• The Infinity of Gilligan, Godzilla, and Gruyere

    Infinity.

    One million beings ring the rings of Saturn while one million more stands in the stuffy queue for a chance to eat mediocre breakfast. And still one million trillion more stands in line with their exhaustible consumables, and I sense a vagina in the wind, an overly impatient man is holding a fuselage of Pick-Up-Sticks and chewing watermelon gum and one must wonder if he has a gun beneath that long rubber coat. On the other side of town, a beautiful woman fills her belly with a ham and gruyere omelet before breaking ferocious wind in a disheveled but crowded Target store. People run as if Godzilla were attacking. All is laughing gas madness as she denies it to the judge who deems it off-handed assault. She gets 43 years in the penitentiary and a lifetime supply of Ivory soap for her crack.

    A man sits on an uncomfortable bench on Dillon Beach Road waiting for a bus that will never come. He reads a glossy Hollywood magazine. The pages flap in the sea-salt air. He’s wearing a Gilligan hat and suddenly becomes hungry for sausage and coconut. He wonders how the Professor gets so much action. Then he realizes it’s easy. The Professor is so much better because he himself is so much worse. No woman wants a Gilligan. He’ll never be able to compete in the game of love and therefore will die alone. They’ll roll him up in some sailing fabric and stick him in a cave. The Skipper stands in front of a mirror in his bamboo and grass hut and practices his imitation of Oliver Hardy. Then he starts to cry when he realizes his “little buddy” is gone forever. He can never be happy, not ever.

    What else? What else?

    The blades of a helicopter chop at the wind. Monster Magnet is playing the song Space Lord as they ride a green comet around the planet. It’s an unfruitful war and pirate eye patches and Wilford Brimley talking about oatmeal kind of day in the universe. Karl Childers from Sling Blade is now the man in the moon, and he keeps talking about biscuits and a book about Christmas… Mmmm hmmm. Nothing seems normal. There is no normal.

    I know about the universe. But just exactly where is the universe? When I go outside to pee off the edge of the porch, I enjoy looking up at the sky, the stars, the planets, the satellites I think are UFOs. And yes, I always wonder, just where is the universe? What is outside the universe? It’s such an incomprehensible question. There is the unfathomable vastness of the universe, but then there must be more, and then even more… It’s infinity at its finest. It just goes on and on and on and on… And if there is infinity that carries on forever in front of us, then there must be anti-infinity that trails forever behind us. Do the two infinities ever meet up? And what if they did? Or what if they do? Maybe it’s all just an endless loop stuck on PLAY. But who pushed the button and now refuses to release it?



  • The Tepid Hemorrhage


    I am an anonymous donor
    spreading my seed of grief across the world
    and I might as well be blind
    for all I see is black,
    the rubber room menace
    rotating on some wobbly wheel
    and my gifts have all been opened by other people
    and I sit and watch in a pile of gold paper
    remembering the uncle who shot himself
    the cousin who shot himself
    the brother, who someday may shoot himself
    And all the bleeds will flow like thick wine
    and pool into an ocean
    where God Neptune will pierce me with a sharpened shovel
    and all the angels will laugh at God’s biggest mistake.

    And this all a malenky bit sad, isn’t it?
    But what is joy without sadness?
    It does not exist.
    What is love without loneliness?
    The deeper the isolation
    the brighter the kiss …
    but still,
    time stretches out like a river
    vastly flowing over the rocks and the limbs
    crushing flowers with a wet fist,
    numbing hot legs braving a dive
    and where will I be tomorrow?
    In a treehouse with a shotgun
    or in a bar with 11 empty shot glasses before me
    or on a dancefloor with a whore
    or alone in felt-like desolation
    sipping at the tears in my wrist
    or clapping for the might of the clouds
    or then again
    nothing at all.
    Bear with me bears of the forest
    for I cannot get a grip on yesterday
    or tomorrow
    or even right now
    stone sober and burning
    and while someone is making wishes
    I am losing my mind
    Another red
    another notch in the bed
    another twist of cold morality,
    but then,
    things could always be worse
    and so, I’m not positive,
    I don’t need to be today
    I am bleak and writhing in the fuel
    the dirty fuel casting spells of the tepid hemorrhage
    and I ache relentlessly
    for my heart is an inferno
    download me
    into the electric sea
    and you will see
    who I am meant to be.

    I met Edward Abbey at the sand dunes,
    but he was already blown away
    I met Miller at a French cafe,
    but he was already blown away
    I met Kerouac on a railroad car,
    but he was already blown away
    and I met me at yet another airport,
    but I was already blown away.
    The bleed pile of my grace
    is wiped away with a red rag
    and the doctors can’t patch me together anymore
    so many holes have I,
    so many disturbing dreams
    and polarized realities,
    my only sanctuary is to drown in paper and words
    pictures and photographs
    and electric men pumping bullets into nameless
    enemies.
    Today has been fried bologna on burnt toast,
    water and pills,
    ashes on my eyes
    and the sound of her bellowing in the background
    and the weird upstairs guy snoring through the ceiling.
    What new ache will tomorrow bring?
    What will I be forced to swallow
    into the hollow grave of my soul?



  • Tomah Graph

    Tomah


    Censor me still-life
    take my Tomah Graph
    swimming in the Hollywood Holiday Inn pool
    now drowning in a pool of my own
    painful frustrations and jitters
    uninvited guests in the gray of night
    this brain hurts like cinema for Alex
    have another stick of chewing gum
    another stick of dynamite to ease the grief
    you so gallantly feel at this moment
    these white office lights bleaching me pale
    invading my blood and neuropathic welly wells
    the gondolas paddle through my veins of Venice
    churning up all the nicotine clots and bad vibes
    where is my slice of American apple pie
    I must of dropped it in Vietnam
    when the grenade went off and all was nonsense


    Cradling three bags of light in my coat pockets
    as I walked along
    the Lake Marion Passage Trail some 30 years later
    I noticed the sky was still the same deep blue
    the leaves of the trees still fell in perfect rhythm
    every year
    the dissection of Autumn
    Saroyan and Whitman staring down
    Jack passed out in a beached aluminum fishing boat
    the narrow, quiet roads lined with the dangling limbs of tall, skinny trees
    the Spanish moss hanging there like the fallen locks of a stoned Medusa
    the quiet so soothing, the calm so intoxicating, the wet so disheartening
    but a woodsy wander it shall be
    in the rural confines, gloriously gorgeous confines, of the southern Carolina place

    Until… Put my fist through the timber lodge paneling
    the boiling inside again
    asking for it again
    just asking for it again, the other side of the coin.


  • Ghost Mints

    Ghost


    Winter’s weight and dust galore
    Eyes heavy in the pain of dawn
    cheekbones ache
    whiskey madness takes its toll
    on an ever-building mint bridge to heaven, scars, delusions
    I’d be cutting the lawn
    if there were a lawn to cut
    I’d be drinking soda drops and pops
    if I wasn’t a ghost
    such a ghost
    walking through walls
    wading in the stalls
    I might be painting the fence
    if there were a fence to paint,
    the barricade is metal, so rusted
    stained with the sweats
    of dashing immigrants
    this mind so invaded
    where are you lumber lady now?
    on the seven seas forgetting
    fornicating the sailor boys
    as I drown in cold crab legs
    you flag hags
    put your pink slippers away
    and start another war
    be careful
    you kings of New Hampshire,
    you Queens of Albuquerque
    do be careful.



  • King of Dropolis

    King



    An anguished chill hurts the night king
    the moans of traffic dissect the interstate
    lonely bellows of travelers of midnight passage
    and me, well me
    I don’t really even know where I am, who I am, why I am
    some windy, flattened palace
    of stone and glass and flickering neon
    and I a statue filled with blood and pain
    rolling through my nightmares in dirty sheets
    waking to another day of heat and wind
    I crawled away, from one hole to the next
    this one deeper and meaner
    my crazed mind begging for bandages
    as I shake and crash my car in the parking lot
    of a miniature KFC
    this fast-food world
    these strips of seductive shopping
    we work, work, work
    to buy, buy, buy
    the oppressed
    chained to numbing desks
    chained to numbing machines and boredom
    the boredom of it all
    bored out of my skull
    and being human is slowly, no quickly
    losing its meaning
    in this Dropolis
    and I shudder at the thought
    of bringing breath to dawn
    a heart attack, no stroke
    on the precipice
    of another day of hopeless struggle
    and I wonder
    what is a smile? what is laughter?



  • The Gravy Canoe of Wild Wyoming – 2

    Entering Wyoming sign.

    The dining of the great meal took place casually in chairs and on a soft sofa in the living room at the home of Veronica Eyes in Berlin, Wyoming. Plates and beverages rested on a coffee table; some people stood while they ate and drank. There was the murmur of blended conversations. There was light laughing.

    Steel Brandenburg III sat in a chair in a corner beneath a tall reading lamp with a red velvet shade. He was quiet. He was alone among the people. He watched the others eat, trying to decipher if they liked the store-bought gravy. He braced himself for bitter reactions. Everyone acted as if he wasn’t even there as he raised fork to mouth repetitively. He was a ghost, someone looking in from the other side. He had to break the barrier.

    “Are you all enjoying the gravy!?” Steel suddenly blurted out. The others stopped talking for a moment and looked at him. One guy named Craig, who was a real jerk, said, “What’s with the gravy, man? Why are you always about the gravy?”

    Steel cleared his throat and looked around at everyone as they awaited his answer. “I… I just want everyone to get the most out of their meal. Gravy’s wonderful for that. It adds flavor and richness to our food.”

    Craig the jerk busted out laughing. The others followed suit, even Veronica Eyes.

    “Whaaat!?” Craig said with a disbelieving laugh. “That’s like the gayest thing I ever heard anyone say.”

    He moved closer to Steel and looked down at him. Craig Nusmerg was a tall buffoon with an odd-shaped body, something resembling a bosc pear. People say the heavy drinking has caused his body to morph and turn him into the strange being he now was.

    Craig Nusmerg had been a high school basketball star and nothing much more since. He worked the presses of the local newspaper for the last ten years and always smelled of ink and grease. He was divorced and lived alone in a rectangular can at the local trailer park. Now he was towering over Steel like an over-ripened Godzilla.

    Steel looked up at him and shrugged his shoulders. “Sorry. That’s how I feel.”

    “Why are you here anyways?” Craig wanted to know. “Nobody gives two shits about the stupid gravy.”

    Steel glared at him. “That’s not true. I’m sure plenty of people here are enjoying the gravy.”

    Craig scoffed and shook his head. His eyes then caught the white gravy boat sitting on the coffee table and he went to pick it up. “You like gravy so much,” Craig said to Steel as he carried it toward him, “Here you go. Have some gravy.” He tipped the gravy boat, and a thick stream of warm brown gravy came pouring out right on top of Steel’s head. Craig kept pouring and pouring, snickering with delight, until the entire gravy boat was empty. Steel just sat there and let him do it. He let him do it all the way. He just stayed in the chair as the gravy dripped from his hair, down his face, and into his lap.

    “God damn it, Craig!” Veronica cried out. “You got gravy all over my favorite chair!”

    Craig just laughed, went to grab more beer from the refrigerator, and slipped out onto the back patio.

    Veronica ran to get some towels. When she got back, she started mopping up as much of the gravy as she could. She handed a towel to Steel. “You better wipe your face off,” she said. “You look like some horrible creature.”

    “Do you think I could use your shower,” Steel asked her with gravy spattering out of his mouth as he spoke.

    Veronica was aghast by such a request. “My shower? Oh, no. No, no, no. Let’s just get you out into the yard and hose you off.”


    Veronica led Steel out the front of the house and had him stand in the small yard of grass. She went to the water spigot and cranked it on as she leveled the hose. She aimed the nozzle at Steel and began to spray him off. “Close your eyes and your mouth, Steel,” she told him as she worked. “I don’t want to rupture your pupils or break your teeth.” But then again, maybe she did.

    It wasn’t long before the real Steel emerged from beneath the slick of gravy. She had him turn around and hold his arms out to his sides. “That’s good,” she said. “I need to get you nice and clean before we send you home.”

    “Home?” Steel asked without turning to look at her. “You want me to go home? Why don’t you send that fuck-off Craig Nusmerg home? He’s the jerk. He’s the one who started this whole thing.”

    Veronica sighed as she sprayed. “You weren’t even supposed to be here.”

    “Right. You lied to me. Why did you lie to me?”

    “Because I just knew something weird like this would happen. Weird things always happen when you’re around, Steel. You’re a weird magnet. You’re… You’re just completely weird. I didn’t want you ruining my party.”

    Steel turned and stepped back from the spray of water. “Sure. Sure. I get it. Sorry to trouble you.” He walked off, soaking wet, and moved down the street toward where his pickup was parked. He got in it and sped off.


    The moon was full and bright, and the landscape illuminated. Steel Brandenburg III drove his white pickup like a cowboy even though he was nothing like a cowboy. He went out to a place called Silver Lake and parked within the bones of the trees near the shore. That same moon that had chased him from the city was still there in the sky, looking down, watching him.

    He got out of the truck and went closer to the water. It looked like a mirror with the way the light was shining down on it. He craned his neck upward to look at the ivory disk in the sky and then he just started to scream like an animal. He screamed and screamed until his throat hurt. A herd of deer shuddered through the surrounding brush. He fell to his knees and bowed his head in irreverent prayer, mocking a God who never saw him or cared for him.

    He got back up and stumbled to the truck to retrieve his phone. He pressed the button for Veronica Eyes. He breathed as he waited.

    “Hello? What is it, Steel? Why are you calling?”

    “I just wanted to know if you have ever heard of a symbolic revenge tale?”

    “What? What are you talking about?”

    “You should be aware that the silly little actions of you and your friends could have serious consequences.”

    “What? Have you been drinking? Where are you?”

    “Stop asking me questions, Veronica. Just stop. But be prepared.” He ended the call. He looked around at the wilds. The treetops suddenly bent in a gust of wind. Something snapped and fell nearby.

    TO BE CONTINUED


    Visit cerealaftersex.com for the previous part of this story… And many more strange tales.


  • Neverland

    Glowing fountain in Neverland.


    When you want to be someone
    but no one knows who you really are
    when you’re living in the worm
    that lives in your own belly
    drinking dirt
    and eating poison wine
    crying to live
    laughing to die
    and everything inside
    vanishes
    and you feel like
    you’re living in a Neverland
    with a never hat
    and a never coat
    and you’ve spent every dime you ever had
    wasting time strolling on the sun
    with a hip pocket full of memories
    sprinkling them on the lava like seed
    counting all your bad deeds
    all the dirty visions you’ve seen
    all the air you’ve breathed
    that was never meant for you or me
    and you want God to do some CPR
    but you haven’t been filling his golden plate
    He looks down on you with pity and shame
    rips the angel from your veins
    deserting you in a Neverland
    wasting away
    like a dead urchin on the road
    as jets fly by overhead
    pissing fuel and exhaust
    to clog it all up
    crawl into the can man
    drink your way to the cave
    and follow that light to the other end
    to that great big grin
    and a candy-apple red Neverland.



  • The Gravy Canoe of Wild Wyoming – 1

    Wyoming gravy.

    In the Wyoming wilds of tumbling grief, out beyond the city of no fame or purpose, just broken lives in boxes and a withering menagerie of amenities, the man in the white truck parked on a lonely hill would drink golden juice and look out upon the vast emptiness of his kingdom.

    He would sit there nearly all day, the windows down, the western wind rolling in, the radio weeping some sad song about love and life and all the loss ever involved. He would sigh. He would drive back to town a wounded man.

    He lived in an overly expensive apartment that was really a dump. The world takes advantage when it can. He got home in the late afternoon to take a shower. He needed to make gravy for a dinner party with the clowns. Brown gravy. Smooth gravy. Gravy like a silently still and unmuddied lake in a faraway place in the galactic Italian Dolomites.

    The party was to be held at the home of the mysterious Veronica Eyes. She had eyes that didn’t look human. They were orange, almost. He wondered what she thought of him. He was not much for speaking clearly, but he was planning to discuss noise at the library with everyone and how much he hated it and was going to lodge a formal complaint with the library board of trustees. He’d try to throw in a joke or two if he could.

    Fascinating enough? he wondered. He hoped the gravy would be a big hit as well. His nervous condition negated most friendships. He was known as Steel because he was cold and heartless… And the fact that his name was in fact Steel. Steel Brandenburg III. He was from Utica, NY and somehow ended up in the barren den of loneliness in Wyoming. Berlin, Wyoming is what the nowhere and isolated town was called. The population was 8,888 people and most of them hated life or people or both. The town sat in a narrow valley. High sandy rock cliffs the color of spice cake bordered the northern edge. An interstate bordered the southern side. Further south were the wildlands and the hills and the cold waters, places where he would play and meditate and recharge his cellophane heart.


    Steel stirred the bubbling gravy in the pot to keep it smooth. He bent his head down to take a smell of it and his glasses slipped off and fell into the pot.

    “Holy hell mother of piss!” he yelled out loud, loud enough to shake the windows and walls and some of the limbs in a tree that grew tall and crooked outside his second-story apartment. He took the pot by the handle and tossed it. It hit a wall, splattered, made a mess, his head confessed the short fuse of his dynamite soul.

    He paused to catch his breath, regain some sense of exposure. He almost cried, then he laughed. His cell phone rang, and he trembled as he answered.

    “Hello?”

    “Hi Steel, it’s Veronica.”

    “Yes. What can I do for you?”

    “I was wondering if you were still planning on bringing that yummy brown gravy to the dinner party.”

    “Uh, well…”

    “I’m making mashed potatoes and thought how wonderful it would be for people to have gravy with them. It would be ever so delicious.”

    Steel looked across the apartment to where the upturned pot rested in the carpet beneath a Picasso wall of gravy in liquid motion. “Oh. I’m afraid I’ve had a bit of an accident in my kitchen. I’ve lost the gravy. I mean, I didn’t lose it… It’s just not going to happen. I’m sorry.”

    Veronica’s pause indicated disappointment. “Oh. That’s too bad. I was really looking forward to it.”

    “I’m sure you were… If you’d like, I could pick up a jar or two of gravy at the store on my way over?”

    “Gravy from a jar?”

    “Sure. It’s not as good as my scratch work, but it will do in a pinch.”

    She didn’t answer him at first because she was whispering to someone in the background, something about gravy, he thought. “You know what, Steel… I’m suddenly not feeling very well and I think I have to cancel the party.”

    “Cancel the party?”

    “Yes.”

    “But I was really looking forward to it and seeing you and…”

    Veronica faked a cough, groaned a little. “I’m sorry. Maybe another time.” She suddenly ended the call and was gone, lost in the vibrations of Berlin, Wyoming airwaves.

    “Huh?” Steel thought out loud. “She’s lying. She must be lying. Of course, she’s lying.”


    Steel bent down with a bucket and a sponge for the arduous task of cleaning gravy out of the carpet and from the wall. He washed the pot and put it back into a cabinet. He rinsed his glasses off and put them back on. They hadn’t been damaged, thank God. The world was clear again. People hated him. He knew it. Veronica had never wanted him at the party in the first place. Why didn’t she just say so, he thought. Why put him through the agony of more social disgrace and disappointment. But then he had an idea. He was going to go to the party after all. He was going to call her out on her lie, her Billy goat bluff.

    He drove to the one and only grocery store in town. He plucked two jars of brown gravy from the shelf and then went to stand in the long, agonizingly slow checkout lane. “One cashier again,” Steel muttered out loud. Some people turned to look at him.

    When it came his turn, he carefully set the two jars of gravy down on the black belt that moved the groceries forward so the cahier could scan them. It was dirty. It was wet with milk in some places. “Ugh. Don’t you guys ever clean this thing off?” Steel said as he glared at the cashier, an older woman with fuzzy orange hair and a very pale face. She was smacking gum.

    “Just two jars of gravy?” she asked with a gravelly voice, a voice the victim of repetitive cigarette assault. She ignored his complaint.

    “Yeah, two jars of gravy… But what about the belt? You didn’t give me a satisfactory reply. You don’t seem very concerned about it at all.”

    She rolled her eyes at him.

    “I’m serious,” Steel plodded on. “I don’t want to set my groceries down on this gross thing,” he said. He turned to look at the people behind him in line. “I’m sure no one does.”

    The cashier sighed. She hated her job. She hated dealing with jerks like Steel Brandenburg III. She wanted to stab him. She retrieved a spray bottle of blue cleaner from some hidden space below. She reached somewhere else for a couple of sheets of paper towels. “Can you pick the jars up please,” she said to Steel. He picked them up. She sprayed the belt down with the cleaner and wiped it up with the paper towels. “Better?”

    “Yes,” Steel said with a smile as he put the jars of gravy back down on the belt. “Thank you. I’d suggest you do that after every customer.”

    She gave him a dirty look. She ran the jars of gravy over the scanner and bagged them. “$5.18.”

    Steel inserted his bank card into the pay pad and waited. He pressed some numbers. “You know, this thing could use some cleaning, too. Ugh. Makes my stomach turn thinking of all the nasty fingers touching this thing.” Once his card was approved he removed it and filed it back into its proper place in his brown wallet. He reached for his bag. “Thanks,” he said to her, and out the doors he went.


    Veronica Eyes lived in a nothing fancy house in a nothing fancy neighborhood on the southwest side of Berlin, Wyoming. The houses were small, basic, boring mostly. They were yellow, baby blue, dirty white.

    Steel stopped his white pickup at the end of the block and looked up the street. There was a pile of cars in front of her house. “I knew it,” he said out loud. “She’s a liar and a phony.”

    He parked the truck out of view of the front windows and went to the door. He heard laughing and talking beyond it. He rang the doorbell and waited. Someone was coming to answer. Veronica had a look of shock on her face when she saw him there. “Steel…” she nervously squeaked. “What are you doing?”

    He grinned at her. She looked at the grocery bag he was holding. “I knew you were pulling my leg about being sick, so I came to the party after all. Nice trick. You almost got me.” He laughed oddly and peered over her shoulder. “Can I come in?”

    Veronica reluctantly pulled the door wider. The other guests got quiet when they turned to look at him with surprised wonder.

    Steel raised the grocery bag in the air. “Hi everyone! No need to fear. I brought gravy!”

    TO BE CONTINUED


  • The Crowns of Pluto (4.)

    Crowns of Pluto.

    The great garden hummed from the heart of the machines that gave it life. It was the crowning achievement of our outpost Station Kronos Kuiper, three varied places of warmth and green and the colors of all the gardens back on Earth combined — the Crowns of Pluto.

    It was a very large place of glass and domes and shining gray walls slick with beads of circulated water in which the vines swam upward upon. A pathway of turquoise and gold brick wound up and down and all around and you could follow it deep into the garden or stay close to a place to heal one’s space soul. The bridges were bowed and held one above the various small streams of perfect blue because of the enzymes — unsoiled ocean water blue.

    The trees were immense and varied, the works of genius minds and artists, somehow altered by chemical gravity to bloom quickly like a porcelain doll with animal organs. They had thick trunks and veins that pumped the energy and gave us breath. Artificial birds hop from limb to limb, mechanical insects buzz, computerized children play in the open spaces of yellow green and where the tumbling towers jut up toward outer space on wings of imagination. Their candied eyes rotate with innocent hope.

    And now it is all mine to enjoy, to wallow in, to escape to. The man-made nature speaks to me as it bubbles in liquid light of blue and mellow orange sun. I can look up to the thick, protective glass domes and see night and all its stars at the same time I can walk beneath the chemical rainbows and hydroponic sun beams.

    I wonder at times if it is the garden of good and evil versus the heartless psychology of man as I sit on a bench alone and look out at it all, breathe it in. They scented the air with lilac and linen and ocean water and man’s own pollution, too. Pollution on Pluto cannot breathe.

    The Paper People hang like bats up high. I can sense one eye opening at first in wonder of what my visit today or any other day means. Then like dominoes falling upon each other, all their other eyes open and their judgement cascades like an Earthly waterfall.

    “How did you get in here!?” I yelled up to the colony. “The doors are not meant for you. Only me.”

    There was a shrill, haunting call like nothing I have ever heard. It was that of a pained, frightened beast searching for mercy at the same time it was pouncing to kill. It was nothing like the usual song they sang. Then the young woman from the Italian villa was sitting right beside me. She had her head turned and was looking straight into my eyes with those emerald pupils, but they did not move, they did not exhibit life or heart, only disappointment in the tragedy I had bequeathed her.

    It was a jolt to my system, and I leapt up off the bench. Her empty eyes followed me. I wanted to run, but like in a dream I couldn’t, my feet were locked in place. But where was I to run? The complex, the station itself where I now existed in this outer world place, it was large, winding, a mystical mystery created by many before me. Perhaps I was ill prepared to live here after all.

    But here I was alone, so I thought. The reproduction did not work. We don’t know why. They never figured it out, but some blamed the atmosphere or lack of it, even though we had created our own. Some blamed the biology of our physical systems and the transformation that occurred. I never fully understood it. Physical love existed, not for me, but for others, but the seeds of a new life never took hold as they should have. The ones once with me never figured it out. I think it was something that they never thought would happen. We were unprepared for our own extinction. But is that any different from how we lived on any world or place and time? I don’t know.


    But life has come here after all. Life in the forms of phantoms and ghosts or perhaps just the material products of my own mind, my own dreams and imagination. Like I have said before, maybe I am going mad and none of this is real. Maybe I am still asleep and travelling. Maybe I have yet to wake up.

    But there the girl from the Italian villa of my memories was, seemingly in soul and flesh, breathing but blind, her arms outstretched and reaching for me. Did she want to embrace and soothe my guilt, or was she ready to strangle me?

    I was finally able to pull my feet from the muck of a dream and I got away from her. I ran through the gardens, the leafy heartbeats all around me, the fake blue sky and its phosphorous clouds of virgin cream mixed up in it like beautiful batter. I made my way for the large arched opening in the far high wall. I looked up at the slithering vines of botanical life, thin columns of Jack’s beanstalks on their way to the heavens and a golden goose and a wicked giant.

    I went through the archway and into the artificial city. Cinderella City they called it. A representation of one at least. It was built for psychological purposes. Each sector was assigned a color and everything in it fell under that color — blue, red, gold, green. The space offered us a piece of home, sanity, clarity, hope to tether ourselves to in case the fear got to be too much. And now the fear in me was too much. I could feel my nerves trembling beneath my skin. I looked back through to the other side of the archway. There was this Wizard of Oz glow about it. It was beautiful but empty. Neither the girl nor the Paper People had followed. I suppose they didn’t need to. All they had to do was wait for me, for I would always be here in one form or another.


    Author’s note: This is the fourth piece of this play-around project. Visit cerealaftersex.com to read the previous chapters. I hope to craft more of this story over time as an experiment in writing some science fiction, or something like that. Thanks for reading and supporting independent content creators who just want to do what they love to do.

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