Dobes Zone

Pen Tree Cat Seven Tuna Tuesday What exactly counts as an intrusive thought? Connell remembered seeing an online argument years ago about the phrasing but couldn’t recall who’d won. There was someone insisting that intrusive thoughts strictly involved thoughts that were violent, upsetting, and unbidden. Drive your car off a bridge, drop the baby on his head, dice your finger like a carrot on the cutting board. Others suggested that this also included random annoying ideas, absurd notions. Shitposts, jokes. Well, that’s just having thoughts isn’t it? A lot of thought comes unprompted, unconscious. The phrase stuck in Connell’s head, intrusive thought or not, was definitely unasked for and not caused by any stimuli in his environment. In the 8 th grade during a science lesson, Connell’s teacher had provided the class with a memory exercise. They were learning about the brain, the different lobes and the areas that controlled bodily functions like appetite, breathing, fear. Thin

 Author's note: I haven't touched any creative writing project in years but I feel like the writing bug is back and has its mandibles sunk thoroughly into my brain. Here's the first of a few short stories. If there's enough interest and enjoyment I may release a short story collection on my itch site with accompanying illustrations.     Working from Home with Tippy by Dobes Crusher Life was quiet and cozy for Tippy the cat and her person, the human woman named Sarah. They lived together in a small house in the suburbs, a sleepy place with little noise and a fenced in yard that Tippy had access to through her cat door. The fence was a tall wooden one which Tippy knew she could scale easily, but on one side there were human children who Tippy didn’t really feel like meeting, and on the other was a dog that smelled like trouble. There wasn’t really any need to wander far when there were bushes to crawl under, bugs to catch, and warm patches of grass where she could sp