On a dish, a small speck of food. No telling what it once was - just a brown spot, hardened from a trip through the dishwasher.

A loud sound, a sound of skin hitting skin.

**

"Goddamn you, Kenny, you can be a real stupid little fuck, you know that?"

(He never would have talked like that when mommy was around, he thinks.)

"Get your stupid little ass back in here and straighten this up. Goddamn it."

He goes back in the living room, and kneels down in front of the television. He thinks - he thinks real hard. The colors look all wrong. He knows it. So he looks down at the buttons, and tries to remember which ones he pushed. And he tries to push them the same way again, only backwards this time, so that it will go back to the way it was. He kinda remembers, but he kinda doesn't.

"Goddamn you little prick, it's just getting worse!"

He's nervous now, Kenny is, and he's pushing the buttons faster, but he can't remember now which ones he pushed before and which ones he pushed just now. He looks up - the man with the microphone has a face as red as a beet, and the grass in the background is yellow.

"You stupid little shit, get out of the way," and he hears his father's footsteps behind him, and he gets out of the way as quickly as he can, but his father is quicker than he is, and before he can get up and move, his father shoves him real hard on the shoulder, knocking him to the ground. "Goddamn prick … go play outside, leave me the fuck alone."

He gets up, and goes outside. It's a hot day, and he's wearing a sweatshirt that's too warm. But he doesn't go back inside to change.

**

One of his men was the first to notice the bruise.

"Captain! Your arm!"

He looked down at the mark, quietly purple but growing louder by the second.

His men gathered around, some with nervous looks in their eyes.

"It's nothing, boys," he said with warmth. "They'll have to do better than this if they want to stop the men of the one-oh-four brigade!"

A chorus of cheers rose up from the crew.

**

In July, it will be two years since mommy died.

**

He drifts across the sea, face pointed forward. He is moving towards a spot of land somewhere ahead, a place he has chosen where he will stand and watch the horizon.

He hovers over the water, his feet about an inch above the surface.

He is wearing his traditional headdress - bright greens and yellows, wrapped around large folds of fabric that caress his head. His face is hidden somewhere underneath this helmet of cloth, only to be seen by a chosen few. He has never seen his own face. He is tall - perhaps twelve feet tall - and can imagine the outline of his body, but he has never looked at it.

He does not know how long he has been traveling. His body moves forward smoothly, at a steady speed, even though he does not move a single muscle.

He is drifting across the ocean, his travels a straight line. Even though there are no eye-holes in his headdress, he is able to see everything. The surface of the ocean is perfectly still, and there is no movement in any direction. The water is blue, and even though he does not touch it, he knows that it is cold, a comforting kind of cold.

In time, he sees his chosen patch of land begin to approach. Instinctively, he slows his approach. His feet are now above ground rather than above water. Without moving, he rotates, and turns to face back in the direction from which he just came.

He stands here, always just an inch above the ground, and watches the horizon. Tirelessly he watches. Days turn into nights, nights wage their sleepy battles with dawn, and it all begins again. Still, he watches. Watches the horizon, patiently awaiting the time when he can remove his mask.

**

There is a window in Kenny's bedroom. It looks out over the front of the house - you look out this window and you can see a little bit of where the roof extends forward, then a little further on you see part of the driveway, and some of the yard. Then comes the mailbox, and then the street.

Look up, and you'll see Ms. Lucason's house. She's the elderly woman just across the way, the one who gets in her big white Lincoln Town Car every day and drives to the mailbox, then back into the garage and goes back into her house. Yes, she drives to the mailbox. She has an excuse ready, something about how it's good for the car, but if she were honest she'd admit it's because she's just tired. She never goes anywhere else. You might catch a glimpse of her sometimes, and you'll think to yourself how very sad she looks.

If you look up above Ms. Lucason's house - it's a two-story, but the first story is halfway underground, so the top of the house isn't very high - you can see the park. There is a playground, and some swings, and a see-saw. On pretty days, you will see two or three children playing. But never much more than that. The park is empty most of the time.

Somewhere off in the distance beyond the park, some buildings rise up. They are gray and uniform, each of the windows perfectly square and lined up in perfect rows and columns. You never see anybody standing in those windows - they're mirrored, of course, but you get the feeling that even if you could look right through them, you wouldn't see anybody looking out.

Kenny has a chair in his room that sits right by the window looking out onto all of this. He sits here most afternoons, and watches the park, and looks at the buildings. He doesn't know what he's looking for. He doesn't really think he's looking for anything. Day turns into night, night battles with dawn. He's just looking.

And then, there are the dragons, and the samurai, and the fighter pilots, and the astronauts. And those things make Kenny feel as if everything is going to be okay after all.