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Fictions

In this case stories should be wordless.

Up sick in bed as I write this. Sick with a cold, miserable with a job I don’t want, but need, and in the house a kick to the stomach as all the lights go out and water turns brown. Up sick in a hospital bed as I write this. Flat on my back in a shrink’s chair. Tell me what you don’t like about yourself, he says. My face hurts, I say. I’ve a cold so fierce the whole head is a banger. The radio did that to you. Nah, it wasn’t up too loud, not at all. You must’ve been thinking too loud, then. Don’t know; everything just seizes up sometimes. And they can make sense, but they also, they sharpen their screwdrivers and come at me in attack mode. What I’m supposed to think? You take it all so personally, don’t do that. It’s not personal, it’s business. I know, I know, I’m a pawn. But if I’m a pawn, why they putting down a flier for a christmas party on the desk? Everybody gets one of those. Again, don’t take it personal. Will they take it personal if I don’t go? Probably, but you can tell them you’re up in another one of those hospital beds. Ah, yes, on Sunday I suspect.

. . .

Piggies at war. They make a debut, each one fighting over the potato chip bag, which the ones on the other side think is quite pathetic. Never mind that, it’s not important. What is is piggies, those ones, at war, dividing up their time so that they get all their tasks done, the first one being to make a grand entrance, announce themselves in grand fashion, and progress from there… Into the future! We all agree upon this, the importance of progressing into the future! “The future is important!” scream the piggies. Pssst…. they try to scream like lions because they have a large audience to impress. Have you seen that freakin’ audience? It’s like the size of the whole got-damn world. Holy hell. “We left all our churches in a hand basket,” said one to the other, to which this did not go appreciated or up in smoke ignored kaput. “We’ve a serious task in front of our snouts here, and still we cannot organize in order to show the people our true talents without confusing them and making them scared as the dickens.” In retort: “That’s exactly truthful, how you put it, and I commend you on that truthful exclamation. Thing is, however, when you search your tender little puffy puff puff (heart) you’ll see that it’ll just never be so. We shall go down in the history books not as Piggy Truce Makers, but as Piggies At War. And so it shall be. Mayhem and more mayhem.”

. . .

The bastards want to know why I make so many mistakes. I tell them, in my mind, these mistakes are manufactured in their minds, and in their nastiness. And I cook up other things which I wish I could release into the verbosphere, such as: “Crackerjack, are you being an asshole again?” Instead I slip out when it’s quiet and start slashing tires.

When I’m up early, or just before I come to, these ideas come to me and I write them down on scraps of paper or crumpled up receipts. When I threw the garbage up into the dumpster there was a homeless man in there. I nearly hit him with it, you know, the bag. He didn’t look too pleased. I said what’s up to him, and I think I said something really stupid like, here ya’ go, referring to the garbage. He asked if there was an old Xbox in there. I answered in the negative, but he read my thoughts in the positive. He in fact read my mind, where in fact I had hidden the spare key and that there was some Silk Nog left in my fridge. In ten minutes I will be gone and he will have it, and I hope he doesn’t delete any shows on the DVR.

. . .

I love the news. Even if my mind wanders and I’m not even listening. Something so comforting about the news playing in the morning when you wake up, or in the car, or in the evening when you come home. News 24 hours a day. It never sleeps. Wish I didn’t have to.

Whenever you wanna hear some news you can turn your eye around and it’s right there to not listen to. It’s so great when I actually pay attention and the words are concrete. Like when they’re reviewing books or movies or albums. These are like little book reports, but less informative. Hell, all I need’s a title and I’ll grab it for myself. If there’s one thing I like more than the news, it’s a book with its ability to sometimes draw my attention to its lines. I wish I could sleep read. The closest thing I’ve come to this is audio books on the Tao. Late at night on rotation. This is kind of like a news wheel. They should call the news reel a news wheel for certain. Or a news rolling pin.

We share the blame in this labor of escape.