Friday, June 7, 2013

3 minutes. Go!

Drive-thru living and scattered memories. I can see her face. She is scared, but there is something that gives her hope. You can see it in the searching eyes. You can taste it in the sweat that touches your lips. Above you both, there is an expanse of blue that threatens to ruin you for Spring days forever. She is telling you about the time that you both went to the ocean. How you swam and body-surfed. You don't remember it, but you don't think about it. Either you can't remember or it was someone else and you don't want to know either way. Life is like that. Slippery and ready to bite you when you're not looking. A predator lurking in the shadows of your imperfect reflection. Soak it in, embrace it, this is the rest of your life. Wondering. It may kill you. It may not. Something will. Does it really matter?

31 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Forth! Throw down three minutes. ;) Sometimes a ton of people join in. ;)

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  2. It has started with the reassuring slide-and-click of the bolt. The feeling was visceral. His breathing increased. It happened every time. The thrill of the hunt. He barely felt the weight of the rifle pressed against his shoulder. He could see his targets pass before him from his chosen spot.

    He couldn't remember aiming. He couldn't even remember pulling back on the trigger, but the young woman's head explode in a pattern of red mist. And then the old man at the ice cream stand. The girl with the mp3 player passing the newspaper kiosk. His hands seemed to move the mechanism, but he couldn't be sure. They were falling, limp and ugly, one after the other, but he couldn't remember the act. It was his curse.

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  3. Doctor. Ha. The word made him laugh bitter tears. How could he be a doctor when he couldn’t save her? When he could only stare at the bloodied child and press a hand to her sticky forehead? He went through the motions he’d been trained to: the pulse, the pupil response, the reflexes. But even he, a second year intern, knew that she wouldn’t last until the surgeon could scrub in. So he did what he could. He turned to the mother, who already seemed to know, and he cradled the child in his arms. He said prayers along with her, in English, in Spanish, in a mix of languages he didn’t understand. Then he noticed more blood. The mother. She’d been shot too. Apparently she didn’t notice in her agony, in her grief. “I need backup,” he cried out, but from the noise of the angry young men in the lobby, still arguing who had been on whose block when, the backup had not yet arrived and he was the only one on call, the only one. “I’m not shot bad,” she said, “Please…”

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  4. He stares at the water through polarized lenses he can't afford. He is thinking about how frogs move. More specifically, he is thinking about how to make a rubber frog look like a real one.

    In the back of his mind there are shouts and snippets of song. He has grown used to the roaring in his ears.

    There is an old couple down the beach. They are sitting on those camp chairs. You know the ones. The ones that aren't ever comfortable, but better than the ground.

    No one knows that tonight will be the night. At home, the ingredients are all laid out. He has done his research. He will be unconscious when the ugliness starts. He will have drifted off.

    A bass splashes at the lure and he is jerked back into the present. Where he misses big fish, but it doesn't change anything. Where the glare off the water is pleasant to stare at. Where he can taste the fish oil in the dusk air.

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    Replies
    1. This is fun. I like how you took me in different directions, kind of like when I was little and my big brother would grab my arm and say, "Let's go this way. Now THAT way. Now THIS way." And then I'd be dizzy as hell and laughing so hard I'd nearly pass out.

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    2. Nice! That's pretty much my goal with writing.

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  5. They think it’s so glamorous, being a magician’s assistant. They don’t tell you about the claustrophobia, the bruises. Oh, the bruises. Arnica will cure that, he said, tossing her a tube after their second rehearsal. Occupational hazard, he said. Weeks later, she still was not accustomed to peeling back her catsuit after a performance and finding the blue and yellowing splotches. They’d think someone was beating on her. Sometimes she’d get splinters from the illusion boxes; often the carpenter only finished with the final version the afternoon of the show and there was no time for luxuries like sandpaper, like smoothing down the sticking-out ends of the nails and screws. Once she scraped a leg along the side of the box trying to avoid him dropping in through the trap door and she’d needed seventeen stitches. It was a screw that got her that time. Come to think of it, it was a screw that got to her every time. She told herself no more magicians. Never again.

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    Replies
    1. Awesome. I now no longer want to be a magician's assistant. ;)

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    2. ^Seriously.^ Great stuff, Laurie.

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  6. The light on the wall is bright in dots and fluttering leaf patterns. He feels a bit stoned. He's not. It's the light. Like looking into a petri dish. He stares for minutes at a time, wishing someone would bring coffee. No one will. He has lived alone for years. Not just alone in his apartment. He is alone in his mind. He is hiding from the nightmare people. He is running, always, in his mind. Which is why his body is so still. He anchors himself on the light blobs and tries to remember what life was like when he was younger. Back when each day was a mystery. An adventure. A battle waiting to be won. Now, it is loss. Always loss. Always bitter tastes in the back of his throat. Waking up, tongue coated white. Light from somewhere. Something to stare at.

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  8. She crashes through the thin layer of ice. The momentum of her fall drives her down until she hits the bottom of the lake. A dull thump. Part of her notices that her right foot is probably broken. She could see it bend to the right just when she hit the surface. The pain hasn't come yet. It's probably on its way, she thinks. She can sense it. Like a train speeding toward her ever closer until it hits her. A thousand needles penetrate her skin at the same time, enter into her blood stream and burn it from the inside. The scream that escapes her gets swallowed by the water. Only she can hear it. But the thing that bothers her the most right now, the one thing she had wondered for the three long seconds of her fall is that she didn't see the face of the one who pushed her

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  9. There was a head on the door. Just like that Cure album she lent to that asshole way back when everyone carried vinyl. This head was painted in freakish looking, streaky white spray paint. She knew she shouldn't have come. The damned debt wasn't even hers to pay. Fuck it. I'll do the deed and be on my way.
    She squeezed her arm against her side, reassured by the hard bulge...

    (Das it. I type slow.)

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    1. you type fine. ;) so, wait, people don't have vinyl now?

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    2. I still do, but I've got nothing to play them on. Not even a pitiful, portable picnic player.

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    3. My wife wants to get rid of my record player periodically. I have hundreds of records. That's a fight I win.

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  10. In my mind I was rowing to caroline. A house that stood on the great lake was where she would be. I had to build a net and get it set cause Caroline was neck deep and a sword fish was hunting her. The sword fish was black and white and read all over like a newspaper. I looked into it's 'I's and read between it's lines. I knew a cartoon or two wouldn't have killed it.
    The next thing I knew I got hired to direct Microsoft. I was stunned.

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    Replies
    1. Bravo! Bravo! Magnifique!

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    2. Ha! Anonymous loves anonymous. Take these pills...

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  11. Sorry I missed the 3 minute throw downs - all of these comments are awesome. I'll go off and do my own now but as I think I've nagged before: 3 minute throwdown should be a regular feature on Papa Mader's blogs :))

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    1. It's gonna be a regular feature from now on. ;)

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  12. I missed them too, dammit!

    These are all wondersome. I mean aweful. Wait... ;)

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    1. THAT took three minutes?! (that joke never gets old for me. ;)

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