She puts this in front of me to keep me honest,”so says the one who has all collapse around him.
Patter, patterpatter--A mouse came walking across his desk. Across his desk to his done pile and stood on to legs. Although seated on the chair, the mouse still looked up at Munx. Mouse groomed himself and the rolled up his cuff. “One “arm”then the other. Munx looked down at the Mouse and said, “Are you done?”
And the mouse said, “No, but are you?”
Then Munx says, “I know your name, your voice: it’s late and I have work to do rather, I am not finished yet. “
The mouse said, “I know. You have kept me awake with this thing” And the mouse ran over and kicked Munx’s typewriter. Cringing while the bell rang
And then continued”And that sound."
Munx speaks, "The mouse became "unperched" and ran the forearms length to the typewriter and kicked it hard enough to ring the bell and returned to his spot sleeves still rolled up, but breathing heavy.”
The white shit NOT snow falls from the sky stops
It took me two years. Two years. I'd have the day for you, but I'm not that picky; two years is enough to scream about it. I'd best find a gun or at least something sharp.
Thing is, you know yourself well in advance, to the fact that you damn well won't have any use for it when you get it. What? Doesn't it go that you get angry, look her in the eye, she spontaneously explodes, and then... ... ...? Where'd the knife go? Hmm, sonny? She explodes and suddenly you're in Costa Rica dancing with a moonbeam? Or in the middle of a bridge in God-knows-where? Or... fuck... I dunno. I've no idea... See! I'm me talking to you (also me), and I can't even think this through. Ineffective's the problem. Completely ineffective. You get these ideas in your head and they seem so grand, but they fizzle out like cheap butter... you ought to try harder.
Anyway, the book. That bitch, my book. I should look up. She was there a second ago, screaming. Where'd she go? I'm trying the door but it won't open. Imagine that. I suppose I'll climb the fence, then? You know, I'm not that bothered. I'm busy remembering the one before that. It was about a dragon named knob. Or knobby. Not sure. I figured I needed a push in the deep end and didn't care what way it went. Fix it as you go along, damage control, steer up... Except it was more like a Messerschmitt right toward the ground. 100 feet and approaching... trying to remember my prayers so I can say them... oh what's the use....
Fantasy... ugh... wait, that was the one before, when I was...?... I'd have to be pretty fucking young to take something like that seriously. Was it the one before THAT? It's been four, right? There was the noir wherein he chased that dame who what maybe killed her husband and I was aiming for a faux generic thingy with a big twist in the second part. See, a nice generic turd to ease you in and after that you get dynamic. Start 'changing the game' and so on. Except, our hero was a little too clever and figured it all out by the third chapter. I really stretched them out, too, you know.
I tried looking to The Orient after that, you know. Hit upon some arcane mixture of never before combined combinations in my deviousness. I jumped into the Bhagavad Gita AND looked into some old samurai tales (Shang dynasty? Sheeyang?). I even took up a Tao stage! Though, that lasted just slightly less than that second samurai story. Something about a fat jap who spent 20 pages cramming his hole with rice-cakes and talking about nature. The sooner he'd go and shit in the woods, the sooner we could get back to scheduled programming i.e. samurais, honour, that sort of thing. If a fat chinaman shits in the wood, does anyone really finish the book? Ask yourself that...
Oh, I really wish she hadn't put it through the woodchipper. Look at it. All this pale history. It's like the ghost of dalliance past. You know, when we ordered this thing I couldn't stop imagining what I'd put in there. I dug out the old basketballs and shoes from the basement and saved them by the door. One a day. I even snuck one of her old handbags. She never used it. Gave me much pleasure. I'd stretch out my breakfast routine, just to pace the excitement, and on weekends I'd have a field day. My own personal holiday. Except, of course, the days after the nights I'd have those dreams. The awful, awful, awful ones where I'd stand for days in front of it, beckoning me, book in hand, afraid some invisible wind would come and knock it away ---> straight forward into the jaws. Bastard. Absolute bastard. In the worst ones I'd manage to get away; somehow find myself a house or two over, safe and sound, but then I'd blink (once) and I'd be back there, a foot closer, beckoning... Me before it! Me before it! Bastard.
...
...
American Sissy
....
Hey, that's not bad. I should use that... "American, Sissy"...
It "flows" quite well, actually. Say, a man is disillusioned with society, this modern one, alienated, cornered, trying to free himself from capitalism, trying to find a way. Out from under the beast. Trying to survive. Maybe... maybe. Out from under the beast!!
I should get rid of the woodchipper first, though. I can't work with it out here.
Bastard.
Actually, it was particularly bad the past few nights. We left the curtains open for the breeze and I could see the moonlight glinting off it from my side of the bed. She looked at me like I was a fool when I asked her to switch sides. Told me not to wake her again "or else". Twat. I did wake up, though. What would you expect? It was taunting me, out there, in the cruele night. Fiend. I ended up pacing the floor at 4am. Too wound up. I tried to psychoanalyze myself and stood in the kitchen in my underwear, ate a schnitzel. That made me laugh, actually; peculiar. I woke her up to tell her. She wouldn't budge the first while, so I accidentally poked her a few times, elbowed her as I turned over from where I was sitting on the bed. It cheered me up to no end, though she didn't seem to "get it". The fool...
I suppose if my leg actually hurt, that’d be on my mind but it didn’t hurt. It would start hurting soon, though, when my nervous system kicked into gear and the epinephrine levels returned to normal and I could be angry that I’d never walk again, not without a prosthetic.
My body. Irreparably damaged.
“Hal?” I heard Cole from my left, “You sure pulled this one off, Hal. Jesus.”
Cole. Fucking Cole. I remember telling Cole, “Shut up and find my leg.”
“Your leg?”
“Cole?” I was staring up at the sky, watching the flakes, shimmering in the light with cloudy, soft glimmers coming off of them like pearls, waft toward us, “I think my leg is gone, Cole.”
“Bullshit, Hal, your leg aint - Oh, shit.” He must have gotten up; I could hear him coming toward me.
“How bad is it, Cole?”
“It’s gone!”
I hacked something and asked, “Above or below the knee?”
Cole answered. I just didn’t hear him. I just lay there, staring up at the sky, and occasionally hacking a cough that moved my chest and hurt my throat. I then became aware of pressure on my thigh. “What’s that?”
“Closing the pod-bay doors, Hal. Putting a tourniquet on you.”
I just closed my eyes and said, “Good,” thinking that I might have gone to sleep at that moment; I’d probably lost a good deal of blood. I had to fight off sleep; I opened my eyes again to the dancing white flakes in the sky. Soon enough, gravity would have them and they’d be down here, on the ground, decorating us. Covering us.
I tried to keep my eyes open while my leg throbbed, I reached down to Cole’s shoulder, grabbed it and told him, “Gimme a smoke, Cole.”
“Gimme a minute, Hal,” and he finished tying off my leg - well, my stump, now. I could hear him moving about before he said, “Here.”
I reached out and took the smoke from his hand, ever looking up at those pearly flakes dancing and said, “I think I left my light in - in… Where the fuck did I leave my light?” and then I saw the orange flame erupt around a blue heart under my nose and began sucking through the cigarette deeply.
“You’re going to make it, Hal.”
I heard some rustling and Cole was sitting up over me, then, on a box it looked like. I told him I needed a beer.
“We’ll get you a beer when we get back. Some painkillers. Some pussy, too, don’t worry about it.” His face was blackened by dirt and soot, ash in his hair. He lit his own smoke, making a fish-face to suck on the square, and surveyed the damage. He said, “Look at the way they all dance up there,” pointing out across the sky, “You seeing this shit, Hal?”
“Yeah, yeah, I see it.” Against the smoke and storm clouds, they almost seemed to form constellations. I saw the patterns they made - No. I made them into patterns. I made the beer steins down at the Sturm und Drang Lounge. I made Angela’s naked body. I made Johnny Ramone’s guitar. Each one of them, I held for the split second they existed before they all danced apart, off to find new dance partners, new dances, different time signatures, different melodies. I asked, “Do you see my leg anywhere?” before another chest-heaving cough forced my eyes shut again.
“Lemme finish this smoke and I’ll see if it’s near, OK?” Cole’s way of saying to forget it; it’s gone. Probably blown what? fifty? a hundred yards away? “You really did it, man, I gotta tell you.” His dirty paw placed the cigarette back to his lips and he inhaled deeply before blowing out the plume of smoke. My pearls in the sky seemed repelled by the smoke even though they were probably a quarter mile up.
I found it in myself to sit up, if only just to look down at my leg. My stump, I mean. Cole saw me trying to get up and said, “Just stay down.”
I sat up and looked down, finally down, and saw the shreds of flesh below my knee and the tourniquet just above it. My knee I mean. It was an awful sight and it was then that I realized that Cole might have been right all along: No use looking for the other half of my leg. Probably disintegrated. Cole reached around to his back and grabbed his canteen. He uncapped it, took a swig, and handed it to me. “Water?”
Cole. Fucking Cole. I remember telling Cole, “Shut up and find my leg.”
“You OK?”
“I’m fine. I just - ” I looked behind me and then back to Cole and took the canteen, “I just need to lay down.” I took five long gulps off the canteen and handed it back before I laid back down and watched the dancing pearls in the sky. They seemed to be coming closer.
Tannhauser Gate
May 2nd, 2417
I open my journal and scratch at my shin only to feel the prosthetic under my fingers. Ghost itch. I tap my pen to my temple and wonder, “What to explain to my son today?” I haven’t long for this world and the doctor says it’ll be a wonder if I even see the kid born. So now I’ve got to write this thing. Tell him who I am. I may as well get around to it and finally explain how I got sick in the first place. Years ago. At the Tannhauser Gate.