A black building with windows of orange light played sentinel over a dark blue river at dusk in a city I did not know. It may have been Riga, Latvia or Baku, Azerbaijan or maybe even Milwaukee, Wisconsin. There were other buildings, old buildings of red and sand-colored brick defaced by time and the scourge of man. There were long, straight streets and bridges and rows of perfectly manicured trees, rows of imperfectly born maniacs. There was smoke rising from the vessels of the wrinkled people that sat in the carnival-lit squares. I got lost in the lights and the noise as the night pressed down. I came out of a machine.
The very next morning I woke up in a silent yet humming hotel room overlooking the guts of a different world. I ate a quiet breakfast in a warm lobby. A pale woman from another time watched from the shadows between the back and the front. She spoke mystery through the dust in the sun like a rain of whispers. I went out to take a walk and I was wearing a long western gunslinger coat and it was somewhat cold. I didn’t understand what anybody was saying. I couldn’t read the signs. But I had other things on my mind. I was thinking about murdering God.
When I walked into the old dusty church with the golden strands of morning light filtering through the stained-glass hands of Jesus, he was waiting there for me at the end of the velvet thoroughfare. His back was turned, and he was looking into a complicated machine that looked like a technological pipe organ. He seemed to be studying the world, many worlds, the entire universe perhaps in his sight. The multitude of multi-colored planets floated like marbles in an ocean of amniotic fluid. He tapped at various points on the large screen before him. He laughed deeply as an explosion materialized somewhere, a clear vision of man and war and other untidy things of those particular worlds — Earth and Earth 2.
He then spoke deep without turning, as if he were a mighty mountain gazing off onto a distant land with a different set of eyes. He was hairless, large, and pale, draped in a single covering of universal brown flecked with gold. “If you plan on killing me, you’ll have to do better than a dull machete. I’m incredibly powerful.” He shook his hands as if he had just finished washing them. The screen he had been working on dimmed like dark mode and he finally turned to face me like the preface of an Old West duel. His face was contoured and cruel. He looked broken. “What is your complaint?”
A crow descended from somewhere and sat on an ancient stone.
“The world is on fire with hatred. You let people die. You let people suffer. You let me suffer nearly every day.”
“And you blame me?”
“Yes.”
“But I have nothing to do with any of that.” He turned back to his machine and tapped on some keys. He was searching for something. He groaned like he was exhausted. “I have no control over the faulty wiring of your world or any other world. There are no guarantees for any living being.”
“I thought you had control of everything. Everything! You supposedly created it all, yet you just leave it to derail and burn.”
I looked up at the looming statues at either side of his cybernetic altar — one a wooden caballero wearing a full-metal bandolier and cast in a wandering, far-off stare; the other an Asian egg man dressed in the colorful armor of a misplaced childhood. His wide eyes moved side-to-side and ticked like a clock.
The lord of the universe stepped down from his elevated space and walked upon the velvet path of forest green toward me. He must have been eight feet tall, the bottom fringes of his cloak swayed against the carpeting as he moved. He raised his arms in the air and lifted his chin of white granite flesh and bone and he spoke to the sky even though his words were intended for me. “So, then your intention is to reprimand me for the whole of my creations? Infinitely impossible. You are wasting your time here. Go off and leave this place.” He lowered his head and scowled at me as he waited for my reaction. His eyes were an unnatural green.
“What planet are you from?”
Just his eyes glided upward. “I am a member of every single one. There is a propagating drop of me in each spinning stone I placed. But it’s gotten away from me. I can no longer control it.” He turned and gestured with an outstretched arm. “Even with my device… I cannot stop the exponential madness of men and all the other beasts out there.”
He suddenly had a fragility I did not expect. He read my thoughts. “I am, even as you are,” he replied. “Imperfect.”
“Then we are all doomed? Every ounce of this universe… Doomed?”
He repented. “That was never my intention.”
“But rather your conviction it seems.” I threw the machete to the floor. It made a muffled thud upon the carpet. “Then it would serve no purpose to do away with you, would it?”
“None… There are a trillion and infinite more just like me.”
“What do I do now?”
He motioned to the doors at the vestibule. “Go back out into the city. Walk. Breathe. Eat and drink life until the end. Love everything without flinching.” He turned away from me and returned to his apocalyptic chancel. He made motions with his hands and the entire universe ignited once more before him and he resumed his endless work.
The murals of human clouds. Bakers in bakeries thinking of what it would be like to not have to wake up so early. What would it be like not to have to press out into the day when the sun has barely begun to breathe, and the world is painted a worrying, cold blue.
He moves along the sidewalks on Huron Street. Those gray linear sidewalks, pathways to the chores of life, pathways to work, pathways back home. Some of the cement squares are buckled by tree roots pushing up from below. For they want life, too. They do not want to be merely trampled upon by the egregious notions of men, woman, children, politics, war…
His hands are stuffed deep in coat pockets. His breath shoots out, lingers with the cold, and creates his own brand of human fog. He stops a block from the bakery. He looks up and down the street… Michigan Avenue. A few cars sputter by in the growing icicle dawn. The entire world feels encased in cold. Instead of turning right to go the bakery, he turns left and walks toward the lake. The big lake. The lake that bred life here. The lake that made this town so many years ago.
He stops at a 24-hour diner. He decides to have coffee and a sweet roll. A sweet roll most likely made by someone he knows. The place is mostly quiet. There is the periodical clanging of cups of plates in the back. There is some soft talking. Someone is rustling a newspaper and clearing their throat. A new day of life. But why? He wonders. He sips. He takes a bite. He places his hand to his heart, and it is still somehow beating. Why?
He puts money on the table and bundles up. He pulls his knit winter hat from a pocket and straps it to his head. He makes sure he covers his ears, so they won’t freeze to death and just fall off. He needs to hear things. He needs to hear the lull of the lake waves as they drift across its own body on its way to touch the shore. He pulls on gloves. He brings the zipper of his coat to the very top, turns up the protective collar. He smiles at someone, nods his head. “Thanks,” he says, and he walks out the door. His nostrils fill with cold air. He walks east.
He stands on the frozen sand of the shore and looks out at the water. It looks incredibly cold. He is beginning to feel incredibly old. He ticks off his lifelong accomplishments in his head and is unimpressed. But still. What are accomplishments if they cannot be shared with the absolute perfect love of your life? he thinks. His eyes reach out across the dark gray waters as far as they can go. There is no other side. It is like looking at an ocean except it isn’t an ocean.
The funeral will be in two or three days. He isn’t sure he can take it. She is everything to him. He never figured he would ever have to utter the words, to explain to anyone why there was no one by his side… But she is suddenly gone. Like a lightning strike. He misses her terribly. He suspects the terminal ache will never pass. How will he ever be able to go on in this sort of a world without her. Where will he live? He can’t. It will all be too much.
Then someone touches him on the shoulder. He turns and there she is. His love beyond love. She is slightly opaque but glowing. She is beautiful. She is alive on the other side. But which side? She smiles as she looks at him through the plastic barrier. He can see the love in her crystal ocean eyes. Her lips move. “I’ll never leave you. Even now. I love you.”
“Hello,” she says so politely. “My name is Hannah and I just ran away from God and his sheep.”
Welcome the pilgrims with a pellet gun and a lava lamp kiss See Hannah cut her finger with a pair of scissors whilst she creates a paper turkey from a paper plate and construction paper the colors of autumn dust See the missiles rain from the sky each tattooed with a patriotic emblem stating “Goodbye… Have a nice day.” See Hannah paste her paper turkey on her bedroom mirror animated and alive it wiggles its plastic bubble eyes, the pupils tremble See Hannah crawl beneath the covers on the eve of holiday glee see her dream of firestorms and bullets and starving on TV See the maestro carve the cooked bird the steam from the flesh rises above the well-adorned table leaves a mist on the golden goblets of blood wine See Hannah stare out the picture window as the chaos of family voices clutter her mind See the soldiers all falling down in a line gassed by children coughing up the poisons as they simply attempt to make paper turkeys with scissors and glue and not a clue from their forefathers how to breathe with peace.
Hannah stares at the church people marching in one by one pale and whiskered faces flushed with trouble crowns of cowboy hats and blindness pouring from their souls and as Hannah passes the begging plate, she spits in it futility running from her mouth the scent of heaven polished in her hair she looks up at Tik Tok Christ and wonders if they’ll nail her up there too Hannah crouches down low and slips out the row whispers to her mum “I have to go to the bathroom …” She breaks out the doors to greet the steely blue sky the wind whipping bone finger treetops curled leaves choking the streets and dancing the semi-truck scatters them like a hurricane as it rumbles right on by and Hannah walked on down the road To the school where they teach the blind children such a huge enormous house of sooty brick and brawl long luscious hills of now dormant grass rolling and rolling on down paths of gray serpentine their way across the landscape and the clouds Hannah climbs over the black iron fence rips her dress on a spike tumbles to a patch of moss and rock She lifts herself up wipes herself off and comes face to face with a blind boy staring at nothing but dark empty space. “Hello,” she says so politely. “My name is Hannah and I just ran away from God and his sheep.” The little blind boy smiles at the sound of her voice Reaches out his hands to touch her Feels the fringes of her dress The softness of her arm right where it comes out of her sleeve. “I’m blind, but I can see you,” he says to her “I’m blind but I can feel you,” he mentions to her And he kisses her on her cold, wind-chapped cheek.
The little blind boy took her down to the boiler room He led the way by touch It was dark and cold and smelled so old Hannah crinkled her nose and coughed “What are we doing here?” she asked “Nothing… Everything is a mystery to me because I’m blind. Just stay close to me.” Hannah found a book tucked beneath a red blanket in the corner. “What is this?” she asked as she stuck the stuff out in front of her. “I don’t know, I can’t see… see… ” and he felt around like a blind boy imitating a blind man lost in the confines of his own darkened theater. “I’ll read to you,” Hannah said. And she led him close to the wall, beneath a slit of window against the ground. And they sat side by side, their backs pressed against the stone of the wall. Hannah flipped pages and read the words aloud. And with a final breath upon the final page, she read: THE END – AND THE MISSILES CAME STREAKING ACROSS THE SKY MAKING THE END A SARCASTIC REALITY.
Hannah stared at the paper turkey pressed against her mirror The dust was falling from her hair The dried blood flaked from her mouth Her once pretty dress torn worse and soiled now She walked out into the hallway Dimly lit and smoky She turned the corner Entered the dining room Saw the pillars of stone bones propped in their chairs Bony fingers clutching the golden goblets of blood A hole in the window Operating a view to the burning scene The head of the blind boy spun like a record amongst the claws of the mangrove cathedrals floating through the world She touched her mouth to feel her breath The eye of the needle had been fed She was alive but the world was dead.
I was lying in a bed and staring at the ceiling, and I was thinking about all the packages of shredded cheese that were accumulating in the refrigerator due to my inability to make a proper check of things before going off to the grocery store. It distressed me greatly and I knew that I had to use them in accordance with their expiration dates or it was possible that some would need to go to the trash barrel. That’s a thought I couldn’t comfortably digest because I am one who hates wastefulness. I was racing the clock of life.
That’s when I looked about the room and noticed there wasn’t an actual clock anywhere. I had no idea what time it was. I looked toward the windows that lined the far side of the room. There was sunlight and blue sky beyond the straight, black vertical lines evenly spaced there. Those were the metal bars designed to keep my madness locked inside so as not to damage the already damaged world.
The walls of the room where I was being kept were a sickly yellowish orange color. Perhaps more akin to the color of a bleached peach. On one of the walls was a large painting of a maniacal-looking man holding a moldy orange in each of his hands. He had a wild and devious grin on his face and his hair was catastrophic, as if he had just stepped into the frame from an earth-shattering windstorm. I must confess; however, the colors went well with the room but the image itself was highly disturbing to me.
I looked up at the ceiling again and that’s when I noticed the pharaohs depicted upon it resembled what could only be described as beings from another world. It was truly unmistakable—the shapes of them, the odd colors of their various skins, their language, their beliefs. It all made sense to me, but then again, perhaps that is why I was here… Because it made no sense to anyone else. I blame the arrogant Earthlings for my captivity.
And recently it has come to me in dreams and half awareness these thoughts: Why are the space aliens visiting us? What are they doing up there? My theory is that they are preparing the people of the world to be taken off the planet. It would be a mighty undertaking by them I imagine… To lift billions of people off the Earth and move them somewhere else. Perhaps they are our true religious saviors, and we are blind to it because we are praying to statues and bearded wizards in the sky. Perhaps the spacemen are the true ones setting up a place for us in the heavens. They are God and the angels.
They look down upon us and see our planet cannot sustain itself. We are destroying it more and more every single day. The mad people ignore the destruction of the environment for that is no real concern to them—for they prefer to hate each other and burn plastic dolls in frivolous, infantile protest.
Perhaps instead of preparing for some war with the aliens via the ridiculous notion of a Space Force, instead of human beings continually being focused on destruction and killing, we should be embracing the presence of these otherworldly beings, welcoming them, preparing ourselves for the final journey to the stars, the resurrection of humanity, the true ascension to the realm of our roots.
Perhaps these extraterrestrials are going through a filtering process with their visitations… What do they do with all the fucking morons? What do they do with all the hateful ambassadors of religion? The bigots, the liars, the frauds, the murderers, the thieves, the utterly ignorant? Let’s leave them behind to burn with the planet they neglected. There is your true judgement day. There is your true rapture. Don’t miss the mothership. Ye mouth this new mantra.
There came a light knocking on the door and then it opened and in came Dr. Milkman. He was dressed in all white as usual. Even his rubber gloves and shoes were white. He was bathed in pure milk, a white-sheeted entity. He wore studious glasses and was losing his hair but styled it as if he just didn’t care what it looked like anymore. His skin was pale. Dr. Milkman held some sort of chart, and he went to the complicated looking machines around me. He checked various screens and connections, pushed some buttons, turned some knobs. He scribbled something on his chart with a silver pen.
Then he spoke to me without even looking at me. “How are you feeling today?”
“I’m a bit worried about something.”
His eyes moved from his chart to my face. He was surprisingly interested. “Oh. What’s that?”
“I’m afraid I bought packages of shredded cheese when I already had shredded cheese in the refrigerator, unopened. So, now I have all this shredded cheese and I feel pressured to use it before it expires. I don’t want to have to throw any of it out. Wasting food is devastating to me. The more I think about it, the more upset I get. I’m feeling very anxious… I feel I need to make a casserole or something, like, right now.”
Dr. Milkman uncharacteristically smiled as he wrote on the chart with his silver pen.
“What are you writing down?”
“Observations,” he answered.
“Do you think this is funny?”
“No. Not at all.”
“Because I’m being serious about all that cheese. Can you give me something? I feel like I’m about to crawl out of my skin.”
Dr. Milkman sighed and placed a reassuring hand on my leg through the white blanket. “Cheese should be the least of your concerns in this world. You’re not well, and so you should focus on getting better, not on an abundance of cheese. The Earth will still spin, and time will march on regardless. I’ll have the nurse bring you a mild sedative.”
“Mild? I don’t need something mild. I need something to make me forget that I exist.”
The doctor’s face turned serious. “You don’t want to exist?”
I looked up at the green-skinned pharaohs for some proper guidance from among the ceiling and the stars. “Sometimes. Isn’t that normal?”
“Not always.”
My focus purposely shifted. “Can I ask you something?”
“Absolutely.”
I motioned with my head. “What’s with the crazy painting of the guy holding the moldy oranges?”
The doctor turned to follow my gaze. “Do you like it?”
“No. It’s odd. And it seems out of place. Don’t the people who run this facility realize a painting like that could be detrimental to a person’s state of mind? We’re already fragile and disturbed. Why not hang a painting of a lighthouse or a peaceful mountain or a glittering spaceship in the sky?”
“No, no. A lighthouse is no good. Lighthouses are creepy. They are spires of loneliness, hollow horns, cold and dark. And mountains? People fall off mountains and die all the time. The man with the oranges is thought-provoking.” Dr. Milkman tapped at his mussed head with a finger. “A painting like that greases the mind. A painting like that is good for you.”
“I have to disagree.”
“And what’s this about glittering spaceships? Have you seen something?”
I gently clawed at my bearded face as I considered what to reveal. “I suppose I’ve been preoccupied with the end of the world. I’ve decided that the extraterrestrials may be our only hope.”
“You’re a believer in UFOs then?” the doctor asked.
“I am. I’ve seen them myself… Five red jewels in the sky above the desert in the blazing American Southwest.”
“That’s quite an extreme division of thought.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, first you were terribly concerned about packages of shredded cheese… And now it’s about aliens and the end of the world.”
“My mind is a broad spectrum. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”
The doctor smiled. “We’re working on it.” He adjusted his glasses and made a move for the door. “It would be good for you to get out of this room occasionally, to be social with the other patients. I highly encourage it.”
I moved my head to look at him. “I don’t care for people much,” I told him. “They’re generally a grave disappointment.”
“Not everyone is a terrible person. Maybe give someone a chance.”
He slipped out the door and I was alone again. I threw my blanket back and crawled out of the bed. My muscles felt stiff. I stretched and walked toward the bank of windows. I grasped the metal bars and looked out. The landscape was rugged and felt African. The dunes of sand were a rusty orange color and those high, shape-shifting mounds receded for miles from the edge of a very dark blue sea. I could smell the salty air. I saw miniature people slowly walking along the shore and I envied their freedom. I tried to bend the bars apart, but it was useless. I should have known that. There must be some other way to escape, I thought.
I went to the door and out into the dimly lit hallway. I scuttled along the shining tile and was soon swallowed up by the smells and the moans and often the screams. I heard the television loudly playing in the dayroom and stood outside looking in. There was a small group of other patients gathered around watching the horrible news. A young woman turned her head and looked at me in a crazy way. Then she quickly looked away as if I was some terrible being.
I walked the hallways until I could take no more and then went back to my room and waited for my dinner to arrive. I ate and then rested until darkness began to descend. I went back to the windows and looked out. There the universe began to come to life against a bruise-colored backdrop, the hollow moon a burgeoning beacon. I felt their presence on the dark side. I felt their presence in the fluttering orbs of gold and green. I suddenly and unexplainably turned to look at the painting of the maniacal man with the oranges. For some reason he brightened in the growing darkness. I stepped closer and looked into his crazy eyes. They were now sockets filled with swirling stars and then I heard him very clearly speak in a warbled, mechanical voice. He said, “Come inside. Come inside.”
At first, I stepped back, but then I reached forward with my hand, and without any resistance it went right into the canvas and through it. I quickly retracted it, and it was covered in wet paint and space dust, a mingling dripping of stars and the colors in the strange portrait.
The voice came again. “Reach in a little further, and then further still. Come all the way through and the true Heaven will find you.”
I steadied myself with my hands on the bottom edge of the frame and pushed my head through. There was a calming wind, a rush of colors and spirals and primordial visages. I took a deep breath and there was no fear.
“All the way to the end,” the voice said. “We are waiting.”
I leapt forward into the portal with all my strength. A sudden soft dark and quiet met me on the other side. I looked up and the universe was there in all its expanding strength and perfection. I turned to look back through the portal and it was now like a clear window, and through it I saw my former room of captivity completely void of me.
I saw Dr. Milkman suddenly rush into the room and frantically search for me. He went to the windows and looked down. Then he turned and came to what was the maniacal painting for him, the window for me. He tried to peer through it as if he knew, but he could not see me. He was speaking but I couldn’t understand the words. His language was now suddenly unimaginable to me. I stepped away and turned. The ship there was lit up like Las Vegas, yet meditative like a monk. I moved toward the light, the welcoming light we all crave at the end, and I stepped aboard the shimmering cloud and into this gesture of graceful, everlasting ascension.
CEREAL AFTER SEX 