Friday, January 30, 2009
Thursday, January 29, 2009
The Apocalypse Monologues: Disease
We were in the subway, which was a terrible idea. My mom’s plan was to get us to City Island. She thought it’d be safe there. It wouldn’t be, but we were just looking for direction. We wanted to be told and we wanted to go. The subway platform was heaving, hemorrhaging sweat and fear. The sound was immense. You couldn’t hear the subway trains over pre-panic noise. Imagine: we all feared the touch of strangers and here were three hundred strangers crammed into a space to get onto an even smaller tube that would already have been full of sweaty, fearful strangers screaming to and failing to avoid one another’s touch. The disease spreads through various bodily contact: blood, vomit, spit, semen, shit like that. Sweat. And it spreads rapidly and horrifically. Loss of bodily control. Bleeding out of orifices. And agonizing screams. Howls, really. It’s animalistic. The disease fucks up your throat and nose, so that your vocals change. You don’t sound human, because you’re deforming. The infected seek people. As the disease starts to fuck them all up, they don’t want to be alone. It’s not malice on their part. It’s loneliness. They’ve got no cognitive capabilities. It’s all instinct. And they don’t want to die alone. They want help. So they go to people. And here we all were. A hateful, convulsing mass all doing the wrong thing. No good would come of this. And then the bad came. One of the infected stumbled down the staircase into the platform. There are supposed to be police officers containing the people who are obviously diseased. But, really, the people do a good job of policing the problem themselves. This guy was a mess. Not just from the bleeding out. Not just from the disease, but from the bludgeoning he received from whatever good Samaritans tried to beat him down. They were right behind him. You could hear the howls. The howls of the now-diseased vigilantes silenced the crowd and lit off a panic. But there was nowhere to go. Violence erupted, and the infected rolled their way toward the crowd, pushing against each other, stampeding on each other, climbing over each other. There was a rush to nowhere. The other end of the platform was locked. Dozens of people fell or jumped into the subway tunnels. Falling over each other, crushing one another, third-rail electrocution. Though the sudden noise was alarming, it was no surprise when shots rang out. People had started to conceal handguns. The distance with the gun seemed safer than beating away any of the diseased, unless the wounds sprayed blood on the shooter or anyone unfortunate enough to be close-by. Then a chain reaction would start. The people on the subway platform were shooting to clear a path for themselves, not at the diseased. At fleeing people. And then the subway train arrived. The conductor didn’t plan on breaking. He just planned on speeding by the platform. But the tunnels were full. Of people, healthy and otherwise. The train plowed through, I don’t know, a mass of, what?, a hundred? It sprayed people all over the train, the tunnels, the platform. Just a wave of blood. A mist of infected blood rained down on the riot of fear. It rained massacre. Fuck, the noise. It was like a God damned choir of howls. The infection was spreading. Every heartbeat spread more disease. My mom was screaming. But there was nowhere to go. I yanked the strings on my hoodie, trying futilely to protect my face from any sick. It was useless. My mother turned around toward me and gasped. My sister was on my shoulders, crying. I looked up to try to calm her, and she was painted with a film of gore. Blood was cascading out of her noise and ears, bubbling out of her mouth. She began to screech. Like a monster in chrysalis. She was six-years old. So small. She weighed, I don’t know, fifty pounds. I don’t know. Her body was so small. So small. So light. So light.
I threw her.
I threw her at the infected.
I threw her at the infected and ran.
I ran to the stalled train. Somehow, infected blood got into the train and I could see the process of fear and disease spread. The uninfected were like a steam of gasoline waiting for the fire to catch up to them. I scaled the train and ran down the length of it toward the end. To jump into the tunnels. To get to the surface. To run. To run. To run.
The last few moments of my mother’s life were unimaginable. I saw it. She saw me. She watched me do it. I destroyed Katie. And fled my family. The last thing I remember on my mother’s face was a look of horror as she starred at me, palpable disappointment, shock at betrayal by blood, confused dissonance at who I am versus what I did, before bloody hands dragged her to the ground.
She was screaming my name, before the screams turned to howls.
I threw her.
I threw her at the infected.
I threw her at the infected and ran.
I ran to the stalled train. Somehow, infected blood got into the train and I could see the process of fear and disease spread. The uninfected were like a steam of gasoline waiting for the fire to catch up to them. I scaled the train and ran down the length of it toward the end. To jump into the tunnels. To get to the surface. To run. To run. To run.
The last few moments of my mother’s life were unimaginable. I saw it. She saw me. She watched me do it. I destroyed Katie. And fled my family. The last thing I remember on my mother’s face was a look of horror as she starred at me, palpable disappointment, shock at betrayal by blood, confused dissonance at who I am versus what I did, before bloody hands dragged her to the ground.
She was screaming my name, before the screams turned to howls.
the caretaker
The caretaker
My caretaker leverages a tangle of muscle from my shoulder bone. He does it with practiced ease and grace, like a rail-thin waitress hefting a platter of filled coffee cups across the length of the diner.
I'd not hired this man to do these things. Or anything for that matter. He'd come to me without expectations on either end. We were both echoes of people, and together, we decided, we could temper ourselves into a single steady voice.
That never happened. Or maybe happened too soon. Whatever it was, we eventually found ourselves tumbling into vile domesticity.
As my life constricts around me, he only becomes more robust. He exterminates every speck of dust from the surfaces and then builds new surfaces. He deftly rearranges, spit shines, mows diagonal shapes in the lawn, and hauls wood for the continual fire.
He's expansive and tends to me in a way I find disgusting.
The quandary
It's a quandary. Am I expected to care for someone who gives me care if I want it or not? Does it have to be reciprocal? Or does care negate care?
I think about this a lot, but then he moves toward me, carrying things to comfort and cure, and the answers dart away like a shoal of erratic, translucent minnows.
A few slow bars
When I die, I want to come back here as a termite. I'll fang at the spotless unknown until the structure gives way and all is just collapse. It will make a glutton of me and I will be glad.
The muscle will climb back up onto the bone by sundown, but for now I feel ok. I can pad throughout the house without pain. Maybe whistle a few slow bars as I go.
My caretaker leverages a tangle of muscle from my shoulder bone. He does it with practiced ease and grace, like a rail-thin waitress hefting a platter of filled coffee cups across the length of the diner.
I'd not hired this man to do these things. Or anything for that matter. He'd come to me without expectations on either end. We were both echoes of people, and together, we decided, we could temper ourselves into a single steady voice.
That never happened. Or maybe happened too soon. Whatever it was, we eventually found ourselves tumbling into vile domesticity.
As my life constricts around me, he only becomes more robust. He exterminates every speck of dust from the surfaces and then builds new surfaces. He deftly rearranges, spit shines, mows diagonal shapes in the lawn, and hauls wood for the continual fire.
He's expansive and tends to me in a way I find disgusting.
The quandary
It's a quandary. Am I expected to care for someone who gives me care if I want it or not? Does it have to be reciprocal? Or does care negate care?
I think about this a lot, but then he moves toward me, carrying things to comfort and cure, and the answers dart away like a shoal of erratic, translucent minnows.
A few slow bars
When I die, I want to come back here as a termite. I'll fang at the spotless unknown until the structure gives way and all is just collapse. It will make a glutton of me and I will be glad.
The muscle will climb back up onto the bone by sundown, but for now I feel ok. I can pad throughout the house without pain. Maybe whistle a few slow bars as I go.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Growing Up
Dad pushed himself back from the table. Looking down at the space he had made between himself and the table he started to speak, but then stopped himself and sighed. He looked over the round kitchen table at my plate. "Don't you like it?" he asked. I just shrugged and pushed the noodles around with my fork. Dad got up heavily, took his dish and walked past me into the family room.
He paused in front of the enormous potted plant that now took up most of that drab little room. Looking up at the canopy it formed above his head, he reached into the branches and plucked a brown leaf in a quick motion. I saw the edges of his mouth turn up slightly. He let the leaf fall to our floor and continued into his room. I heard the TV turn on and looked back down at my plate. I slid forward in my chair and let my feet touch the ground. I collected my plate and put it in the sink, watching the noodles slide slowly into a little pile near the drain.
Dad came out of his room with his small hand shears and started pruning his plant. He took enormous care in this, looking for any errant growth or sign of fatigue. After 10 minutes or so he stuck his thick finger into the soil, took it out and moved it under his nose. He inhaled deeply and went back into his room, returning with a small watering can. He walked past me in the kitchen and filled the can in the sink. Returning to the plant, he poured the water around its base in practiced motions, careful to let each dose absorb before administering the next. When he was done he looked up again into the plant's branches, glanced at me, said goodnight and went to bed.
Every night went like this, I'd come home from school, let myself in and wait for Dad to return from his job. He'd get home, ask me how school was and start dinner. We'd eat in near silence, then he'd watch TV or take care of the plant. When Mom left the plant had been small enough to fit in the corner behind his chair, but in the weeks and months that followed I watched it grow at an alarming rate. Dad was constantly fertilizing, pruning and repotting the plant, and his work paid off.
The plant soon became too large to keep behind the chair and was moved to the main part of the room. A few months later it became so large it blocked the television, so Dad moved the TV into his room. That was ok, I didn't like watching TV with him anyway. He always laughed in places that weren't funny and sighed anytime someone said something he didn't like. I preferred to stay in my room and look at magazines.
One night I awoke to go to the bathroom, which was directly off of the kitchen, and stopped in front of the plant. It was a nice plant really, tall and proud, its branches healthy and heavy. I could still hear the TV coming from Dad's room, but I could also hear him faintly snoring through the door. I looked at the plant again and undid the snap on the front of my pajamas. With my eyes still trained on Dad's door, I took out my penis and peed a little bit into the pot...not a lot, just a little. I quickly shuffled to the bathroom and finished peeing.
Every night for the next few weeks I repeated this act, growing bolder as the weeks went on and my sabotage went undetected. Dad was starting to notice changes in the plant however and his concern with the plant's health increased. The once luminous leaves had started to brown around the edges, slightly at first, but now it was noticeable.
Dad checked out several books from the library to try to diagnose the problem and started brewing up remedies in the kitchen. Fish parts mixed with vinegar, diluted bleach solutions to spray on the leaves, ground mint on the soil to deter pests...but none of his cures had any effect. He became increasingly desperate until one morning he emerged from his room to find 5 or 6 leaves on the floor around the pot where the plant resided. He reached up quickly to touch the plant, horrified when another leaf fell to join its siblings. Still every night I repeated my ritual and every morning he awoke despondent.
He stopped going to work, calling in sick with imagined symptoms that seemed to mirror those of the plant. Weak limbs, no appetite, hair loss-his boss said it sounded serious and agreed to give him a few days to recover. None of this deterred me though, and the plant’s condition continued to worsen. Now whole branches were dying and breaking off and it looked like the plant's days were numbered. I returned home a week later and found Dad sitting on the floor, his shoulders shaking. He was surrounded by the fallen leaves and branches of his plant and I felt the corners of my mouth begin to turn up slightly.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Friday, January 23, 2009
Thursday, January 22, 2009
red right ankle
“You are finished!” Umberto hissed before flitting away, the queen bee off to round up her drones.
Arguably, she had not even truly begun yet. Gwendolyn, having ridden this planet around the sun nearly twenty-six times, was not ready or willing to be put out to pasture just yet; but she was keenly aware that she’d gone around a few more times than the others. A chill shook her bare shoulders, as another fiery bolt of pain crackled up her leg. She winced at the sight of her swelling ankle, the black-and-blue already creeping out from under her pasty skin.
Sitting in a canvas-backed director’s chair, she waited. Her cue came and went with a small eruption of verbal chaos; she would not make her next and last cue, either. Umberto barked orders into a headset, while fiendishly re-fitting Gwendolyn’s final ensemble to another girl’s fragile frame. This was the grand opening of Colette’s new store in the Place Vendôme, and Gwendolyn was in a brash leather belt with tassels shooting out from her hips and swishing against her thighs as she walked; a silk and silver braided necklace that graced her cleavage perfectly; these were not the problem. Nor was the problem that she’d strutted out in these accessories wearing nothing but lingerie, a plain ivory cotton bra and panty set, to give the illusion of a clean palette, no clothing, no distraction. The problem, simply, ostensibly, was the shoes: an impossible six inches high, her feet gingerly balanced atop needle-thin spikes, barely held in place by gauzy golden straps.
Gwendolyn did not question, she did not fear. She would pull it off with dazzle and flair, as usual. She’d guarantee her high-profile spot at the next night’s Hermès show. Four years on the road may have matured her features, but they’d also taught her how to play the game. She was well positioned, head and shoulders above any of these other girls. Especially Shanta, the vaguely Indian girl who couldn’t be a day over sixteen even though she told everyone she’d just turned eighteen. She was a child, trying to do a woman’s job.
But it wasn’t always the vicious girl eat girl world that Tyra Banks painted on TV. Exemplified by Clarice, a sweetheart from Lisbon who’d done a handful of shows with Gwendolyn and who, now, was acting as her primary caretaker, bringing her an ice pack for her ballooning ankle.
“It wasn’t bad,” Clarice said. “You took the hit so graceful.” Her voice was gentle, her smile kind, although the stark way her hair was pulled off her face made her look angry, as cold and mean as Nurse Ratched. The hit, as it were, was a defect of neither shoe nor ankle but of the combination. The two working in tandem failed, such that the heel lurched left, snapping apart, and the ankle went right, with a crunch, and though there was a considerable wobble of her body and an awkward swinging of her arms that required a Nike-like effort to regain her center of gravity, Gwendolyn did not fall. If only the athletic shoes named for the goddess of strength and victory came in size haute couture.
She landed on that ankle, and the video will forever preserve how ugly it appeared to Johnny Audience. But by some miracle she maintained a bipedal pose, and limped off the runway to the sanctuary behind the curtain, where she collapsed in agony out of the eyes of the press. Clarice had been immediately behind her on the catwalk, had followed her behind the curtain then pulled her to her good foot and helped her into a chair in the dressing room, telling her urgently, “Please must elevate!” She lifted Gwendolyn’s bad foot up onto the makeup counter before twirling off to her wardrobe change and hitting the runway again.
“Oh, Gwen!” said a heavily accented voice behind her. “You are hurt?”
It was Shanta, of course; false concern oozing out of her bright-red-painted lips. The fact that Shanta repeatedly abbreviated her name to that of the tacky Ms. Stefani offended all of Gwendolyn’s sensibilities. She pretended not to hear.
“But you are next!” Shanta said loudly, coming around to face her. “You cannot go?” Innocent tone, but barely concealing a wicked grin. Whereas most of the girls simply ignored her plight, Shanta singlehandedly brought high school-style bitchery to the backstages of the highest fashion exhibitions around the world.
“Heels break, Shanta,” Gwendolyn said, nonchalant. “Someday yours will, too.”
“Forty seconds!” Umberto called. Shanta winked at Gwendolyn as two attendants slipped a long sheer dress over her head and fixed her sleek black hair, then tightened a small knot at her back, to better accentuate her narrow waistline.
Gwendolyn watched her sashay toward the stage, almost glad for the distraction as she waited, nearly nude, her ankle throbbing in time with her heartbeat. More than a small part of her hoped Shanta would trip or fall, wished her own fate upon her, but she made the walk successfully, exalted at the end as she smirked her way past Gwendolyn without even batting a single voluminous eyelash. The show was over. Clarice, now wrapped in a terry robe, brought Gwendolyn her street clothes and helped her dress, helped her outside and into a taxi, helped her to the hospital and back to the room they shared with four other girls.
She’d be on crutches for a while, but she would recover. She wouldn’t do Hermès the next night, and she wouldn’t go to Rio the following week, but she’d be damned if this was the end. Just this once, beauty could not, would not be so fickle. She’d worked too hard to get where she was. She had a few good years left. She would return to New York for fashion week then hop over to London, then she’d be back in Milan by the New Year.
Her heel broke, her ankle broke—it was not the end of the world.
For the next few weeks, as she was laid up in a hostel-like room-and-board just off the Rue Saint-Honoré, reserved exclusively for working models, she would be ostracized; might as well be a seventeen-year-old runaway leper trying to break in to the biz.
She would hang around, anxiously awaiting text message updates from Clarice, to find out everything she’d missed. The big buzz in Rio would be the unveiling of a transsexual model, with whom none could compete—not Gwendolyn, not Clarice, not even Shanta.
Staying off her bad foot meant staying away from the gym, so Gwendolyn had no choice but to fast, planning to be thinner when she recovered than she’d been previously. She’d make ankle-twisting the next hot thing in the modeling world, she’d make millions hocking her new weight-loss secret. Her comeback would be better than Kate Moss’s coke-fueled front page. Sure, she wasn’t as high as Kate Moss had been to start, and she didn’t have quite so far to fall, but at the end of the day, Kate Moss was thirty-five and still going strong, and at twenty-six, Gwendolyn’s world, when it healed, would be wide open.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Monday, January 19, 2009
is the heat even on?
1.
"Is the heat even on?" was the first thing that came through my blistered lips this morning. I was still wearing my suit, black insulated coveralls with reflective piping. My head felt like a Mountain Dew can shot through with the beebees from those toy guns the three of us would shoot before we were were allowed to have the real thing. There was no blanket, just the suit, and I was using a Sorel as a pillow. I felt a burn across my knuckles.
I was on the floor, at the foot of the couch.
I sat up, looked around; the places they usually ended up were empty. I was alone in the cabin. The potbelly stove held only reddened cinders.
2.
Most nights, my dreams are veined with violence. It pulses though me. I've seen the way my own death will play out, and I've brought death to many others. There have been quarries where bodies go unnoticed, empty factories and silos set ablaze, dogs and cats impaled on galvanized steel stakes, eyelashes plucked out one by one, blood beaded surfaces.
But my waking life is like a sieve for these things. As soon as my eyes open, it's like the thoughts never occurred, as if I wasn't capable of it at all. Nobody would imagine I could dream up such things.
Go on, ask. Everyone will say I couldn't, that it's not possible. Not me.
3.
Last night, I remember the tavern. The old men there and especially the girls. There was one girl who was maybe the onus, the reason the night cracked, splintered, and dropped like a sick tree. That girl, she has name that is as common as one of those trees, the ones that backdrop everything up here: deciduous, fallen, first overcome by borers and now overtaken by fungus.
She told me about her job scrubbing up after emergency surgeries, the harsh chemicals that sting her eyes.
Shots of whiskey were spliced between pitchers of beer that seemed to keep coming. I paid, insisting, inching closer, pretending the music was too loud and this was the only way to hear. She knew better and played along.
Our talk become more personal. She had an uncle who killed his best friend last fall. Gun hunting season had been extended. The population of deer was so massive that everything was at risk. Cars were getting wrecked, people were getting hurt. Killed, even. Deer were decimating the fields rowed with pine saplings. Predatory wolves were strong on venison; they were breeding like mad, running amok and killing domestic dogs.
One shot did it. The uncle was in his stand and the bullet went through the crown of the best friend's head and dropped him right there. The uncle blamed tiredness and a heavy morning fog, but the jury saw it as malice. It later came out that they were right.
My mom had died, I told the girl, bubbles in her bloodstream. She fell over in the gift shop she ran for the tourists. It was the off-season and nobody came by so nobody noticed she was dead until hours later, when we got home and dinner wasn't on the table. We drove out there and found her curled into herself on the worn linoleum. Her features were as gentle as ever.
We couldn't afford to bury her a casket, or pay for any part of a funeral for that matter. But the community rallied and helped us out with a modest goodbye. My dad never got over her, but he remarried less than a year later. My sister was too young to remember her. I'm somewhere in the middle. There are images that come to me, but nothing I can invest myself in. She's just someone who was there once and now isn't.
4.
The girl and I drank more. We exchanged numbers, put them in our phones, texted just to test them out.
Then there was a split second where something set us off. You've been there before, I'm sure. It's where the slack goes out of the conversation, suddenly everything said before that is phantasmal; the only thing that matters now is the tightening, the tensing. You both recoil, even though, seconds later, there's no concrete trace of what was said or who said it.
It just happened. It always seems to happen.
She went back to her friends. Mine came to me. We yelled for more shots, demanded the whole bottle.
Last call had already been called, but we hadn't heard. The bartender kept slowly picking up glasses and mopping up the rings they left. He looked at us in a way that showed he was apologetic, but not truly sorry.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her leave.
I ran to the door, yelled out as loud as I could, "Fucking bitch!" She didn't even turn around. I hoped she hadn't heard, hoped my voice was just held hostage by the cold air.
5.
I ran back to the guys and said let's go. We'd follow her, keep apace of her car. We'd catch up. I could make amends, apologize. Let her know that I was sorry, that most of the time I just mess things up and could she forgive me? Could she love me, not right away of course, but eventually. Could we work up to it? I thought we could. Knew it. I was sure. I wouldn't say that, not yet. But she just needed to hear me out. It was the drinks, I'd tell her. The beer, the whiskey. Us, both of us, we're just fine. We'd only get better. I was sorry. Did she believe I was sorry? Did she believe that I could be sorry?
By the time we got the engines running, she was gone. I just kept muttering "fuck, fuck, fuck," feeling totally lost.
Snow had been falling. We realized they were the last ones to go out of the parking lot, so we found their their tire tracks and followed them.
6.
It was the usual brutality of my dreams.
We gunned it, weaving in and out of each others' path, going in circles. The world sped up, everything more urgent than ever, the way it is when you're drunk and feeling desperate and chasing some purpose that keeps slipping your mind.
The moon was bright, reflected by the snow. It was so bright we cut the headlights.
Fields of alfalfa we've hunted a million times. Fields we've ridden across even more.
Startled, they ran, sprinting off in a different directions. There was screaming—I didn't know they scream. I didn't know they know how to scream. We kept at them until several fell. We rammed them, kept at them.
With the engines still running, I jumped off and knotted rope around the leg of one. I threw the rope over the tree, pulled it taught, heaving it from the ground, and tied the rope off on a branch. Blood drained from between its watershed ribs. The thing hung there, still alive but barely moving.
Back on the seat I motioned, let's go.
They followed, throttles pulled.
Eventually we stopped, the way everything stops.
The door is never locked; we walked in and that was it.
7.
My phone was in my back jeans pocket, so I unzipped the coveralls, reached in, checked it and saw that I hadn't missed a single call. Nobody had tried to reach me.
I went to the window. The were right outside the cabin, spraying a hose and a using Brillo pad to get between the grooves in the treads.
They looked at me and made no gesture, just kept working. Kept at it, spraying and scrubbing.
The runoff stained the snow bright red.
"Is the heat even on?" was the first thing that came through my blistered lips this morning. I was still wearing my suit, black insulated coveralls with reflective piping. My head felt like a Mountain Dew can shot through with the beebees from those toy guns the three of us would shoot before we were were allowed to have the real thing. There was no blanket, just the suit, and I was using a Sorel as a pillow. I felt a burn across my knuckles.
I was on the floor, at the foot of the couch.
I sat up, looked around; the places they usually ended up were empty. I was alone in the cabin. The potbelly stove held only reddened cinders.
2.
Most nights, my dreams are veined with violence. It pulses though me. I've seen the way my own death will play out, and I've brought death to many others. There have been quarries where bodies go unnoticed, empty factories and silos set ablaze, dogs and cats impaled on galvanized steel stakes, eyelashes plucked out one by one, blood beaded surfaces.
But my waking life is like a sieve for these things. As soon as my eyes open, it's like the thoughts never occurred, as if I wasn't capable of it at all. Nobody would imagine I could dream up such things.
Go on, ask. Everyone will say I couldn't, that it's not possible. Not me.
3.
Last night, I remember the tavern. The old men there and especially the girls. There was one girl who was maybe the onus, the reason the night cracked, splintered, and dropped like a sick tree. That girl, she has name that is as common as one of those trees, the ones that backdrop everything up here: deciduous, fallen, first overcome by borers and now overtaken by fungus.
She told me about her job scrubbing up after emergency surgeries, the harsh chemicals that sting her eyes.
Shots of whiskey were spliced between pitchers of beer that seemed to keep coming. I paid, insisting, inching closer, pretending the music was too loud and this was the only way to hear. She knew better and played along.
Our talk become more personal. She had an uncle who killed his best friend last fall. Gun hunting season had been extended. The population of deer was so massive that everything was at risk. Cars were getting wrecked, people were getting hurt. Killed, even. Deer were decimating the fields rowed with pine saplings. Predatory wolves were strong on venison; they were breeding like mad, running amok and killing domestic dogs.
One shot did it. The uncle was in his stand and the bullet went through the crown of the best friend's head and dropped him right there. The uncle blamed tiredness and a heavy morning fog, but the jury saw it as malice. It later came out that they were right.
My mom had died, I told the girl, bubbles in her bloodstream. She fell over in the gift shop she ran for the tourists. It was the off-season and nobody came by so nobody noticed she was dead until hours later, when we got home and dinner wasn't on the table. We drove out there and found her curled into herself on the worn linoleum. Her features were as gentle as ever.
We couldn't afford to bury her a casket, or pay for any part of a funeral for that matter. But the community rallied and helped us out with a modest goodbye. My dad never got over her, but he remarried less than a year later. My sister was too young to remember her. I'm somewhere in the middle. There are images that come to me, but nothing I can invest myself in. She's just someone who was there once and now isn't.
4.
The girl and I drank more. We exchanged numbers, put them in our phones, texted just to test them out.
Then there was a split second where something set us off. You've been there before, I'm sure. It's where the slack goes out of the conversation, suddenly everything said before that is phantasmal; the only thing that matters now is the tightening, the tensing. You both recoil, even though, seconds later, there's no concrete trace of what was said or who said it.
It just happened. It always seems to happen.
She went back to her friends. Mine came to me. We yelled for more shots, demanded the whole bottle.
Last call had already been called, but we hadn't heard. The bartender kept slowly picking up glasses and mopping up the rings they left. He looked at us in a way that showed he was apologetic, but not truly sorry.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her leave.
I ran to the door, yelled out as loud as I could, "Fucking bitch!" She didn't even turn around. I hoped she hadn't heard, hoped my voice was just held hostage by the cold air.
5.
I ran back to the guys and said let's go. We'd follow her, keep apace of her car. We'd catch up. I could make amends, apologize. Let her know that I was sorry, that most of the time I just mess things up and could she forgive me? Could she love me, not right away of course, but eventually. Could we work up to it? I thought we could. Knew it. I was sure. I wouldn't say that, not yet. But she just needed to hear me out. It was the drinks, I'd tell her. The beer, the whiskey. Us, both of us, we're just fine. We'd only get better. I was sorry. Did she believe I was sorry? Did she believe that I could be sorry?
By the time we got the engines running, she was gone. I just kept muttering "fuck, fuck, fuck," feeling totally lost.
Snow had been falling. We realized they were the last ones to go out of the parking lot, so we found their their tire tracks and followed them.
6.
It was the usual brutality of my dreams.
We gunned it, weaving in and out of each others' path, going in circles. The world sped up, everything more urgent than ever, the way it is when you're drunk and feeling desperate and chasing some purpose that keeps slipping your mind.
The moon was bright, reflected by the snow. It was so bright we cut the headlights.
Fields of alfalfa we've hunted a million times. Fields we've ridden across even more.
Startled, they ran, sprinting off in a different directions. There was screaming—I didn't know they scream. I didn't know they know how to scream. We kept at them until several fell. We rammed them, kept at them.
With the engines still running, I jumped off and knotted rope around the leg of one. I threw the rope over the tree, pulled it taught, heaving it from the ground, and tied the rope off on a branch. Blood drained from between its watershed ribs. The thing hung there, still alive but barely moving.
Back on the seat I motioned, let's go.
They followed, throttles pulled.
Eventually we stopped, the way everything stops.
The door is never locked; we walked in and that was it.
7.
My phone was in my back jeans pocket, so I unzipped the coveralls, reached in, checked it and saw that I hadn't missed a single call. Nobody had tried to reach me.
I went to the window. The were right outside the cabin, spraying a hose and a using Brillo pad to get between the grooves in the treads.
They looked at me and made no gesture, just kept working. Kept at it, spraying and scrubbing.
The runoff stained the snow bright red.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Thursday, January 15, 2009
I could feel that the day was coming. I knew the day was coming since I had started that two year long series of humiliations called nursing school. All I could do was wait and dread and hope that it would be a wrinkled, papery, old man in suspenders who would be the one.
My first suppository.
Though I was mentally and, perhaps, visually a little thrown when the day shift nurse told me what I would have to do, I mustered up all of the professionalism that had been forced down my throat over the previous one year of nursing school. “Okay, I am ready to meet this rectum, I mean guy…” I thought; and then I entered that fateful room. On the bed I see a man. He was not exactly the frail, sick older man with a heart problem I had envisioned. He was definitely not the kind of man a student nurse, a woman of 25 wants to give her first ever suppository to.
The man sitting on the bed in room number 204 was a 29 year old, handsome black man with a large number of tattoos and a large number of even larger muscles. As my eyes widened, I remembered what I was there to do. I introduced myself to him and he to me. His drawl was recognizable, his voice low and rolling. I asked the patient- or the fantasy of every woman from Martha Stewart to Lil’ Kim- whatever, to lie on the bed on his side and (oh my god oh my god) pull his knees up to his chest. This extremely understanding guy obliged and assumed this extremely vulnerable position. I tiptoed up behind his behind, gulped and placed one of my gloved hands on his hip. With the touch of my hand the patient leapt from the bed with the speed of lightning and ran into the bathroom, screaming “Oh HELL no.” My face began to burn, my armpits began to drip, and I wanted to run from the room, not to mention out of the hospital and the school of nursing.
After the longest one minute I haven ever sweated through, the hot black man came back into the hospital room. “Sorry,” he said and re-assumed the position. I took a deep breath and another step toward the bed. When I placed my hand on his hip this time, I flinched. And for good reason, because my patient once again jumped from the bed, tripped on the remote control cord and ran into the bathroom yelling “oh my GOD!” This time, he came out right away shaking his head and walked back to the bed without looking at me. I knew the longer I waited, the more nervous each of us would become, so this time, I went right for the…target. I was able to place my hand on his hip, and although I could feel him tense his muscles through his hospital gown, he stayed where he was. I moved my hand south and began to expose the aim of my lubricated finger. When the separating began my very impatient patient yelled “Oh my GOD” and exploded from the bed and stumbled into the bathroom. Again. This time, embarrassment did not come to mind. Swear words did. “That is IT,” I thought, “I have GOT to
stick this thing in his ass.”
My red face had turned from embarrassment to anger and back to embarrassment by the time my very fit patient came out of the bathroom. “I am so sorry,” he said. I reminded him that he could do it to himself or that I could have a male nurse come into the room to perform the task. He then reminded me that those options made him way more uncomfortable and that he promised he would stay in bed this time. So we began again as we had so many times already: his knees to his chest, the gown removed, my hand on his hip. I could feel him tense and shaking beneath my fingers as I made my move. However, my determination was strong and my reflexes were quick. This time, the insertion was imminent. With one fast motion, a blur really, cheeks were separated, fingers were thrust, and a suppository was placed in a beautiful man’s rectum. Sigh.
When it was all over, I carefully peeled my gloves from my hands while my patient sat up in his bed. As I walked around the bed, his eyes shifted and his shoulders slumped while his dark face darkened with a blush. I moved quickly, trying not to slip on the sweat dripping from my brow. The tension in the room was palpable; it felt as though it was the morning after an embarrassing, drunken sexual display the previous night. Unable to meet eyes, I told him I would be back later to check on him. I instructed him on how to use the surgical scrub when he showered, which somehow felt a little dirty. Once on the outside of the room, I felt safe and was finally able to breathe. I leaned against the wall and picked up his chart knowing that somehow I would have to write down what I had just done to this man.
My first suppository.
Though I was mentally and, perhaps, visually a little thrown when the day shift nurse told me what I would have to do, I mustered up all of the professionalism that had been forced down my throat over the previous one year of nursing school. “Okay, I am ready to meet this rectum, I mean guy…” I thought; and then I entered that fateful room. On the bed I see a man. He was not exactly the frail, sick older man with a heart problem I had envisioned. He was definitely not the kind of man a student nurse, a woman of 25 wants to give her first ever suppository to.
The man sitting on the bed in room number 204 was a 29 year old, handsome black man with a large number of tattoos and a large number of even larger muscles. As my eyes widened, I remembered what I was there to do. I introduced myself to him and he to me. His drawl was recognizable, his voice low and rolling. I asked the patient- or the fantasy of every woman from Martha Stewart to Lil’ Kim- whatever, to lie on the bed on his side and (oh my god oh my god) pull his knees up to his chest. This extremely understanding guy obliged and assumed this extremely vulnerable position. I tiptoed up behind his behind, gulped and placed one of my gloved hands on his hip. With the touch of my hand the patient leapt from the bed with the speed of lightning and ran into the bathroom, screaming “Oh HELL no.” My face began to burn, my armpits began to drip, and I wanted to run from the room, not to mention out of the hospital and the school of nursing.
After the longest one minute I haven ever sweated through, the hot black man came back into the hospital room. “Sorry,” he said and re-assumed the position. I took a deep breath and another step toward the bed. When I placed my hand on his hip this time, I flinched. And for good reason, because my patient once again jumped from the bed, tripped on the remote control cord and ran into the bathroom yelling “oh my GOD!” This time, he came out right away shaking his head and walked back to the bed without looking at me. I knew the longer I waited, the more nervous each of us would become, so this time, I went right for the…target. I was able to place my hand on his hip, and although I could feel him tense his muscles through his hospital gown, he stayed where he was. I moved my hand south and began to expose the aim of my lubricated finger. When the separating began my very impatient patient yelled “Oh my GOD” and exploded from the bed and stumbled into the bathroom. Again. This time, embarrassment did not come to mind. Swear words did. “That is IT,” I thought, “I have GOT to
stick this thing in his ass.”
My red face had turned from embarrassment to anger and back to embarrassment by the time my very fit patient came out of the bathroom. “I am so sorry,” he said. I reminded him that he could do it to himself or that I could have a male nurse come into the room to perform the task. He then reminded me that those options made him way more uncomfortable and that he promised he would stay in bed this time. So we began again as we had so many times already: his knees to his chest, the gown removed, my hand on his hip. I could feel him tense and shaking beneath my fingers as I made my move. However, my determination was strong and my reflexes were quick. This time, the insertion was imminent. With one fast motion, a blur really, cheeks were separated, fingers were thrust, and a suppository was placed in a beautiful man’s rectum. Sigh.
When it was all over, I carefully peeled my gloves from my hands while my patient sat up in his bed. As I walked around the bed, his eyes shifted and his shoulders slumped while his dark face darkened with a blush. I moved quickly, trying not to slip on the sweat dripping from my brow. The tension in the room was palpable; it felt as though it was the morning after an embarrassing, drunken sexual display the previous night. Unable to meet eyes, I told him I would be back later to check on him. I instructed him on how to use the surgical scrub when he showered, which somehow felt a little dirty. Once on the outside of the room, I felt safe and was finally able to breathe. I leaned against the wall and picked up his chart knowing that somehow I would have to write down what I had just done to this man.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
eyes closed, face first
At the top of the hill it’s quiet, peaceful. Just how you remember it. Below is nothing but perfect whiteness, no breaks in the snow except for trees dotted here and there, all the way down to the end of the field and the start of the street. It is all orderly, all complete. School hasn’t let out, maybe one more hour to go. It’s been so long since you’ve been a kid, you don’t know when the school day ends anymore. Maybe an hour of quiet left, and then chaos will erupt on the hill.
When you were a kid you were the chaos, the constant noise and movement and color obliterating the quiet. The rush of the red plastic sled as it went down. The back and forth swish of your army green snow pants rubbing together as you pulled yourself up the hill once again. The yelling as you face-planted or got a spray of snow in your mouth or were crashed into by other kids on orange inner tubes and brown toboggans. The laughing as you snuck up on your friends and pushed them before they could get their gloves back on, making sure you put some spin into it. Noise and color everywhere, crashing into each other, clashing as it tumbled together, bounced back and forth, slid past.
What was that like, those days, can you really remember? There was abandon, that’s for sure. Did you really run up and down that hill for hours? Were you really able to ignore the cold and the soaking wet gloves and socks? Are the things you are trying to reclaim really there at all, were they ever? Could you really have had that much fun?
From the top of the hill the snow is blinding in the winter sun. You wish you’d brought your sunglasses, you wish you’d brought a visor, you wish you’d brought a hundred children to tear up that whiteness with all the enthusiasm their little hearts can muster. We all had that enthusiasm once. But there is only you and a giant hill and untouched whiteness everywhere. So do your best. Raise that sled high above your head. Take a running leap. Throw yourself into the void.
When you were a kid you were the chaos, the constant noise and movement and color obliterating the quiet. The rush of the red plastic sled as it went down. The back and forth swish of your army green snow pants rubbing together as you pulled yourself up the hill once again. The yelling as you face-planted or got a spray of snow in your mouth or were crashed into by other kids on orange inner tubes and brown toboggans. The laughing as you snuck up on your friends and pushed them before they could get their gloves back on, making sure you put some spin into it. Noise and color everywhere, crashing into each other, clashing as it tumbled together, bounced back and forth, slid past.
What was that like, those days, can you really remember? There was abandon, that’s for sure. Did you really run up and down that hill for hours? Were you really able to ignore the cold and the soaking wet gloves and socks? Are the things you are trying to reclaim really there at all, were they ever? Could you really have had that much fun?
From the top of the hill the snow is blinding in the winter sun. You wish you’d brought your sunglasses, you wish you’d brought a visor, you wish you’d brought a hundred children to tear up that whiteness with all the enthusiasm their little hearts can muster. We all had that enthusiasm once. But there is only you and a giant hill and untouched whiteness everywhere. So do your best. Raise that sled high above your head. Take a running leap. Throw yourself into the void.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Friday, January 9, 2009
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Magical forests
For years I would sit in the back of my grandfather's 1975 muted gray Cadillac that we only took to funerals or for a drive to our cottage, and I would stare anxiously out the window. I was always looking for one thing as I gazed patiently at the Wisconsin prairie and farm scenery whizzing by. My grandmother sits in the front seat and tells me that they are coming up soon. I squirm in my seat, belted in, anxious in my small six year old stature and its limits on my Cadillac window viewing. The seconds pass so slowly and thoughts excitedly raced through me head. Will I see one today? Will one of them sneak out into the daylight? Watch out brown cow-they might come out today and spoil your chocolate milk!
My grandmother nudges my grandfather to turn down the radio, Willie Nelson calling for his lover, and I look and look out the window. Little hazel eyes glancing and darting, peeking through the slightly tinted glass for the tried and true signs of their existence. There were their remains, the enormous round balls randomly sitting in the cleared farm fields! Always so perfectly round, these brown and golden spheres of hay were part of the necessary deeds we all had to do. It made sense to me, they ate hay, so they would have to expel hay, regardless of how perfectly round it appeared and the size of their waste only proved to me the real size of the creatures themselves.
I continued to scour the empty spaces between the giant globes, hoping to see one of their horrifically amazing faces. Hoping, wishing, with only the enthusiasm of a whimsical girl to think of how I could tell my friends at school of what I saw, how I could tell them this secret existence that only my grandmother knew. She has shared her secret with me.
My eyes meet the mindless rows of yellow corn, so I sit back into my seat. Another missed opportunity at a sight of them, a sight I wanted so badly. My dismay was fleeting, the ride was long and there would plenty more opportunities to catch a glimpse. My grandmother asks if I saw anything and I tell her no and smile. I know that someday one of them will come out during the day, even though my grandmother said they only come out at night, and the first one I see, I will name them Penny, same as my cat, I can only image them being best friends. As the forests fly by in the tips of the window next to me, I know they will come out of their magical forest home for me to see, a real Wisconsin dinosaur, my grandmother would never lie...
My grandmother nudges my grandfather to turn down the radio, Willie Nelson calling for his lover, and I look and look out the window. Little hazel eyes glancing and darting, peeking through the slightly tinted glass for the tried and true signs of their existence. There were their remains, the enormous round balls randomly sitting in the cleared farm fields! Always so perfectly round, these brown and golden spheres of hay were part of the necessary deeds we all had to do. It made sense to me, they ate hay, so they would have to expel hay, regardless of how perfectly round it appeared and the size of their waste only proved to me the real size of the creatures themselves.
I continued to scour the empty spaces between the giant globes, hoping to see one of their horrifically amazing faces. Hoping, wishing, with only the enthusiasm of a whimsical girl to think of how I could tell my friends at school of what I saw, how I could tell them this secret existence that only my grandmother knew. She has shared her secret with me.
My eyes meet the mindless rows of yellow corn, so I sit back into my seat. Another missed opportunity at a sight of them, a sight I wanted so badly. My dismay was fleeting, the ride was long and there would plenty more opportunities to catch a glimpse. My grandmother asks if I saw anything and I tell her no and smile. I know that someday one of them will come out during the day, even though my grandmother said they only come out at night, and the first one I see, I will name them Penny, same as my cat, I can only image them being best friends. As the forests fly by in the tips of the window next to me, I know they will come out of their magical forest home for me to see, a real Wisconsin dinosaur, my grandmother would never lie...
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Failure of the New Gods
There’s a woman with her feet planted in the surf of Coney Island,
waiting for a bottle to bob her way.
During the day, she works as a contortionist at a freak show.
"Come! See Freyja the Human Pretzel!"
("Freyja the Human Pretzel" is not her legal name.)
She bends and twists her body into the alphabets of long dead languages, spelling out all the stories you’ve ever wanted to read, but didn’t know you were reading.
She becomes the sheet music of every song you’ll ever be married to.
Her body is your next tattoo, spelling out, in what should be Celtic, the word "YES".
A few years ago, she graduated from locksmith school
and now spends her weekends opening car doors for grateful tourists and
safety deposit boxes for newfound orphans.
She picks broken-hearted pendants based on a sliding scale of questions whose bottom line currency is whether you really deserve to ever see that face again.
Under Thieves Moons, she breaks into the safes of the Russian mafia, taking nothing and leaving behind the love letters of their parents from the old country just to remind them that, with patience, nothing is impossible.
Ya tibya lyublyu.
Ya tibya lyublyu.
Ya tibya lyublyu.
Ya budu lyubit tibya cherez nashi DNK.
...
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
I will love you through our DNA.
At night, she works as a teacher/stripper/goddess
dancing backwards into clothes, stirring memory within the confines of a song, breaking hearts at the speed of 70 beats per minute.
She teaches men to reflect upon the nature of time and motion and void, realizing just how short and poorly spent 3 minutes can be.
For $10 a tutoring session, she gyrates a telepathy, pushing them to invariably think "Please let this be the extended remix version!"
(It never is.)
"You smell like home," they breathe.
She whispers, "Call your mother."
When I was in high school, she was abducted by the KGB
trained for espionage, becoming character in instants, and disappearing in the spaces between.
Her backstage was a compact mirror and she traipsed through all the stages of global theaters of cold war, seducing diplomats with poison lipstick and pirouetting with knives.
(What she really wants to do is direct.)
"You could be anyone," her handlers boast
She admits, "I always will."
Getting her doctorate in cryptozoology involved
1) becoming a cult leader
2) and committing deicide
For her post-doc, entire pantheons fell before her.
She measured fate in alchemical missed connections while casting spells through rolled eyes at misguided undergrads.
Tracking legends was merely for lesser cryptozoologists, while she reeled the unreal, proving that even monsters need love, too,
and then she loved them,
soothing men who would be wolves within a song
deciphering fingerprint messages in the half-hearts of tin men
bending crooks to genealogical memory and Kaisers to ideals over ideology
uncovering apocryphal dances to trap time
applying for headmistress positions at girls schools.
There’s a woman standing amongst the flotsam and jetsam of Coney Island waiting for a message in a bottle that I’ll never throw,
because,
Lynn,
this locksmith contortionist will never fit me like you.
waiting for a bottle to bob her way.
During the day, she works as a contortionist at a freak show.
"Come! See Freyja the Human Pretzel!"
("Freyja the Human Pretzel" is not her legal name.)
She bends and twists her body into the alphabets of long dead languages, spelling out all the stories you’ve ever wanted to read, but didn’t know you were reading.
She becomes the sheet music of every song you’ll ever be married to.
Her body is your next tattoo, spelling out, in what should be Celtic, the word "YES".
A few years ago, she graduated from locksmith school
and now spends her weekends opening car doors for grateful tourists and
safety deposit boxes for newfound orphans.
She picks broken-hearted pendants based on a sliding scale of questions whose bottom line currency is whether you really deserve to ever see that face again.
Under Thieves Moons, she breaks into the safes of the Russian mafia, taking nothing and leaving behind the love letters of their parents from the old country just to remind them that, with patience, nothing is impossible.
Ya tibya lyublyu.
Ya tibya lyublyu.
Ya tibya lyublyu.
Ya budu lyubit tibya cherez nashi DNK.
...
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
I will love you through our DNA.
At night, she works as a teacher/stripper/goddess
dancing backwards into clothes, stirring memory within the confines of a song, breaking hearts at the speed of 70 beats per minute.
She teaches men to reflect upon the nature of time and motion and void, realizing just how short and poorly spent 3 minutes can be.
For $10 a tutoring session, she gyrates a telepathy, pushing them to invariably think "Please let this be the extended remix version!"
(It never is.)
"You smell like home," they breathe.
She whispers, "Call your mother."
When I was in high school, she was abducted by the KGB
trained for espionage, becoming character in instants, and disappearing in the spaces between.
Her backstage was a compact mirror and she traipsed through all the stages of global theaters of cold war, seducing diplomats with poison lipstick and pirouetting with knives.
(What she really wants to do is direct.)
"You could be anyone," her handlers boast
She admits, "I always will."
Getting her doctorate in cryptozoology involved
1) becoming a cult leader
2) and committing deicide
For her post-doc, entire pantheons fell before her.
She measured fate in alchemical missed connections while casting spells through rolled eyes at misguided undergrads.
Tracking legends was merely for lesser cryptozoologists, while she reeled the unreal, proving that even monsters need love, too,
and then she loved them,
soothing men who would be wolves within a song
deciphering fingerprint messages in the half-hearts of tin men
bending crooks to genealogical memory and Kaisers to ideals over ideology
uncovering apocryphal dances to trap time
applying for headmistress positions at girls schools.
There’s a woman standing amongst the flotsam and jetsam of Coney Island waiting for a message in a bottle that I’ll never throw,
because,
Lynn,
this locksmith contortionist will never fit me like you.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Friday, January 2, 2009
(because I dreamt of zombies 2 nights in a row)
Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds? I never said it was a zombie. I mean, I could see how someone might think it was a zombie, but do I actually think it was actually a zombie? No. Not unless you want to get into a debate about crack addicts being, quite literally, the living/walking dead. When it comes down to it, I think it was just a crackhead. Standing there in the middle of the street, at the end of the exit ramp, just looking to get hit. I didn't hit her, though, more like she hit me, you know, like how they say half the time deer get hit by cars except that what really happens is the deer is just running, running, and (boom) smashes into the side of your car. Nothing the driver can do about it.
I hit the brakes because I saw her, or I saw someone, something in the road, and I slowed down, and she was doing this weird jig and then she turned and, I mean, yeah, I've watched a few horror movies in my day but there was something feral behind her eyes, inhuman like with costume makeup and special effects, trick lighting or whatever. Her hair was wild, kind of Tina Turner meets Labyrinth-era David Bowie, and she started clawing at the lights and the grille, all but throwing herself on the hood as I came to a stop. Reminded me of some TV program I watched about a kid who was locked in the basement his whole life with rats and when they found him he was like an animal, possessed by urges we right-thinking folks could never comprehend. She was like that, clawing and climbing on the hood, which I’d only just had fixed from all of those acorns dropping on it last fall when I had to park in the street under that big oak tree, I’d just had the dings hammered out and she was looking good (the car, not the crackhead).
And you know how in every horror movie at the height of the suspense the people do something amazingly stupid, like split up or fall down or enter a dark room or hallway or whatever, and just like them I did my own stupid thing.
Me, always the Good Samaritan, always trying to help, and you know what? I get shit on, every time, and you'd think I'd stop being so good, but no siree, that's just who I am: a nice guy. I rolled down the window partway and yelled out, "Hey there, you all right?" and must've given her a fright, because she jumped straight up, catlike, and spun around and glared at me through the windshield. The particular bent of her elbows as she reached up then out made me think of a spider dressed in chewed-up clothes.
I yelled again, "Hey!" but she carried on, and like I said, I'm a nice guy, but I'm not always as patient as I could be. I'm aware of it, I try sometimes to work on it, to better myself, you know, but at this point, my impatience was growing and I beeped the horn. Lightning-fast she was at my window, so quick I didn’t see a flash in the headlights, and she was reaching in, her fingers slipping through the opening, her nails clicking and clacking on the glass, like a crab clawing its way around a tank. The lady, now that she was so close, had a real bad smell, and her skin was gray, graying, and she looked unwell, like she needed immediate medical attention.
Everything inside me was telling me to just hit the gas and drive off, you know, none of my business and best not to get involved and whatnot, but still I wanted to help her if I could. She was increasingly irate, and I thought she might break my window, so I grabbed my phone and dialed 911, but it was busy. Can you imagine that? You ever call 911 and get a busy signal before? Crazy!
I was just plain dumbfounded but I'd be damned if I'd let this wacko wreck my window, so I said, "Excuse me," but she didn't stop, so I hit the up button, sliding the glass window shut. She was slow to pull away, getting her fingertips caught, but she managed to yank them loose, all but one. The window mechanism groaned then closed all the way, the topmost knuckle of her pointer finger on her left hand popping off and landing in my lap. The lady, who evidently was feeling no pain, made no sound, did not cry out, and I was sickened a little and she started pounding on the glass ferociously, and I looked down at that little gray nub and saw that there was no blood, it was a clean break, as though bending off the coarse end of an asparagus stalk. I put the car in drive and slowly inched away, trying not to look at her groping and clawing at the car, and instead fiddling with the radio, but nothing came in clearly, stupid piece of crap radio, never did work right.
I heard a thud behind me when she threw herself onto the trunk, but she couldn't hold on as I sped off. I was worried that she'd still be there, clinging to the tailpipe when I got home, like when I was a kid and a praying mantis had wound itself around the car’s antenna, hanging on for its life, and I begged my father to pull over, but he wouldn't, not worth stopping for some dumb bug. But that dumb bug, with its long spindly legs, held on and held on and made it all the way to school, and I hopped out and gently plucked the delicate creature off the antenna and set it in the grass. So relieved it was still alive, though probably it was never the same again. Unlike the praying mantis, the lady must've fallen off around one of the sharper turns.
I left her alone somewhere in the darkness, and was shaking my head over it, confused, when I felt a pang near my, uh, groin, and again; it didn't hurt but it was more than a little distracting while I drove. Pulling over was NOT an option, so I flopped my hand around down there, couldn't figure it out. In my driveway I switched off the engine and flipped on the overhead light and, I shit you not, that little gray nub of a fingertip was jumping around, poking me.
Don't believe me? I've got it right here. I carry it around everywhere I go. Here, take it out if you want. It’s only a fingertip, can’t hurt you. No? You sure? Okay, then. It’s just a fingertip in a jar. I never said it was a zombie fingertip. I never said it was a zombie at all.
Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds? I never said it was a zombie.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)