A Frightful Mess
- William J. Archer
- Oct 30, 2018
- 6 min read
His thoughts were connecting like dots, synaptic cosmic robots, zipping through his head like shots. Little laser beams, they take off like rockets and careen through the heavens like drunken freaks on roller skates. It was fine until they slammed headlong into a planet or two that had the gravity of mass graves, for victims of ungentle genocides. Or tides that lifted the misty massiveness of rolling seas higher than the knees of tall gods. Gods that hopped like electric frogs when their feet got wet from the moving water.
I thought about what he often said about being dead, and in my head I always responded the same way by saying nothing. On the outside I nodded, smiled and lied away the discomfort hanging in the air with some generic insincerity or another. Oh brother! When will false platitudes become more shameful than articulating unappealing truths? A gossamer thread runs through the room like a hyper child, or a wild and sly hyena with an eye for needlepoint. Or other forms of art.
A car hung in the balance, a mechanical acrobat with a battery pack and room for luggage. It dismounted from the off-ramp and ploughed through a fence, knocking down the only street-lamp in the area before tearing off into the dark. The place was a park before dogs took it over. Now it’s a place for canines to go and bark the night away. Ol’ Beef Bones has been avoiding the spot for years now. He used to take his kids there to play on the swings and slip down the slide. Not now, he and his family stay inside. The neighbourhood ain’t what it used to be by any stretch of a rubber band. Stretch out a few more hits and hold out your hand, reap the benefits of another tightly twanged tune about a tuna you met in the can. You can’t learn that stuff in a school.
Remember the day grandma took the dog out behind the barn for the last time? She just sat there in her favourite chair, stroking his hair until Uncle Reaper dropped by and she died. Rover lived on for many more years, getting scratches behind the ears from grandpa and the remaining members of the crew, even you. Not sure if you remember that far back, though by that age you had already conquered a continent with your charm. And guns. I have to admit that I didn’t really agree with your approach of detonating nuclear war-heads so far into that episode about the core values of an apple. At least a lot of innocent people hadn’t been born yet. I thought about bringing this up the last time we sat there stealing glances at the yummy ladies as they passed by on Fallout Beach. I didn’t want to ruin the mood with my attitude, so instead I went to bed with a curvy girl who had no head. I hadn’t realized she had been vaporized in the blast and that I had been trying to get frisky with a sexy memory from the past. All hands on deck, she still had a neck.
The pills were small and bluish. Something called speed I think. I took four or five and they didn’t make me go any faster. I still got caught by the police, fleeing the scene of what could have been a much better time had I not chosen to open my mouth in a yes at the first offer of an altered state. You were the patient one and decided to wait for the next round of mind-altering clarity. My mind ran angry, chaotic circles around my head until the hours talked it down and I took some water and a long nap. Things that grow in dirt and dung guided you far from such synthetic discomforts, and you smiled serenely at me through the glass and kept me company as time passed. Thanks for walking me through the consequences of my many impetuous mistakes, and then meeting me at the gates of this soul-prison when I escaped. Then you took me far away from repeated disasters of that type.
The toughest spider in the room had a tattoo of a man on it’s chest. It also smoked cigarettes and operated behind an intricate web of intrigue and deception. The pictures on the packs of smokes didn’t scare it at all. The spider had a whole parlour full of tricks and everybody in the game was welcome. Especially Mat.
Sometimes a person just has to duck out and run. Forgo the lurking spectre of impending fun and flee. Avoid the siren song of promised pleasure, deny dreams of desire and debauchery. Turn tail. So that’s what happened, and the birthday party was somewhat of a disaster when the guest-of-honour hopped a train to some faraway place. He had done the same at his wedding earlier that year so it wasn’t a complete surprise to those who did attend. They drank and got down until the sun came up, then fell down and slept the pain away. Birthday Boy had to jump a return train to get home this time. Once a year is plenty for that kind of stunt.
Boats, floating lazily across an azure sea in the middle of a warm day. Some were long, wide of beam and had sails, others short and motorized. There were some that looked as though they rivalled any mansion on earth for luxury, and others that were obviously a little more the worse-for-wear. They bobbed contentedly on the gentle, shimmering water, regardless of their differences, going this way and that, seemingly with no real direction at all, simply glad to be out fulfilling their collective obligation as boats. And they did it well. There was a ceremony near the day’s end, about an hour before dark, to celebrate these floating marvels, and then the city went to bed. And that’s about all I have to say about that.
They gave her so many warnings over the years that it become something of a running joke among the members of the community. She had the good sense to ignore every last one of them. Instead, she charged headlong into an adventure inspired by courage and optimism and wildly surpassed even her own craziest expectations. She doesn’t have the time or the inclination to tell them all that they were wrong, or weak, or afraid and stupid, her success in all endeavours reminds her, and all who doubted her, that the perceived foolishness of her past was anything but. And as they grow forgotten and grey behind their fears and limited vision, they still gossip about that girl, the one who didn’t have the good sense to heed their faulty sense of direction. They tiredly shuffle on, and deep inside, non-refundable mountains of regret weigh down their souls as they move ever closer to the grave. They die and are instantly forgotten in a sputtering fizzle of mediocrity.
Should have listened to the girl who was sensible enough to defy your stupidity from the beginning. Had she listened, your bad advice could have been responsible for enslaving the dreams of a child. Shameful. Here’s to you wonderful girl.
Leaves fall from trees when summer leaves. Maybe that’s why the season’s called fall. Autumn is colours and walks, under an umbrella in the rain; fall is a door closing on the best part of a year. The leaves fall onto an autumn grass, grass green again after many months with little or no water. My thirst for sunshine grows stronger as winter months wash happiness away, to store it in some impenetrable fortress for safe-keeping. Spring eventually takes it from the hook, dusts it off, and drapes it over our sadness when sleeping plants and faltering psyche’s wake up for another season of smile.
His thoughts, not drawing dot-pictures now, but conclusions, wrestling with the confusion of delusions, those illusions created to convince the self of a reality we think we might rather experience. Deliriously dancing to a tuneless tune of windless words whispered weakly into an ear that only hears that which allays it’s fears. Heads buried in the sand suffocate eventually.
I suppose you could say “yo” to a yo-yo, but where will that get you? I suppose it can’t say no if you’re about to piss into the wind, would you even listen if it did? How seriously is one to take a sandy-headed wind-pisser who talks to yo-yo’s though? Depends on one’s perspective. And from where I sit, Eeee equals M.E scared.
