You can write whatever you want in the comments section on this blog post. You have two minutes (give or take a few seconds ... no pressure!). Have fun. The more people who play, the more fun it is. So, tell a friend. Then send 'em here to read your 'two' and encourage them to play.
Have a good weekend!
It starts with a vague thumping sound. You slash your head back and forth – where the hell is it coming from? Shit, it’s your heart. Is it beating too loudly? Too fast? You feel a clammy sweat crawl over your skin like a million spider legs. Your vision is weird, darting, blurring in and out.
You’re afraid, but you don’t know what you’re afraid of. All
you know is that, whatever it is, it is fucking terrifying. You try to close your eyes and blot it out, but the
horrowshow behind your lids snaps them back open. You sit heavily on the rock
beside the stream. This will pass and you’ll go home – something
fucking weird happened while I was at the lake.
Or you won’t go home, and there will be a phone call.
It’s out of your hands for now.
FYI - My internet situation is dodgy right now. I will respond to everyone's contributions - might take me a few days though. Cheers!
Standing on the edge of the abyss made me realize how much the way down resembled the way up. The fall will be the perfect metaphor for relativity. Time and space: expanding and contracting in indirect proportion. As I leave the edge I realize I have neither time, nor space to do the math. But the inversely proportionate ratio between matter and time is obvious without the mental exercise I had enjoyed all my life: quantifying nothing. Reductionism at its best. Just as I land I realize something unexpected happened to time. It stopped. Literally and permanently stopped. I would truly be on to something here if time had not simply ceased. But alas, that relativity thing reveals I only spent my allotted amount of it. I observe no more and another universe blinks out.
ReplyDeleteMan, you're killing it every week, brother. I really like this piece. I LIKE like it. ;)
DeleteAw, that is sweet man and I want you to know I won't stand in your way. If you like her, take her, have her, and do her like the cheap little thing she is. We have already seen she likes the way down.
Delete"Supposed to be a rainstorm tonight."
ReplyDeleteSomewhere past Billings, the only light from a deepening, cloudless, ink-blue sky showed up like neon contrails on the railroad tracks. We sat in a diner that squatted like a timid bug between those tracks and the interstate, our immediate view a patchwork of grass and tossed trash and signs saying shit like "For Sale 13+ Acres 2 Homes" while dry lightning played in the Crazy Mountains way off. People oughta know: desperation, like ozone, has a smell.
Those booths were the worst damn booths I ever sat in. Might as well sit on old rusty machine parts wrapped in thin pleather. Or dry bones in cold plastic.
"Well I don't see no storm."
"Then let's keep going."
We paid the squint-eyed girl at the register, even tipped her an undeserved single. Way she looked at Casey made me smile. Like she wanted someone—may's well been him—to take her out of that town for all eternity and not ever look back.
Turns out we shoulda stayed, even in a fleabit motel you barely ever see no more, since the storm come in after all, and if we hadn't been where we were, we also wouldna been on I-90 some twenty miles east of Butte when that oncoming 18-wheeler with the sleeping trucker crossed the median in near-slow-motion and took out the RV right in front of us. As well as us. Buncha others too.
My last memories are a compact import pumping blood like a profane heart and a violent Montana sky filled with benjamins, fluttering like grey moths, hoping against hope to find some porch light somewhere and maybe settle.
What a waste.
One sorry fucking mess, to tell you the god's honest truth.
Okay, it was more like four minutes go, but damn it, Mader, we need a little more time to make these words into a story! ;)
DeleteAh, the time isn't important. ;) This is an awesome piece, man. Love it. Especially: "Might as well sit on old rusty machine parts wrapped in thin pleather. Or dry bones in cold plastic."
DeleteHa, yeah, you can *feel* those seats. :)
DeleteFour minutes? Damn, the second two minutes you must start to fly like Steinbeck on Speed, Hemingway on Heroin, or at least Oscar Wilde.
ReplyDeleteHa!
DeleteOnly just realised this was a reply to me, Ed. I thought it was some ironic, surrealist two-minute piece!
DeleteAnd you know, I find that time does indeed do some odd things when you shut everything out and really focus on these things for the allotted (and then some) time.
I went into the cabin to assess the situation. It was still too cold to apply texture on the walls, so I milled about the place trying to figure out my next move. I knew there was a panel of flooring that wasn't screwed down in the south room, and I pried it up to see what nightmares lurked below. A foot of water glared back at me. I won't be installing the plumbing under there anytime soon. Springtime in the Yoop is a sloppy mess. I guess I'll have to switch gears and cut some trees down instead. By the time I get the bridge built over the creek in my backyard, it might be warm/dry enough to get something done on the lakehouse. The suspense is killing me.
ReplyDeleteThe suspense is killing me, too, G. Great piece. I love the flow of these "work pieces".
DeleteI hope the weather lets me get something done this week!
Delete