The Bull & the Nun

This story was told to me by <a href="http://www.japanbikenhike.com/" target="blank">Joe</a> who runs the <a href="http://www.japanbikenhike.com/" target="blank">Japanese Hike & Bike</a> tour that I'll be partaking of with my fiancee Angie. This is a true story, he swears, and is too good not to post. "In a nut-shell, we hired a dancer for the party after the hash-run, everyone drunk and the dancer...did her dance. But one side of the venue- a public park- bordered a nunnery, and one nun recognized the dancer as being a close family member, niece of something? A little un-clear. Not daughter, I expect... <br /> <br />In the nun's defense, I will say the dancer DID have very memorable...attributes ;-> Said nun chased said dancer from the grounds with a large blanket. <br />To cover her up with, it is presumed. <br /><br />The dancer, agile and lighter ran quickly, on account of her less weighty clothing? No weighty clothing? Whatever, she dashed into a nearby field. A field occupied by one extemely...errr...arroused bull. <br /> Obviously he had watched the show, too! <br /><br />But the bull choose poorly, in my opinion, and chased the nun who might have escaped, had it not been for her poor choices; she didn't for-sake the brightly colored blanket, and she ran in circles rather than straight for the fence. <br /> Slipping on a fresh cow-pie and landing butt-up in a cow-walo certainly didn't help. <br /><br />The bull capitalized on the opportunity to make his amorous intentions painfully clear.  <br />As I understand, later in the hospital the nun complained, 'He don't call, he don't write...'" <br />Nice. 10:21 AM | 0 Comments | Tags: inspiration, story

.002 Seconds (Part 1 of 7)

<p><a href="http://www.slambridis.com/chyrp/upload/pendulum_PG01.jpg" target="blank"><img src="http://www.slambridis.com/chyrp/upload/pendulum_PG01_web.jpg" /></a></p> <div class="storytext"> <p>I slid in perfect form, head cocked, elbows tucked, hands up, the fattest part of my ass in contact with curved earth, face forward, knees bent, heels dug in, back arched, and eyes wide beneath my helmet. I felt no pain, no pleasure. I heard no scrape or shoosh or wind or tires or horns. I smelled no asphalt, no exhaust, no autumn. Time ceased, and for a moment, I did too. Friction took over in the middle of the road. I saw a gray fence with jade and aloe spindles growing through the weathered wooden lattice. Beyond, a three-story house with dark shingles. The bike was a Norton Commando borrowed from Emily. It was bent and twisted and covered in dead leaves at the base of the house. I stood, relieved I could. No pain yet. The aftershock – a pulse of sweat, hairs up, nausea. Breathe slowly. I remembered Emily’s note. “Mark’s driving me. We’ll talk soon. Please. XO.” The following day’s text message: “Glad I went home. Miss you. Love you.” I had been home, plagued with doubts, staring at another research grant rejection, yet she missed me. As if she erased the last few years of our growing rut. I dove into a bottle and went for a ride. “Stay put, don’t move,” said a bright voice. The moon hid her in silhouette. “I think your elbow is bleeding. Don’t worry, the bike can be fixed.” Her hand skimmed my helmet, startling, pink. A black tattoo dove around her slim bicep and shoulder. Tail-feathers of an exquisite bird flowed up her neck in monochromatic ink. “Do you want to take the helmet off?” I flipped up my visor. She walked, and my legs followed, toward the bike. She brushed the leaves and dirt off. I righted the bike but couldn’t straighten the wheel so I let it rest on its stand. “So what’s your name?” “Um, Gale. It’s Gale,” she said. “Want to sit down a minute?” The corners of her mouth puffed into a smirk only a woman aware of her powers would have. “Yeah.” My side ached. I followed her into the house, past a wrought-iron door with a fleur de lis frame, up aqua-tiled steps and across a foyer that smelled like a public pool. In the kitchen, she put a tumbler of bourbon in front of me on the white enamel table. I couldn’t will my thumb to press the *8, Emily’s auto-dial on my phone. I eased into the plastic seatback, glittered silver like the bike’s tank. I sipped the bourbon and started to feel my body again. There was a two-inch gash on my right side. The buckle on my boots was filed sharp. The hole in my leather jacket’s left elbow revealed a deep, wide scrape. It started throbbing when I looked at it. There is a terror in being blind to absence – in only noticing something’s gone when it returns, if it returns. I sipped more bourbon, feeling hot. “Take these,” said Gale, spilling pills into her palm from an orange pharmaceutical container. “And drink ‘em up quickly.” She offered no water. The pills said “50 mg”. “Relax, they’re only pain killers.” I took two and chased them with bourbon. “Nope. All,” she said. “That’s okay, these’ll do.” “You just skidded fifty yards on your ass. Take ‘em.” I put the other three in my mouth and swallowed. Gale leaned on the table, and drank. “Gulp it down so I can pour you more,” she ordered. She saw me tapping my foot. “Don’t stress. You’re not driving that bike anywhere now.” Gale picked up my undamaged helmet and ran her fingers along the dome. It was undamaged. If I hadn’t worn it, nothing would be different. “I'll get El Fuchs to take care of the bike. He’s a friend of mine. So just relax.” I smiled with only my cheeks. “Oh, and finish off the bottle.” She left, but my mind brought back the wings of her tattoo, stretching towards her thick grapefruit locks. 18 or 35? I couldn’t tell. Her French hips rotated with Swiss precision. It was an ass that synchronized male minds and female menses, its curve a fragment of the golden spiral that I was confident would be the new standard for the value of Pi. Just another pretty girl. I tried to stop my hand from shaking. At least I wasn’t thinking about Emily. I sipped the whisky, pulled my notebook from my jacket, and remembered a sign in a car’s window which read “Nothing of Value.” Shadows in the street, two vagabonds hauling loaded shopping carts strung together by garbage bags. I came into the turn too fast, and braked. The memory of the crash felt flawed, already damaged with weight and meaning. An oversized man walked into the kitchen, followed by small dogs. He tossed his brown coat onto another chair, revealing a bunch of small sacks slung on thin strings. “Fuchs?” I asked. He turned and squinted. His skin was light, but darkened by the sort of dirt that desperation leaves, not the earth. His face had thin diamond-shaped scratches. “What…? No. Fuchs? How do you…? What do you want with him? Who sent you here?” As he approached the table, I noticed his eyes were terrible, dark. “Listen, Gale just…” I pointed behind me. “…and it’s El Fuchs anyway. Yeah, no,” he said. He leaned on his palms. The table legs strained. His breath cut my face. His dogs whined below. I held still. A crunching noise came from within the walls, followed by a sharp ding. Strange that a house should have an elevator. Footsteps crossed behind me, and I tried to catch a glimpse. The walls churned again. “Yeah, no, you just surprised me,” he said, snapping back up, as if tamed. “People usually just go right up.” He smiled at me, big and goofy like a child. “Now, who are you and what can I do for ya?” His hand slapped the leather of my jacket. Beneath his two flannel shirts, he was that big beast from Looney Tunes, hugging and petting and loving and squeezing until his toy lay limp and misshapen in his hands. His dogs groaned and curled up around each other on an oval bed in the corner. “Look, I dropped my bike outside. Gale brought me in. If it’s okay, I’ll just wait for her,” I said, slipping my notebook in my pocket. My head started to throb. I felt hot and my belly dipped like I was in turbulence. “Best not to mention El Fuchs, you know. Gale should know. I’m Jay. Jay Sparker. Pleasure. Drop a penny, grow a train, as they say,” and he laughed as the chair strained, then swung one of his sacks around, removed an aerosol can and stood it on the table. He pulled another from a second sack and propped it alongside the first. “William. Nice to meet you.” My eyelids pulsed in a seasick rhythm. I poured more whisky. I should leave, but I had to do something with the bike. I glanced up at the cupboards. There were over a dozen masks from various cultures. They were scarecrows of wood and hide and fabric, weapons against ethereal entities, dreams, and death. I stared at one with large black eyes and slits above for human ones. Two yellow snakes slithered from the sockets and entered the gaping mouth with its forked black tongue. The horns scraped the ceiling; the pointed ears and chin formed a triangle, tipping it up. I continued drinking. I’d at least wait for Gale. I heard a door slam upstairs. The elevator churned. My head wobbled. “The bike’ll be fine. And Gale’ll be here late,” said Sparker. The chemicals took over. I drifted away, but didn’t dream. “He’s still here. Good,” Gale’s voice echoed. “Yeah, and he’s out.” They led me across the foyer and pressed a plastic ruby. We waited. It glowed yellow. The door opened, and she slid the copper lattice to the side. The door clanged shut and the elevator crunched and screeched like wood whipping metal as it rose. My limbs ached. My brain felt liquid. The elevator stopped. “Come on,” said Gale, leading me into a room that smelled like talc and sex. On the couch, she offered me more pills. “These are different. These are so you wake up,” she said. “You want to wake up, don’t you?” said Sparker. “Maybe. Maybe not.” His chuckles flapped through my head like bats. I ate the pills and felt a wash of terror. Walls thudded, then not, then again. Voices echoed through the hallway. A shadow covered my face, cool and solid. I felt weightless and fell into an endless fall. “That’ll keep you right. All things come from silk, the Mayans say,” said Sparker. “Quiet,” snapped Gale. Perfume. Tobacco. Marijuana. Incense. Swirling in colors. Water running. The smack of skin. Groaning metal. A bell. I heard an aerosol spray, and everything turned to rainfall. I dreamt outside of my self. I dreamt of Gale. (Cont'd below)</p> </div> 12:54 PM | 0 Comments | Tags: story, .002 seconds online

.002 Seconds (Part 2 of 7)

<p><a href="http://www.slambridis.com/chyrp/upload/pendulum_PG02.jpg" target="blank"><img src="http://www.slambridis.com/chyrp/upload/pendulum_PG02_web.jpg" /></a></p> <div class="storytext"> <p> I left for home the first morning. My side hurt and the ceramic mask, broken in pieces on the floor, sent me limping to the train. My eyes felt heavy, sunken like someone was jamming them down with their thumbs. Open. Close. Open. Close. Flashes of twisted faces and looming behemoths, reptilian slithering through hollow sockets, strange fumes, breath in my ear, tongues, and crooked grins. I got off the train, thought of Emily and walked towards our apartment, passing our usual coffee shop. “I’m talking about how we think. What’s bigger than that? How could they think my research is outside of the department’s goals?” I had said to her the week before she left, but she was watching a dreadlocked man give a croissant to a homeless guy at the bus stop. I watched her watching him, wondering when I started boring her. “I met this guy named Mark at work today,” she said, smiling, for once. “Really nice, unlike everyone else there. He started sculpture classes too, only he’s a year ahead. Would you believe his family lives in Sacramento too?” she said, clipping her short hair around her ear, a black frame for her round little face. “Wow, that’s great. Maybe you can carpool for Christmas,” I said. “He’s not sure if he’s going back yet. His parents just told him, over the phone no less, that he has a dead twin. Or had, I guess. Can you believe that? And they –” “Oh, I forgot to tell you, my dad just…what? What?” “Nothing,” she said, not smiling anymore. “What? Seriously.” “Nothing, you just interrupted me. Like you always do,” she said. “Always? Always is a bit of an overstatement.” “Whatever, you do the same thing. Look, forget it, I don’t want an argument.” “I’m sorry I interrupted. Go on,” I said. “No, nevermind. That was it. I was just…talking. What did your dad say?” she said, playing with the orange buttons on her coat. “He, um. Well, I just found out that he had a sister who died in infancy. Took him half a lifetime to tell me.” “Yeah, that sucks. I’m sure he didn’t mean to withhold it,” she said, and then she looked back at the homeless man, and I drank my coffee. We used to get excited that we could finish each other’s thoughts. “I think you should go with him. With Mark. Back for Christmas. I mean, if you’re both going for the week it just makes sense to carpool.” “You sure? You don’t want to go with me?” she said. “I could use some time alone. Writing time. Thinking time. You know. Holidays and such.” “Oh. Okay. I’m sure my grandma’s going to ask. I guess I’ll just tell them you have a lot of work. I miss you already,” she said and kissed me. As if we were the same loving couple as when we’d met. That was the last time we were really together, having any real sort of conversation, before the week ended and she took off. The year we moved in together, Emily’s creative work dwindled. She got a corporate job. We hated unwinding our bodies before I left for work, so we thought commuting together would be fun. It didn’t work. Instant regularity, just add water. We bickered, constantly. She always wore the same orange double-breasted overcoat and brown scarf that had been washed too many times. She plucked the stray beads of fabric on the scarf until there was nothing but strays left. The scarf’s end fell to the floor as she read. Part of me wanted to tell her, but the other part wanted to see if she’d step on it. She staggered as she got up. An old man was standing on the scarf. Memory is not a single function of the brain, but a dispersed quality of its very connectivity, at all levels, in all areas, at all times. Past the café, I turned the corner and saw our empty apartment. I felt sick. It must be so quiet inside. I thought I saw a light flicker which scared me shitless. I walked back to the train station and sat down on a cement bench on the platform. The following day I made it to the train station’s exit. The next, to the bottom of the staircase. After that, I just sat on the bench, rubbing my eyes, wondering how much rubbing would be dangerous. I watched a long-haired Indian girl with uneven eyes wait for a wiry-haired man with brown-gray skin and a tan jacket. She was there first, alone, looking with hope, then disappointment, when any man walked by. Sometimes she boards the train alone, her rainbow skirt almost catching in the sliding doors. Others, he approaches with hands in pockets, shuffling, squinting a smile. She is on him before he stops, standing on her toes and reaching. They hold hands and wait for the train. She smiles, but he doesn't know why. Later in the week, he arrives first, unshaven. Her hurried smile sweeps him onboard, and I see the window’s kiss as the train pulls away. The next, he waves at her as she’s about to pass. His face flickers with doubt. Their kiss builds from peck to total embrace. She giggles and wishes her smile could last until tomorrow. She turns away and tucks her hair behind her ear. They give each other everything they think they want, and then they board the train. I watched, paced, watched, paced, and after a few hours of scribbling in my notebook I boarded the train back the other way. I should check on the bike. I exited the train, walked, and saw the familiar lattice of the house’s gate. I wondered if this brothel had its own cadre of old and spent mistresses, relics of decades past in period-piece lingerie, as the ones I’d heard about. I remembered the dark morning glasses of the high school girl I lost my virginity to, my closest experience to prostitution. (Cont'd below)</p> </div> 11:58 AM | 0 Comments | Tags: story, .002 seconds online

.002 Seconds (Part 3 of 7)

<div class="storytext"> <p>Though Sparker cleaned constantly, plugging the rubber cord into socket after socket, his peak vacuuming hours were in the afternoon. I collapsed on the Gale’s couch. At most, ten minutes passed before he was in the room. “Gale got me my first mask. She said it’d help me sleep. But I still wake up screaming. Not her fault. I just haven’t found out how to really use them. One day, I’m going to realize I’m dreaming and all the good memories will come back from before things changed and take over the bad ones,” he said. He pulled a rag from a sack, sprayed it with the aerosol can, and cleaned a new porcelain mask. “When I was a kid, in my kid dreams, I had super powers. I had a unicorn friend, a fancy hat, a cape and a sword. If I got frightened I’d scream and glass would shatter. I wish I still had that dream. There are dark things in dreams, Will, dark things that will do things for you if you find them. They can find the things you’ve lost.” “Maybe you just need to get the hat first,” I said, curling up into the couch and pulling my jacket over my head. “Yeah, I need a pimp hat. Yeah, no…I’m the canary in the coal mine.” He laughed and I pictured the hulking Superpimp on his white steed. “You must be missing something too, right Will? Everyone is,” he said, tapping his mask. Before Emily left, I’d been dreaming of false futures with her. Sad and terrible. Infidelities, arguments, decay, violence, heartache, every night. I had been faithful to her, but a psychic drift had grown. Violent daydreams of lashing out at would-be burglars, unfit drivers, and inconsiderate clerks had evolved into these second-order nightmares where the horror coming only after waking. I was scared of myself for feeling nothing during the fantasias. Then, the pain of knowing that my memory of Emily had been damaged. Those first sweet memories buried further in the murk. But you can never know how much, and that was torture. “I guess. My girlfriend, she-“ “You should try to find it,” said Sparker. “Can you do that? Can you tell me how, if you find it?” He pulled my jacket down and pressed the orange mask over my face. I pushed it up, but he pressed it back down. A peacefulness swelled in my gut again, fanned out through my limbs and head. What if he was right? It’s not like I’d hobble back home and find Emily in the empty apartment. “Gale got me my dogs too, you know. I love ‘em,” said Sparker. “They’re descended from her grandpa’s pups. He used to hunt goats with ‘em. Bred the goats too, the miniature climbing ones with narcoleptic ones. You know, the ones that fall asleep all the time. Yeah, Felix talked about narcolepsy but I can’t remember the details.” “Sensory tract interruption,” I said. “When they get cut off, the brain’s chemical bath changes and it goes into REM sleep, cutting off your motor functions with it.” “Wait, you know about Felix? Felix DuPont, yeah, no, like our stove.” “Who? No.” “Scientist. Psychologist actually. Louisiana, in the 1800s. His wife was raped and killed, son murdered at home, in a break-in while he was at his lab doing sleep research. Their bodies were dumped in the swamp. No?” “Uh uh.” I yawned beneath the mask. The criss-crossing patterns of the upholstery blurred. I wondered if certain brain regions became unhinged before others, bits of sensory paralysis, leaving others still connected. The pills made me tired, but I needed rest. “Yeah, no, Gale told me the story. Felix saw their deaths everywhere, asleep or awake. Couldn’t think of either of them without seeing the nightmare. Couldn’t even stay home anymore, just buried himself in his lab, or hung out at a brothel.” He unwound the vacuum cord and plugged it in next to my couch. “He did dream and memory experiments on himself, then on the prostitutes. Day after day, working, drinking, drugging. He used extracted brain and body fluids, depressants, stimulants, hallucinogens, and of course sleeping masks.” He flipped the switch on the vacuum, making it spit and roar, and raised his voice. “He was trying to find his family. Their real memory, trapped in his dreams. His colleagues got his license revoked behind his back. They found his room in flames, most of his notes and research destroyed. What a loss. They never found his body, but there was a note that said ‘I found them. In the swamp. I will not return.’” Sparker flipped the vacuum off. “Crazy, eh?” he said, still booming. My head pounded as the vacuum choked and sighed still. Sparker sat on the chair’s arm and chuckled. “Oh my. Got me going on. Wasn’t I talking about the dogs? Yeah, no, the old man’d creep into the forest with a pup muzzled by a stocking in his arms. At the base of a tree he’d lift the dog into the air, then plop him on the ground and pull the stocking off. Those dogs bark like mad, and man, those goats woke up and just dropped like 50 pound sacks.” I saw a field of sleeping goats stretching to the horizon, BAM, after BAM, after BAM, the little dog shuddering each time, not knowing what happened. The proud hunter fumbling through them, checking for sleep, injury, or death. He drags them home on a lattice structure of hooks, slopping the creatures into piles like inverted mass graves. The next day’s mask was leather, molded into deformed, bubbling folds. “Here, the one I was talking about. Legend says Felix became reborn beneath black iron gates in the swamp.” He held the blood red mask up to his face and inhaled. “Your turn,” he said, and slipped it over me. The darkness was warm, scented of perfumed oils and wood. “He killed the nightmare and reclaimed his wife and child. Gale knows I’d do the same. She might say she wants to leave, but she’s lying.” I felt like I was sinking into time’s moist earth, through the tangled roots of hope and fear. “Easy, easy, not so fast,” he said, tapping the mask. He laughed his gargantuan laugh, and I felt nauseous. “I’m not really dreaming though, I—” My mouth felt gummy. “There’s that ’I’ again. ‘I’ is just an abstraction. A little vertical mark. It’s nothing without time. Felix knew it. It’s what makes every tangible human moment. And each one is made up of every single active nerve cell. One by one, the moments flow and you just remember them after and call them ‘my self’. Kill the self and you’re free of time. Find it, Will. Your fear holds you back. Find it and command it. Can you feel how close we are?” I felt like I was falling again, away from the aurora of light around the mask edges. A neuron’s voltage gates reset in about .002 seconds. A human moment? Neurons feedback to each other, predicting themselves. This is usually followed by that. What if the lapse between is tuned like our eyes are to such a tiny fraction of all light? Could all of human greatness and frailty be a function of such an arbitrary timescale? Sparker continued. “Felix said the brain has enough unique states for anyone who has ever existed to be completely unique at every moment. No soul needed at all. Don’t you find that comforting? He called it neural relativity.” It was possible, with over a hundred billion neurons and a trillion synapses, all in feedback loops. If the relative activity of all our neurons at each moment defines us. If novel stimuli rise up to becoming a greater percentage of the whole. I mumbled something about inputs and outputs, but Sparker didn’t hear me. “Felix really found his stride with dreams though. He called it a notebook taking notes on itself. He figured out that the self and the surroundings only exist through each other. And that he could cut them both off in dreams. He could become disembodied. He could command the inhuman and used it to find his family. Think about it. If the soul’s an illusion, then…oh, I don’t know. Too bad most of his notes were destroyed.” He turned off the vacuum and moved towards the door, but had forgotten to unplug it. I drifted over a gray-green bog. I was a crow, perched on gates covered with yellow flowers like dust on an engine. I saw a form in the water below. Its black eyes opened, still bloody from moonlight's cut. I saw its first breaths in the silky weeds. Its lungs choked with heavy fluids as it rose through the meniscus of algae, insects, and detritus. I saw the slime and scum cling to its fresh skin. Its blood effervescing. With each soft step, the earth groaning for its inevitable son and waving the rest of its children aside to clear a path. I saw Emily somewhere ahead, walking alone by the swamp’s edge. A system in constant flux, the mind becomes a shadowbox when cut off from the world. A swamp of memories. Within it was my first true sight of Emily, outside of association. With each moment, either retold or rewound, it becomes a smaller fraction of the total, smaller and smaller, ad infinitum. (Cont'd below)</p> </div> 09:07 AM | 0 Comments | Tags: story, .002 seconds online

.002 Seconds (Part 4 of 7)

<div class="storytext"> <p> Sometimes Sparker’d pull a cloth and bottle from one of his bags and start cleaning the window, raising his voice whenever he depressed the spray nozzle. “Do you realize what week it is? The last week of the year. The pagans called it the timeless time. They danced, drank, ate, fucked, sinned, all outside of judgment. The same week Felix disappeared.” Sparker pulled a new mask out, this one stark white, mouthless with intricate gray etchings. He cupped it to my face. It felt cool and empty. “Any luck?” he asked. The mask muffled my claim that Felix’s family was dead. Sparker turned towards the drawn heavy curtains. Staring at them, he held his vacuum to his chest. “Gale’s changed, you know. I have a photo of the first time we met. Yeah, no…I was three years old. I think. She lived down my street. Our parents had us take a bath together. She was bobbing a rubber nightingale in the water. We kissed in the tub. It was great. She’s in here somewhere,” he said, tapping his temple. “Her family moved away soon after. When I was seven years old, my mom had a man who looked after me. He forced me to watch him. I didn't even know what a cock was or why I should put my mouth on it or what the liquid was on his belly after he finished himself off. I won’t lose Gale again. I cleaned those sheets for hours and hours, every time my mom left me alone,” he said, then rose and snapped the curtains closed. He became a giant, with giant hands clubbing the man into the ground, the earth giving way and bending in, pummel, pummel, pummel, Sparker’s knuckles slicing open on stone and rock and twig. “Try harder, Will,” he said, tapping the mask on my face. He flipped his vacuum on and jutted it around like a dagger, as it became a monster, big as a house, growling, spitting, roaring, coming to life to take me in. I tried not to think of Gale, scared that he could see my thoughts. How would I defend myself? If the bike was delayed much longer. If Sparker attacked me. If I tried to run away but couldn’t. If Gale… “A few years ago, in the airport after returning from burying my mother, I saw Gale again. I bought her a scarf. She said she was dating someone, but we hit the bars anyway. Her guy stopped us. He had a red syringe. Claimed it had HIV+ blood. I gave him my wallet, my shoes, my jacket, everything, in the street. He tied my hands with her scarf, and then they ran away together. Naked, I read ‘El Fuchs’ embroidered on the back of his denim jacket. What a system. It’s the sand that forms the pearl of doubt,” shouted Sparker over the noise. I thought of Gale’s lips sipping coffee by my apartment, a thread of saliva suspended between tongue and cup. I wondered where my bike was. “She came back, of course, but something’s different. He had turned her into a…prost…a. Hmph. Well, you know. The oldest profession. Yeah, no…tell that to a grave digger,” said Sparker as he rammed the curtains, breaking light off of them. Beneath the mask, I accelerated down down down. Sparker below, his giant hands waiting to catch me, to stuff me into one of his sacks, other heads, hands, and body parts protruding from the other bags. The world towered up in instant solidity. Immobile, crammed in a crevice, buried alive under ten thousand feet of rock. I felt true claustrophobia. And then it crumbled. I jerked up, chest heaving, sweating. “Will, you look really tired. You’re worrying too much,” he said, and then almost forgot to unplug the vacuum again. Sparker always said two things before he left: 1. “Oh, Gale left more for you,” pointing to a small bag of pills and a new bottle of bourbon. 2. “Oh, and she wanted me to tell you the bike’ll be ready soon. I'll get to work on it some more tonight. Do me a favor and keep an eye on her for me, okay? All things come from silk, you know.” (Cont'd below)</p> </div> 08:30 AM | 0 Comments | Tags: story, .002 seconds online

.002 Seconds (Part 5 of 7)

<div class="storytext"> <p>In the evenings, Gale entered my room like swirling wind, her slender legs spinning about me. “Did you get what I left?” she asked. ”Yeah, but -” ”But you didn’t take all the pills. You really should. Here, take these. Don’t fuss, just take them. Good, very good. Watch out, you’re dribbling whisky. Hand me those shoes. Yeah, under the couch. I swear, there's no room in here. And those. No, those. Okay, how’s this look? The necklace, silly. I know the stockings are sexy. What if I… hard to imagine if I can’t hold it up.” ”You look -” ”Mmmm…mmm…mmm? You think this top or this? Okay, this. Quite a dip, no? Yeah, more tips. Okay, look away a sec?” she asked, giggling. ”I’m not going -” ”Don’t peek…oh, wait, hand me that scarf behind the couch? The long brown one. First thing Sparker ever gave me. Only nice one. Okay, now don’t peek,” she said. ”I promise I -” ”I know, you’d never. Riiiight. Okay, you can look. Whoops, nearly fell off! Good? Now picture me in just this? Nope, nothing else. Okay, I’ll be next door. Mostly. Bye!” A different day, Gale put her hand on my thigh, and I tried to keep breathing steady. “If you open that book you have to write in it,” she said. She smelled of pears bathing in thyme. “It’s like a samurai sword – it has to draw blood before you can put it away.” The pen gushed black blood, pouring over the pages, dripping with gravity, spilling onto the floor, but also up, against gravity, following some siphoning of pressure along my hand and up my wrist, into my veins, blackening my arm. She pinched my skin, tugged the hairs, then rose, laughing. I avoided her face whenever she looked at me, stared when she didn’t. “Why are you always working? Don’t you ever want to play, Willie?” I put down the notebook, hearing Emily ask me the same thing. She used to be so creative, but she hadn’t even touched the last pad I bought her. “Y’know, all the people that come here, they’re nothing but time to me. But something’s different about you. I could run away with you,” she said, another day, and gulped her drink. She stretched her back, tightening the fabric around her chest, and then left my nook for her real, larger, nighttime room, heels and belts and wigs dangling from her fingers, as I watched her tattoo diving down her slender back. I exhaled hard while my lap throbbed. The tick-tocking of the elevator began. The new sounds of night. It whirred and chunked in its shaft. Up and down every thirty minutes. Gears in a clock driving time. I heard Gale, next door, in other rooms, with other men. Moans. Slaps. Thumps. Phrases I’d rather not repeat. Other girls too. Sometimes Gale came in for a drink, a smoke, a pill. Sometimes grabbing another article from under the couch. Then leaving me imagining. I swayed with the patterned curtains, wondering how far into the great unknown I was willing to wander. I watched the folds and thought of Emily’s bandana, the first time I saw her, five years ago. Her black hair bobbed as she walked from the train toward the rest stop in her orange coat, holding a large black portfolio. She pulled the bandana from her face and smiled at the rotating hot dog cage. “Don’t feel like a salad?” I asked. “’Scuse me?” she said, eyes narrow. I nodded at the other people. “Ha. No. I’d rather have a corndog, but this’ll have to do.” She pulled a hot dog out, lathered mustard, took a bite, and her face gleamed. “Okay, now I need one,” I said, and paid for a hot dog. “Care for a seat?” “Um,” she said, “Okay, I’ll sit,” and we sat. “So what’s in the portfolio?” I asked. “Oh, just some sketches. Paintings. Stuff like that.” “Can I see?” “Sure. Knock yourself out.” She pushed it toward me with her foot. “They’re left over from my final. I passed, but found out that I’m failing the year because they won’t give me any fucking leeway to go see my dying father.” I flipped through the pages. There were brooding self-portraits in pixie haircuts, some painted, some charcoal, some photographed. There were oil renderings of buildings that swayed like trees. Pencil sketches of gaunt characters. Fabric collages of obese women. Watercolors of birds. “These are great,” I said. “What happened to your dad?” “Not sure. Stomach cancer, or something. I’ve had a hard time getting a straight answer out of anyone. Some blackness eating him, and he deserves it, that’s all I know. But I have to go see him.” I drew the curtains and traced the receding outline of the bruise on my side. The sky turned from orange to violet, and the elevator croaked. Gale came in, told me she was tired and laid on the couch, clothed still. But my mind did the rest. I watched the black feathers stretch up her neck. I saw the flickering shadows like morning rays coating Emily’s skin when we moved into our first real apartment together. We had sex everywhere, christening everything. The couch. The closet. The kitchen counter. The tub. The bathroom sink. The rubs and rug burns. The wet pools. Lost pants and panties. Gale’s neck bent back…the outline of her nipples, her dress lifting, her licking sweetness off a spoon, the small slit where her tongue was. No, that was Emily, not Gale. I searched for Emily, but Gale pulled me away. Juices became things only to clean. The last night, Gale was there again, in the doorway, naked but for her scarf, furious but gorgeous. Her eyes seared. Her hair fell over my face. My hands moved to the back of Gale’s waist, guided by her hand or my will, I wasn't sure. Emily and Mark at parties together, after-hours, their family’s questions about me long forgotten. My hands skated under Gale’s scarf and cupped her small, soft breast, shirtless, braless, shameless. I saw them drinking. I saw her sitting on his lap. I saw her leaning over. I saw her mouth open. Gale’s eyes were inside my head, her tongue inside my lips, and a wave crashed and chemicals surged and I wanted to be inside her, swimming, sliding through currents. I saw Emily’s hands snaking around him as her broken tongue followed, and something in me creaked under pressure, something gave way, something tingled. A lock clicked. New chemicals flooded in and broke the dream. I slid away from Gale, towards the hallway light where Emily’s face still glowed, until something heavy hit my head, and everything went dark. (Cont'd below)</p> </div> 08:12 AM | 0 Comments | Tags: story, .002 seconds online

.002 Seconds (Part 6 of 7)

<div class="storytext"> <p>I woke. A human voice. Me and not me. The voice spiraling, repeating. Owwwwwwwww my head. My head, on the floor. Dark red carpet. Outlining hand. Left hand. Fingers. Suspended. Fibers, individual. Hundreds. Flit, flit, flit. Attack and decay. Bristles, also individual. Together, a brush on porcelain. Already polished porcelain. A notion of a higher order: still versus non-still. Something hard had hit my head. The huge shadow. Gale, before. A long brown scarf, a featherweight frown, and nothing else. Her skin on top. Did I? Did we? No, not quite. Right? Almost, not quite. Fuck, Sparker, I’m so sorry. Am I sorry? What’s that sound? The hum of a motorcycle engine, far away but closing. Out, yes, out. I clawed my way towards the flitting bristles and muttering. “Heartbreak and triumph, sweetheart, heartbreak and triumph,” said Gale. Wet drips rustled my eyebrow. Don’t check for bleeding. Don’t want a gush. My left arm throbbed from shoulder to fingertips, and I lurched like a graceless sidewinder. Head pulsing with Gale’s scrub brush. And that's definitely an old motorcycle engine rumbling outside. “Gale?” I said. Throat dry. Try again. “Gale?” I said, louder, proven by a deeper throb in the head. “Heartbreak and triumph, heartbreak and triumph. Hope is danger, you know that,” she said, intermingled with the flitting bristles. I got up and felt my brain, wet and gray, beating like a heart. Please stay standing. Please no concussion. “Gale, are you alright? Are you hurt?” I asked, turning towards the bathroom. Her scarf was slung over the closed toilet, the furled edges moistened dark. She knelt, bent over the tub, still no clothes on, scrubbing. She looked fine. A few rubs on the knee, red hands, knuckles speckled with errant threads of skin, but fine. Fine enough to clean a bathtub. At least in body. She won’t even answer me. She’ll be fine. The motorcycle was loud now. I jiggled the hallway door’s handle. Locked. Fuck. More flitting bristles. “What the fuck are you doing, Gale? The blood’s on the carpet here, not the bathtub.” Right? I checked, right? Her hand blurred, and her brush strokes became sprites dangling in my eyelashes. Through them though, no blood. Wait, blood on the floor, beneath my feet. Beneath me. I touched. Yup, blood. Plenty. “What the fuck are you doing? There’s nothing there. Do you see this?” I held my fingers towards her. Crimson tipped, well oxygenated. More scrubbing. “Gale, what the fuck?” She stopped brushing, took my hand in hers and gave it a squeeze. “Heartbreak and triumph, William, heartbreak and triumph. Hope is danger,” said Gale, smiling a different smile. “I don’t know what you’re—” “That’s what Jay said to me, when he hit you. Well, after. When he picked up the pieces of the ceramic mask, he mumbled it. Then he looked me straight in my naked eye, straight down in there, and said ‘Hope is danger, Gale. Heartbreak and triumph, sweetheart, heartbreak and triumph.’” “But why are you cleaning the tub?” “BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT HE FUCKING ASKED ME TO DO, RIGHT BEFORE HE LOCKED THE FUCKING DOOR WITH YOU ON THE FLOOR.” “—” Fuck. The engine cut off outside. This was familiar. Emily was born in a small town. When she was in junior high her mom came home, stripped down to nothing just like Gale, and cleaned the bathtub. That night Emily heard loud noises and screaming from her parent’s room and she jumped out the window. She was ready to run all night, to get a ride to the city somehow, but her drunken dad chased her down and brought her back inside. “He wasn’t going to really hurt you, you know. I mean, I know it hurt, but it could’ve been much worse. He’s just doing what he does, cleaning up, protecting. Gives everything that just-polished shine, just like his piece of shit whore of a mother taught him.” She started scrubbing again. “Get up, come on, you’ve scrubbed plenty,” I said. “We’re fine. We’re fine. All threats, all threats. Hope is danger, Gale, but there’s no hope around here, is there? Nosirree mistermister,” she said, with flitting bristles. Hope, or fear, I wondered. Where did the past and future converge? We were there, Emily, I, her hospital bed. We were old. There were others, probably family but the ages didn’t fit. We were both tender mixtures. Sad yet content. Heartbroken yet proud of making it this far. She smiled with her hand in mine, happy to go first and not have a tomorrow alone. We watched visitors enter, sobbing and smiling and shaking hands. They were cardboard cutouts in strange light, paper dolls human-hunting. The mood stilled and time stretched and the antiseptic air became candy and mint and I felt good while everyone grieved. Emily woke with a jolt and let forth the longest and most grotesque parade of obscenities that I had ever heard, as if she dug up her long-buried father, and channeled him at a naval after-party. Her mouth moved with the fluidity of a sixteen year old and I saw her as I first saw her, frame-by-frame, timed with the consonants of every cunt, cock, fuck, suck, lick, crack, crap, cooze, each carnal cooing ‘c’ enunciated with frightening and mesmerizing rhythm. I watched this Emily like a film buff in a dollar-theatre two weeks before the wrecking ball hits, grinning, my balls tingling, my eyes alight, even as everyone in the room made black holes of their mouths. Of the countless ways you can subdivide people, there are three types of women: those who don’t curse; those who curse like frat boys; and those rare ones who know exactly when and where to insert “fuck” in their sentence to make you wonder why Webster ever left it out. She was beautiful. She was alive. An accordion screeched. And then, just as abrupt, she died an orange death. It was a mirror of our first weekend together, at her dad’s deathbed. She cried, though I wondered why. The last time he had returned home drunk he threw her against the wall, and she bit off her tongue. He said he didn’t remember. She picked up the rest of her tongue, ran out of the house and rode his prize Norton Commando motorcycle to her grandfather’s in the city. Her father knew she took it. He said he was sorry. She removed the bandana from her face and left it in her father’s hand in the hospital. She cried, though I didn’t want her to. Outside, I wanted to tell her I loved her. First time I ever wanted to. Maybe there is a space you must leave between the end and the beginning. It’s there, naturally, between time and memory, between love and loss. It’s there between people when paired, like atoms, like melody. I don’t even know if she’ll take me back. I don’t even know what to tell her. To tell her I want to see her and hope she wants to see me. I flipped open my cellphone, dialed *8, but no, dead. I knelt down next to Gale. I held her fingers, pink and waterlogged, joints swollen. “I had an abortion and a miscarriage in the first year I was with Jay. I had another abortion a year later but I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to…he had a…a red syringe,” said Gale. “He’s such a fucking pussy though. Without his fucking masks he’d spend his nights sucking his fucking thumb. Little momma's boy, crying when he needs to win me back. He thinks I’m some girl he took baths with as a child, and…and so what. His little nightingale just keeps flying away.” She looked at me with wet eyes. “He gets confused sometimes. I burned that embroidered jacket of his hoping he’d forget about the man he stole it from. One of his mom’s boyfriends when he was young,” she said, flecking the bristles of the brush against her hand. I took the brush and put it in the tub. “Gale, look at me. Let’s leave. Now. You and me.” “Really?” She looked down at herself and a hint of her smirk reappeared. “I look pretty ridiculous, don’t I?” She looked up at me and the grin widened as she took my hand, rose, then sat on the tub’s edge. The elevator clanked. An errant tick of the giant clock. Gale moved towards the door, but I tugged her back. Then everything lurched, the tock taken hostage. The lanterns rattled in the room, the candle flames jerked. My hand tightened on hers, but we didn’t move. (Cont'd below)</p> </div> 07:15 AM | 0 Comments | Tags: story, .002 seconds online

.002 Seconds (Part 7 of 7)

<div class="storytext"> <p>The building shuddered again. “Jesus. Quake, Gale, we should move somewhere safer,” I said. Another shudder. “Fuck! What the hell is that?” I yelled. The elevator whirred, grinded, and crunched. Something snapped and it went down down down, screaming through the shaft, pushing gray air under the doorframe, and landing with a boom. I heard a crackling, sizzling, then a loud pop as the building’s power overloaded and was silent. Red light flickered around us. Shadows danced. “Fuuuuck!” she yelled. “It’s him! I know it’s him!” The doorknob felt warm. I heard a click and backed away. The door slammed open and Sparker fell through. His vacuum dragged behind him. His face was tight and waxy in diamond shaped slivers like the elevator’s lattice, covered in wet soot. His ghastly black eyes strained. The straps of his bags tangled in his feet. The vacuum’s cord wrapped around him and his neck and chest were streaked with skin rubbed raw. The smell of dry smoke followed him and his mouth exhumed raspy breath. His dogs barked downstairs. “Didn’t you fuckin hear me!” he choked at Gale. I moved in front her. “El Fuchs?” he asked. “What?” I said. “You,” he said, then turned to Gale. “It’s him, Gale. It’s him. That lunatic did this on purpose. He rigged the elevator or something. The vacuum was still plugged in downstairs. It yanked and slammed me against the door. It wouldn’t let go. I almost suffocated. Look at me.” “Jay, I-“ she said. “Look at me!” he yelled. “He did this.” “Jay, you fuck, that’s ridiculous,” yelled Gale, in my ear. “None of your mom’s boyfriends are fucking here.” She reached around me, trying to hit him. “Pain is just a sensation,” he said, looking at me. “A physical association. Just like regret, embarrassment, fear. Felix knew it and he moved beyond. No more change. No more associations. No penny, no train. If it doesn’t change, it doesn’t exist.” He looked at Gale. “No loss. No sickness of infidelity. No lust or hate.” I saw his fright as a drop of ink spreading through clear water, forming swampy eyes and undead blood. Like the blackness of shadows slithering down a lover's back. The black emptiness of a child’s house. Of a memory stuck, or lost, and on and on and on. Felix, Sparker, me. We were a fearful hierarchy. “But Felix’s family was dead. Gale’s not,” I said, trying to be calming. “You can’t just stop everything. Gale, wait,” I said, as she swung at him again. “No, you don’t know. Felix became timeless. Everything like before they changed. Gale, you, and me, in the bath. Remember? Before El Fuchs?” He unwound the cord from around his chest and dropped the vacuum to the ground. “No, you asshole. Remember that jacket you stole? From your mom’s boyfriend? Well, I burned it. I’m sorry your mom was such an asshole, but I can’t fucking baby-sit you anymore,” said Gale, and her arm lunged and scratched his face. “Gale, leave him,” I said, pulling her back as he touched his new scratch. “Why can’t you just forget?” Her eye shadow turned to black rain. I felt bare and made of petty fears. “Nothing of value,” said Sparker, staring at us. He pulled the oily mask from a sack, smearing the dark leather in blood and ash. “Heartbreak and triumph. It’s all heartbreak and triumph,” he said, as his face took new shape. Bare of his embroidered jacket, he was the blackened cur of swampy vengeance. He drew a can from a sack. With a flick of his thumb, fire splashed against the wall, kissed the ends of Gale’s scarf and then vanished. The carpet shifted under me, growing vines from the cord and extending like arrows out the third-story window, across the lawn, and through the wooden lattice with the escaping jade and aloe. I stretched with them, a thread in time, hoping I could still intertwine with Emily as vines towards the same light. I grabbed the vacuum and wrenched it through the window. I grabbed Gale and jumped. I fell in perfect form, face up towards Gale’s arm pulling in from the window, my outstretched hand still open, my eyes wide with the rising sun. I felt no pain or pleasure, heard no barking or crackling or ticking or tocking. I smelled no smoke or perfume. Her scarf floated and flapped in mid-air, away from the swamp’s edge. +++</p> </div> 06:16 AM | 0 Comments | Tags: story, .002 seconds online