A Story Part Four

Chapter 4

            I wake up (even though i wasn’t really sleeping) and i'm staring at the girl laying in the other half of my/our bed. Something inside of me makes me want to throw something at her face, not to hurt her or whatever, but just for something to do. Plus, i don’t want to be walking around my room with her asleep. If i do, i’ll feel like a rapist or something. I always feel like people are afraid i’ll rape them or something. When i think about that, i feel like a rapist. It’s weird.

            The kitchen looks the same as it did before that goldfish ate me, which is good if you’re into object permanence and all that jazz. Permanence. Illumination, but like, in my brain. It’s always in my brain. The fridge makes a stupid noise when i open it and the light is burnt out. Apathetically, i root through it like a shit-eating raccoon. Eggs look good. They expire in a few days and only one is missing (because i dropped it on the floor in a bout of ambition). Eggs.

            I clasp the egg in my hand and i make a fist, shattering the whole thing (shell and all) into a bowl. The latter half of the hour is spent picking shells out of the yolk. These will be good eggs. I will bring her good eggs, even though she’s a figment of my imagination probably. We’re all figments of each-other’s collective imaginations, i think. Subjectivity is weird like that.

Well shit.

            I bring her the eggs. She’s asleep, snoring. The eggs are getting cold. Wake her up you asshole. I try to think of how to wake her but i’m not sure how to do it without being a jerk-off. Plug her nose. A feeling sets in my stomach telling me that if i do that she’ll die maybe. I’ll plug her nose so hard she evaporates. I think about throwing one-hundred dollars at her face. My wallet is empty so instead i attempt to sound like the outside, accept with max-volume. I will wake her with max-volume.

            Deep breath. Coughing, i make a failed attempt to sound like a train-going by. She wakes up. “Why are you being a train?” She’s rubbing her face. I remember there aren’t even any train tracks nearby. City-planner of the year. I sort of stare at her for a bit.

            “I made you food so you won’t die,” i say. She smiles.

            “I’m a vegan, but i also don’t exist, so it’s probably okay for me to eat those,” and she does. She eats these (sort of) cold eggs.

            “So, do you want to go see a movie, at like the theatre or whatever?” She’s picking an eggshell out of her teeth. For a minute, it almost looks like she’s pulling teeth out of her mouth and it freaks me out. Auto-dentistry. “Sorry about the eggshell(s),” i say.

            We take a canal route to the movie theatre because it sounds like route canal and my brain is homogonous. There’s no one working at the theatre anymore because of capitalism. However, i still talk to the ticket-dispenser like it’s a person when i’m buying my ticket so i don’t feel lonely or something stupid.

            The words, what movie would you like to see? scroll across the screen.

            “Uh, surprise me,” i say clicking its face/brain. Two tickets for a random movie no one particularly wants to see in particular, specifically.

            When we enter the theatre it’s pretty empty and the lights are already off. We go and sit at the back because whatever, and the movie winds up. Before the film starts there’s a commercial of some guy being proud because he has a car or something. Then there are like forty shots of this car zooming around corners and mountains at a speed that is probably illegal. Zoom.

Next up there’s this ad that i’m in and there’s this girl who’s in focus at a party i probably would never go to. “Hey,” i say and she sniffs and she walks away and my shirt has arm-pit stains or something. There’s a quick shot of an armpit getting molested by some deodorant stick and next there’s like fifty girls all over me being all sexy or whatever and it’s kind of gross. I feel really shitty about the whole commercial. I feel shitty about wanting deodorant.

Well shit.

Then the movie starts and i realize i am uncomfortable and i want to leave. Some stupid over-produced “indie” song comes on and i am standing at a funeral feeling like shit and i check my phone like forty times and there isn’t anything on it. After the funeral i get dropped off at a bus terminal so i can leave a city and it’s really late and i can see baggage forming inside of my eye-lids. Baggage; Carry-ons.

As i’m walking over to a line-up (for the bus) my thoughts are on the walls in scratchy handwriting. There is a girl in the line in front of me and she has a portion of her white/purple hair shaved and it looks good and then the movie shows a bunch of conversations that’ll happen between this lady and myself. We buy moon-shoes and we hop around like assholes trying to do slam-dunks so we can win a hover car. We win the hover car. We drive the hover car. We hold hands. It’s nice.

Instead, nothing happens and we just get on the bus and i sit behind her and my tired, sad brain is thinking of things to say but i’m too lazy/tired to open my mouth.

The seat next to her is empty.

I don’t sit there.

The seat next to me is empty.

Who cares.

Feel like shit.

Some other dude sits beside her and immediately they hit it off talking about a bunch of things. “Yeah dogs are great. I mean cats are cool, but dogs can play fetch and shit.” The rest of the movie is me watching their love story unfold while i pretend to play on my phone that died halfway through our five hour bus ride. The bus ride ends and then there is a montage of me checking my phone (spoiler alert the phone is empty) for like two months. I ride my bike past a park and in the park they’re getting married in moon-shoes.

Credits roll.

My roomdate is looking at me. “What did you think of the movie?”

Before i can answer a fire-alarm goes off and the building is all flames. We wade through some smoke. She coughs an eggshell as we stare at the building from the outside. It burns brightly, illuminating the streets and junk. The goldfish flies over it and it fans the fire out spewing black fog from its gills. The sky looked overcast, which is weird because i felt pretty overcast. Well shit.

“Yeah it kind of sucked.”

             

            

A Story Part Three

A Story

Part Three.

            Cityscapes are a beautiful thing especially in the dark and also in your head. City planner of the year. I’d like to thank my dad or mom or whatever. People are walking around its streets. They don’t have jobs because it’s too dark to do work. There’s a church in the middle of the town and no one goes because there are no good bus routes or something. The bus that goes there smells like piss and the bus is always late and the driver is angry because he has to drive the piss-bus all day. Poor guy. “Fucking piss-bus” he’d say after doing his third consecutive rolling stop.

            The church has these weird books about a flying goldfish that looms over Tendark, and it’s uh, pretty big (both the book and the fish). The fish has giant slits in the side of it that spew out a thick dark fog and we all just watch the fish as it swims in the skyline. It wears sunglasses and a backwards because that’s cool. Darkness. Radical.

Sometimes, if the town is quiet enough, he’ll say something that sounds important, but people are way too lazy to think anything of it. They just get it tattooed on their legs or something. Everyone has shitty tattoos it seems like. “Hey assholes,” the fish starts, “We’re kind of all one or whatever or we’re all a bunch of different things that have existed forever. New haircuts. Same assholes.”

There’s a goldfish flying around my room. I need a fishhook. Nautical.

This is a lucid dream.

I’m a lucid dream.

I’m not lucid.

The fish comes and eats me. He swallows me in one gulp and suddenly i feel like sushi. I think about Earth and the universe as the belly of a giant goldfish. This is rubbish. I am dead inside a goldfish. My last words will probably be, “i want to know everything.” On second thought, they will be “i miss pennies”. Or “Ouch”. Maybe i’ll get tongue-tied and i won’t say a damn word. That sounds like me.

All this while i’m dead inside a stupid goldfish. There’s a conversation in my brain and it’s just familiar voices screaming my last words at my face. White-noise. Illumination. I can’t make out the voices or i don’t care maybe. I poke the goldfish walls. “Hey can you spit me out or something. I don’t want to be dead anymore.” Spit. Free-fall. I land on my bed though so i’m okay. I turn over and there’s a girl there staring at me. “Oh hey sorry.” I say.

“Why are you in my bed?” She says.

“This is my bed.”

“Oh.” She says.

“Yeah.”

“Oh.” She’s still laying in my bed. I want to give her one-hundred dollars because she probably deserves it. Or maybe i just want to give her one-hundred dollars. My brain is foggy. “Sorry. We thought you were dead, I guess.”

“Oh.” I say.

“Yeah.” It’s dark. I sneak a sniff of myself to make sure i don’t smell like goldfish, or a piss-bus or something. “This place was for sale because you were dead. There was an auction but it was at the church so no one went.”

“Well, thanks for liking my house i think.”

“Yeah.” She says.

“Do you want me to leave then?” I say.

“I don’t know. What time is it?”

“I don’t own any clocks.”

“Is it cold out?”

“I don’t know. I was dead or something.”

“Oh yeah.”

“Yeah” I say.

“Okay, you can stay. But I need to do a thing first.” She gets out of the bed. She’s wearing some clothes that look good if you’re into that sort of stuff. Fashion. Radical. She leaves the room and i stare at the wall looking for a light i guess. She reappears with a giant pair of scissors and she cuts my/her bed in half.

“Do you snore?” She says.

“No. Well maybe. If i do i’m usually asleep when it happens.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“If i snore just throw stuff at me and i’ll wake up and stop being an asshole.”

“Sounds like a plan, Stan.” She says to me.

“My name’s not Stan,” i say.

“Me neither,” she says.

She goes to sleep and i don’t sleep the whole night because i’m scared my mouth will be a loud asshole that keeps everyone awake. 

A Story Part Two

A Story.

Part Two

            It’s really dark in here. On a scale of one to ten, it’s probably a ten. Ten-dark. Tendark. If there was a city named Tendark, i would live there, or actually i probably already do. My room. Tendark. I don’t own any clocks but something tells me it’s getting late. I can tell because there is silence outside. Crickets are sleeping. No sleep. Not ever. That’s a thought i like.

            Sometimes, i think it could be fun to go to bed late and wake up as soon as possible for like a week straight. No sleep, for like a week. Sometimes i think that, but i like sleep. A doctor once told me that sleep was for people who are tired and that i should probably sleep less. Sleep for ten hours a day. Wasted day. Close your eyes forever. Darkness. I’m always tired, so let’s turn off the lights in my head. Tendark, population one.

            Realize there’s no way to turn off your brain, even when you’re asleep. When i sleep that’s when i’m most honest with myself. That’s when i think of the things i don’t want to tell anyone. Today, on my walk home, i crouched near a puddle, and i told a wobbly fellow that looked like me about a dream i had once where i was in a room with a bunch of my friends, except they weren’t really my friends and i was actually in a shitty movie that your parents would find funny.

            Lights.

            Camera.

            Action.

            I’m sitting in this terrible diner with six of my friends. We all are scratching lottery tickets with pennies. (For those of you who don’t know what pennies are they are these copper coins the government hates ((and is now disowning)) because they cost 0.02 cents to make and they are only worth 0.01 cent.) Scratch. Sniff. Copper. My card failed. It’s not very good at being a lottery ticket or maybe it is, just not for me. “I appreciate the effort.” I say.

            My friends continue to scratch their cards and one by one they lose like me. We’re all losing. Lose. Loss. Darkness. But one friend is suddenly loud. Bright face. Illumination. He is staring at me and he is happy. He is very happy. Then he buys stuff. Consumerism. Then he is poor. He is poor and just like me except he has a bunch of things now. “Remember when you won the lottery” I say.

            He stabs me in the heart and in the stomach and I die.

            Cut.

            Credits.

            Then the movie starts up again. I’m sitting on a bar stool at the shitty diner with my oscar-nominated friends. We’re scratching lottery tickets. It’s the exact same goddamn movie. I lose, again, or maybe not again but i lose. It happened again, but it’s the same movie and if you just reread something or rewatch something or refracture your heart the same way like thirty times or whatever, is again the right word or is it just the same thing. A goldfish flies into my room and tells me we’re all the same thing, probably.

I’m rambling.

Sorry.

My friend who won before loses. The actors are confused. One blond girl who looks like (what i imagine) a young Angela from the office says, “Hey. This isn’t in the script. Isn’t he supposed to win?” She’s finishing her card as she asks this. Cameras are still rolling. She wins. I lose. Shake hands with her. She deserves it. We all go see a movie. When we leave, i thank her and i say something stupid like, “Same time next week?” or something. She pulls out a gun and she shoots me in the body a bunch. Swiss cheese. Lactose-intolerant. Ouch. Darkness. I don’t want your money. Sorry again.

Lights.

Camera.

Action.

We’re in the diner again and we’re scratching our lottery tickets. My guy friend loses. Young-Angela loses. I lose. We all lose except this one girl who isn’t my friend – even in my dream. She seems happy to win the money. She looks at me in my eye balls and doesn’t look away immediately which is strange because that doesn’t happen very often i guess. People’s eyes are always playing dodge-ball with glances. Staring is polite. She wears glasses.

Good for eyes.

Good on the eyes.

Heart-swelling.

Illumination.

She has her money somehow already (movie magic) and she gives me one-hundred dollars. She won probably $50,000 dollars (or 49,500 after taxes because my dream looked American) and even though that’s a lot and one-hundred dollars is probably not, it still felt good. “You know, you don’t have to give me this or whatever. It’s your money.” I say. She smiles. I smile. One-hundred dollars. Heart-swelling. Illumination. Action.

My phone was yelling, “wake up.”

I woke up.

My room was cold.

My bed was cold.

Cold.

Tendark.

Population one. 

a love poem.

Slushy sidewalks 

Salty roads 

Snowy mountains 

Stinging cold

Dirty buses

Screaming men

Flocking feathers

Mighty pens

Setting sun

Melting earth

Flowing river

Swelling girth

Open doors

Boots on tight 

Stomping feet 

Married wife,

You be careful 

You be careful 

You be careful 

You be careful.

More parts from that book i'm working on

I've been writing the following in fatigue-ridden states. 

A Series of Dreams Inbetween

6:00 AM ~ No Sleep. All Night. Still Awake. Still Asleep.

--

A quiet boy came and thanked me without making a fuss and for some reason i feel better about wasting my time in a laser tag

--

Leave Work.

Go Home.

--

I can't feel my toes but not because they're cold even though i'm wearing shitty shoes in the snow and they're probably numb

I think it's because they haven't been touched really ever and the more i think about it the more my legs start to disappear and it's really weird because i'm on a warm bus and i can see them

but they don't feel like they're there

--

Being awake for a while is weird because you get to watch everyone wake up like blood cells and they trickle around kind of lonely like i imagine my veins to look like

Also everyone holds coffee cups

--

I wonder what would happen if i just started crying on the bus like would these people do anything if i rested my urinating eyes in my palms

I wonder

-- 

I don't know the world looks better when you're tired

I think everything is prettier because you're forcing your eyes open to look at it

--

Sleep.

--

so last night in my head there were these spiders all over my room and they were big and small just like people but they were really big

and one was the size of my feet and it was dark and it hissed at me and it crawled towards me and i hit it with a hammer a lot until it broke and stopped hissing but it was kind of dancing on its back with twitching legs

tiny spiders were sad when the big spiders got dead and i felt bad about it

i imagine this is what world leaders feel like

--

Waking Up.

--

I hate going to bed and i hate waking up because they both take so long and they both are so lonely and pointless and nothing ever gets done

i like sleeping though because when i'm asleep i can meet someone and we can tape our hands together and roll around and it isn't weird because no one gives a shit until i have to take the tape off of my hands and wake up

and it's a real shame sometimes that i can't just sleep for probably ever

and it's a real shame that people don't tape their hands together

you're neat, probably

--

a story: part three of part one

a story.

part three of part one

(the final part)

Again, i speak. My mouth flaps like a waving flag covered in brown. Sovereignty. Professions. The light is charming. “Hello. You’re great. Thanks for not leaving me alone in the dark. You know, that’s special. You’re special, a special light. Yeah.” You’re talking to a light. Thoughts in my head are always so critical. Critical, yet unimportant. That's crucial.

            The light is good at being a light. i think i’ll leave it at that, yeah.

            When i was a boy, i had a goldfish. His (?) name was Freddy probably because as a dumb kid i liked alliteration even though i didn’t know what it was. Freddy was stolen from his family by me from a dumpy pond filled with spiders and twigs and beer bottles discarded by “those youngsters”. Freddy came home with me and i put him in a fish bowl so he could move out of his parents pond and even though his new place was dumpy it didn’t have beer bottles in it. If Freddy could talk, he would say “Independence. Fuck yeah.” i liked Freddy. He was good at being a goldfish.

            After Freddy died because that’s just how things are, i went back to the pond and i saw a stupid baby frog or toad hopping around like a jerk-off. His name was probably Hopper or something creative like that. my grandma picked me up from the pond and i showed her Hopper and probably she was scared, but she didn’t mention anything. When we got back to her home she grabbed an empty jar and we filled it with dirt and water and some grass and other stupid things to remind Hopper of his former life. With a knife, i poked some holes in the top of his jar (so he could breathe and not die).

That terrible cartoon movie about that jungle-dude came out that day and like an idiot kid i wanted to go see it. Idiot kid. Idiot. Kid. Still young. Feel old.

           

my father came to grab me from my grandmother’s home. He pulled up and i got in the car all excited. The sun was nice and bright. Hopper, my father, and i went to the theatre to see the movie. Hopper stayed in the car because (i imagine) my father didn’t want to pay for a third ticket or something. On the dashboard. i came back to the car after the movie and Hopper wasn’t moving and he didn’t look like Hopper any more. His skin was leather and he looked like a soccer mom from an adult film. Dead inside. Dead outside.

i was young sorry

Confessions. This is my confession to the orange light on the wall. That beautiful orange light. Fuck. That was a mistake. People make mistakes. Since then i've stopped stealing animals away from their families because truthfully it is probably not that good of an idea especially since i exhale bad air and all animals need air – even fish and jerk-off frogs. Lights don’t need air i don’t think.

“Do lights need air?”

And then the light turned off. 

a story: part two of part one

a story.

part two of part one

            Piss in your bed. It’s a thought i keep to myself when laying there. Never get up. Never move. Stare into the dark and think about what’s there. Pretend there’s something else there. Wish there was something else there. “Hello?”

            Now you’re talking to yourself. But sometimes or probably always i’m always talking to myself, even to other people because when i look at other people i try to see me even if it’s just there only a little bit. It’s not vanity or maybe it is, but either way i just want to feel like other people. Maybe i’m looking for them in me. This is silly.

            Breathing is really loud and almost intrusive. Notice that when you breathe, half of that action is poison or food for trees. (That’s right i think. Grade school was a long time ago). Blow out bad air into other people and watch them cough or give you weird looks. That’s how i want to die though, suffocating on the air of someone else. Though, i don’t think my lungs would swell if someone was going to die because of it. That’s selfish of me.

            Outside, there’s an orange street light. It’s painting my wall and i think it looks kind of nice. When you look at something too long, it starts to stay in your eyeballs. Rent free. My eyes are sliced by light and my mind’s tongue is licking the cut. It happens over and over again, and i try to look away from the light because staring is impolite and even though my head is hiding the light is still there like the apathetic ghost of, you know something/someone you care about or whatever. Slurp slurp. Brain-tongues.

            The light is pretty nice still, even if it doesn’t care about my breath. Although it’s pretty loud and annoying, i think i’ll keep breathing because it lets me know i’m still a person like everybody else and i can’t keep looking at other people for myself because to do that i need to get close and i don’t want people to breathe my bad air.

Oxygen tanks for Christmas/Birthdays/Valentines.