Tag: prose

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     My mother said the ghost in my room would leave when I turned twelve. At thirteen, I started to believe that she was a liar.

     Catherine wasn’t an annoying ghost or a mean ghost, or a ghost that carved cryptic messages into the rafters, or whispered pervy stuff into my friends’ ears while we played video games, or sent a gust of wind over the curve of my girlfriend’s ass the first time we fucked. She just talked to me when I needed a buddy. She spent the rest of her time reading tattered books in my closet. When I’d reach in for my jacket, I’d ask what she was reading, and she’d always say, “You wouldn’t get it.” I guess I believed her, because how could I argue? She’d already lived an entire life.
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The sirens were raging in the train. Voluptuous, caped, red lips clinging to fangs, cascading curls ropy with sweat. No, the vibration. Screeching in our ears. Green flashing lights. We came out of the tunnel and the lights came back on, yellow and warm and familiar. The police had made an arrest. The train chugged and slowed and whined and then, slowly, picked up speed and we were on our way. We pulled ourselves off the ground and found our seats. When our stop was next we pulled the chain.

     The party was in an old house atop one of the tumbling hills. We climbed the switch-backing streets. Below, the fog was settling over the city, whose lights were fading yellow flashes in the blue-wet atmosphere. The streets were quiet, but we weren’t. The air, clean and moist, filled our lungs, and we filled the air with song; shanties, rhymes, nationalistic pop, the like. Here among the cold houses and trees the sensors were less watchful. We were poets but clerks and machinists and assembly workers, we were poor, we were unnoticed, we were young and the nights never seemed to end.
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Julie Collins: For our sixth interview with Dook, our Angwin / Yeti spokesman, we are shaking it up. Dook is joined by our first appearance of a female Angwin, Sally.

Before I take questions from the audience, the ushers will pass around a salad made by the Angwin.

OK, first question. Please give your name and where you live. You in the third row, red hat.

Hi, I’m Jane from Manchester England. Sally, if I’m pronouncing that right, who runs your people the males or the females?

Sally: You aren’t pronouncing it right, but I’ve never been able to do French right, so no problem.

We are fairly equalitarian. Unlike humans, we don’t have any “male” or “female” jobs, except that females are the baby makers. Females may have the edge when it comes to art, and males for tool making, but the difference is insignificant. The makeup of our councils is fairly evenly split.

Julie Collins: Let’s hear from the man in the seventh row with the purple coat.

Jake Mbenga from Capetown. We’ve heard a lot lately about politicians and celebrities accused of rape or assault on women. Does that happen among the Angwin?

Dook: Much like humans, Angwin men would like to live a long life, so no.

Sally: It happens, but it is rare for the reason the Dook gives.

If I may ask a follow up, why is that?

Dook: I’d like to say that we are an enlightened people. That is true. It is also true that the Angwin women are usually larger and stronger than the men. This is true in most animals, but not among most mammals. We don’t know why it is true for the Angwin.

Julie Collins: Let’s hear from the man in the Dude hat wearing an orange jacket.

Doug Hawley from Lake Oswego Oregon USA. In earlier interviews, Dook mentioned that Angwin live in caves and under the snow. Is it one or the other or both?

Sally: Dook and I chuckled about that earlier. It is both. We apologize for the lack of clarity, Dook made a mistake in suggesting it was primarily one or the other.

Julie Collins: The woman with the red hair and killer dress in row six.

Michelle Duval from Lyon, France. Sally, how were you chosen to be a part of this interview?

Sally: Same as Dook, short straw. Audience titters. Well, that was part of it, but the same as Dook, my English is good and I am knowledgeable in Angwin culture.

Julie Collins: Petite woman in Hello Kitty outfit, tenth row.

Miu Furingo Tokyo. I’m studying to be an environmental engineer and I appreciate the Angwin’s dedication to sustainability. How do you handle sewage and refuse?

Sally: I’ll take that because Dook seems to be sleeping or meditating. We generate very little waste, because we don’t wear clothing, except for this interview – the producer insisted that we cover the naughty bits – and don’t use packaging. Much like humans, we don’t eat the yellow snow. Chuckling from audience. Anyway, as you probably know, drinking urine causes no problems.

Julie Collins: Let me interrupt a moment. Did you get “naughty bits” from a Monty Python routine?

Dook: That’s right. The retrogrades have been sending up episodes. Are they making any more episodes?

Julie Collins: Sorry to say that one of the Pythons is deceased and the group doesn’t perform together any more. Sorry for the interruption, what were you about to say?

Sally: As a part of our sustainable practices, solid waste is used in our hydroponic gardens where we grow our vegetables.

How do you like your salads? Spitting and groaning sounds from the audience.

Oh come on, we’ve been eating this stuff for hundreds of years and no one ever got sick.

Julie Collins: I see that most of the audience is heading for the doors, so that concludes our sixth exclusive Angwin interview.

 

 

Doug remains a little old man, with website https://sites.google com/site/aberrantword/ and twit @dougiamm

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     At midnight, he invited me back for curry, and I am a sucker for shy excuses. He never turned on the lights. We never had curry. I heard the scratching then but ignored it. I was drunk and wanted his pants off.

     I screamed, waking at dawn. A clear plastic tunnel ran over my head, around the room, and through the walls. Looking down at me was a penis with sawed-off teeth.

     “Naked mole rats,” he said into the pillow. He’d brought home that many women.
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I threw up again this morning.
This hasn’t happened in months, but the burn feels the same as it always does.
Last night’s sandwich spurts, then drips, out of me: a fire that runs on it’s own because my eyes are shut tight, shoving out the light.
Wish it was a hangover.
Or food poisoning.
The flu, something I could cure.

I was a senior in high school when headaches forced themselves into my daily life, when I woke up with a little bit of the night before’s food stuck to my lip because the pain secured its place again. Caused me to perish. Succumb. Stay in bed. Cry. Run to the bathroom. Vomit. Sit with my legs crossed and stretch my arms over my head. Close my eyes. Focus on the pounding. Let it create a symphony made of pain, one that played only in my ear drums.

I’d think of the the pain, feed it like an addiction.
It reminded me to feel.
Feel always.
Feel deeply. (more…)

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     You’ve always worried this might happen to you.

     At seven years old, up past your usual bedtime to watch Beverly Hills 90210 with your mom, you watched, peeking through the gaps of your bony fingers, it happen to Kelly Taylor. She begged and pleaded with her rapist, a shadowy figure in black who trapped, beat, and forced himself upon her in a dark alley. Your heart pounded faster than it did during the mile run in P.E. You wanted to cry. You felt so nauseous you almost lost mom’s goulash all over her clean sheets.

     You didn’t sleep at all that night.

     You watched it happen again one Sunday morning a couple years later. It was a made for TV movie on TBS. A man gets a call—his wife is in the emergency room with a broken arm after being gang raped in an abandoned metropolitan warehouse. He rushes to the ER, thankful, at least, that she is alive. When he arrives, though, she has died. The injury to her arm had severed some important artery.

     What. The. Fuck.
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According to Blue Pearl Investment Management’s vastly interconnected computations, Kenny sovereign – self-proclaimed mayor of Mockerton, landlord of the Sovereigns pub, proprietor of Sovereign’s cars a’bargain and lead singer of Kenny Sovereign and the Go Hards – was a grade A, titanium coated, two spits to the wind, asshole.

It hadn’t always been so – when the markets dove deeper than a beaked whale, Kenny’s money had popped and bobbed Blue Pearl to safety. Kenny was square on the donut list.

Then came the call. I’m moving my money he’d said, I’m doing something down here, for the community.

Fucking community snarled Gerald – VP, son of MD, and the tantrum rippled out, accruing significance until it reached Duggan – the best asshole wrangler in the business. ​ (more…)

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                                                                                        1.

It was red through and through. I reached my hand deep in the inner leaves. An ant crawled across my knuckles dragging a broken leg. I tried to help by pulling the leg off, but I broke the ant in half and its two pieces went round and round trying to find each other. Red ones are the sweetest. This one was a little soft in the middle and the sweet was almost rot. I fed a piece to the dead ant.

 

                                                                                         2.

White at the top below the green. A few hard green growths. I asked Mother to slice them off because I didn’t like their look. She slid the thin knife quick and quick and quick again. She didn’t cut her fingers like the time she peeled the squash and shook spots of blood on the wall. The hard green growths stared at me like poked-out eyes. They tasted sour at first, then ice or cucumber, then sour again. A sour end.

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Lazlo the Bear was kicked to death one night by three men half his age, but he didn’t let that define him. Instead he swallowed the unfortunate incident whole and washed it down with cider and thick fingers the next morning.

It was unfair, of course: he owed no one. None of that shit, he would tell them, everywhere.  But nothing is fair, his grandmother whispered, and he knew she spoke the truth. For she was sly and strong like him, and hung neatly around his neck.

He didn’t go to the funeral, but he watched. Little robin Lazlo in the bushes: what a joke. Only the strangers came – skulls bared, eyeing him carefully where he hid. The priest spoke tight English sadnesses and knew nothing of him, but his kind heart beat so loudly that it was enough for Lazlo. He left his last tall tale on a hook by the chapel door and slipped out.

So, Lazlo is dead. Those faces at the centre would be so surprised now by his liberties, his open plans, his hollow bones. He should slide through the secure doors and peck at their papers, just so, just to show them. Sign here, sigh there, Lazlo the Swift. (more…)

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The Avalanche Effect

The story of the suitcase was true, but the painting wasn’t in it. Oh, well. Things progress when there’s a mistake. The next 48 hours are going to be crucial. Don’t mess with women who are into gore. I haven’t the slightest doubt that my own relatives planned to kill me. It’s too awful here. Yesterday we heard something that sounded like rocks being unloaded from a dump truck. Those were gunshots. I stepped outside to take a look and saw descendants of Marcel Duchamp selling snowballs on the street. (more…)