A deep orange overhung the quiet room, a pergola of light to shelter us as our branches twined slowly toward each other. We stretched so slowly and yet too fast, as we knew the subtle metronome of our hearts beneath that silence could only count to the morning’s blue-grey loneliness again. I articulated my fingers so as to increase the distance to contact with that other warmth, to increase the already fathomless joy that would arise when skin and skin combined to yield a chimera planted in the serene garden of this everywhere room.
Even as I conceived this elegant arbor, my hand was still continuing onward, onward to the contact which would form its birth. The space between was narrowing, was becoming an ever more enriched womb to bear our love’s crescendo. Each molecule which separated us now fizzled, now spun merrily away as the grooved and sloped whorls of my pendant fingers pushed forward.
Now my fingertip could feel the coursing warmth of a fingertip that could feel my coursing warmth.
But as catharsis’s curtain was about to fall
And touch, the grandest of our senses made
A trembling vine o’ertook my bravest strides
And froze my movement with its hardened braid.
Twas fear that held me at the door before the dawn
That gave such gravity and yet such craven eyes
To the child of our simple touch
Which pure or farcical would soon arise.
Burning lamp of love’s first caress
Have thee hiding under thy auroral folds
A barb to poison every dream I’ve had
Of being held above the black of solitary cold?
It was as if the universe had nothing left to say to me. The orange glow surrounding us was Beatrice, was also succubus. Did it wish to bring about divine conjugation of these branches, hands in hands, and eyes in eyes? Or did it merely wish to grant me hollow freedom from a world I thought was formless night, but that held me closer to its pith than love in this arboretum could?
My thoughts were an inkblot soaking upward through the pages of this very story. How long had the blackness, planted, been creeping up the capillaries of its naïve leaves?
And in the midst of my mind’s writhing, an undulating heat penetrated my finger tips and turned the fiber of my being into one steady vinculum of fire. The gap had relegated its strength to the birth of our connection. Was it my unsteady traverse, or that of my companion, a flash of contemplation now visible as well above that birchen brow, that bridged the Arcadia and yet the Hell of that last moment?
A tender infant sapling sprouts somewhere in the pale orange of an artificial wood, with a shadow something like the disgust rooted now in our nervous soul.
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
Dido's Lament
As the words of Dido float so gracefully from her, so too does life flee. She laments to be remembered for herself and not her fate. Sadly, humankind cannot afford her this, for the effects of our being and our being itself cannot often be separated. I am these words because they are the only remnants of my being which remain when I am laid in Earth. Sadness prevails in my case and in that of Dido, you see. We cannot be ourselves. No one can. Perception dictates that we are what we do, how we look, and where we go. What bitter agony… of course, the actions of one can be as true or as inspiring as the person who one is, but this type of positivity is still a mask, a visage. It is still false. Where is truth? Perhaps it is found in death, or perhaps in forgetfulness. I cannot say. It seems that Dido cannot either.
The end.
Dido and Aeneas. Act III. 10:13-16:00.
The end.
Dido and Aeneas. Act III. 10:13-16:00.
A Fictional Tale of Decidedly Epic Proportions Parts 1-6
A story sequence written starring some of my college friends.
19 March 2010
Lukasz,
Your friends in office have with much grievance seen your absence. To mind, I also found it odd that you must depart so suddenly for the crags of the High Tatras. Though your homeland, must Poland entertain you amongst its harshest of foehn winds? This absence, this schism, in the roster of the Senate, makes my news more painful to convey. I fear the darkness of my words may incite your flighty return, but can only hope so much. The vehicle of my exordium, dear President, is one of murder. The act, one which I’m sure will enter into a lineage of many tragedies, took place today in our very office. The particulars still escape the authorities, for the deed was concerted with the violence of a mysterious magnetic storm, which withdrew power from the security cameras. No doubt that, as death spilled itself across our floor, the villain escaped with the darkling maelstrom as his background. Our knowledge is therefore minimal at this time.
Before my trembling hand quits the keyboard, I must express another… peculiarity. In a remote subclause of our constitution, it is written that in the case of a senator’s murder, the acting President shall subsume all investigatory and executorial duties for the case. This means, Lukasz, that I have been granted the powers of illumination… and of death. It falls to me to locate this murderer, and to administer revenge. How much I long that it were you to take this mantle! For your mastery of the assassin’s art is far greater, and your will more steeled to the vices of man. The unnatural gifts bestowed on Senators upon induction are great. But will mine be great enough?
Let this letter be progenitor to light, and not dusk,
Vice President Waddell
PART 2
Lukasz,
Though my last letter may have yet to even cross the seas, I write now with more news, of a nature most grim. The police investigation of the murder scene has just now settled, and after many days of careful combing, they believe that they’ve collected all the pieces of the unfortunate victim. Their growing confidence in this matter, however, is checked completely by their lack of insight and the opacity of their words. From the few vagaries that they’ve delivered to me, it seems that the victim was somehow… and, logic escapes this… somehow unitized, as it were… dissected into small pieces and (my meal won’t agree with my saying) reorganized into what looked like an outline of wings along the floor… Is this some abstruse trick played at the freedom of graduation? The freedom which Sean will now never see? His struggles were vast, and his toils deep… is this the recompense afforded to one of our most skilled senators? My mind races in emblazoned fury when I consider the loss of such a soul, and the concomitant increase in paperwork for us all…
One thing is for certain, Lukasz. The elegance of this murder could not have been achieved by one outside our group. My suspicions are high, and my guard set, for those people we once considered friends now mar all pacts among us. The mode of the murder, in specific, would be condemning if I could pinpoint one amongst us with such a quartering skill… But, as the secrecy of our endowed ability is proportional to its absolute strength… I must need force the senators to expose themselves in some way or another. Kinesis, rapture, wrath, or alchemy… all senators hold some principle trait which guides their hand… my journey now begins in full.
In vengeance striving,
Vice President Waddell
PART 3
Journal Entry
What have I done? Even in my darkest imaginings, I never thought I could bring such harm to another… Was it really my own hand which traced out Sean’s various itinerary? Was it I who awoke, smiling, in the pool of his blood, a red angel aloft in a crimson sky? I could see it all; I could see it happening: flesh and sinew parting before my eyes, with naught but an effortless stroke of my will. Then, in a blur of legs and arms, I escaped the abattoir, and I fell silently upon the night. My eyes glazed against the cold as my body continued to roam, and I felt my consciousness slipping long before my body could quit. I awoke this morning in my own bed, painted with those feathers of gore… I was the angel in my clear remembrance. I was the force which shook someone from this plane… but how could I be?
= = =
How could it, indeed? Sounded a heavy voice from somewhere deep inside my body… deep inside my soul.
PART 4
Lukasz,
I write you today with some aggravation… you see, I’ve located the murderer. However, things, as always, are not so straightforward. Perhaps a full discourse of my adventure will help to clarify things…
Last Friday, I arrived at school just before 8:00, traversed the stairs, and removed my key in order to unlatch the senate door. I was much surprised, however, to see that the door was slightly ajar, and the light on. As it will be of little gravity to now reveal to you the nature of my power, I will say in short that I have a peculiar reaction to certain pieces of music. Perhaps this will explain why I carry that accursed Walkman with me in all my travels. So, with the potential danger of the situation, I fastened an earphone on my left lobe, and neared the open part of the door.
I could hear a female’s voice within, quite obviously in some degree of tremor. Fragments came to my free ear as I drew yet closer… “That blood… painted across my back… couldn’t be me… but the blood…” And, softer, and subtler, in the background, a man’s voice : “How could it, indeed… your fault…grievous error… chemical equilibrium…”
It was apparently this last suggestive statement from the male source which drove the quaking female over her (mental) limit… she let loose a piercing howl, and screaming, “Nooooo!!” rushed from her position toward the door. I could hear her footfalls growing louder and with the last reserve of my own wit, jumped from her path as she bolted out of the office.
Even out of the way, I was forced to stagger back as the force of her egress met me… apparently it was sourced by a senator’s energy… sure enough, as I raised my head from my position of wincing pain, and it met with those tennis shoes, the light blue jacket, and those atmospheric-gone-(not)-civil eyes, I could not mistake the personage of my pursuit – Rika, mad with psychosis, standing in front of me, noticing me, rearranging her posture for battle… Rika had destroyed Sean’s dear life.
With a flick of my hand, I ejected my mix tape and remorselessly flipped it from the paralyzing beats of Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up… to my final power… the decimating strength of Fugue and Toccata. As I hit play and its darkling incipient notes rose to my ears, its heavy bleakness fashioned about my arm a sword of such music as could never be heard twice. Rika, in her stead, had produced a drafting surface from the fabric of the cosmos, had with her own blood constructed with pain the lines of an alchemic mesh… The tempo rose and as my body filled with noise, black waves began to emanate about me… and strengthened… and resonated… until, with all of my bravery behind me, I charged toward her… However, her fierce line-work had not gone unrewarded, and just as I started forward, so too did she finish that mesh… and my arm was raised with staccato weapon in arc… and her lines formed in to a wall of blades about me… and as our powers collided, my darkness waves and her razors of light became an imbroglio, bending with their might the time and space between us…
And in those few seconds of our titanic clash, a deep crack was heard between, and we were thrown asunder… I recovered first, and was deeply surprised to see not one body but two lying before me… that of Rika, still somewhat trembling from what was surely a hint at her terrific judgment… and that (you must know!) of you, Lukasz, somehow transported across space by the force of our skirmish.
I will end with even yet the worst and most unrealistic of news, Lukasz. As you lay recovering in the hospital from your trip, so too did Rika lay in chains across the floor of the school’s Asylum (the Cashier’s Office), never moving, never speaking… never responding to my prodding and threats of alfalfa… Until just this morning, when, with new torturous vegetables in mind, I returned to that room, to find Rika in ague’s clutches, asleep for eternity with eyes reflecting infinity… That’s right… Rika has died… But the most aggravating thing of all is the short note I found scribbled across the flesh of her left shoulder. Seemingly, it only appeared after her last breath, and simply stated…“Control.”
This is a cataclysmic revolt to me, Lukasz, for with my power weakened by use and the death of yet another innocent-well-not-really-but-in-this-context-innocent senator, I must once more summon my wits to find the nature of our group’s real evil.
Be it written,
Vice President Waddell
PART 5
Nurse’s Report…April 2010…Floor 3 West Wing
Wing activity has been slow since the incident. It seems like the other patients in the ward have become introverted to the point of placidity. Even now the police aren’t sure what to make of the incident tapes, in part because their images are grainy, blurred; in part because they seem to defile reality.
As staff nurse for the evening of the incident, I have been directed to report what I witnessed. I only wish that my memories could be as vague as those videos… instead they revive nightly, they sear into my mind… no matter what treatment, what chloral hydrate I manage to smuggle, I cannot put myself at rest. Maybe writing this will return to me something of my distant past.
That night I was in high spirits. Margaret in room 302 had painted a picture of her daughter for me. Like the other patients, we encourage them to pursue art and music in the hopes they could improve, so I was ecstatic that she would share her daughter with me even if she never had one. You might think that working in the mental ward would provide little emotional nourishment for me. But, I disagree… being immersed in the shades of so many perspectives, and the thrills of imaginings that aren’t tainted by the pessimism of hard reality, is always something I’ve been fond of.
My happiness grew more as I visited with Bart, who had recently taken an interest in large machinery and could hardly stop talking! And yet more happily did I receive the little rendition of Amazing Grace that George played on a rose petal he found (don’t tell Agatha!). I was so elated that I almost approached room 314 without fear. However, that foolishness was soon lifted, because as I lifted the latch and…
[Here the letter is separated briefly by wet blot marks and what look like brave attempts to restart sentences.]
I’ll restart by describing room 314. The room had been empty as long as I can remember. Even when the wing was fringing on capacity, 314 remained clear. There is a rumor that the Board of Gents bought that room for their own purposes, and that during the cold war, night shrieks could be heard emanating within those walls. The records even show that a nurse and doctor, employed privately by the university system, were assigned specifically to that room (oddly, the doctor was a doctor of physics, not medicine). But, this is all just a wives tale that the nurses throw back and forth. No one has seen any activity from that room for the past twenty years. That’s why I was so surprised to see, just last week, that a young man (scarcely old enough to participate in our Saturday swig-off, bless him!) had been relocated there.
The patient, Lukasz, was an odd fellow, talking little and laughing much, who had suffered some sort of massive trauma. His symptoms reminded me of a sort of advanced and constant stress disorder that I had only before seen manifested in war prisoners or Tech students during finals week. As luck would have it, he was both… or so he would mumble, between pudding cups. I really saw no need for the excessive belts and chains lashing him to his bed, but the order came from high up, and I didn’t think to question it. He just seemed so gentle!
My shift only put me in the wing at night twice before the incident, but those nights were enough to shake my hopes for the good nature of the boy. On the first night, I heard a scratching noise emanating from within the room, intermittently punctuated by a groan or cry. Upon entering, I found that Lukasz had writhed free of part of his bindings, and was (by my stars!) slowly scratching away the flesh from his left arm… of course the pain must have been unbearable; Lukasz was not prescribed any regular opiate or tranquilizer by mandate… the blood from his foul work blotted his bed sheets in whorls and peaks organized into something like an impressionist landscape. The pain in his eyes told me that his was not the journey of a mad man, though… his look was sincere. He was truly concentrating on his arm, de-fleshed, like he was looking for something. Every few seconds his right arm would jerk away from his work in noncompliance, like he was at times overridden by some other prerogative. He began to pick away the pieces of fascia and muscle stretched taught along the bone, still searching, still with such an agonizing concentration… He was still searching as I sounded the alarm and the night men came to re-secure him.
My second night in the wing brought with it more strangeness. I visited 314 to ensure Lukasz was sleeping, and instead found him stark upright, unsecured, staring at his television screen. His eyes were so blank, like glass…. Like by looking into them I could see the beyond… Is that what he was seeing as he stared at the white noise playing across the television? He was mumbling something, too… so incoherently that I couldn’t tell if it was even in English… And, the strangest thing is, that as I pressed inward to hear more clearly, I thought I could faintly hear the static talking back to him…
I’ve reached that night once again. I have nothing else to waste time or to draw away your attention. So I must… I lifted the latch to once again find Lukasz blankly staring at his television screen, flashing white with noise. As I approached him to lay him back down, my foot hit something large on the floor. In… in the broken light from the static, I could make out another person, a man in a crooked and broken manner… like a store mannequin, or the thing that appears in a dark room just out of the corner of your eye… He felt so hollow, and heavy; in my shock I felt deprived of the ability to scream, conscious of my actions but completely unable to control them. I bent down and turned the man over, with the grim realization that this was the same and only person who so often visited Lukasz during the day… his business partner and friend, Evan… my hands quickly found the cause of the victim’s petrified stance… a number of long steel bars protruded from the torso, flecked with red at their tips like some sort of macabre flower garden. And, around the wounds flowed not blood, but a thick mixture of what looked like Portland cement, sand, and gravel… could this have been real? What evil could bring one to replace a person’s blood with builder’s concrete? The body still lays on the floor of my memory in that horrid and twisted form…
Still in shock, perhaps even now not fully worn off, was my next discovery… that, as I went to lay Lukasz to sleep before alerting the guards, he too was stiff, unresponsive. I quickly discovered that, strangely, Lukasz’s hands were pinned to the bed by shattered pieces of CDs… his throat engorged by the presence of hundreds of feet of cassette tape (coroner measurement at 281.25’ – a C60); and his temples broken and bleeding from what looked to me like a massive pseudoaneurism. Independent research on the cassette tape suggests that it was from the 1987 Rick Astley album, Whenever You Need Somebody. This cruelty is yet unexplainable… was this a struggle for power in the student senate that both of these young people held so dear? Is this connected with the Hayes murder? Was it merely a deranged author’s idea of a joke? Most ironic of all, though, is that upon analysis of Lukasz’s body, a black marking was found embedded in his right arm in approximately the same location as the torn flesh on his left… Whatever the word, “control” meant to Lukasz, he had struggled to remove it until his last (and agonizingly irksome) moments…
Respectfully,
Maria Goebbel
Former Nurse
Raging City Hospital
PART 6
Date: April 20, 2010
To: The Council
From: DM
Re: Victory
Esteemed members of The Council, I write today to inform you that our quarter three plans for domination have succeeded. Though the initial investment in Kryslev’s research at the hospital came under question twenty five years ago, there can be no misconstrued notions of deficit now. The infants that he inoculated with our nanomachines in room 314 grew up under the gaze of parents across the country that were blind enough not to notice their real children had been replaced. The machines, it seemed, had the uncanny ability to repress the higher creative capacity of the children, making them predisposed to enter into studies in engineering and the sciences. Even this was but a small pretense to their greater power, though… as they grew, the children developed a condensed form of life energy, that through the machines, they could exert according to their interests. The young one, Rika, and her ability to perform the temporal blade drafting technique, should illustrate this.
Our witless senators’ histories began to twine together as their parents and minds were warped into believing that first Mines, and then the Senate, were safe places. They all collected in the senate body, just as planned, the deplorable infants now turned deplorable students. From my seat as trusted advisor, I watched as they attempted to help their cohorts. I watched with a false smile painted across my face.
After I fell from my position in the council, I sought some small shaft of light that would bring me back to your graces… so, fifteen years ago, I slit Kryslev’s throat and injected myself with the nanomachines. Because my immune system was stronger than those of the infant subjects, my body began to rebel against them… it began to eat itself away in a vain attempt to protect me… I didn’t want to be protected. The nanomachines fought back, too, reducing me to a bloody pool, softly festering on my hand-knit divan for near-on three weeks. Then, slowly, a miracle happened… the machines gathered bits of textile and circuitry from my home… began rebuilding me… and making me better. They interfaced with my mind, and lent me the memory of the superceded machines… of those in the subjects. As my frame transitioned from sinew to steel, I knew deep within my being that I had become the central controller.
Yes, it was me. It was my sole doing that rankled their minds with visions of Mines, that brought them to their seats in Senate, that cut them down in battle. Rika yielded to my power when she dissected Hayes… and Lukasz when he petrified Waddell. That sealed the scheme, because up until that point it was only Waddell that was evading my influence… something in his material frequency negated my signal… likely it was his cursed music ability. With he and Dubaj gone, the Senate leadership slowly crumbled. Nordby and Weyer stood defiantly for a time before I had them both immolated with a flick of the wrist - it seems that Ziegler had quite a knack for chemo-pyrotechnics. But, he too soon fell after I had Reed shatter him in her zero-point potential field. It was beautiful, watching as he fell apart like so many of God’s legos at her very gaze. I was almost tempted to ask her to join us… but that was a passing whim. I pitted her against Rodriguez’s entropy subspace and they devolved each other’s matter into so many marbles of shadow and light… the burns still paint the Surbeck lobby like impressionist death… beautiful.
After a while I became bored, and instructed the others to begin attacking the student body. The pleasure lurking under my worried-looking façade was immense. A grand rebellion pit student against senate in an attempt to bring peace back to their lives. Now, as the war subsides and with the Senate annihilated, they will all look to you, to us, for their guidance. Our plans shall now proceed unimpeded… a new age is dawning! Fourth quarter earnings are projected high… let us hope that our little Hell will have enough desks for our eager pupils.
THE END
19 March 2010
Lukasz,
Your friends in office have with much grievance seen your absence. To mind, I also found it odd that you must depart so suddenly for the crags of the High Tatras. Though your homeland, must Poland entertain you amongst its harshest of foehn winds? This absence, this schism, in the roster of the Senate, makes my news more painful to convey. I fear the darkness of my words may incite your flighty return, but can only hope so much. The vehicle of my exordium, dear President, is one of murder. The act, one which I’m sure will enter into a lineage of many tragedies, took place today in our very office. The particulars still escape the authorities, for the deed was concerted with the violence of a mysterious magnetic storm, which withdrew power from the security cameras. No doubt that, as death spilled itself across our floor, the villain escaped with the darkling maelstrom as his background. Our knowledge is therefore minimal at this time.
Before my trembling hand quits the keyboard, I must express another… peculiarity. In a remote subclause of our constitution, it is written that in the case of a senator’s murder, the acting President shall subsume all investigatory and executorial duties for the case. This means, Lukasz, that I have been granted the powers of illumination… and of death. It falls to me to locate this murderer, and to administer revenge. How much I long that it were you to take this mantle! For your mastery of the assassin’s art is far greater, and your will more steeled to the vices of man. The unnatural gifts bestowed on Senators upon induction are great. But will mine be great enough?
Let this letter be progenitor to light, and not dusk,
Vice President Waddell
PART 2
Lukasz,
Though my last letter may have yet to even cross the seas, I write now with more news, of a nature most grim. The police investigation of the murder scene has just now settled, and after many days of careful combing, they believe that they’ve collected all the pieces of the unfortunate victim. Their growing confidence in this matter, however, is checked completely by their lack of insight and the opacity of their words. From the few vagaries that they’ve delivered to me, it seems that the victim was somehow… and, logic escapes this… somehow unitized, as it were… dissected into small pieces and (my meal won’t agree with my saying) reorganized into what looked like an outline of wings along the floor… Is this some abstruse trick played at the freedom of graduation? The freedom which Sean will now never see? His struggles were vast, and his toils deep… is this the recompense afforded to one of our most skilled senators? My mind races in emblazoned fury when I consider the loss of such a soul, and the concomitant increase in paperwork for us all…
One thing is for certain, Lukasz. The elegance of this murder could not have been achieved by one outside our group. My suspicions are high, and my guard set, for those people we once considered friends now mar all pacts among us. The mode of the murder, in specific, would be condemning if I could pinpoint one amongst us with such a quartering skill… But, as the secrecy of our endowed ability is proportional to its absolute strength… I must need force the senators to expose themselves in some way or another. Kinesis, rapture, wrath, or alchemy… all senators hold some principle trait which guides their hand… my journey now begins in full.
In vengeance striving,
Vice President Waddell
PART 3
Journal Entry
What have I done? Even in my darkest imaginings, I never thought I could bring such harm to another… Was it really my own hand which traced out Sean’s various itinerary? Was it I who awoke, smiling, in the pool of his blood, a red angel aloft in a crimson sky? I could see it all; I could see it happening: flesh and sinew parting before my eyes, with naught but an effortless stroke of my will. Then, in a blur of legs and arms, I escaped the abattoir, and I fell silently upon the night. My eyes glazed against the cold as my body continued to roam, and I felt my consciousness slipping long before my body could quit. I awoke this morning in my own bed, painted with those feathers of gore… I was the angel in my clear remembrance. I was the force which shook someone from this plane… but how could I be?
= = =
How could it, indeed? Sounded a heavy voice from somewhere deep inside my body… deep inside my soul.
PART 4
Lukasz,
I write you today with some aggravation… you see, I’ve located the murderer. However, things, as always, are not so straightforward. Perhaps a full discourse of my adventure will help to clarify things…
Last Friday, I arrived at school just before 8:00, traversed the stairs, and removed my key in order to unlatch the senate door. I was much surprised, however, to see that the door was slightly ajar, and the light on. As it will be of little gravity to now reveal to you the nature of my power, I will say in short that I have a peculiar reaction to certain pieces of music. Perhaps this will explain why I carry that accursed Walkman with me in all my travels. So, with the potential danger of the situation, I fastened an earphone on my left lobe, and neared the open part of the door.
I could hear a female’s voice within, quite obviously in some degree of tremor. Fragments came to my free ear as I drew yet closer… “That blood… painted across my back… couldn’t be me… but the blood…” And, softer, and subtler, in the background, a man’s voice : “How could it, indeed… your fault…grievous error… chemical equilibrium…”
It was apparently this last suggestive statement from the male source which drove the quaking female over her (mental) limit… she let loose a piercing howl, and screaming, “Nooooo!!” rushed from her position toward the door. I could hear her footfalls growing louder and with the last reserve of my own wit, jumped from her path as she bolted out of the office.
Even out of the way, I was forced to stagger back as the force of her egress met me… apparently it was sourced by a senator’s energy… sure enough, as I raised my head from my position of wincing pain, and it met with those tennis shoes, the light blue jacket, and those atmospheric-gone-(not)-civil eyes, I could not mistake the personage of my pursuit – Rika, mad with psychosis, standing in front of me, noticing me, rearranging her posture for battle… Rika had destroyed Sean’s dear life.
With a flick of my hand, I ejected my mix tape and remorselessly flipped it from the paralyzing beats of Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up… to my final power… the decimating strength of Fugue and Toccata. As I hit play and its darkling incipient notes rose to my ears, its heavy bleakness fashioned about my arm a sword of such music as could never be heard twice. Rika, in her stead, had produced a drafting surface from the fabric of the cosmos, had with her own blood constructed with pain the lines of an alchemic mesh… The tempo rose and as my body filled with noise, black waves began to emanate about me… and strengthened… and resonated… until, with all of my bravery behind me, I charged toward her… However, her fierce line-work had not gone unrewarded, and just as I started forward, so too did she finish that mesh… and my arm was raised with staccato weapon in arc… and her lines formed in to a wall of blades about me… and as our powers collided, my darkness waves and her razors of light became an imbroglio, bending with their might the time and space between us…
And in those few seconds of our titanic clash, a deep crack was heard between, and we were thrown asunder… I recovered first, and was deeply surprised to see not one body but two lying before me… that of Rika, still somewhat trembling from what was surely a hint at her terrific judgment… and that (you must know!) of you, Lukasz, somehow transported across space by the force of our skirmish.
I will end with even yet the worst and most unrealistic of news, Lukasz. As you lay recovering in the hospital from your trip, so too did Rika lay in chains across the floor of the school’s Asylum (the Cashier’s Office), never moving, never speaking… never responding to my prodding and threats of alfalfa… Until just this morning, when, with new torturous vegetables in mind, I returned to that room, to find Rika in ague’s clutches, asleep for eternity with eyes reflecting infinity… That’s right… Rika has died… But the most aggravating thing of all is the short note I found scribbled across the flesh of her left shoulder. Seemingly, it only appeared after her last breath, and simply stated…“Control.”
This is a cataclysmic revolt to me, Lukasz, for with my power weakened by use and the death of yet another innocent-well-not-really-but-in-this-context-innocent senator, I must once more summon my wits to find the nature of our group’s real evil.
Be it written,
Vice President Waddell
PART 5
Nurse’s Report…April 2010…Floor 3 West Wing
Wing activity has been slow since the incident. It seems like the other patients in the ward have become introverted to the point of placidity. Even now the police aren’t sure what to make of the incident tapes, in part because their images are grainy, blurred; in part because they seem to defile reality.
As staff nurse for the evening of the incident, I have been directed to report what I witnessed. I only wish that my memories could be as vague as those videos… instead they revive nightly, they sear into my mind… no matter what treatment, what chloral hydrate I manage to smuggle, I cannot put myself at rest. Maybe writing this will return to me something of my distant past.
That night I was in high spirits. Margaret in room 302 had painted a picture of her daughter for me. Like the other patients, we encourage them to pursue art and music in the hopes they could improve, so I was ecstatic that she would share her daughter with me even if she never had one. You might think that working in the mental ward would provide little emotional nourishment for me. But, I disagree… being immersed in the shades of so many perspectives, and the thrills of imaginings that aren’t tainted by the pessimism of hard reality, is always something I’ve been fond of.
My happiness grew more as I visited with Bart, who had recently taken an interest in large machinery and could hardly stop talking! And yet more happily did I receive the little rendition of Amazing Grace that George played on a rose petal he found (don’t tell Agatha!). I was so elated that I almost approached room 314 without fear. However, that foolishness was soon lifted, because as I lifted the latch and…
[Here the letter is separated briefly by wet blot marks and what look like brave attempts to restart sentences.]
I’ll restart by describing room 314. The room had been empty as long as I can remember. Even when the wing was fringing on capacity, 314 remained clear. There is a rumor that the Board of Gents bought that room for their own purposes, and that during the cold war, night shrieks could be heard emanating within those walls. The records even show that a nurse and doctor, employed privately by the university system, were assigned specifically to that room (oddly, the doctor was a doctor of physics, not medicine). But, this is all just a wives tale that the nurses throw back and forth. No one has seen any activity from that room for the past twenty years. That’s why I was so surprised to see, just last week, that a young man (scarcely old enough to participate in our Saturday swig-off, bless him!) had been relocated there.
The patient, Lukasz, was an odd fellow, talking little and laughing much, who had suffered some sort of massive trauma. His symptoms reminded me of a sort of advanced and constant stress disorder that I had only before seen manifested in war prisoners or Tech students during finals week. As luck would have it, he was both… or so he would mumble, between pudding cups. I really saw no need for the excessive belts and chains lashing him to his bed, but the order came from high up, and I didn’t think to question it. He just seemed so gentle!
My shift only put me in the wing at night twice before the incident, but those nights were enough to shake my hopes for the good nature of the boy. On the first night, I heard a scratching noise emanating from within the room, intermittently punctuated by a groan or cry. Upon entering, I found that Lukasz had writhed free of part of his bindings, and was (by my stars!) slowly scratching away the flesh from his left arm… of course the pain must have been unbearable; Lukasz was not prescribed any regular opiate or tranquilizer by mandate… the blood from his foul work blotted his bed sheets in whorls and peaks organized into something like an impressionist landscape. The pain in his eyes told me that his was not the journey of a mad man, though… his look was sincere. He was truly concentrating on his arm, de-fleshed, like he was looking for something. Every few seconds his right arm would jerk away from his work in noncompliance, like he was at times overridden by some other prerogative. He began to pick away the pieces of fascia and muscle stretched taught along the bone, still searching, still with such an agonizing concentration… He was still searching as I sounded the alarm and the night men came to re-secure him.
My second night in the wing brought with it more strangeness. I visited 314 to ensure Lukasz was sleeping, and instead found him stark upright, unsecured, staring at his television screen. His eyes were so blank, like glass…. Like by looking into them I could see the beyond… Is that what he was seeing as he stared at the white noise playing across the television? He was mumbling something, too… so incoherently that I couldn’t tell if it was even in English… And, the strangest thing is, that as I pressed inward to hear more clearly, I thought I could faintly hear the static talking back to him…
I’ve reached that night once again. I have nothing else to waste time or to draw away your attention. So I must… I lifted the latch to once again find Lukasz blankly staring at his television screen, flashing white with noise. As I approached him to lay him back down, my foot hit something large on the floor. In… in the broken light from the static, I could make out another person, a man in a crooked and broken manner… like a store mannequin, or the thing that appears in a dark room just out of the corner of your eye… He felt so hollow, and heavy; in my shock I felt deprived of the ability to scream, conscious of my actions but completely unable to control them. I bent down and turned the man over, with the grim realization that this was the same and only person who so often visited Lukasz during the day… his business partner and friend, Evan… my hands quickly found the cause of the victim’s petrified stance… a number of long steel bars protruded from the torso, flecked with red at their tips like some sort of macabre flower garden. And, around the wounds flowed not blood, but a thick mixture of what looked like Portland cement, sand, and gravel… could this have been real? What evil could bring one to replace a person’s blood with builder’s concrete? The body still lays on the floor of my memory in that horrid and twisted form…
Still in shock, perhaps even now not fully worn off, was my next discovery… that, as I went to lay Lukasz to sleep before alerting the guards, he too was stiff, unresponsive. I quickly discovered that, strangely, Lukasz’s hands were pinned to the bed by shattered pieces of CDs… his throat engorged by the presence of hundreds of feet of cassette tape (coroner measurement at 281.25’ – a C60); and his temples broken and bleeding from what looked to me like a massive pseudoaneurism. Independent research on the cassette tape suggests that it was from the 1987 Rick Astley album, Whenever You Need Somebody. This cruelty is yet unexplainable… was this a struggle for power in the student senate that both of these young people held so dear? Is this connected with the Hayes murder? Was it merely a deranged author’s idea of a joke? Most ironic of all, though, is that upon analysis of Lukasz’s body, a black marking was found embedded in his right arm in approximately the same location as the torn flesh on his left… Whatever the word, “control” meant to Lukasz, he had struggled to remove it until his last (and agonizingly irksome) moments…
Respectfully,
Maria Goebbel
Former Nurse
Raging City Hospital
PART 6
Date: April 20, 2010
To: The Council
From: DM
Re: Victory
Esteemed members of The Council, I write today to inform you that our quarter three plans for domination have succeeded. Though the initial investment in Kryslev’s research at the hospital came under question twenty five years ago, there can be no misconstrued notions of deficit now. The infants that he inoculated with our nanomachines in room 314 grew up under the gaze of parents across the country that were blind enough not to notice their real children had been replaced. The machines, it seemed, had the uncanny ability to repress the higher creative capacity of the children, making them predisposed to enter into studies in engineering and the sciences. Even this was but a small pretense to their greater power, though… as they grew, the children developed a condensed form of life energy, that through the machines, they could exert according to their interests. The young one, Rika, and her ability to perform the temporal blade drafting technique, should illustrate this.
Our witless senators’ histories began to twine together as their parents and minds were warped into believing that first Mines, and then the Senate, were safe places. They all collected in the senate body, just as planned, the deplorable infants now turned deplorable students. From my seat as trusted advisor, I watched as they attempted to help their cohorts. I watched with a false smile painted across my face.
After I fell from my position in the council, I sought some small shaft of light that would bring me back to your graces… so, fifteen years ago, I slit Kryslev’s throat and injected myself with the nanomachines. Because my immune system was stronger than those of the infant subjects, my body began to rebel against them… it began to eat itself away in a vain attempt to protect me… I didn’t want to be protected. The nanomachines fought back, too, reducing me to a bloody pool, softly festering on my hand-knit divan for near-on three weeks. Then, slowly, a miracle happened… the machines gathered bits of textile and circuitry from my home… began rebuilding me… and making me better. They interfaced with my mind, and lent me the memory of the superceded machines… of those in the subjects. As my frame transitioned from sinew to steel, I knew deep within my being that I had become the central controller.
Yes, it was me. It was my sole doing that rankled their minds with visions of Mines, that brought them to their seats in Senate, that cut them down in battle. Rika yielded to my power when she dissected Hayes… and Lukasz when he petrified Waddell. That sealed the scheme, because up until that point it was only Waddell that was evading my influence… something in his material frequency negated my signal… likely it was his cursed music ability. With he and Dubaj gone, the Senate leadership slowly crumbled. Nordby and Weyer stood defiantly for a time before I had them both immolated with a flick of the wrist - it seems that Ziegler had quite a knack for chemo-pyrotechnics. But, he too soon fell after I had Reed shatter him in her zero-point potential field. It was beautiful, watching as he fell apart like so many of God’s legos at her very gaze. I was almost tempted to ask her to join us… but that was a passing whim. I pitted her against Rodriguez’s entropy subspace and they devolved each other’s matter into so many marbles of shadow and light… the burns still paint the Surbeck lobby like impressionist death… beautiful.
After a while I became bored, and instructed the others to begin attacking the student body. The pleasure lurking under my worried-looking façade was immense. A grand rebellion pit student against senate in an attempt to bring peace back to their lives. Now, as the war subsides and with the Senate annihilated, they will all look to you, to us, for their guidance. Our plans shall now proceed unimpeded… a new age is dawning! Fourth quarter earnings are projected high… let us hope that our little Hell will have enough desks for our eager pupils.
THE END
Stuffed Animals of Terror - A 'For Fun' Horror Story
In an old room in south Rapid City, the dust had settled. Spiders and flies swam playfully through its dull benthos, leaving small whorls and piles as on a snow-angel holiday, to adorn the woodwork with some naïve remedy for its age.
The insect fete was interrupted by a ragged clap on the far door, facing opposite the tattered valances, letting in just enough morning light to draw dim lines along the floor. The aisle of light trailed faithfully along the jagged floorboards until it met the rattled door, which shook a second time with enough violence that it collapsed inward.
A large figure, dressed hurriedly in a suit of the same grey pallor as the dust, clambered in, and with a baritone expostulation thus: “Yes! This shall be my greatest scheme… the most worthy scheme, that the Council has ever seen. I sat by willingly as they killed off the slop in the Student Senate, and now they’re so enamored with the accomplishment that they’re blind to the factions. The factions, Edward!”
A man, scarcely visible behind the first, appeared nonplussed by the boast and warning. Perhaps a bit over half the size of the larger one, he wore a t-shirt and jeans, torn and stained. In fact, he also seemed nonplussed by the fact that until a few minutes ago, this room hadn’t existed per his two-year memory of the house. And, as la crème for the nonplus sundae, he didn’t flinch as his foot slammed heavily crosswise into an upturned board in the floor, which cleanly broke off his remaining big toe. It rattled away like a stone. “Yes, the factions,” Edward morosely said.
“I see that my conditioning hasn’t worked completely,” the other man said, digging in his pockets and pulling out a smooth black box, which was engraved with a crescent moon, (since crossed out thickly with a red marker). “Yet,” he finished, and pressed a small button at the top of the box. Behind him, the small man convulsed in an awkward, nonplussed way, then broke his strange involuntary dance momentarily to glower at the large man in a strained way. The rebuttal was short-lived, the convulsions started again, and didn’t end until smoke started to pour heavily from Edward’s ears and collar.
Now staring at the floor, Edward said, slowly, “Yes, the factions, sir.”
“That’s better, Cullen,” the large man said. The sun peaked a little more confidently through the shades and met his stark black hair, slightly squared metal glasses, and excited grin. “Now, why do these factions start?” The man continued explaining out loud. “Because some upstart students get the idea that they can exist happily outside the sphere of the Council, that’s why. And so, the only answer is to remove any inkling of happiness from their lives! And,” his voice had slowly risen into a boom, “what makes people more happy than cute, fuzzy, innocent little kittens, Edward? WHAT? I’ll tell you… nothing!”
With that, the man slammed his fist into a dusty sideboard, and the floor of the room began to slowly creak open. Muffled mews could be heard from below as the gap widened, and revealed a reeling mass of feline fluff.
“When the world wakes from their petty dreams tomorrow morning, Edward, their precious putty-tats will all be substituted by my Crazy (stuffed) Animals of Terror!! Let this be a lesson to all who build offense against the Council. No more cats! Only… CATS!!! Hahahaha,” he belted maniacally, as he whirled around and strode from the room.
Edward glowered from behind him, in a nonplussed manner.
The insect fete was interrupted by a ragged clap on the far door, facing opposite the tattered valances, letting in just enough morning light to draw dim lines along the floor. The aisle of light trailed faithfully along the jagged floorboards until it met the rattled door, which shook a second time with enough violence that it collapsed inward.
A large figure, dressed hurriedly in a suit of the same grey pallor as the dust, clambered in, and with a baritone expostulation thus: “Yes! This shall be my greatest scheme… the most worthy scheme, that the Council has ever seen. I sat by willingly as they killed off the slop in the Student Senate, and now they’re so enamored with the accomplishment that they’re blind to the factions. The factions, Edward!”
A man, scarcely visible behind the first, appeared nonplussed by the boast and warning. Perhaps a bit over half the size of the larger one, he wore a t-shirt and jeans, torn and stained. In fact, he also seemed nonplussed by the fact that until a few minutes ago, this room hadn’t existed per his two-year memory of the house. And, as la crème for the nonplus sundae, he didn’t flinch as his foot slammed heavily crosswise into an upturned board in the floor, which cleanly broke off his remaining big toe. It rattled away like a stone. “Yes, the factions,” Edward morosely said.
“I see that my conditioning hasn’t worked completely,” the other man said, digging in his pockets and pulling out a smooth black box, which was engraved with a crescent moon, (since crossed out thickly with a red marker). “Yet,” he finished, and pressed a small button at the top of the box. Behind him, the small man convulsed in an awkward, nonplussed way, then broke his strange involuntary dance momentarily to glower at the large man in a strained way. The rebuttal was short-lived, the convulsions started again, and didn’t end until smoke started to pour heavily from Edward’s ears and collar.
Now staring at the floor, Edward said, slowly, “Yes, the factions, sir.”
“That’s better, Cullen,” the large man said. The sun peaked a little more confidently through the shades and met his stark black hair, slightly squared metal glasses, and excited grin. “Now, why do these factions start?” The man continued explaining out loud. “Because some upstart students get the idea that they can exist happily outside the sphere of the Council, that’s why. And so, the only answer is to remove any inkling of happiness from their lives! And,” his voice had slowly risen into a boom, “what makes people more happy than cute, fuzzy, innocent little kittens, Edward? WHAT? I’ll tell you… nothing!”
With that, the man slammed his fist into a dusty sideboard, and the floor of the room began to slowly creak open. Muffled mews could be heard from below as the gap widened, and revealed a reeling mass of feline fluff.
“When the world wakes from their petty dreams tomorrow morning, Edward, their precious putty-tats will all be substituted by my Crazy (stuffed) Animals of Terror!! Let this be a lesson to all who build offense against the Council. No more cats! Only… CATS!!! Hahahaha,” he belted maniacally, as he whirled around and strode from the room.
Edward glowered from behind him, in a nonplussed manner.
Sentence Genetics
We build a sentence much like the human body builds proteins. From a set of genetic instructions (words and their definitions) stored within the nucleus of a cell (our individual memory), we are able to express a gene (sentence-thought). However, a sentence, like a protein, is much more than its primary structure, which is a simple linear ordering of words. Without more definition, a sentence will not 'make sense.' Genetic disorders may arise because of an insertion, deletion, or mutation of nucleotides in a cell's building instructions, just as confusion may arise if we omit an object, subject, verb, demonstrative, or descriptor from our sentences.
Having all of the words present in a sentence-molecule is still not sufficient to convey ideas both necessarily and sufficiently. Secondary sentence structure, analogous to alpha coils and beta pleated sheets in protein, are a sentence's local sub-group elements. Commonly, these sub-groups are separated (or joined) in meaning by conjunctions and punctuation marks. This level of organization is made manifest by dependent and independent clauses and subjects and predicates. These architectural duals introduce sentence hierarchy, allowing external parties to map the priority and meaning of what they are perceiving.
By ordering words into understandable, stratified segments within a sentence, communication is made possible. However, much like a partially denatured protein, the effectiveness of a sentence is not maximized when it doesn't have some global conformation - some tertiary structure. At this level, the interaction of words must be considered. In biology, interaction may refer to domain affinity - segments of a protein will associate with each other due to covalent or hydrogen bonding, disulfide bridge formation, or degree of hydrophilicity. With sentences, the idea of 'interaction' is somewhat more vague. There is an entire branch of science based on the interaction of words, in fact - it is called poetry. People who wish to construct elegant, convincing, or moving sentences must ultimately pull from the toolboxes of poetry. A sentence's wholeness comes from combining poetic tools with associated emotion. Some examples of tertiary structure include:
1. Alliteration - A succession of similar consonant sounds can establish a sentence rhythm, which could add to the conveyance of an upbeat or optimistic viewpoint. Mathematically, alliteration may also serve as a cumulative product operator, multiplying the effect of common sounds. Alliteration with 's' may project serenity or susurrus. Alliteration with 'r' may impart a raw or earthy taste to the overall sentence. Alliteration with 'z' may suggest a lack of maturity.
2. Synonym selection - The same piece of primary structure may come from multiple words, operating under a range of perception that imparts similar general understanding. These 'ranges of understanding' define synonymic word families, much like a wobble position in genetic codons grants leeway to transcriptional interpretation. Thus, one wishing to convey the concept of e.g. 'cold' has many options, which are identical from the stance of primary and secondary structure, but which fashion the overall (tertiary) feel of the sentence in often less-than-subtle ways. The family consisting of cold, frigid, frozen, gelid, and icy each have more precise meanings that can be used synergistically with other words in a sentence to intensify an effect. 'Cold' is the most general of these words, and in combination with other vague or generalized term, could produce a sentence with a bland or ordinary tertiary structure. 'Frigid' implies exceptional circumstance, and could be used in combination with other hyperbolistic terms to fashion something epic. 'Frozen' implies process, or a change in state, and can be used to shift sentence meaning toward perceptions of dynamicism. 'Gelid' has a strange syllable composition, and may lend to a tertiary structure emoting exclusivity or alternative outlooks. 'Icy' presents both a state and a texture, which supports a tactile tertiary composition.
3. Syllable arrangement - These elements of tertiary structure may be seen as a subset of synonym selection, but are more based more on global arrangement. Using many short-syllabled words together may cause the speaker to viewed as simple or low risk; the sentence to seem more concise, rough, or choppy; and imparts feelings of anxiety, nervousness, and incomplete catharsis. Using many multi-syllabled words projects a flow or constant meter, but may also become monotonous or invoke impatience in the perceiver. A good mix of long and short syllabled words must be selected to balance the tertiary structure of the sentence to desired specification, just as a good balance of sulfur or hydroxyl moieties in amino acids must be put into place for 'the right' protein folding to successfully occur. Syllable arrangement also applies on an inter-word basis, e.g. the liason principle in the French language lending fluidity to tertiary structure.
The quaternary structure of proteins, which applies to interactions between separate folded protein entities, is analogous to the synergy between lines in a stanza or poem, the ordering of instructions in a standard operating procedure, or the three-paragraph motif of academic essays. Just as in biology, these interactions are often the most complex.
In summary, there is a strong parallelism between the construction of biological molecules and the well-thought construction of a sentence. Humans have naturally learned to become effective by the biomimicry of the heart beat below their own heart beat.
If additions, contentions, or discussion is deemed, please include it as a comment to this note - I share my thoughts as an avenue to access yours!
Having all of the words present in a sentence-molecule is still not sufficient to convey ideas both necessarily and sufficiently. Secondary sentence structure, analogous to alpha coils and beta pleated sheets in protein, are a sentence's local sub-group elements. Commonly, these sub-groups are separated (or joined) in meaning by conjunctions and punctuation marks. This level of organization is made manifest by dependent and independent clauses and subjects and predicates. These architectural duals introduce sentence hierarchy, allowing external parties to map the priority and meaning of what they are perceiving.
By ordering words into understandable, stratified segments within a sentence, communication is made possible. However, much like a partially denatured protein, the effectiveness of a sentence is not maximized when it doesn't have some global conformation - some tertiary structure. At this level, the interaction of words must be considered. In biology, interaction may refer to domain affinity - segments of a protein will associate with each other due to covalent or hydrogen bonding, disulfide bridge formation, or degree of hydrophilicity. With sentences, the idea of 'interaction' is somewhat more vague. There is an entire branch of science based on the interaction of words, in fact - it is called poetry. People who wish to construct elegant, convincing, or moving sentences must ultimately pull from the toolboxes of poetry. A sentence's wholeness comes from combining poetic tools with associated emotion. Some examples of tertiary structure include:
1. Alliteration - A succession of similar consonant sounds can establish a sentence rhythm, which could add to the conveyance of an upbeat or optimistic viewpoint. Mathematically, alliteration may also serve as a cumulative product operator, multiplying the effect of common sounds. Alliteration with 's' may project serenity or susurrus. Alliteration with 'r' may impart a raw or earthy taste to the overall sentence. Alliteration with 'z' may suggest a lack of maturity.
2. Synonym selection - The same piece of primary structure may come from multiple words, operating under a range of perception that imparts similar general understanding. These 'ranges of understanding' define synonymic word families, much like a wobble position in genetic codons grants leeway to transcriptional interpretation. Thus, one wishing to convey the concept of e.g. 'cold' has many options, which are identical from the stance of primary and secondary structure, but which fashion the overall (tertiary) feel of the sentence in often less-than-subtle ways. The family consisting of cold, frigid, frozen, gelid, and icy each have more precise meanings that can be used synergistically with other words in a sentence to intensify an effect. 'Cold' is the most general of these words, and in combination with other vague or generalized term, could produce a sentence with a bland or ordinary tertiary structure. 'Frigid' implies exceptional circumstance, and could be used in combination with other hyperbolistic terms to fashion something epic. 'Frozen' implies process, or a change in state, and can be used to shift sentence meaning toward perceptions of dynamicism. 'Gelid' has a strange syllable composition, and may lend to a tertiary structure emoting exclusivity or alternative outlooks. 'Icy' presents both a state and a texture, which supports a tactile tertiary composition.
3. Syllable arrangement - These elements of tertiary structure may be seen as a subset of synonym selection, but are more based more on global arrangement. Using many short-syllabled words together may cause the speaker to viewed as simple or low risk; the sentence to seem more concise, rough, or choppy; and imparts feelings of anxiety, nervousness, and incomplete catharsis. Using many multi-syllabled words projects a flow or constant meter, but may also become monotonous or invoke impatience in the perceiver. A good mix of long and short syllabled words must be selected to balance the tertiary structure of the sentence to desired specification, just as a good balance of sulfur or hydroxyl moieties in amino acids must be put into place for 'the right' protein folding to successfully occur. Syllable arrangement also applies on an inter-word basis, e.g. the liason principle in the French language lending fluidity to tertiary structure.
The quaternary structure of proteins, which applies to interactions between separate folded protein entities, is analogous to the synergy between lines in a stanza or poem, the ordering of instructions in a standard operating procedure, or the three-paragraph motif of academic essays. Just as in biology, these interactions are often the most complex.
In summary, there is a strong parallelism between the construction of biological molecules and the well-thought construction of a sentence. Humans have naturally learned to become effective by the biomimicry of the heart beat below their own heart beat.
If additions, contentions, or discussion is deemed, please include it as a comment to this note - I share my thoughts as an avenue to access yours!
Driving to be Lost
From Tuesday, 29 March 2011. 6:30 PM.
I drove as far as propriety would take me on Waldo Road. When it branched and became as broken as my suspended mind, I left it for Baker West. I drove. I found (refound?) Swede as its traverse north recommenced. Driving north, the stripes of light and dark were like a camera shutter over the eye of God. I enter and leave the light but the light is always there again. Swede ended in Estey. Ended with School Road and Bentley Township Hall and Suzie's Salon. Ended with homes for sale, homes that, without human interference, would regress back into the womb of the forest. I left this place of ends, this Estey. Left it for the sun and its light, though fading, still present.
I found myself across water, this lake a surface, an unlying mirror, a mazmorro of my thought tatters. And near it, in small force, the Welcome In restaurant. I stopped for an out-of-place, out-of-time meal. The comfort of being lost in so much of a pool took me as I wrote. The fear that technology and time wouldn't function here was brief but exhilarating. An old man, a veteran of the second World War, sat behind me, and approached by another man, initiated a conversation to grasp the identity of a mutual friend, long lost to the Earth, long lost to their minds. He flew V-17 bombers. He flew 34 missions. His accomplishments, his vehicles, his essence, were still lingering within their brain ashes, but his name was not. His name was with God now, amidst the aether and never ceasing light. They continued to shift their memories like a box of puzzle pieces to find his name, and I continued being lost.
I had driven off the phone grid, and I was still living. I had forgone familiarity, and invitations, and responsibilities, but I was not smitten. I had taken a step outside my artificial home and found it a mere doll house in a larger room. I had, through this simple gesture of recklessness, glanced infinity.
I drove as far as propriety would take me on Waldo Road. When it branched and became as broken as my suspended mind, I left it for Baker West. I drove. I found (refound?) Swede as its traverse north recommenced. Driving north, the stripes of light and dark were like a camera shutter over the eye of God. I enter and leave the light but the light is always there again. Swede ended in Estey. Ended with School Road and Bentley Township Hall and Suzie's Salon. Ended with homes for sale, homes that, without human interference, would regress back into the womb of the forest. I left this place of ends, this Estey. Left it for the sun and its light, though fading, still present.
I found myself across water, this lake a surface, an unlying mirror, a mazmorro of my thought tatters. And near it, in small force, the Welcome In restaurant. I stopped for an out-of-place, out-of-time meal. The comfort of being lost in so much of a pool took me as I wrote. The fear that technology and time wouldn't function here was brief but exhilarating. An old man, a veteran of the second World War, sat behind me, and approached by another man, initiated a conversation to grasp the identity of a mutual friend, long lost to the Earth, long lost to their minds. He flew V-17 bombers. He flew 34 missions. His accomplishments, his vehicles, his essence, were still lingering within their brain ashes, but his name was not. His name was with God now, amidst the aether and never ceasing light. They continued to shift their memories like a box of puzzle pieces to find his name, and I continued being lost.
I had driven off the phone grid, and I was still living. I had forgone familiarity, and invitations, and responsibilities, but I was not smitten. I had taken a step outside my artificial home and found it a mere doll house in a larger room. I had, through this simple gesture of recklessness, glanced infinity.
The Libertine
Your creeping charm invaded me,
Your burning eyes belayed the truth,
Your penny words were cloaked marauders,
Feigning love, pretending ruth.
Pretending ruth.
Stealing through innocent night,
Your dark cape furled about you,
With no intention but blight,
You plunged your dagger into me through and through.
Into me through and through.
I lay here bleeding,
Across so many memories.
I lay here dying,
Across a walk now cold and gray.
Now cold and gray.
You stole my breath and didn’t give it back.
You wrote my effigy before we even met.
You played my heart like it was a card in your deck.
And you smiled as I was broken by your comfort.
You murdered me with my own hope.
Your burning eyes belayed the truth,
Your penny words were cloaked marauders,
Feigning love, pretending ruth.
Pretending ruth.
Stealing through innocent night,
Your dark cape furled about you,
With no intention but blight,
You plunged your dagger into me through and through.
Into me through and through.
I lay here bleeding,
Across so many memories.
I lay here dying,
Across a walk now cold and gray.
Now cold and gray.
You stole my breath and didn’t give it back.
You wrote my effigy before we even met.
You played my heart like it was a card in your deck.
And you smiled as I was broken by your comfort.
You murdered me with my own hope.
Brother Moon
Do you know, Brother Moon, what I once was, even before your
rays touched the Earth and raised the tides, even before young lovers
worshipped your warm corona, even before you were the death of every day? Do
you know my likeness outside of that delineated by your radiant pallor? Do you
know my breath beyond those wisps of smoke shown so ghostly by your
scintillating waves? I was the vast beyond before your light, I was the wonder
of scholars before you pinned down the skies, I was the harbinger before
gypsies read alms under your mantle. And, do you know, Brother Moon, what I
shall be again, when your hoary rivers of luminescence are dried and bled away
into the deep, when your crown be torn from your flaxen hair and blotted, when
your fame be only a whisper caught between the drivel-rants of the insane?
rays touched the Earth and raised the tides, even before young lovers
worshipped your warm corona, even before you were the death of every day? Do
you know my likeness outside of that delineated by your radiant pallor? Do you
know my breath beyond those wisps of smoke shown so ghostly by your
scintillating waves? I was the vast beyond before your light, I was the wonder
of scholars before you pinned down the skies, I was the harbinger before
gypsies read alms under your mantle. And, do you know, Brother Moon, what I
shall be again, when your hoary rivers of luminescence are dried and bled away
into the deep, when your crown be torn from your flaxen hair and blotted, when
your fame be only a whisper caught between the drivel-rants of the insane?
Colour
Colour was the food she sought. In all her journeys, in all her delicate steps and in all her brash boundings, she only wanted that one course, so delectable, so intriguing was it. The reds of remorse mingled with the reds of passion and those of anger, a sweet cadence that made her feel as if the blood within her sang its melody. The greens of illness dripped uneasily onto the green of naivety, spoiling it as surely as the green of money spoils the green of Mother Earth. Blue were her tears as in blue twilight she witnessed the soft croon of a blues bard, cranking from her lungs those feelings seasoned bittersweet. Black were her thoughts as, stepping through the deep unknown of her own mind, she never thought she’d find a soul outside the black again. White were her most tenuous fleeting thoughts, innocence upon the white snow and sky, fleeing outward like a band of fledglings or the words typed upon the white of this page. But still her journey continued. She scoffed at the unwholesome majesty of violet, she reeled at the orange of perverseness and warning. And still onward she flew. She mixed her colours, she found grey. She found many years of doldrums, shifting through warm greys, and cold ones, ones with some life and ones which could only ever stay dead. And she despaired for there was nothing to sate her and she grew hungry. Wasting away, she saw brown grow around her, saw its maw wide and ready to swallow her and make her the earth. This was a carnivorous colour, one which she could not pursue but which pursued her. And the ground pulled her further in and smothered her breath. All she knew in those last moments before death was brown. Not the bright light of love or accomplishment. She had grown bored of that long ago. Not the utter black shadow of fear… that was also behind her. But this brown. This colour of worms and ordure and soot. This was her defeat. She closed her eyes and died. And somewhere inside her, a consciousness was let loose from this world of things with names, of light with hues, of increments and of textures. It became all things and no things as it became incorporeal. And in this transition perhaps her new colour, the one which, all along, was inside her, was born.
RED - Thoughts Spilling
As I sat there, so melancholy at my writing desk, my hand all of its own grasped a single red crayon and began to scrawl across the paper. I could feel every subtle rippling as it ran its smooth point over the blood-staining white. Flecks of dust below the surface of the paper became deeper red snow set upon lines of scarlet water. A small curving ribbon of crayon ran astray and fell into a groove in the table, began to colour it too that hated red. Began to fill every wooden wrinkle set across what once must have been a mighty oak standing tall in green. Now red. All red. And the crayon colour spilled so sensuously off my table, pooling in the fibers of my white carpet. Now red. All red. And it kept spreading, this pool deepening around my ankles. All the while my hand continued its lattice work upon that page, and an image first abstruse began to grow from nothing. The red was filling my world. It grew up around my waist and my legs once cream now red all red and it wasn’t a cold red, it was a lust red, it was a rage red, and it was eating my flesh and it was climbing up my chest. And the red of that crayon colour was digging into the small red of my heart and it became one red and then grasped my neck and still my hand was scrawling its suicide serenade and the image on the page was becoming a reality. And as it poured from my eyes the red became my tears and as it filled my mind the red became all my thoughts. And I dissolved in the red, and I who once was human now was red. All red. And my hand was somehow still moving through the deep to finish its image. All that existed now were the spreading lines, my curiosity, and red. A stabbing feeling exploded in my consciousness as, although my eyes were long since gone, the lines joined and sang their image loud. In that red consumption in that red cacophony in that red melodrama anger ire fleeing despair in that red that sour red that bitter red I found what my hand and that red were so ready to bring to life… it was you. Poured from my soul it was your likeness. But I have nothing more to give since I am red and you are red but we are not.
The Albatross - A Poem
The albatross is screaming
As it writhes across the patterned
Guilt of my shoulders
Bear nothing but its soft suffering
Said the keeper of the cards
As he became the shadow
Of a sour intention
And as I became enfolded
In the fabric
Of morning.
As it writhes across the patterned
Guilt of my shoulders
Bear nothing but its soft suffering
Said the keeper of the cards
As he became the shadow
Of a sour intention
And as I became enfolded
In the fabric
Of morning.
Lantern Light
My hand waved good bye to them all as I set forth at sun’s first light. My heart was not waving, it was wavering, it was awash with the dark which I thought must surely fade with the night, but did not. My footfalls were heavy, so heavy. They were iron and blood and guilt. With every discernible knot of my being I lifted my legs onward, into the bright, away from their figures, still waving in their frozen recollection. I mounted a first hill and I was bleeding profusely, exsanguinated by the light and my distance and my grief. Was it me who was moving my body into the unknown? Was it me who was launching my flesh into the smoldering new day? …Thoughts which when answered would only increase my suffering. I felt an empty vessel now, mounting hill and delving vale. I felt that my contents were littering my path, still held captive by where I’ve been and who I knew. And what did the ‘where-I’m-going’ contain but emptiness? My eyes became frosted and glass, my brow precipitous. I trudged onward with a fool’s strength, the strength one borrows from the dead. The smallness of self overtook me; I was slipping forward now, moving disembodied yet swiftly into the fading light, but one. A torch glowed on the horizon and with strength unknown to neither flesh nor spirit I became the path back to that terrestrial star. I joined myself into its luminous tendrils and for one second had a faint memory that I was the very lantern light shone at my back when that morning I set forth. When, still and quiet, the waving them-figures held the sconce aloft.
Play Time - A Horror Story
A chime overhead was followed by an annoyed voice: “Attention, customers, the store is closing in five minutes. The store is closing in five minutes.” Tyler heard the half-warning, half-reprimand, but he weighed it against the large pile of jeans he had yet to try on, and decided to ignore it. He had never found such promising and aesthetically pleasing bargains, and it would be a shame to leave them here. Plus, they have to wait for everyone to leave, right?
While he was undoing the clasp on his fourth pair of jeans (which fit him perfectly! Success!), the lights dimmed and there was a metallic grating sound from somewhere in the distance. Maybe his comforting thought was wrong. Maybe the bitch running the counter really was that stiff, just didn’t care. He ran from the dressing rooms, clumsily trying to latch his belt at the same time, and was met only with the security lighting, pouring down in isolated spires over the faceless mannequins littering the store, the gargoyles of the fashion age.
The registers were all off. The metal sound must have been the iron gates now in place across the store entrance and front windows. The only sound now was the steady hum of the air handlers… actually, the humming had just cut out. Tyler could only imagine that the cheapskates running the store had decided to cut the power at night to conserve power. Which sucked for him, because now he was amidst dead silence in a sea of cotton and polyester.
Tyler’s first instinct was to yell for someone to open the store, a guard or something had to be patrolling the mall. He walked up to the gates, and to his dismay, found that there was nothing but complete blackness on the other side of the chain links. “Hey! Hey, is anyone out there?” he yelled, at first a bit cautiously, then with growing vigor. It wasn’t working. In fact, it seemed like the more he yelled, the less… the less he could stand to yell again. What was going on? He tried to put his arm through a hole in the gate, and his hand fell upon something warm and solid. The shape wasn’t describable. It felt like a tree that was full of hot water. But it was so black beyond the gate that he couldn’t tell.
The shape writhed and slid past his hand. It was alive? Or at least it was moving? What the hell was this? He pulled back his arm as fast as he could. He couldn’t see out there, but something inside him told him that whatever was out there… could see him.
There was a crash in the back of the store. Tyler again recoiled, this time back into the fence, then jumped again, remembering what his hand had just lit upon out there. His mind was racing with thoughts? A joke? Some sick joke? Was that what this was? Shouldn’t my eyes be adjusted by now? Why is my heart racing so fast? Why can’t I catch my breath…
The thought hit him like a brick. The air handlers. Somehow his breathable air was being cut out. He was nervously sucking in all of the last of his breathable air. But how? This place is huge.. unless someone was purposely trying to pump out the air… or unless something very big was gulping it in…. no, that’s stupid. That’s stupid.
He was pacing in the front of the store, too scared to try the gate again, too scared to venture to the back door of the store. He reached for his cell… Shit, he realized. The pants he had worn in to the store are still in the dressing rooms. No way… He had to do it. If he wanted to get out… He was starting to get dizzy. All of the mannequins were watching him, like some sinister hand had come from the darkness and pushed their eye-less faces down to observe his fear.
The crashing in the back of the store was louder now. He saw some rustling among the shirts displayed along the side walls. The rustling was coming to the front of the store. Something was crawling under the clothes. Something was coming toward him. He wished he wasn’t breathing so damn loud, he wished his legs didn’t feel like lead. He needed to think clearly. He needed to think at all. Move, he thought. Move…. “Move!” He yelled to himself, and he ran to the opposite wall of the store.
He began making his way along the far wall back to the dressing rooms. He was going to reach that phone and call whoever he could to make this better. Who would he call? Who did he know? What the hell? He thought. His mind was muddy water. Swirling between his ears. He wasn’t seeing properly now. The air was becoming intoxicatingly weak. He stumbled into one of the accessory racks and a bunch of studded belts fell to the floor, their clattering filling his head like it was the only sound in the world. He had to keep going. He had to keep running.
He emerged from the retail area and fell onto the floor of the changing room hallway. The cold tiles greeted his skin like some farce of a bed, tempting him to rest there forever as his breath continued to weaken. He was crawling now, he was opening the door to his dressing room. He was rooting through the pockets of any clothes he could find. He was pulling a cell phone from the folds. He was staring at its illuminated screen. He was staring at a text message that had just arrived. The words were all in double… no, his vision was all in double… fading. His mind was interpreting it far too slow. As he fell unconscious and the crashing met him and ripped through him, the phone slid across the tile and its screen was reflected on the marble wall… it read, “Play time is over.” The store become one avalanche of clothes, and flooring, and counters, and mannequins. All coming to a stop in a stack on some plane strewn with the litter of so many more stores, of pools, of cars, of homes. An enormous arm lifted up a handful of figurines from one of the stacks, up until it was even with a gleaming pair of young eyes and a crooked smile half-filled with teeth. “Play time is over,” it crooned. And it let go off all of the plastic bodies, of all of the lifeless forms, like a crane machine at the arcade, and they fell surely back into the earth, some breaking as they hit, one twisted figure, a boy in new clothes with a look of horror painted across his visage, atop them all.
While he was undoing the clasp on his fourth pair of jeans (which fit him perfectly! Success!), the lights dimmed and there was a metallic grating sound from somewhere in the distance. Maybe his comforting thought was wrong. Maybe the bitch running the counter really was that stiff, just didn’t care. He ran from the dressing rooms, clumsily trying to latch his belt at the same time, and was met only with the security lighting, pouring down in isolated spires over the faceless mannequins littering the store, the gargoyles of the fashion age.
The registers were all off. The metal sound must have been the iron gates now in place across the store entrance and front windows. The only sound now was the steady hum of the air handlers… actually, the humming had just cut out. Tyler could only imagine that the cheapskates running the store had decided to cut the power at night to conserve power. Which sucked for him, because now he was amidst dead silence in a sea of cotton and polyester.
Tyler’s first instinct was to yell for someone to open the store, a guard or something had to be patrolling the mall. He walked up to the gates, and to his dismay, found that there was nothing but complete blackness on the other side of the chain links. “Hey! Hey, is anyone out there?” he yelled, at first a bit cautiously, then with growing vigor. It wasn’t working. In fact, it seemed like the more he yelled, the less… the less he could stand to yell again. What was going on? He tried to put his arm through a hole in the gate, and his hand fell upon something warm and solid. The shape wasn’t describable. It felt like a tree that was full of hot water. But it was so black beyond the gate that he couldn’t tell.
The shape writhed and slid past his hand. It was alive? Or at least it was moving? What the hell was this? He pulled back his arm as fast as he could. He couldn’t see out there, but something inside him told him that whatever was out there… could see him.
There was a crash in the back of the store. Tyler again recoiled, this time back into the fence, then jumped again, remembering what his hand had just lit upon out there. His mind was racing with thoughts? A joke? Some sick joke? Was that what this was? Shouldn’t my eyes be adjusted by now? Why is my heart racing so fast? Why can’t I catch my breath…
The thought hit him like a brick. The air handlers. Somehow his breathable air was being cut out. He was nervously sucking in all of the last of his breathable air. But how? This place is huge.. unless someone was purposely trying to pump out the air… or unless something very big was gulping it in…. no, that’s stupid. That’s stupid.
He was pacing in the front of the store, too scared to try the gate again, too scared to venture to the back door of the store. He reached for his cell… Shit, he realized. The pants he had worn in to the store are still in the dressing rooms. No way… He had to do it. If he wanted to get out… He was starting to get dizzy. All of the mannequins were watching him, like some sinister hand had come from the darkness and pushed their eye-less faces down to observe his fear.
The crashing in the back of the store was louder now. He saw some rustling among the shirts displayed along the side walls. The rustling was coming to the front of the store. Something was crawling under the clothes. Something was coming toward him. He wished he wasn’t breathing so damn loud, he wished his legs didn’t feel like lead. He needed to think clearly. He needed to think at all. Move, he thought. Move…. “Move!” He yelled to himself, and he ran to the opposite wall of the store.
He began making his way along the far wall back to the dressing rooms. He was going to reach that phone and call whoever he could to make this better. Who would he call? Who did he know? What the hell? He thought. His mind was muddy water. Swirling between his ears. He wasn’t seeing properly now. The air was becoming intoxicatingly weak. He stumbled into one of the accessory racks and a bunch of studded belts fell to the floor, their clattering filling his head like it was the only sound in the world. He had to keep going. He had to keep running.
He emerged from the retail area and fell onto the floor of the changing room hallway. The cold tiles greeted his skin like some farce of a bed, tempting him to rest there forever as his breath continued to weaken. He was crawling now, he was opening the door to his dressing room. He was rooting through the pockets of any clothes he could find. He was pulling a cell phone from the folds. He was staring at its illuminated screen. He was staring at a text message that had just arrived. The words were all in double… no, his vision was all in double… fading. His mind was interpreting it far too slow. As he fell unconscious and the crashing met him and ripped through him, the phone slid across the tile and its screen was reflected on the marble wall… it read, “Play time is over.” The store become one avalanche of clothes, and flooring, and counters, and mannequins. All coming to a stop in a stack on some plane strewn with the litter of so many more stores, of pools, of cars, of homes. An enormous arm lifted up a handful of figurines from one of the stacks, up until it was even with a gleaming pair of young eyes and a crooked smile half-filled with teeth. “Play time is over,” it crooned. And it let go off all of the plastic bodies, of all of the lifeless forms, like a crane machine at the arcade, and they fell surely back into the earth, some breaking as they hit, one twisted figure, a boy in new clothes with a look of horror painted across his visage, atop them all.
Toward
And there I was, staring intently at the word on the page. Of course, there were many other words, it was a periodical. There were many other pages. But this was THE word. This was THE page. For some reason, I knew it. I could taste this word. I could swim in its sans serif depths, catapult from the ledge of its t into the pool of its o. Why was I looking so harshly into its character? I was interrogating the word. 'Toward,' I read aloud. And now it was real. Now its ink had been translated through the electrical highway of my central nervous system into a combination of air and muscle, reverberating from my throat like some twanging banjo in a forest clearing, tweaked by fingers both earth-grubby and delicate. Now it not only existed by virtue of some sweeping printer fingers, it existed in my body and around my head. It had been multiplied into the chords of a different perception. I was walking into it like it was a pathway into truth. I was moving toward toward. To ward? To fend off? This was a breakage, this wasn't its rightful mien. Tow ard? To move away from the arbor? I am shuffling the letters one by one like I am playing Rummikub. I am moving its cells like a biotechnologist, trying to rearrange a cat into a fish. To Draw... an infinitive. Toward contains many a line, emanating from it like spokes, but no matter how many, I continue to move toward toward. When I reach the sudden curl of its final d, I will be facing up into the heavens, I will be marching up its backbone like the shivers I get when I read to the dead. For, perhaps, when toward ends and it becomes destination, that will be where I am. Who I am. But I am stuck. I am entrenched in w, and I try to read it again and all I can say is tow. Two. To. Wot? I wager that this is it. I have dwelt on toward for far too long. I am now past toward. If I turn back I will once again move toward toward. But this is a siren's song mistake. I will be eaten by its intensity if I go back to that word. I move on. I fall off d. There is no heaven here. There is nothing but the white space of the page. And the sudden realization that the author of this periodical is also moving toward toward. I look up at the spire ahead. It is another t, falling surely into another o. I am moving away from toward by moving toward toward. And now I know it won't end. The white space will yield to this repetition. I am stuck once again staring intently at this word. At word. Toward. It is the always of this place. It is a movement that will never stop. It is time's arrow. It is entropy. It is dissolution. But it is toward. And it is a lilting reminder of continuance.
Static - A Horror Story
It was a cold night, the kind where, unless you looked real hard, the Michigan countryside could have been frozen in time, frozen like the realist dream of some painter of old. The hills spelled out the coming winter with their greens transitioning to browns, to the colour of repose, of death. Across the mottled plains lay just a few specks of light, the homes of those brave souls living far enough from the cities to see the stars. One such home, nestled snugly inside a picket fence-line, bore the shimmering colours of red and gold, and greens, flashing from one to next in the main story windows. These colours bore forth the story of the movie Evan had just clicked on using the game controller now-remote.
His parents away for the evening, the house felt even colder and more artificial than usual. Evan had always felt a bit disconnected from this place, even though he had lived there his entire life. He spent many hours in front of the TV, hoping that the oasis of light and sound it projected would somehow insulate him from the reality living outside. The true and striking cold. The deep blacks of the night sky. The harsh words of children. The stirring tales of broken hearts. He wanted to live in this falsehood forever. Because to disregard pain meant to embrace happiness, in front of this screen.
The image flickered. A few flecks of static crept across the face of the main actor in the romance flick, just as he was about to give the kiss of true love to his daring counterpart. Evan felt uneasy. The static, creeping across his face, was ruining the illusion he wanted for this lazy night. Why couldn’t he spend one more hour in the bliss of forgetting. He felt like the actor, looking for love, finding only static on every channel. He switched to a different movie, this one a comedy. The Pixar teddy bear, in its childlike bearings, was walking toward a grocery store. Evan had seen this one many times; it always made him smile. As he watched, and the teddy bear was about to push the lever on carousel horse in front of the store, a line of white noise crept across its furry arm. Interfered with the fun. Broke, once again, the illusion of childhood sending forth colour and noise to blot out Evan’s worry.
What was going on? This had never happened before. The images on his movies had always been crisp and believable. He had always swam in their lies so faultlessly. He switched again, this time to a horror movie. Static ruined the tension. He switched to a documentary, and static ate away at the lion eating away at her prey. A cartoon. Static disintegrated the transformation scene of the main character. A game show. Static fell across the survey questions.
Frustrated, Evan got up from his futon, and drug his feet into the kitchen. The cold harshened, and he hugged his sweater even closer to him, like the arms of a loved one. He wished it could have been. He wished he could be losing himself inside the bright and flawless eyes of his perfect mate, just like the screen of a television. Those lover’s eyes would the pool of warmth he could swim in, could be an endless sun so that he would never have to pull so close into his winter clothes again.
He was daydreaming. Not watching where he was going, filled with the image of his perfect man, he had stumbled across the kitchen toward where the cupboard should have been. Popcorn would make this cold a bit more bearable. Maybe it would even be enough of a distraction so that he could overlook the static. Static? Am I hearing static? He thought to himself, still in a half daze, dreaming of the man that would take him to warmth.
He lifted his arm, and his head, out of that mirage, to reach for the cupboard door, and he ran into something soft and warm… and still. His eyes still hadn’t adjusted to the dark, but he was certain of the shape of it… certain it was….
He jumped backward, alarmed, and let out a yell. There was a man standing there, looking sullenly into the empty cabinet. The man, tall, had dark, medium length hair that fell in half ringlets around his head. As Evan tried to catch his breath, tried to think calmly about calling the police, trying to fight him, trying to run, the man slowly craned his head around, still in the half dark of the kitchen, and stared. Not even at him, really. This man was staring into Evan. He was the image of pale beauty, he was a specimen from the land of dreams, he was everything Evan had just been hoping for. The smile that crept onto the man’s face was one of a sweet innocence, was a beckoning one. The man’s close-fitting shirt and jeans showed that he had some physique, some strength with which to fuel the heat of the embrace Evan was now, illogically, unwaveringly, moving to give him.
His heart was beating so fast, he was in a trance, he was swept into this by the night, his hands and arms were thrown forward, his eyes softened by the thought of an ally in this cold… And then he heard it. The static, creeping into, filling his ears. And then gone. And the man was still there in all of his quiet beauty. Smiling. Inviting.
Evan was burning with the desire to enter his embrace. He took another step forward, looking into his eyes. Static. Static burst across the man’s face, and the sweet smile fizzled quickly into the most horrid snarling countenance that Evan had ever seen, teeth sharp as canine razors laying over lips now putrescent and dripping, eyes red and hollow set back in the sockets of a dark and spoiling skull. Fizzled back, and the beautiful, sex-filled, luscious face reappeared. Fizzled, and death, and the snarling smile crawling up the side of his hollow face, producing rows of jagged teeth. Fizzle, and beauty. Fizzle, and the corpse’s tongue was slithering out of the hole where a cheek should have been, glistening with black blood. It still stood there, menacing and then brilliant, dead and then alive, red flaming coals of eyes giving way to clear and spotless blue. Still stood there staring. Then, slowly, it lifted one arm to beckon to Evan, one arm fizzling with static between slender moon-made skin and the rotten flesh of hell. Choked up, horrified, feeling sick at what he could have been holding right now, Evan ran out of the kitchen, not thinking, just fleeing, ran to the door and opened it, and stepped into the plains of cold and leaves and pumpkins which he… no. There were none of those things here.
There were only long waving lines of tall grass. The savannah sun was beating down upon Evan’s head as he moved a bit farther into the fields. Foreign birds dotted the sky, which was flashing between a warm blue and a cold gray, sputtering with static, filling his whole mind with static. The wind was static as it blew through the rushes. The ground was a static that flowed under his feet, the vegetation shimmering between tropical flowers and dead earth. What was going on here?
A new static filled his ears. This… no, this wasn’t static. It was a low growl. It was coming from right behind him. He spun around quickly, to see the grass waving unnaturally, to see the glint of sun across two sharp-as-knives eyes. The static ripped through the grass, which gave way to both night and sun, which, in its layers, uncovered the claws and slender body of a huge cat, a beast of prey, a house of destruction, its fangs for killing, its tail whipping in excitement. It leapt forward and with claw outstretched went for Evan’s throat. He was slammed back and down into the ground, he was under such a weight as he had never known. The claws were stuck firmly into his chest, deep under his skin. He thought he could hear his heart beating. He knew it to be, instead, the ragged putrid breath of the beast, now craning its head to the sky, now releasing a blood-curdling scream of victory as it pressed down more firmly into Evan’s tender skin. He squirmed, he yelled, and screamed, and cried, he tried everything he could do, to roll away, to tear away, and just as his strength was failing and the beast raised his other claw for the killing blow, a wave of static ran across the hillside, ran through the feline monstrosity, and broke its hold on Evan, shimmering like the endless blue sky above, its weight fading just enough that he could escape its grasp. He pounded his feet into the ground like hammers on anvils, praying for the door of his house, to be back in that place cold yet inviting.
He was there, he opened the door, never remembering it to be so light, his fear and anxiety giving him the strength of desperation. As he slammed the door shut, a thud on the other side followed by a scream of bestial fury told Evan that he must have been mere inches away from death in his scramble back.
He couldn’t go back to the kitchen. He couldn’t go outside. He ran back to where it all started. The family room, with its television still blaring static, noise, breaching reality, giving him such a headache that he thought his skull would split. He didn’t know what to do. Waves of static were pouring from the screen, the walls were moving under the weight of illusion. The line of teddy bears lined up on the shelf to one side was starting to move robotically under the weight of the static. The mirrors were filled with faces too mangled to call human. The couch’s legs were flickering between wood and jointed, crawling, insect legs, its cushions becoming a pool of snickering maggots. All Evan could do was give up, or… try. Try to beat this. Try to cut off the source of this nightmare. He hoisted the heavy reading lamp up and poised it to strike at the television, even as it flickered between shaft and python, even as its fanged head spit and struck at Evan’s legs. He hoisted it higher, over his head, and brought it crashing down into the white noise, the rectangle of light. It cracked, and let burst an intense wave of light and noise, a roaring like the abyss of hell itself had been blown open. It through Evan back into the wall and, as the light from the now destroyed television faded, so too did his consciousness…
“Evan! Evan! Wake up, honey, we’re home.” The voice sounded so far away, but got closer every second, with every vibration of the dark, of the hand gently nudging his shoulder. “Evan!” He opened his eyes, and he was greeted by the gentle gaze of his mother, shopping bags in one hand, and her other lightly set upon him. “You must have fallen asleep! Look, your movie has been long since over.” She gestured toward the television, stuck on a screen of steady white noise. Evan turned off the television immediately. “Sorry, Mom, yeah, I must be tired. I’m going to bed.”
He mounted the stairs, passed his dad and said good night to him, too. Brushed his teeth. Washed his face. Stared at himself in the mirror for a moment. Ran his hand along his clean skin. Brought his gaze, tiredly, toward his own eyes. Looked at their gentle and exhausted irises, looked at the fine details of their pigment, rushing out from his pupils like so many fine flowers. Looked into the darkness of his pupils. Looked closer, and closer, stirring in them, so tired. A flicker of white static ran quickly across their depths.
His parents away for the evening, the house felt even colder and more artificial than usual. Evan had always felt a bit disconnected from this place, even though he had lived there his entire life. He spent many hours in front of the TV, hoping that the oasis of light and sound it projected would somehow insulate him from the reality living outside. The true and striking cold. The deep blacks of the night sky. The harsh words of children. The stirring tales of broken hearts. He wanted to live in this falsehood forever. Because to disregard pain meant to embrace happiness, in front of this screen.
The image flickered. A few flecks of static crept across the face of the main actor in the romance flick, just as he was about to give the kiss of true love to his daring counterpart. Evan felt uneasy. The static, creeping across his face, was ruining the illusion he wanted for this lazy night. Why couldn’t he spend one more hour in the bliss of forgetting. He felt like the actor, looking for love, finding only static on every channel. He switched to a different movie, this one a comedy. The Pixar teddy bear, in its childlike bearings, was walking toward a grocery store. Evan had seen this one many times; it always made him smile. As he watched, and the teddy bear was about to push the lever on carousel horse in front of the store, a line of white noise crept across its furry arm. Interfered with the fun. Broke, once again, the illusion of childhood sending forth colour and noise to blot out Evan’s worry.
What was going on? This had never happened before. The images on his movies had always been crisp and believable. He had always swam in their lies so faultlessly. He switched again, this time to a horror movie. Static ruined the tension. He switched to a documentary, and static ate away at the lion eating away at her prey. A cartoon. Static disintegrated the transformation scene of the main character. A game show. Static fell across the survey questions.
Frustrated, Evan got up from his futon, and drug his feet into the kitchen. The cold harshened, and he hugged his sweater even closer to him, like the arms of a loved one. He wished it could have been. He wished he could be losing himself inside the bright and flawless eyes of his perfect mate, just like the screen of a television. Those lover’s eyes would the pool of warmth he could swim in, could be an endless sun so that he would never have to pull so close into his winter clothes again.
He was daydreaming. Not watching where he was going, filled with the image of his perfect man, he had stumbled across the kitchen toward where the cupboard should have been. Popcorn would make this cold a bit more bearable. Maybe it would even be enough of a distraction so that he could overlook the static. Static? Am I hearing static? He thought to himself, still in a half daze, dreaming of the man that would take him to warmth.
He lifted his arm, and his head, out of that mirage, to reach for the cupboard door, and he ran into something soft and warm… and still. His eyes still hadn’t adjusted to the dark, but he was certain of the shape of it… certain it was….
He jumped backward, alarmed, and let out a yell. There was a man standing there, looking sullenly into the empty cabinet. The man, tall, had dark, medium length hair that fell in half ringlets around his head. As Evan tried to catch his breath, tried to think calmly about calling the police, trying to fight him, trying to run, the man slowly craned his head around, still in the half dark of the kitchen, and stared. Not even at him, really. This man was staring into Evan. He was the image of pale beauty, he was a specimen from the land of dreams, he was everything Evan had just been hoping for. The smile that crept onto the man’s face was one of a sweet innocence, was a beckoning one. The man’s close-fitting shirt and jeans showed that he had some physique, some strength with which to fuel the heat of the embrace Evan was now, illogically, unwaveringly, moving to give him.
His heart was beating so fast, he was in a trance, he was swept into this by the night, his hands and arms were thrown forward, his eyes softened by the thought of an ally in this cold… And then he heard it. The static, creeping into, filling his ears. And then gone. And the man was still there in all of his quiet beauty. Smiling. Inviting.
Evan was burning with the desire to enter his embrace. He took another step forward, looking into his eyes. Static. Static burst across the man’s face, and the sweet smile fizzled quickly into the most horrid snarling countenance that Evan had ever seen, teeth sharp as canine razors laying over lips now putrescent and dripping, eyes red and hollow set back in the sockets of a dark and spoiling skull. Fizzled back, and the beautiful, sex-filled, luscious face reappeared. Fizzled, and death, and the snarling smile crawling up the side of his hollow face, producing rows of jagged teeth. Fizzle, and beauty. Fizzle, and the corpse’s tongue was slithering out of the hole where a cheek should have been, glistening with black blood. It still stood there, menacing and then brilliant, dead and then alive, red flaming coals of eyes giving way to clear and spotless blue. Still stood there staring. Then, slowly, it lifted one arm to beckon to Evan, one arm fizzling with static between slender moon-made skin and the rotten flesh of hell. Choked up, horrified, feeling sick at what he could have been holding right now, Evan ran out of the kitchen, not thinking, just fleeing, ran to the door and opened it, and stepped into the plains of cold and leaves and pumpkins which he… no. There were none of those things here.
There were only long waving lines of tall grass. The savannah sun was beating down upon Evan’s head as he moved a bit farther into the fields. Foreign birds dotted the sky, which was flashing between a warm blue and a cold gray, sputtering with static, filling his whole mind with static. The wind was static as it blew through the rushes. The ground was a static that flowed under his feet, the vegetation shimmering between tropical flowers and dead earth. What was going on here?
A new static filled his ears. This… no, this wasn’t static. It was a low growl. It was coming from right behind him. He spun around quickly, to see the grass waving unnaturally, to see the glint of sun across two sharp-as-knives eyes. The static ripped through the grass, which gave way to both night and sun, which, in its layers, uncovered the claws and slender body of a huge cat, a beast of prey, a house of destruction, its fangs for killing, its tail whipping in excitement. It leapt forward and with claw outstretched went for Evan’s throat. He was slammed back and down into the ground, he was under such a weight as he had never known. The claws were stuck firmly into his chest, deep under his skin. He thought he could hear his heart beating. He knew it to be, instead, the ragged putrid breath of the beast, now craning its head to the sky, now releasing a blood-curdling scream of victory as it pressed down more firmly into Evan’s tender skin. He squirmed, he yelled, and screamed, and cried, he tried everything he could do, to roll away, to tear away, and just as his strength was failing and the beast raised his other claw for the killing blow, a wave of static ran across the hillside, ran through the feline monstrosity, and broke its hold on Evan, shimmering like the endless blue sky above, its weight fading just enough that he could escape its grasp. He pounded his feet into the ground like hammers on anvils, praying for the door of his house, to be back in that place cold yet inviting.
He was there, he opened the door, never remembering it to be so light, his fear and anxiety giving him the strength of desperation. As he slammed the door shut, a thud on the other side followed by a scream of bestial fury told Evan that he must have been mere inches away from death in his scramble back.
He couldn’t go back to the kitchen. He couldn’t go outside. He ran back to where it all started. The family room, with its television still blaring static, noise, breaching reality, giving him such a headache that he thought his skull would split. He didn’t know what to do. Waves of static were pouring from the screen, the walls were moving under the weight of illusion. The line of teddy bears lined up on the shelf to one side was starting to move robotically under the weight of the static. The mirrors were filled with faces too mangled to call human. The couch’s legs were flickering between wood and jointed, crawling, insect legs, its cushions becoming a pool of snickering maggots. All Evan could do was give up, or… try. Try to beat this. Try to cut off the source of this nightmare. He hoisted the heavy reading lamp up and poised it to strike at the television, even as it flickered between shaft and python, even as its fanged head spit and struck at Evan’s legs. He hoisted it higher, over his head, and brought it crashing down into the white noise, the rectangle of light. It cracked, and let burst an intense wave of light and noise, a roaring like the abyss of hell itself had been blown open. It through Evan back into the wall and, as the light from the now destroyed television faded, so too did his consciousness…
“Evan! Evan! Wake up, honey, we’re home.” The voice sounded so far away, but got closer every second, with every vibration of the dark, of the hand gently nudging his shoulder. “Evan!” He opened his eyes, and he was greeted by the gentle gaze of his mother, shopping bags in one hand, and her other lightly set upon him. “You must have fallen asleep! Look, your movie has been long since over.” She gestured toward the television, stuck on a screen of steady white noise. Evan turned off the television immediately. “Sorry, Mom, yeah, I must be tired. I’m going to bed.”
He mounted the stairs, passed his dad and said good night to him, too. Brushed his teeth. Washed his face. Stared at himself in the mirror for a moment. Ran his hand along his clean skin. Brought his gaze, tiredly, toward his own eyes. Looked at their gentle and exhausted irises, looked at the fine details of their pigment, rushing out from his pupils like so many fine flowers. Looked into the darkness of his pupils. Looked closer, and closer, stirring in them, so tired. A flicker of white static ran quickly across their depths.
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Disastrous Ownership
I silently watch as the day unfolds around me. Of course, I
am part of this unfolding, as well, though I must fix something to prevent my
mind from becoming too clouded with the beauty of dynamics. I am aware of many
low mutterings on all sides of me. The man and his child at the counter are
trying to decide, as quietly as possible, which of the pastries they want to
bring home to the matron of their house, who by this time has changed her
desire from food to that of simple companionship in her long wait for their
return. The separation that fosters worry and rumination produces relief when
it collapses. I diffuse my thought and return to the revolving world. Another
muttering exudes itself from the wires in the lighting above me, electrons
creeping forward to complete the circuit, which by a separation of potentials
allows for the light by which I am able to write these words. When that
separation collapses, I will be left in darkness, only able to turn my notice
to myself. And in that microcosm that I should of all things be master, I see
the most embittering separation of them all – the kind that I can never have
constructed. This is the separation of thought and self. For ‘my thoughts’ aren’t
really my own. They are a water which flows through my consciousness, and which
I must choose to observe, to embody, or to be affected by. All of my
creativity, these lines, my fear, these pains… they are external forces which I
hold close to myself but which, with some effort I may also divorce from
myself. The artificiality of my experience now blackens me. I am forlorn. It is
a childish notion, really. How can I expect that anything is really my own? I
am given this time to have life, to have thought, to have anything, only by
basis of loan. The desire to accumulate is a futile one. Shall I wait for my
fall, when all things proceed away from me at once, or shall I let them trickle
by as is natural so that I am not collector but conduit? I am jarred from my
reverie. The man and his child have decided upon macaroons. The light above has
burnt itself out. I have slipped back into a realm of disastrous ownership.
Sunday, May 19, 2013
The Costs of Television
Simple calculation: Say that you watch 1 hour of television a night, perhaps with 2 hours on a Sunday. That makes 8 hours of television a week (one entire work shift, for comparison). In a 52 week year, you have then watched television 416 hours.
Corollary 1: In 24 years, you will have amassed approximately 10,000 hours of television time. According to Malcolm Gladwell's theory of expertise, 10,000 hours is the practice goal for becoming an 'expert' at something - piano, drawing, a field of science, etc. Therefore, by maintaining the television practice above, you will lose out on the chance to be an expert at something in your life time (perhaps even two to three somethings).
Corollary 2: Let's say you don't want to be an expert at something, and you merely would work the extra time per week. In a minimum wage job in Michigan, you might make 7.40 USD per hour. After taxes and other deductions, let's say that gives you 5 dollars in spending money per hour, which over 416 hours gives you 2,080 USD per year extra. Since you're working rather than watching television in this scenario, you might also realize the cost of cable as spending money each month, which at a minimum could be 20 USD/month * 12 = 240 USD. Therefore, you stand to come out 2320 USD above the cable watching scenario. Being a wise consumer, perhaps you decide to pay off debt with this money.
Or, perhaps you decide to invest it. Investing 2320 USD per year for 40 working years at an annual return rate of 5%, which isn't too crazy to assume, would amass you an extra $296,000.00 upon retirement.
Think about television and how it impacts your life. Of course, my calculations can't include the real value of relaxation, laughter, or social community which television foster. However, I hope this can serve as a strong message that we often do things without fully considering the alternatives (and there are many more in the television case I haven't covered here).
Corollary 1: In 24 years, you will have amassed approximately 10,000 hours of television time. According to Malcolm Gladwell's theory of expertise, 10,000 hours is the practice goal for becoming an 'expert' at something - piano, drawing, a field of science, etc. Therefore, by maintaining the television practice above, you will lose out on the chance to be an expert at something in your life time (perhaps even two to three somethings).
Corollary 2: Let's say you don't want to be an expert at something, and you merely would work the extra time per week. In a minimum wage job in Michigan, you might make 7.40 USD per hour. After taxes and other deductions, let's say that gives you 5 dollars in spending money per hour, which over 416 hours gives you 2,080 USD per year extra. Since you're working rather than watching television in this scenario, you might also realize the cost of cable as spending money each month, which at a minimum could be 20 USD/month * 12 = 240 USD. Therefore, you stand to come out 2320 USD above the cable watching scenario. Being a wise consumer, perhaps you decide to pay off debt with this money.
Or, perhaps you decide to invest it. Investing 2320 USD per year for 40 working years at an annual return rate of 5%, which isn't too crazy to assume, would amass you an extra $296,000.00 upon retirement.
Think about television and how it impacts your life. Of course, my calculations can't include the real value of relaxation, laughter, or social community which television foster. However, I hope this can serve as a strong message that we often do things without fully considering the alternatives (and there are many more in the television case I haven't covered here).
Friday, May 17, 2013
Sanctuary yet Mausoleum
Breckinridge is a small town just far enough from the middle of the Michigan mitten that it can't claim it as fame. The clean, main corridor of town consists of a number of shops perched copse like along the shores of the M46 car-flow. I take my seat in a corner of its main diner at a table spotted with red and white overlay shapes that remind me of boomerangs. Music from the 1950s plays in the background, with the firm expectation that it will bring some life to this place. I watch as an old man and woman sit down between me and the door. They are framed by the noonday sun and appear as shadows in my view, silhouettes with no features but the bowed backs and sparse hair of age. I strain my ears to detect their conversation, but the only sound I am rewarded with is the dull hum of do-wop leaking from the speakers. They conduct their meal in silence, and though I cannot distinguish their features, I imagine they scarcely make eye contact. Have these autumnal spouses moved beyond the stage of speech's usefulness, even beyond the stage of emotional connectivity? I imagine that once you have shared every memory worth sharing with another, you must become a creature which benefits only from a shared present, or the twinkling of a shared future. But here, at this table, I believe I see a new stage of companionship. One where the twinkling future has been cast aside as unreachable, since the end of their time here looms so close it must seem self-evident. One where the present, in communique, is naught but a series of misfortunes of friends, of banal family occurrence, or of the foggy recitation of the morning news, things better left unmentioned for the sake of good humor. And, of course, one where the past is so well known that to share it again would be offensive to one's mate. What I see is the terminal stage of a relationship, when nothing beneficial remains but the sharing of silence, the building of either an agony or an anticipation, the object of which is unclear or unwanted. This is a shared and living death and, to me, the most frightening but also most revered part of a union. As the couple rise to leave, I cannot help but think they have been slowly enacting their funeral here over toast each morning for the last several years, with no one to witness it or pay respects but the wandering strangers who find this place, a quaint sanctuary yet mausoleum.
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Sharing Yellow Wallpaper
From May 11:
I was pleasantly surprised to find a woman, sitting alone in a restaurant reading, much like myself. I was seated next to her, and she pleasantly introduced herself and her passion for books. I was so moved out of association, that I gave her the copy of The Yellow Wallpaper I had bought only moments before. She, like an enthused child at her birthday fete, thanked me profusely and began digging in. I cannot help but feel the warmth of kindred society.
My challenge to you, reader, is to carry something with little monetary, but with great artistic, value with you for the sole purpose of giving it away. Enrich someone's day through the act of parting, and find that what you give out is far outweighed by what you gain.
I was pleasantly surprised to find a woman, sitting alone in a restaurant reading, much like myself. I was seated next to her, and she pleasantly introduced herself and her passion for books. I was so moved out of association, that I gave her the copy of The Yellow Wallpaper I had bought only moments before. She, like an enthused child at her birthday fete, thanked me profusely and began digging in. I cannot help but feel the warmth of kindred society.
My challenge to you, reader, is to carry something with little monetary, but with great artistic, value with you for the sole purpose of giving it away. Enrich someone's day through the act of parting, and find that what you give out is far outweighed by what you gain.
Sadistic Time Macine
Mowing a long-unmowed lawn is a bit like traveling in a sadistic time machine. I find that the things which are spat out the clippings chute are fairly indicative of past occurrences, the more painful versions of tree rings. As I round the corner, and feel the inevitable sting of detritus on my legs or miscellaneous shards in my eye, I can't help but observe: "Wow, that was the half decayed bottle cap from a pint of Jack Daniels my roommate enjoyed a bit too much of last October." "That feels like a stray calcified pickle from the subway sandwich carelessly thrown from a passing school bus in the parking lot next door last December," or even, "I could have sworn my pride was around here somewh...oh, there it is. Right in the kisser." Next time, I'm outsourcing.
Sunday, May 12, 2013
An old man, balding, sits heavily...
I float between cafes and
restaurants, oft with no companion but my books. What I see, hear, and feel in
those community lifesprings becomes the subject of my writing. I appreciate
your willingness to gaze upon my interpretations.
May 11, 2013
An old man, balding, sits
heavily against the picture window framed backdrop of Ann Arbor afternoon. In
front of him lay a collection of china saucers, plates, and a tea cup, which he
slowly raises to his lips to sip, tentatively, as if the heat of the Frisia
brew could suddenly increase at any moment. His eyes betray nothing of boredom,
of enjoyment, or of sorrow, but simply gaze observantly down at the
traffic flux below. His shirt, a light pink which is neither wrinkled nor
ironed, is contrasted with the dark slacks which just barely cover his ankles.
He shifts slightly and places a hand at the side of head, as if to say, this
existence is a headache, but then again perhaps to say, the weight of my mind
needs support. Across from him sits not an energetic child, nor the companion
which most men his age have settled with, but rather his briefcase and a
windbreaker, stacked in such a way that if hit just right by the slowly fading
sun, it would seem the caricature of a good friend, slouched over an empty table
setting. Perhaps the placement was intentional, or perhaps the man is thinking
his own placement lonely or cruel, in this stifling room where he cannot enjoy
tea with anything but the work papers or cold electronics or miscellany in the
bag. Something in my soul resonates with this man, past or present or future
unknown to me, and as his flesh becomes bound to my memory, I wonder if perhaps
I see myself, purposelessly supping in a naive place, alone and disenchanted,
watched by a curious mind who can think of no novelty but to contemplate my
incompleteness.
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