Bedtime

 

Trigger warning: this is pretty messed up, and I kind of don’t want to post it.

 

So…enjoy?

 

Bedtime

 

Every night, as Samantha closed her eyes to go to sleep, she was paralyzed with the fear that she would never open them again. That her eyelashes would twist into tight, intricate knots. She would struggle to wrench them open, but it would be in vain. The tangles of eyelash would bind together long enough for the skin where her top lids met the bottom to form thousands of tiny, cancerous growths that would weld them shut forever, like soldered metal joining two pieces of stained glass. The harder she fought to open them, the more the tiny muscles would rip and tear and break down, until her eyelids were useless flaps of flesh with no purpose other than to trap her blue eyes in darkness. Forever.

Samantha fought desperately against the thought. She forced herself to think about flowers and rainbows and Mrs. Gill’s seemingly endless supply of new kittens. But the fear was always there. Waiting. Right behind her eyes. She was just a little girl, after all. And it’s hard for a little girl to ignore something her mother told her would happen, every night.

Just before she tucked her in.

Could Be

 

Relative Jim stood at the corner of 4th and Pine every day except Sunday, wearing his ragged clothes and holding up his hand-made cardboard sign. He had a hat out in front of him, and sometimes the people walking by put money into it. Because he was dirty. Because they felt sorry for him. Because he looked like he needed a break. There were a lot of reasons people might have given money to Relative Jim, but those are best known only to the people themselves. But there’s one thing for certain.

It wasn’t because of what was written on the sign.

You see, Relative Jim didn’t hold his sign up in front of his chest. He didn’t lean it against his legs, right next to a mangy old dog meant to inspire sympathy for those kinds of people who’ll feel sadder about a hungry dog than they will about a hungry fellow. But Relative Jim didn’t have a dog, hungry or otherwise, so he couldn’t very well do that. No, he pointed his sign straight up into the sky, so as you’d have to be a bird or maybe superman to have a look at it.

Most people figured Relative Jim was just a little off, and that was enough of an explanation. You know how those homeless are, they’d say to each other from the other side of their air-conditioned car windows. But sometimes folks would get curious enough to ask to see the sign. And Relative Jim would get a little confused for a second. But he was nice enough people, and so he’d bend his arms in just that right way that makes something that’s pointing upward shift so that it’s now pointing straight ahead. That’s when people would get the second surprise of their brief interactions with that odd old fellow we call Relative Jim.

There was nothing written on the sign.

Most people would move on, then, figuring how Relative Jim looked a bit puzzled at the whole interchange to begin with. Not worth the bother to try to find out more, they’d figure, before moving on about the rest of their business. But every so often, one of those curious passers-by turned out to be a very curious passerby, and would ask why the sign was blank. To which Relative Jim would furrow his brow, give the sign a good long look, then give the fellow what asked about it a good long look, and say that the sign wasn’t blank. If the fellow responded to this downright unusual utterance by asking what, in fact, was written on the sign, Relative Jim would say something to the effect of, “What in tarnation kind of question is that?”

Most individuals, having gotten this far, had a question or two left for ol’ Relative Jim. In for a penny in for a pound, they’d figure, or so a reasonable man might reckon. But those questions didn’t rarely lead to much in the way of useful conclusions to the whole puzzling state of affairs that was a conversation with Relative Jim. He just kept on giving the same kind of answers he done gave to the previous questions. As a matter of fact, I only ever heard one question that got a clear answer, that might shed some light on what passes for Relative Jim’s motivations and line of reasoning. The question was this:

“Who, exactly, is that sign meant for?”

Relative Jim answered that one with none of his usual confused pauses or complex manipulation of his various facial muscles. He answered it right quick.

“Aliens,” he said.

To which the questioner, quite reasonably I think we’d all say, asked him if he thought there were aliens up there looking down on him as he stood there at the corner of 4th and Pine every day, saving of course for Sunday.

“Could be,” Relative Jim replied. “But I’ll tell you for free that I sure as Shinola hope so, and that they’re friendly fellows willing to help a body out. Can’t figure another way I’ll ever figure out what’s written on this blasted sign.”

Crimson on the Tongue

 

On my twenty first birthday, my father took me to a bar in the Other Place. After years of yearning and wishing and imagining, I finally had my first taste of the color red. I thought the flavor would be angry, or passionate, or feel like pure love nestled against my tongue. I didn’t know what any of that might mean, but this is where my fancies ran.

In more grounded moments, I envisioned the flavor to be be spicy, or harsh.  To taste of actual red things such as tomatoes and cherries and cherry flavored syrups. Or perhaps to be an amalgamation of ever morsel that has ever been drenched in redness. Cinnamon candies and orchid petals dragonfruit juice sipped from a pomegranate skin.

The moment the fluid crimson touched my tongue, and its volatile scarlet sparks danced against my olfactory nerves, I knew how utterly and hilariously wrong I was. It did not have any of these flavors. Of course it didn’t. How could it?  It tasted red. Completely and totally red. How can I describe it. I can’t? Can you describe what the color looks like to a blind person?

I haven’t been back there since, but I dream about it. Someday I’ll go again. If I ever see my father again, maybe. But at least I have that memory. And something new to wish for.

I wonder what blue tastes like?

Probably blueberries.

Like This

 

I hold you while your tongue is numb
and you cannot speak
A minute ago you pressed your hand against my mouth
so I could not spit forth my jagged words
to slice open the delicate flesh
just below your eyes
and spill forth your tears

These sociopathic factories
in our heads, spew out their chemical transmitters
according to stimuli, and nothing more
uncaring that this cocktail is uncomprehending rage
and that one is impotent suffering
especially when, like now,
we never get enough sleep
and it seems like things
will never get any better

The sharp pains in your mouth scream at you
just like I do
your punishment, perhaps?
for being too beautiful,
for seeing me broken
and wishing not to rid yourself of me
but for a nectar so viscous
it can bind the shattered shards of me
and make me whole

I can’t remember being whole

Now, moments later,
I hold you while your tongue is numb
and you cannot speak
an effort to stem the pain

You don’t need to speak
Because you listen
And if I can be allowed
just to hold you
like this
maybe I can remember
your breath is my nectar
and I am never really broken
into shards
while my skin touches yours

The Whispering Dust, Part One

Part 1 of a 3 part story.

 

It was a three month journey along the Andromeda Trail to get to the site. Three long, cold months, sucking liquid food product through a tube and breathing in nebula dust, with no one but Gussy for company. I like the guy, but three months of his chatter about the New York Mets and methods for cultivating orchids in hostile environments is enough to make me want to strip my skin off and sell it for hide. I’d get a pretty penny for it, too, these days.

If someone else had already mapped the site out it would have taken a matter of days. But then, if someone else had mapped the site out, I wouldn’t be looking at a big fat prospector’s commission to bring home to April. That’s the job. No one’s been out this far. Not in this direction. What do they call it? “Unvectored Cosmological Coordinates.”

Damn. Sounds like something out an Aasimov novel. Still blows my mind, to think about it. Ten years ago we didn’t even know how to breath in space, let alone ride the stellar currents all the way to another galaxy. It seems silly to say that, now. That we were stuck on that one tiny planet. I know most people are still stuck there, but to be honest, I can’t really remember doing anything else. Those days in fire rescue, or on the crab boats, happened to somebody else.

“Danni, you seeing this?” Gussy’s voice said in my head. Well, I guess it wasn’t Gussy’s voice. It was my voice. MTM “sounds” just like your internal monologue, only you can sort of tell you’re not the one thinking the words. It takes some getting used to.

“The chatter over the box?” I said. “Yeah, of course I am. Why? Looks the same as usual to me.”

“It’s getting worse,” he said. “Are you sure we should be doing this?”

I sighed. He didn’t hear it. I didn’t here it. No sound in space and all that. “Are we really going to have this conversation again? We’re almost there.”

“Yeah, but…”

“But nothing,” I said. “If you want to turn back now, fine. But I’m going. And I’m keeping your cut.”

There was silence.

“Are you still there?” I asked. It’s always worth checking, on the Trails. You never know.

“Yeah,” he said after a minute. “Yeah, you’re right. Of course you are.”

“Damn straight,” I said. “Now do me a favor and shut up for a while. I’m almost done with this audio book.”

I didn’t tell Gussy that I shared his fears. Why should I? This part of the journey was always a little terrifying. Riding out to some unknown region of space classified by the scouts as “Anomalous.” Spending the whole time getting updated data about radiation levels, weird reports about unknown signals from the region. Sometimes they were clean enough to translate into audio.

We got that, too. But it didn’t mean anything. It turned out space was a weird place. Weirder than we thought. So what if there were voices out there, whispering into the darkness? And so what if some of them were in English? And so what if they said…things. I’ve scouted eight anomalies up to this point, and not one of them had Cthulhu hidden inside of it. Just hyperfuel. And superconductive materials. And, on one lucky trip, the derelict hull of some ancient structure. In other words, money in the bank.

But it gets to you, having those whispers piped into your ears through long-range coms the whole way out. That gets more people than dust and exposure combined. A lot of rangers just end it, on these journeys. They can’t take it. They’re weak.

Not me, though. I can’t turn back now. Not when we’re so close. Not when April’s counting on me. She keeps telling me not to go out. She’s scared. But what else are we supposed to do? She can’t work. Not anymore. She keeps telling me I could do something else. And I keep saying I’ll consider it. But I was made for this. I had no idea who I was until that first moment I rode off the platform and into the black. That was the moment I woke up. The moment I came alive. She’s the love of my life, but this is my life. But how do you tell a girl that?

You don’t.

It was bad, this time. I told her this was my last trap. Maybe it is. Maybe this’ll be the big score. It could always happen. But it was bad. I’d hate for that to be the last time we ever talk to each other. The last time I ever touch her face. But she was so scared. So angry. I shouldn’t have let her listen to that transmission. How do you explain to someone that the signals from these anomalies say a lot of things. They sound like they mean something, but they don’t.

It doesn’t matter that this one said my name.

I’m just glad that’s all she heard. The signals aren’t strong on earth. I didn’t hear the full message until I got out of the atmosphere. Thank god the version she heard cut off before it got weird. Before it got mad.

But none of that matters. We’re almost there, and I won’t turn back. Not now. Not ever.

Insipid Inspiration

If my boredom
was a monster from a classical epic
it would be Grendel’s mother
no name
no attributes
just deadly
and then done

If my boredom
was a volcano
it would one of the ones on mars
not the really really big one
or the really big one
but it would be pretty big

If my boredom
was a video game character
from the 90s
it would be Kefka, from FFVI
because the dude destroyed the world
in multicolored pants
and it still wasn’t enough

If my boredom
was a character
from Finnegan’s Wake
it would be
some character
from Finnegan’s Wake
I can’t name
because it’s a very dense book
and finding one would take energy
and you don’t have any energy
when you’re bored

If my boredom
was a literary form
it’d be poetry
short lines
little imagery
a weak attempt at wit
and no structure to speak of

Oh look
There’s Kefka
in a Martian volcano
reading Finnegan’s Wake
to Grendel’s Mother
that looks fun
I should probably join them
it’d be a good time
there’s probably scotch
with tainted ice
and colorful umbrellas

but I won’t
because they’re not real
because that scenario is ridiculous
and they’re only there
because I’m bored

 

Submission to the Majesty

I stand
my bare feet in the wet, dark grass
nowhere
far flung from the gaudy, electric party dress
worn by the city sky
and throw my longing gaze up
at the star strewn night

Her majesty
Her ridiculous, unaware, incomprehensible splendor
slaps me across the face
just once
open palm
and then looks down at me
a look of utter indifference
in her billions of twinkling eyes

I taste blood on my lips
and I shiver
but not from the cold

I sink to my knees
As She commands
without a word
without a gesture

For where else could I
a worthless bag of blood
and meat
and yearning
belong, but beneath the wild, naked firmament
spread open above me
my knees bruised by the  stony earth
sublime in my discomfort
my arms stretched
my mouth open
awaiting whatever She chooses to give me

I am an invisible nothing
cowed
before the vastness
of an expansive, sidereal mistress
who cannot love me
but without whose fire
I could not live

So what can I do
but worship
and submit
to the majesty

Sleepthief

I’m not one to call out arbitrary milestones, not least of which because it feels derivative, and I would not want to be accused of autolatry. As such, I ignored when I had 50 followers, and 100 followers, the latter of which would have been difficult because it came during the Freshly Pressed surge. I sort of wanted to post something when I reached 500 followers, because that actually felt significant. I started a blog to get myself writing, but it still felt good that people were reading it. Not a lot of people, but quite a few more than I was expecting, given that I did next to nothing to promote it.

But as I approached 777 followers, I got excited. That felt like a lot all things considered, and it was thematic, and it appeared likely to happen right around 7 months after I started the blog. So I kept my eyes open, hoping to tag the exact moment and post about it.

But it was not to be.

Due to the chronic exhausted and complete lack of control over my sleep schedule that is my life these days, today I slept from around 1 PM to just after 4:30. During that period of unconsciousness, my 777th follower made himself manifest. I did not know this, as I woke up and walked over to the computer. I was unaware as I loaded up my WordPress page to check my stats. At that moment, I got an email notifying me of a new follower. Hey, I thought, that  could be 777! So I opened up my stats, and looked.

It was 778. The moment was stolen from me, during a moment of half-consciousness, never to be experienced in all my days.

Sure, I could blame Hyperbucket for clicking “Follow” at that precise moment. I could even come up with an elaborate conspiracy theory, whereby she has been reading my email, tracking my progress, and waiting until that very moment to strike, just to teach me some abstract lesson about the nature of ephemerality.

But that would be crazy.

Plus, during the rest of the day I read a bunch of the posts on her blog, and her writing is actually pretty awesome.

So I figure…fair trade.

Counting to Nothing

Alicia Menendez loved the number zero ever since she saw the Zero the Hero episode of Sesame Street. She didn’t really know what it was to be interested in something until that moment. It didn’t take her long to realize that, as great as the number zero was in that episode, it was woefully under-represented.

She started out by finding and identifying zeros wherever she went. Her aunt and uncle thought it was adorable. This quickly became frustrating. There we so many numbers, and not nearly enough of them were zero. Why did you need all those threes and fours and eights anyway? What good were they really doing? You needed zero, of course. And one, because you had to represent something. But did you need anything else?

That’s how Alicia Menendez rederived the binary numerary system. Soon, she was converting everything to binary. She rewrote all of the numbers in all of her books. She filled yellow-lined paper pads and stacks of graph paper with binary conversations of all of the numbers everyone said on TV or out loud. Before long, it occurred to her that the zeroes in those contexts weren’t real zeroes. They did not, themselves, represent the quantity of zero. Zero was just a way of saying there wasn’t a 2 in that numerical representation, or a 4, or an 8. Alicia wanted a real zero. She wanted to count to zero.

She started with her abacus. It took her several days to figure out how to get her abacus to count to zero, but she did it. She showed it to her aunt, who laughed and told her she was good girl. That was the first time Alicia realized that maybe, sometimes, adults just don’t understand some things.

Then she showed it to her uncle, whose jaw dropped open. He was a mathematical engineer, and so it made sense he understood numbers. He made her repeat the process over and over and over. He looked at it from different angles, and under different lighting. He took pictures with his digital camera, and started at them from different angles. Over and over again, he whispered the word “impossible.” He asked Alicia to explain it. She did her best, but from the puzzled look that seemed likely to settle permanently on his mustached face, she didn’t think she did a very good job.

Finally, she shrugged his shoulders, and said he had to get to work. “I’m going to choose to be thelemic about this,” he said, “before my brain splits open.” Alicia didn’t know what this meant, but it didn’t really matter. She went back to counting.

Counting to zero without the physical medium of the abacus turned out to be much more difficult. Alicia tried for days, and just couldn’t crack it. So she asked her aunt to take her to the library, and walked over to the mathematical section. She read Aristotle. She read Pascal. She read Bertrand Russel’s Principle’s of Mathematics, but only the parts about zero.

It helped, but it wasn’t enough. She came back to the library as often as she could, after that. She sought out everything she could on zero, on void, and on nothingness. She read Buddhist texts. She read Sartre. She read Kaplan. All of them had part of the answer. But not all of it. To get all of it, she’d have to go further. She kept reading. This was all training. She’d get there.

Then, one day when she finally felt ready, she told her aunt and uncle she was going to her room to think about zero.

“Have fun, dearie,” said her aunt. “When you’re done, I’ve got lasagna in the oven.”

Alicia Menendez went up to her room and turned out all the lights. She lit several different scented candles that, when their volatile scents mixed, had no aroma at all. Then she sat on her bed and began to count.

It didn’t take long. No time at all, really. Before she even knew it, Alicia successfully counted to, and conceptualized, the number zero. And she completely and utterly ceased to exist.

Downstairs, her aunt made lasagna, and wondered what was taking their niece so long. She told her husband to go check on her, but he seemed reluctant. So she yelled at him, and he yelled right back. It worked up into what could have turned into a really good fight, but it was cut short when Alicia walked through the door and proclaimed that she was hungry.

“How did it go thinking about zero?” her aunt asked.

“It was neat,” said Alicia, “but kind of scary. I didn’t exist for a little bit. But it’s okay. Once I stopped thinking about zero I started to exist again.”

Her uncle looked at her as if his eyes wanted to pop out and drown themselves in the lasagna.

“That’s great, dear,” said Alicia’s aunt.

“Yeah,” said Alicia. “But I don’t know if I want to do that again. I think I’m going to think about seven for a while. Seven sounds much safer.”

Allergy

Lee stood up during the first commercial after halftime.

“Hey, where you going?” asked Stern. “Bathroom’s that way.”

“I know where the bathroom is, fool,” said Lee. “This is my house. I’m going to get the shrimp croquettes. Wait till you taste these motherfuckers. They’re tight.”

“None of that shit for me,” said Barry. “I don’t touch shrimp and shit like that.”

Lee shook his head as he walked into the kitchen.

“Man,” said Stern. “How come you never try nothing? How the fuck you know if you like it if you don’t try it?”

“It’s not like that,” said Barry. “I just can’t eat shrimp and crab and all that. I got allergies.”

“What are you talking about, allergies?” said Stern. “I never heard about that.”

“Well, I got allergies,” said Barry. “Why I got to talk about it?”

“Like, real allergies? Or just some food intolerance bullshit?”

“How the fuck should I know! I never been to the doctor or nothing. I just know when I eat shrimp and shit it aint pretty.”

“Well, is it a histamine reaction, or not? Shit be serious.”

Barry laughed. “Look at this motherfucker talking about histaneen reactions and shit. How the fuck should I know?”

“Well what happens when you eat it?” asked Stern. “You get itchy? You break out in hives?”

Barry shifted in his chair. “I don’t like to talk about it. That’s how come you don’t know about it. Just trust me. It aint pretty.”

“What you fools talking about?” said Lee as he walked in, carrying a tray of golden brown croquettes and several ramekins full of green sauce.

“Motherfucker says he has allergies,” said Stern.

“I do.”

“Right,” said Lee. “This is just another excuse not to try something because you’re a pussy. You wouldn’t touch the dip, either.”

“It’s fucking allergies!” Barry protested again. Then he grabbed a crostini, plunged it into the dip in front of him, and shoved it into his mouth.

“What’s he supposed to be allergic to, anyway?” asked Lee.

“He says seafood and crustaceans,” said Stern. “Shrimp and crab and that shit.”

“Yeah?” Lee’s eyebrow raised. “If that’s true, he probably shouldn’t try the dip. It has crab in it.”

Barry’s eyes widened, and he spit the food out of his mouth and right into the bowl of dip.

“Dude!” Lee cried. “I slaved over that shit!?

“It’s got crab in it?” Barry asked, scraping at his tongue with a napkin.

“Yeah.”

“Oh fuck. Why didn’t you say nothing?”

“I didn’t think…”

Barry lurched forward.

“Holy shit,” said Stern. “Motherfucker wasn’t lying.”

Lee and Stern backed away on the couch and watched as Barry began to spasm. There was a sickening crack, as the bones in his face snapped and shifted under his skin. The muscles on his exposed arms seemed to quiver, then new muscle tissue burst through the flesh and wrapped around his arms. Barry stood up and screamed out in pain. His nose stretched out. Blood sprayed from his fingertips and claws burst forth. Hair erupted from all over his body, like grass on a time-lapsed chia pet. Barry threw his arms out, then snapped his head back and howled.

“Shit!” said Lee.

Stern stood up, and walked towards his friend. “Motherfucker,” he said. “That shit aint no allergies. That’s fucking lycanthropy.”

“What?” growled Barry.

“Lycanthropy,” said Stern. “Werewolfism.”

Lee laughed. “Holy shit. You’re right.”

“You weren’t lying when you said you never been to the doctor about it,” said Stern. “What the fuck made you think it was an allergy?”

“I don’t know,” said Barry. “It only happens with food. Allergies be doing that, right?”

Stern shook his head. “Lycanthropy induced by crustacean intolerance,” said Stern. “My cousin had this same shit, only with shellfish. Given that your nose all bumpy, you probably a kyphorrhinos. That means you got the West Coast strain.”

“Fuck,” said Barry. “Sounds serious.”

“Nah,” said Stern. “It aint nothing.” He turned to Lee. “You still got that wormwood extract your old lady left here?”

“Yeah,” said Lee. “I’ve got it.”

“Should calm this shit right down,” said Stern.

“Fucking A,” said Barry. “Usually I just have to wait it out.”

“I’ll go get it,” said Lee. He stood up.

“Shh, shh!” said Stern. “Game’s back on.”

Lee dropped back into his seat. “You’re just going to have to wait.” He shook his head. “Food allergy.”

“Fine,” said Barry. “Whatever.”

“Another thing, motherfucker,” said Lee.

Barry looked at him quizzically.

“You’re paying for that damn couch.”