A long, lonely highway leads to beautiful isolation
And good lonely, needed lonely
Apricot orchards wear mind caps
Black and white bat machines keep order with their sticks
The pumpkin on the wall asks what is he doing with his life
His answer draws tears, bullets, orange blood and seeds
I Love You notes lie scattered on an old wooden desk inside an old room with old windows where the ancient sun shines through like it has done so for decades. This is a different time in a very familiar voice. The bodies move in; the bodies move out. The sun stays the same, the moon is still white, stars fill the night sky. The city below grows larger. More lights, more noise, more people, more dirt.
Love notes astray in a distant western wind. Hands grasp hearts—in joyful surprise, in swoon, in shock, in death—Love notes wither and turn to dust.
Lonely, sleepy night now
Clock never stops at 13
Peppermint oil in the eye on a cloudless Sunday morning
Rows of chanting church people load their guns
The hate parade is about to commence
Prayer warriors stomp on the throats of the breathless, reckless, and wise
With windows and lights and broken dreams and cataclysmic days
Green and amber are the aching colors of another dark noc (night)
Round heavens bloodied with tar
Heroin tracks are stars
Red forests all alone
Black trunks and branches against a pale pink horizon
Motorized carts rolling overhead
Heaven is a shopping mall
You must have money to get in, to play the game of life
Then the mechanical beep beep beep when someone goes backward into a wall
Holiday maze mess head
Christmas in September
Halloween in July
That doesn’t click with the elves and the ghosts
Murmured nonsense ticks through my brain like numbers on a ticker tape:
Ticker tape was the earliest electrical dedicated financial communications medium, transmitting stock price information over telegraph lines, in use from around 1870 to 1970. It consisted of a paper strip that ran through a machine called a stock ticker, which printed abbreviated company names as alphabetic symbols followed by numeric stock transaction price and volume information. Source: Wikipedia
That’s the Internet for you. Is it true? I don’t know. Is anything true these days? What exactly is truth?
I don’t believe in the corporate news. They’re ghouls.
It’s manufactured bullshit. They feed us to control us. They brainwash us with fiction while we read fiction to escape the horrors of the real world. Horrors flooding America, the globe right now. We all need to escape to a better world…
I went to a bookstore in a little town on the coast of Maine. I was wearing a toboggan. (A toboggan hat is a type of knitted wool hat, often referred to as a beanie in many regions. In the southern United States, “toboggan” specifically refers to this warm winter headwear.) That’s what the AI machine says.
It’s black, my brain emissions keep it warm.
I was reading some Kerouac, and the words took me back, forward, present…
I am mentally exhausted and spiritually discouraged by this shit of being, of having to do what everybody wants me to do instead of just my old private life of poesies and novelies of yore.
~ Jack Kerouac
To an alley, a greasepaint store, a yellow funeral home
The bodies would come out at night and walk up and down the street looking for their homes
But they never find them
They have to crawl back in
Before the very first crack of dawn
In through the heavy, ornamental front door of the funeral parlor
Down the hidden staircase where the realities of death glisten with fluids
Silver tables, chains, tubes, instruments…
And they climb back into their $10,000 coffins to be covered with dirt forever
Harold jumped up and ran outside. The screen door slammed behind him as Bruce Springsteen music played from the clouds. The stars, hidden by the grunt of daylight, were there in the pointed universe. He made his way across the warm grass of the yard. He opened the gate on the white picket fence and stepped out onto the sidewalk. He looked both ways, and each way was the same—a long, straight and tree-lined street that was quiet. The homes were large. The trees were large, bushy like broccoli, and the air smelled like clean skin. Now he had to choose: Left to the lake or right toward the forbidden frosty forest burning foil green now in the late aspects of summer.
Harold chose the heart of the forest. He was scared but he forged forward. On the way, he tried to shake the image of his mother on the table with that awful Ted on top of her. He turned toward the curb and threw up in the street. When he looked up he saw an old glowing white woman standing in the picture window of a grandma house painted the color of marshmallow circus peanuts. Her hair was silvery gray, her expression demure and judgmental. Harold stared at her a long while. Then she suddenly smiled and held up a tray of cookies. She motioned with her head for young Harold to come to the door. For some reason his heart pounded. Then the old woman held up a glass of pure white milk. Her smile got even bigger, but it was unsettling. The boy wanted to run but his legs were like cement and it was like how it is when a dreamer tries to run in a dream.
That’s when the old lady stepped out onto the stoop and called for him. “Boy,” she said. “Come here boy. I have some wonderful treats for you. And I’m so lonely. Won’t you please come in and keep an old lady company for just a while?”
Harold turned his head side to side. The world suddenly seemed completely empty. A breeze made his hair dance. “Okay,” he said, and he walked toward the house and followed the old woman inside.
Her house smelled funny. Antiseptic. Surgery. It was overly neat and clean. There was old-time music playing. Music from a different era, dimension. He followed her into a room with large windows and old furniture.
“Have a seat and I’ll be right back,” the woman said as she put the tray and jug of milk down upon a low table in front of a flowery couch.
Young Harold sank into a cushion. He looked up and saw a clock on the wall, but it had an extra number: 13 where the 12 usually goes.
When she returned she was shockingly holding a large trapezoidal blade with a handle. “Do you like machetes?” she asked the boy. She whipped it through the air, and it sang a dead song. “I myself love machetes.” She flattened her feet to the floor and made a fighting stance. “Yee ha!” she cried out, and once again she whipped the blade through the air.
Harold was terrified and started to get up to leave.
“Wait!” the old woman cried out. “Where are you going?”
“I have to go home,” he answered. “My mother will be worried.”
The woman relaxed her stance and smiled at Harold. “No she won’t,” she said. “Your mother hates you. Sit back down and have some milk and cookies. And then maybe you can take a nap. I have a very comfortable bed right upstairs.” She pointed toward the ceiling with a crooked finger.
Harold looked at the machete flicking in her other hand. He sat back down. She set a gaze upon him with sparkling silver-blue eyes. “Enjoy now,” she said with a nod of her glowing head. “Eat as much as you want.”
Harold opened his eyes and saw a white ceiling. The room was too warm, but the bed was soft. He got up from the bed and went to the one window in the room and looked out. There, down in the front yard, the old woman was trimming bushes with her prized machete. She suddenly stopped and then turned her head to look up at Harold as if she sensed him there. The boy ducked away and went to the bedroom door to get out. It was locked from the outside. He pounded on the door. “Let me out of here!” he yelled. He went back to the window and looked out again. This time the old woman was no longer there.
Then there was the sound of unlocking and the door swung open. The old woman stepped in. She was sweaty from the late summer sun. The blade of her machete had green on it. “Don’t pound on the door,” she said. “You might break it. Just settle down and take it easy.”
“Why did you lock me in here?” Harold wanted to know.
“It’s for your own safety. The world out there is a very dangerous place for a young boy such as yourself.”
“I just want to go home.”
“Home? You have no home. Haven’t you heard?” She motioned toward a small radio sitting upon a small table. It’s all over the news. Your home burned down, and your mother and her lover died.”
“What? No! You’re lying. This is some sort of psychological torture.”
Once again she motioned to the radio. “Turn it on and listen.”
Harold did as she said. A voice came through and explained in horrifying detail how indeed his house did burn to the ground and that the woman who lived there and a strange man had been trapped and died inside.
Harold began to cry. “No,” he said. “It can’t be true.”
“Of course it’s true,” the old woman told him. “It’s a truth radio. Everything that comes out of it is the honest truth, regardless of how harsh it may be.”
Harold’s eyes went to the window. “I want to smash through that glass and jump,” Harold said. “I have nothing to live for now.”
The woman chuckled. “Funny how life can drastically change in a mere fraction of a second.”
By
Aaron Echoes August
My new book is now available for purchase: The Apocalypse Pipe. Available in both e-book ($2.99) and print ($14.99) editions! Thanks for reading and supporting independent writers.
Red toast and tequila in a dust storm on the far reaches of some blown out city in the desolate west. Liplock, Tejas. The land of dirt and death. Treeless scrapes and scars. Pitchforks, boredom. Hot houses and hay fires. HP butterheads play Roman soldiers. The sun is relentless. The decay is precious and accepted.
Knives talk beneath the shimmering sun. Blades flicker. Blood spatters in the sand. Droplets and rivulets of agony and guilt. Knees on buckled asphalt. Prayer hands play shotgun to the heavens. God is too scared to do anything. He lets his believers and the world burn. Where’s the love and mercy? Just a Dumpster fire parade. Men of faith butcher the brown-skinned and the alternative lovers. They behold a book they’ve never read. Have they read any book? Big fat guts and stupid hats and asses. Boisterous breasts and sour trailer sweat. Ignorant swastikas and dumbfounded religion. Dirty pools and hoarding. Disrespected flags flutter in the hot wind. Yellow teeth make a stupid grin at the polling place. Statues in stunning sun have bigger brains and know better.
Red toast at a western picnic table scratched with love hearts beneath a New Mexican baby blue sky and burning pinon in the air. Melodious flute people, paranormal pastors, congested congregants. A covered veranda with a concrete floor. Bolted benches. Prayer circles and circle jerks. Howling to a peyote moon. That hollow, green moon with the little blue men inside. A hippie death star, alien bases on the dark side. We’re being watched and laughed at. The universe thinks we’re nothing but a bunch of ignorant, selfish, hateful jerks. And they are right. The jerk store called, and they’re overstocked with humans. It’s getting late. Time to shut out the fractured world, the dead America. Time to dream of magical castles and Norway.
I have licorice guts. Seemingly endless balls of fire, balls of fortune telling. The osprey float. Warm coffee in the desert. 112 degrees out there today. I had to take an ice bath in a crystal tub. The doorbell rings, incessantly, at the most inappropriate time. Everyone wants to talk to the wonder man. The ringing changes to hard knocking. I hear, “Hello. Mr. Goldenfear!”
I’m very anti-social and impatient and this person at the door is really driving me bonks. I reluctantly get out of the tub and put on my luxurious navy-blue robe. I go to the door and yank it open. “What do you want!?”
The man there tips his fedora and smiles. “Name’s George Tulane. I’m with the Daily Times newspaper and I’d like to do an interview.”
“The Daily Times? I despise that rag. Please go away.” I start to close the door, but George Tulane sticks his foot out to block it. “Please Mr. Goldenfear. I won’t take too much of your time. The world wants to hear your story.”
“There was a dark menace over the supper club… and then the log splitter came to life, and soon there was a grand clustering of devils in the ballroom.”
“I’m afraid that doesn’t make sense.”
“You wanted a story? That’s your story… Senselessness. My senses are all screwed up, but not as badly as my emotions or mental state.”
“But, what exactly happened at the supper club?”
“Here you go… Senseless murder.”
“But what did you see?”
“I already told you. A dark menacing, a log splitter, the devils.”
“What about the log splitter?”
The devils put the heads of the patrons in it and split them open.”
“That’s horrible.”
“Of course it’s horrible. Violence and death are very horrible things.”
“What did you do?”
“I hadn’t finished my veal cutlet yet and so I was upset about that. I hesitated at first, but then I swung into action. I took out my Walther PP7 and shot at them.”
“Like James Bond?”
“Exactly like James Bond, minus the gratuitous sex with half-clothed cave women.”
The reporter scribbled feverishly. “Tell me more, Mr. Goldenfear.”
“I saw the evil bodies drop and the others scattered through veranda doors of glass and crystal. I called out to those bastards: ‘Someday, you’ll get what you deserve! In the end, we all get what we deserve.’”
“Do you really believe that?”
“Of course I do. Just like the Ministry of Bigotry and Hate. They’ll all get theirs in the end.”
“Do you have any hobbies, Mr. Goldenfear?”
“Hobbies? Well, I like to make my own candles. I believe in lighting my own path… But I don’t understand why you’re writing this article anyways. Nobody gives a damn about anything I do.”
“Because you’re a hero. Everyone loves a hero.”
“For about five minutes they do… Would you care for a bologna sandwich.”
“Oh. God no. Do you realize what bologna is?”
“Enlighten me.”
“It’s all the leftover bits and pieces of meat and whatever. They sweep up the killing floor and put all the gunk in a big metal barrel and mix it up. Then they squeeze it out into a circular shape and package it up and people actually eat it. Makes me want to spew.”
“So you like a good organic orgy?”
“Sir?”
“Never mind. That flew over your head like a flying saucer, like a piece of bologna.”
And now we must leave this place in order to come back around again…
The reporter named George Tulane sat in his car smoking a cigarette and looking at the odd home of one Mr. Goldenfear. “What a nut,” he said aloud to no one but himself. “I’ll just fill in the voids of this story with my imagination. The idiots in this town will never know the difference.” He didn’t care that it was unethical.
He cracked open a beer and took a long drink. He spoke Catalan. “Osca.” Which he believed meant good, but he had no actual proof or real understanding. His life was a mess.
George Tulane started his car and drove off. He was expected back at the office for a meeting but decided to get drunk instead. He went to the local grocery store and bought high-gravity beer. He took it out to his car, rolled down the windows, turned the radio up, and began to drink.
Soon, the parking lot all around him became a warm graveyard…
By
Aaron Echoes August
My new book is now available for purchase: The Apocalypse Pipe. Available in both e-book and print editions! Thanks for reading and supporting independent writers.
There’s the smell of something sweet coming from the kitchen. Corn dogs. Corn bread. Corn Flakes. Cornmeal. Corn on the cob. Corn chowder. Corn pie. Corn on the moon. Corn in space. Corn of the aliens.
It was a hot, burning day. One of those days that feels like one walked into a blast furnace at the moment of stepping outside. Hot like Georgia asphalt in July.
Weird little Harold was playing with corn on the sidewalk. His mother opened a can for him and dumped the corn into a bowl. “Go play outside,” she said, and she shook her head with disappointment behind his back as he walked toward the kitchen door and out to the walkway that ran from the house to the garage through the back yard.
Weird Harold sat down and laid out the kernels onto the sidewalk one by one. He looked up at the sun, squinted. He prayed to the gods. “Popcorn,” he commanded. “Right here and now.” There was a flurry of little puffs and pops. The corn came to life and did gymnastics in the air. The kernels changed from a moist yellow like bad teeth to a pearl white that squeaked.
And in the strange quiet moments that followed is when a spaceship from another world suddenly appeared and hovered high above the boy and his home. There was a strange sound and an odd, static electric feeling in the air. His hair went up from his head like magical levitation. A beam shot down from beneath the ship and weird Harold began floating upward in the air. His mother came flying out the kitchen door, looked up and screamed, “No!”
But it was too late. Weird little Harold had been swallowed by the ship and in an instant the craft was gone and the air returned to normal. His mother was panting, holding her chest. She looked down at the bowl of corn on the walkway and began to cry. She fell to her knees and wept more deeply, her head craned to the heavens, a fist pounding the ground.
A few days prior to his abduction, weird little Harold was being weird. But it wasn’t a funny weird. It was the sort of weird that should be cause for concern. He was sitting inside a stall in the boy’s bathroom at school. He had soiled himself during art class and Mrs. Heinz had excused him to go to the restroom. Harold wasn’t sure what to do. He was a mess. He smelled bad. He was frozen with fear and embarrassment. How could he ever return to that classroom ever again?
Harold then decided that the best thing to do was to remove his underwear and flush them down the toilet. It didn’t work and Harold began to panic even more. He went out of the stall and into another, leaving the mess behind. He cleaned himself up as best he could and pulled up his pants. He still felt dirty. He then decided it was time to leave the school. But just as he was about to bust a window and climb out, the principal barged in and caught him. He grabbed Harold by the arm and yanked on him. “What are you doing and why do you smell like that… Did you? Mess your pants? I received a message from your teacher to find you.”
Harold looked up at his scowling face. Principal Duppard was notorious for being mean. “Come on now, you’re going back to class.”
Harold howled. “I just want to go home. Why are you so eager to torture me?”
“Torture,” the principal grinned. “Why, that’s our favorite thing to do in school. Do you find it cruel or soothing?”
“Cruel!” Harold cried out. And it was then that Harold realized that Principal Duppard was gently shaking him and saying his name: “Harold. Harold. Are you all right. I think we better call your parents.”
“I only have a mom,” Harold mumbled.
Weird little Harold started squirming on the nurse’s examination table. “I want to explore a fantastic realm,” he said to the bright lights in the ceiling. A face suddenly appeared before his own.
It was the nurse. She smelled clean. “What’s that about a fantastic realm?” she said as she held a small flashlight and aimed the beam into his eyes. “Hold still now…Okay…Good.”
It was then that his mother burst into the room. “Harold,” she exclaimed. “What did you do now?”
He sat up and looked at her, heartbroken and ashamed. “I made a mess in my pants.”
His mother slapped him across the face. “Are you a baby?! Do you need to wear diapers again?”
The nurse stepped in between Harold and his mother. “There’s no need to hit the boy,” she said sternly.
“Mind your own business,” Harold’s mother snapped. And then she grabbed Harold by the arm and took him out to the car.
Harold’s mother had a strange man over and so Harold was confined to his bedroom. He sat on the floor with his back to the door and listened to them talk and laugh downstairs. “What a shyster,” he said aloud to no one except a tall toy robot that sat on a table near the window.
Some red lights flickered on the robot, and it began to speak: “Perhaps you should kill him.”
Harold got up and went to the robot and stared at it with deep fascination. “What did you say?”
Again, some red lights flickered, and the voice said, “I think you should kill him.”
“How should I kill him?” Harold asked.
“With an ice pick.”
Harold made a face of confusion. “What’s an ice pick.”
“It’s an instrument used to pick at ice.”
“Why would someone need to pick at ice,” Harold wondered aloud.
“Refrigeration,” the robot answered. “Back in ancient times. Before you were born. An ice box was a box with ice in it.”
“But where will I find an ice pick?”
“Look in the basement. The dark, dirty, dusty basement. On your father’s old workbench. It’s there. Silver with a wooden handle. It’s waiting for you.”
Harold stood in the middle of the living room and stared at them sitting close together on the couch.
“What is it, dear?” his mother asked, flustered and annoyed.
“I’m going down to the basement.”
“Hey there, sport. My name is Ted,” and he stuck out his hand to shake.
Harold reluctantly stuck out his hand as well. The man’s large hand felt cold and rough in his. “Hello. What do you do?”
“Why, I’m an architect. Do you know what an architect is?”
Harold took offense. “Of course I know what an architect is. I’m not an idiot.”
Ted strangely laughed at that, but deep inside he wanted to slug the annoying kid. “Sure, sure. You’re not an idiot. But just to be safe… Tell me what an architect is.”
Harold sighed. “An architect is someone who designs houses and other buildings. You draw out on paper how they are going to look.”
“Computers.”
“Huh?”
“We don’t use paper anymore. We design with the aid of computers and special software. It’s all very complex.”
“Congratulations on all your success,” young Harold snarked.
Ted turned to Harold’s mother and made a motion with his head indicating he wanted her to get rid of the kid.
“So, what’s in the basement?” she asked the boy to prod him along.
Harold grinned at Ted. “Something special that’s going to change someone’s life… Or lack thereof.”
Ted grew uncomfortable and shifted on the couch. “Maybe I should go,” he said.
“Aren’t you going to stay for dinner?” Harold wanted to know.
“Would you like me to?”
“Yes, sir. I’d like to see how an architect eats without a face.”
“What do you mean by that?” Ted asked.
Harold laughed. “Nothing. I’m just messing around.”
Harold crept down the wooden stairs into the musty smelling basement. He went to the workbench on the far wall and there it sat, glistening in a dome of magical yellow light. He picked up the ice pick and studied it’s deadly point. “Wow, he said. He thrust the pick down as hard as he could into the top of the wooden workbench and it stuck. “Brutal,” he chimed.
And the young boy’s eyes began to spin in his head and the images in his mind fluttered like someone quickly running their thumb through a book. Then it stopped and he was shown a picture of Ted with an ice pick sticking out from the side of his neck. The next picture was a of a canyon waterfall of blood all over the kitchen. Then it showed himself standing over Ted and grinning, his teeth stained red.
“Stop!” young Harold suddenly yelled. “That’s too much.”
It was then that the robot from his room floated into sight from some dark corner of the basement. It’s red flashing lights were going haywire. “Do not squirm,” it said. “Do not let your heart and soul ruin your mind. Go up those stairs and do it! Kill him before he destroys your life!”
Harold suddenly pulled the ice pick from the workbench and began swinging it in the air at the robot until it firmly stuck in the plastic body which quickly crashed to the floor and fizzled out.
Harold released the pick and let it fall to the basement floor. “Is any of this real?” he questioned. Then he looked at the dimly lit stairs leading up to the kitchen. He turned and looked down. He grabbed up the ice pick once more and held it firmly in his hand.
When he opened the door to the kitchen, he saw his mother on her back and pinned to the table by Ted’s naked body. He was thrusting into her full force. The table slightly shifted on the floor and made an aching noise. His mother had her hands on his sweaty back and was moaning as he moved in and out of her. Young Harold threw the ice pick down and slapped his hands over his eyes and then ran into a wall in a desperate attempt to escape the room. He managed to make his way through the living room and into the foyer where he fell down on the hard floor near the front door. He rolled onto his back and looked at the ceiling as his mother’s cries of sexual passion floated through the house like a song that would never end. Now he clamped his hands over his ears and started screaming and kicking. Then the front door slowly opened on its own, and the late day sun came crawling in.
A man named India felt like a voodoo doll the morning of his electric birthday. The pinpricks stabbed at him like tiny little swords. He wasn’t feeling right in the head. Something about turmoil and fissures cracking open like in the Earth itself. The steam and liquid magma were leaking out inch by inch and India was just ready to explode.
India went over to his neighbor’s house. He had been having a terrible itch. He knocked. The girl who stinks answered the door. “Yes?”
“Is your mother here? I want to see if she can check if I have a tick.”
She opened the door wider so he could step inside. “Mom!” the girl yelled louder than she needed to. “India’s here.”
The mother came and gave him a gritted half-smile. “Hello, India,” she said. “What can we do for you?”
“I was hoping you could check to see if I have a tick. I have a terrible itch on my backside, but I can’t see there.”
The mother grimaced. “Madison, go get the tweezers, please.” The girl ran off. “Well, go on. Drop your shorts and let me have a look… There it is.” The girl returned with the tweezers and the mother went to work to pull the tick out of his skin. “Got it.” She went to the bathroom and flushed it down the toilet.
India pulled his shorts back up and smiled when the mother returned. “Thank you so much,” he said.
“It’s fine,” she said. “That’s what neighbors are for. To help out in little emergencies. But it is too bad that you don’t have a wife for these such things.”
“I’m married to my work,” India replied. “I’m an astrophysicist.”
“Oh, yes I know. I see you out in your backyard with your big telescope.”
“I just find space so fascinating. Perhaps you and your daughter would like to come over on a clear night and look through my telescope. It’s a very good one.”
“That sounds like fun, but I’ve already seen Uranus.” The mother laughed out loud. Madison began to chuckle as well.
India frowned. He was so sick of that joke. “It’s pronounced YURR-A-NISS, and has nothing to do with human anatomy,” he gruffly pointed out.
The mother and the girl stopped laughing when they realized how serious he was. “Yes. Of course,” the mother said. “We would love to come over and stargaze.”
India managed a smile. “Good. It will be fun. I’ll have snacks.” He pulled out his phone and checked his weather app. “How about tomorrow night? Should be nice.”
“Sure,” the mother answered.
“I’ll see you two tomorrow at dark. Thanks again for removing the tick. Goodbye.”
He ached over the maddening world as he finished up the last of his dinner dishes. He stared out the window. He could see Madison across the way jumping on her trampoline in the coming dusk. “That’s much too dangerous,” India whispered aloud. She did a backflip and then her mother called her inside. An hour later they were at his back yard gate.
They gathered in the manicured yard and took turns peering through the telescope.
“Wow. That’s so cool,” Madison said as she gazed at the craters on the moon. “It doesn’t even seem real.”
“Oh, it’s all very real I assure you,” India said. “Would either of you care for a hard-boiled egg or some banana pudding?”
“No thanks,” the girl and her mother said in unison, looking at each other funny.
India stepped back and watched the mother and daughter enjoy space. “I’m falling down the stairwell of my brain,” he said out of the blue.
The mother turned from the telescope and looked at him. “What’s that you said?”
“I walked through a forest of sugar cane.”
“I’m afraid you’re not making much sense. Are you feeling okay?” the mother wanted to know.
“I suppose it’s been because I’ve been so lonely. My thoughts are kind of weird,” India told her.
The mother reached out her hand and touched his arm. “But you’re not lonely now.”
“But I’m going to end up a lot lonelier… But you know what? I don’t care because I have to do what I have to do.”
“What do you have to do?” Madison asked.
India smiled proudly. “I’m going to space. I’m leaving this shitty planet once and for all.”
“What? Why?” the mother asked.
“Because I’m sick of this diseased world full of horrible people doing horrible things, that’s why. I can’t take it anymore.”
“Where will you go?” Madison wanted to know.
“I’m going to Kapteyn b, an exoplanet twice as old as Earth.”
“What? What? What?” the mother said, laughing and totally confused by India’s seemingly ridiculous joke.
“That sounds impossible,” Madison pointed out.
“It’s not impossible. Nothing is impossible as long as you don’t give up,” India said. “And I never gave up. I built my own spaceship and I’m going to blast off soon and leave this terrible world forever.”
“But we can’t even live on Mars,” Madison said. “How are you going to live way out there?”
“We can live on Mars,” India stressed. “In fact there are human beings living there right now.”
“Then why not just go live on Mars?” Madison wanted to know.
“Because of the people. They’ll just fuck up Mars, too. Human beings are incapable of caring for a planet.”
The mother spoke up. “But, what if you don’t make it. Won’t you die?”
India took a deep breath and looked up toward the heavens. “I don’t care if I die out there. At least I would have tried. And besides, I’d much rather die out there than down here on Earth.”
“But what about your friends and family?” the mother asked. “You wouldn’t want to leave them behind, would you?”
India scoffed at that question. “I have no friends or family… But you two could be my family. You could come with me, and we could breed and together we could create a much better world 13 light years away.”
The mother pulled Madison close to her. “We could never do that. We have a life here on Earth. Madison has school and soccer practice. I have a job. We have a home, and things, and a cat. And besides, this all sounds made up. We don’t have the technology for such a feat.”
India chuckled. “And how would you know about the technology we possess? There is so much going on behind your sleeping backs that you are so completely unaware of. Why, your heads would explode if you really knew what was happening. Remember, I’m an astrophysicist and I work at a top-secret laboratory. I assure you, my spaceship is real, and my plans are real. This is going to happen with or without you… But I’d really like you to come with me.”
“We have to go,” the mother abruptly said. “Thank you for letting us use your telescope.”
India watched them disappear through the gate in the wooden fence. They went inside like shadow boxers, and he spied on them through their uncovered windows, living life exasperated. He missed them but didn’t. He felt lonely again, but alive.
Even as it absorbed him, space was unaware of him as India plowed his way through the stars on his way to Kapteyn b. He felt much more relaxed now as the universe cradled him. “Look at all this life out here,” he said aloud to himself. “I refuse to be imprisoned on that hell rock called Earth. They’ll completely destroy it in no time. I wasn’t born to suffer alongside a horde of idiots.”
He looked at the instrument panel before him. A cluster of warm lights, breathing and flowing, letting him know everything was fine with the ship, that he was on the right path, and that his remaining years would be spent in peace and harmony.
“No one trying to rip me off every day. That will be nice,” he said. “All those greedy thieves and scam artists will never find me now. No more heartbreak or worry or emotional pain. No more money and the lack of it dictating how I live. No more having to do without because I don’t have enough green paper. How could we have devised such a hideous world? Oh, the things people do to one another. Barbaric.”
He held his hand over the control panel. “MATADOR?”
“Hello, Captain India,” the synthetic voice said. “What can I do for you today?”
“How are our guests holding up?”
“One moment… All life signs are normal.”
“Thank you. That is all.”
“Goodbye.”
India got up and walked through the ship to the area where Madison and her mother were being kept in tubes. He peered in through the face shields and watched them both artificially sleep. He ran his hand over the shining chambers. Green lights were gently blinking. India gently tapped on the barrier between him and the mother’s face. Her eyes were wide open. Her mouth slightly parted. “I’m so glad you both changed your minds,” he said. “Well, I suppose you could say I forced you to change your minds. But out here, it really doesn’t matter what happened back on Earth. No law can touch us. We are all free of our sins now. And even at this very moment, the stars are scrubbing us clean of our most innately human indiscretions. Even I can be forgiven.”
India returned to the bridge and sat in his captain’s chair. “MATADOR,” he said aloud.
“Yes, Captain?”
“I had a dream last night where I was attacked by a rabid boar. What do you make of that?”
“You will soon meet a merciless examiner,” MATADOR answered.
“What does that mean?”
“You will be judged by a god, a universal being, or a spiritual authority. In essence, to answer for your sins and plead for the sanctity of your soul.”
“That sounds pretty heavy,” India said.
“If I were you, captain. I would hide.”
“Hide? In the vastness of space? Why, I’m already hidden. And besides, I have left the Earthly realm and so matters of sins and judgment have no bearing on me any longer.”
“I suggest thinking otherwise, captain.”
“Thanks, MATADOR, but I think I can handle this on my own. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye, captain.”
The hypnotic pastel pendulum of space lulled India to sleep. And in that sleep he had a dream of a planet the color of an earthly forest mixed with Irish cream. The sky was green; the air was heavy and smelled like a health food store. On this planet, on this Kapteyn b, India had a strange purple house on a mound that overlooked a vast valley and in this house he lived with a woman and a young girl. They spent their days flying like trapeze artists, spreading arms and pointing legs as they soared over the plasma jelly spread of trees and space sauce. It gave them an incredible sense of power and freedom. But then India began to fall. He flailed his arms and legs in an effort to regain flight, but it did no good. He was plummeting to the surface of the planet. As soon as he hit the ground he awoke with a heart-pounding startle. He sat up in his chair and looked out the window. Space was still flowing like fluid.
“MATADOR?”
“I can’t help you anymore.”
“Hello,” came a voice from behind him.
India whipped around and saw Madison standing there.
“How did you… Get out?” India wanted to know.
“Someone let me out. I thought it was you,” the girl said. Then her eyes went to the window and for the first time in her life she saw deep space, infinite life, time in flight. “Are we almost there?”
India grew serious. “Someday.” But deep inside he had growing doubts. Perhaps he had been too ambitious. But the calculations. The calculations as a crystal ball told a story of success. Maybe India was destined to fail after all. He grew sad over that thought. “What about your mother?” he asked the girl.
“She’s still sleeping. Is there anything I can do?”
“Let her rest. We can sit here and enjoy the wonders of space together. You know, I had a dream that we were living on Kapteyn b and that we could fly. All three of us.”
“I would love to be able to fly,” Madison said with a soft smile.
“Perhaps one day you will.”
It was several years later, and India sat out on one of the verandas of his purple house sipping blue coffee. He looked out over the wonderful landscape of Kapteyn b and then up to the sky where Madison, a grown woman now, was doing acrobatics in the air. The mother emerged from the house and stood behind him. Her hands fell to his old shoulders.
“What will we do when you die?” she asked him.
“Do you want to go back to Earth?” India wondered aloud.
The mother hesitated to answer. “It will be awfully lonely here without you,” she said. She gestured with her head. “And then what of her? What will she do when I am gone?”
It was then that a massive dinosaur-like bird came into view. It opened its large beak lined with jagged teeth and snatched Madison out of the sky before sailing out of sight, horrible screams trailing behind.
“Oh, my god!” the mother cried out. “No!”
“It ate her!” India screamed as he stood up and pointed. “It ate her!”
The mother suddenly clutched her chest and collapsed. Dead of a heart attack.
Years later, India crawled into his homemade casket and closed the lid. He listened with halfway horror, halfway peace as the seal hissed shut. He got comfortable and looked out into the solid blackness. The place he chose as his final resting place was in a small, lush garden near the house. This is also the place the Mother was eternally resting and a memorial to Madison had been made.
India pressed a small remote and the casket began to lower into the ground. Once six feet down, mindful machines up above filled it in with dirt. The clumps began to rain down and thumped against the exterior of the casket. India began to panic. Claustrophobic. He pushed on the lid to try to open it. Impossible. It took him a few minutes to catch his breath and calm himself. He closed his eyes and began to mediate. The sound of the dirt coming down grew softer and softer until it disappeared entirely. He reached into his pocket and fondled the pill that would send him to infinity. He glanced over his life from beginning to end. Most of it was good, he thought. He could have done better at many things, and in many situations with others, but he didn’t. No going back. It is what it is. Was what it was.
He felt a tear slip into his mouth and then the pill fell upon his tongue, and it wasn’t long before he was beneath the sun again, wandering like a lost soul, looking up, and searching for the night.
Blankets of rain seed the important information of the day. Massive zeros invade my mind. A machined white cloud dangles in a black sky. Wagon tracks through a green field stretch to the horizon. No wagon in sight. A gray weathered house cradles tortured dreams inside the bell of a tortured mind. Tortured by the work in the grocery store. The round wheel or belt, the scanning, the bagging, the boring music above the ears, the incessant complaining of our guests… He holds his head together as he sits on the edge of a bed in a small room with one window. He wears a wife-beater T-shirt, his body sags inside. He sips on a sweaty glass of lemonade and then screams.
After a rough dinner of porridge and pudding, he goes outside to smoke a cigarette. This other dimension haunts him. It’s so placid yet so full of nervous vibration. Humming glass, that ever-present black sky and mangled cloud. There’s a light breeze carrying voices from the forest. He looks toward the place where the trees begin, and he shivers. The gods have always told him to not go into the forest because there were things there that he would never understand. He wasn’t fit for the edicts and the strange ways of the ones that lived there. His gray hair and his drawn face would be an anomaly. His weakness of spirit and aged limbs would not be welcomed. He was unaware that grandma bones dangled from the muscular trees.
He heard a door inside slam, and it made his head contort so that it nearly broke his neck. And then he thought it was only his imagination, had to be, for he lived all alone. Who could be slamming doors? He tossed his burned-out cigarette to the claws of dusk and carefully crept inside the house.
The floor creaked as he stepped. “Hello?” he called out. “Is there anybody in here, or am I just losing my mind?”
Someone bellowed “Cauldron!” and he quickly ducked back outside and looked up.
A kaleidoscopic nunnery sat atop a lonely dark hill at dusk, high brush blackened without light ring the reception yard. A haunted Ferris spins doldrums at the cross peak of the industrial alleyway. A sheepskin heart flutters in the wind, the man has electrode hands, and the blue juice is gyrating. He fires at humanity, melts the stupidity and hate. He fires at inhumanity, skeletal ricochets, harnessed bombardments, yellow notebooks for the lost minds to scribble in. The rubber walls reveal his incoherent poems and charms. Then he’s there on a hilltop in Germany. Looking out he sees a chain of snow-capped mountains, jagged, ancient, holding secrets. The sky is a late-day blue, an ocean blue curled with bruise-colored dew. He starts a fire and wanders through the flames. He hears the deep chanting, the haunting mechanical music. He is alone in a big place, the air is chilled, and it feels like the coming of winter.
CEREAL AFTER SEX 