dreadcrumbs

"The Second Date"

Amy is telling me all about the magazine she's interning on, and because she's cute, and I really like her, I'm trying to pay attention.
"...it's amazing the kinds of things they're reporting on, stuff the mainstream just won't touch," she says. I raise my eyebrows and nod. I should be asking something. A follow-up, to illustrate I'm engaged.
But her handbag is dripping, and has been since we sat down. So I'm distracted.
"pligk," comes a sound from just below her bag.
It's a thick kind of drip, like a sea sponge overladen with phlegm.
"pligk," I think I hear again, but try to ignore it.
"When it goes to press, it's like a giant process machine turns on, interleaving media without..." she says, but...
"pligk," a drop interrupts.
It's seriously distracting.
She's hung her purse on the armrest of the chair she's sitting in, leaving about four inches from the bottom of the bag to the floor. Just far enough for the drops of whatever is seeping through the seams of her bag to make a barely-audible noise when they hit the floor.
"...and so when I told Gordon, that's the 'Humour' editor - it's so great, they use the British spelling 'cause they mean it in that old Greek way, like feelings and bile, not, like, actual funny stuff...but so when I told Gordon..." she goes on.
"Pligk," says the drop of whatever-it-is crashing to the floor.
Normally, I'd be leaning forward, politely rapt, trying to show I'm interested in her and her story, but when I do that, the bottom of the bag creeps into my field of vision, and the little off-white pool forming beneath it kind of grosses me out.
It's probably just water, I tell myself. She set the bag down outside, and it got damp, and...
"Pligk," rings the bell of another free drop.
I swear I can feel the drops hitting the floor through my feet. I shift my position, trying to get as little of my feet touch the floor as possible.
"...I've got like four more weeks, but like I said, Sarah is leaving next month, so I'm really sure that..." she goes on, and I'm suddenly struck with the unreasonable fear that I'm going to be tested on what she's been saying.
"Plish," comes the sound, and the change makes me twitch. I try to cover by faking a stretch, but she stops abruptly.
"Are you okay?" she asks.
I realize suddenly I've leaned forward, and I can see the little pool underneath the bag. I stare. There's some kind of dead bug in it now. A beetle maybe. A moist shell on its back.
Almost in slow motion, I watch another drop form on the bottom of the bag, break loose, and splash onto the beetle. It twitches violently with the impact, and suddenly, Amy's head is in front of mine.
"What is your issue today?" she asks, annoyed.
She's about ready to walk out, I think.
My eyes drift to hers.
"What's in the bag?" I ask.
"What?" she says.
"What's in your purse?" I ask. "What's in there? What's wet in there?"
Her eyes turn confused, then irritated, and she leans back, letting out an exasperated noise.
For some reason, I still think she might answer me, and I wait, staring at her.
Abruptly, she grabs her purse and stands. I hear a crunch, and I know she's put her foot in the puddle and smashed the bug.
"Please don't call me again," she says, and I look down at her foot.
She walks away, the tread of her shoe pulling up the damp remains of the beetle. I watch her feet as she leaves, leaving pieces of bug behind with every step.
I look back to the wet smear of handbag secretion on the floor.
Just leave it alone, I think, even as I crouch down next to it.
But I have to know.
I lick my lips.
I have to know.

Five story cop-outs that need to be retired

1. The Shaman.
   We need our character to have a drastic change of heart, remarkable physical/emotional/spiritual healing, or receive some piece of advice from beyond-the-ken-of-mortal-man. Sort of like, a religious experience. But without the religion. Is there any kind mystic tradition we can distort to our purposes that people will recognize but not really know anything about?
2. "Love."
   Why is our character doing things...er...out of character? Why is he leaving his family? Why is he spending all his savings on a boat ticket to the Mariana Islands? Why is he risking his life for a stranger? Let's say "Love." It conquers all or something, right?
3. Sex.
   So how can we get the audience to believe our character is actually in love with someone they've only known five minutes? You know, without actually having any good interpersonal dialogue? Or acting? Cheap.
4. Nutso Technology.
   In the distant future year of 2009, our hero has, say, a 100 year old skull, and needs to find out what it looked like before it lost all of its skin and hair. Why not just stick it in the Amazing Analyzotron 4000? You can get a nice holographic representation of the head in its heyday, as well as any tattoos it may have had. With a few tweaks from the geek on staff, you may even be able reverse-interpolate its vocal cord DNA and hear it speak.
5. Swiss Army Magic.
   We've given our hero the "Mantle of Jove" which enhances all of the bearer's natural abilities. Also, with enough concentration, and when the plot paints itself into a corner, it enables our protagonist to see through walls, read minds, fly for brief periods of time, communicate with animals, and, if he really concentrates, reverse the flow of time and, depending on audience feedback, resurrect the dead.

"In The Belly of The Beast"

I almost don't want to speak for fear it will ruin the mood, but it seems only polite.
"Hey," I say.
"Hm?" comes the response from the gloom.
"Just saying 'Hi'," I say.
"Oh," says the voice. "Right. Hello."
We float in silence for a minute. I'm not sure if decorum requires me to continue to conversation, not having been in this situation before.
I'm about to ask him his name, just for the sake of propriety, when he relieves me of the burden.
"I'm Jason," he says.
"I'm Ed," I say.
After a few more seconds of quiet, I'm really not sure whose turn it is to speak.
"Um," Jason noises.
"Yeah?" I ask.
"Can you...er...can you feel your legs?" he asks.
I take a moment to try wiggling my toes. It feels like they're there.
"I think so," I say. "Why? Can't you?"
"Not really," he says. "I'm sure I had them when I came in, though."
"Oh," I say, and reach one of my stumps down to check my own.
"My thighs are still there," I say, and then probe further. "...nothing below the knee, though. Weird."
"Here," Jason says. "Just a second."
I hear some erratic splashing noises from the direction of Jason's voice, and then some irregular breathing.
"Can you see me?" I hear Jason ask, a little closer now.
I peer into the darkness.
"Sort of," I say. "An outline, maybe."
"I just," Jason gasps, and then begins what I think is a coughing fit.
I wait until he finishes.
"I just wanted to see if you could check my legs," he finally says. "Its teeth got both my arms."
"Ah," I say, and then, hoping to empathize, "My hands are pretty much gone."
There is a moment of quiet, and I hear a muffled scream. From outside, probably.
"Should we be more upset about this?" Jason asks. "I mean, losing body parts is serious trauma."
"Yeah," I say. "I'm not even in pain. Probably the best I've felt in years."
Something outside shifts, and I finally begin to make out Jason as he floats closer. Most of his skin and hair has dissolved, so he looks like an armless bust composed entirely of red meat.
"It's probably the stomach acid," he says, his meat mouth opening and closing raggedly. "Or the air in here. Sedates...uh...uh...ubblh"
I watch him slowly tilt to one side as he speaks, his body doing a half rotation in the fluid until only his legs are visible. I can see them flailing awkwardly, pretty much intact. Only the feet up to the ankles are gone.
"Jason!" I yell, hoping the acid hasn't burned through his eardrums yet. "You've still got them! You've still got your legs!"
Eventually the kicking settles into twitching, and I watch as Jason's remains gradually sink beneath the surface.
After a few minutes, I try poking at my face with my stumps in an attempt to determine if I still have skin. Just about when I've convinced myself I might still have a nose, I hear a loud splash from the other side of the stomach.
I float silently in the ripples for a while, rocking gently into the stomach lining. I'm pretty sure my left hip comes loose on one of the impacts.
"Hey," comes a voice in the distance.
"Hm?" I noise.
"Just saying 'Hi'," says the voice.
"Oh," I say. "Right. Hello."
I feel I should be reminded of something, but for the life of me, I can't remember what it is.
"I'm Ed," I say.

"A Visit to the Farm"

"Welcome to Butterfly Springs, Rob," Greg says, gesturing expansively at the lush rolling plain before us. "Where we help mankind acheive the impossible!"
"Nice," I say, not really sure where to go from there. "Um...pretty."
"I know, I know," Greg says, starting a slow amble down a dirt path I assume leads to the farm house, or a barn, or something.
"You're wondering how we help people acheive the impossible," he continues.
"I assume you've got some kind of crop," I say, matching his leisurely pace on the path.
"Sort of," he says. "I do call it a farm in the paperwork, but it's really more of a livestock thing."
He chuckles to himself, and then stage-whispers "don't tell The Goiters I said that, though."
I take a beat trying to figure out if I've mis-heard him, but eventually give in.
"The Goiters?" I ask.
He nods. "You know, the big bloated throat things people get? Enlarged thyroid?" he says.
"I know what they are," I say. "Doesn't help."
"Sorry, sorry," he says. "It's not like we have herds of ambulatory glands grazing around."
I wait, trying to give him my best "get to the point" look.
"That would be cool, though," he says, laughing. "But no. We just have people here, people with goiters."
I stop. "People?" I say, turning to look at him. "You're farming, excuse me, herding people?"
"They're very happy," he says.
I open my mouth to speak, but before I can formulate an argument as to why people really shouldn't be treated as livestock, Greg puts up a hand.
"I'm kidding," he says, in a drawn out, can't-you-take-a-joke way.
"Butterfly Springs is the world's largest endocrine bottler, Rob," he says, pride evident in his voice.
The look of indignation on my face curdles into confusion at what feels like an obvious and baffling non-sequitur, and I can't help looking around for the crew of some hidden camera prank show.
"We're farming the people's thyroids," he says. "Not the people themselves. They're like the land we grow our crop on."
"Er," I say. "Um..."
"They are well compensated," he says.
"Well that's...good," I say. "Right?"
"Look at this," he says, pulling a foil package out of his pocket and unwrapping it to expose a pale gray rod. It looks like a candy bar made out of modeling clay.
I shrug, still a little concerned about the herd of people with enormous goiters hidden somewhere nearby.
"Pure white phosphorus," he says, smiling.
"Okay," I say. "I guess I believe you."
"Well," he continues. "Okay, not pure, exactly. There's some cheese in this one, mixed in for flavor, but everything else is pure phosphorus."
"Flavor?" I ask. "People eat this?"
"That's right," he says, beaming. "Impossible, right?"
"Isn't phosphorus poisonous?" I ask. "Radioactive, or something?"
"Not when you're drinking farm-fresh calcitonin," he says. "Milked daily from the goiters of healthy Swedes."
"Ah," I say, because my mouth will make no other noise.
"Check it," he says, and takes a big bite of the pale mass. He chews widely, his mouth open, and I can see the material glow faintly in the darkness of his mouth.
"Eating just this much would kill anyone not enhanced with my endocrine beverages," he says, wincing a little as he swallows. "I'm a freaking super-hero, Rob!"
"It doesn't...er...burn?" I manage to mutter.
"Nah," he says, taking another bite. "Not with the cheese mixed in. Tastes seriously nasty plain, though, so you wouldn't want to eat pure phosphorus, even without the, you know, chemical burn."
"But why would you even..." I say.
"Oh!" he interrupts, suddenly remembering something. "And your poo smokes, like it's on fire! It's awesome!"
I stare for a minute, and he takes another bite.
"I can't believe I forgot that," he says, shaking his head in amused exasperation while he chews. "It's the best part."

The five best places to hide from me

...if you suspect I'm hunting you down for your unique pelt

1. Any Sports Bar not in Ohio
2. Inside any of Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg's cabinets
3. The Annals of History (again, any of them)
4. The basement abattoir of "The Quilted Bear"
5. Inside a net on my doorstep

"Meeting Mom"

The car rolls to a stop and Jared stares at the house in front of us. He looks miserable.
"It's just dinner," I say.
"You don't understand," he says, still staring forward at some point between the steering wheel and the car's hood. "She's fostered this disturbing culture of nasty food and awkward conversation. Dinner at home is like the pinnacle of discomfort for me."
"Still," I say. "It's been six years. I should meet her."
"I guess," he says, and takes a deep breath.
"We can do this," I say. He turns, finally to look at me, an expression on his face I've not seen before.
"She...they...the whole family...they're...unspeakable," he says, looking directly into my eyes. "Really. I know I've told you before, but I really mean it."
I laugh, and he twitches a little. "Don't be so dramatic," I say.
He coughs out a mirthless laugh, and pulls the keys from the ignition.
"Let's just get it over with," he says.
We walk to the front door in silence, stopping just before the front door.
"Just ignore them," he says, whispering now. "That's best. Ignore everything, if you can."
I pat his shoulder reassuringly, and the door opens suddenly in front of us.
I can't help but smile when I see the attractive young woman holding a baby girl standing in the lighted doorway before us. A young boy, about five, stands just behind her leg, peering around it. They are beautiful, all of them, and seem genuinely happy to see us.
"You're here!" the woman chimes, and Jared jumps a little. The oldest child, a boy of about five, darts out to hug Jared's leg. "Daddy!" he says. "You're back! You're back!"
"You must be Jared's mother!" the woman beams, "I'm Melanie!"
She lunges forward, pressing me in a hug between her one free arm and the baby, which coos in my ear.
"Come in, come in," she says, ushering us into the house. In a matter of seconds, I find myself on a sofa that feels like it's made of felt, a baby on my lap and a boy resting his head on my shoulder.
Opposite me is another couch on which Jared and his wife sit. She looks as if she's on the verge of laughter, and Jared has the look of a mouse facing the open mouth of a large snake.
"I can't tell you how happy I am to finally meet you," Melanie says. "Jared says you've been out of the country?"
"Er...yes," I say, trying to shore up my son's obvious lie.
She begins to talk, outlining what sounds like the family's history since their marriage forward. It all sounds perfectly wonderful, and I'm beginning to think that Jared has psychological problems to have presented her to me in the way he has. I look to my son, confused, and his eyes widen in horror as he recognizes my reaction to his family for the pleasant acceptance that it is.
"Dinner will be ready in just a minute," Melanie says. "Jared tells me that you're an animal lover, is that true?"
"Yes," I say. "I have two cats at home."
"Delightful!" she says, clapping her hands. "Two cats! Every night, just for yourself?"
"Well, er...yes," I say, a little off-balance. "Jared's father passed away several years ago, so it's just me and the cats now."
"We'll have to come for dinner sometime," she says, standing.
"We're mostly a dog house here," she continues, winking. "So to speak."
She walks to the kitchen, calling out, "But we love good monkey when we can get it."
I stare at the spot she just left, not sure just what we're talking about. My eyes dart to Jared, who opens his mouth several times before finally rasping, "She's...she's kidding."
After a minute or so, she calls us to dinner, and I file in to find a beatifully set table with six place settings.
"Wherever you want, dear," she says, gesturing to the table, and I sit down beside the high chair.
"Are we expecting anyone else?" I ask, nodding toward the single empy place setting.
"Oh, dear me," Melanie says, and Jared groans. "No, no. Just us. Force of habit, I suppose."
She approaches the table with large bucket of meat and a pair of tongs.
"Guest gets first choice," she says.
"Er..." I start, still not sure what the meat is.
"Would you like the monkey's paw?" she asks, a twinkle in her eye.
I look to Jared, who gives me a subtle head shake and a "don't believe her" look.
"Certainly," I say, and Melanie reaches into the bucket and pulls out a pale steaming mass that looks for all the world like the boiled hand of a monkey.
"It's not a monkey," I hear Jared whisper.
Melanie swats him on the back of the head with the tongs. "You're no fun," she says.
"No, no, it's not a monkey," she continues, dropping oddly shaped pieces of meat on everyone's plate. "But it's still food!"
I wait for Jared to start eating, and then tentatively take a bite of my hand-shaped meal. It has a nervous porky flavor.
Several seconds pass, and then, abruptly, Jared's son shouts, "Megan is yummy!"
Melanie gives her son a disapproving look. "No names, dear. Either 'the meat' or 'little sister,' if you must call it anything."
Chagrined, the boy whispers "little sister is yummy," and Melanie nods.
My eyes widen as I look at the shape of the meat on the table, and then to the empty chair, and then to Jared, who shakes his head.
"It's not our daughter," he says, and Melanie lets out an exasperated sigh.
"No! Fun!" she shouts, slapping him hard on the shoulder with each word.
Jared sighs, sadly cutting another piece of meat and poking it into his mouth.
"We only have two kids, Mom," he mutters as he chews. "This is a neighbor or something."
"And don't talk with your mouth full," Melanie says.

Five activities actually made less horrific when you add zombies

1. Scrapbooking (you know which scraps I mean)
2. Cockfighting (undead poultry!)
3. Watching "Dancing With The Stars" (also, "American Idol")
4. Hunting
5. "Networking" (the cocktail party kind, not the ethernet and routers kind)

Fun With Brain Trauma

I'm not quite up to fiction just yet - my brain still seems to be operating at about 75% standard, and telling lies seems to require more brain power than not. For me, anyway. I don't mean to slight non-fiction writers by saying they only write non-fiction because they aren't smart enough to write fiction. I mean, I hear that Seabiscuit book was pretty good. Even if it didn't have actual Sea Biscuits in it.

But for me, alas, my soul burns bright with truth, and it goes against the grain to lie, even if it is more fun.

So instead of a story, I thought I might try to chronicle a few of the hallucinations I still remember from my surgical recovery. I think most of them were due to lack of sleep, though the narcotics may not have helped.

First, there were the heads. Sometimes human heads, usually not. Mostly the heads of horse or donkey-people. These would be integrated into any surface that had texture. Curtains, blankets, walls, skin. They didn't usually move, and if they did, it was just to chew cud or blink or something. They never talked to me, the arrogant freaks. Mostly it was like I was discovering hidden images that no one else could see. Hidden images of the heads of horse people.

Also, socketed fabric. As I spent the first week of recovery either in bed or wanting to be in bed, I became quite familiar with the sight of blankets and sheets. When these blankets would get bunched up at the bottom of the bed, it was quite clear that they were made up of one or more ball hinges about the size of an orange. What a blanket would need with ball joints I cannot say, but I'm sure it's something wicked and unnatural.

Apparently during days 4-7 post surgery someone in my circumstances is usually at the greatest risk of popping one or more blood vessels in their throat and subsequently bleeding to death or drowning on their own blood. So during these days I stayed in my in-laws guest room, as their house is closer to the hospital than mine. While I was there, I developed a very clear impression of some Thing that lives underneath the guest bathroom and watches television from the 70s and 80s between the hours of midnight and 5 AM. It is a small manlike thing about the size of a toddler. It has wide bloodshot eyes and wears an unwashed brown suit. I never actually saw the thing clearly as I crouched on my hands and knees at 3 AM peering into the air vent in the floor of the bathroom, but there WAS something down there. I heard it watching "All In The Family" and "Battle of the Network Stars." If I'd had the energy, I think I might have tried to pull up the floorboards and expose the fiend in its lair.

I think there was another recurring "hallucination," but it is possible I've integrated it fully into my experience and no longer perceive it as non-real.

I'll ask my wife tonight if she can see the satyr on the bookshelf too, just to make sure.

Off the Slab

It will be two weeks tommorrow from the day I cheerfully submitted myself to an anesthetic stupor and surgical maiming. And you know, the doctor really wasn't kidding about the two to three week recovery period.

I thought, sure, whatever. I've shrugged off being hit by a bus and have uprooted trees with my bare hands. I'll be back to normal in two or three days, and then use the sick time to build some kind of feckless robot servant. Alas, not the case. The trick about getting healthy, it seems, is that you are required to sleep and eat. When everything goes down like a spoonful of razor blades, you not only don't want to eat, your nervous system won't let you. Also, it turns out the only thing keeping my tongue from lolling back into my throat and suffocating me while I sleep was the presence of my gargantuan tonsils. I didn't know that. It's the sort of thing you don't find out until those tonsils have been plucked out and suffocation forces you awake every hour, swimming in a nauseating hypoxic delirium.

So, basically, no water + no food + no sleep = uncomfortable descent into death. It's nasty.

Worse still, when your diet consists only of equal parts blood, Percocet and phlegm, the brain, she does not work. It's still not really working, even though I am now at least on a steady diet of pot pie puree. And phlegm.

The Appointment: A True Story

I try to look the man sitting across from me in the eyes, but I can't. His eyes aren't exactly in sync, so I can focus on one or the other, but not both.
"There will be two of us in the room," the man says. "Myself, and one other."
"Okay," I say, trying to act like the entire situation isn't disturbing at all.
"I will be the one with the knives," the man says, nodding once. "I'll be doing the cutting."
"What," I say, "will the other one be doing?"
He smiles at me, and I try to smile back, but my face twitches involuntarily instead.
"He will be in charge of keeping you still," the man says. "While I cut into you."
"Oh," I say, not really reassured in any way. I'm suddenly more worried about The Stillness than I am the impending knives and blood.
"I know, I know," the man says, finally breaking the gaze he'd held on me since we began. "You think that you can take it, that you'll be fine holding still. But you won't."
"I...well," I start, not really sure if I want to talk about this.
"You'll scream and thrash," the man continues, getting a distant look in his eyes, clearly remembering something. "And I'll end up cutting things in the wrong order. Or things I never meant to cut at all."
He looks back at me, smiling again. "That can be very messy," he says.
"And painful?" I ask.
"Probably," he says. "You can't always tell if the screaming is from fear or pain."
"Ah," I croak.
"Frankly," he says, shrugging. "I'd rather not think about it."
"Yeah, okay," I say, standing. My throat has gone quite dry.
The man opens the door, gesturing me out.
"See you on Tuesday," he says.