THE HOLY TEXTS All the contents herein are copyrighted to Jake Thomas, 2007-2008

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First Church of Storytelling

Last Updated:
Apr 11, 2008

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Gender: Male
Status: Engaged
Age: 26
Sign: Aquarius

City: BROOKLYN
State: New York
Country: US

Signup Date: 04/14/07

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Wednesday, July 16, 2008

A New Story!!!
Category: Writing and Poetry

Hello again!

I know it's been a long time. I've been working on a number of things, and put short original work on the back-burner, but recently I decided it had been too long, and over the past few days I hammered out this piece of work.

It's not even really so much a story as it is a writing exercise of sorts for me personally, but I enjoy it, I think it's an enjoyable read. I hope you like it!

-Jake T.


THE HOUSE

            The house sits there, as it has for years. The paneling has faded and some of the shutters swing noisily on rusty hinges, but the years have been surprisingly kind. The lawn grows wild, but is as beautiful as it is untamed. The horticultural anarchy spreads across the contained lawn. Vines twist around the wrought iron fence so thick it almost looks like an unruly, errant hedgerow. The grass comes up ankle high, giving a pleasant tickle to any trespasser wearing open shoes or daring bare feet. Everywhere there are wildflowers growing in no garden but controlled by the mad geometry of natural pollination. Despite the abundance of flora, the stone path leading from the high arched gate to the houses front porch remains clear. You have to wrestle with the gate, not from rust but to break apart the vine's thick green chain snaking back and forth across and through gate and fence. After the gate is opened your walk up to the house is so clear you'd think it was traversed daily. Go up to the porch. Walk up the three stone steps. Cross the wooden porch planks. Notice how they don't creak. Even after all these years you hear nothing your footsteps echoing off the wood into the void underneath. Try the door, it will be unlocked. It's always unlocked. Come inside.

            There is, of course, no electricity in the house. It has been unoccupied for decades. The light in the antechamber comes in from large windows on the second floor landing. The light comes through thick and weighted, as though it were rolled in like a carpet. The light is almost parallel with the staircase running up the right side of the room to the upper story. Along the staircase are portraits of the house's previous tenants. At the bottom stands the patriarch, a staunch old puritan with a straight back, a set jaw and cold grey eyes. His clothes are formal, and his hands are folded in his lap over a large black bible. As you ascend the pictures take you through time and generations. The lineage is unmistakable to the point of distraction. The men all resemble slight variations on the patriarch, with slight changes in hairstyles and dress. A couple of the portraits near the top include wives, who all look the same: gaunt, stern, pallid. At the top of the stairs is a discoloration where the latest portrait has gone missing. No one knows where.

            Looking at the discoloration on the wall sparks a thought in you. You walk back over to the staircase, run your finger along the banister, then raise it for appraisal. No dust.

            To your right is a door. You walk through it, and find yourself in a sparsely decorated bedroom, what you guess to be a guest room. The bed creaks as you sit on it. The room smells stale. For the first time since you enter the house you sense that smell of age and neglect. The nightstand beside the bed has three drawers. In the bottom drawer, the largest, is a set of extra linens and towels. The middle drawer contains toiletries, all wrapped and untouched, the brittle paper flakes and crackles to the touch. The top drawer contains a bible. Across from the bed there is a painting on the wall. It shows a woods in autumn. The leaves are brown, red and gold. A captured wind blows through the scene, swirling leaves and blowing branches with impressionistic gusto. The frenetic movement of the leaves, the swaths of colors bright as fire, gives the painting a vibrant almost violent energy that seems out of place in the drab, utilitarian room. As you walk up for a closer inspection of the painting you notice that just off the middle of the painting there is a trail that leads through the woods, and deep off into the distance it leads to what appears to be an old wooden white-washed church. Underneath the painting is a chest of drawers, but there's no need to open it. It's empty.

            You exit the room and walk across the landing. You pass the windows and try to look out of them, but they are frosted, only letting in the white light that fills the antechamber below. It's all for the best. The back yard is more fully appreciated from the ground. At the other end of the landing another door faces you, with a second door perpendicular to it just down a small walkway. You go to the door facing you, then open it.

            You are in a study. The walls are covered in bookshelves so thoroughly that light only creeps in through a slit between two shelves standing in front of the window. There is a lamp on the desk that sits to the left of the door. You'll have to maneuver around the strangely tall desk chair to reach it. Don't worry, there's still some oil in the lamp and some matches in the top drawer. Light the lamp.

            The light illuminates the small room. There is a shimmering glow upon the wall, light reflecting off of a golden scale that sits at the back of the desk. The scale sits at an even balance; one plate holds a small container of salt, the other holds a stack of coins whose denomination is unfamiliar. The desk is a utilitarian design, no flourishes, no carved patterns, all strict angles and functionality. On the right side of the desk is an inkwell still full of black ink and a long quill pen vertical at its side, its tip stuck in a small hole drilled into the desk. The left side is a mirror image, except the ink is red. The books which line the room are antiquated manuscripts of law, record, and business. All the books are numbered on the spine with the date range of the records within. Opening an early law book, you see the letter of the law laid out before you in exquisite black ink, page after page of rules and regulations dating to the founding of the town. As you flip through the book you see, scrawled into the margins or inserted with new pages carefully pasted into the spine, accounts of the laws being used. With red script filling margins and annotating passages you can read the history of every appeal, every invocation, every use, misuse, amendment and alteration of any item throughout generations. The books of business are similar. Every local institution of commerce is carefully accounted for, their profits writ black, their debts and failures writ red. Now take down the books of record. There you see the history of a town, writ in two types of ink. Births, marriages, prosperity, accomplishment, bounty and acclaim written in black. Death, disease, famine, misery, destruction, sadness and infamy written in red. As the books become more recent, the red becomes more prominent. Of course, the books all stop short decades ago. The locals would be hard pressed to remember most of the names mentioned in these tomes nowadays. Best to put the books away. No use weighing the accounts of the dead, they've never been known for paying off their debts.

            Through the second door on this side of the landing is a children's room. There are three beds, bringing to mind the story of Goldilocks and the three bears. To the left is a cradle built up on rockers. Above the cradle dangles a handmade mobile with cloth stars, cotton clouds and rubber ball planets all circling a central, spongy yellow sun. Surrounding the cradle on small shelves and within closed chests are children's toys of various sorts straddling both sides of the gender line; dolls, horses, building blocks, wooden cars and toy soldiers intermingled on the shelves. On the far side of the room sits a canopy bed sized for a young child. The bed is all white, its tall posts supporting a tent-like rise in the canopy with long, white cloth cascading over all sides. Pull aside the cloth and you can see the bed is still made, a white stitched comforter covering the mattress and four large white pillows stacked at the head of the bed. You may notice a dip in the comforter in the center of the bed. Run your hand over it, and you can still feel the imprint of a small body. The head of the bed rests against a large arched window that looks out to the front of the house. Sitting on the window sill, just behind the pillows, is a pair of binoculars. Around this bed are shelves, but these have only an occasional smattering of toys, such as an errant paddle ball, an odd board game. Mostly the shelves are filled with books; nature books, geography books, travel books, books on science, history, trivia and mythology. The books are dog-eared, underlined, torn and creased. A book on local birds rests open atop the shelf closest to the bed.

            The third bed sits opposite the cradle. It is of normal size. It is neatly made, with inauspicious beddings and a simple, solid frame. The only adornment around this bed is a small bookshelf with a select group of books including a bible similar to that in the guest room, books on anatomy, rhetoric, and ethics, and a collection of Chekhov plays. Between the canopy bed and this one is a tall, wooden wardrobe with an upper level for hanging clothes and a lower level of drawers. A look inside reveals a regular assortment of children's clothing.

            Outside the room you walk back across the landing and descend the stairs. Looking at the front door to the house from this side now you notice something you hadn't before. Around the inside of the door is a frontispiece, which has carved across the top, "Hell and destruction are never full; so the eyes of man are never satisfied. –Proverbs 27:20" You read the words as you reach the bottom of the staircase, coming up against the portrait of the house's original patriarch, and wonder exactly what he meant by having that particular piece of wisdom etched into the exit of his home.

            Across from the staircase is an entryway to a sitting room. The focal point of the room is a large fireplace. Above the mantle is mounted a large coat of arms. An ornate chandelier hangs from the center of the room. The broad room is sparsely furnished, with a tall, narrow armchair near the fireplace, next to the armchair a fainting couch, then across from the fainting couch a divan. A small table sits on top of a faded oriental rug between the fainting couch and the divan. It's dark, polished wood still retains enough of its sheen to reflect your image as you look down on it. On the table is a finely crafted chess set. The board is made of cool marble and the pieces are hand-carved out of ivory. Although the board is set of the beginning of a game, a lone white pawn sits off to the side of the board, as though taken before the game has even started, a deserter of the white kingdom.

            Adjacent to the sitting room is the dining room. The space here seems confined and uncomfortable, especially in contrast to the airiness of the sitting room. In fact, you have to shuffle a bit to get between one of the Shaker-style chairs and a display cabinet housing a collection of dazzlingly ornate china. The contrast between the elegantly humble Shaker furniture and the extravagance of the china builds a certain curiosity over what a dinner in the house would be like, but the claustrophobia of the room supersedes wonder. However, as you exit it does occur to you that the chair at the head of the table differs significantly in design from the rest of the chairs, and that the frame of its back bears a more than passing resemblance to the frontispiece of the front door.

            Past the dining room is a small kitchen, which is actually more like a serving space, with the main cooking area built onto the side of the house. You aren't going to find any food in there, so skip it and take a right. You're in a short hallway now. There is a door on your left that leads to the back yard. Come back to that later. Keep walking and you find the door to the master bedroom. The door sticks when you try to open it. Lean in with your shoulder - the door gives.

The master bedroom is large. Against the center of the side wall sits a small furnace. To the right of the furnace is the bed. The eye is drawn to it. It's not like anything else in the rest of the house. The sheets are extravagant, deep violet-colored satin, smooth and cool. The four posts rising up from the bed are carved out of dark African wood, ornate patterns twist and curve around them, snaking up to their apex, where small, hunched gargoyle-like figures crouch at their tops, looking out over the rest of the room. When you lean upon the mattress your hand sinks four inches deep. It's so extraordinarily soft. You wonder what it would be like to lie on, whether your body would sink deep into the mattress, encasing you in a snug, satin hole. Though it seems comfortable, the idea of actually getting into the bed is preposterous. Within the context of the room, the house as a whole, the bed seems unworldly. Or perhaps it seems too worldly, almost hedonistic in its excesses and comfort, sinful in its allusions to bodily pleasure in a house so stridently centered around a Protestant diligence to simplicity and humility. Only after stepping away from the bed do you take in the other side of the room.

A thin, tall-backed chair, like the one in the sitting room and the head of the table and the upstairs office, sits adrift in an open sea of wood flooring, anchored only by a small side table. Surrounding the walls on all sides of that half of the room are large card catalogues, like those found at a library. They are strong, sturdy things, made of oak and polished to a shine. The small, looped handles to the drawers are made of brilliant, luminescent brass. No use in trying them, though. They're all locked. The only thing in the whole house that remains locked. You'd have thought by now that someone would have jimmied one open, but then again you would have thought by now that someone would have broken the windows, or looted the china cabinet or squatted. Just as some things just happen, I suppose some thing just don't. The title card on the front of each drawer reveals their contents to have something to do with names. The number of individual drawers yields a very narrow margin of last names; "Abrams" through "Adelson," "Walker" through "Westin." There's either a lot of names within those drawers, or a lot of information on the few names provided. You give a couple of drawers a perfunctory jiggle, but decide it is a fruitless exercise and step away. You exit the room, go back into the hallway, and walk out the back door.

The backyard is the complete opposite of the front. The whole yard is desolate, nothing but dry, unyielding earth. No crabgrass, no flowers, nothing. The brown, cracked earth pushes all the way out to the wooden fence that runs around the perimeter of the expansive back yard. Only one thing breaks the bland landscape – a crudely constructed cross at the far end of the yard, jutting a full six feet out of the ground. The cross marks the slightly raised earth of a grave. No one knows who is buried there. The family, as far as anyone can tell, is interred in its entirety at the local graveyard. Some speculate it might be a pet, but it looks too large a grave for a pet. Others think it was perhaps a visiting relative no one knew, as the family was quite private, but then again they were quite private, and no one can ever actually recall them receiving visitors. Of course, no one's willing to excavate the gravesite. No one disturbs anything at the house. There was one time, though, where a local boy, for a science project, took a soil sample from the back yard to see if there was some reason why the front was so prosperous while the back was so barren, and do you know what he found? Salt. The whole back yard had been salted, what must have been hundreds of pounds of salt. Hell of a thing.

Here's something not everyone sees; there's a gate built into the back fence, way in the back corner. It's hard to spot unless you walk right up to it. Go through it and you find a path down to one of the small creeks that run all around this area. Here, a little off the path, is a small shed. It's a ramshackle old thing, looks like it will barely hold together, but it's safe. Head inside.

There's a flashlight hanging on the wall just inside the door. That's mine, I leave it there. Turn it on and throw the beam around a bit. The walls of the shack are plastered with paper of all sorts. Newspaper clippings, post cards, photos, bulletins, nudie pictures, advertisements, they're all strung up with no real pattern, but with a discernible amount of care. Wipe the dust off the pictures and you'll see a lifetime's worth of dates scrawled into the corner of each picture. At the back of the shed is a small desk built out of a slab of wood laying across two large blocks of wood. Now, here's the kicker: look at the base of the block on the left. There's a small arch cut in the bottom, large enough for you to squeeze your pointer finger into. Do so, then pull up and out. There's a secret panel there. You remove the panel, and inside you see a book. It's wrapped in an oiled piece of cloth and has a bound leather cover. Inside are pages and pages, handwritten, of some pretty fantastical stories. They're not quite like anything you'll find at Mallory's Book Nook in town, that's for sure.

I don't show this to everybody. I wasn't even sure I was going to show you until I did it. If you want to read it, be my guest, but it doesn't leave this shed. You can come back here and read it any time you want, obviously you can just let yourself in, but it always goes back into its place in the block, understand?

Well, that's pretty much it. Our own little haunted house. No real ghosts or anything, I suppose, none of that nonsense. You don't need to believe in spirits to know that a place can have a life of its own. Do what you need to do, take whatever notes you want, everyone here's going to stay out of your way, but do me a favor? Don't tell anyone about that book, all right? This is a good town, these are good people, they're tolerant and they're strong, but there's some things that just don't need spreading around, see.

I'll leave you to your work. You run into any… trouble, you call me, all right?

I'm always around.

3:54 PM - 3 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Hello, again

It's been a while.

I've got a new story in the works, but this month has been madness and my brain has been dead. Expect to see something posted in a couple weeks at the most.

Until then, my friend Nom de Plum, who writes some truly wonderful stuff you should all read over at:  http://www.myspace.com/raunchysagacity , put out one of those "Ask me five questions, I'll ask you five questions" requests, and who was I to deny her? Consequently, here are her questions and my answers, used by me to free up some of the writing blocks that have been plaguing me lately. Read if you like! Comment if you want!

See you soon!!!

-Jake T.

1)                  According to your profile, you live in Brooklyn, New York. For a large chunk of world, New York City conjures up so many images - wall-to-wall people in an endless city, poverty, wealth, crime, art, lights, actors, nonstop excitement.
What does New York mean to you?

 

(A)             Here's the thing about New York to me. I feel like the horror of adult life is realizing that it's just like high school. You never really leave. And New York City is like the biggest, preppiest, cliquish high school in the world. What's hardest to understand about New York without having ever lived here is exactly how small it truly is. Most people only have a very small square of city blocks they actually travel in. You've only got a handful of people you really ever talk to. Everything is both spread out and claustrophobic. It takes you an hour on the subway to get from your small, cramped, overpriced apartment to your friend's small, cramped, overpriced apartment. Transportation is hard to navigate, time is hard to come by, space is hard to afford, jobs are hard to find. Dating can be hard, as groups are very insular and meeting new people is difficult. It's very easy to consume things here; it's very difficult to create. All of that bitching you may read in hip scenester message boards about New York losing its edge and personality are entirely true. This city has always gotten its personality not from its glamor, but from its dirt, and these days the dirt can't afford the rent. New York now has the same stores, restaurants, theater shows and movie theaters that you can find in any medium-sized city in the country. All of the weird, dirty, obscene, eccentric, experimental, crazed, inspired, inventive and daring individuals have been pushed out to the boroughs at best, if not to other cities or even countries.  No longer a breeding place for the new and exciting, New York has become a cultural Elephant Burial Ground, where the dynamic and new comes to be buried in the crypt of canon. As someone who came here to be an actor, this can all, at times, be somewhat heartbreaking.

But. Oh, but. Sometimes, there are moments. Sometimes you run across a free Kurt Weill concert in Washington Square Park, or you practically run over Woody Allen filming outside Webster Hall, or you get to meet your idol when doing one of his plays and have him take you out to dinner, or you catch a bus up to The Cloisters right as Fall hits, or you stumble upon a fascinating book in The Strand that you probably would never have heard about anywhere else, or you do something touristy for the hell of it and remind yourself that places like Ellis Island or Radio City or The Empire State Building actually are spectacular places, or having a place like Forbidden Planet that allows you to completely discover comic books for the first time in your early 20s, or you meet the woman you are destined to marry, and all of a sudden New York is romantic again.

To sum it all up, I suppose, is that New York isn't just a place where someone lives, it's a city you have to have a relationship with, and like any relationship it takes a lot of work.  You have to constantly reassess and examine where you stand, what you want and how you're getting it. And like relationships, it can be great and supportive, or it can be exploitative and abusive, and unlike the actual traffic pattern of the city, it's always a two-way street.

 

 
2. What did you learn from being "the smart kid" when you were in primary school? (Don't be coy - you and I both know you were the smart kid).


(A)     Actually I had the great fortune to go from being the smartest kid in the school to being surrounded by brilliant kids. I was always a pretty smart kid, but when I was going into fifth grade my family moved to the panhandle of Florida in this small, impoverished town called Eastpoint. Eastpoint was a fishing community where kids hung out in school until they got old enough to drop out and work on the oyster boats. I was the golden child simply because I liked to learn. There were actually teachers who would just send me to the library during their classes because they knew I wasn't going to get much out of the lessons they were teaching the rest of the class.

    Then my family got transferred to Gainesville, FL, which is where the University of Florida is located. Consequently I went from being in a class full of kids waiting to get their fishing license to being in class with the children of professors. Suddenly I was very much not the smartest kid in the room anymore. I started pushing myself, trying to live up to the new standards. I applied to the International Baccalaureate Program at Eastside High School which, while I was there, was ranked as one of the top 5 public schools in the country. I never made it back to the ultimate Top of the Class, but I was with people who elevated me simply by being around them.

    I think going from one extreme to the other was one of the best things that could have happened to me. I learned a lot of humility, some self-reliance, a reasonable level of distrust of authority (how could teachers not know what to do with a kid like me?), an appreciation of good education and people who truly love to think and learn. I learned how much better and more fulfilling it is to surround yourself with people who are better and/or smarter than you in some way so that you can learn from them and better yourself.


3. You have to choose between the following two super powers:
~ The ability to fly, but you can only go 200 miles per hour at your top speed. This is it, this is your only power. You can't breathe any better in thin air; you don't have superhuman strength, nothing. You, simply, can just fly.
~ The power of absolute invisibility. That's it. People can still touch you; you can still make noise, etc.
Which power do you choose? Explain your answer.



(A)    The ability to fly, no question. The main reason being that I wouldn't trust myself with the power of invisibility. I actually read H.G. Wells' The Invisible Man when I was a wee one, and one of the brilliant aspects of that story that always stuck with me is how the titular character goes mad and starts committing all of these heinous acts, largely because he cannot see himself anymore. You can look at that allegorically, but even on a very actual, physical level, being able to actually look at yourself, either in the mirror or in the eyes of others, can keep you honest. Think about how when we talk about THEM, the nasty baddies, one of their primary characteristics is that they cannot be seen. They are The Men Behind The Curtain, The Unseen. Being able to fly, if anything, INCREASES your visibility. I would feel much more of a need to use my powers for good and not for sneaking into women's locker rooms like a terrible 80s teen comedy. I think one of the greatest boons of society is accountability, and what is invisibility but a way to duck out of responsibility? Plus, what if something terrible happened to me while I was invisible? Who would know? There's a great X-Files episode involving a genie that hilariously touches on that question.


So yes. Flying. Hands down.



4. Where do you see this country in 50 years?


(A)    I am actually pessimistically optimistic. There's a brilliant movie called "Lovely and Amazing," if you haven't seen it skip to the next paragraph because I don't want to spoil it for you, it's absolutely wonderful. There is a character in the movie played by Emily Mortimer who is an actress horrifyingly obsessed with her looks, not in a wacky "vain actress" way, but in a way where, at one point, she stands naked before the distant man she's sleeping with and asks him to point out all her physical flaws, and he obliges while she stands, nodding and smiling. At the end of the film, the character, a dog lover, goes up to try and show some affection to a stray who, in turn, bites her on the face. Later in the hospital, face now scarred, the character is more relaxed and happy than she's been through the whole film, because now she is irreversibly freed from the desire to look "perfect." I believe that soon America is going to officially get bitten in the face by a dog.


    I think sometime in the next few years we are going to get our ass handed to us in the way no one seems to be talking about - economically. We're not going to get blown up by Islamo-fascists, we're not going to get invaded by China, illegal Mexicans aren't going to take us over from the bottom up and then sell us down the Rio Grand. One day people are going to come around asking for all that money we've been borrowing and we're going to be up shit's creek, sans paddle. However, I don't think this will be the worst thing that could happen to us. Look at previous economic superpowers who have more recently been knocked off their pedestals - England, Spain, France. They're still around. They're not destitute, their people are still by-and-large doing well, they're surviving just fine. I think hitting the skids for a bit and losing our empiric endeavors and world-police attitudes will help this country immensely. I think it will be rough, but, as I mentioned in response to your Dorothea Lange blog, we're a tougher people than we've recently been given credit for. I think at the other end of this dark night will be a dawn of turning our attention on ourselves and our problems and actually work towards solutions.



5. Where do you see yourself in five years?


(A)    I believe I'll be able to see things a bit more clearly. I'll have more self-knowledge, as some of the things on the burners now will have been finished and assessed, hopefully showing some insight into who I am and where I should be going. I will have been married for a few years at that point, and I think by that point I'll be settled into married life. I'll probably be looking at moving out of the city, going somewhere a little more conducive to raising a family. I'll have been out of the country at some point. I'll still have most of the questions I do now, but will be a little closer to the answers, or perhaps a little closer to asking better questions. I think I'll be more stable with things like money, employment, relationships, and I think that will free me up to screw around a little more with my art, my bizarre dreams and obsessions - which I think I'll also have a clearer vision of. However, I feel like all-in-all I won't be terribly different than I am now. I'll be a worrier, a crank, I'll dawdle, doodle and write a bunch of silly bullshit that comes into my head. I hope I'll move past some of the timidity I have about contacting people and pushing my personal initiatives. I hope I'll know more about "playing the game." I think I'll still have a small group of friends I itch to see all the time even when I haven't called them in ages.I think I'll still be curious, silly, angry and trying to figure out exactly what I have to give.


12:15 PM - 7 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Friday, April 11, 2008

Week 52: The End
Category: Writing and Poetry

So this is it. A year of writing a story a week. Some were good, some were bad, on rare occasions some were an absolute blast, and rarest of all, some were actually on time. However, I've decided to hang it up. I started this thing with the goal of getting in a lot of writing practice, stretching myself and getting feedback. I feel like I've gone about as far as I can with the current mode of operating. I feel like I need to start focusing on cleaning up and submitting some of the good ones and start working on actual projects that won't just entertain me and the five people who read this blog. I'm still going to write diligently, and I'll still post things here, just not necessarily a story a week. So please, check in. I've made the vow that if I ever start slacking and not writing at least as much as I've written here, I'll take up the challenge again. The goal is to keep writing, always. I'm just changing the format.

Thanks to everyone who read, and a huge huge thanks to everyone who commented. It's still not too late, if you ever want to go back and read some stories and comment, or send me thoughts on the whole process, how/if you think the writing has grown or changed, what you think I still need to work on, what my strengths and weaknesses are, or just what you'd be interested in seeing from me, PLEASE let me know. Feedback is necessary. Writing in a vacuum is an absolute killer. It turns you into a self-involved, dull, solipsistic twit. Or Emily
 Dickinson. And no one wants either of those things.

So here it is, the final story, dedicated to the man who inspired me to start and who stuck with me through the whole thing with diligent feedback and encouragement, Sean Ryan. Also to my lovely fiancee, who has been no less diligent in support, feedback, and her appreciation for anything involving bees.

This one is for you two. Thank you both.

Fini.



THE END

            Sean Ryan stood in the middle of Madison Avenue, surrounded by flames and carnage. In one hand he held a nonsensically large gun, in the other his crotch.

            "Suck a dick, Osama bin Laden," he yelled, then fired four rounds into the barricade of burning overturned cars. On the other side of the barricade Osama bin Laden shook with rage.

            "Why does he keep telling me to suck a dick??" he asked of his second in command. "I do not like dicks! I do not wish to suck on them! I feel he knows this, and yet he persists with this kind of talk!"

            The second in command shrugged his shoulders. "Maybe he's just trying to get your goat."       

            "Ungh, well, he's doing a good job," Osama huffed, arms crossed. "I should be telling him who sucks dicks!" The second in command nodded.

            Back on the other side of the wall of burning automobiles Sean Ryan cackled with laughter. "Did you hear that? I just told Osama bin Laden to suck a dick. Classic."

            Jake Thomas was curled up in a ball near the trunk of a Camry that had been cut in half. "So much burning," he mumbled. "Why must everything be burning?"

            "Oh for heaven's sake, pull it together. At least you're not burning," chastised Sean. "You're only flaming. You homo. Besides, look on the bright side. At least that asshole McGinty from Homeland Security isn't here."

            A helicopter came whirling down 30th Street, flying thirty feet off the ground, and turned onto Madison Avenue. Leaning out of the helicopter was a man in a black suit and tie. He had a stern jaw, a short-cropped haircut and dark black sunglasses. In his hands was a bullhorn. "Sean Ryan and Jake Thomas, this is Agent McGinty from Homeland Security. Drop your weapons and surrender!" he bellowed out of the device.

            Sean Ryan shook his head slowly. "That man is a douche. I really wish he wasn't. But he is." He sighed.

            Over the large pile of cars came a military-style walkie-talkie, sailing in a long arch like a grenade. It landed at the feet of Jake Thomas. "Huh," said Jake.

            "Don't touch that!" yelled Agent McGinty from the helicopter. "We can shoot you. I have a piece of paper from the President of the United States that says I can shoot you."

            "Suck a dick, Homeland Security!" said Sean.

Jake picked up the walkie-talkie and tentatively pressed the 'talk' button. "Hello?"

"Hello? Hello? Is this Sean Ryan?" came the heavily accented voice from the walkie-talkie.

"No, this is Jake."

"OH, thank goodness! This is Osama bin Laden. Look, I noticed you've got the McGinty guy bothering you. If you will stop shooting at me and provide a distraction, my man here believes he can shoot the helicopter out of the sky. Oh, and Sean has to stop telling me to suck a dick."

"You've got to be out of your fucking mind," said Jake. "Suck a dick, Osama bin Laden. Suck a million dicks."

"Goddammit, why with all the dicks!" screamed bin Laden. "I like vagina, how many times must I tell you, I am like knee deep in vag-" Jake turned off the walkie-talkie.

"Put down the weapons and give yourselves up!" demanded McGinty. "If you won't listen to me, maybe you'll listen to her!" McGinty reached into the helicopter and pulled out Emily French, Jake Thomas's fiancée, leaning her dangerously far outside the helicopter.

"Don't listen to him!" yelled Emily. "He's a total douche! And kind of a pervert. I think I saw him fondling his cell phone."

Agent McGinty threw Emily down to the floor of the helicopter. "This is not a cellphone!" he seethed through gritted teeth as he pulled a complex looking electronic device out of his jacket pocket and waved it in front of Emily's face. "This is a cutting edge, government-grade beta test of intra-neuron compu-technology with com-stat capabilities, seek/track ping bounce, mobile bio-scan interrogation platforms and instant vocal-triggered information recall on approximately 800 subjects." Emily rolled her eyes. "And I was not fondling it!" yelled Agent McGinty. "I was showing it PROPER RESPECT."

Emily wrapped her feet around the bolted chair leg and pulled up her torso, head-butting Agent McGinty's hand and sending the device flying out of the open window and into the flaming passenger seat of Prius. "I hope it also had a warranty." Agent McGinty screamed like a horrified little girl.

"McGinty grabbed your girlfriend?" said Sean. "That's some bullshit right there."

"She's not my girlfriend, Sean. She's my fiancée."

"Oh right, I forgot. You're getting married," said Sean. "Gay."

"Actually, it's very much not," said Jake. "You know what is gay, though?" Jake picked up the walkie-talkie and hit 'talk.' "Osama bin Laden's gay. I know this because of all the dicks he sucks."

"I fucking hate you guys!" yelled Osama bin Laden. Jake threw the walkie-talkie back on the ground.

"All kidding aside, though, fiancée stealing is pretty much at the top of my 'ass-kicking' offence list. Sean, correct me if I'm wrong, as I might be a little too close to this, but I think shit may have just gotten real."

"Oh, it's the realest," said Sean. "Shit doesn't get much more real than this."

"All right." Jake stretched out his back. "I'm about to do something seriously stupid. I need to play some Kelly Clarkson music."

Sean Ryan jumped. "Hey now, there's nothing stupid about Kelly Clarkson."

"No, it's more like a soundtrack. Music to do something stupid by."

"Ah. Proceed, then."

Jake kicked out the window of a flipped sports car that still had the keys in the ignition. He turned on the battery and pulled a CD out of his jacket pocket. He put it in the stereo and turned the volume knob all the way up. 'Walk Away' began to play.

"Is that Kelly Clarkson?" said Osama bin Laden from his hidey hole.

"Bold choice," said Sean.

"It seemed reasonable," replied Jake.

"Oh, by the way, you carry around a Kelly Clarkson CD?" asked Sean.

"Yeah," said Jake.

"Gay," said Sean.

"You don't carry around a Kelly Clarkson CD?" asked Jake.

"No."

"You have no Kelly Clarkson CD on you at all?"

"No."

"Then what's that in your lower pocket?"

"It's not a Kelly Clarkson CD."

Jake stared at Sean.

"It might be a Kelly Clarkson CD."

Inside the helicopter Agent McGinty was lying on his belly, reaching his hand over the edge of the open door. "Lower me, you goddamn swine! Put this hovering metal turd onto that fire pit."

"Uuuh, I don't think that's a good idea," said the pilot.

"I don't think it was a good idea for your dad to have shot his spunk up your mama's hoo hoo, but that still happened. Now lower this chopper or I will hang you with your own colon."

The pilot began lowering the helicopter. "Uh, sir? The boys appears to be on the move."

Agent McGinty looked up. Jake and Sean were running towards the helicopter. "Boy oh boy, it's been a while since I've done anything this dumb," Jake laughed aloud. Finally, he reached his destination, a Ford Pinto that was only minimally on fire.  Jake motioned for Sean to help him pick up an upended sewer grate and toss it on the trunk of the car. Then Jake jumped on the trunk, took the gun out of his waste band and pointed it downward. "Actually, come to think of it, I don't think I've ever done anything this dumb."

"Jesus Christ," muttered Agent McGinty. "Is that a Ford Pinto?"

The Ford Pinto, for those not in the know, was one of the great disasters of automotive engineering in the last century. Developed in the late '60s and early '70s under the oversight of charlatan Lee Iaccoca, it was, by and large, one of the worst cars ever designed. It was built to crumple like a baby under a bulldozer on impact and had a weak gas tank stashed in the trunk that would instantly rupture under the slightest of bumps. And, on occasion, it was known to explode. Ford had a massive recall in '79, but some people are dense and don't listen to the news that's good for them. Some people keep driving death traps for years, managing to survive through arrogant, ignorant luck. Some people, which is to say people like Denton Feeble, who drove his car into Manhattan that morning to wait in line to get stand-by tickets to Young Frankenstein: The Musical! He had abandoned the paean to corporate malfeasance when Osama bin Laden  started chasing Jake Thomas and Sean Ryan through midtown in a giant mechanical bee, destroying everything in his path. As Denton Feeble attempted to dial his mother from a locked bathroom stall in the basement of Macy's, Jake Thomas knelt down on the sewer lid, covered his face and pulled the trigger to his weapon, releasing a bullet straight into that famously ill-designed gas tank. An explosion burst out of the car's trunk, propelling the sewer lid, with Jake on top, high and wide into the air.

Perhaps it was luck. Perhaps it was God. Perhaps Jake was much better at chemistry and physics than he had ever let on. Perhaps it was that bizarre of confluence of events that seems to favor the mad and deranged, but the explosion threw Jake directly at the hovering helicopter. Jake fell low, tangling himself in the landing skis and grabbing the grasping hand of Agent McGinty. The sewer lid went high, slicing into the gears of the helicopter's rotating blades. The chopper went wobbly, bobbing and weaving, then crashing to the ground.

Smoke and dust billowed from the wreckage. "Thomas!" Sean screamed. Through the mist a figure was walking away from the downed helicopter. As the form parted a puff of smoke Sean saw Emily French dragging Jake by his feet across the pavement.

"Jesus, he's heavy," heaved Emily. "No more ice cream for this man."

"I heard that," said Jake. "And I'll have you know I can walk fine, I just thought you could use the exercise." Jake's feet dropped to the ground. He struggled to stand.

Sean smiled. "Good work, Thomas. That's definitely at least a few hundred thousand dollars of twisted metal there."

"Oh! I tossed his cell-phoney gadget thingy into a burning Prius!" beamed Emily.

"Well," said Jake. "I think we've done our part to raise the national deficit today. Drinks are on me."

"I don't drink," said Sean.

"FINE," said Jake. "Drinks are on you."

"Ass."

Suddenly there was a clanging cacophony from the helicopter. Agent McGinty stumbled out, tattered and bruised. One of his arms had gone missing. Judging from the tattered clothing and gushes of blood, it had gone missing violently.

"I hope that wasn't your dialing hand," said Emily. "I know how much you love your cell phone."

"You are all under arrest!" yelled McGinty. "I'm going to put you in a prison we have especially for bear rapists and skull fuckers! We have such a prison, you know! It's my second favorite prison! It's terrible, and painted entirely in puce!"

"Look out guys, it's the long arm of the law!" said Sean.

"You've got to give him a hand though," said Jake.

"I think he just needs a shoulder to cry on," said Emily.

"I'd like to engage him in a fair fight, but he's disarmed!" said Osama bin Laden, climbing over his fortress of piled cars with a gun aimed at all of them.

Jake smacked his forehead. "Oh shit! Osama bin Laden! I totally forgot about that guy!"

"Who are you, President Bush?" said Emily.

"ZING!" snapped Sean.

"Oh, that's good!" said Osama bin Laden. "That's topical! Very funny! Now, unfortunately, I have to kill you all."

"Wow," said Sean. "That got dark quick."

"Why do you want to kill us?" asked Emily.

"It's my fault," said Jake with a sigh. "It's what I wrote. Somehow Allah's favorite asshole had a media confusion and thought that my stories were some sort of secret code from one of his cells in America."

"You're not going to keep that 'Allah's favorite asshole' line in, are you?" asked Emily. "That's kind of offensive."

"Nobody reads this thing except you two," said Jake.

"Obviously he read it." Sean pointed his thumb towards Osama bin Laden.

"A fair point," responded Jake.

"This MySpace thing is so confusing!" said Osama. "We were so sure! It all made sense!"

"All made sense?" Jake said with a raised eyebrow. "You came to America, dressed like pirates, in a giant mechanical bee; you destroyed a town called Cedar Grove, dug up corpses,  ate babies and ruined a parade! How does that make sense?"

"We also wrote a children's book," said Osama's second in command.

"You know, when you say it all like that, it does sound weird," said Osama. "It's a bit embarrassing. Boy, we really do have to kill you now, if the boys back home get wind of this I'll never hear the end of it."

Emily's eyes narrowed. "Wait a tick. You didn't do anything to the Ateh Theater girls, did you?"

"What?" said Osama.

The second in command checked his notes. "Ah! The Madeleine Maby Must Die girls."

"Oh," said Osama. "I kidnapped them and made them dress up as harem girls. They're inside the giant mechanical bee."

"Are you telling me," said Emily, drawing herself up, "Are you telling me that you kidnapped my friends, dressed them all up in skimpy clothing, put them all in a giant mechanical bee, and you DIDN'T INVITE ME?"

"Well, the point of having a harem is hardly to share, now, is it?" Osama shrugged.

"Oh shit," said Jake. "This is going to get ugly."

Emily's shoulders rose up to her ears in rage. She bared her teeth like an angry gorilla. A scream of rage filled her throat. She grabbed Agent McGinty's remaining arm and with a show of horrific strength ripped it straight out of the socket. For the second time that day McGinty screamed like a little girl.

"OH FUCKING SICK!" Osama yelled, dropping his gun in shock. His second in command began barfing uncontrollably. Emily took the arm and hurled it through the air. It connected with Osama bin Laden at the top of his head and knocked him ass over tits.

"Please don't throw any limbs at meeeaaaaoooorrrrgh!" said/spewed the second in command. Emily climbed up the pile of cars and delivered a swift roundhouse kick to the face.

"Who's king of the mountain now, bitch?" said Emily.

"Your fiancée is a madwoman," said Sean.

"That's why I love her."

"That is IT!" yelled Agent McGinty. "I'm sending you to my favorite prison. It's for incestual pedophiles and genocidal terrorist tax evaders. You will be fed glass and raped by baseball bats covered in barbed wire, and we will keep you alive for a very, very long time, so you can really enjoy it."

Sean reached a hand out and gently pushed Agent McGinty over.

Emily walked to the mechanical bee and ripped the door open. Inside were all the girls from the Ateh Theater Company, all of them dressed in scandalous wisps of silk and cloth.

"Did you happen to notice," said Bridgette, "that we are inside a giant mechanical bee? Do you think they'll let us use it for the next Ateh show?"

Emily stared at the cleavage on display. "My girls," she smiled. She leaned against Madeleine's chest and closed her eyes.

"Hold on," said Alexis. "This is all because of Jake's stupid stories? But he never even used me yet? This sucks."

"But you got to ride in a mechanical bee!!" Bridgette howled. "How awesome is that?!?!"

"If it makes you feel any better, Alexis, I never even showed up. I was only mentioned," said Liz Neptune.

"You know, this is going to make that move to L.A. a whole lot easier," said Katherine.

"Holy shit," said Sara Montgomery. "I'm still wearing this stupid outfit."

Outside Sean Ryan and Jake Thomas stared at the disaster left in their wake.

"Not a bad show, Thomas," Sean granted.

"No, indeed," agreed Jake. "Good of you to come out. Couldn't have done it without you."

"What else was I gonna do? You know me, always ready to start some shit. Speaking of which, you think we should call an ambulance for this douche?" asked Sean, pointing to Agent McGinty.

"I'm sure someone's on their way," said Jake, settling down onto the hood of taxi cab.

"So this is it, huh?" said Sean. "The last story of the week?"

"Yep," said Jake. "This is it."

"Hmm," said Sean. "So, what are you going to do now, Buffy?"

"Well, personally, I kinda wanna slay the dragon. Let's get to work."

"Good call. How about this: Sorry, we're closed."

"Last line of Cheers. How about this: 'You've been a great audience, I'll see you in the cafeteria!'"

"Seinfeld. OK, how about this, "It's a long way/ to Tipperary/ It's a long way/ To go/ It's a long way/ To Tipperary/ To the sweetest gal I know.'"

"Ummm. The Gay Show?"

"Mary Tyler Moore!"

"Like I said, The Gay Show."

"Come on, that's an incredibly famous series finale!"

"All right, I've got one for you: "P.S. When you notice I've left my journal behind, don't bother to send it. Perhaps some day, I'll drop by and pick it up myself."

"What the balls?"

"It's Mr. Belvedere!"

"What."

"The finale of Mr. Belvedere! He gets married and goes to Africa! It ends with him writing a postcard! It's touching!"

"You dare mock me for Mary Tyler Moore, a seminal piece of television, and follow it up with Mr. Belvedere?"

"You love it."

"You know, it's this crazy bullshit I'm going to miss the most."

 

The End.

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Monday, April 07, 2008

Week 51: The Stranger
Category: Writing and Poetry

THE STRANGER


            Don stumbles down the alley, reeling like an overzealous ballerina. He’d been out drinking with the boys from the office, but the whole time he’d made sure to keep an eye to his watch, and as 1 AM approached he gathered himself together and exited The Cromwell Arms with a belch and a "See you next week!"

            He gets excited as he comes to his usual spot, just beneath the fire escape of a tenement building right off of Edipen Ave. The night is dark, the alley is darker. Don closes his eyes and leans his back against the cold brick wall. He thumbs over the row of bills in his wallet recently withdrawn from an ATM. His head swims with expectation. Two weeks ago it had all been an accident, a chance meeting. He’d been drunker than usual and gotten turned around, stumbling into the alley unawares. As he put his head between his legs hoping to bring a little weight to his light-headedness, the stranger had come upon him. He had thought about that encounter the entire following week. He was changed. People noticed, his wife, his coworkers, they asked him what had happened, but he’d shrugged it off. "Just had a hell of a night," he’d told them. If they only knew.

            That next weekend he’d gone back. It had been a compulsion, as inevitable and welcome as a sunrise. He thinks about it again as he stands in the alley in the same spot, at the same hour, for the third Friday in a row. He remembers how he felt no anxiety then, there was no fear that the stranger would not appear, that the same events would not transpire. There was a certainty that dried his mouth and pushed his blood hard through his veins. He remembers slipping into bed beside his wife, lying beneath the sheets, his body more alive in that bed than it had been in years.

            He checks his watch. Almost time. He likes that they both hold true to schedules. He feels a kinship with the stranger. They’ve only shared a handful of words, but there is a closeness to the stranger that is undeniable to Don. The stranger knows a part of him no one else does, a dark, true part of him. As he thinks about exposing this hidden side of himself to this stranger he feels something in himself begin to rumble and quake. He gets hard. He loves the new addition to his week, he likes the regularity, but he gets so shaken just thinking about it that he fantasizing about what else they could do, this stranger and he. Don gets warm, thinks about taking his jacket off, but then thinks better of it. It’s part of the ritual.

            Footsteps echo down the alley. Don lets out a nervous laugh. He feels like one of those girls in old footage of The Beatles concerts. He wants to scream out, he wants to jump and applaud and cry and faint. Instead he runs his hands through the hair just above his ears and holds the clump at the base of his skull, a gesture that he has calmed him since 6th Grade. He sees the outline of the stranger at the far end of the alley, backlit by a motion-censor light above the back entrance of a Chinese restaurant. The footsteps of the stranger are the click and shuffle of patent leather boots. They are indicative of a swagger, a rebel step that is somehow arrhythmic and lyrical. The outline of the stranger is lean, jeans running up long legs and a denim jacket zipped halfway up the front. The stranger covers half the distance between the alley’s end and Don then stops, pulls a cigarette out of a pack hidden within one of the jacket’s inner pockets. As the cigarette is lit only a wide smile is illuminated underneath the low tilt of a Stetson hat. A slow drag is taken, then the cigarette is removed, ashed, and left in hand. The swagger continues. The hat is pushed up the forehead.

            "Back again?" the stranger asks as though it were a joke. Don thinks the strangers voice sounds like an old country music song. He answers with only a smile. The stranger walks over to done, casually puts the cigarette back in his mouth, then grabs Don by the lapels of his jacket and pushes him up against the wall. "What’s your problem?" says the stranger, the words sliding out of the side of the mouth. "Who the fuck are you, you sicko? Keep coming back here like this?" Don shrugs his shoulders and smiles again. The stranger is so close he can smell sweat that is mixed with alcohol. He sees flecks of brown in the stranger’s bright green eyes. He can feel the stranger’s breath. The stranger tosses Don down the alley, away from the main drag. "I guess you know the drill by now," says the stranger, covering knuckles with glistening brass. The stranger puts one hand against Don’s chest and pulls the other back in a fist.

            "Wait!" yells Don. "Wait! Please! Not in the face!" The stranger grins and rares back anyways. "If you hit me in the face I can’t come back!" The stranger stops. The hand lowers. The cigarette shifts around the mouth in consternation. Don stutters out, "I can’t hide those bruises and I’m running out of excuses. Hit me anywhere around the torso, those aren’t a problem, just the face. It’s hard to explain that." The smile returns. The stranger pulls back, this time the fist traveling along the hip line, then delivers a quick blow straight to the gut.

            Breath rushes out of Don. He tries to pull it back in, but his lungs won’t let him. The lack of incoming oxygen turns his vision soft. The world becomes a blur. Somewhere that feels far away the stranger is still delivering punches to Don’s stomach. A punch lands on Don’s rib cage and the pain becomes sharp and present again. The stranger wipes away a bit of perspiration on a denim sleeve and Don takes in a deep breath. As the oxygen expands his chest he feels every punch a second time. His knees drop out from under him and he slides down the alley. A sound between a moan, a cry and a laugh twitters out of Don. The stranger does a slight feet shuffle, then delivers a single kick to Don’s engorged crotch. Don’s eyes roll over white. He grabs his groin in pain, but feels that he is still hard. He resists the urge to pull himself out right then and there in the alley and bring himself to the release he knows is coming. The stranger bends over the crumpled man and roots through his pockets, pulling out Don’s wallet and removing all the bills. The money is tucked into a denim pocket and the wallet is tossed onto Don’s bruising stomach. The stranger walks out towards the main drag. "Next week, then" plays down the alley like a honkytonk jukebox selection, and then the stranger is gone.

            Don lays in the alley. He feels every inch of his body. Slowly he pulls himself to his feet. The alley that was dark before now seems bright, almost iridescent. Although the pain is intense, Don wants to run. He wants to dance, or fight, or fuck, or sing. He wants to light something on fire, break something, tear something apart. He wants to destroy his life and the lives of those around him and laugh at the demolition. But he won’t, he knows this. He will go back home, he will jerk off quietly in the bathroom while his wife sleeps, then he will crawl into bed and wake up to the same sleepwalk life that deadens his senses and dulls his soul.

Until next Friday night.

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Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Week 50: Happy Belated Easter
Category: Writing and Poetry

HAPPY BELATED EASTER

            You’re welcome.
           For the candy, for the bunnies, for the eggs and the nice dinner and the sunrise service and the good feelings and the redemption and all of that. You’re welcome. So glad I could be of service.
            Me? Well, I’m fine, thanks for asking. Oh, wait, what’s that? You didn’t ask? No, you wouldn’t have, would you. And, in fact, I’m not fine. Truth be told, I’m bleeding miserable. But heavens, I wouldn’t want to bother you. Wouldn’t want to burden you with any of my problems. I only shoulder every single solitary one of your sins every single day, it’s not a big deal, it’s not like it hurts or anything.
            Oh wait. It does hurt. A lot. What, you thought consuming all your sins felt good? That it is a joy and a pleasure to take all the vile essence of humanity and process it into pure, heavenly forgiveness? Well you thought wrong, didn’t you. Not exactly a new state of affairs for you lot. Oh I know, I know, you’ll start citing scripture, saying about how I’m the shepherd and I love my sheep and about how glad I am whenever one returns to the fold. Well done, you can read. Here’s a tidbit, though. The Bible was written by a cadre of hooligans and shysters who wanted to shake down the yokels. They took what actually happened and ran it through the cleaners till it came out real pretty and told the people the pretty things they wanted to hear. Does saving a soul have its rewards? Yes, sure. You know what else is rewarding? Taking a bullet for an innocent child. That’s a very nice, honorable thing. Also? It hurts like a bitch. If you doubt me, I’d love to show you. And taking in a sin? It makes bullets feel like a warm bath. 
            Of course, there’s the actual, very corporeal pain that comes with Easter. You know, the Good Friday stuff? Getting nailed to a cross and whatnot? That was a real picnic. Nails going through wrists and ankles, that’s a nice way to kick off a weekend. Of course, if you start getting drowsy there’s also a spear in your side or vinegar down your throat. But you know what the most painful part of the whole thing was? No. You don’t. Because you’ve never been crucified for the sins of all humanity, have you? So I’ll tell you, the most painful part was knowing what would come next. You know I went to Hell after being crucified, right? People forget that. Where was I between Friday and Sunday? Not taking it easy. Not recuperating. Not going out and hiding a bunch of stupid little colored eggs, let me assure you. Nope, I suffered the flames of Hell. And guess what, it hasn’t gotten much better. People talk about my sweating blood in the Garden of Gethsemane as though I were worried about being crucified. I mean, come on. Crucifixion’s a bitch, don’t get me wrong, I don’t recommend it, but people face certain death all the time. Nasty, violent, awful death. Crucifixion is awful, but it’s also over with in a day. Not like AIDs or Ebola or something where you’re staring down a long road of slow, painful death. If simply the concept of a painful death could make you sweat blood, hundreds of people would do it every day. (Well, to be fair, the Ebola people do sometimes sweat blood, but it’s not really in an existential way now, is it?) Nope, I sweat blood because I knew what was coming AFTER. What is STILL ongoing. 
            And then there are the other two. God and the Holy Spirit. Oh, they’re a fine duo, they are. All three of us mentioned in the same lot. First of all, let’s be honest, God’s still coasting off the credit for creation. Wow, you made stuff just by saying it, really great. And then after six days of naming a lot of crap he had to take a break? Ummm, ok, how about a few days of pure Hell? What about an eternity of being the Brita filter to the unending filth of mankind? Boy, I can’t wait for my day off. It’s only been about 2,000 years and counting. When do I get my trip to Cabo? I’m waiting. 
            And the Holy Spirit, oh Me, don’t get me started on that poof. Very impressive, that one. The cheap party magician of the trilogy, the Paris Hilton of the three-in-one. He hits the party circuit, shows up at all the fun gig and fills everyone with warmth and joy and love. So where exactly was he on a certain Friday that springs into my mind? I could have used a little joy, a little warmth. What did I get? A spear and sponge of vinegar. Yeah, that sounds fair. All things balanced up here, for sure. 
            So go on, enjoy your holiday. Gather with your family, tell the Easter story, eat a nice dinner, invest in the richness of religion and spiritual purity for a day, then go right back to sinning on Monday. I’ll still be here, swallowing your shit. And you know what really gets me, what really makes it all so special? So many of these awful atrocities that I spend so much suffering cleansing from you lot are done in my name. Boy, you can bet how excited and happy I get when I not only have to suffer the forgiveness torture for someone blowing up an abortion office or disowning their child for being gay or whatever, but when they do it citing ME as their raison d’asshole. Mmm, baby, does that ever make this Savior gig TOTALLY worth it. You want to do something just for me this Easter? Go out into your beautiful, manicured front lawns, set up a nice, big cross, then nail yourself to it.
            A bit harsh? Get over it. Just because I love you, doesn’t mean I have to like you.

 

3:46 AM - 2 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Week 49: Curses!
Category: Writing and Poetry

I actually wrote this and posted it yesterday, but apparently it didn’t take. So here I am, posting again. This is the make-up story, a new story should hopefully be coming tonight. KABONG.

 

CURSES!

            The mummy sat in the museum thinking about curses. About 4,000 years ago his underlings had taken his corps, removed it of its fluids and organs, turned his body into a dried husk and then thrown his wrapped corpse into a box and buried in a bunch of big stones. They had also buried him with a small fortune; golden idols, coins, offerings of fruit and foodstuffs, even live animals. Heavy stones had also been placed on top of his tomb, in the hopes of keeping his body safe from scavengers, both animal and human. Just to be sure the grave was not disturbed they carved a curse onto the tomb, a curse meant to inflict fear and horror in anyone who might want to see what might be buried with a formerly living god that was too precious to be left in the anterior chamber. However, as with so many things in life, the curse didn’t work the way it had been supposed to work.

            The curse says quite firmly that if the king’s grave was disturbed he would return from the dead to wreak vengeance on the offending parties. All well and good, but if a soul has completely crossed over, he’s not exactly going to come all the way back now, is he? So in the tomb the mummy sat, waiting for years, centuries even, as the world went by. Sure, he’d be pissed if someone messed with his grave, he thought, but certainly it wasn’t worth all this. Only once had his grave been disturbed, somewhere around 400 BC. A couple of grave robbers looking for loot. It had been nice to kill the offending parties and their entire families, it had been nice to do anything for a change, but still. Once it was done, back to the grave. Wow. Great.

            And then it happened. 4,000 years after he was first interred a whole group of grad students stumbled onto his grave. "The burial tomb of a minor figure," one of them had said. "Possibly not even a king." Not even a king? When he was alive the mummy had had insubordinate, smart ass jerk-offs like this pantywaist strung up and eaten alive by tigers for fun. "Minor figure." After 4,000 years of laying in wait the rage that burned through his cold, dead form was a comforting, welcome warmth. However, as quickly as it came it faded. It had been 4,000 years. Who the hell cared who he was, anyway?

            Besides, vengeance would be such hard work. These weren’t two local douche clowns robbing graves, this was an international team of research students. The mummy got tired thinking about how long it would take to not only kill the whole team, but to hunt down their entire families? It’d be exhausting! There were a good fifteen countries represented between them all. Just because he was dead doesn’t mean travel couldn’t still take it out of him.

            Speaking of travel, they’d shipped his grave to a research lab at Yale, where he found himself currently. It was after hours and the mummy was sitting in the student lounge. No one was around. He was watching late night television and drinking a soda from the vending machine. Being dead was an odd thing. While he was entombed he had certainly been stuck, but his soul, his consciousness, still received information. Being dead was sort of like swimming in the collective unconscious. Still, it was different to be in it. It was interesting to see that television was actually as awesome and as horrifying as he’d thought it would be. And Coca-Cola tasted fucking delicious, if he did say so himself.

            So there he sat, sipping his soda and watching some infomercial selling Girls Gone Wild videos. What if I don’t wreak my vengeance, thought the mummy. What if I just let it go? These kids had it bad enough as it was, they were archeology grad students in the current economy. There was nothing he could do to their families that were worse than the student loan debts they were accruing one meaningless class at a time. The mummy chuckled. Talk about a curse.

            What would he do, he wondered? He couldn’t just go out and get an apartment, work at some shopping mart. He couldn’t just say who he was, that would be awful. They’d run tests, there’d be huge philosophical debates, even worse, they might make him do the talk show circuit. Of course, these days there was weirdness all over the place. And with all the liberal government social service foo-ferrah freaks were openly tolerated, even accepted. In his day anyone even remotely malformed was sunk in a river or thrown off a cliff. These days he could just say he had some crazy skin condition and no one would probably bat an eye. Maybe he could get a job working on a farm somewhere. He could go out to California. From what he’d heard he felt like he’d like  California.

            The girls on the television were still bouncing around. It’s a shame they removed all my bodily juices, thought the mummy, it’d be nice to get a little bit of that after 4,000 years.

            The mummy finished his soda and threw the bottle in the recycling container. He broke into a handful of offices until he found one with a coat and extra pair of shoes in the closet. They were a bit snug but they’d work, at least of a bit. On his way out he saw a hat that said "1 Dad hanging on a coat rack. He put it on. He snuck out a side entrance and walked out into the cold morning air. The movement felt good. Maybe he’d try one of those cappuccinos he’d heard so much about. He started whistling an old, old tune. Just because he was cursed, doesn’t mean he couldn’t have a good time.

 

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Friday, March 21, 2008

Week 48: Dull
Category: Writing and Poetry

I know I’m behind. The catch-up story will come either later today or tomorrow. I’ve vowed to write a one-pager. Job search = creative brain death. I apologize. But the real issue is, what do you think of THIS:



DULL

          Peggy Herschel sat in a café and looked out at the cold wet morning. She sipped her coffee and thought about Stan Parks. She was having an affair with him. Cheating on her husband of ten years with him. She had no idea why. She’d started an affair because the passion had gone out of her marriage, but she realized only this morning that there was no passion with Stan, either. She had traded out a dull and predictable boredom for a new and varied boredom. What a dull, sad old woman I’ve become, thought Peggy. She took her idea pad from her purse and flipped it open. She took the pen from the metal spirals at the top of the pad and jotted down a note. "Woman has affair, is bored." At least she’d have something to write about when she got home. Thank god for my writing, she thought, if it weren’t for my vivid imagination I don’t know how I’d get through this chore of a life.

            The door to the café burst inward. A man in an expensive suit ran into the shop, a briefcase attached to his arm by handcuffs.

            "Excuse me," he said to Peggy. His voice was low and sultry, with a hint of an accent. His eyes had an intensity that made Peggy nervous. "I’m in a bit of a hurry. I need to get to The United Nations. QUICK. I was wondering if you could drive me? I promise, you’ll be well compensated. It’s very important, the fate of an entire small country in the wilds of Eastern Europe depends on getting this suitcase to…"

            "I’m sorry," Peggy gave a tired smile. "It’s just, I’m enjoying this coffee, you see."

            "Oh. All right," said the man. "Well, thanks anyways." Peggy watched as the man moved down the bar to a cute blond girl reading a textbook on community planning. He gave her the same pitch he’d given Peggy and the girl nodded her head. As the two of them left the café they were accosted by two men in sunglasses and jumpsuits. The handsome man in the expensive suit said something to the two men, then began throwing punches. The fight was epic, the handsome man fending off both attackers, all while keeping a firm hold on the suitcase firmly attached to his wrist. The handsome man had one assailant in a choke hold, while kicking the other repeatedly with his left foot. The man he was kicking regained his senses long enough to put a hand up and grab a hold of the handsome man’s ankle. The handsome man then swung his right foot up over his left, delivering a crushing blow to the assailant’s face, knocking him to the ground. However, such acrobatics had forced him to loosen his choke hold on the other man. Before the handsome man could regain his footing the other assailant took a gun out of his waistband and pistol-whipped the handsome man. He said something, then raised the gun to the handsome man’s head. Just then the blond girl came up behind the assailant and hit him with the textbook in the back of his head. The man stumbled and dropped his gun. He turned and grabbed the woman by the neck and lifted her off the ground. The woman, choking and sputtering, pulled her leg up behind her and reached down. Her hand reached down and managed to slide off her two-inch pumps. Holding the shoe by the toe she threw her arm out and lodged the heel into the man’s eye. The man screamed in pain and dropped the woman. The handsome man came to and grabbed the assailant’s dropped gun and put two slugs into his stomach. As the man fell the blond came over and helped the handsome man to his feet. Their eyes met and they kissed, deep and violently passionate. The woman broke off the kiss and pulled out her keys, jogging over to a small Taurus across the street. The handsome man got into the passenger’s seat, and the car sped off down the street.

            "Tsk," said Peggy. She looked back down at her notebook. "Man abandons creative, intelligent woman for dull slut," she wrote. She was full of ideas today.

            If it wasn’t working out with Stan, maybe she should find someone else. She thought of the other men she knew. There was Phillip, the entrepreneur who had made a fortune developing a non-toxic fertilizer that was revolutionizing the wheat industry, some saying single-handedly lowering the price of bread a full thirty cents. Then there was Gordon, an actor who had recently translated a lauded stage career into film stardom as the tough-but-fair chief of police in a successful cop action series. Or perhaps Neil, who was gaining national attention for turning around problem schools in low-income areas. Then, of course, there was Arthur. There was something about the way Arthur tore down the other people in their writing group, really cut them down to size. There was a mystery about him. He wasn’t in good shape, he had a dead-end job and his stories were third-rate Don DeLillo rip-offs, but the way he carried himself with such assurance, such cocksure bravado, there must be something within him, thought Peggy. Maybe it was something dark, perhaps he was troubled. She would put a feeler out at the next writing meeting. Write a story just for him, see if he notices. She went back to her pad. "Entitled, arrogant yet sensitive artist ravishes marries woman." Good. That one would be fun to write.

            Peggy stared out the window. On the street a boy dressed in lederhosen danced a jig while playing a pan flute. As he passed a sea of rats scurried out of the sewer, following him. It took Peggy a moment to realize that the rats, too, were dancing. As the last of the rats were dancing down the street a man who had been putting coins in a parking meter jumped into the street and grabbed one of the rats. He bit into the rat’s stomach, tearing out its guts and slurping out its insides. He then put the hollowed-out rat carcass on his head and let loose a loud, cackling laugh. "I WANTED TO DO IT, AND SO I DID IT," he said. "I AM LIKE A GOD!" An angel descended from the sky, holding a flaming sword in its hand. "How dare you blaspheme!" said the angel, and swung the sword of fire, releasing the man’s head from his body. The angel picked up the man’s head, with the rat body still on top, and placed it on its own head. The eyes of the man’s disembodied head shot open. "NOW I AM LIKE A HAT!" it said. The angel ascended back to the heavens. An old balding man stepped out of an apartment and watched the angel rise to the sky. "What a bunch of religious poppycock!" harped the old man. "I am a man of science! What use have I for angels when I have a Local Temporal Accelerator!" The old man pulled out what looked like a ray gun from a 1950s B-movie. "What’s that?" asked a pregnant woman passing on the street. "My invention!" beamed the old man. "What does it do?" asked the pregnant woman further. "THIS!" said the man. He pointed the gun at the woman and pulled the trigger. A pulsating purple wave overtook the woman. Her belly grew quickly, then suddenly a baby plopped to the ground. The woman began aging at a rapid pace, as did the baby at her feet. As the child began to grow up the mother grew old. They passed each other in a matter of moments. The child was nearing adulthood when the mother first bent over with great age, then passed away. The boy looked at the corpse of his mother and let out a howl of rage, then he too began to enter adulthood, then ever quicker old age and, finally, death. With two corpses lying before him the scientist raised the gun to the air. "See, you silly god!" he screamed. "I hold time, your greatest weapon, in my hand! Tremble before me, you pitiful deity! Witness sanctity in science!" Just then the jaws of a giant Tyrannosaurus Rex swept down from above and clamped down on the scientist. It lifted him up in the air and with a toss of its head the T-Rex threw the scientist in the air and swallowed him. Bombs began exploding around the ancient beast. It roared and began running away. Tanks and helicopters followed. A decorated general in an open-topped land rover sat on the back seat and yelled out of a megaphone, "Keep on him, boys! Let’s blast this abomination of science back to the Cretaceous Period! He’s headed towards the river, lads!"

            Peggy sipped her coffee. "If he goes into the river at this time of day The Great Squids will get him, anyway," she said to no one. She wondered if her husband had any idea. She hadn’t exactly been discreet. Maybe if he would get angry at her, if he could loathe her, it would give her the freedom to feel something. How had it gotten like this? How had the world become so small, so inane?

            Peggy finished her