giddy sighed. "Gnobs, I will hug you."

"Oh will you?" Gnobs cried out, causing some of the baby Minotaurs to begin to cry.

Gnobs immediately sprouted parts of himself into baby Minotaur dolls which made cute sounds. The Mommy Minotaurs hugged them to their children and they became quiet again.

"How long until tomorrow?" Gnobs asked when the kids grew quiet again.

"Oh at least a day." Giddy said with a twinkle in his eye.

Gnobs scowled at Giddy. "You're teasing me!"

"Yes. Yes. I am." Giddy proclaimed. "It's usually you...if you remember...that is always teasing me!"

"Oh." Gnobs said, his tree face drooping with sadness. "I'm a badddd boy."

Giddy thumped his friend's barky skin and shook his head. "Not bad. Just a bit over the top sometimes."

Gnobs brightened. "So you'll still hug me?"

"Only if you behave."

"I'll behave. I'll behave." Gnobs declared and shut his eyes.

"Why are you going to sleep. There's still a whole day ahead of us." Giddy announced.

"Because if I go to sleep now tomorrow will come faster."

Giddy laughed. "Oh Gnobs. Time will move the same no matter what we do."

"But what else am I to do?" Gnobs complained. "I'm stuck here now."

"Remember Gnobs. You're the one that started this tradition."

"Oh. You're right." Gnobs said, remembering his first time, which was three years ago, soon after he had met Giddy and befriended him.

"It seems like only yesterday." Gnobs said.

"Time flies." Giddy agreed. "Especially when you're busy."

Then Giddy clapped his metallic skinned hands over his mouth, which along with his eyes nose and face, were the only parts of him that weren't metal. "Whoops!"

Gnobs began to cry.

The baby Minotaurs began to cry. 

The Mommy Minotaurs made grunting alarm sounds. The father Minotaurs came running across the wide meadow from the river where they had been bathing, thinking something horrible had happened.

"Now look and see what you've done!" Giddy scalded Gnobs.

"But you told me time flies and it's not flying at all, because I'm not busy. Not even a little."

Giddy looked at the charging Minotaurs, who were huffing and puffing curls of white smoke as they came to what they thought was the danger of their alarmed spouses and children. Giddy had to think of something. Fast. Really fast or it was going to be a disaster!

Giddy's heart churned a moment in his chest and then he brightened. "I love you, Gnobs!" He said gently, hugging the Gnobs tree, which looked so much like a gigantic frog sprouting bark, branches and trees. 

Gnobs big eyes widened and he used a branch hand to wipe away the tears. 

"I love you too, Giddy!"

And so Giddy learned a lesson that day. Careful what you say. Very careful. He also avoided a herd of angry Minotaur fathers!

The Case of the Wood Heart, "A Sherlock Holmes Story."

Watson gave Mrs. Hudson a gentle hug and she pulled away. "I know what you're doing. You're not coming back for dinner, are you?"

He gave her comely face a gentle smile and a sweep of his deep brown eyes, his mutton chops bouncing slightly as he grinned. "You read me like a book, dear Mrs. Hudson."

"No, I read you like a scoundrel. When will you stop running off on those fool's errands for the Prince?"

His smile tightened. "They are not fool's errands."

"They most certainly are." She replied, her voice becoming shriller and angry.

A shadow fell across them.

"I will see to him, Mrs. Hudson." Sherlock said as he stepped onto the porch, slipping on his deerstalker hat and adjusting his cape so that it fell back over his shoulders, so he could reach his pockets more easily. He finished comporting himself, then turned to Watson. "I would like to have a talk with the Prince."

"Sherlock, stay out of this." Watson warned. "This is between Mrs. Hudson and I."

"It certainly is not!" She warned, wagging a finger at him.

"I hate it when you wag the finger."

"Get used to it, Watson. It's what a good woman does when her man has been led astray." Sherlock explains, the hint of a smirk on his lips.

Watson is about to explode for a second, then he lets it go. "Very well. Come then. But it will be boring and tedious."

"I thrive on boring and tedious." Sherlock responded, a wink at Mrs. Hudson as he did so.

She laughed, then gave Watson a light peck on his cheek. "Go with your friend. At least I know someone with good sense will be watching over you."

She turned her back to the both of them, closed the front door and they could hear her shoe clapping on the hardwood steps as she went upstairs to pick up, as was her wont in the early hours of t he morning.

Sherlock put a hand lightly on Watson's arm. "So. Where shall we begin?"

=======================================================

Sherlock and Watson climbed out of the T-Cab, or Tesla Cab as they were sometimes called, and straightened their clothes as they faced Marlon Castle, the current residence of Prince Edwards, a distant relative of Queen Mary of Scots, and quite well off, but a bit on the eccentric side. They stood at the end of a large drive paved with red cobble stones and hedged with fine shrubs, shorn to resemble hearts and spades, like those of a deck of cards. Red flowers poked their faces from green beds of moss at the feet of the shrubs.

The tall gates, which were mounted on ancient hinges imported from the Scots Lands, hailed from a period where Kings had magic and ruled by the might of their dragons and Elves had not yet fled their world to a parallel one, safe from the expanding immorality of humanity. 

Sherlock smiled at that thought, because humanity preyed ever day for the help of angels, and yet had driven living ones from their lands by their greed, avarice and lust for power. He noticed that the mighty walls that precluded the public from seeing the castle more clearly appeared to be more clean than usual, and he suspected some magic in that, but gave it no second thought as he turned back to look at the two Royal Guards, courtesy of the Queen, who stood at the entrance, blocking their path.

"Please tell His Highness, Prince McMurphy, that I am come to meet with him for our appointment." Watson declared.

One of the Royal Guards nodded, then stepped inside.

A few minutes later after some small talk and the viewing of small flocks of blackbirds flitting from one sunflower shaped basket garden of flowers to another that spread across the lawns of the castle, a very, very tall man stepped outside, his ruddy face beaming with pleasure.

"Ah, my good Doctor, so good to see you again. And Mister Holmes. You honor me with your presence. Come in. Come in."

They gave him a polite nod and followed him inside. His footsteps were quick and lively, almost as if he were half floating as he guided them through the labyrinth of corridors and walkways until they reached the rear of the castle and embarked cross a miniature drawbridge over a moat below which were all manner of dimpled fish swimming about, their tiny mouths clutching at the air above and spots of bread that the Prince had been throwing them and which he immediately sought the silver plate of, which he had left on a highly polished marble table set near the moat.

He clutched a shred of bread, an d began breaking it up and tossing it into the moat, causing the tiny creatures there to become frenzied with movement and motion as the crumbs struck the thin layer of water meeting air.

"You see, Watson, how dearly they respond to the smallest of kind gestures."

He turned to face Watson, but his eyes were on Sherlock. "Small acts of kindness can steer creatures into any direction we desire."

"And you believe to any requisite end?" Sherlock asked.

"Astute observation, Mister Holmes. Exactly."

He turned back to his friends of the moat and broke more bread and tossed it. "When I was but a lad in my father's castle in the Mount Marres of the Scotland Sea, I learned a very great secret. One that I stumbled upon, but one which has followed me on light footsteps all these years since."

"Which is?" Sherlock asked politely.

The Prince turned to him and fixed Sherlock with a stare that made Watson wince, but stirred Sherlock not in the least. "That men always have a motive for everything they do. Even the kindest of things."

With that he turned away from the moat and began walking towards a smaller castle in the rear, which was made of brick and wood, and gave more the appearance of a fairy tale home, than the castle it was, though it stood a good three stories in height and had ramparts and weapons mounts on its roof.

They entered the smaller castle and the Prince guided them into a smaller room where all manner of magical equipment was gathered on large wooden desks and lengthy tables. In some smaller glass containers were odd looking substances, of which Watson knew at once were similar to Harry's magical works, but some of which were unknown to him and gave off a variance of energy that he couldn't put a finger on. At their right stood a remarkably detailed wooden statue of the Prince.

"I have a case for you, Sherlock."

Watson started to clear his throat. "Don't worry, Watson, it won't affect our work."

"I'm listening." Sherlock replied, his face immovable.

"I wish you to resolve a mystery for me."

"I will do my best. But if it involves magic..."

"It does. But I suspect a man of your caliber of mind will find this too titillating to avoid inspecting with the e scrutiny of your giant intellect."

"The clarity of my thoughts are far too exaggerated." Sherlock interrupted.

"Perhaps."

The Prince began loosening the tunic about his chest, then thrust it aside. Watson gave him a startled look. "There is more to me than meets the eye, dear Watson."

The Princess unlaced his undershirt, thrust it open and both Sherlock and Watson stared in shock and amazement at what was revealed. There in the center of the Prince's chest was a wooden door, much as you might find on a Cuckoo Clock. The Prince fidgeted with the tiny doorknob a moment, then opened it to reveal a wooden heart.

"Dear God in Heaven." Watson exclaimed.

"How does one undo what was foolishly done in one's youth?" The Prince demanded of Sherlock.

Sherlock stepped closer to examine the interior of the chamber revealed. "May I?"

"Be my guest." 

Sherlock took out his magnifying glass and examined the interior of the Prince's chest, his heart cavity and the wooden heart that pumped there for a long time, not breathing or saying a word. Finally, he carefully shut the door to the chamber, then stepped back as the Prince began composing his shirt and tunic again to a more normal state.

"Well?"

Sherlock looked at the Prince. "First. You say this happened when you were a child?"

"Yes. The age of ten. I had the ill gotten humor of a jaded and spoiled brat and offended a Druid Warlock."

"And?"

"He turned my heart to wood."

"I see. And you believe this why?"

"Because I have lived with this in secret for all these years, telling no one, not even my poor father. You see this is why I have not married to this point in time. My father is nearing death and I fear I will not be leaving him an heir."

"Second. If you could remove this wooden heart, then what?"

"I would marry the Duchess of Bramberry, for whom my affections are well known."

"Three. I assume you are willing to pay my customary fee?"

"I will  triple it."

"Sherlock!" Watson protested, finally finding his voice again after what he had seen.

"Good."

Sherlock turned to Watson. "Shoot the man in his heart."

The Prince and Watson both paled.

"Do it!"

The Prince paled even further. Watson shook his head.

Sherlock took out his own weapon before either man could make a move and shot the Prince directly in his wooden heart. The Prince fell backwards onto the floor and lay there unmoving.

Several moments later the statue of the Prince shook violently and shards of wood splintered off, then fell to the floor. A stark naked Prince stood there, clapping his hands. "Well done, Holmes. Well done!"

Watson turned in shock. "But..."

"You see, Watson." Sherlock explained. "Warlock magic requires a duplicate of the original to be made before any curse can be bonded to the cursed. Of wood. Once the duplicate is destroyed. The original resumes its own life once more."

The Prince nodded. 

Sherlock smiled at the Prince. "I shall expect my fee on the morrow. Good day, your Highness." 

Watson turned to watch as Sherlock left the room, whistling a merry tune he had picked up from Harry several days ago.

The Prince coughed.

Watson turned around and again realized that the Prince was naked.

"I'll get some clothing for you at once, your Highness."

Watson rushed from the room to the laughter of the Prince. For Watson had seen something else that was a result of the curse. The Prince would never have a child; for his most private part had remained wooden.

  ==========================================================

Sherlock and Watson sat near the fireplace, sipping tea when Mrs. Hudson came in and sat beside Watson.  

"I told you there was something peculiar about that man." She said with a shudder.

"I always wrote it off to his Scottish heritage." Watson replied with a laugh. "Not to his more...ah..wooden nature."

"Speaking of which, Holmes, however did you come so quickly to the conclusion that the Prince was a golem of wood."

"Elementary, dear Watson. Had you noticed when he was feeding his fish that his right foot was in the water?"

"Yes. But he's a peculiar man as my dear Mrs. Hudson just spoke. Why should that bother me?"

"Then you didn't notice that right ankle, which was revealed, was beginning to change color as the water soaked into him."

"Ah." Watson exclaimed merrily. 

The sound of a knock from the front door.

Mrs. Hudson went to answer it and returned several moments later with a package. "For you, Sherlock."

"Put it on the side table." He requested.

She did so. "Aren't you curious what it is?"

"Not really. Just a memento, is all."

Sherlock smiled.

Neither Watson or Mrs. Hudson noticed that the small box was wet at the bottom and quivered just slightly. But Sherlock did. His eyes narrowed for a moment, then his face brightened and his eyes turned to his good friends.

"I suggest we dine out this eve."

"A jolly good idea, Holmes." Watson responded, rising. "I shall begin dressing immediately."

"And I." Mrs. Watson replied, heading for her apartment downstairs.

Sherlock waited for everyone to leave the room, then he took the box and opened it. Inside was a wooden heart with his fee on top of it. A small note was attached. He read it.

"Your fee and a small token of my thanks for your collection. Sincerely, the Prince."

Sherlock took his fee and slipped it into his coat, then the heart and tossed it onto the fire, where it began to smoke for a moment, then burst into flames.

Doctor Watson stepped out, straightening his tie and shirt collar. "What's that smell?"

"The past, dear Watson. The past."

Whammy Sammy "A Samuel Light Story"

Sam felt a bit strange as he and Jimbo sat in the park, watching the girls baseball team practicing. Not because he was watching the girls, but because he felt strange.

"What's eating you, Sammie?"

"Not sure."

"Try me."

Sam looked at Jimbo, his tall, rascally Texan friend with a drawl a mile long and fists as big as hams. "All morning I've been feeling as if at any moment I might go...boom!"

Jimbo jumped a bit when Sam emphasized the boom a bit loudly.

"Don't have to go ballistic and emo on me."

"Sorry. Just feels like...boom!"

Jimbo plugged his ears. "Through?"

Sam nodded.

"Think it's another kind of power thing or other?"

"It's the other that's got me worried. Remember last time I felt this?"

"Yeah. We got caught up in a fight with some kinds of demons from the seventh level of hell. And it turned out to not be hell at all, but some kind of projection by a misguided, miscreant..."

"Whoa, my Texan partner."

"Gotcha. Look, weird is weird after awhile. So how much more weird can it get?"

Samuel was about to answer when one of the girls slugged the ball so hard it spun overhead, and dropped towards his lap. He shot up to catch it.

WHAM!

San Francisco was burning. People were screaming. Horses were screaming. Men and women were running in every direction as the place was shaken and torn by a huge earthquake that no one had ever expected.

Samuel found himself dodging falling brick and mortal, leaping over sidewalks that sprouted broken water mains, and hissing gas that exploded into searing flame throwers as he passed them. It was a race for his life. He couldn't believe the horror of it all. One man ran towards him screaming, his body on fire, his eyes burned out of their sockets, hair smoking and flesh burning. He smelled like singed pork.

Samuel tried to help the men by extending his umbrella to steer him towards a horse trough, but when the man struck the water, the trough exploded as a huge piece of building smashed into it from the side, sliding it and the man towards oblivion.

Samuel ran and ran, until he didn't think his high heels would last any longer. He finally had to tear his long petticoat free as it was catching on everything. He felt it tug free, revealing his legs, which in any other time would have caused him great shame, but a woman had to do what a woman does.

He finally reached the safety of the pier, but it was also breaking up beneath the rips and tears of the earthquake. Fire was spreading from the warehouses onto the dock, threatening to overwhelm all the ships moored there.

He finally managed to reach his destination and ran up a boarding ramp onto a large schooner that his father owned.

His father was already ordering his men to shove off from the pier for fear of the flames and water damage. He knew a minor tidal wave had to be coming as well, and they needed to draw as far as possible from any structures that they could collide with.

"Darling, help the boys now, will ye?" Her father said.

She tore off the rest of her petticoat, which again would have driven the sailors mad with lust, but when they saw her flying across the main deck to help raise the anchor, they ignored her, for their lives were at stake. There might be hell to pay on the morrow, but today they were one family determined to survive the Great Quake.

Finally, the ship began to pull free from its leads to the dock, and the anchor groaned loudly on its chains as it rose, dripping from the sea water.

Her father strode over and grabbed the anchor and with the help of two men, they angled it to its berth.

She went immediately into the Captain's Cabin and threw off her female clothing and put on regular sailor clothes. She stopped for a moment to admire herself in one small mirror. Then she frowned. 

"How can I be me?"

WHAM!

"Is he going to be all right?" He heard a pretty feminine voice ask with great care and concern.

His eyes fluttered open and the bright afternoon sun lanced into his brain for a moment, until he put an arm across his face.

"Sammie?"

"I'm okay." He muttered, not feeling okay at all.

He gradually removed his arm from over his eyes and revealed the most beautiful girl he would never know. For the moment he recognized who it was he knew Jimbo was going to be out with her before he could say a word.

"You're one brave gal." Jimbo laid it on with thick sweet honey Texan drool.

She looked at him and dimpled.

"I'm sure you helped cure whatever was ailing my friend and partner here."

"Friend and partner?"

"Yeah. We have a detective agency."

"Really?" She asked, her eyes wide with excitement.

As Samuel slowly got to his feet, the girl and Jimbo were already heading in a different direction while the rest of the girl baseball team gave Samuel a thumbs up, then went back to play.

"Whammy Sammy!" He muttered, feeling the slight bruise on the back of his head where he had struck the ground. "I get the wham and he gets the girl. For all I know he'll be doing that until I'm a hundred and three."

He sighed, then tucked in his shirt and headed for home. "Things could be worse."

"You betcha, Sam."

Samuel looked to his right and Albert, the scientist man with a brain the size of a universe, was striding beside him. 

"Why didn't you warn me?"

Albert shrugged. "What good would it have done? You'd have still caught it."

Sam sighed. "Suppose you're right. My one shot at making an impression on the girls and I blow it."

Albert smiled. "Not really."

Sam gave him a puzzled look.

"Hi, are you Jimbo's friend and partner?"

Samuel stopped to turn around and the most gorgeous redhead he'd ever seen was standing behind him smiling. 

"Does your head hurt? I know the perfect thing to fix it."

"You do?" He asked dumbly, stumbling over his words.

She took his arm and steered him away from the direction towards his home. "I do."

Sam smiled. Maybe the day wasn't totally a loss, but what had that whammy been about and why had he been a girl in it?

"You listening?" The redhead asked, when he didn't reply right away.

"I'm sorry." He quickly recovered. "Still a bit shook up."

She gave him a bright smile. "I'm going to fix that too."

She laughed and the sun shone brighter still.

Zombies of the Stratosphere, Chapter 11

Fractal Flames

Rader Men from the Moon --- Full movie of the Republic Seria starring Commando Cody

Thoughts "Tales of Shadows and Light"

When I awoke that morning, the sparrows were singing outside my window, warbling happily to each other and the green world of the Spruce Tree they inhabited. Their tiny claws caught on dangling leaf branches, they bounced up and down as the crisp, January breeze coasted in and out of the web work of leaves hiding the trunk from my view.

I sat on the edge of my bed watching their play a long time. It always made me feel better about myself and the world I had to face each day when I did that. I didn't have to think about going back to that school, where the children pretended to be grownups, and acted like scoundrels and parents ran away from their parental duties to get lost in their personal problems.

Being an educator wasn't what I thought it would be. It had turned into a nightmare for me, for many of my fellow educators as well. We were policed by Federal laws, state laws, county laws, school district laws, administrator laws and by parents. Our ability to teach what we knew and do it best was hobbled by a thousand and one politically correct laws and inhibitions that had nothing whatsoever to do with the reality of what we did for a living or what the kids really needed. Our nation had become obsessed with facts and figures and self importance and forgotten the heart of learning....love of knowledge for its own sake. We had become cogs on a great wheel of indifference and corporate commerciality. A factory that grinds out future adults to fuel the money machine of America. Zombies, not thinking adults. Not individuals with a zest and love for life and all its possibilities.

At that moment I thought it was going to be a very dark day. A very dark day indeed.

But perseverance is my middle name and I get up each morning, Monday through Friday, and cast myself back into the lagoons of education like a sacrificial lamb to be slaughtered again by all the restrictions and inattentions of the students and the laws.

I wondered sometimes if there was true justice in the world, that so few could make it so hard for so many, but just reading the headlines of the newspapers, or watching the national news and seeing how just a few percent of the world owned over ninety percent of it, it was no wonder that teachers were bottom-runged for extinction. As were many other professions.

Scientists were complaining about climate changes, but they had ignored one very stern, but cruel reality that life had its own way and mind about doing things. Humans could change everything but the way they looked at the world. Most people didn't change much from about two years old according to research and I believed it. 

Try teaching a thirteen year old child something new he doesn't want to learn. It's not just difficult, it's pretty much impossible. Yeah. You can get them to memorize the numbers and facts, but do they use it? Not really. It's games and fantasy they're after these days. You go through a door ahead of them and hold it for the next child to exit, and they will all come through, not one of them taking the door from you so you don't have to stand there like an  idiot.

Maybe I'm bitter, or maybe I'm wise. Point of view matters.

But that morning I was honey and light, the birdies singing sweet songs outside and making my life a better place to be for a time. Why couldn't people be more like that? Why do we have to spend so much time criticizing, complaining and trying to control each other, rather than helping, assisting, nurturing and being kind?

Thoughts were like swift arrows through my mind that morning. Thoughts about light. Thoughts about darkness.

Would I be thinking all those thoughts if I had grown up to be an astronaut? Or would I be sitting in some high tech laboratory pondering why people didn't pour more money into pure research, want to explore, want to take advantage of the knowledge exploration brings?

Probably.

Seems endemic of humans to want more than they will ever have, even if they already have more than the majority will ever have.

I'm almost eight years old now. And I suspect that soon I will get up, but not go anywhere, instead I will take one last breath, then clasp hands over my chest and sprout lilies as I expire into the Great Unknown.

I'm not afraid of dying so much, as not knowing what comes next? I suppose that's no different for anyone else either. No one really knows for sure what comes next. How could they without actually having been there and come back? And yet there were kids in India who remembered being alive before and could even point out where they died, and who their parents had been.

Do I believe that?

Just as much as I do in angels with wings. Both are possible, and both might be grasping at straws to make sense out a life much bigger than we were.

I stood up to look more out my window. Funny, but I didn't feel any wind, even though it was blowing the leaves and sparrows up and down in a shaking medley of colors and movement. I pulled my head back in and turned around, then I froze.

Laying on my bed was this strange person that looked like me. Their face was frozen in a look I couldn't explain. I was trembling at that moment. I wasn't sure what to do. How could someone have snuck into my bed without my noticing it?

I walked closer to the bed to peer at the body more intimately, but as I did so, I got this strange feeling. How come I couldn't feel my feet on the carpet?

I looked down and my feet were not touching the carpet.

That set off a chain reaction of both trembling and fear. And yet, even in the midst of the turmoil I felt at that moment, I also felt a certain kind of calm. I sat down on the edge of the bed, still not feeling anything and reached out a hand to touch the forehead of the lookalike. My hand passed through the head.

I jerked my hand back in shock. The touch of the head  had not been solid, but like pushing my hand through a dense mass of frozen air.

It was still dark in my room, even with the window open and so I noticed the bright light as soon as it appeared. 

I turned to look and the door to my bedroom was open, but instead of the usual hallway complete with small tables with stands of books upon them, and prints of famous artists hanging on velvet purple wallpapered walls, there was just this bright white light.

I stood up to examine this more closely.

Nothing changed. The light remained steady and unchanging.

For no reason I could explain I felt both fear and great peace from looking at the light. I remember reading once that when people died a tunnel of white light appeared, but this wasn't a tunnel. My preacher had said sinners go to hell, but I didn't see any flames or forks and devils.

I went closer to look. A kind of gentle warmth exuded from the light, even more so the closer I came to it. Finally I thrust my hand into it. It felt like immersing it into a warm bath water.

I stuck my head into it and ahead of me I could see a flowing path of golden light that crossed through towering columns of white light. Ahead on the path were some people I had known before. My father and mother, my old girlfriend from high school, a coach I had loved, a librarian who had instilled love for books and reading in my heart. And in their midst stood a man with radiant eyes, his face glowing with warmth, his eyes burning with a light so gentle and deep that my heart felt as if it might burst.

At that moment all thoughts of teaching escaped my mind.

I knew then that I had graduated from the school of Earth and was no longer going to be teaching. I also realized at that moment that I wasn't just teaching others, but teaching myself, that I was learning how to love even though there was none in return, that I was learning how to give, even when there was no return of such.

How did I realize that?

Let's just say that at that moment I knew why the sparrows outside my window were singing so brightly, so merrily. They knew what was most precious about life. And now I did too.

That even in the darkest of my teaching hours there had been hope and light and that no motion, or good thing I did was ever wasted. For I could also see in the path of light many of the hardest of the children I had worked with over the years, grown up now, but recognizable. I could see them smiling and waving at me. I knew then that love was never wasted and that my life had not been in vain.

I exited my room and went into the Light to join my friends there. Yes. It was going to be a great day. A very great day indeed.