Friday, June 28, 2013

3 minutes. Go!

The moonlight feels wet and slick on your skin. You shiver and try to wipe the goosebumps away. The taste is still strong in your mouth. A three dimensional taste. Nothing like you imagined. Now, the world begins to pull away from you.

Your eyes are ineffectual decorations. You feel the skin begin to burn now. You picture a man sitting on a tall wooden stool. You don't recognize him. You try to breathe, but the smell of sulphur chokes you. Sickens you. You spill your stomach onto the sidewalk. Oh, Jesus, make it stop. There has to be a way. A way back. You should have dropped pebbles. Maybe if you follow the cigarette butts.

You wake up cold and alone in a park you don't recognize. You shake your hands to get the circulation going. You slap your thighs and start walking.

22 comments:

  1. Ahead I spy a gate, but it is no ordinary gate. It gleams in the light of the dawn rising and seems to challenge, calling gently upon the wind that howls around my ears. I stop to check my surrounds, but there is nothing. The spectre trees glare back, unperturbed by my presence. It is then that I spot the cigarette butt on the ground. Someone was here before, and quite recently, but who?
    I reach up and feel the ache that begins at the back of my head and hurtles to the front. I blink, trying to remember any moment from the night before, but I draw a blank. Dizzy, my legs carry me forward like a sleepwalker in my own life, propelling me towards the gate.

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  2. Eyes are almost starting to function now. The Pelican is still atop the wooden pilaster. What the hell made me think it was a man? Skins cooled off again. That's a relief. Shit, now I've got a mile and a half to walk home. What the fuck happened to those assholes? That's the last time I party with those guys. Dammit, my finger hurts. Stupid match. I hate that when the fucker sticks to my finger. Time to buy a goddamn Zippo. I definitely should have dropped peebles...instead of acid.

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    1. lol. ah, you're THAT guy. makes perfect sense. ;)

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  3. What'd you just call me? Did you, Pelican Man, just call me, "Puke-Face?" "Hee-heahh-ha-haa, no, douche-bird, that was me!" Stupid me, not only did I delude myself into believing dawn was here by staring into that solar-light glowing in the midnight yard, and actually believing this pelican just gave me dirty lip...but here comes Skootch playing ventriloquist with my head as the missing boys of night-shenanigans follow him tumbling over the creaking fence. My luck, exactly, because auntie Merle made me SWEAR I wouldn't dare bring this gang back to her ranch house...

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    1. Well in! Good to see ya, bud.

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    2. Hey pal, you and the scribes, here, are holy terrors and poets with The Word ~ fun Friday, mixing it up with you all ;)

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  4. Crying. That's all you ever fucking do! Can't you just once stand on your own two feet? Just once, I'd love to come in here and see you taking some fucking responsibility for yourself! Just once! But no, it's always fucking crying and screaming and sobbing. How the fuck can you do that to me all the damn time? Don't you fucking have an ounce of self-respect? Somewhere? Just once, fucking dig deep, you asshole! Take charge of yourself and your life! And quit bothering me with your mindless whining!

    Now here's your damn bottle. Drink up and shut up. Your mother will be home soon.

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  5. Denise Lhamon:

    I think my phone hates your blog. Here's my contribution: If I were the President, I'd make an example of that punk-ass little stoolie that thinks he can get away with selling State secrets. Television takeover, public trial and execution. Because this country has problems, but no one gets away with selling its secrets.
    If I were President I think I would be assassinated within two days. But, if get shit done, let me tell you. Tyrant, man. That's me. Aww, now I'm thinking of Terry Pratchett and it makes me sad. Hopefully his daughter will do Discworld justice.
    Hey did anyone see the awesome that was Under The Dome?
    Dear Jesus, this Elvis Sirius channel just won't shut up. Not that I mind Elvis, long live the King and all that, it's all them other bastards, the radio hosts that won't. stop. talking.
    Oh hey they stopped. Yay!
    It's hot. We're still driving. And I want steak. It's terrible for the environment, but I really want steak. Someone get me a margarita with a tiny umbrella. It's 5' o clock somewhere and I want a ghat-damned drink over here!

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  6. Sybil woke to the feel of a small hand shaking her shoulder. “Gnarf,” she said, rolling over.

    “But you promised,” came the small, whining voice. “You promised we could catch some cicadas in the morning.”

    She’d forgotten that “morning” meant something different to his yuppie brother and his wife. They had careers with a capital C, and purebred dogs, and soccer practice. Days had structure. Unlike hers. She painted until she felt like stopping, then went to bed, each day different, but she’d never, even when she lived at home with her brother, had been on the same schedule.

    Her little niece stomped her foot and then climbed into bed with her. “Wake up, Auntie Sybil, wake up.”

    “Okay, okay,” she said, putting on her best fake cheery voice. “Let’s go find the little suckers.”

    “And then we can make pancakes?”

    She put on a surprise expression. “What? Cicada pancakes?”

    “Ew, no!” her niece squealed.

    “Mmm, crunchy!” she said, gathering the small body in her arms and planting fake chomps against her head.

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  7. “Get back here!”
    He did not stop walking. The clouds were full, hanging low with gray bottoms, and the rain would come any second. She could feel it in her body, in her swollen sausage fingers, in the nerves of her brain. Everything told her to collapse to the ground and howl when the thunder rumbled, when the first fat drops fell cold against the back of her neck, pooling at her shoulders and running down her shirt.

    He did not stop walking.

    “You’ll never find anyone who will love you like I do!” Her last plea. It was the ace up her sleeve, she knew, but she wasn’t thinking rationally at this point. She dreaded going home to the empty apartment and the accusatory looks on the cacti and the clock that ticked with preternatural force, like it was trying to pull the rest of the world along.

    He did not stop walking.

    She had one more card to play. “You’ll starve!” she yelled, at once feeling like it was the most ridiculous, desperate thing she’d said in her life.

    This made him stop. He put his hands on his hips, letting the rain run down his body. “Are you for real? Starve? Unbelievable.” He shook his head, and kept on walking.

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  8. The house rattles, the unsecured things in the closet shake, the rain pours down. She fills a pitcher with water in case the power goes, because it always goes, even a stiff wind turns the lights off, plunging her into dark silence. But secretly she likes the dark, she likes being off the grid, because that electrical field DOES something to a body, like it scrambles up the current running through her nerves. Nothing ever hurts during a power failure. She looks forward to them, has even considered tripping the breakers from time to time when the pressure builds too high, but her roommate wouldn’t go for that, no, he has to have his ESPN and his blender to survive. All she needs is packaged food, a little water, and she’d be fine. Maybe one day she’ll trip the switch when he’s not home, pretend ignorance or maybe that the power company had been trimming the trees and accidentally nicked a line, and she’d be content to play blackout Boggle and read books on the deck by the moonlight.

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  9. I don't mean to sound desperate. I need to get ahead a bit. One hit. That's it. I can chart the words crossing between ears, drafty sound of hiss. TV static. Do they even have that anymore. Fuck it. You're still not here, and I'm still bored. I still love you, but you're still a whore. I don't want it less. You just want it more. It's all disastrous. It's all a chore. Wake up. Bake up. Find a wake to fake up a confident demeanor. Whose eyes can look meaner. I lose myself in yours, dark - they tell me all I need to know - I slit mine into tiny creases so you can't see shit.

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  10. There IS no reason to stink up your shoes! ;)

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