Perks

Our hero awakes with a bloody nose. He doesn't seem worried as he wipes away the crust with spit on his thumb.

He drinks coffee with seven canisters of creamer, easing into his day with a slight twitch. He puts on his work uniform, a pair of dark khaki pants and tucks his white button-up shirt beneath the belt. On the news is a story about a plane crash.

He drives to work in a 2005 Toyota Prius. It's a rental. His car is in the shop.

At work, he enters data into a computer for three hours and then takes a lunch break. He eats a pita bread sandwich and some baked Lays potato chips. He's not sure this is a healthy alternative to a McDonalds hamburger, but the packaging tells him it is, so he feels better. He takes a sip from a bottle of purified water and then swallows two Percocets.

The pills taste bitter and almost immediately start to dissolve on his tongue. His dealer told him these little white tabs will make his day so much easier. And our hero desperately wants an easy day. It is, after all, a Thursday. One day short from one day from freedom. The anticipation is almost too much to bear.

Our hero pauses to watch the sky, the clouds. He somehow doesn't feel connected to anything, anyone, but he can't explain why.

Back inside the building, our hero starts to feel the pills taking effect. He gets a little anxious as he moves in and out of the feeling, keeps asking, "Am I feeling it yet? Am I feeling it yet?"

Less than an hour later, his computer screen starts to fade in and out. He can't focus on the fluorescent buzz coming off every object in the room. His hands slip from the keyboard and rest on his lap. He's flying.

Our hero has never felt so good. This isn't like normal highs he's felt. His mind isn't affected at all. This isn't like Mary or Sally or anyone. He just wants to lie down and stare at the ceiling and think about the things that make him happy.

This reminds him of some artwork by a modern artist he really likes. Something about being trapped by society and conditioning and just lying back and taking it. No fighting back. The painting could be asking, "Am I feeling it yet?"

So our hero lies down and he begins to think, but nothing important or pleasant comes to mind. It should, but it doesn't make our hero disappointed.

A knock comes on his office door and a scrawny secretary wearing a miniskirt comes in. She looks down at our hero and says nothing, a puzzled expression on her face. She watches him smile incessantly, until he sits up, looks at her and says, "I'm going to throw up." He does so, promptly, all over himself and it pours down his khaki pants and rubs up against the secretary's high heels.

The feeling of euphoria leaves our hero. But the point is, it was there.

A Bar Scene

Two men of the same age find each other in conversation at a bar and learn that they both loathe life.
“My wife left me for my best friend, I was laid off and my mortgage was foreclosed. My children don’t call or write and I’m getting too old to start over.” Said the one. “I can find only one way out, either through a bottle or a gun.” He finished drinking his beer and waved for another.
“What a coincidence.” Said the other. “You have lost everything but I never had those to begin with.”
“Maybe you’re taking things too seriously,” the bartender interjected. “Many things are worth living for. You don’t have to drink yourself to death.” It was his way of saying, I think you’ve had enough.
“Any happiness in my life makes me feel guilty.” The first muttered. “Perhaps, then, starting right now, I refuse to laugh at anything ever again. I refuse to allow myself any pleasures until I pull through this.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” said the second man. “I will make a similar resolution, only I will laugh at everything.” He finished drinking and then turned to his companion and burst into high-pitched squealing. He pointed and he held his stomach and he fell off the stool onto his back.
The first man didn’t react at first, just listening to the man crawling on the floor, laughing. Then he abruptly stood up, bent over the laughing man and slowly beat the shit out of him. But it was no use. The laughing man was already free.

Inheritance

June 14, 2008

NOTE: I started this and never finished it. I actually like it better that way.

TV made me do this. Cops and robbers. Japanese cartoons. Even censored, those R movies persuaded me. Tipped me over the edge. That's why I'm here.

It's raining and later I will be swimming with pneumonia. This will only help my case. I'm sitting in the bushes blinking away raindrops and watching the upstairs window of my girlfriend's house. I should say, "ex."

The light flicks on, glows bright and I can see the flowers I gave her for Valentines day on her dresser. I'm waiting for the right moment and then I'll burst in and kill her and that bastard she's screwing. I'm waiting til they start kissing.

Video games made me do this. Stealing electronic images of cars and gunning down anyone who gets in my way. Big, red, pixel-blobs of blood. There ain't no halo over my head. I was taught this was OK.

I already know that I'll be tried as a minor because I'm 13 and this is the way things work in this town. Maybe I'll get some time in juvenile hall, maybe some community service. I'll get out soon enough and my ex and her new boyfriend will still be dead. I may be able to watch the history channel documentary, in which they'll ask the question, Why did this kid snap?

Who hasn't had some kind of impulse to kill before? Isn't this some sort of human nature? Every one thinks like this once in a while, why am I to blame for going through with it? Evolution made me do this.

I can already imagine the little bullet holes in her chest. Right through the heart she said she gave to me. Lying, stinking whore, you're gonna get yours. She'll be half-naked, because she never goes all the way.

As for that twat she replaced me with, some jock who's 15, I'll shoot him in the head so many times that they won't recognize his teeth.

I don't even know what kind of gun I have.

a small story

She walks out, leaving forever, says, "I'm doing you the biggest favor in your life."
I roll over and fall asleep, the pillow still wet from her tears.
I'm awake at 2am in an insomniac fit.
All the drinks are empty.
At least a dozen vacant bottles.
So I walk to the corner market and I'm the only customer in the store.
I have a tiny cart and put ten bottles of Wild Turkey in it.
Then I grab an extra bottle.
At the checkout, all those little impulse items, I take a package of condoms and some beef jerky.
The cashier asks me if I have ID.
I show it to him and notice he only reads the birthdate.
The cashier asks me cash or credit.
Credit.
The cashier asks for my ID again.
He just reads the name and makes sure it matches the card.
No one ever looks at the picture.
I leave, pushing my little cart down the street.
Two cops pull over, one fat and one short and ask to see my ID.
Do I have a choice?
They run it through a machine without even looking at it.
No warrants, they say, but just in case, what's in the bags.
Eleven bottles of Wild Turkey, some condoms and some beef jerky, I say.
I think this guy is a pervert, the short cop whispers, loud enough that I can hear.
What are you, some kind of pervert? the large one asks.
I plead the 5th.
The cops take me down to the station, sirens blaring.
They say it's just in case.
For several hours they grill me with questions about murdered people.
All I know is what I read in the papers, I say.
This isn't the guy, the one cop whispers, still not quite quiet enough.
You aren't the guy, the other cop says, arms crossed.
The short cop holds up a black and white mugshot.
This man, fat cop says, has been causing terror all over town.
He's killed eleven people already, the other cop mutters.
We thought you were him.
There is a likeness, I say, but how did you get his photograph if you don't know his name?
You can go, says the fat cop.
Can I have my groceries back? I ask.
You can have one bottle.
That's all I need.
I'm forced to walk back to the hotel, about five miles from the station.
I decide to drink.
By the time I have finished half the bottle I start having paranoid delusions that around every corner, down every filthy alley is the serial killer.
I imagine my doppelganger stabbing me with long sharp fingernail knives.
Deep into my neck he thrusts until the blades poke out the other side.
Each step increases my paranoia and my pace, until I am running for my life down empty streets.
It's very quiet.
Then I trip and fall flat on my face.
The Wild Turkey bottle shatters and inch long slivers stab into my neck.
The alcohol seeps warm into my jacket.
I pull the glass out painlessly and I don't bleed much.
The sun rises the moment I return to the hotel.
I go back to my room, which has been cleaned by the maid.
There is a tiny mint on my pillow.

wearedriving

We are driving.
Roadtrip.
That kind of thing.

A previous argument has disabled everyone in the vehicle.
No one wants to speak and the driver is especially uncomfortable.
I sit in the back seat and stare out the window.
It’s dark as electrical tape outside, the only light from the high beams that bounce off the road in front of us.
I’m too wired to sleep.
Everyone else is wide awake as well, unable to ignore each other.
And so goes it.

The driver decides, to fill the silence, turns on the radio.
Ticking through the channels like a worried teleprompter, he tries to discover a station that plays music everyone likes.
Not likely.
But besides that, all he can locate is static.
STATICSTATICSTATIC.

The passengers – and me – are getting sick of this white noise.
It’s no substitute for conversation.
Until –
the driver discovers a voice.

It says, T-MINUS 1 HOUR 3 MINUTES
And then static again.

A minute later.
T-MINUS 1 HOUR 2 MINUTES.
And then static again.

We’re still silent in the car, but we’re all sitting upright, waiting for the lulls in the nearly endless static sea.
Still silent to each other.

T-MINUS 57 MINUTES.
The cold voice of a computer echoing in our little box.
A sign says, 50 miles to somewhere.
Destination isn’t important anymore.

T-MINUS 49 MINUTES.
Still waiting.
No explanation.
No reasoning behind any of it.

We’ve mostly forgotten the argument, but not the anger.
We’re retaining that at least.
I think the argument was something about . . .

Existence.

T-MINUS 33 MINUTES.
. . . and counting, one of us whispers.
No one else speaks. The static is enough for us.


And we just kept driving.
Just kept going.
And going.

And going.

Sea Cucumber

These things take planning, but I wasn't prepared for this.

I love the way my eyes swell in the morning, crusted so bad I have to peel them open. I love the bloodshot hopelessness in the worm-like veins. The tears that choke in the corners and the sporadic dilation in the morning sunlight. Like my eyes are rotten grapes bleeding wine.

I love the aching I get in every tired, pulled muscle of my damaged frame. The way my bones crinkle with weight and age. The way my mouth is dry as sand and the way my teeth throb with cavities.

I'm not kidding. It really makes me happy.

I made myself anorexic just last week. For fun. I'm not really concerned that I'm fat, I just want to be disgustingly thin. Like a living skeleton, sucking and smoking thin little cigarettes. I want my bones poking out my back like dragon skin. Like a dead lion, the ribs wrapped in tattered flesh. I want it to hurt to masturbate.

After a big meal of blueberry pancakes and orange juice and bagels with cream cheese and some chocolate bars I use a toothbrush and massage my epiglottis. It's sore and cancerous, but soon my gag reflex is stimulated enough that I puke my guts out, disgorging viscera like a sea cucumber. My salivary glands are swollen and dry. I think some of what I regurgitate is blood, but who knows. That gag reflex feeling is beautiful. I'm pulling myself apart.

I love this.

The brown-red barf swirls down the bowels of the toilet bowl and into oblivion, like this never happened. I feel tired all of a sudden and lay on the tile, focusing in and out on the ceiling light. The sporadic dilation in the florescent sunlight.

Some of the bile splattered on the magazines next to the toilet paper, smearing the ink of a weight loss book. The title screams "LOSE 30 POUNDS IN SIX WEEKS!"

Five more weeks to go.

Venery

Fiction

VENERY
Mene Tekel
VI-XXIII-MMVII

Dedicated to Ultra_Hacker for all the rides he gave me.


The radio is playing Queen so loud I can't hear anything but "Radio Ga Ga".
In the dark, I see those dark, green pools reflecting light. "There!" I shout and point.
Chase guns the engine, flips on the headlights, and at 32 miles an hour we run the cat down with his car. The cat doesn't get far before it lurches under the right tire and lifts the car a foot in the air. In the passenger side mirror, I can see the mass of fur behind us, a puddle of blood and guts oozing out of its broken belly. Chase, I, and Thomas in the back, all laugh.
We turn left and right and hit a cul-de-sac and do a u-turn in someone's driveway at 28 miles an hour, burning rubber. The radio is playing Queen's "We Are The Champions". We drive down another road, and I see it, another cat, sitting in the gutter. Chase hits the lights, and we chase the feline down at 44 miles an hour. Imagine a giant balloon of strawberry jelly. That's the look the animal makes as it bursts under our tires, fur and viscera spraying out.
We all laugh, we all laugh. Thomas sits up. None of us wear a seatbelt. Thomas injects himself with a vial of heroin and sighs. And laughs.
The radio is playing Queen's "Who Wants to Live Forever". Thomas is singing along, Chase is drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. I close my eyes and breathe the music. It's a mix cd on random play, and each song is ecstasy.
Chase is driving a 2006 Grand Prix. The color is a egg white hue, and each flash of streetlight we dart under illuminates the speckles of blood dotting the hood. It's beautiful.
Chase drives faster, wheeling around a corner at 54 miles an hour. He speeds up to 67 when I see a raccoon, and point it out. Before it can dash back into the woods, we nail it, bouncing over it like a living speed bump. We all laugh, we all laugh.
Driving at 51 miles an hour, we wheel down the street and run a red light. It's so late at night that no one sees us. We run a stop sign fifty feet later at 49 miles an hour. I see something black and white and scream, "There!" We smush it into the gutter. Turns out it was a skunk, and the stench bombards us as we race away choking at 73 miles an hour.
Chase turns off the headlights, and we crouch along at 17 miles an hour, hunting for prey. I see a black cat sitting in the beam of a streetlamp. "There!" Chase hits the highbeams and the cat takes off. We chase it down the street until it runs into someone's yard and up a sapling. We can't stop, and we whack into the tree. It crackles and falls, and the cat runs out of the leaves in panic. We accelerate again and chase the kitty into. . . .the beams of an oncoming car. The cat tries to turn and run laterally, but the car taps it into the air. It soars into our windshield, killing it instantly. The car is out of control, and we hit a mailbox before we're straight on the street again. A flurry of bill-me-laters and magazines and one baffled driver is our wake as we leave the scene at 89 miles an hour. And we all laugh hysterically.
The unlucky black cat is still on our windshield, bleeding from rips in it's flesh. Chase flips the windshield wipers and rubs it off the car. It flops into the road, rolling like a rag doll. The radio is playing "Killer Queen".
At 47 miles an hour, we hit a rabbit on accident. At the irony of this we cannot stop laughing. Thomas is in the back, tears streaming from his eyes, laughing, high as a fever. He moans, and lies down across the back seat. At 33 miles an hour we hit a speed bump, and he flies onto the floor. We all laugh, we all laugh.
I see a rabbit nibbling dandelions in a patch of grass by an intersection. "There!" We hit the lights and chase the bunny into the street at 40 miles an hour. The animal runs diagonal to our tires as they roll over him and squish his little bunny frame.
I scream, "Stop!" and Chase does. Without answering their questions, I spring out of the car, and over to the rabbit's body. It's still alive, it's eyes blinking like an epileptic, it's front leg twitching. I grasp it's paw, place my boot on it's face and pull. It's little head cracks like bubble wrap under my foot, and I pull up an entire drumstick of bunny meat. I hop back in the car, and toss the leg at Thomas. "For good luck." I say. We all laugh, we all laugh.
The radio is playing Queen's "A Kind of Magic".
We drive down another neighborhood at 23 miles an hour, and see a white cat. It glows angelic in the headlights. It almost gets away, but we trample it's hind legs. We do a u-turn in someone's flowerbed and face the dying animal. It's legs are twisted, broken and it's trying to escape by pulling itself along the ground with its front legs. It's pathetic in a funny, helpless way. Chase accelerates to 45 miles an hour, flattening the cat's head and ending its misery. We all laugh, we all laugh.
"There!" I see a tiny calico kitten, it's stupid little bell ding-a-linging as we mow it down. It became a gum stain on the pavement. We all laugh, we all laugh.
The radio is playing Queen's "Fat Bottomed Girls". We're driving down a stretch of interstate and we thump over deer roadkill. An animal that we wouldn't even try to hit. It sends the car out of control, offroad, and we're driving in the grass. All kinds of animals run out of the bushes and into traffic. A few rabbits get slaughtered, a raccoon as well, but most get away. This just kills us and we laugh and laugh like maniacs. We pull back onto the road at 52 miles an hour, and take the next exit.
We drive out of the suburbs for a minute. Cruising down an empty street behind a warehouse we see a homeless man pushing a shopping cart of his possessions. Chase doesn't stop. He hits the cart, and the man at 61 miles an hour and sends them both flying over the roof. The bum's ribs cracked, and his face peeled off, but he was still alive enough to stand and curse at us as we drove off laughing.
The radio is playing "Under Pressure".
We see two dogs fighting each other, ripping each other's throats out. Vicious, stray dogs, the kind that inspired Kujo. At 38 miles an hour we rush into their little fight. They try to move, but we still tear off the smaller dogs leg. I can hear it's howling as we race off. In the rearview mirror, I see this three legged dog, still taking on the other, snarling, dog eat dog.
The shopping cart had cracked our windshield and broken a headlight. Like a one eyed predator, we stalk through the shadows until we see a small, grey cat sitting in the street. We chase this one down, but it keeps running faster and faster. It dives under a chain link fence and we follow it, bursting through. We shoot into a dried up canal, and the cat is just ahead of us, dodging the glow of the sole headlight. It bounces in and out of the beam, like a shadow. Chase accelerates slowly, just barely idling up beside it, til it's fluffy tail is close enough to the fender. Then he tips the steering wheel just so, and the cat's tail catches, ripping it up and tearing it around the axle. A stream of blood sprays across the passenger side window. Thick, meaty blood, like tomato sauce. We all laugh, we all laugh.
Suddenly, at 47 miles an hour we hit a steel post at an angle, flipping the car and flopping down the pavement until the ceiling becomes the floor. My head hits the dashboard and breaks my face open. My teeth are chewing on teeth. Thomas finds a needle in his mouth. Chase is cut up by shattered safety glass. Blood everywhere.
We lay upside down in the wreckage, bleeding and immobile with pain.
The radio is still on, static and fuzz. The song is "Another One Bites the Dust".
And we all laugh, we all laugh.