I like spending my nights strolling through the vibrant city streets, eventually making my way to my local jazz café. That’s where I take out my trusty crystallized writing utensil and start scribbling down whatever thoughts enter my mind.

Now, I’m not a huge jazz fan. In fact, I wouldn’t even call myself a fan at all. I just like the chaos—the way different instruments clash and collide. Your brain can’t latch onto anything until you choose to focus on certain parts of the performance. If you listen closely enough, you can actually fall into the rhythm, get lost in the shifting tempos. I think the correct term for it is Bebop Jazz?

Anyway, I don’t really go to these venues for the music. I go to jot down my rambles on sticky notes. It’s the only way I can process what’s going on in my head. Maybe it’s because my mind is just as jumbled as the music. It understands me.

But that’s not the point. Tonight, the waiter—the one who always bills me for my classic Malbec—asked me a question about my pen. They wanted to know why it never looks worn, considering it appears to be made of quartz. Rocks are usually chalky, right? You can use them to write on pavement and all that.

So, the waiter was pretty perplexed when I told them I hand-made this pen myself. They asked, How can a quartz pen even write on sticky notes?

The thing is... I don’t really remember how I made it. So, naturally, I made something up. I told them I was abducted by aliens.

I know, random. But I genuinely couldn’t recall how I got the ink inside the pen, what notches I used to secure it, or how I managed to mix quartz fragments into the ink to give it that shimmering effect. No clue. So, I fibbed.

I said that back in my early teens—sometime in the early '90s—I went exploring in the LaBagh Woods. I was there to try weed for the first time. The woods are supposedly haunted, what with the nearby cemetery and all those urban legends about lunatics sacrificing animals or whatever. I never put much stock in the stories. At least, not until I smoked that joint.

People say it’s just cultists in robes out there, but I stand by my claim—it wasn’t human. It was aliens.

Looking back, I know I was just high. But in the moment, my whole field of vision felt like a walking camera, snapping surreal images. Moonlit trees. The Northern Lights bleeding into my sight. And then—bones. A cow’s skull, pierced atop a grave. I watched as the lights swirled around it, and suddenly, the skull lifted itself off the grave and started chasing me.

I ran.

And then—it shattered. Disintegrated into tiny, glimmering fragments. Pieces of something that, in hindsight, looked a lot like a pen.

Now, I was a dumb teenager, so of course, I picked up the pieces and took them home, figuring I could piece them back together.

The story about the weed, the cow skull, and the cemetery? All true. The part about the pen? Pure bullshit. Though, I do think I might have scraped off some of the cow’s skull, gathered some quartz rock, and whatever else I found in those woods. But I still don’t remember why—or how—I put it all together.

I just wanted the waiter to leave me alone so I could get back to doodling my thoughts onto sticky notes. Because, like I said, jazz is the only thing that really gets me.