dreadcrumbs

Five Things I've Done This Month While in Meetings of Leviathan-Class Boredom

1. Make origami cubes from post-it notes
2. Tie little nooses into the power, phone, and ethernet cables under the table and alternately hang them around my neck
3. Loudly match the breathing patterns of the nearest person
4. Draw a crude stick figure with large feet and a beard, title it "Rasputin" and look at it every two to three minutes, stifling a laugh every time
5. Write "T-E-A-M" and "W-O-R-K" on the knuckles of each hand and punch the air excitedly every time the subject is mentioned

"Dinnertime"

I find Amy on the back porch, staring fixedly at the dark copse of trees that borders our backyard.
"What is it?" I ask, peering in the same direction. I see nothing.
"I think he....he's in there," she whispers. "Hiding in the trees."
"Are you sure?" I say, still scanning the darkness for any sign of movement.
"I heard him," she says. "I heard a howl or something."
"A howl?" I ask. "Maybe it was just an..."
"It wasn't an animal!" She says, cutting me off. "It was like...like language or something!"
I sigh, and stand beside her in silence for a few moments. I am about to go back inside when the clouds finally shift and a ray of moonlight falls on the trees.
"There!" she hisses, and I see it. The black head of a horned goat twitching between the branches at about the height of a man. At Amy's exhalation, the head turns suddenly toward us and I see its eyes glint in the moonlight. Human eyes.
Amy gasps, and I take a step forward.
"Enough!" I shout. "Come inside already, Dad! We get it! Goats are creepy!"
There is a pause, and then I hear his tree-muffled shout from the end of the yard. "Goat heads!" he yells. "Goat heads are creepy!"
"Right!" I call out, turning back into the house. "Whatever."
Seconds later I hear Dad's heavy footsteps on the porch and Amy says "You look great, Daddy."
I groan and shake my head. Little brown-noser.
She's an enabler, is what she is.

Five completely innocuous things that should in no way fill you with dread

1. Grinning
2. Your reflection
3. That drain (you know which one I mean)
4. Your bedroom window
5. The man two houses down

"Shipwrecked"

The old man tending to my leg clucks twice and smiles at me. His face is covered in sores, so the smile is not without consequences, and something drips from his cheek onto the hut's dirt floor.
"You'll be ready to walk soon," he says, and four people I hadn't noticed behind him begin clapping excitedly.
"Where...where am I?" I ask.
"The colony!" one of the four shouts, a woman, and comes forward. Her arms are covered with a number of open wounds in various states of healing, and several of them are seeping. "You're our first visitor in quite a while. We're all very excited!"
"The colony?" I ask, a little nervous now that I see everyone but me is covered in infected flesh wounds.
"A place to get away from it all," a man says, and everyone but me laughs.
"Is this...is this a leper colony?" I ask.
There is a pause, and then they all laugh again.
"No, no," the old man says, still smiling. "Just a colony. A commune. A small brotherhood of mankind."
"But...but...why," I start, still unsure of the condition of their bodies.
"Oh, the usual things," The woman interrupts. "To escape the evils of the modern world. Technology. Corporate malfeasance."
"No," I say. "Your skin...why are you...um...injured?"
"Oh!" she says, looking down at her arms. "Right! I'm sorry, I just thought..."
"It's for protection," the old man says. "So we won't get eaten. You know, spoiled meat and all that. Nobody wants pus on their meat."
"Nobody?" I ask. "Like, people?"
"Oh, there are a few tigers in the jungle all right," the woman says. "But sure, Jerry here is a cannibal."
The only man who hadn't spoken raises a hand. "Hey." he says.
"And Ben, too, who you haven't met." she says.
My eyes widen, and I stare at Jerry. "I...I..." I stammer.
"Don't worry, buddy," the old man says. "Jerry's not hungry."
"Oh." I say, but fail to relax.
"Which reminds me," the old man says, reaching down to bring up a sharp rock that looks to be covered in mud or feces. "You'll probably want to scrape yourself up on the tastiest bits."
I take the rock. "The tastiest bits?" I ask.
"Butt, thighs, upper arms, you know," the woman says. "Ask Jerry. He knows the best parts."
"That I do," says Jerry.

A Long Fives-Free Friday

So I've made the jump to a dedicated feed reader for all my blog-viewing needs. I could just bookmark the sites I'm interested in, but I'd really rather not be bothered to actually go to the sites in question to see if they have any new posts. I'd much a rather a bodiless automaton do it for me.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about and can't quite figure out why I would want an invisible robot to read what chickens eat, go ahead and jump down to the paragraph below that starts "I've been drinking a lot." I recount an embarrassing bathroom incident that might be more to your liking.

So. Feed reader. In a not completely unexpected act of conceit, I added dreadcrumbs to my list of feeds, even though I know very well when it gets updated. Lo and behold, something others keep telling me (but I always ignore) became apparent. I should really go into ballet.

No, no. Sorry. What really became apparent was that I should be naming my entries (and probably tagging them) a little more intelligently, since my post list is just a long undifferentiated list of "Microstory Mondays" and "Friday Fives" with the occasional "Silent Laughter of The Elder Ones" to break them up. Who is to know which story or list is which? The same people who enjoy a tale about "Calling Home" may not feel the same about "Fun With Sociopathy." Of course, those people are probably long gone, but still. I'm not gone. So I'm going to dispense with the titles that are really categories and move the titles up to where they belong. The End.

But not really THE End. I did want to share a bathroom moment, as I've gone a couple months without doing so, and I really need to maintain my loo cred.

I've been drinking a lot of water today to cleanse my system of all the mercury I ate, so that necessarily means many trips to the workplace water-closet. On the most recent of these I was blessedly alone in the facility and had gotten to the post-hand-washing period where one traditionally dries their hands. Alas, there was nothing to do it with. We don't have a blow-dryer type dealie, and our two paper towel dispensers had nothing poking out of them. This could have meant two things. Either we were out of paper towels (likely), or the last person to get one didn't pull hard enough to properly extract the head of the next towel in line (just as likely).

So, before I resorted to wiping my dripping paws on the Three Day Pants of Questionable Cleanliness I was wearing, I had to make sure there weren't any towels hiding in the recesses of the dispenser.

Unfortunately, the two dispensers (at either end of the facility) are mounted in such a way as to prevent people of my height from easily seeing their undercarriage. Determining if any towels are hidden away inside thus requires me to half-squat, bend over, and crane my neck. Not a dignified stance, but not "I'll-never-show-my-face-at-school-again!-NEVER!" undignified.

However, add to that the strange tyrannosaurus-like way I was holding my hands because of their wetness, and the fact that I made the regrettable decision of remaining in the squat stance as I walked lurched from one dispenser to the other. The second dispenser proved to have some towels inside, so I pulled some out, and as I moved to return to my standard posture, I noticed one of the visiting Vice Presidents of the company standing halfway in the bathroom doorway. He had obviously seen my Dripping Creep, which, while odd, didn't seem grounds for the expression he had on his face. It was as if he had just seen a poorly shaven Kodiak bear eat its own entrails. A little fear, but mostly disgust. Worse yet, he didn't just swallow it and go hide in a stall, he turned around and left the bathroom altogether. Usually I only have this effect on women, so I checked to make sure my clothes weren't stained with vomit, blood, or feces, but found nothing.

I don't know. It kind makes me wonder if I don't have some sort of skill I'm not taking full advantage of if I can cause that kind of reaction in people without even trying. Should I be in a different job? Circus freak, maybe? Bouncer? Stunt monster? Not high paying, I'd guess, but if I'm missing my life's calling...

Oh well. I'll have to think about it. It may be the job I'm looking for is "Dad." And I have that one already.

Microstory Monday

Fun With Sociopathy

The bicycle darts in front of our car, too close for us to stop, and we hit him going about 25. The rider spins through the air and lands roughly on the roadside with a yelp. Johann stops the car immediately and jumps out to crouch by the fallen rider's side.
"Calm down, son," he says. "You've been in an accident."
The rider blinks several times and then nods jerkily.
"Listen," Johann continues, "the ambulance won't be here before you bleed out."
I start to say something, because the guy doesn't look to be bleeding, but Johann gives me a look, and I swallow it.
He lifts the rider's arm up, holding the forearm to the man's face. "I don't have a knife, so I'm going to need you to bite, as hard as you can, right here," he says, pointing to the exposed flesh of the wrist.
The guy's eyes widen, but Johann keeps going. "You have to trust me," he says, "you need help clotting now or you'll bleed to death."
There is a pause, and then the guy bites. Johann stands and starts walking back to the car.
"Now drink," he calls out, jumping into the driver's seat just as blood starts to squirt from the rider's arm.
We drive in silence for several blocks.
"That was hilarious," I say, and Johann starts to giggle.

Sandwiches and Death

So the in-building cafe at my workplace that was holding a contest to choose their name finally chose their winner. The conquering suggestion? Any guesses?
"The Better Bytes Deli."
Right.
So, now, no offense to the certainly very nice visiting time traveler from 1985 who suggested this name, but really. LAME. I don't know if I could think of something with more practical emptiness.
This...this...THING they've chosen is worse than choosing nothing at all. It's like the difference between accidental death and suicide. Either way you're dead, but if you kill yourself, you're also telling the world that you're a pansy-a$$ idiot. Impressive.
Come on. Really. Attempting to hide the fact that we're gutless retards is part of what proves we merit existing at all.
Meh. Whatever.
I'm just bitter I won't be eating at "The Meat Hutch." That would have been awesome.

Microstory Monday

Thicker Than Water

"Come on," my brother says, staring over my left shoulder. "Help a guy out."
I risk another look at his eyes and stifle a gag.
"You should really see a doctor about this," I say.
"Dude," he says. I hate it when he says that. "Dude. You know they'll just call the cops when they find out I've been dropping."
"How do you know!?" I say, a little irritated. "It's not like it's LSD! It's...it's...a fungus or something!"
"Ringworm," he says. "The high is fabulous."
"GAH!" I shout, throwing up my hands and turning away. I don't know what to say, and in the silence, I hear him blink. It's a troubling sound.
"Fine," I say, not turning around. "What do I do?"
"Just hold my eyelids open and scrape off the hard bits with your fingernail," he says. "You know, just like a scab."

Friday Fives

Five Perfectly Plausible Reasons Why I Am Writing This Whilst Sitting In A Shady Grove In Greenwich Connecticut

1. That stygian hole in the basement turned out not to be an unguarded gate to The Underworld (or The Underworld is much more pleasantly sylvan than I thought)
2. My fancy-pants wife has taken me on one of her book tours to serve as plebian color and pack mule
3. My synesthesia is acting up and I'm actually eating a bowl of Cheerios in the nude
4. I'm checking out Rosemary Wells' Rabbit Husk farm
5. I'm in hiding from Pinkerton Agents, and those anachronistic fools will never think to check my blog