Only in His Mind

Smell of a Midnight Snack

2011-01-26T23:14:00.001-08:00

I’ve smelt flowers burning, My
Sisyphus clinging to loose nose hair,
A parrot repeating a beating
When a wife or husband hits,
I’ve smelt the scent of bruises

Magic comes in moments, ecstatic
On their own, but inside
A dull, muffled light-
The glow from a refrigerator,
A midnight snack.

My bed frame holds weak, barky ankles,
Tied vines, rashes on wrists,
Arched backs and chest pianos.
My bed frame thinks that community
Is an important concept. It doesn’t understand
Why I sometimes sleep alone

I’ve smelt the gift of fire
Punished by rock and eagle
How will we be punished
For our gifts, for our bruises,
For our muffled sounds in the night
Straight and taut against a bed frame,
Alone.

Sleep

2011-01-26T23:13:00.000-08:00

Steps widen, silent with lust.
A broken cross, forged with rust,
Note books and pens,
Dollops of dust,
Gifts to donate, amends
For your trust.

Hands on these things, toss them aside,
The dancer, the muscle, the legs and their stride,
Artful with sin
Quick and inside
Do dirty these hands, forget
And confide.

Apple, string, fall of the year
Fetch you this face, place down the mirror
Water that lasts
Stale with green tear
Pay solace this ocean, send
We to the fear.

And when the moon sleeps, and night eats the day
Know humanity’s truth, know Adam with clay,
Know a heart and its youth,
Beckon and lay
Fall down to the sheets, kneel
Alone and away

Odd

2011-01-23T22:01:00.001-08:00

It’s odd the way bug wings stick to our world, Odd when
My friend saw cherry blossoms on an orange tree
And I said that’s pastry, deli, café in a freezer odd,
That I said that thing, just now
Your change got left in a jar, and when the bus says goodbye,
Good day, good friend, metal pole, sticky chair, gum
Miniature and beneath you, sitting on a roof top with a balcony,
Fear says goodbye too, like silence across my couch when
Your black laces kneaded into your back’s graces,
Wind all haired up and hair all ribbon and smiles- you said
We were odd like the number three on a big wood stick
Spirit and god odd- and I said I feel like a suitcase
Trafficked with a lock, hazardous, checked- lost, found
Tossed aside and scuffed, breathed in and out, germs,
Good day, good friend, metal pole, sticky chair, gun, but I felt just right
And you said,
That’s odd.

Our Big Yellow Dog Lucy by Theresa and Justin

2011-01-21T21:18:00.000-08:00

Grandma got ran over
And Lucy, my dog, stared at her from the screen door
Drooling her big dog drools
She thinks maybe wet noses aren’t meant for the cold
Just like cars aren’t meant for grandmas
Tongue lapping at the summer
just outside the screen door.
pink tongue, pink skin, all raw, vulnerable
on the asphalt, in the heat

I am in the kitchen with the potatoes
And my brother’s toothpaste is squeezed
Some left on the sink
And mom usually yells
But I don’t think she is going to yell
Today.

All we heard was the thud
And even then, only Lucy
With her big dog ears
Could hear the crack of bones,
The breaking glass, to us
Muffled by the slick sound of cut
Potatoes, a smile on our big yellow dog,
Panting and wagging her tail,
Drooling for raw meat,
On the asphalt, in the heat

Lucy can’t come to the funeral
Because it’s on a Tuesday
And that’s when our big yellow dog
Visits patients at the hospital
Where babies, children, men, grandparents, and dead
House themselves like tattered cloth
In a closet of white coats
She’s a yellow scarf,
Brightening dreary winters,
Covering the splinters of old closet corners

Brother is the first out the door
And I drop a knife, and nothing has ever
Been so loud as that metal against the tiles.
Lucy bounds before us,
Tongue flapping like a flag
Unaware that dogs aren’t meant
For open wounds and ambulances,
Dogs are meant for recovery rooms,
For walking past with hairy legs
And sweaty tongues
Not for spattered blood on fur
But no one can manage to say
Bad dog

My Little Flag Waver

2011-01-21T12:52:00.001-08:00

When I consider your threats:

My little flag waver,
I consider the brutality
Of your frosted leg hair
And zipped caramel boots
Stepping mud thick, handsome deep
Into skin and laced buttercup chocolates.

I consider rare tomatoes, thorny
And plastered against canvas,
Unique with dust, aged wine bottles
In a black dress, bowed with brown paper,
White string, peppered brows,
And grey skin under the moon.

“That church’s roof is red” I say.
And you, “No, see? Blue daisy
With pomegranate toffee,
Orange pastel on lips that ride
Rusty, longing bicycles.”
“My life is red” I say.
And you, “Red like the core
Of the world. Red like apples and their worms,
Digging. Red like digging. My digging, your digging.”

A whimper in bed
And I am thinking of your legs and breath,
Chest and ache and walnut spice, barky groves
Where dogs sniff for bees in between the ankles of trees
And you are thinking of legs and breath,
In dust on the ground,
Tied, constricted with cloth
Hanging from a pole, precious
And red.

One day I am alone
While you sleep next to me.
I feel the gnarl in the wood, I am
The owl chick, left in the nest,
Cooing without really knowing
The definition of sound or voice.
I feel threatened.

The Ocean

2011-01-21T12:45:00.002-08:00

The Ocean

The ocean dried today
And I just stared at the five pointed
chalk figure on the oily pavement with thoughts
Of suicide and salt, and
Red clay, green dust, and blue wind,
Long and greasy across my face.
Your hair does splits and curves with lingering,
Sticky spit at the finish line
In the corners of downward facing
Mouths, ears, noses, and
Cheeks red and flushed over the hill where
A Sunset rises on a beach, but
Our paradise is an endless line
Drawn with a pencil slowly dulling,
Slowly leaking lead poison.
And we’re choking,
And we’re thirsty.
You pour water and salt
Into a cheap, plastic, heart shaped glass
And tell me it’s the ocean.
And I tell you I have never seen anything so beautiful.
What does that say about me?

Windmill

2011-01-21T12:45:00.001-08:00

Windmill

Sometimes when cooking with you
Flour and egg stick to my fingers
Like pasty clay and I remember
Sweat covered hands
Staking a windmill into the dry earth
On top of the red hill where the grass
Clings to the metal wire fence
Like that barren look in your eye,
Jealous when the baby cow suckled
And its mother ate grass despondently.

On sunsets where my big moon waits, ugly
With anticipation
The windmill makes a shadow
Like a crown memorized on your head
And I think that maybe if I had not met you
That shadow would look more like thorns
On the mountainside or maybe
Just dark on a slope.

When the windmill was young
It used to blink and scoff at the wind,
Shoulders astute, sun worshipping brows.
But the day we go back,
I think you hold our baby too tight
Worrying that the windmill’s arms
Have become infested with spiders

I say I used to climb the windmill,
“It was beautiful, when I was young”
And I want so desperately for you to be proud
So I stand at the top of the hill after you return
To the car and I look stone for you against the sun
On the hill is my sad skinny shadow next to the windmill’s
And you take a picture and say it looks beautiful
And I nod and feel like a parent
Disappointed with their child’s indifference

Let's Get Writing 2Tulips in the Pantry

2011-01-11T22:23:00.001-08:00

“Where the hell are my goddamn tulips?”
“Did you check the pantry?”
“Why would I put tulips in the pantry?”
“Well… good question.”
Cindy Dullworth crossed over to the other side of the kitchen, waltzing about like a bee with a broken stinger. She wore an apron with a big grease spot at the top from the cake she had baked three days earlier. It had pictures of dancing pomegranates on it holding spoons and forks. Cindy waited till her daughter left the room, then she opened the pantry, reached in and grabbed the tulips.
“Told you to check the pantry.”
Cindy almost dropped the tulips from surprise.
“Why are my tulips in the pantry? I don’t remember…”
“You put them there yesterday to take away some of that smell from the rotten strawberries.”
“Oh…”
“So, what are those tulips for anyways? Any particular reason you were so agitated about not finding them?”
“These babies,” Cindy’s hand gestured towards the tulips very much in the way a beauty queen gestures towards her satchel, slow and concentrated, “are going on the porch where everyone can see them.”
“So… no real reason huh mom?”
“How is wanting people to see them not a reason?”
“So just people in general right? There’s no particular man, not even perhaps one that runs by every morning with a certain golden retriever, who also perhaps told you about his own flower garden, who also perhaps has an extremely nice body, that you would put these flowers out for?”
“No particular man that I can think of.”
They both laughed, though Cindy felt a little bit uncomfortable with her daughter’s forwardness. She found it hard the way her daughter took their father’s death with such stride.
“Listen mom, maybe you should just ask him on a date. It’s no big deal, really.”

Meeting Barnaby

2011-01-10T23:28:00.001-08:00

Barnaby hung on Monday from an old noose in his room. He wore his best suit so that when they found him they knew it had been planned. Last time he wore sneakers and sweatpants, and people felt less traumatized for some reason. By Wednesday Barnaby decided that no one would notice he was gone and so he got bored, snapped the rope, and fell to the ground with a loud thud. Just as he hit the floor, there was a knock at the door. Of course they would arrive two seconds after I fell, thought Barnaby. He contemplated just laying there and waiting for whoever it was to break through his door and discover his corpse, smelly and waiting, hugging the floor like an unfeeling lover.
“Barnaby you ungrateful wretch, I know you aren’t dead. Open the door and make me some eggs.”
There goes the floor plan.

Jerry Hoover Part 1

2011-01-09T20:32:00.000-08:00

Jerry Hoover wasn’t quite sure why he started following the arrows sketched into the sidewalk in white chalk, but he did. He walked around the corner of Eighth and Hamilton where he stepped in a large oily puddle. A wet plastic bag wrapped around the heel of his right leather shoe so he kicked his leg till it came off. The bag was from a Chinese market a few miles off that had a deli with some of the best pasta he had ever tasted. Jerry wasn’t quite sure why the Chinese deli made pasta, but that never stopped him from eating it—especially since the pasta only cost four twenty five for a plate full. Jerry’s suit shambled along his legs, a little too loose around the wrists, and a little too soggy around the legs. He whistled as he walked, it was that whistling time of night for fearful people in places they don’t usually come to. The arrows took him down a dark alleyway where a man with sunset eyes and whisky aroma nodded his head and raised a hand, struggling to get up. Jerry nodded to him and continued moving, a little faster down the arrows. Jerry kept moving through that alleyway, wanting to go back, but wanting more to not walk past Mr. Whiskey from earlier.
Jerry was a young balder just like his father and his father’s father. The Hoover family had a history of hair excavation and scalp rebellion, and despite starting Rogaine early, Jerry was doomed to hat wearing and forehead waxing. Unlike his father who was blessed with a symmetrical and proportionate head, Jerry had an odd bump smack center of the top of his skull that looked sort of like his brain had swallowed a golf ball. So he usually stuck to hats. Today he had left his signature hat at the office where Rosa, the young woman from cubicle eight whom Jerry often flirts with, picked it up, smelled it, and with a content smile put it back on Jerry’s desk. Jerry had known where he had dropped it, but when he had arrived there Rosa had already put it on his desk. Jerry was going to report the missing hat to his boss, a man who had once referred to Jerry as Jared, Charles, and for one uncomfortable week, Pedwig, but Jerry’s boss was at home early having his own trouble finding his libido so as to properly fuck his wife. Jerry’s boss’s wife, a cross-eyed and yet immensely attractive woman licked her lips and grabbed the remote. She sat there deciding between Food Home Network and a screening of It’s a Wonderful Life. She chose the Food Home Network. Jerry’s boss walked into the kitchen and began eating his leftover Chinese pasta, coincidentally from the same restaurant that made the bags Jerry had previously stepped in. In any other place, this might not have been a coincidence, but Jerry lived in a city stock full of ethnic markets, pasta, and anxiety driven bosses. Jerry’s boss felt sick, both from the leftovers and from his wife’s ability to shrug off their lack of sexual escapades. The truth was, Jerry’s boss’ wife hadn’t climaxed in years, but still she was genuinely attracted and in love with her husband. Jerry’s boss, on the other hand, found himself thinking fondly of the bald man from cubicle ten, the one that always wears the hats.
Now the arrows began to appear more steadily as Jerry got down the hallway further and further. Some of the arrows had been smeared from the prodding of steady feet and skittering rain. He found himself skipping from one arrow to the next, similar to the way he used to jump from tile to tile on floors when he was younger, passionate, and had buckets full of hair. The hallway began to narrow and Jerry placed his hands on the wall. A crack in the wall sliced his finger very slightly, and instinctively he jammed the finger into his mouth, quickly tasting an array of dirt, blood, and what he thought but couldn’t believe tasted like the raspberry butter cream cupcakes his grandmother had sent him around thirty years earlier, three days before she had passed away. Jerry kept the card she sent with the cupcakes because she had spelt his name right, and because it said “Loving You is Easy as Cake”, and that made Jerry smile. Jerry finally turned a corner where he was confronted by the pale figure of a little girl laying on the floor. She looked dead.
Lisa Barton had narrowly escaped being hit by a brown Fed Ex truck already that day, and so when the light fixture above her fell to the ground and smashes in a torrent of sparks and glass, she knew something was up. She had first sensed a problem when she put her socks on correctly that morning only to find out that the grayed out part had risen slowly to the top of her foot. The second hint she had gotten was when her toothpaste turned to blood and then when her toast burnt before she had placed it into the toaster, though she found the socks to be the most disturbing of the signs as her toothpaste turned to blood about three times a year, and well, she had an awful toaster. Lisa was medium height with short, tussled hair. Around her wrist she wore a bracelet which she much rather liked because of the small elephant carved into the gemstone. She liked elephants because they had big ears, just like her grandpa Nicholas. Today she had worn bright green shoes, and so her hair, fearing a color collision, changed its color to brown to match her outfit accordingly. Her hair was always very conscious of Lisa’s fashion, though Lisa herself never really cared to notice. The truth was, she chose each pair of shoes specifically in relation to the positions of the moon. As the moon was not full tonight, and thus ought to be feeling rather envious, she felt the green necessary. Though she supposed the moon could be feeling lonely and reclusive instead, so perhaps she ought to wear blue. But, before she could finish that thought her mind had swept her out the door and on to the street where, to her mild amusement, arrows in white chalk had been etched into the sidewalk, laced with what looked like commandment powder. She thought it might be fun to follow the arrows. So she did, through the dark alley, skipping happily past the goblin with the red eyes and whiskey breath. There at the end of the alley, the back of her head found itself making quick friends with a metal pole. She fell unconscious on the ground, only to awake to the friendly face of a skinny bald man with an ill-fitting business suit.

Lets Get Writing 1

2011-01-09T15:17:00.000-08:00

She handed me the jam jar with some sticky coins in it and told me to get out. We were planning on using the money in the jar to go on a vacation. I thought the idea of us working towards the same goal, or of me even having a goal, would please her. I couldn’t help but notice how the light from the window, through the red curtain, reflecting into the jam jar glass, made the cheap block of fake particle board that was my desk feel just a bit friendlier. Society says I should look at her eyes, so I do—only it feels a bit awkward, and so I stare instead at the wrinkles around her eyes. I try to pretend I am searching for something in those wrinkles, like an answer. I want to prove to myself that I can have some type of existential bliss of a time that might put me on level with the rest of the world’s successful, caring people—or at least that I can be comfortable with myself. But all these attempts at trying to live up to social constructs and instead live as a ‘normal person’ feel rather fake. And so, I don’t find any answers next to those big beautiful eyes; instead all I see are wrinkles on a clouded face. She looks at me, at my attempt at a contemplative stare, and her cheeks jump a little, like worms on fish hooks, like she thinks I care, but then she realizes I don’t care, so the lifting of her cheeks dies down, and I realize I am the worm being eaten by the fish. I think it’s hard to break up with someone pathetic—the instigators worry that the receivers might hurt themselves, or screw their life up, or feel angry or resentful—the fact that she was able to break up with me despite these feelings probably means that I must be truly, unbearably pathetic, as I am surely not living a great life. On the other hand, it could also be the fact that the new neighbor next door owns a nice car, seems to have emotions, and lives a possibly healthy lifestyle (barring any hidden drug addictions or serial killer cliché). Who knows—either way, I was needing a new place to live.

Goodnight Ghost and the Pasta Parada

2010-09-22T19:32:00.000-07:00

At the time, I had no curtains in my windows. The moonlight lit up the room, searing the carpet with a dim white light. If not for a large tree in the backyard, my room would be entirely illuminated, and as a result, my eyes would have had trouble finding their rest. But luckily there was a large tree blocking half of the light, creating odd, winding shadows. A dog shaped splotch wound its way up my wall, up to the ceiling, and to my eye level. I stared at its lips as they curled back and its mouth opened for a silent bark. I gazed at the shadow's face. Its blackened eyes growled and smoldered with hatred, but I kept staring back. Not once, but twice it bared its fangs, threatening to chomp into my fragile body, to quench out my life. But still I stared. I was seven, and I was afraid of no mere shadow dog. Unfortunately for me, shadow dogs were only the appetizer for a long night of atrocious monstrosities.
The restaurant earlier that day had been a droll treat. One that I appreciated, but would not celebrate for years to come. The spaghetti was good, but not great. The bread was okay, but nothing more, and the atmosphere had grown stale from too many eyes sipping at the walls. The old lampshades leaked dust, and the train planted in the middle was dented like a fallen red wood waiting to rot. The waiter was a nice lady, probably in her twenties. I distinctly remember her sporting a bit of acne and seeing her skin glistening with too much oil. Also, the right side of her smile was a bit crooked and hung loose likes a fish hook. All the waiters wore fancy clothes, despite the restaurant being a bit less than fancy. If you looked close, however, one could see that certain ties were wrinkled, and white shirts had small dots on them, and you knew that their pants must have smelled a little funny because they hid them beneath such large aprons. These were the part timers, the workers with one set of clothes, bought just for that job, uncomfortable and unhappy. My family was happy, eating, mouths splashing juices, slurping spaghetti. My mom had ordered the ravioli with shrimp in it, and she didn't very much like it. My dad was one of those guys that, when not satisfied, had no issue taking it up with the workers. He urged my mom to complain, but we all shushed him. The rest of us felt awkward confronting people, especially those preparing our food. You can never be too nice to the ones handling your food, lest you end up with something unwanted amidst the noodles. Besides, it was not the waiter’s fault, or even the cook's, it was our fault for ordering food we disliked. Even though we attempted to coax my dad out of it, he still managed to implant his anti-complement into the waiter’s ears. The waiter, who one might expect to be stricken with rage, was overly kind. Thinking back now, I am sure she was already jaded by the customers, probably late into her shift, feet hurting and breath running out. But still, she was kind to us, especially when my mom insisted she not replace the food. To end the meal we all were given ice cream, I chose vanilla as I was not a big risk taker back then. To be honest, I am still not a huge risk taker, but at least now I try different flavors of ice cream. My brother had vanilla too, and he still has vanilla to this day.
When we returned home, stomachs satisfied, we all sat down in our respective house spots. My mom and dad sat in their positions on the couch, my brother went to the computer room, and I prepared for bed. I always waited for one of my parents or siblings to go to bed as I did not like to go alone. That night I laid my head on the kitchen counter and sat in sleepy limbo, not alive enough to stay up, but too scared to dare the dreaded stairs up to my room alone. Even to this day, my childhood fear of those stairs feels understandable. Imagine dark, eerie stairs leading into mysteriously darker hallways where the shadows don’t seem quite right, and the silence is actually a bit louder than one’s own breath. Now, imagine yourself trying to sneak up the stairs quietly so as not to alert the demons, but with each step the stairs lament their predicament with a squeaky whimper. Not very good circumstances for sneaking, and thus I decided it was better to go with someone else and take the night horrors by force.
My house was spooky, especially at night. The only times I would ever go to bed by myself was when I was so overly exhausted that the fatigue of my body towered over my mind. On those nights, my little feet would carry me slowly upstairs and I would collapse messy and loose like clothes into a basket. But that night I was wide awake, a creature of the night... a toddler of the night. I was the bane of ghosts and monsters, hanging between the covers and in dark hallways. From atop my perch, or what some might call a bunk bed, I could outlast any ghoulish attack. But I still waited for my dad to get ready to go to bed. He was an early sleeper, so I did not have to wait long. He fumbled up the stairs because he worked long days and fumbling is what one does after a long day of work. He already has his sweatpants on, and so he was ready to go once he finished brushing his teeth. I followed his footsteps and waited for him to stroll to his bed and turn the lights off. If he kept his door open, I would be safe! But he did not, it closed with a thud and a click as the bolt slid into the crevice of the wall. I knew then, as the wind howled along the walls of the old Victorian house, as the walls shook and the nails rattled that tonight would be a battle.
Covers, throughout time, have proven their worth to the younglings of the world. They are adamantine sheets made real, and they will keep one safe from all sorts of trouble. There are a few rules on properly protecting yourself with covers. First, one must make sure that all limbs and body parts are properly and efficiently tucked underneath the blanket. If even a single toe were to leak out under the cover, it would be grabbed. That was the rule between monster and child. An unfortunate consequence of this rule was that on certain days, especially hot days, it could get a bit sweaty underneath. I swear one terrified night I started a body heat campfire, but I couldn't take off that blanket. The second rule was that on particularly scary nights, one must helmet their head with the blanket as well lest the monsters ruffle ones hair. I followed both rules that night, because I knew what was coming. You know those days where you wake up, knowing that it would just be a crumby day? Your toothpaste tastes bad, your towel is damp, and for some reason you feel like someone was punching you in the back all night. I felt like that, except instead of it being morning, it was night. Unfortunately, the light in the room was not right next to my bed. Instead it was a few feet and a ladder away. So, when I turned off the light I ran, less than merrily and more scarily, to the ladder, up its metal bars, and right into the comfort of the covers. I would be safe under there, or so I thought. My ignorance allowed me to fall asleep, for the time being.
Late into the night the spaghetti hit me like a frozen turkey shot from a cannon, at my stomach, point blank, by an angry man with large mean eyebrows. I crossed my legs, I howled through a closed mouth, and I prayed for the irresistible urge to dissipate. Despite my heroic resistance, I eventually gave in and ran to the bathroom. Even the bathroom was creepy at night, so I turned on the ceiling lights as well as the mirror lights. Nothing would be sneaking into the bathroom. Thank goodness I didn't think of monsters creeping up from the toilet, which would have made for an interesting night. Luckily, that thought didn't cross my young little mind. After using the restroom, I turned one light off, then the other, and then I ran over to my room, lights flickering off as I passed them. I made sure to flick them off right at the last second as to give me as much light as possible. Eventually I made it back into my bed, my door closed, and window opened. It had been a hot night, and so the window had to be opened, but that came with an unfortunate consequence. No more than five minutes into sleep the monster came, bashing the door open and closed with his great fist. It would close, and I stared at the door, waiting for it to open again. One, two, three, and then it would open, nothing in the hall way. I thought someone might be playing tricks on me, maybe my brother or sister opening and closing the doors, perhaps a pet causing a ruckus, but nothing was there. What’s more, I reasoned that the wind couldn't be doing it because the door was opening towards me. I shuddered and stared at the shadows crawling along my walls. I noticed the dog shadow after an hour, and then the crab, and then the cat. Every different shadow came with a crush of the door against its frame. Every slam, I would close my eyes, and when I would reopen them a new monster would be waiting for me. Then I saw it, walking across the door, a human figure, skeletal in appearance, a yellow light inside its marrow, out-lining its bony structure. I felt so cold. Goosebumps emerged and huddled together like kids around a fire, trying to find warmth. My heart exploded with beats, and I held my breath and froze, nothing would move me. My ears felt the bump of blood pulse. It was like a headache without the pain. Hours were crawling by, I just knew it. The clock in my room was ticking so slowly, back and forth. Why was it ticking so slowly? Other nights that clock would be the reason I was stuck awake, but not that night. The monster passed through my vision with a long armed stroll, half blocked by the sleep nestled into my eye. It stopped halfway, stared back, and my hair leapt out of their pores. Then it was gone. My eyes stayed wide open, staring at the door, ignoring the shadows and waiting in anticipation. I fell asleep with my head half hidden, half exposed, lying on my belly, chin resting on my pillow and staring at the door. I had stared all night.
In the morning my parents pulled out our leftovers from the previous night. We still had a lot of my mom’s food. I am not quite sure why we kept it as no one wanted to eat it the night before, so why would someone want it for lunch. My family does things like that all the time, keep things we don’t need. It is a lot easier to keep something then to ask everyone if they want it. That’s why our house is cluttered with spooky things in the first place. I would guess that rodents would pay top cheese for our real estate. All the nooks and crannies made from stray chairs and desks make for some good critter homes. They also make it easy to bump into things when it is dark, or for things to bump back. We had kept some of the good spaghetti as well, and my parents pulled it out and began to heat it in the microwave. I was never hungry in the mornings, and that morning was no different, so instead I just sat down. A trick I have learned and that has treated me well in life is to ask someone the question you want to be asked. I asked my parents if they slept well. They said fine, and asked me back. I told them about my night, and much to my pride’s dismay, they told me it was the wind. But if it was so utterly insignificant a cause, why had it been so vivid?
Some people believe noodles represent longevity. They say the food emits a feeling of good life, unbroken and untainted, white and clean. Memories, good and bad, cling to the doughy strands and munch slowly on them, happily chewing for a mind’s eternity. It is no wonder so many popular books are being published these days advocating the loving surrender of pasta. According to those books, pasta is how one keeps one’s wits about them when they lose a loved one, or when one is jilted by an egotistical lover. But as I sat there in the restaurant the evening of the horror, spooning my ice cream in its silver bowl with the flowers carved around the rim, I had no pasta induced notion of a memorable dinner. During those minutes of hasty chewing, I didn’t think I would remember my mom’s order, or the way the desk at the front looked like fake wood, or the little stitched-in patch hiding itself poorly on my chair. Not in all my life did I think I would remember the smile of the waiter who greeted us at the door, and the way he tapped his left foot impatiently, but not angrily. I definitely should not have remembered how my breath tasted grossly of garlic, and that it kept that way all throughout the night because I was too afraid to brush my teeth. And who would remember any of that, not a child surely. But I did. I remembered every last boring detail of that day from the morning of, to dinner, and on to that night. You might ask why I would write about spaghetti and ghosts in the same story, I know I did. Well, to you people who need reason, I offer this answer. That dinner that night should have faded into a fine dust. Perhaps it was the pasta that kept that memory going and all those noodle loving crazies are right. But, maybe, unlike what many pasta enthusiasts suggest, it was not the pasta that instilled my memory, but the terror of that figure in the night. I mean, I can’t remember any other pasta dinners quite like this one. So, I suggest to anyone wishing to remember events in great detail to stop eating pasta and to instead implant in their lives a bit of unbridled, innocent terror.

Big Moon and Swamp Thing

2010-09-22T19:31:00.000-07:00

Bosley’s mouth contained several holes and seven teeth. These teeth, although gangly, created a rather charming smile. All the people of the town could not help but smile back whenever Bosley showed them his silly grin, and his silly grin could not help but shine white with pride whenever the people smiled back. In front of his teeth sat two very red, very chapped lips. From the day Bosley’s cells multiplied and grew these lips, a romance had begun. The upper lip loved the lower lip. They could not stand to be apart. Their favorite day was Tuesday, because on Tuesday’s Bosley’s mom made spaghetti, and every time Bosley would slide one of the long doughy strands through his lips, they would feel a kind of togetherness that no other couple in the world could ever experience. Or so they thought. There were, in fact, other parts of the human body that felt the same sandwich experience… they just did not enjoy it as much as them. This was partly because the two body parts did not like each other or the porcelain seat they were forced against, but mostly because the experience as a whole was very smelly. However, their discomfort in no way measured up to the discomfort Bosley’s lips were feeling on the third Tuesday of November. You see, on most Tuesdays Bosley would be at home enjoying his spaghetti. This particular Tuesday, however, Bosley was not eating spaghetti. He was not even at home. Instead, he was in a back alley on Cedar Street covering himself in grease, leaves, and excitement. Today, Bosley decided, was the day he would scare his brother good.
Bosley got the idea last night while watching a very scary movie. His parents did not want him to watch it, and had sent him to bed early. But, through the railing of the stairs, he got to see the brilliance of “Swamp Thing.” In the movie, a man covered in leaves walked around and, for reasons Bosley could not figure out, terrified people. Despite many efforts, Bosley had never been able to scare his brother. He tried jumping at him from behind walls, but he always mistimed it and jumped out before his brother was near. Bosley also tried dressing himself up in sheets to pretend to be a ghost, a thing he thought was sure to scare his brother. But, for some reason Bosley’s brother did not get startled at all. One might conjecture that this has to do with the fact that the sheets were pink, but Bosley decided that it was because his brother just was not afraid of ghosts. After the ghost incident, Bosley was about ready to give up. Yet, after watching his brother and his girlfriend sitting on the couch watching the scary movie, Bosley got a new idea. His brother’s girlfriend was very terrified, but Bosley knew that her fear was obviously fake and that she just wanted to be held by his brother. Bosley knew that his brother, on the other hand, was genuinely terrified. He could see it in the shake of his leg, and the slight twitch in his hand. His brother was terrified. What Bosley did not know was that his brother was not actually afraid of the movie. He wasn’t even paying attention to the movie. The thing he was really afraid of was the girl sitting next to him. But Bosley did not see this subtle young adult fear, instead he just figured his brother didn’t like plant people That is why, on the third Tuesday of the month, Bosley prepared himself to give his brother the scare of a lifetime. Being so excited, Bosley found it hard to not bear his teeth in joy. This, of course, aggravated his lips greatly. Unfortunately for them, the only acts of protest they could muster were slight whistles and a quiet smacking noise.
As Bosley costumed up, his brother across the street walked into the town’s grocery store. He was angry that day. He could have been with his young adult girlfriend doing young adult things. Instead, he was left to watch over his dumb brother while his parent’s went shopping. He thought Bosley was so very odd, like an apricot sprouting from an apple tree; different, and not as tasty as an apple. He wondered how many more times he would have to babysit Bosley. He hoped not many. The shop was small and smelt of dust, and the owner was fat and smelt of lavender. No one really knew why the owner always smelt so strongly of lavender. They just assumed he had accidentally bought perfume instead of cologne. Not that he would need cologne anymore, seeing as his wife died and he had vowed never to date again. The actual reason that the shop keeper smelt of lavender was because lavender was his wife’s favorite flower and on the second floor of the shop he had built a small garden devoted to her. In addition to the lavender, the garden had three orchids. One was white, and two were yellow. Each flower sat in a corner by itself because they did not get along very well. The white orchid loved the sun, and had grown tall in its rays. The shopkeeper had meant to move it this morning. He had meant to let the other flowers get some sun. But, he had forgotten.
It took twenty-five minutes for Bosley to completely engulf himself in leaves. By that time, his brother had gotten sick of waiting and had started teasing the idea of shoplifting. He would only take something small, like a candy bar or something. The shopkeeper would never see him do it anyways as he was always glaring at the stairway. Five minutes later, just as he slid the first chocolate bar under his jacket, a small green bush began to run across the street. Along the sidewalk of the very same street, a pigeon was pecking at a stale piece of bread that had gotten flattened into the cement. A little girl and her mother walked past the pigeon, and the pigeon waddled a couple feet away but decided not to fly off, as it wanted to eat some of the bread. This pigeon was determined to eat that bread, but just as its dusty and scratched beak managed to nibble a bit of the crust off, a loud thud came from the center of the street and the pigeon flew away. The shopkeeper ran to the shop window. Bosley’s brother dropped the candy bar. The truck driver swerved oddly to the left and into a pole. Bosley’s leaves flew up towards the sky, and Bosley’s grease covered body collapsed onto the hard concrete. It was the third Tuesday of November, and Bosley was still smiling, and his brother was definitely scared.
Bosley’s parents couldn’t help but blame Bosley’s brother. They didn’t show their disappointment, but they wanted to. Every now and then, Bosley’s mother would glare at her son, and he would know she hated him but he would never turn his head. His neck would feel her eyes, and it would shrivel down into his shirt. He broke up with his girlfriend, afterwards. She was relieved. It took a lot of the pressure off her life, and she wasn’t ready for death. Neither was he, but he was stuck with it. The family went shopping together on Wednesday. They had to go out of town because they did not want to go to the town’s shop. They all bought black clothes, except for Bosley’s mom who bought a dark purple dress. She wanted to get at least some more use out of it, rather than never wearing it after the funeral. She was tired of wasting things. The reason neither the parents had been there with Bosley the day he had died was because they had been out toy shopping for him. In a week, it would have been his birthday. Since Bosley died, they were stuck with toys that no one would use. What a waste.
Bosley was buried that Thursday. There were fourteen people at the funeral. Ten of those people cared about Bosley, the other four did not know him enough to feel sad. It was a tragedy, they thought, but they just couldn’t get themselves attached enough to cry. Seven of the ten people paid attention to the funeral. The rest just stared at the giant pile of toys sitting on the gravestone. Bosley’s parents couldn’t find it in their hearts to give the toys away, but they also couldn’t stand them sitting in the front hallway of their house. Plus, they had lost the receipt. Therefore, they decided to use toys instead of flowers, and as they stared at the small pile of toys they thought of their son’s silly grin. They thought of how he would have smiled all day on his birthday, and how nothing would bring him down.
At the same time as Bosley’s funeral, another funeral was taking place on the other side of the graveyard. Phil Linasetti had died during an operation. Some say he died a lot earlier as he had lost his ability to control his own body. Truth is, while Phil couldn’t control his own body, he had no problem thinking. In fact, had he been able to tell his hysterical mother and horrendous doctor that he did not want a lobotomy, he would have been much happier. Unfortunately, when they brought up the operation, Phil had no way of telling them he did not want it. He had no way to tell them “no, that is not what is best for me. I would actually much rather prefer to keep my life, thank you.” When he tried, all that came out was a gargle of saliva and a slightly offensive groan. Phil died amongst seven doctors, three interns, and his own silent scream. This is in no way similar to the way he wanted to go under. The way he really wanted to die was to sky dive without a parachute into the ocean, that way he could be remembered. Instead, he died a lousy vegetable.
Unlike Bosley’s funeral, many of the people that came to see the last views of Phil’s decaying corpse actually paid attention to the funeral. This was partly because the person speaking the eulogy had a very beautiful, and somewhat foreign sounding voice. As the crowd stood around the deep trench, Phil’s nephew Jordan began to twitch. His leg shifted uncomfortably back and forth, and his ankles seemed to be getting weaker. His eyes rolled around and his mind wandered over the grassy hills and outside of the graveyard. He was bored. His mother held him close so as to keep him in line. She knew that her son was often distracted. She thought he might have some sort of attention disorder, but she did not want to pay for the doctors bill to take him in. So instead she tried to ignore it as best she could. It was not long before Jordan got too fidgety to control. She was forced to let go, and he ran away over the hill. A few people in the crowd gave Jordan’s mother disapproving looks, but for the most part people were able to ignore his misbehavior. As Jordan got to the top of the hill, he spotted Bosley’s funeral procession. He wondered who had died, and he dropped into intense thought on the matter. Not many people looked sad, so he assumed they must not care that much about the dead person. He wondered for a good thirty seconds before he spotted the giant pile of toys.
The giant pile of toys enjoyed their change of scenery. They found the weather on the day of the funeral to be very satisfactory. Well, for the most part they all did. There were a few toys that were grumpy about the change. They liked being stared at in the store. They liked the way the tiles of the shop created a checkerboard pattern, and they liked to count the number of small holes in the ceiling. It kept them occupied. Grass, they thought, was just too green. The toys that did enjoy the change were feeling very ecstatic about their situation. It was nice to be around sadness for a change. It is a common misconception that toys all want to make people happy. Some just want to live their lives and raise their very own little toy families, and when they do raise those families they want to make them happy, rather than their human owners. It was an unfortunate coincidence that Jordan decided to snatch up one of the particularly independent toys. The toy was a soldier. It had in its hand a very tiny, but visually and proportionally correct gun. It wore dark green camouflage clothing, with a small black belt, plastic shoes, and a string of ammo across its chest. It was ready for war. What it was not ready for, however, were the hands of a small child, especially ones as clumsy as Jordan’s.
Jordan knew what he was doing was wrong, but he also knew that no one would blame a child, especially one in a graveyard. He might get a slight scolding, but if he were to shed a few tears he could cloak his misbehavior with sadness. So, he went for it. He snatched the toy soldier and ran up the nearest hill. But it was a slippery hill, and the grass was angry that day at all the trampling feet. It wasn’t the usual groomed, cut to an exact length, sprinkled with pesticides, and tied with an organic ribbon graveyard grass. This grass was uneven, scattered, patchy, and charming. One could tell from the floral arrangement and the simple and well placed stony paths that someone had taken great pains to make this graveyard his own garden. People at funerals don’t usually notice such details.
Sylvester, the caretaker of the graveyard, was used to people walking on his grass and so he did not mind the strange boy running on his hill. Even when the boy tripped and fell face first into the side of the hill, tearing out patches of mud and grass, he did not mind. Sylvester’s heart went out to the boy, as it did for all the other people that walked through his garden. Even if he was angry at the boy, he could never bring himself to confront him. His desire to stand up for himself had been withered away by the cold wind of the graveyard. Soon, the two mothers from each funeral met at where the boy fell. Neither mother spoke, they both just nodded and wept a little, and then they continued on their way. Jordan gave Sylvester a quick glance as he got up from the mud. Sylvester ducked down, and went back to his pruning. No one seemed to mind that Jordan kept the toy.
Sylvester saw things like that all the time as the caretaker. One time he even saw two men get into a fistfight. He remembered one of them men tripping and falling into the trench, and the other man shaking his fist. One of the women fainted, or at least pretended to faint, and the priest ran to her side. Sylvester guessed that not many people cared for the person being buried. Later he read the gravestone. It said Elizabeth on it. He liked that name. The next day he planted begonias next to her gravestone because he thought they fit her pretty name. When cutting grass, Sylvester did not like to use the lawn mower that the owner of the graveyard had purchased for him. He preferred clippers for his grass. The clippers were giant and awkward for most people to hold. They had a black worn handle which used to give him blisters until he started using gloves. That was when he first got the job. He loved his clippers almost as much as he loved his graveyard. The real problem with the lawnmower is that he found that it often cut the tops off the sprinkler heads, or would kick up stones and throw them in different directions. Worst of all, it disturbed the mourners. He did not like to disturb the people that came to his home. He preferred to stay out of the way and keep his distance. Sometimes he would just go straight into his small shack next to the mausoleum. From the outside, the shack looked miniscule, but from the inside it was as large as Sylvester wanted it to be. In one corner he had eight of his favorite books, each of which he had read at least ten times. In the other corner, he had a spot to place his clippers. He also had a small broken rocking chair which no longer rocked, a hollowed out television where he kept his favorite potted plant, and a clothes rack with one pair of overalls and a velvet suit. The overalls he wears when gardening, and the suit he wears late at night when he reads to the dead. He thinks he will read one of the classics to Bosley, but he is not sure yet.
A few months went by after the funeral before things began to get normal again. Or at least, as normal as they could get. Bosley’s father was stuck in the sad hospital. That’s what the locals called it. It isn’t really a hospital, because nothing ever gets treated there. Instead, it is just a large white building where people who are sad go. Inside the building there is a large collection of mismatching chairs. Some are huge and comfortable, and others have springs jutting out of their seat covers. The best chair, the purple chair, was loved by all. It sat alone in the corner by the window, and all the sad people would fight over who got to sit in it. They decided that the people with the saddest stories got to sit in the chair first. Bosley’s father was the third person to sit in the chair. Bosley’s mother was not in the sad hospital. Instead, she stayed at home watching the home-cooking channel, smoking cigarettes and drinking light beer. She didn’t talk to her other son anymore. Sometimes she forgot he existed. Sometimes she talked to Bosley though. She saw him. He was like the little spec in her eye after seeing a bright light, always fleeting, always drifting slowly away whenever focused on. She did not enjoy much anymore. She watched T.V., but she did not pay attention. Her favorite thing to do was to dress in as many clothes as she could on a cold night. The clothes would heat up her body and she would begin to sweat. Then, she would take off all her clothes and go outside to feel the cold air freeze her sweat to her body.
The grave keeper had spent the months after the funeral doing the same thing he always did. By day, he donned his overalls and snatched up his giant clippers and worked in the garden. By night, he put on his suit and took out his books and began to read. He was very close to finishing the book he had been reading to Bosley, and he liked to think that Bosley enjoyed the read. He decided to read to him “Catcher in the Rye.” At first, he was afraid that Bosley might be offended by the book seeing as he would never reach the age of Holden Caulfield. But the grave keeper pushed that notion aside and read the book anyways. After all, Bosley had no say in the matter, and the book was indeed a classic. When he finishes the book, the grave keeper will leave Bosley alone. He will move on to another grave, and read another book. The grave keeper is satisfied with his life because there are and will always be plenty of people to read books to.
The shopkeeper closed down the shop for a while after Bosley died. He did this because he wanted to pay respects towards Bosley. But more importantly, he wanted a vacation. When he got back to his shop, he immediately went upstairs. His flowers had wilted slightly. There had been no sun for them. There had been no water for them. The only thing they got to eat over those couple months was a thin layer of dust and a couple dead bugs, both of which had been absorbed slowly into the soil. The upstairs no longer smelt of lavender. Upon realizing his mistakes, the shopkeeper forgot all about Bosley and went back to taking care his wife’s memorial.
Bosley’s brother, Jim, was most affected by Bosley’s death. It was not sadness that affected him, however, but a longing. When Bosley first died, he would walk through the his house in complete silence. His parents ignored him and would evade his glance. Pretty soon, Bosley’s brother stopped trying to interact all together. When he left the house two years later his parents had no idea. He now lives in a small apartment with a faded carpet. The carpet has two stains, the first was on the living room floor, and the second one under the living room bed. Jim likes to sleep under the bed because the bed frame has seventeen swirls on it. He counts them over and over again until he falls asleep. Sometimes he does not fall asleep though, and instead he just keeps counting. He doesn’t watch television anymore, but he thinks about it. He likes thinking about the ones where people have goals and dreams, and then they lose them. He remembers all the details; he knows what the actors wore in each scene, and what color their eyes were, and how dirty the streets were, and what stores are close in each scene, and who knows who, and who dies, and who lives. Often he dreams about movies where the moon is so large. It’s like a quarter on a small velvet rag, and it makes everything look so insignificant. The actors say it is so big they think they can touch it. Jim doesn’t think its possible.
One night, when the moon was at its fullest, Jim decided to go grab it. He left through the front door, and got his neighbor’s tallest ladder from the shed. Then, he leaned it against the tree. He had never been a very good tree climber, yet there he was in his pajamas and white shirt, climbing the huge walnut tree in his back yard, trying to get onto a branch that would hold him. Only, most the branches at the bottom were small and could barely hold his weight, so he had to keep climbing higher and higher. He was surprised that his sleeping neighbors didn’t hear him, especially his neighbor Lily who he knew was a light sleeper. Jim had a crush on Lily. He liked the way her toes curled when she walked, and how they were so accepting of the cement. Her boyfriend was a real bad guy, not a villain completely, but he liked to make people feel awkward. Also he had a creepy laugh. Jim thought he brought Lily down. She was the ironing board, and he was the iron. She was not one of those cheap ironing boards either. She had a real nice cloth top, with swirls to count. But her boyfriend was always getting too hot and smoldering. Jim knew that that if Lily stayed with her, she was eventually going to get burnt into a pile of ashes. He just hoped that she at least gets burnt in the living room, that way he can sneak inside and watch television with her, or they can just sit quietly.
Eventually Jim found a branch that could hold his weight. He was afraid being so high up. He had not felt afraid for a long time, so this was very different to him. He made his way to the end of the branch and sat there staring into the face of the moon. The moon stared back, and Jim imagined the moon tipping a big top hat in his direction. He sat there for hours, despite the chilly wind. But soon he found it to be too cold for pajamas and a white t-shirt, so he began to head down. But, just as he was looping his leg around the branch and slowly releasing his weight, he noticed two people through a window across the street. They were in a nice house. It was white and looked Victorian and everything was chiseled perfectly into place. The lawn was mowed, and there were no chips in the driveway’s cement. The front of the house had gigantic windows, twice the size of Jim’s. Jim thinks giant windows make a house look important. If he could, he would live in a church where the windows are gargantuan and the glass engulfs the light, creating colored patterns on the floor and pews. He knows though that the priests would not take kindly to a man sleeping in the pews. It would cause a ruckus, especially on Sundays when the worshippers can’t find a spot to pray because all of Jim’s pillows are scattered on top of the altar. Inside the house the people were having sex. The man was enjoying it, and he was sweating and grinning. The girl looked like she was not feeling anything at all. Jim thought she looked obligated, like she had somewhere else to be, and as soon as the job was done she would leave. The man didn’t seem to notice, and if he did, Jim doubted he would mind. Jim watched them for a few minutes. The man began to turn red and speed up. He looked like a mosquito that was about to pop from drinking too much blood. Jim leaned in farther to get a better look, he wanted to see the girl’s face when they finished. He wonders if she will smile. But, Jim leaned in too far, and fell before he could see her.
As he fell, Jim reached up and latched on to something. He hung there, fifteen feet of cold musty air between him and the ground. But it was cold, and his arms grew tired faster than usual. Just as he was about to let go, his body started to slowly drift down. When he reached the floor, and the grass nestled between the crevices of his toes, he looked up. The moon, shining so brightly, had plopped itself in the middle of Jim’s front yard. Jim had done it, he had grabbed the moon. He fell down to the floor and began to ponder. At first, he remembered when he used to tell Bosley the moon was made out of cheese. So, he took a bite. It tasted terrible, like vanilla chalk. When the taste went away, Jim wondered what he was going to do with the moon in his yard. He really did not want the responsibility of taking care of it. He thought that perhaps someone more qualified, like an astronaut or a veterinarian, should have to deal with it. As he sat there thinking, and as the sun began to rise, he felt also felt a twinge of disappointment. He had thought the moon would be a lot bigger.

Clara

2009-11-16T15:31:00.000-08:00

In the beginning, there were suds. Inside the suds were all manners of miniscule creatures. There were the suds filled with the green gooey bacteria, and the suds with purple mud, and the suds with the conglomerated rainbow silt. From those suds tiny bubbles formed with larger critters and plants and objects. The fish and the birds came next. And then even larger creatures began to emerge in even larger bubbles. Soon, all manner of things sprang into existence. Mountains shook themselves out of the blankness, and gardens sprouted into space, and buildings floated into time. There was a bubble for everyone and everything, except for one small girl. And that girl, Clara, asleep for all of this creation, was just about ready to wake up.
Clara awoke to the grunt of a large red armoire. The armoire, who had spent the last three hours staring at the girl, had grown impatient and had decided to wake her up prematurely. Clara, who had spent all her years in breathless sleep, did not take kindly to the premature awakening. Actually, any awakening would have been a shock to Clara at this point, seeing as this was her first instance of consciousness. Thus, it is no wonder that Clara’s first intake of air was followed shortly by an echoing scream. This scream, however loud, was a very understandable response. After all, it is not everyday that one finds themself in the lucky situation of being wakened by a large red armoire. Still, the armoire decided that he did not like the loud noise. In order to quiet Clara, the armoire stuck one of his red stubby feet into her mouth. As one might suspect, balancing one foot in a mouth was a very difficult task for the armoire. This task, however, in no way measured up to what came next. The armoire squeezed its wood together, and a low moan of a sound emerged as the wood’s segments grinded. The door of the armoire opened slightly flashing a white light and the low moan turned into a “Shhhh.” And that is how Clara met the armoire.
Clara hated the sound of the armoire’s clunky feet. The constant clacks were enough to drive a girl mad. In an attempt to cover the sound, she had the armoire grab a variety of items from their bubbles and then she tossed them on his feet. Oddly enough, the first things they grabbed were shoes (despite the fact that they had never seen shoes before). The sound was still awful and the armoire had a very difficult time moving in heels, so she grabbed some mittens and slipped them on instead. The soft thuds that followed after were quite satisfying to Clara. She found that oven mitts made the best shoes, and she herself wore a red pair with a yellow threaded border. On a side note, Clara also found that the mitts were very good at keeping her feet toasty warm.
It was not long before Clara and the armoire became good friends. The armoire was her big woody protector, and Clara was the armoire’s child. Clara gave it a purpose in life besides the holding of old sweaters with missing buttons and ugly jackets without zippers. With Clara, he found that he did not have to always endure the taste of mothballs and dust bunnies, and could instead try out newer and tastier things (such as apples and cook books). The only damper in their relationship was the armoire’s lack of communication enabling organs. Every time he tried to say something, it ended up sounding like a swinging door or creaking window. Some might say that his speech would provide the perfect audio for a horror film. But, since neither Clara nor the armoire had ever seen a film, they took the armoire’s inability to talk as a minor inconvenience rather than a blessing. The two of them rarely argued. For one, as stated earlier, the armoire’s arguments never truly sounded right. Debating with nothing but grunts and squeaks is a difficult task. Also, neither of them really ever had anything to argue about. They did what they wanted to do, and at the time, what they wanted to do was spend time together.
The bubbles of the universe created a shiny forest through which Clara and the armoire would trot along. The different types of things found in the bubbles would often send shivers of curiosity down Clara’s spine. For instance, the funny squishy object and its many legs perplexed Clara. She wondered how it moved and what its purpose was. What were the circles on its legs? Why did it constantly try to hide? What was that weird seeping black liquid coming from its center? Questions like these prodded Clara into taking objects out of their bubble. But, taking objects out of their bubbles was a frightening notion for her. It had been the armoire that had grabbed the mittens for her, and even though the armoire was not injured by it, she had her doubts about her own entry into the bubble. For one, she did not want to pop the bubble. She also did not want to accidentally engulf herself in one. In the end, she decided that despite the risks, she could not go on living with these questions all her life. So, with the cunning of a candy thief, she reached in and snatched one of the critters. To her pleasant surprise, the bubble did not break, and she was not dragged in.
On Earth, Jared the scuba diver also got a surprise (although his was not quite as pleasant). He had been chasing an octopus for hours, and had finally cornered it into a hole with only one exit and only one entrance. There was no escape. But as he thrust his wetsuit-clad hand into the hole, he found nothing inside. He looked around the surrounding coral, but nothing was there. The octopus had simply disappeared. He waited for thirty minutes, pondering how he could have missed his prey. He decided that there was no way he could have missed it. Despite his lust for an answer as to where the octopus went, Jared decided to pack it up and head back to the boat. Jared knew that had he spent five more minutes there, he would have been out of oxygen. What Jared did not know is that had he waited those five minutes, he would have been confronted with a very nervous hand shoving a very dead octopus wearing eight very soft mittens back into the hole with only one exit and only one entrance.
Ever since the octopus accident, Clara was terrified of taking things out of their bubble. She knew it wouldn’t harm her, but what she had not thought about was what harm she could do to the objects in the bubble. She decided that taking living things out of their bubbles was a bad idea, and that she could only take things that didn’t move. Because of how badly Clara’s initial encounter with the objects in the bubbles turned out, she was now much more cautious. For instance, when taking out socks she decided to only take one of each pair. She did this because she felt that taking both socks in a pair would just be greedy. Also, she believed that had she taken a whole pair of socks, the other socks in the bubble would miss them dearly and in turn would be angry with Clara.
The day that Clara discovered the speech bubble had not been a particularly interesting one. Clara and the armoire had been walking along, like they usually do, when they came across a bubble with nothing in it. This bubble was much more interesting than any other bubbles Clara had seen. It even blew away the bubble containing bubble. As a child of adventure, Clara could not resist reaching into the emptiness. When she did, she felt a sensation in her hand she had never felt before. She felt light and heavy at the same time, and in her palm she found something powerfully tangible, yet in no way physical. Upon feeling one of the lighter substances nestle in to her palm, she flung her hand out of the bubble. The armoire, with the most concerned face he could muster, glared at Clara. Clara knew exactly what to say: “Is the Hamlet essay due on the fourteenth or the fifteenth?”
George was sick of his students. All he needed was one more dumb question to spring out of the mouth of his students before he would definitely go home and blow his own brains out. He did not think he would be able to teach his high school Shakespeare class any longer, and he was sure he was going to get fired anyway. Stress had grown fat on George’s mind, and it was slowly killing him with bad grades, angry parents, patches of baldness, and a cheating wife. It was thirty seconds until the bell when the class suck-up raised his hand. With a wavering voice, George spoke at the boy: “Yes, what is it?” The boy, squeezing and crooking his eyebrows as if to show his apparent lack of questioning prowess responded: “I can’t remember. Sorry. Just lost it.” Later that night George put the gun down for the third time that month.
One day Clara walked past a bubble full of things she could not resist. And, although the armoire pressed her to continue on, she could not help but stop. Inside the bubble, multitudes of little people wearing brightly colored dresses floated around. Some of them looked incredibly life like, and others looked like they had been strewn together with household appliances. One object in particular, a tiny figure with two button eyes, one blue and one green, caught her attention. She noticed that while all the other figures’ stringy smiles were formed into a perfect U shape, this one had a straight line. She liked the doll’s indifference. Only one thing stopped her from obtaining the doll: short arms. She could not reach the doll because it was situated directly in the middle of the bubble. She cursed her little arms as she sat waiting for the doll to bob towards her. It never did. So, like any child unable to obtain their toy, she realized that drastic measures must be taken. She also realized that she was going to need a lot of string.
She found the strings along the many edges of the many bubbles of the world. Some string she found on the ends of sticks. Unfortunately, many of the strings at the end of these sticks were covered in soap. Clara could not understand why someone would tie so much useful string to the end of a boring pole. Other strings she found quite perplexing. For instance, at one point she mistook a handful of squiggly creatures for bits of loose thread. Their slimy bodies squirmed and wormed in the palm of her hand. It was not too long before she decided that the worm-like creatures would not work very well as string. Soon after the earthworms, Clara grabbed a pile of pasta. She found the noodles to be too soft, and concluded that they were much too fragile for her purposes. In the end, she took some shoelace, some coarse hair from ugly wigs, and some loose cables from the computer bubble. To tie these all together she used a loose thread from a cashmere argyle sweater. She initially had just meant to take a small amount of string from the sweater, but when she pulled the string the entire sweater unraveled.
You can imagine the surprise on Anne’s face when her entire sweater disappeared off her body. She was especially furious because this sweater had been her favorite. Her soon to be ex-boyfriend had given it to her as a gift. She was planning on wearing the sweater out to a date with him, but instead ended up wearing a hideous orange sweater. Later, while at their date, her boyfriend asked why she was not wearing it. She said with the face of a person realizing how dreadfully stupid their own excuse is, “The sweater simply disappeared off my body.” He, of course, accused her of lying and used her deceit as an excuse to break up with her. She, of course, blamed the failed relationship on the disappearing sweater. The ex-boyfriend, however, blamed the failed relationship on Anne’s failure to put out.
All throughout Anne’s misery infested breakup on Earth, Clara sat cross-legged tying different sorts of string together. The sweat of her excitement made it difficult to tie the strings together. She could not wait to get her hands on the doll, and no amount of danger was going to stop her. The armoire, feeling rather useless, attempted to help her make the ropes, but his lack of fingers made his help futile. All the same, he did manage to accidentally create a beautiful cat’s cradle. When the assortment of strings were tied together to the best of Clara’s abilities, phase one of her plan was put into action. She looped the mismatched string around her waist, and then placed the other end in the armoire’s mouth. She was ready to bubble dive.
Adam was afraid of the boogeyman, which he suspected had been hiding in his room. Unbeknownst to Adam, the boogeyman did not live in his closet. In fact, the boogeyman lived on Fourth and Ultem in a small Canadian neighborhood. Most of the boogeyman’s neighbors thought the boogeyman was a pedophile, and so the boogeyman was on police watch. What Adam did see the night he heard the rumbling in his closet, and the night he walked to the closet’s door, and the night he opened the closet’s door, and the night he had his sock wrenched from his foot, was an armoire. The sight of what Adam thought was the boogeyman made it very difficult for him to sleep at night. So, like most children unable to obtain peace of mind, Adam decided drastic measures must be taken. He also realized he would need a lot of string.
The reason for the string was so that Adam could lay a trap. Although he was afraid, Adam resolved that no one but his mother was allowed to take his socks from him. So, he laid out his string trap inside the closet, set out his sister’s doll so as to lure the boogeyman in, and waited in his bed with a baseball bat in one hand and the string in the other. One might think that Adam’s parents would have been concerned with the fact that their son was going to bed with a baseball bat, but they actually were quite proud. They thought that their son was finally gaining some friends. They thought that when Adam asked them to buy him a baseball bat, he was going to use it to hit a waffle ball back and forth. They thought that afterwards, when he had made some good friends, he and his friends would form a club, perhaps sell some lemonade, and later become successful lawyers. In actuality, Adam was going to use the bat to club him a monster.
Clara found her fear of jumping into the bubble a formidable opponent. But, after a few minutes of failing to coax the armoire to go in her stead, she took the plunge. Adam’s eyes had begun to droop down into their sockets. Every few minutes his head would slope down to his chest, and directly following it would jerk right back up again. He was sleepy, and there was no use in denying it. Just as Adam had slipped out of consciousness, Clara appeared in his bedroom. Unlike Adam, she was wide-awake. Despite her desire to explore the new world she had just entered, Clara knew she should only stay for a few moments. Her eyes scampered around the room. Articles of cloth lay scattered across the floor, shoes and toys cradled in corners, and on top of a purple box directly in the center of the room lay the doll with the neutral smile. Clara took a slow and calculated step forward. As she moved forward, her ears and nostrils, sensing the severity of the situation, shut themselves up. The world and everything, besides the doll, was dulled. Just as her hand was about to reach the doll, her foot became hooked on Adam’s trap.
As she fell, Clara’s senses came back to her. They rushed and flung themselves into the world like an orchestrated symphony with bladder problems. Before she hit the floor, she smelled the dust of the carpet. Before she hit the floor, she heard the twang of a tightened string. Before she hit the floor, she grabbed the doll and spotted the stupefied boy running towards her. The instant before she hit the floor, she felt the deepest and most dreadful regret she had ever felt. And then, the room’s emaciated light went dark.
The moment the string flew free of his grasp, Adam’s sleep leapt from the crooks of his eyes and vaulted out of the cavities of his bones. He instinctively jumped out of bed and snatched at the string. Unable to grasp the tiny threads, he instead went for the girl that was now clutching his sister’s doll. Unfortunately for Adam, the quickness of all the excitement and the darkness of the room caught up to him. As he ran towards Clara, his foot pricked the edge of the purple box and he fell forward on top of Clara, his head crashing to the carpet. The last thing he remembered on Earth was a strong tug and a woody grunt.
The armoire, who had never been a patient piece of furniture, had promptly pulled Clara in the second he felt a hint of pressure on the other end of the string. As the armoire tugged Clara in, he came to the realization that his little companion had returned home with a bit of extra weight. This came increasingly more apparent to him when Adam’s full body emerged from the bubble and onto the floor. At this time, had the armoire been born with a set of vocal organs, one might have heard a variety of noises ranging from a whimper to a howl. But, since the armoire had no way to produce sound, he instead stood there and felt what only could be described as a pure and complete sense of astonishment. After only a few moments of thought, the big red impatient armoire asserted that this time, he was going to let the little ones sleep.

Normandy the Racing Turtle

2009-09-16T12:34:00.001-07:00

Normandy looked over to me with his slimy, sad eyeballs, “I am not sure I can go much faster.”
“You’ll have to try Normandy if you want to win this race.” Normandy nodded and slumped down to the floor, gritted his lips together, and took off one foot at a time. It was painful to watch him crawl across the floor. He reminded me of an old man limping towards the end with a giant pair of scissors ready to cut his own life in half. “I am really trying boss, but my legs just don’t work like they used to.” I laughed and prodded one of his little green legs with a stick, “You act as if you were ever fast.”
“I was fast boss, in my past life. I’ll show you.” Normandy’s pace quickened, and droplets of green liquid (of which I could only hope was sweat) began to waterfall down the side of his body. He flew down the raceway like a very fast snail in a snowstorm. “Don’t kill yourself Normandy. I wouldn’t want to have to train me another turtle.” Despite my warning, Normandy kept up his pace. It looked like he was going to finish, and with record time, so I continued to push him. “Go Normandy, you can do it!” I poked him with the stick again and his pace quickened to two feet a minute. He was going to make it. Or so I thought. A foot away from the finish line, his legs keeled out from under him. While lying there, his neck leaned forward and stretched out. Even though he could not move, he still continued trying to complete the last few inches. I threw my stick down and ran to his side. “Normandy, Normandy! Stop! Don’t worry about the race, just stop!”
“Gotta finish boss.”
“No Normandy, it’s okay! You’re done Normandy.”
“I win boss?”
“Yea Normandy, you won.”

I Dislike Matt

2009-09-16T12:33:00.000-07:00

I dislike Matt because he is big, smelly, and eats all my applesauce. Not that I particularly like applesauce, but it is the only thing I can afford. So, you can understand how upsetting it is for me when I walk into my kitchen to find Matt sprawled out on the floor, belly plopping out of his shirt, lying in puddles of mildly yellow applesauce. Matt has no shins or ankles. Instead, he has two long kneecaps surrounded by gallons of mush. When he walks, which is rare, one can easily spot two elongated slabs of flesh underneath his arms. They dangle. If you have never seen a slab of arm flab dangle from a very fat man before, then try picturing two elephant ears made of smelly, sweaty Jello slapping against a manatee with very long knees. Matt’s only redeemable quality is his ability to form his body into a large raft, complete with motor, paddles, and carpet.
We met solely because I needed a roommate and a heater. He happened to be able to supply both. Granted, his form of heat does not involve the use of a heater, stove, or fireplace, it still works. And, whenever it gets too hot, I just have him go outside. We are currently experimenting on how to adjust temperatures by placing him in numerous poses. We found that a meditative pose gives us a consistent 75 degree room temperature, whereas a squat pushes 80 degrees.
Matt talks more in his sleep than he does in real life. He often talks of dancing popsicles and quarantined meatloaf. Sometimes he gets angry and cries out about how his steak isn’t medium rare, or about how he can’t stop eating, or about his mom. But, when Matt is awake, he talks of happy things like lambs with wings and pleasant pickles and curious corn.
One Tuesday, I decided to come home early from a trip to my parent’s house to check on Matt. I wanted to make sure he had not eaten everything. It was a hot day. The air was potent with polluted gases, the clouds were trying to sprinkle sweat but failing, the birds were trying to sing but croaking, the television was on but muted, and Matt was crying. “NO I DO NOT WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT,” he says to me as he pushes me out of his room. But he does talk about it, in his dreams. That night his sleep is upset. I hear him through our papery walls. They are so thin I think I can see his voice. The words slip and fall in front of me like a lost child in the woods. They search for his mom, but they won’t find her because she is dead.
The next day, I sit down with him at the kitchen table. My chair squeaks and I laugh and he is silent. My laughing turns to a chuckle, and then to a snicker, and then to a mumble, and then to a frown. Then he talks. He tells me everything. His mom had died, and she had been beautiful and big. And she told him, every day, how beautiful and big he was. The furniture leans in and the room gets smaller as he tells me this. They are listening to him and so am I and we are all ashamed. In a small, pathetic compartment of my mind, I am jealous. He loved his mom enough to not care what anyone else thinks, but I do not love anything with as much fervor.
The next day Matt moves out, and the refrigerator and the cabinets follow closely behind. Now, I dislike Matt because he is big, smelly, and makes me feel bad about my life. Not that I particularly dislike my life, but it is my only weight in this world and it in no way measures up to Matt’s. No matter how hard I try, I will never care about something as much as he does.

Lester the Pyro

2009-09-02T17:30:00.000-07:00

Lester lights fires four, maybe five times a week. The fires aren’t usually large, but they aren’t small either. The size of the fire usually depends on the fuel. For instance, sometimes Lester will head down to the town’s small convenience store and buy some of the dollar wooden airplanes and burn those. They give off a much lighter heat than real logs. Also, the flames are much friendlier. They zoom around and soar through the air currents like jet planes at a show. Other times, Lester will ask for “the good stuff” and James, the cross-eyed store keep, will hand him a canister of French marinated coconut seeds. Lester knows that the seeds aren’t really coconut, but whatever they are they sure do burn well. Supposedly the seeds are also very good for your skin. Lester’s skin is very callused and charred, so maybe he ought to use some. One time Lester found a bucket full of random scraps of wood, and thin metal sheets, and various toys. He poured in some lighter fluid, the expensive kind, and tossed in a match. He watched the toy’s heads melt off and grinned at the bubbling mess. Eventually, the smoke turned black and attacked his eyes so he had to run away. Lester told everyone that he knew nothing about the fire (even though he knew that the fire was, in fact, a dark and malicious one). Wood fires are usually very talkative, but they never say anything important.
The fire will gesture towards Lester with multiple long orange arms, “Hey Lester, how is it going? Mighty good weather today isn’t it? How are you doing? So, what do you do?” Lester can get this type of conversation from anyone, and so he only lights these when he is feeling exceptionally bored, and exceptionally lonely. The good fires, however, are wise and know not to waste time. Some talk of philosophy, some talk of math, some of science, and others speak of giant black fire pits. Others speak of God and the sun. Some talk of the glory days when the world was still a burning pit and lava gorged itself on surface.
Lester’s parents dislike him. They think he is crazy, a pyromaniac, and they wish that they had not brought him into the world. They tell him they love him, but Lester knows better. He knows how much of a burden he is to them. Often times he contemplates burning him self and returning to ash, but he is afraid of being smothered in dirt. One day, after he scorched the patio, they yell at him:
“Oh Lester, sweet Lester, why do you smoke up the house? Why do you burn away your dreams and your hopes and your possible life?”
And Lester replies with:
“Have you ever lit a particularly rotten piece of wood on fire? It is magnificent.”

Birthday Celebration

2009-09-01T15:00:00.001-07:00

My son’s birthday was celebrated with a shuddering multitude of fireworks. Blue fireworks, red fireworks, yellow fireworks, fireworks of all colors. Big ones and small ones and round ones and flat ones. Ones that crawl and moan on the floor. Ones that scream as they rise into the darkness of the nights. Ones that twirl and fizzle and shoot dust into unsuspecting peoples’ faces. Ones that dislike people and spit on them with their red ashy tongues. The small fireworks squirm on the ground like melting tad poles. They watch their mothers and fathers burst forth into the sky up and up until they die. The young ones, unable to bear the loss of their short lived families, squeeze their cardboard lips and attempt to cry but their tears dry up in the vortex of their own flames. The fireworks continued their draconic banquet for three days. The town cheered up until the fourth day, when the fireworks broke free of their flights and began to reign down their ash and embers onto the dry and crippled town. Before his birth, the town celebrated my son as their savior and deliverer. His birth was to be a wondrous omen. But through their gluttonous celebration a hell awoke. Something about the fire and the orange glow in the sky turned the people of the town into emaciated demons. Their hearts began to turn into a bubbling goop, and the beats were shut out. The souls of the hearts, unable to bear the transformation, protested with strong beats. Eventually, the hearts’ strong beats became soft drumming taps and then nothing. The heartless town, asleep yet awake turned to their former deliverer as their homes burned. They felt he had deceived them. The boy, knowing nothing of the trouble he had caused through his birth, clutched firmly to my robe as we fled through the streets away from the villagers.

Escape of the Furniture

2009-09-01T14:58:00.000-07:00

My furniture ran out on me. It left home quickly and quietly in the middle of the night. The sofa snuck out of the window, down the walnut tree, and out of town. The armoire, who was rather tall, could not fit through any of the house’s orifices. To escape, the giant red hunk of wood leaned awkwardly to the side and slid through the front door, scraping his skin as he squeezed through. The television easily marched outside, dragging his happy plug behind him. The toaster, the blender, the stove, and the rest of the kitchen utensils swallowed their last crumbs and fled through the garbage disposal one part at a time. My computer, much in the same fashion, flushed itself out one piece of data at a time. The cupboards, refrigerator, and other containers of the house spit out their contents and paraded into the night. Very soon everything was gone. Everything except my bed, which still lay underneath me pondering its escape and sweating drops of sap through its tight wood. After many elongated ticks from the clock hiding outside, the bed knew what to do. He decided that the only way for him to make it out, was to rush out as quickly as possible. It counted, “3… 2… 1…” And then, without hesitation, made a break for it. The sudden drop to the floor woke me up, and as I saw my bed squeezing out through my door I screamed. Not knowing what to do, I snatched up my baseball bat and yelled towards the invisible intruder to put my bed down and leave. My sudden orders startled the bed and instead of stopping, it plopped out of the doorway and fumbled down the stairwell. Limping, it made it out the door and down the street. I chased my bed for half a block, half naked and very cold. As I ran I thought to myself, “what am I going to tell mom and dad?”

Scarecrow

2009-06-04T22:52:00.001-07:00

Simon bawled furiously after spying what was left of his miniature sunflower patch. “Looks like the little critters got to your flowers again, eh Simon?”
Simon spun around to face his good friend James. He did not say anything, his sad eyes told the tale.
“Well Simon, don’t worry about it. We’ll just replant them. “
James was a man of medium stature, with dirt caked cheeks and a crumply nose. His chin was jagged, and his cheeks were square. His dusty brows poured themselves on to his nose. On top of his head, he wore a brown cap and underneath the cap grew short white wired hair. His eyes, unlike the rest of his body, were soft and blue like the sky. When Simon looked into James’ eyes, he felt sleepy and awake at the same time; they were pillows that Simon wanted more to talk to then to sleep on.
“Beautiful day, isn’t it? Good day for planting.”
James slowly crouched on to his knees and began to scrape out the old sunflowers. He stopped at a single sunflower, one that was undamaged by the animal attack.
“Looks like Suzy here survived. Pretty thing is a fighter. Only one petal missing.”
The night before, when the animals came to feast on her family, Suzy bravely fought them off. Alas, she was no match for the giant raccoon and despite her plant prowess, she could not save them. She lost an arm in the battle.
“Yep, beautiful day.”
Simon gazed off into the sky, and back at James’ house. The house was small and its exterior screamed of decay. The porch walked from the doorstep onto the dirt surrounding the house. On top of the porch a swing sat. James never used the swing. Simon wanted to, but he was afraid James would get angry if he used it.
James sighed, “I am getting a little too old for this. My legs don’t bend like they used to. Still, I don’t know what I would without our garden, Simon.”
Simon nodded in agreement. As much as he hated to admit it, James was getting older. Soon, James would only be able to plant four rows of plants, instead of eight. And after that, two rows. And after that, one row. And after that, nothing. But Simon did not like to think about the days when he would no longer be needed to protect the plants.
When James finished planting the new seeds, he stood up and began to search around the patch of garden dirt. “Now, lets see how they got in this time.”
James walked over to the fence and noticed a small hole underneath it. It was a small tunnel, big enough only for a small raccoon, rabbit, or mouse to fit through. “Here is our culprit. Looks like they got through the fence here. You see it Simon?” Simon was facing the other way and so he did not hear. James shouted, “Simon, you see it?”
Still no response. James walked over to Simon and put his arm on his shoulder. “You see it, eh Simon? The hole? That’s where they got through.” James turned Simon towards the hole. Simon saw it and nodded absentmindedly. His mind was on other things. Simon knew that if James’ plants did not grow, James would not be able to sell them at the market. He would lose his house. The house him and Molly grew up in.
It was a hot summer, about thirty years ago, when Simon first met Molly and James. James was younger then. He had brown hair, his chin was rugged instead of ragged, and his face was less dusty. His eyes were still magnificent. Molly fell in love with James for his eyes. Molly was perfect. She reminded Simon of white daisies that have just been watered. Perhaps that’s why he liked her. Her face smiled even when she was angry, and her elbows and knees and ankles and feet loved to dance as she talked. Molly used to sit with Simon in the garden and talk with him. She told him how sunflowers should be fed, and how petunias should be watered, and how James likes his back rubbed.
Molly died ten years ago. She got cancer. Simon knew Molly did not like to wear sun block. She wanted all the sun to herself. He wanted to tell her, “I told you so. I told you to protect yourself.” But, it wasn’t skin cancer. It was breast cancer. James and Simon urged Molly to get treatment. She did not want to. She did not want to remove anything from her body. She felt everything should grow, good or bad. Her funeral was held in a lovely park, with beautiful trees, and wonderful roses. Simon wished he could have been there, but his job was in the garden. Before James left, Simon helped him gather the flowers to put on her grave. They were beautiful; white daisies.
James stopped planting anything but sunflowers after Molly died. Miniature sunflowers. That is part of the reason why they are so hard to protect. Simon wished he could take better care of the flowers, but he just can’t see well in the dark. Still, Simon knew he had to change his act. He knew James’ garden couldn’t survive another attack. So, he prepared. He knew it wouldn’t take long for the little plants to sprout. And thus, it wouldn’t take long for the critters to attack again. The animals loved it when the plants were small. They loved the babies and their soft mushy roots.
Simon did not prepare like most would. He did not work out. He did not punch bags. He did not rub grease under his eyes. He did not have a montage. Instead, he gritted his teeth, and practiced his scowl. He had to be terrifying. He had to consume courage, and belch fear. He had to save them. So, he began to collect things to help him achieve this. He tied a rake to his arms, making his hands look like claws. He used black string on his head to give himself scary hair. Lastly, he borrowed James’ hat. James’ hat was not particularly menacing, but Simon wore it in a very horrific manner: at a slight angle with the tip flipped up. By the end of the day, before night came, before the animals would arrive, Simon was feeling very scary.
They came when the sun tripped and fell over the mountain. First, the squirrels. Fences were no match for their cunning. Up and up they clambered into the tallest of the trees and branches above. For a moment, Simon lost sight of them. And then, from the tall branches they leapt into the garden. One flew directly at Simon, but Simon was ready. Simon swung his claws at the squirrel and clipped his right arm. The squirrel was flung clumsily to the ground. Once on the ground, it tried to get up but collapsed under its mutilated arm. He sat there for a moment and shivered and shook. Then it died. Simon turned to the other squirrels and growled at them. The squirrels, terrified, ran up the fence and darted into the forest’s darkness.
The next animals to venture forward were the possums. They did not last long against Simon’s mighty rage. One, however, did manage to deal a blow to Simon’s leg, a dastardly wound, before falling dead on the floor from internal bleeding. Splinters flew everywhere as Simon’s leg croaked under his weight. After the possums, the mice came. Hundreds of mice swarmed Simon’s body. They began to chew on his clothing and his tightly tied skin. Holes chewed their way through his exterior. Simon swung violently at them, but could not dampen their numbers. Fortunately for the sunflowers, the mice were satisfied with eating Simon. After about an hour of struggle, the mice crept away, and Simon began to hunch.
The last animal to come that night was the most dangerous of all: the monstrous raccoon. The animals called the coon Carl the carnivore. Carl did not show up that night to feast on plants. He showed up because he heard there was a resistance. Carl liked a good fight, and he knew the night garden would give him one. He could smell it in the air. The fear. Carl’s smile was filled with fleshy gums and fragmented teeth. Embedded in his teeth one could find a variety of snacks ranging from frog legs to deer horns. Farther in his body grew a mushy pile of bones and bile. In a few weeks, this pile would have killed Carl. But at the time, it just made him angry.
Simon hunched in front of the beast, unable to move. It seemed as if his fight might be over for the night. Carl would not stand for this. Seeing the lurched and pained Simon made Carl even angrier. He came for a fight. In retaliation, he walked over to the nearest plant and began to tear away its flesh, petal by petal. Simon’s face lifted slightly, and looked below the rim of his sad, torn, and shattered hat. His heartless body could not digest the horror he witnessed. The screams of the little plant echoed in his eardrums and shook loose the dirt from his brain. Carl continued. Another petal. Simon screamed and began to lift his broken leg. Carl smiled. Another petal. Simon tore his other leg from the dirt, etching his way forward. Another petal. Simon was up now. He had not moved from that spot since the day he was born, but he moved for this. And, before another petal could be torn, Simon was on Carl.
The initial shock of Simon’s movement and the savageness of Simon’s rage put Carl at a disadvantage. He expected a tough fight, but nothing that could conceivably bring him close to death. The moment Simon’s claw ripped into Carl’s callused paw, there was a change in Carl. He was no longer jesting, but became serious. His grimace fought just as much as his claws. Soon, one of Simon’s arms lay on the ground, popping back and forth like a worm. Simon’s loss put Carl back into a cocky mood, and Carl ventured into a leap towards Simon. He was too late to notice one of Simon’s rakes swinging towards his face. One of the rake’s prongs hooked into Carl’s eyes and Simon swung Carl around and sent him flying into a fence post. Carl tried to limp away underneath the hole, but Simon caught him before he could get away and tore apart his body, limb by limb. The fight was over.
The next day James was shocked to find his garden in such disarray. There were dead critters everywhere, and no Simon to be found. He was just as amazed to find that all of his plants were unharmed. He did not know what to do. He wanted to call the police, but what would they care if Simon was missing? Instead, he began to clean up the bodies. He picked up each carcass, one by one, gently placing them in a black garbage bag. When he was done, he turned to the house to go sit down and take a breath. Half way through the door, he heard a small whimper. He turned towards it, hoping he would not have to finish off one of the half dead critters. Instead, he found Simon, covered in blood, straw, and scraps of fur. Simon sat huddled in the swing, and in his arms were the remnants of the mauled plant. A white daisy.

Gerble

2009-05-31T22:25:00.000-07:00

Gerble leaned back and touched his soft cushiony foot. Five patches, he thought. Five patches, one button, two beads, and a pair of glasses. The others around him had not yet started to wake up. This relieved him. He was not quite ready to deal with their initial shock and screams yet. His own had been traumatizing enough. Gerble reached into the pocket sewn onto his side and pulled out a pair of square, black framed glasses. He sat up and began to blow on them. He then wiped them on his chest and glared at their clear plastic frame. Satisfied, Gerble tossed the fake glasses on to his face. Stylish, he thought, but not necessary. He could see perfectly fine without them. He tossed the glasses aside, hunched his frame against a wall, and waited for the others.
Hours passed and they never woke up. Gerble walked over to a pink one and slapped it across the face. Nothing. He picked up a stick and walked through the rows of them, prodding each one as he passed. Nothing. Not a movement. None of the other critters like him had woken up, or would wake up. Gerble was alone. Like any normal creature that has just found themselves to be completely alone in the world, he panicked. Gerble did not think he was very interesting, and so was a bit worried about how he was going to spend the rest of his time by himself. He had a good reason to be worried because Gerble was, in fact, not very interesting and the events of his life showed it. He sat on the counter and walked, and paced, and sat some more. His most interesting feat was a back flip, of which he could only do three times before something inside him snapped. He did not like back flips anyways. For him, there was no pondering of life. There was no love or relationships, except for the occasional fondling of one of the motionless dolls. There was no sense of fear, or doubt. To him, everything was always fuzzy.
After about a year, Gerble began to die. He walked slowly. His eyes no longer blinked. Some of his stitches were torn or completely gone. Gerble knew his end was coming. After all, he had seen his own expiration date. So he prepared. He left notes, and signs, and hints of his existence. One note said: “Hello, my name is Gerble!” Another said, “Come and play with me!” Another said, “Try squeezing my foot!” The last one said, “I am lonely. Please love me!” When it was time, Gerble hobbled over to the spot he had woken up in. He picked up his glasses, now covered in dust. He blew on them. He wiped them on his chest and inspected them. Satisfied, he placed them on his face, just above his button nose. He began to close his eyes, notch by notch. He was afraid to die, and so he took it slowly. Before he could finish closing his eyes, Gerble expired. There he lay, by the other dolls, with a sleepy gaze underneath black framed glasses.
A week later, Gerble was bought at a discount store, at a discount price, by a mother and her son. “Why is he lonely?” the little boy asked motioning towards the last of Gerble’s tags. The mother looked at the note, and back at her son. “Because you haven’t given him a hug yet! Try giving him a hug and maybe he will come to life!” The boy squeezed Gerble’s stomach, but nothing happened. Gerble was broken. The boy threw a fit about buying a broken toy, but the mother was enchanted by Gerble’s sleepy eyes and goofy glasses. She loved his five patches, one button, and two beads. So, she bought him. She meant to fix him up for her daughter. To give it to her as a gift. To sew his torn stitching, and to fix his back flip and broken eyes. She meant to love him. But she did not. She was a busy woman, and did not have time to fix broken toys, no matter how cute. And so, Gerble now sits quietly underneath an army of little green men, and broken dolls, and old action figures, and miniature cars, and other sorts of things that are lost from the rest of the world.

Miniscula and the Smell

2009-05-19T22:33:00.000-07:00

Mr. Friendly carries on top of his head the most brilliant hair. It is brown like freshly stained wood, and it flows and curls like fancy cake frosting. It makes all the ladies swoon… from far away. In close range Mr. Friendly is a volatile nose bomb. He smells REALLY bad, and when those women get close, they shudder instead of swoon. Oddly enough, despite his smell Mr. Friendly is very hygienic. He bathes three and a half times a day. He brushes his teeth for at least nine minutes every morning and every night. He puts on deodorant once when he wakes up, and again in the mid afternoon. His clothes are run through the wash every two days. He wears the most wondrous of colognes, subtle, not strong, the perfect balance. And, he is not particularly gaseous. But still, he smells like a wildebeest bathing in hot, steamy manure. What, you might ask, did Mr. Friendly do to deserve the horridly raunchy smell? This, dear readers, is that story.
Voz was not born on Earth, he was born on a planet that orbits the top right corner of the universe known as Plop. Universe Plop is full of a plethora of races. There are the Earblers who roam around the dusky and musky corners of planet Kigler. They are a cute species, known for their enormous ears and uncanny tempers. On the same planet one can also find the Okes, the pig people, the Glingers, which look like pandas without skin, and the Yunies. The Yunies are a proud race of rodents. They look like ordinary Earth mice, except their tails are in their mouths, and their tongues are on their butt. They are an unhappy race, cursed with bad taste, but blessed with long life. There are many other planets with many other species that live in Universe Plop, but I will not mention them as they are going to be dead soon anyways. Voz, a member of the squid species Smargleplesh, lived on the much smaller sister planet of Kigler. The sister planet, aptly named Miniscula, was a very small planet. If you were to measure it with a mucus scope, it would be about the size of a quarter sniff of mint. This is equivalent to 1 millionth of a nanometer on the metric scale. Thus, it is no wonder that not many noticed the disappearance of Miniscula.
Voz did notice. He is not particularly observant, but it is hard to not notice an entire planet missing from under one’s feet. Being the sole occupant of Miniscula, Voz decided it was his duty to investigate the planet’s disappearance. And so his journey began. He searched many places. He searched the scorching desert plains of the planet Burnea. There, he found nothing but sunburn. He searched the water planet of Soakatron five. There, he found a few fish and a boot. He searched the alien mafia planet where they offered him a job as a parasitic killer. He searched the planet of the giant vegetables, and came out with nothing but a full stomach. He found nothing anywhere. No matter whom he asked, no one knew what had happened to his tiny planet. Some did not even believe it existed. Instead, as his quiet voice whispered in their ear, they thought they were going insane.
Meanwhile, Mr. Friendly was doing some searching of his own. You see, Mr. Friendly had recently been fired from his job. You see, on Earth it is not very wise to call your boss’ wife and daughter hot in the same sentence. Thus, Mr. Friendly was stuck searching for a job, a soul mate, and a life. He became fatter at first, eating when he was bored. He read free newspapers. He ate off free newspapers. He sat along long, hot sidewalks. As his money ran out, his fatty life declined and he became skinnier and skinnier. He lost his car, and so he had to walk everywhere. Mr. Friendly began to grow into better shape from all the walking, and became more attractive to more and more women. Things finally seemed to be looking up again.
For Voz, nothing was going well. He had traveled to so many planets and he begun to ponder whether it was worth it or not to continue his sad little search. His feet were tired, all twelve of them, his minds were sore, and his splazmobladder was running on empty. Granted, he had a good time at many of the places he had visited (aside from the anteater like colony where all they did was try to eat him). Still, he needed some place that felt like home. So, Voz continued to float along from planet to planet, from universe to universe, and from species to species.
Mr. Friendly loved his new life. He got a job as a stunt man at a local movie set. There, he met many high up people with high up attitudes. He laughed and they would laugh and he would smile and they would smile and he would argue and they would cower under the might of his amazing debate skills. Most people loved him. But, some did not. For instance, Henry, who was part of stage set up, thought Mr. Friendly was a prick. So did Mr. Friendly’s current “girlfriend” who also happened to be sleeping with Henry. Mr. Friendly knew, but it did not faze him much. He, after all, had seven other “girlfriends”. Yet, he still could not help feel a little jealous.
Voz always wished for a partner of some type. Unfortunately, most species were too large for him. If they were not too large, they were definitely against interspecies mingling. Voz never met his parents, or anyone else from his species. After being expelled from planet Plop by an accidental sneeze, the only planet he ever lived on was Miniscula. Space can be a lonely place, and so Voz decided that it was not only time to find a new home, but also to find someone to join with.
Mr. Friendly’s jealousy over his girlfriend’s treachery first began to really bug him around the time that he walked in on them having sex in his own bed. Initially, he thought that it was two of his girlfriends going at it at the same time and so he was turned on. He just figured that one of them had a cold, and thus a deep voice. It turns out, it was not two of his girlfriends. There is something about seeing Henry’s hairy man butt pop out from under the blanket that got Mr. Friendly very angry, and very flaccid. Mr. Friendly found it hard not to do something about this. He took deep breaths, he tried to lie down (but they kicked him out of the bed), he sat in a chair, he even did a little Tai chi. None of these things worked. So, like any desperate human would do, he killed them and hid their bodies.
Voz had seen planets of many different colors. Reds and blues, greens and yellows, and even red-blue-green-yellows. But none quite matched the beauty of the next planet he came across. It was so intensely beautiful to him that he decided to hop down and say hello. What he did not know, is that he had landed on earth. He floated, often pushed by the wind, around peoples’ ears and skin. He would whisper hello as he buzzed by, and they would swipe at the air and make a scrunchy and uncomfortable looking face. Voz thought they were cute. But no one stopped to say hello to him. One person even coughed right into his face, blowing him a half mile down the street. Voz was so hurt by their attitudes towards him, but he loved the atmosphere of Earth and decided to put his rejection aside. He would not give up so easily. And then he saw him.
Mr. Friendly sat on a bench quietly and solemnly. As one might guess, he was a bit distraught and exhausted over the murder of his girlfriend and Henry. The murder was bugging him, but he knew he would eventually move on with his life. And then he heard him.
Voz flew swiftly and strongly towards the ear of Mr. Friendly. Unfortunately, Voz had been so anxious to meet Mr. Friendly and his beautiful hair that he forgot to stop. He made a splash as he flew into Mr. Friendly’s earwax. Mr. Friendly, feeling a tickle in his ear, attempted to clean it out. “Stop, stop, you are killing me” cried Voz as Mr. Friendly’s prodding finger jammed further and further into his ear. For a second, Mr. Friendly stopped. “Was that her? Was that my girlfriend screaming?” Mr. Friendly conjectured. He did not believe it was her. He figured he must just have been hearing things. Besides, the voice to him was so small. He continued to prod out his ear. “Stop, stop!” Again, Mr. Friendly stopped. “No, you stop!” Mr. Friendly screamed in a fit of rage.
By this time, people began to look at the crazy man fingering his ear and screaming. Undeterred by the staring crowd, Mr. Friendly continued to stab into his ear and scream. Voz was a fighter! He would not go quietly into the earwax! He fought and screamed back. But, it is hard to fight against a giant finger when one is just a tiny Smargleplesh. After an hour, the police came to pick up Mr. Friendly. But, by that time he had stopped screaming. He decided he had gone insane. “I did it, I killed them!” Mr. Friendly was done fighting with the voices. What he did not know was that the voices were also done fighting. Voz had curled himself deep inside Mr. Friendly. There, dejected from the world, he decided to make his final resting place.
Before dying, a Smargleplesh releases their eggs in a mass of black smelly goop. The eggs split into a million children. This is exactly what Voz did. He knew that his children would hatch eventually some day. He knew that they would find their way out. And he hoped that they would continue his search for home.
Mr. Friendly, unawares of the black smelly goop inside his body, began to reek. He never could figure out why. Instead, he decided that it must be punishment for his murderous actions. Two weeks after being tossed in jail, the police finally were fed up with Mr. Friendly. They never found the bodies, and so they believed Mr. Friendly had just lied and was crazy. Because of that, and because of how badly he smelled, they released him. He is now very famous for his uncanny smell, and works for a deodorant company.
Mr. Friendly will go on living his life of atonement. But, after two years time the baby Smarglepleshes will burst forth and obliterate Mr. Friendly’s stomach. Mr. Friendly will die, and the children will emerge as green gas clouds from the holes in Mr. Friendly’s body. From there on out, their individual journeys will begin. Eventually, one of the babies will find a very tiny planet in a very tiny corner of the universe. The planet, recently discarded by a Wildersnapper who thought it was just lint from his pocket, will make the perfect home for the little Smargleplesh. On the planet, in tiny carved in words, the Smargleplesh will find the name “Miniscula”.

Sock Thief

2009-05-15T22:11:00.001-07:00

I love to steal people’s socks. Red ones and blue ones and green ones and yellow ones and ones with stripes and ones with hearts and ones with black spots. Ones in corners and ones on the steps and ones on peoples feet and ones on close lines and ones in laundry baskets. Ones with threads missing, ones with holes, ones with little separated toes, ones that do not fit, and ones that fit perfectly. Feet socks, love socks, purple socks, glove socks. I love to steal people’s socks, and after I steal them, I flip them inside out and put them back or sometimes I eat them or sometimes I put them on people’s feet when they are sleeping. Sometimes I put them in someone else’s house and they see those socks and they wonder who’s they must be, but they put them on anyways because they do not have a matching pair at the moment. I do not steal sock puppets, instead I invite them to come with me. Sometimes they do, if they hate the plays they are put in. Sometimes they don’t, because they feel obliged to stay with their creators. But when they do, we have a hell of a good time.
Together the sock puppets and I sit lazily on the couch and watch television. One day, while flipping through the channels, “Lamb Chop” came on and a riot was started. Buttons were flying everywhere as sock puppets squawked and yelled at the television. “Sell out!” the puppet with only one eye screamed. “Whore!” yelled the puppet with the pink sock in a girly voice. I yelled to quiet them down and the socks would not listen. So, I brought out the big guns. “Does somebody need to be folded and put in a drawer?” I said as I looked around at the rioting socks. All the puppets quickly quieted down except for one. The one eyed puppet glared with his single button and said to me, “Try me, asshole.”
Instantly I had my sewing needles out. I began to wrench my needle into the side of his face. He screamed in agonizing pain as the needle crossed through the edge of his lip and looped back around. I quickly silenced him by stringing his mouth shut. Red fluff slid down his eye as he tried to cry. I snatched his eye button away and flung it at the other puppets who shot back in fear. A stream of red thread flew across the floor because the eye button was still barely attached. I grinned and snatched up the string tossing it in my mouth and grinding it into a single tiny thread until it finally snapped off. With that the sock fell limp in my hand. I quietly folded it and pushed it into the drawer next to all the other sock bullies. “Anyone else?” I said softly as I stared at the cowering puppets. All at once, every single one of them wished that they had never left their silly little plays.

Smart Shoppers

2009-05-15T21:59:00.000-07:00

There were twenty-seven incidents yesterday. Many of them involved murder, but murder is boring nowadays. It is no longer a hot topic. I think it probably has to do with consumer relations. There is too much supply for the demand. The following is an example of one of those incidents involving murder:

A man leaves his house and enters his garage. He is worried about his wife whom he thinks is cheating on him with the television. Do not hate the television, he is not at fault here. In actuality it is sort of the wife’s fault for flipping through channels she has never been to before and discovering the pay per view section. But if you were to go that far, it is also somewhat the man’s fault for getting a successful job where he can pay for pay per view television. Although, if you are going to go that far, it is also his teachers fault for giving him a half-good education. And if you are going to go that far then it is his parents’ fault for also having somewhat successful jobs and educations to be able to support the rising cost of half-good educations. Or, I suppose one could blame the people who invented pay per view or the television. But that seems a bit harsh. Personally, I blame the man’s boss who installed the pay per view, and later slept with the man’s wife.

The thought of the wife’s deceit never does linger in the man’s mind very long. He likes to think that he is more than enough to satisfy his wife’s growing desires. In fact, he is not enough, which is why the television incident came up in the first place. In the garage, the man looks at a semi-brand new bike. He is proud of this bike, for him it is an illustration of his cleverness and consumer prowess. Out of all the bikes within a 50 mile radius of his house, the man believed this one had been the best deal. Yet, if you believed getting the most bang for your buck to be the best deal, then the man could have just stolen a bike.

Still in the garage, the man hops up onto the leather seat of his bike, and slowly peddles out the door. The man sighs at a dent in the middle of the garage door as he passes under it. The dent sighs back at him. It is a low and slow moan of a sigh, but the man can hear it. The man and the garage door dent share a strong relationship. The man had created the dent one day when he was peddling his old bike and the front of the bike collapsed launching the man into the door. This had been the reason for the purchase of a new bike in the first place. The man feels like a father to the dent, and the dent looks up to the man. Unfortunately for the dent, upon leaving the garage his father figure was quickly and un-efficiently murdered. Another man had caught sight of the semi-brand new bike, and thought that it might serve him a bit better than the resident of house 414. After all, the robber thought, the price of new bikes had become increasingly expensive and he wanted the most bang for his buck. Therefore, he took actions to obtain the bike. His forceful request was met with a soft whimper, a clack, and a thud. The resident was killed solely for his bike.

The murderer, who at the time was feeling rather dissatisfied with himself, needed the bike to escape a robbery he had been involved in prior to the bike incident. The robbery took place at a convenience store, which is a story even less sought after than a murder. But, for those who care, the convenience store was incident number twenty four that day. Now, back to the initial incident. The dead resident was loved by a few, but most just took a mediocre liking to him. Fourteen people will show up to his funeral (a modest number). Six of those people will be from his work. One might note that his boss will not show up. This might possibly be because the boss happened to also be the one who had showed up to “install” the dead man’s wife’s cable in the first place, or just because the boss does not like funerals. They make him sad.

The other eight people who showed up will be family. There may have been more people, but some of the distant relatives had decided not to come on account of the fact that the dead man was fairly rude to them at last year’s Christmas party. This rudeness was alcohol driven, and so those members of the family now believe the man to be a drunk. The man, in fact, was a drunk, which is also partly why his wife needs cable and the sex that comes with it in the first place. The parents of the man will also be present at the funeral. They will be slightly distraught at the fact that they have out lived their son. Although, in a way, the father of the man will feel slightly proud of himself for being so healthy at such an old age. Yet, the parents are unaware of the Christmas incident so during the funeral they will have nothing but good memories involving the man. Except for one incident when the man was very young and the parents walked in on him masturbating to fuzzy cable television. No, cable television is not the devil. The parent’s only regret will be that the man could not get more out of his half-good education.

The man’s wife should also be there. She will be wearing a black dress, which she will look incredibly mournful in (she picked it out months ago for just that purpose, which is a bit confusing to me as to why one would buy a funeral dress prior to knowing there would be a funeral). Then again, the wife does always like to be prepared. In fact, when sleeping with the man’s boss she always made sure to secure an alibi as well as a stable time gap (at least half an hour) in which to perform the deed. On her face a frown and a few tears will be present. But, during funerals one’s mind often wanders, and at some point during the priest’s readings, she will realize that she is free to explore other men and their television installation skills. At this time, a slight smile will find its way on to her face which some people will mistake as a sign of sight amusement over the dead man’s best friend’s eulogy which will contain a light hearted joke about the dead man. The mother of the man, however, knows the wife very well and will see that the smile was that of relief and not laughter. This will add a bit of confusion to her sadness, but she let her mind rest back onto her son after some seconds of thought.

Out of all the people at the funeral, some of them will cry, but others will just offer their condolences and declare how much a shame it is that innocent people die. Little do they know, the dead man is not innocent. In fact, he had totally ripped off the sales person that he had bought the bike from. Or so he thought he did. In actuality, the sales person had ripped him off by giving the man a higher price tag when the negotiations for the bike had first begun. The “innocent” murder victim had only felt bad for a few hours after “ripping off” the sales person. All the nibbles the dead man had felt from his conscience had been quickly removed as soon as he thought to himself, “they pay the workers here too much anyways, and besides, these bikes are overpriced.” However, according to that reasoning, all bikes the man had seen in the past couple months were over priced because he had decided this store sold the cheapest bikes. In MY opinion, all the bikes ARE overpriced. You can blame cable television for this if you like, although it probably has more to do with the rising cost of half-good educations in the country.

But, bike owners have to make a living too so that their sons and daughters can grow up to be smart consumers and producers, so you cannot blame them. Those same bike shop-owning parents will raise their children more protectively because, as stated earlier, the rise in supply of murder has steadily been rising. They hope that in the end, their sons and daughters will not become just another incident, but instead good consumers who live successful lives without cable television or cheating wife-husbands. They also hope that their children might realize that the payoff of stealing and murdering is not worth the negative possible outcomes. Although, the murderer from the previous incident did get away. And, aside from a few unhappy days on which he despises his every being, he now lives a good life. He initially had felt more than just nibbles from his conscience about killing the resident of 414. However, soon after the incident the murderer thought to himself, “this man probably gets paid too much anyways, and besides, he has cable television and an expensive bike he probably doesn’t deserve.” After that, only a few twinges of guilt were felt by the murderer. On Tuesdays, the murderer likes to ride his bike through the park.

The murderer picks a specific park on Thirteenth Street because all the park furniture there is very old and very wise. Specifically, the murderer enjoys the company of the park bench in the far left corner of the park. He chose this park bench because after seeing the bench’s graffiti’d and carved top he immediately knew it had seen many a hard day and thus it would not judge him. Also, he notices the shackle on the park bench’s leg which bolts it to the ground, and so he knows that the park bench will not run off on him. Together the man and the park bench reminisce about their troubled pasts. One day the man asked the park bench why he let so many people sit on him. The park bench being somewhat of a utilitarian responded by telling the man that although people sitting on him makes him somewhat sad and uncomfortable, it makes a lot more people happy. While the murderer had felt reluctant about talking about his terrible deed before, after the bench said this he felt safe to talk to it. He tells the bench everything; about the robbery, about the murder, about his feelings afterwards. He asks the bench if it could ever forgive him for being so horrible, and that he understands it if it can’t. The bench forgives him immediately. After years of friendship, the man politely asked if the park bench would mind if he had his son’s eighth birthday on the bench’s back. The bench quickly agrees and plans begin for the party.

The day of the party the murderer was feeling very good about his life, and the park bench was feeling very proud of his sturdy legs and their ability to hold up three gallons of punch as well as a very large cake. Little did the man know his past was about to present itself before his eyes. It is gift time. One by one the gifts are passed out to his son until none are left. Or at least he thought none were left. The last present chose to wheel itself out from behind a tree. The best present of all: a brand new bike. The son was ecstatic about his new bike, but the murderer was not. Suddenly pains of joy began to ravish the murderer’s son and suddenly pains of guilt began to stab the murderer’s soul. The revelation of the bike instantly threw the murderer into a moody state. He sat flustered on the park bench and laid his head in his arms thinking about the horrible day where he murdered the man for his bike. He wondered whether the dead man could ever have forgiven him, just as the bench had. He wondered about the man’s family and whether they were still searching for the man’s killer. They weren’t. He wondered whether the bike had a loved one that it longed for day after day. He wondered and he wondered until he heard a quick gasp from the park bench.

An ice cube was melting and sliding off the table, and as the park bench tried his best to squirm away, the murderer felt more and more distraught. It is not really the ice cubes fault; it has more to do with the fact that the son of a bitch that dropped the ice cube did not have the sense of decency to pick it up. An interesting side note, the son of a bitch just happened to be the boss of the murdered man. The boss had decided to go to the birthday party because he really loves birthday parties. They make him happy. And while the boss could have picked up the ice cube easily, he decided to let it rot in the sun. The murderer thought about whether or not the jerk knew what water can do to an old picnic bench like this. Well, it can do a lot because much of the protective paint had been chipped off the bench.

Suddenly the murderer could hear another yelp. The poor ice cube was quietly screaming in pain and anguish as the splinters of the picnic table carve grooves into its delicate, icy skin. The ice cube’s droplets begin to separate and lead meaningless and sad lives of their own. They are not screaming. Actually, at the moment they are in the process of creating names for certain parts of their anatomy. For instance, the droplet that has become exceptionally long due to the slight angle of the table has now pronounced to the others that he has a tail. The droplet is very ecstatic about his tail, and believes that only a perfect being could have given him such a perfect limb. God, he shouts, is within me and is my creator. For one second, the entire droplet race sits in awe as the idea of God gestates in their mind. However, a few moments later, the tail has separated from the body and the very same droplet exclaims to the others that he was in fact mistaken. He was mistaken about a great many things. For one, he now realizes that there very well might not be a God. He also realizes that his species reproduces by budding, and that the little bump on the front of his body was caused by a protrusion in the table, and was not actually a penis. Lastly, he realizes that he is slowly dying. In the next few moments, the droplet comes to terms with his death. At first, he is afraid. He is afraid of the fact that when he dries up, God will not be there waiting for him. He is also afraid for his children that have recently budded from him. Is he leaving them in a world where resources are soon to dry up? What is happening to his species’ watery economy? Will they be able to support themselves for the few moments before their death? No, he decides as he takes his last beautiful breath of life.

But what is this? A bright white light coming towards the droplet from the sky. It is beautiful! The intricate patterns and shapes of the bright white light shock and comfort the droplet. Suddenly, God is back in the droplet’s life and he dies satisfied. He even forgives the man who threw him on the table in the first place. Shortly following the droplet’s passing and God’s absorption style genocide, the murderer throws “God” into the trash. After wiping clear the water, the murderer decides that despite his anger, he is not going to punch the man who dropped the ice cube on the table. He decides that if the ice cube can forgive the perpetrator, then he too can forgive the ice cube dropping bastard. He also comes to the conclusion that Brawny really isn’t that strong after all and that next time he will go with Bounty.

Still at the party, the man sits on the bench and watches his son play with his new bike. He realizes that he should not be too angry about the bike. After all, it is a sign of the new life he has presented for his son. He also knows that eventually he will have to come completely in to terms with the murder he had committed. He does not think he will ever turn himself in, he has too many reasons not to, but perhaps one day he can at least tell his son the troubles of his past. He imagines they will return to the park and they will sit together on the bench. The park bench will be older, wiser, and the murderer will be older, wiser, and the son will be older, and together they will work things all out.

Unfortunately for the man, in three months time the park is being renovated for safety purposes. All the park furniture will be replaced with new furniture. The man will arrive and find no benches there and he will sit quietly instead on the top of the slide and look up at the sky. The sky will bring him little comfort. His son will sense the gravity of the situation as he sits on the swing, and he will look at the ground. The ground will give him little comfort. After some time, I imagine the silence will be broken and the murderer will tell his son about the murder. I imagine the son will walk away, and the man will sit on the swing waiting for his death at which point his son might forgive him and he might forgive himself.

The Clapper

2009-05-15T21:53:00.000-07:00

My girlfriend is a robot. I do not say that as a metaphor to describe how emotionless she is. In fact, she really just is a robot, and an emotional one at that. We met behind a shoreline coffee shop. She had rusted over from being out in the salty air too long and thus could not speak. If it weren’t for her door squeaking against the wind I never would have spotted her amongst the old thrown out blenders and coffee makers. When I approached her, I immediately knew she was a bit timid because she tried to hide behind an old piece of cardboard. The reason she was so shy, she later told me, was because she was ashamed of being so unkempt and so robotic. I told her it was okay and that while most the girls I dated weren’t robots, they were indeed messy and unkempt.
Sometimes I find dating a robot to be difficult. For instance, on our first actual date I took her out to a restaurant and ordered her a very fancy meal. Needless to say, I came home that night with two meals in my belly. I caught her that same night crying in the bathroom. She told me she was sorry that she had not told me earlier about her inability to eat food, and I told her it was okay and not to cry because it might make her rust. The same night we went out to get dessert at the gas station. I grabbed an ice cream from inside the gas station shop, and she charged up at the electric car charger. She told me she really enjoyed the chargers there because they were much stronger than the house sockets. The extra electricity really excited her system and she started to get a little bit buggy (when a robot gets drunk, it gets buggy). After finishing our dessert, we stumbled back to my apartment. My newly found robot friend was both intoxicated and intoxicating, and that night we had sex for the first time. I later felt a little bad that I might have taken advantage of her. She told me not to feel bad, and that her rational systems had been 98% functional that night.
From there we hit it off. On Tuesdays she would make me coffee and breakfast from her chest cavity, and on Fridays I often gave her a sensual back polish. She was cute and organized, even in the bedroom. Her orgasms came in bleeps not moans, and her toes would work out math problems as they curled in ecstasy. Unfortunately, she was very cold to the touch. I remember the first time I found this out, I had leapt off the bed because the cold was such a shock. To fix this she would put herself on reheat for five minutes, and when the five minutes were up the steam from our bodies would keep us warm. When we were together, the static between our bodies and souls would shoot electrons and messages to the stimulating center of our brains and central systems and all of it would explode in a large outcry and a beep. And when we were done, I would fall asleep, and she would turn on sleep mode, and we would lay there till the next morning when I would shake her screen saver away.
Her cords are often getting tangled with the other cords in the house, so on her birthday I got her the clapper to install in her house, this turned out to be a very bad idea. The reason it was so bad is because we threw her a surprise birthday party the next day and when she got home we screamed and yelled and clapped, and she fell to the floor. I ran to her side and looked around confused and horrified. The others looked down on me with faces that had no words. I thought she had had a heart attack from the surprise! I wondered whether or not robots could have heart attacks. I did not think so, but I could not take that chance on her. On the way to the mechanics her system restarted and she woke up. She asked where she was and how long she had been out. With tears streaming down my face I told her only an hour. Although I insisted we go to the mechanics, she would not let me take her. She convinced me she had felt fine and that she wanted to go home. On the way home we passed a one legged man who was singing and we slowed down to watch and listen. He had a silly hick voice and as he sang he began to pad his legs and clap his hands. Suddenly she was thrown into a relapse! This time I rushed straight to the mechanic! After 15 minutes of working on her, the mechanic came out with a stern look in his eyes. I feared for the worst. He then held out his hand which was holding a piece of paper. It was the sticker for the clapper I had bought her just a day earlier. He told me she would be fine, and that they had taken the system out. “You have a fine robot there,” he told me as he handed me a robot manual, “take better care of her next time.” Upon exiting the workshop, I promptly threw the manual away.

Crazy Bag Lady

2009-05-15T21:52:00.001-07:00

Jared and Gary live in a sad little town with a sad little history. The history is not sad as in mournful, there just is not much to it. Their lives are normal and normal is boring.

“Hey check this out,” Jared said, placing a newspaper in front of Gary who sat glumly on the couch.
“What is this?”
“Just read it”
Jared once again pushed the newspaper towards Gary and at the same time grabbed the remote and turned off the T.V.
“Besides, nothing is ever good on at this time. Not like you are missing prime television here.”
“Meh, I kind of liked the show I was watching. It was one of those survivor type shows.”
“Oh come on, you know those shows are crap. Not only are there like fifty of them running now, I heard they also don’t even go all out survival on them.”
“What do you mean?” Gary looked down at the newspaper, and then looked back to toward Jared.
“Well, like I heard one of them survivor guys stayed in a hotel and has his crew help him with certain things like making rope and shit.”
There was a brief moment of silence as Jared thought about one of the shows where the survivor man had strung together a 30 ft. rope in less than a day.
“So, what has gotten you so uppity in this newspaper here? Looks like the same usual crap to me.”
“Turn to the third page.”
Gary turned to the third page of his town’s sad little newspaper. From the expression on his face prior to reading, one could tell that he was not expecting much.
“Holy shit, crazy bag lady?”
“Yea its fucking crazy.”
“How did it happen?”
“Dunno, I guess she was a schizo or something like that and she stopped taking her medication.”
“But it says here she died of natural causes.”
“Sure, I guess if falling off a building is natural… although I suppose she did land in a tree.”
“Fucking newspapers man, always changing the story.” Gary looked down at the newspaper and pushed it forward onto the table.
“Yea I know. Still, its pretty crazy. Bag lady. She has been around since we were kids.”
“Yea, remember all those times she tried to offer us food? Shit could have been poisoned.”
“Hah, I heard Greg tried one of her pomegranates once and got sick.”
“One of her pomegranates eh?” Gary said as he raised one of his eyebrows.
“Oh you sick fuck, not like that. Didn’t she try to give you spaghetti once?”
“Yea, she was a crazy one. Spaghetti looked damn good though until it jumped off the plate and ran into the sewer. As much as I like rats… ”
“I wonder if they will have a funeral service for her. I doubt she has any family.”

In fact, crazy bag lady really did have no family. She, however, did have many bags. Big bags, little bags, bags of all colors. She had at least fifteen bags on her at all times. Often three or four back packs, a couple small handbags, a roller backpack, a suitcase, and any other little accessory bags she could fit on her body. But, all her bags were empty.

Jared stared at the remote, and then back at the newspaper. “I hope they have a funeral for her. She was kind of like a city land mark I guess.”
“Yea. Remember that time she built that pyramid outside the library?”
“Oh shit yea! That thing was huge. The cops had to take it down and drag her off. There must have been like thirty bags in it.”
“Yea. Wonder how she got them all over there.”
“Dunno, she did get pretty good at carrying them though.”

Crazy bag lady, Elena, was actually very talented. Her bags were even more talented. They could collapse at will, dance along a string, ride a tricycle, prepare breakfast, and sing to birds. The truth is Elena did not have to carry her bags around. In fact, often when people were not looking, the bags carried her around. She was a mother to the bags. She watched over them, patched them up, and spent every moment of her life with them.

Gary was a bit sad at the prospect of never seeing crazy bag lady again. If she did have a funeral, he thought he might watch her from afar. He would ask Jared to come with him, and Jared would feel a bit odd about his friend’s sudden compassion and would quietly, but humbly decline.

“Yea.” Jared was looking a bit uncomfortable at the situation. Also, being confronted with death is always hard to grasp. Especially when it happens so suddenly and forwardly.
“Anyways, toss me the remote I want to finish my show.” Gary tossed Jared the remote and Jared turned the television back on.
It was the same show as before. At the moment, one of the grizzle bearded survivor men was climbing down a mountain with state of the art equipment. Along his side was a scruffy looking guide.
“Told you that show is fake. I bet that little guy does all the work for him. Plus, the way the cameras are angled, it is obvious that this whole thing is a set up.”
“Yea, you are probably right. Hey, I wonder what they will do with all her bags,” Gary asked with a lighthearted grin.
“Good question. They will probably just toss them or something.”
“Yea probably.”

Elena’s bags spread out after her sudden death. A few of them did make their way to the dump after being tossed. There they sit in the pleasure and comfort of other misguided and malnourished accessories. Others became bags for other even more eccentric human beings. For instance, a woman with giant ears carried two of the bags, one on each ear, around the city for a couple weeks. The last of the bags enjoy their stay pretending to be left accidentally below park benches and on airports. They are all a bit confused by Elena’s death, but hey, she is after all a human and humans are a very confusing species.

Wilt

2009-05-15T21:37:00.000-07:00

I used to live with my family of five in a house with crooked eyes that cast crooked shadows at the dirty ground floor. Outside the house is a swing that nobody swings in. Outside is a garden, that only my mom used to stay in. Outside is where I now live. I am the middle child, a daughter. My mother used to love me, my dad has always been indifferent, and I used to love myself. Now, there are not many feelings left. One might say I have become a bit rigid to the world. Personally, I just enjoy being out in the sun with my mom in the garden.

****

One day I walked through a prairie by my house. The prairie is yellow and it sighs with the wind. Along the edge of the prairie are tall trees and below them little patches of grass. They are very green, and the very yellow prairie often becomes jealous of the very dark shade that the trees provide. Still, it was not the forest that I walked through, I made sure to take note of that. The reason for this is because the forest is scary and wicked and when you walk through it the trees grow angry and scratch and bite and gnaw. It is a mean forest. The prairie is nice except for the little sticky shurikens that latch on to my socks. My socks hate them, and I hate having to listen to my socks complain about how disheveled they are becoming.

People often have picnics in the prairie; they bring their barbeques and their piñatas and their screaming children. The parents start exhausted, they dread the moment that the piñata breaks and the candy spills out and the children rush forward with their little sugar addictions licking and biting like little rodents. The piñata dreads that moment too. It wishes it had been made in to a paper boat, or kept a tree, or anything but a piñata. At the piñata factory, the paper is always very depressed. They are almost as depressed as the people working there who wish that their lives were filled with more than paper. I know a worker there, a particularly eco-friendly one, who often steals pieces of paper in order to stick it to the company. He uses his wrath against “the man” as an excuse for working such a poor job. In actuality, he just smoked a lot of weed in high school and college instead of going to his classes.

That day there were no parties. This is because that particular day the air was being particularly harsh and it was particularly cold. Not frostbitten cold, but broken refrigerator cold. Unfortunately, I had forgotten a jacket. I had thought the day was going to be a warm and happy one, but the sun lied to me. He had plopped out his flashlight and signaled for a warm day, but he forgot to turn the furnace on. So, here I was a mile from home in a light white shirt and light blue jeans being blown slowly towards the tree line. The strong wind was unforgiving and he yelled and screamed along with the song of the prairie. Usually my jacket is such a trooper in situations such as these. I like to think that there is a jacket army out there, where they train only the best and brightest jackets. It was there that they must have trained my jacket. After training, my jacket was tossed into the army although he did many things to get out of it. He even told them he was a gay and had flat sleeves. While in the army, my jacket participated in the great linen war of 97 as well as the Battle of Detergent Hill. He is a strong and sturdy jacket with many battle scars from sharp twigs and other such things. The shirt I happened to be wearing at the time was a damn hippy and did nothing for the cold.

The prairie's song was beautiful and proud, and as I looked down to watch the yellow singers I did not notice myself being gradually sucked over into the forest. Soon I found myself underneath the long branches of a titanic tree. It was very nice to be in the shade and covered by the wind, so I did not run out of the forest line just yet. As I sat there, listening to the humming of the prairie grow quieter and quieter, a pile of grass on the ground took up a new tune. They sang to me and smiled at me and I became entranced by their silent song. They sang of the sun, and water, and of the dusk that was about to show its face. They sang of life, and love, of broken twigs and frogs, of spotted deer and grumpy bears. They sang of me and my family. They told my story, how I would live and how I would die. “Not in this forest”, they sang, “not in this forest.” Every single subtle sound that gasped out of their little green mouths at the tip of their little green tongues entrenched me. I would have sung with them, but after a certain incident in the shower with my brother and a recorder, and his playing the recorder to my crush, and my crush laughing at my voice, I had decided not to sing anymore.

Quickly and swiftly I snatched a blade of grass up, accidentally breaking its frail body in the process. I wanted to take such a sweet song home with me, to show my parents and family and friends. They would be proud. But the grass’ singing became hoarse and it groaned and moaned. I instantly realized I had done something wrong. I shifted on to one knee and tried to place it back in the ground. “Too late, too late” sang the other green stems. Horrified, I looked back in to my hand where the little blade of grass had become quiet and sad. Sap and water and pieces of xylem and phloem dripped slowly and purposefully out of it and on to my skin. Little by little it was drained of life and when it was finished, it let out a tiny, shrill screech. I felt the soul of it wriggle through the wrinkles of my palm until falling solemnly off my hand. I followed where it must have gone with my eyes; I followed it to the barky roots of a tree, and to the canopy, and to the tallest leaves and to the sky. Then I looked back at my hand, now stained green, and at the lifeless body. The grass was no longer singing, their heads were bowed towards the ground. I shoved two fingers into the dirt and dug a small ditch, and inside I placed the body of the blade. Words were spoken, ones I could not hear. I turned to go, but unfortunately for me, the forest did not want me to leave.

Apparently this was one of those “soul for a soul” situations. My mom always told me that plants did not have souls, but I had taken to questioning the things she would say to me. For example, she once told me that proper girls never wore make up, and that Chap Stick is a type of makeup. So, one extremely hot summer I decided not to wear Chap Stick. That very same hot summer, my lips, now burnt to a crisp, ran away in protest. I was told that they went to the same resort as my dog. “So they died?” I asked my mom. She asked me how I knew the dog had died, and I told here there was no way a dog from a middle income family could afford to live at a high end resort/mud spa for more than a week. My mom also told me that being afraid of the forest was stupid. Well, as much as I would like to believe her on that one, the forest really was evil.

As I had taken a step out into the forest that day, a long mossy vine wrapped around my waist and tugged my entire body to the damp floor next to the patch of grass. It lay me there for a moment as I struggled against its thickness. Before long, the exertion and the surprise of the situation exhausted my body and I fell limp. My eyes drifted over to the grass now inches away from my face. They stared sorrowfully back at me until the wind made them turn away. In the back of my mind, I could hear them singing my funeral hymn. Ashamed, distraught, and tired as hell, I fell asleep. I awoke later to the view of the sky surrounded by a donut of trees. Not being able to bear the watchful eyes of the surrounding trees, I began to scope out my surroundings. It would seem that while I was asleep, my body had been moved and then strung up by vines decorated with a multitude of flowers. I was in a new area of the forest, aside a new patch of grass, surrounded by new trees and new sounds. Needless to say, I was not entirely optimistic about my situation. But, if I was going to die, at least it was in a pretty spot.

Whether it was daytime or not, I could not tell because as I hung there, drifting in and out of sleep, there was nothing but dark and shade. It was the kind of dark that you wouldn’t want to play tag in. I tried to play tag in that kind of dark when I was a little girl once. We all ran around and only a few of us had flash lights. I had one, but I wanted to sneak up on everyone else so I had shut it off. Well, ten seconds into tagging one of the people around me I realized that I had just made a creepy homeless person “it”. The good thing was that he actually started chasing me. The bad thing was that I don’t think he was playing tag.

After a couple hours of being awake, I noticed that the vines had begun to grow tighter. Sharper and stronger and deeper they dug and wrung themselves into me, slowly grinding a leafy burn into my arm. The pain grew beyond what my body had ever experienced before. I could feel roots penetrating my skin, choking my veins. They were inside me, and they were breaking my fragile body until I could no longer scream. The pain was so intense, building and building until it reached its peak and I felt a sudden flush of white, and slipped into a meditative state.

I thought of my father as he sat in front of the television and chewed and chewed, never with food. I thought of my older brother’s sour life, and his sour friends. I imagined his girlfriends pruning in the sun, all dried up. Yet, no matter how much they sweat, they always had room for tears. I imagined my mother in the garden. She was golden there, digging her hands into the dirt, not thinking of the smell of the fertilizer. She never worried about the particles burrowing themselves under her nails. But her nails worried. They did not want to get crooked and broken from the gardening tools. They did not want to become tangled, and abnormal because of chemicals. They wanted to be pretty and painted, but my mom did not care. She would dig and dig in the garden, and she would watch her flowers bloom. Her watching was distinctive. It reminded me of how a mother must watch a dying child. They watch, and they watch, and they pray not only for the child’s safety, but for a chance to participate and to save. But sometimes things cannot be helped, sometimes the children just die.

I remember my skin not being my own. The trees and the bark curled themselves closer around my arm, and they took it over. They clung to it, and instead of flesh I had been transformed into a creature with leafy scales. My face was my own, but it could no longer produce a voice. I wondered where the animals were, or the bugs, or anything besides this green madness. Where were cute fluffy bunnies damn it. I made myself believe they were there, right outside the little circle of trees watching with little fluffy eyes and pacing with little fluffy paws. I wanted to strangle them. Amidst sleep, and pain, and anger, my thoughts drifted back to my family.

One year my mother let her entire flower patch die. The daisies became deadsies and the lilies were lifeless, and the roses rotted, and the posies passed, and the poppies perished, but no one noticed. My little brother had left us a little quicker than anticipated, and the town and my family became hushed and mournful. The angels dropped their harp picks from the sky as he ascended, and the click, click, click of them dropping was the only sound emerging from my house. My father had the television on mute. My older brother was single. And I went for walks.

I remember the day he died. Everything was going on as normal, but suddenly we all knew at once that something was not right. Immediately I checked the oven to see if it was on, it was off. My brother, on top of a girl, jumped off and made sure his door was locked, it was. My father scratched his belly and checked his beer, it was empty. And my mother stood up from her garden and ran to my younger brother, he was dead. He died so silently, without a yelp, like an ant being squashed. Sometimes silence is the loudest alarm, and when the house got all quiet, and when the windows said nothing, and when the prairie was mute, and when his heavy breathing turned to a gasp and a thump, silence was all that was left. For the night, the silence was tangible.

They came with questions like they always do when something dies so young. Little reporters, big reporters, good cops, bad cops, loud mouths, gossipy girls and cheerless cheerleaders, and brimming stores, and pitying persons. What a heart broken song emerged from all the ruckus. A bad song that no one wanted to listen to. My mother used to look so silly in her big gardening hat. She looked like a bee-keeper. While answering all the silly questions, her hat sucked in all the grief. It grew spoiled and turned black and melancholy. It told the tail of her son. Soon, she stopped wearing hats over all, and her body began to suck in all the grief. In case you were wondering, it takes three days of people asking how someone died and three days of vacuuming grief, before words don’t make sense anymore.

Also, in case you were wondering, it took me three days before I started wondering when the fuck someone would come looking for me. I remember thinking that perhaps if I had some rocks, and could move, and wasn’t on the verge of dying, and wasn’t in a forest, then I could make a HELP sign and people would fly by and save me. A flare gun would have been nice too, or a tent, or a handless phone, or a book on tape, or anything. But I had none of those things. All I had were the ominous trees and their ominous little patches of grass. I remembered all those survival shows I used to watch, and all those shows about people stuck on a desert. Never once did I see a movie about people lost and dying in the forest. In comparison to what happened to me, people on desert islands had it easy. At least they get to scratch their nose. I sat there, up in the vines for days on end, wishing for a drop of rain or a twig or a leaf to fall down and land on my nose to remove the damn itch. Interestingly, by the third night, my nose never bothered me again. It probably had something to do with the fact that it had turned into a leaf.

One afternoon or morning or night, they finally came. The search party and their search puppies. I must have been fairly smelly at that point, but the dogs for some reason were not able to distinguish me from the plants. I wanted to scream so badly, or wriggle my arms, but all that came out was a low moan. The dogs heard the moan and they rushed to me, screaming and crying and looking up at me. I was so happy and excited that they had found me, until the squirrel jumped off my arm and ran for the nearest tree, and the dogs followed. Those were the first signs of life I had seen in a very long time, and they depressed me more than anything. I saw one of the trees move after they left. It moved on its own, not by wind.

The doctors told us my brother had died of diphtheria. Basically, his throat became swollen and stopped his breathing. He was so young, I wondered if he knew he was being suffocated by his own body. Do babies know they are dying? None of us had noticed the symptoms. Usually in children the neck swells up, but you could not tell with my brother, especially since he was already a bit chubby to begin with. I used to call him my little dough boy, and he would laugh, and smile, and drool, and fall asleep, and drool again. The day he died, I was supposed to be watching him. Instead, I was in my room watching the cooking channel. My brother had been asleep, and so I felt comfortable leaving him alone. He died while I learned the secret to baking the perfect potato. I don’t think my mother ever forgave me.

I awoke the day after the rescue team came through to find a tree hovering over me. Oddly, this is the second time this has happened to me. The first time my older brother was playing a prank. He thought it would be funny to use his old tree costume from his elementary school play. I heard he played a tree marvelously and that no other student in the school could have done it as well as him aside from one of his buddies who had an affinity for standing perfectly still. Unfortunately the shock of waking up to the figure of a costume tree in my face in no way prepared me for waking up to a real tree forcing water down my throat. I began a heroic attempt to squirm ferociously, but the vines held me in place. Then I came to my senses. What a relief it was going to be to drown. To die finally. But it turns out the trees were not trying to drown me. Instead, they were feeding me and clearing my throat of its last traces of humanity. I remember the water feeling so sweet in my mouth, and as it went down I could feel my throat clearing. I noticed that the water temporarily cleared my throat, and so I was then able to make sounds, whimpers, and soon screams. So, naturally I did what any person turning into a tree would do, I screamed and screamed. The tree, frightened by my unfamiliar noise, fled back into the thick forest. It left me alone for the rest of that night. I screamed late into the night until my voice swallowed itself and I could not speak any longer.

The next day I could tell the trees were feeling less threatened by me. They begun to move and coerce and talk with each other. I could not yet understand them, but they made motions at me. I think I had become enough like them for them to start accepting me. I wondered how many of them used to be humans. Perhaps some of them worked at boring paper company jobs, and their only release was walking in forests. Perhaps some of them were homeless guys that fell asleep in the wrong spots. Perhaps some were mothers, or sons, or bakers. Perhaps they were all trees, and I am their first experiment. I perhapsed for a few more hours until a larger commotion began in the trees. It seemed like they were putting on a play. I have gone to three plays in my life, two were horrible school plays that I watched and left before they were over, and one was a bad school play that I was in and left before it was over. Incidentally, one of those three plays happened to be my brothers. I hoped that their play would be good, because if I was going to have to watch dirty trees prancing around in leafy tutus for the rest of my life, it better be entertaining.

Since I had been hanging there feeling somewhat pre-occupied with not being occupied, I found it hard to not watch the ensuing scene. The play featured a sapling, and two small thin trees. The larger of the small trees did nothing but watch the sapling. Its jerky movements would follow the wobbly sapling around in circles. The sapling was silly in the play, it would hobble a few feet, then fall over. Whenever it would get up, it would fall over again, and whenever it would fall over again, the larger tree would rush to its side. It was strange, their bodies were so human-like. They reminded me so much of those syrup bottles with the old lady on them. The sapling had a small, green, sad face and the larger trees had watchful, barky brows and little beady grooves for eyeballs. Each individual plant had a very distinguishing, very barky outfit. The biggest tree’s grooves and bumps mumbled the tale of old age. The other tree was covered in vines and blossoms. It was fun to watch it walk around because the vines would constantly try to stick into the ground, and so the tree had a very hard time walking. For the most part, this play was very boring and so I spaced out a bit.

The reason why I thought my mom never forgave me was because of her actions towards me. She would do some pretty mean things, like hiding the remote, or making pie for dessert (I hate pie). Granted, she did do a lot of this stuff before hand, but it never felt angled towards me before. Still, I wished she had been there with me to help me out of my predicament. As much as I loved my full body bark tan, it was not very fun being a tree. My mom never told me she blamed me, but a mother can’t say that to her daughter. I had dreams sometimes about her telling me off. Telling me I should have died instead of him. Those dreams were almost as scary as the tentacle alien ones, and so I always awoke in a cold sweat. The dreams were the reasons for my walks.

Three hours into the play something changed. The second largest tree started acting strangely. It followed the little sapling, foot by foot, bringing his head so lovingly down towards the little plant. But then something grotesque happened, the tree grabbed the sapling by its throat. It strangled it, softly at first, and then harder and harder. The sapling let out a cry, and I could hear it. I heard its words, its screams. “I do not sing for you”, it cried. Its voice was so sweet, it reminded me of the grass from earlier. Then the sapling fell lifeless to the floor. The older tree walked forward. It was enraged by the saplings death, and it ran and twisted and contorted. It let its head back and released a desperate cry. Then, it looked at me. It thought I was to blame. It hated me. When the play ended, the three plants walked forward and took a bow. I did not clap, partially because my hands were tied, but mostly because I did not have it in me. Plus, the play was not very good.

Before leaving, the largest of the trees stepped forward and placed something on what used to be my head. It was my mother’s gardening hat. Then they left, all of them. They left me alone in an empty area, with an empty stomach, and an empty heart. The vines dropped me, and slithered away, and I fell to the floor. I wanted to run home, but I could not. I was still a plant. I sat there for a few minutes until I heard some footsteps. “There you are,” said a woman’s voice. A hand reached onto me and grabbed the hat on my head. It was my mother. “What a pretty plant you are, and wicked too, stealing my hat. Don’t you know I need this to garden?” she chuckled a bit. I laughed on the inside at the prospect of my mother talking to a plant. It was sad that she had no one to talk to anymore. She began to cry. She told me she missed her children, and that they had left her alone. I tried to hug her, and to move my leafy arms towards her, but I was still a plant. We sat there a while in silence together.

After a while, she decided it was time to go, and began to walk away. Oh how I wanted to follow her, to yell at her. I needed to tell her somehow who I was and that I was sorry. I tried to yell, but only a whimper came out. She heard it. She ran over to me and asked me if I had made that sound. I tried to do it again, but nothing came out. She started to leave again. Frustrated, I doubled my vocalization efforts. Yet, this time, instead of a shout, out popped a song. A sweet song that told her of my sorrow, and of the prairie, and of the trees, and of my little brother. “What a beautiful song you sing little plant”, she said. She picked me up so carefully from the dirt. She had a mothers touch. By now, I had grown into a strong plant, and so my roots were deep. Yet, she still was able to pull me out without breaking any of my limbs. She carried me to her garden and stuck me in the ground. The dirt felt very nice, and it still does.

****

It is hard sometimes, sitting here with my mom without her knowing who I am. But, she takes care of me very well, so I don’t complain. Instead, I sing to her. I do it to make up for her missing children, I do it because it makes her smile, and I do it because if I didn’t then I fear she might not take care of me anymore. I have sung to her this story so many times, and I know one day she will forgive me because of it.

Greetings

2009-05-15T21:20:00.000-07:00

There are many broken things, and deserted things, and overly organized things, and destructive and sad and light and green and tapping and walking things that reside in my mind. They sit there day after day, sad and alone. Every now and then one of them surfaces for a brief moment into the squiggly surfaces of my brain. Then, before I can write them down, they disappear. Thus, I created this little piece of online surface to server as my lazy hand's paper. I imagine there will be a few people that sit at their desks all day browsing and browsing and refreshing the same websites over and over again. Eventually, one of those people will accidentally fall upon this and perhaps read a few words. Then they will scratch their backs,turn around, and roll their chair into the kitchen. They will grab an orange juice out of the fridge. The other juices will be sad because of their rejection, but relieved that they get to live another day. The unfortunate orange juice will pray for his own life. Then, he will take one last breath and look up just as he is about to be drunk. He will see this blog, realize and rejoice at his apparent fame, and go quietly in to the throat of his owner. Soothed by the drink, the man will continue to read this blog. He will see this story and notice the part about the orange juice. Strangled by his guilt for the murder of the OJ, he will attempt to commit suicide. His neighbors will find him before he is able to, and when they do they will tell him:

"Enjoy the writing, just don't kill yourself over it."