Contact

He walked into the Chinese restaurant and waited to be greeted and seated. He was led to a dimly lit seating booth and given a menu to browse.

He maintained a pleasant and modest smile throughout his exploration and eventually decided upon a blended cocktail drink and a sirloin steak dinner.

The waiter came to take his order and politely left the table.

The man surveyed the restaurant and took notice of the various shapes, colors and beings placed around him. It was all very stimulating…and catalytic.

The waiter made his way back with the man’s cocktail drink along with a clear glass of cold iced water. The man’s eyes became wider and wetter around the edges as the cocktail drink was placed on his table. The alcoholic drink contained a bright red maraschino cherry impaled by a decorative transparent pick.

The waiter asked if the man would like anything else and the man gave a firm motion of his hand to indicate no. The waiter announced that his dinner would arrive soon and left the table.

As the man looked around again to glance about the room, he noticed that shapes, hues and sounds were all one and this was a sign. The feeling and the message were very intense to him, but he had to wait until the right moment. The right moment would be the defining point and purpose.

He slowly rocked back and forth in his seat and licked his lips continuously to keep them wet and sensitive. He intermittently placed his middle finger straight down in the cold glass of water and sucked on it until the skin was irritated and taut.

Soon the waiter arrived with the man’s steak dinner. He greeted the man with an obligatory and hospitable grin and placed his plate on the table warning the man that the plate was hot. The man moved his cocktail drink in front of himself and casually plucked off the cherry impaled on the pick. He held the pick between his right thumb and index finger in a precise manner and as the waiter begin to question if the man desired anything more, the man then dramatically shoved the pick into his left eye until only a point was visible.

Contact had been made and the moment was gloriously defined…

So Close and Far Away

A bucket full of bruised baby hearts was found alongside a twisted gray road. A worn traveler made the discovery and felt compelled to bring the keepsakes home. He had heartless bodies waiting in the ground in his backyard and finally, it seemed as if they could serve a purpose and fulfill their destinies.

The bodies were dug up after the traveler finished a hearty meal of clam chowder and cornmeal biscuits. His temples were sore and tight from vigorous chewing.

Bodies were placed side by side on the cynical grass, like sardines resting in a tin can, as the earth was disturbed. Each body had been preserved well in plastic casings filled and submerged with curious and strangely aromatic oils, salts and resins. The traveler looked over all of the bodies as they were uncovered and placed his hand over his heart in sacred sentimentality. He felt a vibration underneath his hand and yearned for something very promising and unspeakable. He suddenly imagined a sky full of luminous stars bleeding brightly with softly jagged and hazy light auras.

He pulled the bucket of injured baby hearts near and began to fondle them in his hands to feel their texture, moistness and power. He knew that these would do very well. They had history but they also had a future. The very nature of their condition established this fact and the traveler was the magician. The traveler now imagined a universe completely packed with infinitude of bodies each possessing a center with radiating life orbs.

He took a pocket knife and slashed open one of the body casings and complicated liquid gushed out all over the grass and onto the traveler’s steel-toed boots. He began to whistle peacefully and proceeded to cut open the other body casings. Invisible lives were being murdered and replaced with tangibility.

Once all of the casings were completely opened, he gathered a baby heart in his hand from the bucket and placed one directly into the withered but well preserved and black blood-crusted hole of the chest cavity of one of the bodies. The traveler’s whistling got a little louder and sharp and he continued embedding hearts into each body. Thirteen bodies total were invaded.

The traveler began to feel weak and the initial vibrating in his chest became more tremulous. His vision also began to darken and blur and his mouth and throat locked up and became arid. His whistling turned into fierce and desperate expulsions of air; a violent zephyr-kissed melody.

The traveler tried to stand up but instead collapsed theatrically onto ground. The bodies on the grass began to transform and shape-shift. All of the traveler’s clothing articles disappeared into the secrets of air. The traveler’s body unfolded out on the grass in stark nakedness with steady trembling and shaking.

The mouths of the corpses each formed into the shape of a small circle and staccato puffs of air came out of all of them. The spurts of air eventually took on the familiar sound of the traveler’s smooth and elegant whistling that he previously was able to express. The casings fell away and the torsos of the bodies rose slowly until they reached upright and erect sitting positions.

Each face on the body slowly took on the features of the traveler’s face as the mouths continued to churn out haunting whistles. The bodies eventually began to stand up and gather great strength and vitality. Each turned out to be complete duplicates of the traveler’s physical disposition.

They all drew near the traveler’s lifeless corpse and stood over him in a tight gathering while staring down at his body with wide and penetrating bloodshot sets of eyes. The live facsimiles joined hands and walked around the traveler’s body in a clockwise path. As they circled around continuously, his body began to dry out, shrink and erode and in his place, a startling pile of clothing garments and many pairs of steel-toed boots materialized. The circling slowed down to a halt and each entity grabbed a piece of clothing to get dressed in.

There was much to be done. They cleared out and cleaned up the yard and the casings were thrown away completely. Each of the entities needed to get some rest and prepare for the next day’s mission, which was to gather enough food and clothing, set out onto town roads, hitchhike and make homes in new areas.

Once the entities were settled into their new abodes, their silent killing sprees would begin in local areas and pristine backyards would soon be filled with fresh, dehearted and mercurially preserved vessels.

The Whole Universe Inside a Glass of Water

“So what do you do for a living?”
“I bake snakes.”

“What did you think? That two men couldn’t have sex together and not mistake a knife for a fork?”

“How’s that washer and dryer unit working?”

She began laughing insanely and writhing violently on that filthy mattress.

“I am inclined to think that any man can chew his way through his own fat if he wanted to.”

“What’s so funny about this? I don’t know anyone else? Do you? Because I’ve got a lot of jitters in my heart and each time I expel, the world moves with me.”

“Susan doesn’t think with all of her sunsets. Eventually, they’ll all expire and that will be the Ends of Days for her.”

“I know plenty of Christmas men. They are proud, strong and think with a good hunter and gatherer instinct. That’ll make any mother proud, that she’ll sparkle like a tree and her love will burn like an eternal flame in the passions and throes of the holy fireplace of life.”

“Harmony and precincts go together. When one is absent, there’s no place for individuals to gather in championship and peace.”

“Why those would make a fine pair of gloves! Just hollow out the flesh and bone and hang them up to dry.”

“You sure had me fooled. I thought you were lost. But now I recognize you again and we look the same.”

The room was very dark, however upon close inspection; she could make out a vague shadow standing in the corner near the heavily curtained windows. The shadow appeared to be rocking back and forth in short sluggish movements. The head looked to be misshapen and the body was somewhat amorphous; long exaggerated extremities and bodily edges that looked to be viscous in texture.
There was a peculiar smell of smoke about the room. She held in her breath and lowered herself further below the bed’s mattress level. The shadow began to slowly but steadily drift toward the bed in intermittent but brief displays of disappearances. It looked like a constant play of flickers and with each flicker, the shadow became less amorphous and more revealing…

“Charlie! Charlie!! Please listen to me! Listen to me!!”

“Would you stop yelling?! What’s the matter with you? Why were you screaming like that? “

“I can’t help it! There’s something down there and we have to get out of here!! I know what I saw and…Oh Charlie I am so scared!”

“You stay right here. I am going to go –”

“No!!! Please don’t go!! You’ll be in danger! Please!! Listen to me!”

“Alright, alright! Calm down and tell me what you saw.”

“I…I….I heard this humming sound while I was reading on the couch and it was coming from the refrigerator. So I decided to check it out and…Oh Charlie…”

“Go on…go on.”

“I decided to check it out and I opened the refrigerator. I saw this other world Charlie! This other world!”

“What the fuck do you mean this other world? Are you out of your goddamned fucking mind! You must have been dreaming.”

“No no no!!! I wasn’t dreaming!! I saw it Charlie, I saw acres and acres of moving fields, tall zigzagged blades of grass and big mountains staggering in a darkening horizon! It looked like I could fall right through. I thought I was seeing things but I wasn’t Charlie! I continued to look and before I knew it, the heads of these gel-like creatures appeared around the corners of the refrigerator from inside the view! They had large foreheads and I could see everything inside their heads…there was something, like a central eye in the forehead and that made me see a face when I looked into it. Christ! It was my own fucking face and I could see myself opening my mouth really freakishly wide like I was going to attack myself!! Eat myself whole! My face got closer and I thought I was going to fall into my own mouth and get swallowed so that’s when you heard me scream and I couldn’t stop screaming Charlie! I closed the door and ran upstairs as fast I could!”

“Evening Sir”
“Evening”
“Say, do you know where Oakley Avenue is?”
“I do. It’s one more street over. Just continue down this path and you’ll see it. You can’t miss it”
“Wondeful. Thank you sir!”
“My pleasure.”
The stranger’s eyes crinkled tightly around the corners, he smiled and continued watering his grass.
George turned around to survey the path down the neighborhood road. He could see the street, that the stranger referenced, just down the path.
“Say sir, I have one more quest–”
The stranger was gone, along with his house and the entire neighborhood. Right in front of George was a door in the hue of soft dull blue. On the door was a label that said Oakley Avenue in bold Baskerville type. George was stunned and bewildered. He turned around again and saw that the back wall of an empty sterile room, in the same color of the door, had replaced the view of the neighborhood road.
George faced the door again and saw that it was now slightly ajar and a glowing yellow light was coming through.
George gave the room another look in complete confusion and apprehensively decided to push the door further open and explore…

“I don’t like mustard. I especially don’t like runny mustard. It’s sickening, it’s vile and very horrifying…and when I hear her talk, I become devastatingly ill.”

“I smoke cigarettes because I can. You drink because you can’t. Our convictions are different.”