writes Marcus.
Something like thirty cubicles span the space between me and this RJ character, so why is he unloading his life on me? His badge! I can glance at the name on his employee badge. I look down at the usual badge holding locations. Shirt pocket. Damn. Belt loop. Shit.
I walked in the front entrance of the institution where crazy lived. Outside crazy was called normal. Inside it smelled like rubbing alcohol. In the waiting room, everyone’s hair was shiny and thick. The bags under their red eyes reminded me of how I felt every morning.
Now that life was burning 10 feet from where I stood in the snow, keeping me warm and melting the billions of frozen flakes around my feet.
It only takes a moment for our animal instincts to take over us. A hushed whisper of a thought becomes the booming voice of vice.
The morning arrived in a gradient of orange, purple and blue across the sky. The sun hadn’t pulled itself over the mountains and the moon was enjoying a glimpse of the day. The girl with the pearls in her eyes wept.
He grabbed his bag and through on a jacket before wandering to his spot where he’d hold out a cup and shake it for spare change. In the tourist spots, he always made enough to at least buy a sandwich from McDonalds but he was out of his potions and elixirs that helped him forget. Not even a beer in his possession.
Henry groaned as he got out of bed. His back popping and snapping as he stretched. It was still dark out. He grabbed a cigarette from the night stand and went to his back patio. The dew from the grass and the absence of sun sent a cold shiver through his body.
Sykes thought about this face being cleaned up. The Diener picking out teeth, shards of glass, and chunks of carrot from the skull turned bowl now holding onto the pulp of the man’s features.
“I’m not a man to take what isn’t mine.” The teenage crew member dropped his valuables and ran out to the deck. Leaning forward on the railing, trying to catch a glimpse of land.
With the amount of swim lessons I’ve had I should be the next Michael Phelps. At most, I’m the Phelps of the doggie paddle: No swimming cap required.
Weekend skeet shooters use them for practice, the mosquito’s blood engorged torsos exploding in red across green lawns.
Easier physically perhaps, maybe even less dangerous but how will we really show them that we don’t want to kill them, we just want them to behave? We run their underwear up the flag pole.
“I’ll bash you head in.” I said. Now I was thinking of my wife lying in the bed behind me, with nothing but a solid wall behind her. Trapped.
Today is Easter Sunday. I won’t survive, however, if I can’t do this high or a little drunk. One of the two days out of the year in which the church is full. A fact about the faith so laughable I find I cry myself to sleep at the thought.
I do know that the magic spell for the catalyst to vomit is brushing my tongue. Without fail, if I linger too long on the attached part of my tongue, I gag.
Easy rider walked into the coffee shop and came out with a very pale coffee drink to which he was adding many packets of sweet-n-low.
Though she didn’t move, Sara knew her colleagues were beginning to stand up in their cubicles, like Meerkats on the plain, suddenly aware of the threat of danger.
Now she could see the task of the morning. It involved pouring two elements; liquid and solid into one bowl. An alchemy resulting in a new element.
Sometimes I already know what the message is by looking at the phone number. I know what they want, how much they want, where I should meet them and what time I need to meet them.
So Shtan, father of Sheth now stood proudly defending the one thing that made their family truly unique, a lisp passed down from generation to generation.
“Hair! You’ve lost 37,564 hairs from the top of your head BUT you gained 63 hairs in and around your left ear and 59 hairs in and around your right. You had an increase in your nose hairs, both in number of individual follicles as well as girth of each hair.”
Here’s to party’s and the glimpse of memory you may be lucky enough to have of them.
Ever since I hit my head, every thought plays through my mind in French, Spanish and then English. Always.
There is no warm comprehension only cool calculations: The language of positions, diagrams, degrees, millimeters, rations, nuts and bolts. Still, never their minds attempt to bury the why, who, what, where, how?
On the train we rode during a day trip, he bought a hat as a souvenir. He wore that hat almost everyday until he went to the hospital for the last time.
Taking his Pinarello bicycle down the road, he stopped at a 7-11. This was also the first time he had left home on his own.
On the page in front of me was now a rendering of a mobile phone with a cracked screen. The text accompanying the previous illustration now changed as well.
He kept potatoes just so he could watch them grow eyes. They looked like they were trying to escape themselves too.
The weather element was presented for its audiences by a clip from the first season; a contestant from Wisconsin, Judy, remarks “Gosh it sure is windy.” just after the opposing family gets blown away and the laugh track turned on.
The confusion lay around the intended definition of the word “mean”. The sentence at the very end of the ancient script read “Discover mean.”
From watching you pick up rodents and reptiles with no problem, to literally climbing up the walls to holding your own against my teasing which culminated in leaving a red hand print on my back. All the way to teaching for a year on your own in a country where the language was completely foreign to you. To your latest endeavors.
Every morning I thank god for gasoline, Marlboro Reds and every day low, low prices that can’t be beat. I slip on my blue vest and straighten my “welcome to Walmart” badge.
I felt around for the buzzing toothbrush, which the advertisements had bragged “could last up to 48 hours on the same batteries.” Who the hell would brush their teeth for even 5 minutes?
For waiting customers, the owners had items for purchase on display. There were a number of Nascar hats, greeting cards, various candy bars and energy pills. There were also scarves and handkerchiefs.
I suppose our opinions differ.
I’m in outer space and you’re trying on the 8.5 size shoe at JC Penny because the 8 was just a little bit too tight in the toes. Yeah, I suppose we differ.
Oh my god! And those pumps? Delicious! My silky gams would be on display in those heels. Rawr.
Above his head he held the words which were meant to give his life purpose, the words he was meant to obey.
In this dream walked a procession, four deep. They had come from the hill shaded by the Samanea Saman tree at its summit. They walked; the Cloaked Ruby leading her troupe, stretching and yawning at the sky.
“Excuse me?” she said.
From behind me the tertiary constituent in our sad procession towards frozen dairy spoke up.
Each country had their slight variation on liquor and coffee. Caffeine to wake the body and whiskey to have a nice day, nothing spectacular, just a nice one.
The man pulled a Mason jar full of water from below the counter and took a swig. His eyes bulged, his cheeks flushed red and he let out a puff of smoke before replying, “well, if you are camping alone, I recommend a pup tent.”
I think therefore I am tortured.
One packet at a time he sprinkled the salt in a circle around his tent. Satisfied, he took the bag from his mouth and stepped inside the tent.
Suddenly my being floated and my world of black exploded into a million pieces of light and color. I floated, my lungs burning. My eyes squeezed tight but the light still stabbing through.
Peter had seen something on TV where a guy used one magnet to move around another magnet that was on the other side of a wall. That feeling of nostalgia was like that, a pulling of something that felt familiar but wasn’t seen.
then maybe would be like standing in between two large mirrors, trying to peer past your own reflection to see the something, but only only staring into possibility, the maybe.
After the golf session, about 15 minutes of screeching tires, broken glass and honking cars, he drove down to the nicest restaurant in town.
And so now, into popping maybe over 100 balloons, Jamie started relishing in the reactions of her guests. The force and energy of all the partiers was hushed by a single balloon popper.
You do your best to keep the ball in the air. You drop it a few times while doing your hygiene routine but pretty soon it becomes second nature to keep the beach ball in the air.
We passed a display with all sorts of symbols. The Christian cross was pointed out as another symbol of irony; a torture device used by the Roman Empire became the symbol of a supposedly peaceful belief system.
