November 30th & December 1st, 2010

"2:13PM in a Parking Lot in New England in the Winter"

The cold, bumpy iron of the dark gray handrail seemed to glow backwards in the shade of the roof's overhang as the bright snow behind it created a blanketing wet so complete, taking the place of everything dry. The air, thin, denied the fat and the warm of the world, fading the dark, black treeline across the lot into a velvet.

In bursts of time over the course of the afternoon, cars mumble to life under packed snow and let it all slide off like sweat.


***

"November Men"



***

November 29th, 2010 -- "Life in the Sun, 1894"

"Life in the Sun, 1894"

Todd placed his tools in the dirty dry of the wood bin, the heavy things hitting the cracking, splintering planks with a heavy metal clank, a hollow plop and metallic tumble as they rolled over each other awkwardly in a slide to the leaned side of the rusty cart, the dipped end frying in the sun and mixing in the brightness of it all in a near-white beige like a far off dynamite fire. Shade cut the shape of the box in sharp triangles that led off and out of the cart to the cooling ground beneath. Far off sounds of many bugs in heat filled the sweating air with an electric, living hum, a moving buzz with frantic shifts in tone, a sound with a smell.

It was 1894, he was thirty-six years old, and Grover Cleveland was the president of the nation. Todd had purchased the plot of land he was working as part of an expanded, free, labor deal that allowed for the buying of land on the cheap for the purposes of cultivating a thriving, rural economy in otherwise arid, tough regions - places of grit and salt, places where you grow things far in the damp ground deep down under the dry tops near the sun.

Potatoes. Peanuts. Legumes. Tubers. Candy from the planet that will turn a buck pretty slowly and steadily until there is no hot weather left in the tank, until the water from the world tosses itself up and into the air and comes back down in the frigid snap of winter as bright white, a hoary toss down a windy flume that puts all activity to sleep for months.

Sweating, Todd pulled liquid off the back of his neck with one hand while swiping away the cooling wet on his chest under the sun-bleached bandana around his neck. He pulled at the fingers of his gloves, took them off, clapped them together, and tossed them into the cart with the tools. Black, glossy leather and worn patches of light brown animal skin heated immediately in the bright in the back of the cart as Todd picked up the rig by the handles.

Two o'clock hot, wood wheels bolstered by plates and pins over blasted rocks, the shifting sounds of shoes that need a cobbler, dust-colored everything.

Todd walked home, ate an early supper, and spent the rest of the hot evening on the porch with a stinky pipe, smoking slowly and watching the nineteenth century count away before nightfall.

November 28th, 2010, not to mention some previously neglected works from the past two weeks or so...

"The Ocean as a Comfortable and Forced Transition"

The wonder in his mind and in his head in the sand by the sea was made huge by the tides of water lapping in hushed pulls as he sat - or, better - sank in sand, the sand the last smile of the land before cupping or being cupped by the ocean. The great sun in the sky screened the beach in a film of hazy, salt yellow that made everything leading to the water feel very close and very hot, made from some gel of the land, some firm, juiced air with a body smell and real weight, a substance that could be better used to describe the junk pulled away from sleepy eyes in the heat of a room before noon, the lisping smack of a morning mouth thick with old spit and the taste of yesterday's garlic.

He had arrived at a line of change, an event marked by the animated horizon of dark and clear, salty liquid, the line of the land with regard to the sea, the cut and overlap of old water made new by movement, all swirls of excited, bubbled air and swells of cold water from the blind, silent deep.

There was a freshness, here, a dark collection of pools bright cold above packed, ancient mud. In a line, the air changed from thick and close and buzzing to something ultimately cleaner, something more open on the water with a missing weight, a misty day of blue gray clean backed by the electric pop of light behind floating water. Walk into that water to cut the line and feel the halving, the distinct split from bright discomfort and entrance into a coldly spraying clean, a curing mist that would dew lightly on top of small arm hairs to mix temperatures with the traveling blood below.

Pulling himself up and out of the sticking sand, the man clapped the bumpy dust from his hands and thighs. He bladed away patches of itchy salt from tanned dips in his shoulder bones and thought about the long walk through land that had come to this line, this forced place where things change without so much of a plan to consider it expected or good or bad or anything subjective like that. White turned blue, hot into clean cool. He got to his feet and stretched, the sun swearing into his back and sweat with a gradual, burning yawn, the ocean ahead of him roaring in an impossibly large and flat pile of much and dark, comforting weight. He neared the edge, there a filling wind, the hinted connection to the streams of quick and moving whispers offshore that travel along waves in bumped trajectories, purposeless, completely benign and without forced direction. In with a dive.



***



November 14th - 27th, more or less...

November 15th, 2010 -- "Forever Celebrating"

"Forever Celebrating"

The blue black darkwater in the ocean turns emerald green and then white with a hush as it sweeps over dots of sand packed wet and hard in a flat cake to make up a salty ocean bar. The sky, a smack of pale, comfortable periwinkle, sits high and large and unobtrusively in the sky on the brink of the cosmos, playing as a kind of watcher, some kind of backdrop slapped back as far as it could be to hold everything that's real or far off in one large and blue sound that could not ever become confused or be confused for anything else.

The smells are everywhere. The churning of the ocean at the end of its lap, the salty smell of waves giving up to gravity and falling with a slap of water on rocks and sand. The cool smell, the clear smell of water dripping in the dark places between jetty breakers, the clear sting of the water's drop's life in a brief salt whiff before dropping in and mixing with everything forever. Everything is clear.

The young woman dressed in a warm-black swipe of deep and heated cloth stands barefoot in the drier piles of beige by the dunes, bits of lime green and dead grasses folded or twisted into soft bends that poke for a time through the soft of the beach earth before being shifted by clean feet that hang down naked from garments made for celebration. Some distance beyond the dunes are the beginnings of feasts being righted in circles of stone dug down inches into the salty shakes of the beach. Adults, groups of sweating men and focused women, gather in crouches by the bright beginnings of bonfires and add things in piles to smoke. They grab at ingredients with dark, smooth hands. For all the motion, there is hardly a sound above the constant sharing of the sea.

Above, a star gleams yellow through the dying soft blue of the mid-afternoon in a pinpoint and flickers in place to herald in the night.


***

October 30th, 2010

"The Impossible Braid"

October 28th & 29th, 2010 -- HALLOWEEKEND (and Thursday, plus two...)

"GOD HELP US ALL"

By the time he had come to, the charring was complete.

The wrecked skeleton of the house leaned in on its foundation on the hill against the fading light of the surrounding, remaining bits of inferno in the backyard. Chokes of smoke puked up brown from the flooded basement, becoming an intense, blood red in the sky that hung for a while like a thick ceiling.

He sat up and leaned on one elbow. At last, it was over, and there were only a few points of horror left to remind him of what had almost gone terribly wrong - the rusty 1986 F150 in the driveway with its windows sprayed in gore; flicked, gold casings from the shootout; the damned, dead dog, that loud, yipping bastard. What once looked like a calm house nestled in a hill by Rt. 12 now looked unbelievably like the cratered battlefield of some far-off military nightmare.

He adjusted himself and ran the side of his hand up his arm, blading some stinking mud off his soaked shirt. He winced and bit down hard as the ball of his palm bounced out and on past a bad bullet graze. He grabbed at it hard, surprised at the warmth that spread over his hand as fresh blood poured through the gaps in his grip. His eyes closed hard on themselves as his mouth formed an unnatural grimace that almost resembled an insane smile. He jumped to his feet and starting punching his head and chest while bringing his body into a tight clench. Beads of sweat and mud and blood ran down his forehead and into his eyes and he was furious.

"They almost got me! They almost got me! They almost got me! They almost got me! They almost got me! They almost got me! They almost got me! They almost got me! They almost got me! They almost got me! They almost got me!..."

At once, he froze in a snap, silent, hunched over, impossibly solid. His eyed popped open somewhere in the dark and widened into something terribly calm. His grimace seemed to melt downward in slow motion to form something horrible and insanely dangerous.

In a voice that almost resembled that of a raspy little girl, he whispered something demonic into the black treeline and sprinted quietly into the night.

Hours later, a faint and ungodly giggling could be heard somewhere horrible.

***

"Dave Andrews, abduction escapee"

"You look up into the night sky and you see...what? What do you see?

People do that, right? They look up into the sky and they watch for their favorite shapes, right? Look, there's the Big Dipper or that lion shit-for-brains, whatever his name is. Yeah, they do that. They do it, because they don't know what's gliding between those dots, the horribly silent minds that travel in straight lines to do horrible things with their sick lights. Hell, I used to do it, too. Won't catch me doing that anymore, though, not without a gun and a bullet.

Won't take me alive, again. Can't. They just can't.

Hit me again?"

***

"Devil"

"I...I don't know what you're asking, here..."

Mark adjusted his tie and gulped hard on the dry air of the train car. He was sweating. Looking around, he realized that no one else appeared to notice the small, chattering man to his right. Heads down. Earbuds pressed firmly into place. Heavy bestsellers resting pages-up in laps of people looking blandly across the cab into the windows at the attractive people sitting next to them.

Moments ago, the old woman in the seat had gotten up to wander out into the night, leaving this odd being with its strange fade and calm, ancient, red eyes.

Later, Mark would recall that it wasn't the insanity of the situation but the odd way the thing's lips seemed to jump around into crazy smiles and grins that had disquieted him the most. That odd way, of course, and the rows of horrible, horrible teeth.

He never had a chance.

***

"The Back Room"

After closing, the small shop, in the city of life, in the by-day-busy market now darkened and slicked with dew, swirled with hot twirls of the multicolored smokes of things that had been dried centuries ago and brought to burn in front of the future pictured in the orb. Nimble hands sliced quiet through the air around the radiant thing as entranced eyes stared into the humming red of the back room's decoration.

"Oh yes, I see it now. I seeeeeeeeee."

Outside in the sky, the moon, full and bright, seemed to intensify as it rose slowly into the night.

The hands of the wild soothsayer continued for much time before stopping abruptly. All light ran quickly from the room through the front door, and a room that had once been organic and alive with magic exhaled in the dark, empty and whistling with dust.

***

October 26th & 27th, 2010

October 27th, 2010 -- "row eight, seat six"

The spotty rain of that Sunday morning sprayed the window of the train in broken, diagonal streaks against the green-gray sky that smelled like lightning. It was a tired ten in the morning, and her legs were pressed up in sharp, numb bends against the squeaky dark blue of the seat in front of her. Tinny music came from the white buds leading in hoops to her ears. Next to her, a brown, leather bag hung open across the seat, showing books and a phone.

The train rolled in jerks to a slight stop, and she left, leaving a squeezed coffee cup in between the seat and the wall.

***

October 26th, 2010 -- "GET INSIDE!"

Agnes squeezed her head through the curtains at the last, possible second and pressed her head to the wall by the small, slot window in the green iron. She grabbed the handle of the slide and slammed it to the left with a clank. Outside, the event had begun.

"Please, Matthew! Quick! Quick!"

***

October 25th, 2010 -- "Far Away From The Sun, Listening for Everything Space Has to Offer"

"Far Away From The Sun, Listening for Everything Space Has to Offer"

It's odd, he thought.

You know, the scraping sensation that arrives when tearing through space, the tingling waves of bits of bright light that run lines down your body like white spit. They press in at high speed in a freckled sheet between you and the black of space to make the sharp form of a man from nothing, a zooming, traveling shadow in the night sky, silent, breathing, sparkling at its edges where small suns meet oil black along the razor side of a plain line.

It had been a small explosion, something that had a foundation in some cold, tank air - nothing fiery or lethal like a hydrogen spit or a chemical wash. It had been small and it had been just enough to shoot him out through the hatch door and into space with a cosmic pop!

The first few minutes were madness, a silent scream in slow motion that hung in the air like a dropped plate seconds before detonating into countless little things that no one ever wants to pick up. There was a cringe, a hunch, the gut-wrenching tingle at the ends of fingertips as hands reaching out for a purchase find nothing but nothing in nothing. In the night, far away from the unmanned station to properly give up, he brought his legs to his chest snugly and rolled in a straight line like an infant for miles while passing out slowly.

He awoke by Saturn and did his best to decide on some kind of "up" for himself. Calm or defeated or both, he closed his eyes and rubbed the soft of his suit with his rubbery gloves, making a noise that sounded like cleaning an empty tub. His stomach grumbled. It reminded him that dinner had been at 1900, whenever that had been, whichever day that had been, however long ago that was that would decide how much longer he had left to go in the starry slick.

The radio in his suit's helmet sizzled without much change for hours, and the sound reminded him of sleep.


***

(This blog turned one on the 16th!) October 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, & 20th.

"Math"


Scarf sat at the table in the corner of the club and twirled a salt shaker between his hand and the hardwood. The light from the lantern in front of him was cut in half by his head on its way to the wall where it splashed in warm red on brightly leafed wallpaper. Inside, the salt looked like hot pink. By the lamp on the wall, menus rested in gooey piles of laminated paper stained and wrinkled by syrupy, brown alcohol and fruit juice. Packets of sugar and bits of coffee grounds pressed in a group in slots by the napkins. By those, a few bic pens ground up by teeth on the end.

By his hand, the check. "Thanks!"

The plan was simple.


***

"Preserves"

Wendy opened the shitty pantry. A breeze led on by the opening door came running in through the window on the adjacent wall. Tufts of fine hair fluttered in wind like white feathers on small forehead as fragile hands let go of the door. The jars glassed and clinked on shelves that lined up along the wall like a storefront.

Her eyes scanned the room, worried. This was all she had.



***

"a healthy realization of self worth in the face of personal and biting adversity, as well as an unexpected boost of self esteem and loss of cowardice due to pop rap"

Zipping his bag up, he thought about what noise it would make, the tying up of all the ends of his life like fat shoelaces long left untied. The headphones went on, and it came to him.

Ffft!


***



"The Creep's Admirable Statement of Purpose"

Sliding and smiling out of the dark with an unnatural rapidity, The Creep, at a speed, tempo, and intensity comparable to his emergence, said it.

I wake up in the morning wishing for the decimation of my mortal enemies.

As if sucked down a sick drain like the last bit of dirty liquid in a bunk, basement sink, he was gone into the murk doing God knew what, he stink of murder gone with him.


***

"Blind Date"


The Crass Ass ended up being able to offend three waiters and a customer by the bar before offering a buck to The Jerk for the check.

She looked up, shocked.

Six months later, they were married.


***



"Sar For Sil Map Boff Hos"

The ancient's eye flicked open with a sound faintly reminiscent of swordmetal.


***

"Sinister Nothing"

Spinning around at once in the road, the young girl saw nothing in the spot where the noise came from, which was almost worse, because something is something, and you have to deal with it, but nothing seems like nothing and could be something unseen, something that needs to be found out or run from!

The girl chose to run.

Big mistake.


***

October 9th, 10th, & 11th, 2010

October 9th, 2010 -- "Sunshine, Inc."



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October 10th, 2010 -- "Avid Stephen King Fan"



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October 11th, 2010 -- "Survival Horror"



***

October 8th, 2010 -- "5"

October 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, & 7th

"Nudity"

At the lip of the cliff near the coast, the granite arched up into the sky on tiers of its own thick rock before passing off into nothing to drop to the sea.

William kept his hands at his sides and enjoyed the air, the dry and cold ocean gusts mixed with breaks of intense, direct warmth from the sun. Underfoot were broken and bent strands of coarse dune grass that broke through the rocks turned to sand to grab the light by the ocean. They poked and tickled the rough of his soles like hay.

Today was his birthday. His present to himself was to be naked.


***

"Morgan Freeman"

***

"Skittles"


***

"Richard's Autumn Apple"

Crap, he said, as the fruit tumbled into the gravel by the road.


***

"Untitled?"


***

"The Rite of the Sun Eater"

The ink black of the desert landscape burned cold in the arid night of the third moon. The purple of the sky pressed flat against the line of the horizon with a weight that pushed the rocks into deep holes in the dry dirt. Added was a silence in the atmosphere that could be brought down in hands like wet cloth and balled up into a massive thing, a heavy thing worth holding and noting and measured.

It was his night, his rite. Staring off into the east, the older man breathed slow and regular. His eyes fixed on a point and watched the gentle shift of light sift upward as sugary purple gave way to blood red. Gold leaked up and through the air in streams as the nearest star tickled the edge of the world.

Hot white exploded in the east, giving way to a tremendous pop of light!


***

October 1st, 2010 -- "Yards of Roses!"

Little kid darted past two defender bullies on the scrabbled concrete behind the grocer's to score a lonely touchdown in the early cold wet of October.


***