| got nothin. |
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stuff we wrote before now.
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places to go .: immaculate ejaculates :. |
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people to meet .: josh :. |
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just so you know all the material on this site is legally protected by american copyright law, etc., etc., etc., and is the intellectual property of the writer. if you'd like to use or comment on any of these pieces, please contact the author. if you don't, we'll have our friend Ox come to your house and break your children. he's a kung fu master. |
Monday, June 04, 2007
This place stinks. Not the normal bad smell of tiny local bars, the spilled beer and smoke stench, but something stale. It smells old, stagnant. Almost like museums smell, but more depressing. The people themselves are here on display every night much like exhibits. Townsfolk either too worn-down or too apathetic to care that this has become their fate. Stuck in a dying town, attending the same job each day and the only bar each night. Most of them are here alone, the only ones here with someone are an elderly couple sitting at one of the few, under-sanitized tables, and two young girls. The television is on, but no one watches, not even the bartender who spends more time emptying ash trays than at the tap.
I say the couple is elderly as a polite way of saying they are too old to still be coming here regularly, though as I know too well, age is a matter of relativity. The girls must be younger than twenty-five. Probably work at the same job and out together as sounding boards for the same complaints about life they make every night. They’re learning that life isn’t fairy tales and happy endings, they must have been quite naïve for this realization not to have set in long before they came to this.
I finish my smoke, and light another, must keep up appearances. Wouldn’t want someone here to notice I’m not a townie and decide to pump me for information about anything more interesting than what happens in the ten-mile radius of this pit. I normally have no problem with socializing while enjoying a few drinks but just the thought of carrying on a conversation with someone from this place is depressing enough. Tomorrow’s journey to anywhere but here is already on my mind as I quietly pay my tab. Yes, anywhere but here will be fine.
Still though, my mind keeps wondering back to the two young girls, especially the red-head with the large breasts. I’ve been staring over in her direction for some time now wondering. What would she have been like if she had been born anywhere else in the world, someplace where a face like hers might have gotten her farther than a dead-end job? I wonder what she’d look like if she smiled. The smile she might have worn has long since been driven off. This place is a cancer on the mind and spirit. Yes, anywhere but here tomorrow.
As I’m heading back to what is considered a hotel here, surprised that with the town's location and shabby appearance that there is a hotel, I take a minute to enjoy the only thing remarkable about the town, the air. It rarely smells this good anywhere else, but a town with no industry lying this close to the mountains has an abundance of clean air. It leaves you wondering why the townspeople are so drawn to the museum odor of the bar when they could be anywhere else smelling air like this. Nostalgia grips me and I catch myself reminiscing of my past. Winters in northern Italy. I should go back there soon, see if anything is left of the place I grew up. I left without really taking it all in as I should have.
Now I’ve depressed myself again but at least this kind of sadness has meaning and focus. This kind of sorrow gives life direction. My mind’s made up now and I’ll be able to sleep well tonight. Yes, the red-head with the big tits. I'll kill her tonight.
..::// \\::..
Saturday, May 08, 2004
Here's an edit of a previously published story from a few months ago. Parts of it are substantially different, but it's still the same story. If you're interested in the editing or the revisions I might have made or you haven't read the original, enjoy. Otherwise, this might feel a little repetitive.
Clyde fought desperately to sink farther into the bedsprings, a cramped and huddled mass of flesh and sheets buried under a heap of pillows. His feet were sweaty, reeking; his arms were freezing, pulled tight to his body in a futile attempt to warm them. Somewhere, underneath layers of epidermis, dermis, capillary, artery, muscle, and bone, somewhere, he knew, something was wrong. The dull ache pounding in the back of his head was steadying, the random muffled beats intensifying to the roar of an empty Amtrak screaming past his cell, fluorescent tubes bringing a sickly green glow to the ghosts of passengers long since dead and derailed, stuck between heaven and hell. The trains had long been a fixture of the countryside, slithering to and fro from destination to destination, passing through a vacuum on their way. Clyde cursed them now, lying awake in a puddle of his own sweat, one more thing keeping him from the mollifying non-being of sleep.
He knew, though, that their days were numbered. The trains were dinosaurs. Upon their creation they were heralded as saviors and shepherds of industry and commerce -- and for a time, they were. Their time, however, was up. Fewer and fewer people would ride; fewer businesses would require their services. With airplanes crisscrossing the skies, the trains would become obsolete. Society would find a way to get along without them. Humankind would soon decide that they were better off without them.
The airport had sprung up just down the road from the jail, providing much to joke about in terms of convenient access, should the city want to load them all up on planes and cast them into the sea. It had been a grand event when the airport opened five years ago -- the mayor spoke of progress, of good times ahead, of the shining example the city was to set for the surrounding counties. Finally, Mayor Hornsby said, we could grow as a center of commerce, of industry, of progress... we will be the center of things to come.
The citizens all applauded and cheered, surely envisioning their grand futures and new hopes. They would welcome fathers back from business trips; they would send children off to visit their until-now-lost grandmothers -- grandmothers that were not lost, in reality, but were simply too distant to be thought of enough to visit. The grandmothers, of course, would not complain. They would be glad enough to see their children come back to them, bringing children of their own; they would be glad enough to see their genes passed on to another generation that they would not mind being patronized.
The citizens would send children off to college. Young daughters would go, wide-eyed at the life and opportunities spread out before them, their legs soon spread out before them as wide-eyed boys arrived from the same airports from the same families. A young man would stand nervously, a dozen gas-station roses lovingly wrapped in plastic in sweaty hand, checking his watch far more than was necessary considering his young lady's plane wasn't due for another half hour. A loving wife would see her husband off on a trip to Michigan, where he would wear a suit ten years out of fashion and try to impress a board of men with more money than he -- whose company had more money than his company -- impress them enough to give him a share so that he might make more money, in turn giving some back, a whirlwind of profits. The same wife would wait for an hour and a half, sucking down Virginia Slims in the freshly polished airport bar, until she made her way across the terminal to pick up the young man she had met by chance, at one of her husband's company party extravaganzas. She would meet him, his tie too tight, new socks, dressed to get her panties off, not realizing that he didn't have to try quite so hard.
All these promises of a future life, the connection brought by an airport -- no, an international airport -- were lost upon most of the residents of Whiteville State Penitentiary. They had all stood at the fence, listening to the mayor's speech over the loudspeakers mounted on the airstrips. They were less enthused, eyes vacant, not responding to the mayor's impassioned promises and the gullible applause of the citizenry. True, some were excited -- the younger ones, the ones waiting for life on the other side of a ten-year stay in the Whiteville Hilton; the older ones, resigned to their respective fates, simply marveling at the progress of technology while they had been away.
One in particular, Myers, had always stood out to Clyde. He never talked to Myers -- never really wanted to. But Clyde did notice him every day, as they did their work out in the yards. They worked the same job, chopping lumber the city had brought in from around the countryside to be processed at the jail. Why not, mused the mayor, put our more permanent residents to good use? Why not, thought Clyde, every day that he chopped the wood from forests he would never again see to fuel fires whose warmth he would never feel, shipped off to families more deserving than he.
Every day, Clyde chopped -- he was strangely proud of his build, much more muscular than he had ever been on the Outside, but of little use picking up women -- and he would listen for the sound of jet engines roaring in the distance. Every time, without fail, the hard-of-hearing Myers would be chopping still. But Clyde would watch, his eyes on the corners of Myers' eyes, as the recognition lit them up. A dull smile would force its way to his lips, and he would put down his axe slowly, as not to pull a muscle or pop a bone out of joint or scare the small rodents that often scurried around. He would look up, up, up, almost tipping over as the aluminum bird soared overhead, then turning to follow it. He would get to the barbed-wire fence, seeming to forget its existence, hands coming up just in time to brace himself against the fence's rusted metal. The plane would touch down, bringing a hundred travelers back to earth, back to their homes and families and those that would greet them. Myers would stand there for another moment or two, before a young guard would call to the old man, hurrying him back to work with a quiet respect one might reserve for a good man, a wise man, much older than one's self, who had killed his wife's lover in a fit of jealous rage.
Clyde thought of all this now, struggling to keep one thought above water as the others clamored for attention, for air; they were all cast aside by a shot of pain in his gut, his stomach ripping apart. He tried to calm himself, remembering the things he had learned over the last few weeks. It's only a sensation, Clyde reasoned, an electrical impulse traveling up a nerve to my brain, telling me something's wrong. And I already know something's wrong, so it doesn't matter.
His smug sense of satisfaction, of control over (if nothing else) his own body, vanished without memory as another wave of pain arrived with the subtlety of a shotgun blast. Screaming for the guards would do no good -- his kind was looked down on, even in prison. Even if they would respond, after finishing a late-night game of Texas hold-'em, it was unlikely that they would know what to do or find it worthy of rousing the doctor. Let him handle it when he comes in later in the morning.
Clyde knew what the problem was, or at least had some idea. Two weeks ago, he had been given a pass to see Dr. Stevens, the resident physician. Clyde had felt a burning in his abdomen, a vise on his stomach, clamping and twisting. Holding back tears, he was escorted to the doctor's examination room, where he had collapsed on the floor. After a moment's diagnosis, Dr. Stevens had decided that Clyde's appendix must come out immediately. The prison was in a sorry state, medically, lacking the tools necessary for a surgeon to work his craft, but Dr. Stevens saw a job that needed to be done this very second. Clyde remembered the doctor's soft eyes, apologizing for the poor quality of the anesthesia through the hazy curtain of semi-consciousness. Clyde had felt the leather straps tighten around his arms and legs, occasionally fighting them as the scalpel pierced his skin before he fully lost cognizance.
He had awakened some time later -- he would later find out it had been almost two days -- in a dusty supply closet hastily remolded to serve as a recovery room. He was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, courtesy of Dr. Stevens' own wardrobe, as his prison rags had been ruined in the surgery. Clyde thought it a rather cruel joke. If he were to see his image in the mirror, he might imagine himself a free man.
Dr. Stevens had taken a liking to Clyde, explaining all sorts of things about the medical profession, about the human body. Clyde, inquisitive by nature, felt like a child again, asking questions, caring about answers. Dr. Stevens had kept Clyde longer than Clyde ever thought would be necessary, running tests he had never imagined; electrodes, diagrams, even a computer that Dr. Stevens had built himself. He explained that science was his passion, that he liked to experiment. Clyde saw a ham radio in the corner and instantly liked Dr. Stevens more -- it was a hobby Clyde had enjoyed Outside. At one point, the lights in the room had all blown out -- Dr. Stevens attributed it to a power surge, to faulty equipment.
And yet, now, two weeks later, his body was failing. He was denying the surgery, the stitching... it was as if his body wanted to erupt out through the scar on his belly. He had heard stories of doctors leaving clamps, ties, even scalpels inside patients, and he felt sure this was the case. His bowels churned, his muscles burned, his brain pounded a beat a thousand drummers could not match. His entire body convulsed, cramping, and then...
Nothing...
But he was there, still. He was still breathing; he was still sucking life in from the air. He began to calm himself, to see the slate walls stop dancing and return to their jobs, keeping him in. And it was then that he began humming along to a song in his head, a song he had never heard.
Won't you come and go with me,
Down that Mississippi;
We'll take a boat to the land of dreams,
Come along with me on, down to New Orleans...
He shook his head violently, trying to dispel the unwelcome visitor. The brassy trumpets and bayou clarinets left without protest, only to be soon replaced with static, an untuned radio. And then, a voice.
Piper two-oh-three foxtrot delta, this is tower. You are cleared...
And static.
Tower, this is Piper two-oh-three foxtrot delta, confirming approach on heading two-twenty...
Clyde shook violently, burying his head beneath the pillow again, yelling into the mattress. The springs erupting through and poking his skin were of little concern now, barely distracting him from the fear of his own brain, the fear of the unknown.
And there was silence. The only sound was the pounding of Clyde's heart, his hands on his chest to keep it from leaping away. A small goddamn plane flew into the goddamn airport, propellers whirring like hummingbirds in search of octane, nectar to fly them farther away. Clyde heard sweat escape from his skin and bead up on his forehead, a plip-plop amplified by fear.
Silence.
A metal cup clanged to the ground far down the hall.
Silence.
Static...
Tower, this is Boeing two-niner-seven-seven, on approach.
He heard the words the voice called, but he did not understand a single one. The words eventually gave way to static, a hiss, a squeal, as another goddamn plane started to fly into the airport. This one was bigger, a jet plane by the sound of it. Hundreds of sardines in a can, waiting to get home to their little fish families, soon to touch down and bring smiling faces to warm places.
Fuck you, Clyde thought. Fuck all of you.
He lay there in bed, listening to the engines roar as they powered down, coming closer to earth. Every day, the planes sounded like they got closer. They were huge when Clyde was out in the yards. On the occasion that he would look up, he would notice the tread on the tires; he could count the rivets along the bird's false skin. He would look into the windows, daring someone to look back at him, to make eye contact, to acknowledge his existence. He would grab his crotch and spit as they passed, turning back to a nod from his nameless neighbor, still chopping wood.
And this time, it must have been even closer. Every night, he would pray to whoever might be listening that the plane's engines would fail, that man would stop pissing on nature and that metal would stop defying gravity. He would hear the dull roar of the engines inching ever closer to earth, and he would pray for the crash. He did not care to kill people, that was certain; he didn't think of the people. Rather, he wanted the excitement, anything to wake him from the coma he had been ever since the rusted iron bars slammed shut behind him. And he was certain, if a plane crashed right there for all the world to see, he wouldn't have to go chop fucking wood.
And the engines roared, and Clyde prayed.
And the engines roared, louder, and Clyde willed it himself.
The lights burst.
And the engines screamed, louder still, and Clyde demanded a crater.
And the metal itself began whistling, a rocket in the sky gone horribly wrong, and Clyde stopped willing it.
The ground shook with incredible force, a giant's footstep as he bounded across the landscape. A wave shot through the cement, knocking Clyde's chained bed off of the wall, embedding springs deep in his arms, back, and ass. Through the black painted bars, he saw the holocaust, a jet-fuel fireball rising high into the night sky. A large chunk of the cement wall crumbled to the ground, displaced by a door marked "Emergency Exit Only," flung far from the crash site. Clyde was not sharp enough to notice the irony, as he was sick from the stench of shit he had created.
Clyde.
He heard the voice, echoing through his head, clearer than any of the others.
Clyde, go outside.
He heard panic from the cells down the row. Guards ran up and down the hallways, screaming orders to each other and to the prisoners.
"Get the fuck back in there!" he heard a guard order, followed by several others, guns drawn. Clyde could see across the way that several cell doors had been jarred open by the impact.
Clyde, go outside.
Almost automatically, he walked to the wall, still looking at the riot taking place in the jail. Gunshots rang out. He pushed the emergency exit out of the way and walked out into the yard.
Turning to look, Clyde gazed at the destruction. A large section of the prison was simply missing -- perhaps it had been crushed into the earth. Clyde did not envy those who had been outside at the point of impact. He saw guards nearly strained through the fence, hollowed of life, covered in shrapnel, like some sick dartboard. Much of the plane had disintegrated upon the violent touchdown.
The nose of the craft, still in one piece, was far away from the rest; a long trench was dug along the path it had taken, through the rusty barbed wire fence Myers had looked through so many times. Clyde followed the lead of the other prisoners that had escaped their cells, making his way for the hole and for freedom. He picked his way along through the wreckage, noting cloth seats, a disembodied hand, oxygen masks.
Clyde, lie down.
But Clyde would never lie down, not of his own free will, not when he was this close to freedom. He hobbled toward the fence as fast as his wretched body could carry him, never looking away.
He felt a pinch in his neck and his entire body went limp.
It was as if he had lost all control over his body. He could only lie there, chest down on the oil and blood soaking into the ground. Bleeding from a gash on the chin, his head was up, and he could see out into the field next to the airport, where his fellow prisoners were making their escape, leaving the flames and smoke for the starry skies above. Clyde saw Myers, ambling through the carnage as others sprinted. He was transfixed by the metallic hull of the fallen beast that had captured his imagination so many times before. Yet here it was, hot to the touch, but within his reach. Myers gazed at the steel giant one last time before stepping out towards freedom.
It was then that Clyde heard several sharp cracks, and Myers' body dropped to the ground like an empty sack. Clyde's fellow prisoners began to fall, one by one. Out of the corner of his eye he saw men in the guard tower, roused quickly from sleep, aiming rifles as if they were hunting rabbits for dinner. The sound of a helicopter overhead was immediately followed by a gale of wind beating down on his back. He prayed to nobody in particular for the ability to close his eyes, to keep out the dirt that was being blown.
He saw feet scurrying around, white shoes, green scrubs, the Red Cross symbol on several jackets. A pair stopped at his head, and he felt hands on his neck.
"We've got a live one here!"
A face crouched down to where Clyde could identify him. Dr. Stevens looked back with feigned worry.
"Get somebody over here, now!" Dr. Stevens shouted. Clyde tried to yell, to speak, to say anything, to move his lips, but could not.
Don't worry, Clyde. It's taken care of.
Dr. Stevens gave a wink and stood up as the paramedics arrived, steadying Clyde's back and loading him into the helicopter that would take him to the hospital.
..::// \\::..
Thursday, January 08, 2004
ok, not sure where to go with this one. Lil' help please:
He knew something wasn’t quite right when he walked into the parking garage with her hand in his. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but something felt wrong. As they neared the back of the line of cars where his truck waited for them, five men stepped out from hiding behind a van, and immediately he knew what he had sensed. A thousand scenarios ran through his head in milliseconds. He thought of running but knew she wasn’t fast enough and that he couldn’t carry her far before they would catch up. He had his decision made before she could utter a startled gasp or they could complete their arrogant grins. He whirled toward her and in a single motion, opened his pocketknife kept in his jacket pocket and handed it to her saying, “Take this, stay behind me, there are a lot of them and one might get by me!” She saw something in his eyes that scared her, a dark look of grim purpose and determination; his eyes were the color of coal. She had never seen his face look that hard.
All of this happened before she could think her way through what was happening. He spun away from her caught the fist of the first attacker, breaking the man’s arm at the elbow with a quick thrust of his forearm. The man cried out as a kick shattered his knee. The other four looked on first with shock then with wild expressions. Two of them rushed him and he met the first head on. He blocked a barrage of punches on his arms before finding the opportunity to land a jab to the sternum and a knee to the face on the first. The second tried to get away but was now out of his league. A quick kick to the man’s inner thigh dropped him to the ground, where a stomp that broke several ribs stopped the man’s pained scream in a struggled for breathe. As the other two closed in and started to exchange blows with him, he heard a scream behind him. He spun to see what was happening and saw her wildly swinging the knife attempting to ward off a sixth man who had come seemingly from nowhere. His rage exploded. The two men facing him were both incapacitated before the first had finished falling to the ground unconscious. The last man had grabbed hold of her wrist as she tried to fight him off and was turning to see if his friends had finished beating the guy, so they could take the girl off for some fun. The man was met by a fist that lifted him off his feet and propelled back through the air onto a car, where he lay groaning.
He was still spinning around looking for more men to come out from hiding behind the cars, when he felt a gentle touch on his shoulder. He spun a came to an abrupt stop when he realized it was her. The feral look faded from his eyes, replaced with deep concern. “Are you ok? Did they hurt you?”
“No…but…I…what…how did you do that?” she asked in an amazed voice. “I’ve never seen anything like what you did”
His shoulders slumped in relief and his voice came out in a sad, tired whisper. “Let’s go home. I’ll try…I’ll explain everything.”
..::// \\::..
Red lines form three oh oh
Room’s covered in a smothering gray
Lies alone staring at walls
He’d never felt anything before
Won’t ever be like that again
Ev’ry thing outside is greener
Stars have never shone so bright
These things just don’t make sense
This wasn’t s’pose to happen to him
Man, this poor kid’s lost
Never felt something so intense
Can’t stop these thoughts anymore
(Never said a thing)
Images floating through his head
(Never gave him a kiss)
He lies awake thinking of her
(Didn’t even matter)
Hasn’t slept in a few days
(In his mind)
Exhausted, finally goes to bed
(She was already his)
Now the dreams are so sweet
There was this look in her eyes
This electricity in his head
Held her through the night
Watched her sleep till 9
Didn’t want to let go
Now for the first time
Nothing in this boy’s life
No, nothing is for show
He’s alone in his apartment
Man, this boy’s head is achin’
He’s never felt this alive
Can’t stop these thoughts anymore
(Never said a thing)
Images floating through his head
(Never gave him a kiss)
He lies awake thinking of her
(Didn’t even matter)
Hasn’t slept in a few days
(Cause in his mind)
Exhausted, finally goes to bed
(She was already his)
Now the dreams are so sweet
..::// \\::..
Sunday, January 04, 2004
Austin writes! Here's a fiction work i did for CRW, take a peek if you've got some free time. I feel its decent, but lemme know what you think.
113
"Tell me a story Grandpa"
The older man sat in a rocking chair alongside the bed, a small boy of 11 or 12 curled up in blankets, surrounded by stuffed animals. The older man settled up in the chair.
"Ok, so what do you want to hear?" he asked as he turned and looked towards the bookshelf. "How about-"
The child cut him off, "How about you tell me one with some exciting stuff in it! I'm tired of those same nursery rhymes, I’ve heard everyone of them, like, a million times!"
The old man chuckled, "My, that's a lot of times. I'm surprised that you can count that high."
"Shhhhhhhh, you know what I mean, now come on, tell me a good one."
The grandfather leaned back in his chair and rubbed his face for a moment. "Lemme think," he half muttered to himself. "Ok, I got one. I haven't told this story in a long time." His voice had gone somber and serious.
The boy shifted in his bed, leaning up against the pillows and listened.
"Alright, once, years ago, there was a man by the name of John Kruger..." And as the sun slowly set in the clouds, the sound of thunder was heard rumbling through the mountains.
~~~~~
"ROBERT! ROBERT? Son of a Bi-, Steve, find Robert and you tell him to shut down that drilling in tunnel 4 now before it caves in and kills us all. Do it now! And then tell him to come find me after he's had a bite to eat and a shower."
"Will do." Steve turned and jogged up the mine, and John Kruger watched him go. He slid his glove back to check his watch. 7:45. 15 minutes till another day finished. The sun would be going down soon, at least topside, it was always a perpetual midnight down here. He pulled his gloves off, dropping them to the ground, and rubbed his face with the inside of his bicep. Streaked dirt covered his face, but his gray eyes shown out like they were on fire. He contemplated putting his gloves back on and working another 10 minutes, but he was beat.
"This mine will be the end of me," he muttered under his breath.
He picked up his gloves, checked the readings on the air gauge, saw they were satisfactory, and headed out of the mine.
Thirty minutes later he was topside: clean, and full. He poured himself a cup of coffee, black, and lit a cigarette. His hands were calloused and scared, and they dwarfed the coffee cup. He had just sat down in his chair when there was a knock at the door. Robert entered without waiting for a reply.
John nodded to the pot of coffee, "Get yourself a cup."
Robert glanced that way, hesitated then poured his own.
"Have a seat Rob."
Rob sat across from John, John's big boots kicked up high on the table, trailing dust everywhere, his gray eyes burning into Robert's for a moment.
"Ok Rob, so what the hell was that all about today?"
"I don’t know Boss, I can just feel I’m close to something. I know that what we're after is down shaft 4."
"Well, that may be," John paused to pull a long drag off the cigarette, and continued. "But it could also hit that river that goes underground 15 miles up. And I for one don't feel like whole damn mine collapsing on top of me, not to mention the 75 men that are counting on me to make sure they can put a meal on their table and the tables of their families."
"But-"
Kruger cut him off, "But nothing, I’ve been doing this since I was 19 years old. You know that, how long have you been working under me?"
Robert half smirked, “Eight Years.”
“And have I let us down yet?”
“No sir.”
"Now trust me, we're gonna go looking in Shaft 4 soon enough, but we gotta make sure that this place stays safe first. You understand me?"
"Yes Sir."
"Go ahead and get some sleep, it'll be another long day tomorrow."
Robert stood to leave, and Kruger took another long puff of the cigarette.
"Hey Rob?"
"Yeah, John?"
"We'll get what we're after. You have my word."
Robert nodded and closed the door behind him.
Kruger took a long hit of his coffee and turned back to his desk, glancing over what was known. They'd been busting their ass down here for the past 3 years, and hadn't had much to show for it, but he knew their time would come. Everything pointed to a big find, and moral was up. But then again, around John Kruger, there wasn't much chance for it to get down.
~~~~~
The grandfather leaned back in the chair, stretching, before he continued.
“Now John never told anyone, but he was a smart one, had a college degree and everything. In Geology. But the lab work was just too much boredom to him, that’s why he went into the mines. At least he got to get his hands dirty.”
“Geology?” questioned the child.
“Yeah, it’s kinda like getting a degree in rocks, only its all technical, and they teach what they are made of, stuff like that.”
The boy nodded in agreement, although still looking confused, but the older man continued. “Now days had passed since John and Robert’s little head to head, and the mine was continuing to make slow headway. The mine’s investors were getting anxious, even though there was still two years left on the contract.
“Investors?”
“Yeah, people that pay for you to dig for them. And they were paying John to find Diamonds. And not just any diamond, seems John had thought to have discovered a new class of diamond. The investors had cut him a 6-year deal. They were 4 years though that deal and still had nothing but a few stones to show for it. And the investors were getting anxious.”
~~~~~
“John, you got a copy?”
John pulled his radio off his belt, “Go ahead.”
“You have a phone call, it’s the suits. It sounds important.”
“Can you tell them I’ll call them this afternoon?
“I don’t think so, I told them you’d call as soon as you got up here.”
“Alright, I’ll be up in 10.”
John paced in his office while listening to the irrational voice at the other end of the line. Five minutes later and without getting hardly a word in edgewise, John hung up.
“Damn.” John leaned back at his desk. Dirt covered the phone from where John was holding it.
He rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands, and then picked up a radio.
“Robert, you gotta copy?” He relinquished the button, and waited a moment.
“Yeah, go ahead John.”
“How’s shaft 7 going, anything new?”
“Nah, same shit. It’s dark, it’s dirty, and there’s nothing of value in it.”
John’s eyes creased, “Yeah, that’s what I figured. When you guys call it quits for the night and get cleaned up, and stop by my office. Steve, you copy that as well?” The seriousness of his voice was picked up by both men, and duel “Yes Sirs” rang through.
John set the radio into its charger, walked to his fridge and popped open a beer. He took a swallow as he sat down and looked at the maps of his mine. He had some decisions to make before Robert and Steve arrived.
About an hour later Robert showed up. John was reclining in the small couch that took up a quarter of his office, looking over some notes he had scribbled down.
“Grab a beer, if you want one.” John said through a breath of cigarette smoke. Robert made his way to the fridge, cracked one open and pulled up a chair.
“So what do you think John?”
“Well, unfortunately, I don’t get to think in this one. I got these investors so far up my ass I might as well put a tie on.” He paused to take a drag of the cigarette, and continued. “They’re trying to pull the rug out from under us. They are giving us two months to hit something or they’re shutting us down.”
“Two months? That’s bullshit. This isn’t something where you just walk in and pull a rabbit out of a hat. This takes time.”
John nodded, “Yeah, you’re preaching to the choir but try telling them that. They don’t give a damn, they’ve forgotten what they signed up for, they can only see big dollar signs. That’s all that matters, and since we haven’t been filling their pockets, they’re gonna do something that will, and if that means canning us, then that’s what they’ll do.”
A knock on the door was answered with, “Come in.” And Steve entered. His large frame filled the small room, and he walked with a slight swagger, almost like he should have been a mafia hit man, and not someone that spent their life hundreds of feet under the earth.
“Mind if I grab one?” Steve asked, nodding towards the fridge.
“Nah, help yourself.”
Steve removed one from the fridge and slid a chair from the table, plopping down between the other men. “So what’s the deal, John?”
“Well, basically the investors have put us in the grinder and we have two months to show something for it.”
“Wait a sec, I thought we still had 2 years or so-“
“Well we did until about 2 hours ago. And then I got a call from LA, and I’m still trying to get the shoe leather out of my ass. But regardless of how we bitch about it now, something’s gonna have to get done.” John hesitated, flicking the ash off his cigarette and taking a hit off his beer. “What I called you guys in here for is thoughts about shaft 4.”
Robert dropped his head for a moment, then spoke. “You know my thoughts on shaft 4, I’ve wanted to go down there for weeks. But it’s not my call.”
John nodded, and turned towards Steve.
Steve paused, “I dunno, John. I got a bad feeling about it, seems like it’s the only shaft the heads north on that side of the mine, and we knew when we started here there was a chance that we could hit that river. We’ve yet to find it, and I don’t see it turning 90 degrees and us being that lucky. I figure we start down that shaft, we’re gonna hit the river, and its gonna shut us down.”
Robert interrupted, “Yeah, but what’s it matter now? We’re getting shut down in 2 months as it is, we’ve got nothing to show for it, so why not take a chance and see what we can do before we go home with our tails between our legs.”
Steve finished his beer and contemplated that for a moment, then nodded to himself. “True.” He shrugged. “Yeah, what the hell, I guess it’s worth a shot.” He glanced at John.
“What’cha think John?”
“Well, honestly, I don’t like it. Don’t like it a damn bit, but I don’t think we have too much choice. And as level-headed as I am, I couldn’t sleep at night if I left this damn place without checking what’s down that shaft.”
Robert nodded, “So it’s decided?”
John nodded, and Steve had quietly walked to the fridge, pulling out 3 beers. “To shaft 4.”
“To shaft 4,” echoed in the small room, but there didn’t seem to be too much excitement remaining in their voices.
~~~~~
The grandfather leaned back in his chair, stretching, before he continued the story, the child lying back in his bed, still awake and attentive.
“Now what Johnny hadn’t told anyone is he had this mine picked out for a reason. He had a desire to make a name for himself, and to do it; he had set his mind to find an element or a compound unknown to anyone, like gold or silver. Scientists told him his odds were nearly impossible down in that mine. All the new stuff was in labs anymore.” The old man leaned back, as if looking into some far off place. “But he didn’t buy that. He felt the world was to damn big and to damn complex for its secrets to be exhausted. O, excuse my French little man.”
He looked slightly ashamed at his outburst, but again, continued on. “He hadn’t told the people in the mine about that. They found out years later. It was something he kept as his own little secret, and it kept him motivated. His motivation was to find element 113.”
The boy nodded silently, although looking confused again and the elderly man continued.
“Three days the drilling went on without any excitement. Just dirty, dark, and monotonous.”
“What’s monotonous mean?”
The old man chuckled, “It means, doing the same boring thing over and over again.”
“O ok.”
“Finally, on the 4th day, they started getting somewhere.”
~~~~~
“Robert, shine that light up here.”
The light flashed across the end of the tunnel, and John leaned forward to get a closer look. A small hole formed at the edge of the tunnel, and water could be heard on the other side.
Steve broke the silence first. “Damn”
John didn’t say anything but slowly started knocking out the end of the wall. 5 minutes later, the end of the shaft was cleared out, and they could see a decent sized stream, 15 feet across slowly winding through its own small cave.
Robert shook his head, “I’ll be damned.”
John didn’t say anything, just slowly entered the hole, stepping carefully into the water.
Steve spoke, “Well I guess that does it for us, the moisture from this will shut us down.”
Robert nodded in agreement, “Yeah, but we were about done anyway. Two months is hardly enough time to do anything in this business.”
John finally spoke up, “Come on, lets a take a look.”
The 3 men stepped into the stream and started walking with the water, and away from the newly created entrance. Ten minutes later, John called out.
“Hey, shine a light over here would you?”
Steve and Robert’s flashlights gleamed towards John in the darkness. John was standing in a shallow pool with hardly an inch of water in it, the water being kept in be a small raised ring of dirt or rocks. But it that wasn’t he was staring at. Steve followed John’s gaze into the pool.
Almost in a whisper Steve muttered, “What the hell…”
In the small pool, thousands of strange rocks shone and glistened, their brilliance almost unnatural in the dank riverbed.
Robert, Steve and John had gathered in the pool, looking down in awe.
“Are-are these diamonds?”
“I don’t think so, at least none that I’ve ever seen before,” Robert added in hushed tones.
Steve bent over and picked up a smaller stone, turning it over in his hand. Rod shaped, about an inch long, but faceted, it looked as if someone had fashioned it, not that it had been sitting in the pool for thousands of years, unseen.
“Shine the light here, let me clean it up some.” Robert and John took a few steps back to give Steve some light while he leaned over and began drying it off with his coat. After it was dry he held it in his palm and smiled. His smile changed quickly when the small stone began heating up in his hand.
“What the hell.”
The stone quickly turned orange and with a slight “POP” exploded. Robert and Kruger were instantly lifted off their feet and launched against the back wall of the cave. Robert regained his composure first, shaking his head to clear the cobwebs.
“Steve? Steve!”
It was clear Steve was gone, blood leaking out his shirt, his face charred and burned.
~~~~~
“Whoa, Grandpa, what just happened?”
“Well, I’m not exactly sure. When Steve dried off the stone, something happened to it. Apparently when the stone was removed from water, it reacted somehow with the air and BOOM!. That was the end of Steve. He was a good man.”
~~~~~
John snapped out of it, “Hey Robert, we have to go. We have to go, right now.”
Robert followed John’s gaze and saw what he was talking about. The explosion that had killed their friend had also broken the reservoir, the small amount of water remaining in the pool flowing out, and that meant the thousands of stones in the pool were beginning to dry out.
Robert and John turned, sprinting up the streambed, John yelling as they ran, “I’ll sound the alarm, you just make sure that everyone is cleared out of the east corridor.”
“Yes sir.”
They both entered the hole they had made earlier and raced up the shaft. They split when the shaft forked, John heading to the center of the mine. He knew if one of those stones was enough to cause that much damage, the entire pool going up would cave in the whole damn mine. He turned the corner and found what he was after. Removing the safety, he triggered the alarm. The shrieking siren roared though the rock tunnels, hopefully telling everyone that it was time to leave right now.
He turned, and ran towards the elevators that lead to the surface. By the time he got there, it was already on its second load to the top, scared faces piling in, overloading the lift. John stood and helped the men get on, and sent it up.
“Where’s Steve at?” one of the men questioned. The look on John’s face was enough answer for all of them.
More men crowded at the elevator, waiting for it to return. It creaked and groaned, signaling it was on its way down. John glanced around, realizing the lift would be full as soon as it hit the bottom. As soon as the lift hit, John and his men piled on, pushing the elevator to the limit.
“WAIT! WAIT! We’re coming!”
Around the corner came Robert, half carrying a man that was unable to walk. His leg was bleeding from the knee and Robert was almost dragging him toward the lift. John turned and saw that there wouldn’t be room for all three of them, and when Robert and the injured man got to the lift, John weighed his options, and stepped off.
~~~~~
“And so, when I came around the corner carrying him, the lift was about to go up. John looked at me, saw there wasn’t enough room, and he stepped off the lift. There was no point in arguing with him. I could see it in his eyes. There never was point in arguing with him.”
The child sat in his bed, listening to everything his grandfather had said. He looked as if he wanted to speak, but seeing tears in his grandfather’s eyes, he remained mute.
“John Kruger wouldn’t have let me stay down there if I had beat him with my own fists. He felt it was his mine, his call to go down that shaft, and it was his penance for the death of Steve to stay there. For years, I hated him for it. But I know now that’s how it was with him. It wouldn’t have been any different no matter how the cards fell.
The old man slowly shook his head, as if to shake the tremor out of his voice.
“John was one of the most driven men I ever knew. He knew what he wanted, knew how to get it, and he got things done. I worked with him for 8 years. 8 hard years. And I wouldn’t have traded them for anything.”
..::// \\::..
Thursday, November 20, 2003
Even more! Here's a nine-pager I wrote for the same fiction class. Totally different tone, totally different subject matter -- totally different everything, I guess, except that it's also in English. It's unfinished -- rather than a short story, it's more along the lines of a long story or even a novel. Be forewarned -- I had five pages of story I was happy with, and I realized I needed about four or five more to turn in. Yeesh.
But I do like the intro.
Waking up to the sun shining through the window glass, just over the apartment building rooftops in kind of a faux city-sunrise, is one of the great joys of a late Saturday morning in Boston. There might be only one thing better than rising to greet the day with this burst of light. So, at once praising and cursing the turning of the earth, I pulled the covers over my head and went face down into the pillow, trying desperately to flush out the last beams of morning streaming in.
“Wake up. Breakfast.” Her demands floated across the air, turning into sing-songy requests at my ears. It took all the gravity of the bed sheets to keep me pinned down.
“Your turn,” I mumbled.
“Mmmph. Okay. My turn.”
I awaited the give of the bedsprings, signifying the start of the long journey toward a plate full of pancakes. Maybe bacon, too, if I was lucky. The springs, however, didn’t squeak.
I rolled over to find a duplicate body-shaped lump of sheets next to my own. Welcome to every morning. I carefully bunched my hands around as much of the blanket as I could gather, and yanked with all my might. She squealed with what I first took as delight.
“Chuck! You little bastard! Give those back!”
No can do, sweet cheeks. I was too entranced by my second-favorite view of morning. I watched the sun rise over Danielle’s peaks, the rays dipping into valleys, Nature painting a portrait of the way the female form should be. Venus de Milo, eat your heart out. At least my girl’s got arms. She smacked me in the head with one of them.
“Chuck!”
I wouldn’t budge, wrapping myself up more tightly into the cotton-poly cocoon.
She groaned, awaiting some response, any response from me. I gave a stage snore. The springs creaked, and I bounced up with the loss of her weight. I listened for her footsteps almost at the door...
“Don’t forget the maple syrup.”
I shielded my face under the covers to protect myself from whatever book or shoe hit the wall just over my head. Finally, a moment’s rest.
The sizzle and pop of bacon grease brought me out of my snooze, the aroma drifting across the central-air cooled apartment. More refreshed by the victory than the sleep, I threw the covers down to greet the day. The blue skies tinted the Colgate-white walls; cheap reproductions of priceless works of art hung from thumbtacks. The room, of course, was too small, but wasn’t that always the case? It hadn’t been that tight, until she had moved in. Of course, I made do. I stepped over her discarded clothes from the day before and picked through a pile of my own dirty laundry, smell-testing each item for wearability.
Decently attired, I stumbled into the kitchen, sailing on the smell of breakfast like Sylvester the Cat might. As I came to the doorway, I almost ran smack into Derek Hale, my sleaze of a roommate. On the surface, he certainly appeared to be a nice enough guy. There’s no way in hell he’d date my sister, though. 11:00 a.m. on a Saturday and he already had his hair gelled, carefully tousled to look as if he’d just rolled out of bed, and I was sure I detected a hint of fashionably overpriced cologne. I was sure he’d been eating my breakfast, too. I almost asked him what he got so dressed up for, but a shared look between the two of them shut me up. Danielle looked at me with... was that pity? I glanced to Derek for some explanation, but he wouldn’t meet my gaze. He eked out an uncharacteristic “morning” before squeezing by.
“Baby,” she sighed. “We need to talk.”
Not this. Not now.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
She was going on and on, words stumbling over each other as they fell from her mouth, and I wondered if she made any more sense to herself than she did to me. It wouldn’t take much; that was for certain. I was lost in her hair, the way it fell over her face and she pushed it back with graceful fingers. Even as she ripped my world apart, I couldn’t stop even the infatuation. I did pick up key phrases here and there – “need more space,” “becoming a different person,” and so on. I began to wonder if I was listening to my girlfriend or an after-school special.
“So, it’s my fault, right?” I baited her, seeing if she’d have the gall to answer.
“No, no. It’s not you, it’s me.” Jesus Christ. Welcome to Breakups 101.
I struggled to keep my head above water, to keep my dignity intact. I had failed to appreciate how content I’d recently been. The weeks all seemed to blend together into endless months, time losing all meaning. My parents would never understand the attraction. I was not building anything, I was not striving. But in the moment, I was placated. Twenty-three years into life, and things – girl things, friendship things – things were going well. The tinge of heartache gave way to annoyance, a righteous anger at her nerve.
“So,” I began, “why don’t you cut the bullshit, and tell me what the real reason is?”
She leveled her gaze at me, with almost the same anger, but it softened as she delivered. “I just don’t find you attractive any more.”
Well, that certainly hit home. I swallowed my yelp of pain, partly of my own pride and partly of shame. Shame, mostly, because this was to be expected. I had always been rather amazed myself that she bothered to keep me around, but I had chalked it up to my sense of humor, my winning personality, my incredible sexual prowess, my humility. She was gorgeous: long, dark hair that fell over her shoulders and shone light back like polished silver; skin like satin, stretched over perfection. She was all-American: high-school cheerleader; smart enough, but not too smart; supportive when she thought it appropriate; and she put out, but not enough to be whorish. I had met her parents – charming, wonderfully fake people, Muffy and Buffy or something appropriately WASPish – and wondered if they thought of me as their daughter’s Adopt-a-Geek outreach project. Now, reality came crushing back, and I looked down, my rolls of pudge waving up at me, laughing out of joyous recognition for their long lost companion, Shame.
“Where will you be staying?” I asked, defeated.
She looked down, biting her manicured nails. As if on cue, Derek walked back in, staring me down with forced goodwill. Danielle stuttered in her step, unsure of her destination, before walking over to him. Derek put his arm around her, never taking his eyes from mine.
That bitch. That bastard.
The happy couple watched me struggle with the television, grunting as I lifted it from its stand. I was in the process of removing everything to which I had the remotest claim from the common rooms into my bedroom. I was paying little attention to logic – I was following my second instinct (the first, to which I immediately paid heed, was to go to the fridge and slam a beer down my gullet).
“You need a hand, buddy?” asked Derek, polishing his halo with his shirt-tail, which was stylishly untucked.
I politely told him to go to hell, dropping the TV carefully on my bed. That was the last of it. I turned to the two of them, looking at me from the kitchen counter. Derek looked at me with his this-is-me-caring,-honest face. Danielle was less sure of what to do, and waited for some reaction from me. I drank from my third beer of the afternoon with my right hand, and flipped the pair off with my left. I kicked the door shut and prepared the barricade in my room.
I awoke to a rapid knocking on the door, barely rivaling the jackhammer pounding in my head. Staring at the ceiling, I watched the cracks turn to fissures in my head, spreading as if to swallow the room whole. The knocking grew louder.
“Fuck off,” I sang.
The doorknob turned slowly and the door slowly creaked open, creating a landslide of DVD cases and newspapers behind it. As I scoured the floor for something heavy (possibly sharp) to throw at the intruder, Tommy poked his head through the door.
Tommy McIntyre had been my best friend for as long as I could remember, at least since the hazy beginnings of university life at Boston College. I was a sophomore when he was a freshman. I found him passed out in the common room of the dorm at four in the morning, Sharpie marker scrawled all over his pale face, contrasting horribly with the plaid of the couch. Had I been involved, I’m sure I would have laughed along with the other pranksters, but alone and armed with an inebriated sense of righteousness and justice, I couldn’t feel anything but shame for my fellow assholes.
Helping him up to stagger to the bathroom and wash his face in the sink, I learned everything there was to know about Tommy McIntyre, only son of a Virginia homecoming queen and a CPA. I learned about his evening, his new friends Jake and Kevin (who earlier in the evening I had seen equipped with Sharpie markers and devious grins), and his intense hatred of vodka as, wide-eyed, he vowed he would never drink again.
Now, Tommy’s eyes widened again as he waded his way into the room, but only slightly. He hadn’t changed a bit – his ears were still too big for his head, but only slightly; his nose turned up just a bit too much. He slowly took in the two extra sets of curtains on my windows, the dining room table (sans chairs) tossed into the corner, the pillows on the floor. He crunched cans of Bud Light as he wandered over to the recliner, staring me in my bleary eyes and indicating the spittle dried on the corner of my mouth.
“So,” he began, “It’s Sunday morning, then, is it?”
The corners of my mouth strained toward a smile, painfully out of reach. On a heavy exhale, I told him the sordid story. He nodded along, swearing at the appropriate moments, looking somber at others. I was glad he was around; the other two people I might have bitched to seemed painfully inappropriate all of a sudden.
Walking around the square downtown, Tommy pointed out minutiae along the roads and in the windows, things he thought I would find interesting. Trying to find anything to take my mind off the subject off hand, he was failing admirably. Everything I saw was a new impetus to remember something about Danielle. It would have felt a little less confusing if it had made a little sense. A merchant selling nuclear-red hot dogs on the corner sang out, reminding me of her soft muttering as she came back from the far reaches of sleep. A painting on a gallery wall was her, even visible in an old man on a sailing ship.
“Hey, I’m talking to you,” Tommy interrupted my pity. I looked him up and down, wondering what he’d found so important. “Tell me,” he continued, “What you find so great about Danielle, anyway.”
“Have you seen her?”
“Yeah, I’m not blind,” replied Tommy. “And yes, she’s gorgeous. What else?”
It took me a second to get going. “She’s sweet.”
“No, she’s not sweet. She’s actually rather bitchy. You, my friend,” Tommy intoned, “have had your head so far up her ass you’ve taken her demands as cute little requests.”
“She’s smart,” I challenged. But the look on my face must have belied that I knew that wasn’t particularly true. “Look, she was somebody, wasn’t she?”
“Something, more like. You’re lonely. She’s gorgeous. You got lucky for a while, but she’s found someone better –“ Tommy put his hands up in defense “—in her eyes. Forget about her. There are other girls, you know.”
“And besides,” Tommy threw back over his shoulder, “I’ve been single since high school. Look how I’ve turned out!”
I’m starting to accept that life isn’t a fairy tale. That pudgy, lower-middle-class white kids from Jersey don’t always come off winners. People lie, all the time, even if they don’t realize it. “It’ll all work out in the end,” they say. “If it’s not alright, it’s not the end.” I highly doubt that a schizophrenic dying on the cold metal grating of a slimy sewer drain, would share their shiny happy vision for the future. I’m sorry if I come off harsh. But the Tooth Fairy isn’t real, and if Santa Claus was, he’s long dead by now. Life is a series of disappointments.
So, the guy doesn’t get the girl. The fireworks don’t fly. At least yet. But at least I’ve got nothing left to lose.
But sometimes, luck loses its way, graciously letting life’s losers stumble over it. And I’ve got something to look forward to. A date with a dental hygienist that I’d had my mouth numbed by just a few days after the breakup, Cheryl Griffin. Formerly Mrs. Cheryl Hale, the divorced mother of an only son, living in an overpriced apartment in downtown Boston and surely toasting himself on the catch he’s landed this week.
Revenge. It’s something to look forward to.
..::// \\::..
Tuesday, November 18, 2003
Holy crap! We're back. Okay, here's a long one I wrote for my Intermediate Fiction class. It's a first draft, so don't worry if you get a little lost. It's my first attempt at anything science fiction, and I wasn't sure how to handle it. I didn't want to over-explain it, but I think I may have underdone it. Let me know what you think.
Clyde fought desperately to sink farther into the bedsprings, a cramped and huddled mass of flesh and sheets buried under a heap of pillows. His feet were sweaty, reeking; his arms were freezing, pulled tight to his body in a futile attempt to warm them. Somewhere, underneath layers of epidermis, dermis, capillary, artery, muscle, and bone, somewhere, he knew, something was wrong. The dull ache pounding in the back of his head was steadying, the random muffled beats intensifying to the roar of an empty Amtrak screaming past his cell, fluorescent tubes bringing a sickly green glow to the ghosts of passengers long since dead and derailed, stuck between heaven and hell. The trains had long been a fixture of the countryside, slithering to and fro from destination to destination, passing through a vacuum on their way. The train came through several times a day, but it was the night trains that were the worst. The night trains kept you awake at night, somehow shaking the heavy cement walls, at times causing the light bulbs to shatter. Clyde cursed the trains now, lying awake in a puddle of his own sweat, one more thing keeping him from the mollifying non-being of sleep.
And if it wasn’t the trains, Clyde seethed, it was the goddamn airplanes. The airport had sprung up just down the road from the jail, providing much to joke about in terms of convenient access, should the city want to load them all up on planes and cast them into the sea. It had been a grand event when the airport opened five years ago – the mayor spoke of progress, of good times ahead, of the shining example the city was to set for the surrounding counties. Finally, Mayor Hornsby said, we could grow as a center of commerce, of industry, of progress... we will be the center of things to come.
The citizens all applauded and cheered, surely envisioning their grand futures and new hopes. They would welcome fathers back from business trips; they would send children off to visit their until-now-lost grandmothers – grandmothers that were not lost, in reality, but were simply too distant to be thought of enough to visit. The grandmothers, of course, would not complain. They would be glad enough to see their children come back to them, bringing children of their own; they would be glad enough to see their genes passed on to another generation that they would not mind being patronized.
The citizens would send children off to college. Young daughters would go, wide-eyed at the life and opportunities spread out before them, their legs soon spread out before them as wide-eyed boys arrived from the same airports from the same families. A young man would stand nervously, a dozen gas-station roses lovingly wrapped in plastic in sweaty hand, checking his watch far more than was necessary considering his young lady’s plane wasn’t due for another half hour. A loving wife would see her husband off on a trip to Michigan, where he would wear a suit ten years out of fashion and try to impress a board of men with more money than he – whose company had more money than his company – impress them enough to give him a share so that he might make more money, in turn giving some back, a whirlwind of profits. The same wife would wait for an hour and a half, sucking down Virginia Slims in the freshly polished airport bar, until she made her way across the terminal to pick up the young man she had met by chance, at one of her husband’s company party extravaganzas. She would meet him, his tie too tight, new socks, dressed to get up her dress, not knowing that he didn’t have to try quite so hard.
All these promises of a future life, the connection brought by an airport – no, an international airport – were lost upon most of the residents of Whiteville State Penitentiary. They had all stood at the fence, listening to the mayor’s speech over the loudspeakers mounted on the airstrips. They were less enthused, eyes vacant, not responding to the mayor’s impassioned promises and the gullible applause of the citizenry. True, some were excited – the younger ones, the ones waiting for life on the other side of a ten-year stay in the Whiteville Hilton. The older ones, resigned to their respective fates, simply marveling at the progress of technology while they had been away.
One in particular, Myers, had always stood out to Clyde. He never talked to Myers – never really wanted to. But Clyde did notice him every day, as they did their work out in the yards. They worked the same job, chopping lumber the city had brought in from around the countryside to be processed at the jail. Why not, mused the mayor, put our more permanent residents to good use? Why not, thought Clyde, every day that he chopped the wood from forests he would never again see to fuel fires whose warmth he would never feel, shipped off to families more deserving than he.
Every day, Clyde chopped – he was strangely proud of his build, much more muscular than he had ever been on the Outside, but of little use picking up women – and he would listen for the sound of jet engines roaring in the distance. Every time, without fail, the hard-of-hearing Myers would be chopping still. But Clyde would watch, his eyes on the corners of Myers’ eyes, as the recognition lit them up. A dull smile would force its way to his lips, and he would put down his axe slowly, as not to pull a muscle or pop a bone out of joint or scare the small creatures that often scurried around. He would look up, up, up, almost tipping over as the aluminum bird soared overhead, then turning to follow it. He would get to the barbed-wire fence, seeming to forget its existence, hands coming up just in time to brace himself against the fence’s rusted metal. The plane would touch down, bringing a hundred travelers back to earth, back to their homes and families and those that would greet them. Myers would stand there for another moment or two, before a young guard would call to the old man, hurrying him back to work with a quiet respect one might reserve for a good man, a wise man, much older than one’s self, who had killed his wife’s lover in a fit of jealous rage.
Clyde thought of all this now, struggling to keep one thought above water as the others clamored for attention, for air; they were all cast aside by a shot of pain in his gut, his stomach ripping apart. He tried to calm himself, remembering the things he had learned over the last few weeks. It’s only a sensation, Clyde reasoned, an electrical impulse traveling up a nerve to my brain, telling me something’s wrong. And I already know something’s wrong, so it doesn’t matter.
His smug sense of satisfaction, of control over (if nothing else) his own body, vanished without memory as another wave of pain arrived with the subtlety of a shotgun blast. Screaming for the guards would do no good – his kind was looked down on, even in prison. Even if they would respond, after finishing a late-night game of Texas hold-‘em, it was unlikely that they would know what to do or find it worthy of rousing the doctor. Let him handle it when he comes in later in the morning.
Clyde knew what the problem was, or at least had some idea. Two weeks ago, he had been given a pass to see Dr. Stevens, the resident physician. Clyde had felt a burning in his abdomen, a vise on his stomach, clamping and twisting. Holding back tears, he was escorted to the doctor’s examination room, where he had collapsed on the floor. After a moment’s diagnosis, Dr. Stevens had decided that Clyde’s appendix must come out immediately. The prison was in a sorry state, medically, lacking the tools necessary for a surgeon to work his craft, but Dr. Stevens saw a job that needed to be done. Clyde remembered the doctor’s soft eyes, apologizing for the poor quality of the anesthesia through the hazy curtain of semi-consciousness. Clyde had felt the leather straps tighten around his arms and legs, occasionally fighting them as the scalpel pierced his skin before he fully lost cognizance.
He had awakened some time later – he would later find out it had been almost two days – in a dusty supply closet hastily remolded to serve as a recovery room. Dr. Stevens had taken a liking to Clyde, explaining all sorts of things about the medical profession, about the human body. Clyde, inquisitive by nature, felt like a child again, asking questions, caring about answers. Dr. Stevens had kept Clyde longer than Clyde ever thought would be necessary, running tests he had never imagined; electrodes, diagrams, even a computer that Dr. Stevens had built himself. He explained that science was his passion, that he liked to experiment. Clyde saw a ham radio in the corner and instantly liked Dr. Stevens more – it was a hobby Clyde had enjoyed Outside. At one point, the lights in the room had all blown out – Dr. Stevens attributed it to a power surge, to faulty equipment.
And yet, now, two weeks later, his body was failing. He was denying the surgery, the stitching... it was as if his body wanted to erupt out through the scar on his belly. He had heard stories of doctors leaving clamps, ties, even scalpels inside patients, and he felt sure this was the case. His bowels churned, his muscles burned, his brain pounded a beat a thousand drummers could not match. His entire body convulsed, cramping, and then...
Nothing...
But he was there, still. He was still breathing; he was still sucking life in from the air. He began to calm himself, to see the slate walls stop dancing and return to their jobs, keeping him in. And it was then that he began humming along to a song in his head, a song he had never heard.
Won’t you come and go with me,
Down that Mississippi;
We’ll take a boat to the land of dreams,
Come along with me on, down to New Orleans...
He shook his head violently, trying to dispel the unwelcome visitor. The brassy trumpets and bayou clarinets left without protest, only to be soon replaced with static, an untuned radio. And then, a voice.
Piper two-oh-three foxtrot delta, this is tower. You are cleared...
And static.
Tower, this is Piper two-oh-three foxtrot delta, confirming approach on heading two-twenty...
Clyde shook violently, burying his head beneath the pillow again, yelling into the mattress. The springs erupting through and poking his skin were of little concern now, barely distracting him from the fear of his own brain, the fear of the unknown.
And there was silence. The only sound was the pounding of Clyde’s heart, his hands on his chest to keep it from leaping away. A small goddamn plane flew into the goddamn airport, propellers whirring like hummingbirds in search of octane, nectar to fly them farther away. Clyde heard sweat escape from his skin and bead up on his forehead, a plip-plop amplified by fear.
Silence.
A metal cup clanged to the ground far down the hall.
Silence.
Static...
Tower, this is Boeing two-niner-seven-seven, on approach.
He heard the words the voice called, but he did not understand a single one. The words eventually gave way to static, a hiss, a squeal, as another goddamn plane started to fly into the airport. This one was bigger, a jet plane by the sound of it. Hundreds of sardines in a can, waiting to get home to their little fish families, soon to touch down and bring smiling faces to warm places.
Fuck you, Clyde thought. Fuck all of you.
He lay there in bed, listening to the engines roar as they powered down, coming closer to earth. Every day, the planes sounded like they got closer. They were huge when Clyde was out in the yards. On the occasion that he would look up, he would notice the tread on the tires; he could count the rivets along the bird’s false skin. He would look into the windows, daring someone to look back at him, to make eye contact, to acknowledge his existence. He would grab his crotch and spit as they passed, turning back to a nod from his nameless neighbor, still chopping wood.
And this time, it must have been even closer. Every night, he would pray to whoever might be listening that the plane’s engines would fail, that man would stop pissing on nature and that metal would stop defying gravity. He would hear the dull roar of the engines inching ever closer to earth, and he would pray for the crash. He did not care to kill people, that was certain; he didn’t think of the people. Rather, he wanted the excitement, anything to wake him from the coma he had been ever since the rusted iron bars slammed shut behind him. And he was certain, if a plane crashed right there for all the world to see, he wouldn’t have to go chop fucking wood.
And the engines roared, and Clyde prayed.
And the engines roared, louder, and Clyde willed it himself.
The lights burst.
And the engines screamed, louder still, and Clyde wanted a crater.
And the metal itself began whistling, a rocket in the sky gone horribly wrong, and Clyde stopped willing it.
The ground shook with incredible force, a giant’s footstep as he bounded across the landscape. A wave shot through the cement, knocking Clyde’s chained bed off of the wall, embedding springs deep in his arms, back, and ass. Through the black painted bars, he saw the holocaust, a jet-fuel fireball rising high into the night sky. A large chunk of the cement wall crumbled to the ground, displaced by a door marked “Emergency Exit Only,” flung far from the crash site. Clyde was not sharp enough to notice the irony, as he was sick from the stench of shit he had created.
Clyde.
He heard the voice, echoing through his head, clearer than any of the others.
Clyde, go outside.
He heard panic from the cells down the row. Guards ran up and down the hallways, screaming orders to each other and to the prisoners.
“Get the fuck back in there!” he heard a guard order, followed by several others, guns drawn. Clyde could see across the way that several cell doors had been jarred open by the impact.
Clyde, go outside.
Almost automatically, he walked to the wall, still looking at the riot taking place in the jail. Gunshots rang out. He pushed the emergency exit out of the way and walked out into the yard.
Turning to look, Clyde gazed at the destruction. The nose of the craft was far away from the rest; a long trench was dug along the path it had taken, through the rusty barbed wire fence Myers had looked through so many times. Clyde followed the lead of the other prisoners that had escaped their cells, making his way for the hole and for freedom. He picked his way along through the wreckage, noting cloth seats, a disembodied hand, oxygen masks.
Clyde, lie down.
But Clyde would never lie down, not of his own free will, not when he was this close to freedom. He broke into a sprint toward the fence, never looking away. He felt a pinch in his neck and his entire body went limp.
It was as if he had lost all control over his body. He could only lie there, chest down on the oil and blood soaking into the ground. Bleeding from a gash on the chin, his head was up, and he could see out into the field next to the airport, where his fellow prisoners were making their escape, leaving the flames and smoke for the starry skies above. It was then that Clyde heard several sharp cracks, and his fellow prisoners began to fall, one by one. Out of the corner of his eye he saw men in the guard tower, roused quickly from sleep, aiming rifles as if they were hunting rabbits for dinner. The sound of a helicopter overhead was immediately followed by a gale of wind beating down on his back. He prayed to nobody in particular for the ability to close his eyes, to keep out the dirt that was being blown.
He saw feet scurrying around, white shoes, green scrubs, the Red Cross symbol on several jackets. A pair stopped at his head, and he felt hands on his neck.
“We’ve got a live one here!”
A face crouched down to where Clyde could identify him. Dr. Stevens looked back at him with feigned worry.
“Get somebody over here, now!” Dr. Stevens shouted. Clyde tried to yell, to speak, to say anything, to move his lips, but could not.
Don’t worry, Clyde. I’ve got a lot of explaining to do.
Dr. Stevens gave a wink and stood up as the paramedics arrived, steadying Clyde’s back and loading him into the helicopter that would take him to the hospital.
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Monday, April 28, 2003
I just checked my e-mail and realized I'd sent this to myself to print it and never posted it here. Quick assignment -- write a story from the perspective of someone you meet over Spring Break. Yes, it's cheesy. And, yes, I'm a suck-up.
April 20, 2003
Another day, another diaper. Road trip last night, which is nothing new, except we were on the road forever. If we had to listen to that SpongeBob tape one more time, I was going to scream. (Of course, whenever I do, they change me. Come on, people, I can’t poop that much.)
We finally got there, early in the morning. North Carolina, again. At least it’s not Jersey. The old man staggered out of the car and promptly fell asleep on the couch. I don’t think I blame him. The lady carried me inside. Of course, there was the usual cooing and baby talk. It’s fun, though, really. I realize that I’m not always going to be able to pull this gig off. Once you start walking on your own, it’s cute for about a month. Then they expect you to do it everywhere.
New guy showed up today. He needed a shave… and a shower. Gross. Apparently he’s my uncle. I wonder if he’s the alcoholic uncle that’s in and out of jail all the time. Doesn’t everybody have one of those?
They say he’s from UNCW. Is that near Attica?
He seems nice enough. Uncle Andy. Of course, they assume because I haven’t figured out that whole talking thing yet, I’m going to call him “Unky Inky.” How adorable. (Gag me.) But, yeah. He could use some sleep. He kept talking about his favorite class, some writing class, how hard he was working and how hot the professor was. I hope he gets good grades. He seems like he deserves them. ‘Til next time…
- Megan Ashley Bader
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