Friday, January 9, 2009

parts 1,2, and 3, of 619 words that can be read in under ten minutes

At the most lethargic and unjustifiable melancholy moment of your life you will be lying in bed and a woman wearing only see through panties will appear. She will be lying in a position that looks as though she has been restlessly trying to sleep for almost an hour, and then she will mumble something about having a big old house. Soon she will lift her head and ask you to scratch her back. She will then redirect you to the upper right back portion of her naked body and be quiet for a moment. Her reason likely will be that it was not necessary to speak because some things cannot be spoken but only touched. You will think of her luxurious breasts and she will then make a face that informs you that you are wrong. The strange part about the face she makes is that the room is completely dark.

“Your nails are nice for back scratching” she says. Taking away all of your lethargic glory. She is feeling more hopelessly lazy than you. She has as well replaced your unjustifiable melancholy with complete and utter ecstasy. You reply by saying that you have been growing them out specifically for moments like these. She does not answer. Moments later she moans, and has not even realized it herself, but she is fast asleep.

***

You take a moment to touch your face and look out the window a bit. As you touch your face you think of a jellyfish trapped in dried bacon fat. Your fingers then penetrate your skull and you touch your brain and potentially die. You won’t know if you’re dead because dying insinuates that your memory bank has crashed like a macintosh or the way the economy is supposed to. The economy as well felt like it was only taking "a moment to touch your face and look out the window a bit". The difference between you and the economy is not very significant, aside from the fact that it surpassed you and your grandchildren’s children, and inspired the hearts of more people than you will ever even meet in your now defunct life.

***

After living in a small apartment in the bottom corner of a busy overpass for four months, you finally get your first noise induced ear splitting head ache. It did not start at one and gradually build to ten, it began at ten and stayed at ten. A woman walks in the door wearing a nurse’s outfit. The outfit is made completely of leather, has a red cross on both breasts, and a large zipper running all way from the top to the bottom of the dress. She is of course wearing matching stockings and high heels higher than the closest skyscraping city tower. She walks toward the bed and crawls toward you. Her bones move like a cat’s, and her lips are more luscious than the kind of Maltese inspired desserts they serve at the closest skyscraping monumental tower. She puts her pointer finger vertically against your lips and says something like shh, or hush. She then puts cotton balls in your ears, lavender extract under your nose, blindfolds you with one of her stockings using the ends to tie your hands together, and puts a perfect maraschino cherry in your mouth. Your senses are fucked. Your headache soon degrades into hypersensitively precise and focused thought. She sits in a chair at the opposite end of the room. How do you know? Because you feel a tingling in your stomach that is most often only felt by algae when algae has been washed up onto the shore and is drying out like Californian dog shit in Mexico.

1 comment:

Stephanie said...

Josh, I think you're right about beings better suited to prose. Your narrative voice is getting stronger. Good use of repeated imagery here. Nice work. Keep it up!