Charon 40

The way the sunlight on a hot day ricochets off the windshields of every car in the mall parking lot, that's how the sunlight reflected off of every stone on Planet Taurus' moon, Charon 40. The surface, like a house of mirrors, every direction bright and glassy.

Marc bounced gently on the moons surface, careful not to rip his spacesuit on the sharp, broken-bottle rocks. He didn't want to melt and the littlest rip could do anything. . .

The astronaut watched his companions get out of the ship, really slowly. Two guys, two girls: Mitchel, Wayne, Abigail and Caci. Marc knew all too well, they were all stoned as hell. He remembered, back in the shuttle's cockpit, Wayne passed a fat blunt to Caci, who was staring out the window at the stars, fucked up on shrooms. Abigail was snorting coke off Mitchel's eyelids. At least three of them had dropped acid.

Marc didn't do anything and earlier, Wayne had nudged him and shouted, "C'mon man, don't pussy out, you won't regret this, I mean, c'mon, how cool would it be to DROP on the fuckin' moon?!"

Marc didn't move. Didn't answer, even though he had a hundred legitimate excuses. It's not a good idea to fuck the brain up in the middle of a difficult search-and-rescue mission. On the surface of a planet, somewhere safe, a coffeeshop even, maybe. Nothing could be more fun, a head full of acid, walking down the street toward . . . wherever.

That's fine, Marc thought. But Charon 40 isn't the best place.

So he withheld and the rest of the crew partook.

On the moon's rocky surface, scattered with those millions and millions of little mirrors, gems and disco balls, Marc watched the crew file out of the ship. He watched them stumble over themselves and glisten in the rocks and forget to put their visors down and nearly blind themselves. The sober one watched the drunk as they bounced out, over the surface of the moon, like blissful pixies.

Caci bounded up to Marc and said, "Jesus, aren't you glad they don't drug test anymore?"

Marc wasn't thrilled. He was thinking of the six or so lives the crew had to save, not counting the ones that may have already been roasted alive in the heat of the moon. Say, if their suits ripped or the hull disintegrated, whatever.

The junkies scattered off and Marc trailed behind, loose as a feather, worried as an anchor. They were going the wrong way. But they stopped at a large rock, gleaming blue and beautiful against the infinite night sky. It was worth more than several countries back on Earth. Too bad they couldn't remove it at all, against intergalatic park laws.

"Guys . . ." Marc said into his microphone.

"Guys, I got an idea." Wayne said. "But before I tell you, you all have to tell me the dirtiest secret you have. Do it. We may never be on the moon again."

"Your idea has to be amazing." Abigail said. "I'll go first. I starred in my first porno . . . when I was fifteen."

"Oh, ok." Mitchel said. "When I was six, I took my grandmother's chiuauaha, the one she loved so much and castrated it. Cut the balls clean off."

"Did you make your grandmother eat them?" Wayne asked.

"Hell no. The dog escaped and ran into traffic. My grandmother never knew which pieces were missing. And she never blamed me."

"Wayne's next." Abigail said.

"OK," Wayne breathed in deep. "Let's see. . . I almost set my cat on fire?"

"No. . ."

"I was molested by my older cousin. . ."

"C'mon man, we don't wanna hear your life story. . ."

"Ok, ok." Wayne breathed heavy. "I knew what the Martinville Killer looked like and never told anyone."

Mitchell crouched up, excited. "REALLY?"

"I saw him kill victim no. 17. Night of April 11th. Didn't tell a soul."

"You know, that other guy who was accused of being the Killer, he got the gas chamber."

"You mean lethal injection."

"No, they brought the Chamber back. It's easier to afterward just cremate the bodies. Course, the gas only knocks them unconscious now. It's really the fire that gets them."

"Anyway, the the Martinville Killer has blue eyes, red hair and he's five foot eleven." Wayne sighed smugly and leaned his five foot eleven frame against the giant blue diamond, blinked his eyes to match and shook his red hair out of his eyes. "Believe it or not." He said.

"Caci is next."

"Oh, you don't want to hear about little, ol' me." She said. "Trust me."

Marc spoke up. "When I was six, I accidentally poisoned my parents." Everyone turned to the one person who's head was straight.

"Just a kid, playing with some chemicals under the sink. Poured something bad into my mother's cooking. They ate their food and I ate something for kids and the next thing I knew, they were in the hospital. Watched them die. And I didn't shed a tear."

There was silence on the moon, as there always is, but something about it seemed even quieter than usual.

Finally Wayne said, "OK, now for my big secret plan. I was planning to do this all along, no matter what you did." The intoxicated astronaut reached up to his neck and pulled the seam and his helmet floated away. Instantly, his head froze, instead of bursting into flame.

Abigail did the same. Then Mitchel, then Caci. Their heads froze, dark red and blue icicles running across their faces, the blood vessles exploded with ice. Their eyes shattered into crystal, floated out their heads, now empty and lifeless. Soon, each corpse lifted up by the giant blue crystal and then up further, higher and higher into space.

Marc watched them in envy until he couldn't see them.

LIMN

maybe my jacket was on fire.

I couldn't tell if any smoke was coming out or not. But my head felt detached from my neck. Floating a few feet above my spinal column. I quivered in my seat and the room quivered with me. I felt all the muscles it took just to sit still. Any smoke yet?

when I breathed out vapor trails hung in the slow air. I knew this moment was long coming.

I couldn't stop shaking. I kept tapping my feet like an eager child. I sang:

"The ocean is an hourglass,
crystal chandiliers underneath the water
bathing with sharks
and I waltz down in my suit and tails
a rastafarian softly plays a xylophone
until he disappears
he knows this is my domain
i stand and i wait, cocktail glass in hand
in the swirly shifting sand of time
my opponent approaches, for he knows i wait
in a grey suit he swims to me,
right to my head, faster and revolving
until he becomes a torpedo and
travels through me."

Existing No Longer

This is true.

I was six. My best friend Ryan, who lived at one end of the trailer park, me at the other, were playing one spring afternoon.
I proposed we go on an adventure through our neighborhood.
'You know,' I said. 'A real adventure. Like Indiana Jones or something.'
So we asked permission from our parents and they smiled, condescendingly, but still adoring. Asked where we were going and when we'd be back. And said yes.
Ryan's mom packed us a lunch. With Capri Suns. I remember this because she only gave us one apiece and I loved Capri Suns as a kid, except they were too expensive for my family budget and they were small. Unsatisfying. I craved them, constantly.

We left.

I remember, I brought my Burger King Halloween Bucket and Ryan brought his backpack so we could save any treasures we found. I don't remember what we put inside them, maybe pennies, or bits of broken plastic or strange insects. In my head, things get muddled. Sometimes it's everything. Sometimes it's empty white, bucket. I'll never be sure of the truth.

We went up to the middle of the park and then doubled back, trespassing through our neighbor's backyards.
I was so excited. Ryan seemed nonplussed, but went along with it.
He was kind of a boring kid that liked pro-wrestling and shitty cable television.
I didn't have cable or my antennae didn't get reception. Essentially, no TV at all.

He had a Sega Genesis, I had a Super Nintendo. But he had cooler games, somehow.
I had Kirby's Avalanche and Rampart and Jurassic Park.
He had Sonic the Hedgehog and Jurassic Park too, only in his, you could be a velociraptor and eat people.

We had the same shitty, faux-mullet blond haircuts.
Ryan lost his baby teeth first.
I bit my nails. I think he did too.
We both liked Power Rangers.
My favorite color was green. His was red or blue.

I first met Ryan when my mother met his and we went over to his house and I played in Ryan's room. Within five minutes of knowing Ryan, we were crawling under his bed and suffocating in the huge piles of clutter. We were instant friends.

And it seemed perfect, crawling under bushes and hopping fences in stranger's backyards. TV was boring anyway. These adventures were the memories I'd always treasure. Somehow, I knew that already, as I created them. I knew the moment was special.

We hadn't been hiking for twenty minutes before we propped ourselves up behind someone's air conditioning and quickly ate all our snacks. I was still hungry. I remember that.

The place we rested was shaded and tranquil. A little tangerine tree, painted white. The hum of the air conditioning. The suck, suck, sucking sound of the Capri Suns.
I wanted to stay there forever.

And yet . . . I was disappointed that this was all our adventure had been so far. A twenty minute walk and a mediocre meal.
We hadn't even gone anywhere new or exciting. We were behind a trailer that was next to my babysitter's. I knew where I was.
And still, I went back to the peace I felt, however mild it was. For several years, I'd often revisit that place.

And then we heard footsteps and the home owner yelled at us and we ran off.

So far, we hadn't fought any monsters, like the ones in my favorite video game, A Link to the Past. No Octoroks or Moblins or anything. Just shady, crab-grass infested backyards. We hacked at bushes with sticks.

We went to the far reaches of the trailer park, a place I'd never been before. The very last trailer home was lopsided against a cul-de-sac and the front yard was completely filled with a giant prickly pear cactus. A forest of prickers and green discs.
We threw rocks at it, tearing up the fruitless crowns, bleeding out its juices all over.
I got paranoid that we'd get caught again. But we didn't.
And something about destroying that prickly pear was incredibly surreal.
I vowed to come back one day and finish its destruction. I really did. I don't know why.
And I returned once, many years later, and it was gone.
Maybe it never existed.

It's hard to say what happens to memories so long discarded. Maybe we never went on an adventure, maybe we didn't drink Capri Suns or get yelled at and maybe Ryan didn't exist at all.

It had been an hour or so. We were already exhausted little explorers.
We came upon an empty lot, the large concrete slabs where abandoned trailerhomes used to stand, until they were excavated and dragged away. Existing no longer.

Ryan found a dead bird laying on the slab and dared me to touch it. A dead morning dove, curled up in withered defeat. Existing no longer.
I said, no way.
Ryan reached inside the ribcage and pulled out an organ. Right through the skin. It was easy.
'Look,' he said. 'It's a heart.'
But who knows, it could have been a liver or a lung or something. All I know is it was a quarter-sized ball of red and violet and it leaked.
He dared me to touch it.
'No way,' I said.
Ryan threw it at me and I screamed.
He put the entrails in my bucket and we took it home.
We got back to my room and went through our treasures, which honestly, had to be the most worthless shit ever. I don't remember any of it. None except the organ, kinda drying up, kinda sticking to the side of the bucket.
Ryan left it at my house when he left, and I had to clean it out.

That's the end.

The thing about retelling a story, is, in the gaps of the temporal lobe, we fill in the holes.
With age, more gaps formulate. More are filled.
Some true, some lies, but it doesn't matter. Whatever changes occur, we make them the truth.

Since this is the first time I've told this story in 13 years, there were many gaps to fill.
I actually sit here, wondering, if any of it happened the way I think it did.
I think it did.
I nearly forgot it happened at all.
But retelling the story has changed it, the way you cannot observe anything in nature without yourself influencing the observed. I've changed this story beyond repair. In a way, the original events never existed. In truth, this story exists no longer.

Pursuing Sirens

poetroy


I am magnetized to sirens; like
Conquistadors of old; like
resigned mariners.

With sloth the soothsayer speaks;
with pride she predicts the gravity
of tomorrow's newsstands.

The crackled whispers in her coded
breath whisk me away with lust for
bloodshed.

I chase these auditory hallucinations
down streets I never knew so well;
pursuing with a wrath I have not known.

Spiraling Ecureuils flutter above
violent smoke piers, enticing gutless gluttony
with disastrous kitchen scents.

My fingertips sprint across dials; meters;
switches. Mildly stroking colorless, broken light.
Each negative stab a sirin to the sedated.

Black bags exit buildings in blue hands;
yellow strings to tie greedy paparazzi to pavement, observing
white charcoal shadow puppets written in white hands.

One winking eye raised; infested
fascination crushes ribs, crushes
infatuated spirits.
A soul tossed on jagged rocks,
devoured by deranged shark teeth.

In silent cardboard detention,
envying for pursuit of flesh,

I decay from within;

my breath shortens to ribbons.

Now I scour sunsoaked lanes, a
jaywalker's purgatory, for the
viscera of a different animal,
the distorted tangles of my own breed.

As I lag, certain horrors realize their potency;
the silence of the sirens is worse than their song,
a panic not in need of wax or chain prisons.

Never have I aged more wading

in the fountain of forsaken youth.

The Chair

I am tied to a wooden folding chair, being beaten in the face by some thug.
The Mafia.
But I don't mind.
I've never felt this good before, I say in between the sounds of fist sinking into bone.
The feelings.
I have to be honest, I tell my captors.
My entire life, I've never done anything important.
I was the middle child, ya know.
I didn't do well in school, I didn't do well with women.
I had trouble managing myself alone.
The thug socks my jaw.
The gang leader watches me get destroyed but he doesn't seem moved.
Dropped out of college, I continue.
Haven't kept many jobs.
Still can't make it with the ladies.
Here I am, I say.
Being beaten to death by the Mafia.
The thug punches me in the cheek.
I have to be honest.
I've never felt more important in my whole life.
The thug rubs his fist, like it's getting sore.
He lands a knuckle in my gut, where it's softer.
You guys make me feel needed, I choke out.
Thank you.
The gang leader looks up in disgust.
OK, untie him, he says.
I stand up, wobble and smile wide through a bleeding gumline.
Thank you, I say again.
The gang leader doesn't look happy.
He looks worried.
Like I'm gonna retaliate now.
Here's the money we owe you, he says.
He hands me a paper bag.
Don't count it, he says.
Same time next week? I ask.
Sure, he says.
But next time we're going to use duct tape.

whale watching

March 30

I was hungry for some crystal and I followed my shadow into the park, from whence I could smell the most delicious scents. They calmed my hunger, but still excited my senses. I tripped through bushes and puddles like a madman until I stumbled to a moss-covered bench. It was surrounded by trees on all sides, completely alien. I collapsed on the seat and instantly fell asleep.
I was awoken by an old man, dressed in a petticoat and poking me with a wooden cane.
"Let me tell you a story," he said looking through me in disapproval. I must have smelt like old cigarettes, ale and moldy paper bags. As I sat up, a single pigeon flew onto his shoulder.
"Once, I was on the vomit-covered shores of an old town and I lay on the beach naked. I ignored the smell and my surroundings. but I noticed the seagulls. They circled more and more above my head and so I decided to follow them. I tracked them two miles upon a beached whale, still breathing, with gusts awaiting death. The birds were patiently landing upon the beast, as they awaited the hungry opportunity to tear it apart."
I sat up. A pair of pigeons joined the one on the old man's back. They nuzzled up against him and cooed, but their yellow eyes watched me angrily.
"I sat and watched, deciding to witness this massive act of nature. As I observed more gulls gently descending on the depressed monster, I notice some had strings in their mouths, and I saw them tie them around barnacles and teeth."
I could hear my stomach rumble. More and more birds landed on the old man, until he looked like a walking aviary.
"I watched this miracle and I clapped my hands with glee. This startled the birds and they took off, carrying the whale with them and I watched in reverence until they disappeared behind the clouds and the wind."
The old man leaned down, the birds covering his body until just his nose stuck out from all the feathers.
"It was the only miracle I have ever witnessed, but I could not ask for more."
Then the old man clapped his hands and the birds took off with him in tangled talons. He wasn't very high before my sight of him was obscured by the trees.
I stood up and went in search to satisfy my hunger, again, but this time to gratify a new lust. A lust for something I could not explain.