Month: March 2025

The Bottomless Inkwell

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What is it about this disarray of life that eats at my guts on a hot morning in July while I stand in a sauna of soap and bleach in the kitchen of the Silver Taco Café in a town in the desert that has no right to be here.

I throw down a white towel and say, “Fuck it! I’m not working here anymore, Eeyore!” That’s my boss’ name, and everyone calls him “The Ass.” He is an ass. He treats people horribly. He yells, cusses, throws things around. Even over the simplest little mistake.

He gets in my face and points a finger. I think he’s going to poke out my eye. “You quit!?” he spits. “Right in the middle of lunch rush?”

“I’m going out to the desert and get drunk,” I tell him. “You’re not going to control my life anymore.”

“Go ahead. Idiot.”

I sit at the edge of the inkwell pool and suck on a bottle of tequila. I’m getting pretty drunk and everything is warm. Even the sun is warm. Black hook wasps are shifting about. I gaze over the edge of the inkwell pool. The water is dark, still, and I know so endlessly deep. I know I would die if I fell in there. Once in, there is no escape. The walls of the pool are vertical dirt and bend inward. It would be impossible to climb out. It’s a deathtrap in the desert. I stand up. I’m wobbly. My foot slips slightly. I think about the blue diamond lady. She wouldn’t even miss me.

I step back, strip off all my clothes, except my hiking boots and socks, and I yell at the sky. I howl like one of the coyotes crossing my path. I look around suddenly because I get the sense someone is watching me and probably laughing or aiming a gun at me. I work my way up a ridge and look out on the desert around me. Mostly flat, slightly rolling. Hard ground. Spotty brush. Distant hills swathed in a mist. Blue burning sky up above. Far off is a strange building and structure, like power pylons and a command center only orbital. I wonder if it is a gas plant or a helium ranch. There are sounds of machines coming up from beneath the ground. There could be an entire civilization down there. It’s faint but frightfully audible. And the air is hot and there is a slight breeze.

I go back down the ridge and gather my clothes. I’m too drunk and if I don’t get back to the car I will die out here. I’m starting to get sluggish as I walk. I throw the tequila bottle, and it smashes against a rock somewhere. There’s a mannequin and I kiss her, then run. I turn to see if she has made chase and there is nothing there. I finally stumble into my car, get in, start the engine, crank the A/C. I grab a water bottle and drink. It’s warm, but wet. I lay back in my seat and rest in the flow of cool air. I eventually fall asleep. When I wake the end of day is already crusting over. The sky is sheet metal gray and orange. I have a headache and a bad taste in my mouth. The car is almost out of gas. I put it in gear and drive back to the city in the desert.

By
Aaron Echoes August

Special thanks to Edge of Humanity Magazine for publishing three of my poems recently: Coffee Shop Rain, The Translucent Wander Pain, and Space Curtain. Please go check them out! Also, a reminder that my new e-book is now available for purchase: The Apocalypse Pipe. The print edition will be available soon. Thanks for reading and supporting independent creators.
Red Sun Panic

Image by A. E. August

Black myth hymns

Rattle the rafters

The gong of peace turns to war

Jelly cobras hiss and spit

As the bombs fall on the Pacific

Man churns toil over oil

And I need to crawl out of my skin today

Like I have the greyscale

And I’ll turn into a Stone Man in the Sorrows

The queens are closer to clashing

An effervescent netherworld to control…

By
Aaron Echoes August
Razor Nudes

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Now what?

He was lying still in the afternoon bed. There was the sound of a blizzard slamming its way through, even though it was March and officially spring. He went to his desk of confusion and filled out some lottery slips.

He had been to the National Archives of Nudity earlier in the day for a job interview. He felt it didn’t go well, but still had hope they would hire him as a junior archivist. He turned in his desk chair toward the window. He peeled the curtains apart. It was sunny and green outside. He saw wasps against the glass and bees dancing in the purple carpet of clover growing close to the ground. But he still heard the sounds of a blizzard inside his head. Nothing was making sense.

He turned back to his computer and decided to compose an e-mail to the woman who had interviewed him. He wanted to thank her and remind her—her name was Rose—that he would be a valuable asset to the organization.

He recalled her questions were odd, but he supposed relatable to the job.

“Would you grimace at the bounty of nude images you would have to look at every day?”

“Not at all… As long as they weren’t too gross.”

“Do you think you would easily tire of looking at nude images all day every day?”

“Sort of the same question… But I don’t think I would.”

“Where do you see yourself in five years.”

He scoffed. “Five years? I don’t even know what my life will be like five hours from now. It’s impossible to know. I don’t understand why interviewers even ask these types of questions. What’s next? Tell me about a time you gave exceptional customer service? I never gave exceptional service. Customers are ungrateful, distasteful twats.”

“I see,” she said, and she moved the pen from the edge of her bottom lip and placed it in a writing position. She jotted something down on a notepad of yellow, lined paper. “Then I suppose it’s a good thing we don’t have customers in the sense of the general public… Which I agree can be an utter nuisance.”

“A sheer collection of rudeness and stupidity,” he pointed out.

“Let’s get back to… Where would you like to see yourself in five years?”

“I would like to be well-versed in the job I am applying for today, and even in a position higher up so that I can share and lead with my learned wisdom.”

“So, you plan on sticking around if we hire you?”

“As long as you don’t fuck up my life.”

Dear Rose, thank you for taking the time to speak to me today about the junior archivist position at the National Archives of Nudity. I want to reiterate my interest in the position and point out that my skill set aligns flawlessly with the requirements of the job. I look forward to further discussion on this matter.

Best regards,

Lloyd Parsons

He hit send.

Rose never replied and he found himself peering out a window every day instead of going to a job.

“I suppose I’m useless to the world,” he said aloud to himself as he stood by a window in his house and looked out upon a seemingly dying world. “Seriously, though. What do I have to offer other than my own mad thoughts?”

It’s sort of how Stevie Nicks talked about Lindsey Buckingham in their early days, he thought, and how she would have to go work a “real” job to pay the bills, but Buckingham just didn’t fit that mold. With a little laugh, she said something like, “He’s a musician. That’s what he is.”

Lloyd went to the bathroom mirror to shave. “I think what she means is,” he began telling his reflection. “He’s not a waiter, he’s not a store clerk, he’s not a fast-food worker… He’s just who he is deep inside.” He pointed the razor at the mirror. “And that’s how it should be for all of us. I’m not useless to the world after all. I just don’t fit into what drives society. But maybe I don’t want to drive. Maybe I want to just gaze out the car window and look at the world and think about things and then write them down. It’s not a curse, it’s a gift! A gift the world wants to rip away from me and everyone else like me.”

Lloyd sighed. He plowed the razor through the white shave cream on his left cheek. The blade bit in, cut him. “Damn it!”

The white shave cream turned red, and so, he went out to the living room window and looked out while he bled all over the place. He was in a fevered frenzy and released himself in front of the world and it felt good for a change.

By
Aaron Echoes August

Special thanks to Edge of Humanity Magazine for publishing three of my poems recently: Coffee Shop Rain, The Translucent Wander Pain, and Space Curtain. Please go check them out! Also, a reminder that my new e-book is now available for purchase: The Apocalypse Pipe. The print edition will be available soon. Thanks for reading and supporting independent creators.
Rural West Texas

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Rural West Texas. Flat. Brown. Isolation. Lost dreams. Ragged old motels. Dirty convenience stores with the lingering scent of unruly humans. Fast-food restaurants with a glaze of stickiness one cannot wipe away. A restroom door that will not lock. Someone has to stand guard. High school football stadiums are the apex of architecture here. Looking out a sun-splashed window. Have to squint. That brightness of life in no-man’s land. But then, there are men here, and women, and children, and refugees, and wayward wanderers. Like dust in the wind. To have the existence of dust every day. To wake up in a silent room with the cracking sun creeping through the curtains. An alarm clock suddenly starts to beep. Slam the button. Groan. Throw legs over side of bed. Peel the curtains away. It already looks hot out there. The world is colored brown and bleached yellow. A few trees are green. The moon forgot to make its exit. A man bemoans his entrance.

He awakens hungry. Decides on frozen waffles with specks of artificial blueberries. He pushes the toaster bar down. Red lines of electric heat. The glow is like hell. There’s a pop that startles him. He scrapes butter across the waffles, pours the syrup on. Damn it, they’re already cold.

Outside and the war helicopters are marching overhead. The killing sound of those blades slicing at the air. Nowhere is safe anymore. Except out here in this devilish grin perhaps. Where hell really exists, and the homes stand still like the warmth of spring guts. That inside feeling, in the soul, man. The pain of these savage feelings when one’s life just isn’t quite right. The fear comes up when he starts the car and begins to drive away. Work is death. Work is a waste of his human essence. What if he just went on driving, needle the downtown capture and just keep going. Rural West Texas is all around and armed with the measles gun. What a calm dream it would be not to worry about surviving anymore. Think about that long breath one could take. But no. Work is a cage. Work is a torture. Work derails true dreams. Unless you’re one of the lucky ones who love what they do.

Living room windows flow by. A thick tree in a yard. Crumbling play sets, old tire swings. A lopsided shed or barn. Distant ghost voices. An old man is inside the house sitting on a couch mumbling to himself in the dim light. He’s wondering why it is that he took care of everyone he could while they made their way through life and now he was left alone to fend for himself. Forgotten. There is a cloister of ungrateful, selfish people in everyone’s world.

There’s an abandoned train station on the outskirts of a broken-down town. Tumbleweeds plastered to the stonework, the work of wind and obstruction. A long crow flies against the warm blue of the sky. His cowboy boots grind against the buckled pavement of an old parking lot. Weeds coming up through the cracks. His thumb rolls against a spark wheel, a lighter ignites, flame to tip of deadly cigarette. Inhale. Exhale. Looks around. The wind is whispering long lost tales of historical dead space. He thinks of roses and the tender petals. He reaches down and plucks a bright yellow dandelion. He rubs the flower against the back of his hand. It’s supposed to mean something but now he doesn’t remember what it is. Maybe some sort of magic to brew in the rural West Texas of dreams and nightmares.

By
Aaron Echoes August

Special thanks to Edge of Humanity Magazine for publishing three of my poems recently: Coffee Shop Rain, The Translucent Wander Pain, and Space Curtain. Please go check them out! Also, a reminder that my new e-book is now available for purchase: The Apocalypse Pipe. The print edition will be available soon. Thanks for reading and supporting independent creators.

Type your email…
The Under-Believer

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Do you have a rainbow? A colorful one—like cereal. No, I meant an umbrella. For the coming monsoon. I’ve been watching the radar for the last 72 hours with no sleep and it looks like there is a possibility for some storms. I had to get on the radio and warn people. I’m the neighborhood sky watcher. I have my own little broadcast station up in a treehouse out in the back yard. I’ve got all sorts of wires and extension cords running from the house. Sure, it’s dangerous, but not stranger danger dangerous.

The mantel of a giant oak. Excursions to Coffeeland and glossy cups. Cacophony kamikazes divebombing. I see the big clouds of explosions. I’m not making any sense to these poor people. Yes, you. Reading this right now. You. How’s your life? Pull up a chair. What’s going on in that head of yours? Are you thinking about living or dying? Did you go to church today or are you a non-believer? Are you wearing pajamas or social clothes? Coffee, like me? Or tea?

I’m an under-believer. I don’t believe in enough. I’m a rogue, a cynic. A hyperactive anaconda twisting my aches around the lighthouses. My thoughts are sparking off in all sorts of directions today. I’m a lamppost that has fallen and I am glowing weirdly on the ground. An electric sizzler. I don’t know how to rein in the all these small parts and assemble them into something coherent.

I had a dream about a basement. The steps down were cement, the walls in the stairwell were cement. There was a dim orange light. There was a landing and then a turn into deeper darkness. I poked my head out and called down. “Hello? Is anyone there?” Then there were noises—not a voice or kind words, but rather an undecipherable whisper followed by a hissing growl. But I had tempted it, drawn it out. There was a dream in my head. It was just a dream. It was frightening enough that it woke me up. Those sounds were just so otherworldly. My eyes flickered. I could see the light of a new day coming in around the edges of the curtains. There was a woman beside me. She was sleeping. She had left me a card on my desk. The front of the card was plastered with little wooden cats of all varieties. She wrote to me about love. Words of encouragement and assurance in that love. A love battle against a hateful world that we share. No one else would have ever done that. That’s why she’s my wife.

By
Aaron Echoes August

Special thanks to Edge of Humanity Magazine for publishing three of my poems recently: Coffee Shop Rain, The Translucent Wander Pain, and Space Curtain. Please go check them out! Also, a reminder that my new e-book is now available for purchase: The Apocalypse Pipe. The print edition will be available soon. Thanks for reading and supporting independent creators.