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.
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!”
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.
If you would be so kind, consider contributing to our creative endeavors and to help us operate and maintain this website. Visit our Support page for more information and giving options. Thank you for providing independent writers with a voice.
There is this guy see who lives upstairs from me he’s the weird upstairs walking guy walks and walks but he never says hi – until today he looked disheveled and bruised hair all a muss toting a bank bag full of money and I’m wondering what all the walking is for floor to floor he walks and walks till a quarter to four
Is he shooting darts or is he shooting junk is he hiding a decapitated head in a hand-carved wooden trunk has he stashed away the body of Cinderella takes her out in the deep of night combs her brittle golden locks until she looks just right props her up on the couch beside him as they munch popcorn and watch “I am Sam …”
Or maybe he’s a Buddhist with incense and candles and lots and lots of fluffy pillows he kneels on his straw mat and bows to the sun or to the moon or to the neighbor beating his dog and grandma with a pinecone and a bat
I always see him solo never with a mate and I wonder what his story is what is his twisted tale of fate how old is he how much does he weigh does he believe in Jesus or follow his own way what does he think about when he drives to Albuquerque does he play a Steinway or toot on a green bottle flute enticing the charms to rise from the ashes buried in his carpet does he drink white wine or red what does it mean when he screams like that is it merely bad dreams or frustration bubbling to the surface in the form of dragon fizz and warm oil
Does he watch Regis and Oprah and maybe Dr. Phil or does he watch the motion on the ocean three vodkas and three pills is he a menace to society or one of the popes does he smoke razor blades or psychedelic dope is he a war veteran or a homosexual does he eat pot pies or filet mignon is he French or is he Irish does he have nightmares or fairy tale dreams does he have children or maybe a wife has he attempted suicide with a rusty fruit knife has he called on Allah to save this bloody world or does he sit back and sip martinis whilst smoking Izmir Stingers not really giving a damn about his brain anymore
All this I wonder but don’t really care I wish he would just stop walking and leave me to my Russian bear the one that looks me in the mirror and says… Please don’t stare.
I drove over to Tecumah’s earthen home to see if I could score some devil’s lettuce off him, but he wasn’t there. I tooled around Taos for a bit, got some lunch at a restaurant made from a huge clay pot, went to a bookstore that was like a barn, and then paid homage to D.H. Lawrence’s ashes in the hills.
After that, I picked up two big bottles of wicked agave tequila and then headed back over to Javlin’s place for the party. I was a bit nervous, as I usually am when about to meet new people and took a few big schlucks of the mad drink I had bought before going to the door of the now shuttered gallery.
I knocked and Javlin came bounding forth out of the shadows like a creepy criminal. He was wearing a dress and he had put his hair in pigtails and had white, powdery makeup all over his face.
“Thom! Thom!” he exclaimed. “You have arrived, and I couldn’t be happier! Please, come in.” And he twirled around like a dancer high on life.
I stepped inside, dazed, and confused. It seemed quiet and void of people. “So, where’s the party?” I asked.
“Upstairs Thom. Everyone is upstairs and we’ve been waiting for you! This is so exciting!”
I followed Javlin up the narrow staircase, having to look at his pale, stubbly legs jutting out from the bottom of the dress as we ascended.
“Here we are then!” And Javlin spread his arms wide and had a huge grin on his face.
“Is this some kind of joke?” I thought to myself as I looked about the apartment above the gallery where he lived. There was a round table set in the middle and around the table were five chairs. Two of the chairs were empty, but in the other chairs sat three dolls, all with cracked, odd faces and dressed in torn doll clothing.
“What the hell is this?” I asked Javlin in all seriousness.
His smile suddenly drooped. “It’s a tea party, Thom, and you’re the guest of honor. Don’t you like it?”
“It’s weird, man.”
“Nonsense! Let me introduce you to everyone.”
He grabbed me by the arm and took me around the table to show off each doll.
“Okay, this little guy is Javlicious, this sweetie pie is Javlene and this adorable one is Javsie… Well come on Thom, don’t be rude. Say hello.”
I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t believe it. “Hello,” I embarrassingly muttered.
“Well,” Javlin began, prancing about the table, “Now that everyone knows each other, let’s sit down and have some tea and talk about shit. Oh, and I made some cookies… Now, now Javlene, don’t hog all the cookies!”
I looked at the dolls. They made absolutely no effort to move, to speak… To be alive.
“You can sit here, Thom,” Javlin said, and he pulled out a small chair from the table.
“That’s a small chair. I’m afraid I might break it.”
“It may be a small chair, but it’s mighty powerful,” and then he yelled “Yee Ha!” as loud as he could.
“I think you need a doctor, Javlin,” I told him. “I think you’re mentally ill.”
“What are you talking about, Thom? I’m just trying to have a little fun. Why do you always have to be such a stick in the mud? Don’t be a party pooper. No one enjoys the company of a party pooper.”
“It’s just… You have to admit, this is all pretty bizarre, even for you. I mean, the dress, the hair, the dolls… They’re so creepy.”
He looked at me as if he wanted to kill me. “You apologize, Thom! Apologize right now!”
“No. This is stupid. I’m leaving.”
I turned to walk away and that’s when Javlin’s big hand came down on my shoulder and he shoved me into one of the small chairs. “You’re being quite rude, Thom, and I don’t like it! Now apologize to my friends so that we can get on with the evening!”
I looked around at the bizarre, lifeless dolls. Javlin was breathing heavy and twirling his hair with his club-like fingers. He glared at me with crazy, swirling eyes. “Apologize!”
“Okay, okay. I’m sorry everyone. I sincerely apologize.”
“Excellent,” Javlin said. “Now we can get on with the festivities.”
Javlin sat down and then reached for the big, plastic tea pot in the middle of the table. He gingerly poured pretend tea into everyone’s cup.
I looked down into my empty teacup. “There’s nothing in here,” I said.
Javlin slammed his big fist on the table, and everything shook. “Damn it, Thom! Haven’t you ever attended a tea party? You have to use your imagination.”
I watched as Javlin lifted his teacup, extended his pinky finger, and sipped at the pretend tea. “Ouch,” he squealed and then giggled. “That’s hot shit.”
I looked over at the dolls and they remained immobile and lifeless in their seats.
“They’re not drinking theirs,” I said to Javlin. “Why do I have to drink mine?”
“Jesus, Thom, quit being such a tool… And yes, they are drinking their tea and eating the cookies.”
“I brought some good tequila, Javlin. You were always fond of a good tequila glow. Can’t we drink that?”
“No, Thom, they’re minors, they can’t drink alcohol. God, are you dumb.”
“Well, they don’t have to drink it, we can just drink it. It will be like old times,” I tried to convince him.
“I refuse to be a bad influence in front of my friends, Thom, but if you want to be all drunk and weird, go ahead I guess.”
I retrieved one of the bottles from my saddlebag and began to drink it down like it was a jug of water.
Javlin looked at me, appalled, as I filled my wishing well of emotions. “You keep drinking like that Thom and you’re going to die.”
“And if you keep playing with dolls, they’re going to lock you up,” I said back to him.
Javlin cupped his ear in the direction of the doll named Javlene. “What’s that? Yes, he is being quite an asshole.”
I set the bottle down on the tea party table. “I’m sorry, Javlin, but I just can’t do this anymore. I think I’m going to leave.”
“You can’t leave,” the three dolls said in unison. “The party is just starting. We’re going to have lots of fun.”
I tried to shake the bad mojo out of my head. “What? Did they just talk?”
“Of course, they talked. They’ve been talking to you all night, Thom,” Javlin said to me. “And I must say, you’ve been very rude to them, constantly ignoring them like you have.”
“Let’s kill him,” the doll named Javlicious said. “I’ll kill him myself… With my trusty little brick here.”
“Yes, let’s kill him,” the two other devotchka dolls chimed in. “You should have believed in us. You lack true faith.”
And then they all started chanting together — “Kill him, kill him, throw him out a window.”
And the dolls got out of their seats and started coming toward me, and that’s when I upended the table and went for the stairs, but Javlin stuck out his big foot and tripped me and I went tumbling down.
And then it was the three dolls on top of me pounding away real horrorshow on my body and bones. Small, but powerful tolchocks that I could just not defend. I tried grabbing one by the throat and tossing her aside, but she bit into me hard, and my red blood began to flow.
“Javlin! For God’s sake, please help me!” That’s what I yelled out to him, but he just stood there grinning and chuckling with his mussed pigtails all jutting out to the side and his sloppy face all happily evil and glad that I was being legitimately raped by three porcelain dolls with cracked flesh, and they just kept beating on me and beating on me until I just couldn’t take it anymore and all went dark and then to bright light and then suddenly somewhere else.
Tecumah sat in the passenger seat of my red Ford Probe as I gunned the engine.
“Now remember,” he said. “You have to jump out or you’ll go with it… And then, you’ll be finished too.”
And he made the motion of sliding his finger across his throat to indicate death.
“All right, all right. Let’s do this,” I said.
We lurched forward along the dirt roadway toward the edge of the cliff overlooking the beautiful valley. I stomped on the accelerator.
“Slow down! Slow down!” Tecumah yelled. “You don’t need to go that fast!”
But I ignored him, and then it was Tecumah bailing out the passenger side. I watched him in the rear-view mirror as he tumbled away in the dust and dollops of high desert brush, getting ever further and further away.
And then it was the lip of the cliff and like floating off to Heaven for me, my guts all wobbly and feeling funny as I went over the edge, up for a fraction of a second, and then quickly down, down, down, and I was no longer afraid of dying or anything for that matter. Everything was done. I made as much peace with the world as I could and that’s all I could do. I could do no more. I was tired of trying to gnaw through the bone of Idiotland. I was tired, and I needed a long rest.
And then there was a heavy crash and then fire and then burning, and bright light like royal sun forever.
CEREAL AFTER SEX 