We named him Isaiah, my son. Once we saw his beautiful, sparkling, blue eyes, we knew we had to name him with a beautiful, Biblical name.

I’d scream out, “Izzy!!!” When we had ice, and snow storms, I’d scream out, “Izzy! My baby!” And he’d come running right to me without a care in the world. He would even be barefoot. He did not care. He would throw snowballs, and build snowmen with his neighbor every winter.

We think Isaiah sleep walks, and that scares me. He could have got lost in the cold. Sorry. I got lost in my own thought. He’s gone now. They’re all gone. It’s me now. Just me. Lonely me.

Last night, I heard a car honk. I lit fire! I yelled! I packed my bag hoping for rescue from the cold. But when I got to the road- there was no one there to help me, so I cried again. Maybe it was just some strange bird. A bird I’d like to eat. I wandered back slowly. I was deprived of hope, and was in full despair. Maybe I was hallucinating.

Pink clouds. I kept seeing pink clouds with a silver-blue lining. In my bedroom, in the bath- pink clouds were everywhere. I soon learned to ignore them. Maybe I had lost it. I cried again as I entered my lonely cabin. It was just me now. I was alone. No one left. They just died on me. They did not fight!

As I read Revelations, I feared I was losing my faith. I did pray. I prayed many beautiful prayers. It was the only thing that lifted my spirits. I continued to pray. Prayers like:

“Dear Lord. Almighty God. Save me from my dark thoughts. Thoughts that could end me up in hell. And forgive me for sleeping with Jodie that one night. She was a church friend, so I still feel bad about that.”

I spoke to my Heavenly Father aloud every day. It seemed to be just Him and I. That made me cry,  too. With no one to look at- no one to touch- I began to become unglued.

Anger. Violent outbursts. Panic attacks! Screaming at the Almighty just begging to be heard.

“Save me!” I cried! “Take away my breath, my life, and let me be with you so I don’t feel so alone!” And He did not listen to me that day. No, He did not listen.

I carefully traveled to a cliff the next day. A beautiful cliff. The place I wanted to die.

“Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, just take me!” I cried as I approached the edge.

Falling to my death was a thought that always haunted my dreams. It tormented my soul in ways I can’t explain, but there was something about that cliff side. Something beautiful about it. This was the place. The place in my dreams where I once saw two beautiful women pet a wild swan right where I currently stood. They then hugged for the longest time, and moved away from the cliff.

I wanted to jump off of it as if demons were driving me to my death. Forcing me to jump. Then they showed up behind me in droves under the cover of night.

“Run from us!” They taunted, and I ran as fast as I could into a dead end. I cried again. I did not want demons to be around me, so I took a deep breath, and I ran the long way home praying aloud for the demons to flee in Jesus’s name. They didn’t completely stay away. They watched me the whole way home. They multiplied. There were creatures of purple and green with many limbs like a centipede’s. They had horns, and antlers, and over-sized, well, you know.

I ran, and I ran without looking back for fear God would turn me into a pillar of salt.

I had run from evil. The demons. The dark. As I approached my residence, a rainbow appeared even though it had not been raining. Thank you, God- I said to myself. A joyful moment at the end of a long, hard day. I needed that. I wish you could’ve seen it, too, but, alas, it’s just me.

As he read, he fell into the story. He watched the seagulls play in the wind, soaring and plummeting repeatedly. Swooping down as a gull, he imagined he felt the white sand scratching between his toes and the waves flowing around his feet, falling back into the sea.

: Maybe I will come back as a seagull in the next life. That would not be bad,” Henry said aloud. Henry was his best conversational friend; he knew he was talking only to himself, but that did not matter. An imaginary friend was better than no friend at all.

Hours of light passed, and then Henry dozed, the fitful sleep of the damned. A sound woke him, a sound he rarely heard, the sound of his cell door unlocking.

“I will lay here for thirty minutes before going to the door.” He waited for Blake’s voice, or any other guard’s voice, to ring out, telling him to present his wrists for shackling and then escorting him for the rare hour under a real sun

Minutes seemed like days, but no commanding voices came. Henry sat up in his bed, feet on the gray, concrete floor. He sat for another thirty minutes

“I was dreaming that I was on a beach when you woke me, so this had better be damn good,” Henry called out to the door and beyond.

He got up and went to the door, gently pushing it open. No one screamed for him to return to his cell, so he stepped out and into the hallway.

He saw nobody in the hallway. What he saw were several piles of what looked like dust. He knelt, scooped his hand into the pile, and then brought it close to look at. He thought it was dust and ashes, all mixed in with sand.” What is this? “He thought. He let the remaining sand in his hand fall and stood up and wiped his hand on his prison outfit. Henry looked in the cell next to his through the slot and saw only what looked like another pile of dust on the bunk. He returned to the pile in front of his cell. He knelt and sifted through it. He produced two objects; one was a gun, and the other was a badge the guards wore.

“This is just crazy,” Henry said as he walked down the hallway, stride by stride, pile by pile. Every door that could block his path had been opened. He walked out of the prison into the glaring light of day. He had looked in other cells on his way out of the prison and into the yard, and everywhere, he saw piles of ashes and sand.

Once out of the prison gates, he walked towards the city. Cars were strewn everywhere, and inside, there were more ashes and sand. Henry was not in the least bit squeamish, so he opened the door of a Buick SUV and scooped the ashes and sand out of the driver’s seat. He got in and saw the key fob in the cup holder where the driver had left it. He expected the car not to start, but it did, so he put it in gear and drove towards the city center, never seeing a living soul. He had never seen this city except on TV and in magazines, which he had been able to read before prison. He drove down a large street, which he saw was named Colorado Blvd on the street signs. He navigated his way around untold numbers of cars, trucks, bicycles and mopeds, skateboards and dog chains, and piles of dust and sand. He parked and got out.

Henry walked from shop to shop, business to business, office building to office building, and the results were always the same. He did not encounter another human being, pet, bird, or animal of any kind. Trees remained, trees and plants of many kinds. The Blight, as Henry later named it, seemed only to take humans and animals.

Henry skirted piles of ash and sand as he went into a deserted market, deserted except for the ‘mounds’ as he came to call them. Behind the meat cases, all were mounds. He helped himself to a couple of bananas, ignoring vegetables like kale, which he wished had been turned to ash. All the while, anger built up inside of him until he finally picked up a large can and screamed as he threw it through the market’s front window. It did not make him feel better.

Henry left the market and walked down the street. He got into a black Mercedes and drove to the next city. If he ran out of gas, he abandoned the vehicle and got in another after sweeping off the driver’s seat. When the fresh produce was gone, he ate out of cans, but he did not have to do that much, for there were plenty of harvest foods that he could walk into a field and eat

“I pretty much talk to myself all the time now,” he said. “I like it. No one disagrees with me”

Over the next two years, Henry traveled across the country many times, never encountering another human being. He came to believe that he was the last human on earth. He had never been able to contact anyone in another country or continent. Finally, he came home to the supermax prison that he had walked out of two years ago.

“It’s time to get straight, Henry, time to man up, time to put the Genie back in the bottle, so to speak.” Then Henry cackled, not a happy sound, but he was done with happiness now, another dream left in the dust. The mounds were mostly gone, blown away in the wind or washed away in the rain.

He found wood in the trees around the prison and built a burial pyre outside the prison using chairs and tables from inside the prison walls.

“You have walls everywhere, prison, my old friend, and there is no escape this time.”

Henry put all his kindling under the pyre and lit a torch. Reaching into his pocket, he took out a large bottle of valium and a large bottle of oxycodone he had lifted from a pharmacy along the way.

“No need for prior approval on these now is there,” he said to the wind. He started swallowing the pills, chasing them down with Jack Daniels whiskey that he had enjoyed mightily during his travels.

“Breakfast of champions, “Henry giggled, the pills starting to work. The torch that he held started to drift downward, finally falling out of Henry’s hand when he became unconscious. Landing on the kindling, the flames caught there and soon smoke and flames rose into the sky. Henry, now dead, started to catch fire, but there was a smile on his face as if he had found the answer to some great question.

On the hillside overlooking the prison, a woman watched the last events of Henry’s life unfold.

“Adam, come here.”

He came and wrapped a muscular arm over her shoulders. The woman pointed to the fire below.

“That was the last of them, every human on the face of this planet, along with all animal life.” She hugged Adam closer, placing Adam’s hand over her breast. “Now, we can start again.”

Loaded Mashed Potatoes Meat Loaf Casserole

Loaded Mashed Potatoes Meat Loaf Casserole is two of your favorites in one dish.

Yield: 6 servings

Ingredients

Meat Loaf

• 1 pound extra lean ground beef
• 1/2 cup onion, diced
• 1 cup seasoned Italian bread crumbs or 1 cup crushed Stove Top stuffing
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 egg
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Topping

• 1 (4 ounce) package garlic-flavored instant mashed potatoes*
• 1 1/2 cups water*
• 1/2 cup milk*
• 1 1/2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese
• 1/4 cup real bacon bits or 3 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled

Instructions

1. Heat oven to 375 degrees F.
2. In a large bowl, combine beef, onion, bread crumbs, milk, egg, brown sugar, Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper then press into a 9 inch square or comparable baking dish.
3. Bake uncovered for 25 minutes, then remove and drain any excess fat.
4. While the meatloaf is cooking, prepare mashed potatoes as per package instructions, using 1 1/2 cups water and 1/2 cup milk.
5. Spread over the top of the meat loaf, then top with Cheddar cheese and bacon bits.
6. Bake for an additional 10 minutes, until the cheese is melted and the mashed potatoes are slightly crispy.

Notes

* Or make your own mashed potatoes instead. This would be a great use for leftover mashed potatoes.

I am not a defence expert, I am an analyst, political and strategic. Every analyst however notes:

The Trump Class battle ships will most likely be sunk within a hour of any conflict. Trump has identified a problem and has the exact wrong solution.

A solution that will all but guarantee that China will win any naval battle and with it any war.

Put that into your mind for a moment. Big sitting ducks in the middle of the ocean that can be taken out by just about anything including drones like Ukraine has done in their backyards taking out most of the Russian Black Sea fleet.

Which idiot in the Trump universe thought this up? Which defence contractor? Who will really benefit?

Everyone admits and has known for decades that the US shipbuilding industry is in disarray. Nothing new there. Nothing new in asking South Korea to assist or Japan for that matter which have way better shipyards than the uninvested US shipyards.

The US needs incredibly accurate multiple small agile warships. Exactly what China, South Korea and Japan build.

Trump wants to build a modern version of a WWII battleship and we know what happened to those in the Japanese fleet.

Sunk by US planes, the Yamamoto was yet another grand design that completely failed. Trump would have lost WWII in a week if he was in charge.

JUST SAY NO TO OUTMODED TECH, THE USA CANNOT AFFORD MORE INSANE WEAPONS PROGRAMS THAT WILL NOT WORK INCLUDING THE STUPID ASS TRUMP CLASS BATTLESHIPS WHICH WILL JOIN THE YAMAMOTO AT THE BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN AND SINK THE USA WITH IT AS SOON AS A WAR STARTS.

Someone has to tell Trump he knows nothing about ships, he is not the designer even though he says he is designing much of what is going into the ships. Why? Because he knows aesthetics.

Are you fucking kidding me?

the Most Shocking Scene Ever | Alien (1979)Chestburster Scene Reactions — Traumatizing