Philosofudge

What’s to stop us from waking up tomorrow and being fudge? My daughter fidgets in her seat behind the table that comes up to her clavicles, picking at a placemat thread like a curious chicken.

In the aquarium of smoke to our right, my father melts off the tip of his nose with the pipe he’s had since ’72. Answer the girl’s question, he says, nose dribbling down his cheek.

If I had chosen anything else for desert, you would have asked the same question, wouldn’t you?

No. My chicken-daughter moves on to a neighbor thread. Fudge specifically. Of course she was lying, I didn’t believe it for a second.

You’re being ridiculous, no one wakes up as fudge.

Do you know that, or are you just saying it because no one’s woken up as fudge yet?

An inundated snort tells me father’s nose has undoubtedly been blown apart all over his trousers.

This is absurd, I say.

My daughter bobs her little head, the thread enjoying no relief. Doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen though, right?

Rolling my eyes, I take a bite of the silent fudge square in front of me, surprised to find a warm, wet cherry gushing between my teeth.

Exodus

Brother’s on the roof with Ouija board wings. Sister taps on the window with faucet fingers, tears on sticky soft cheeks. Mother hums warm wax melodies while she orchestrates brandy cherry cobbler symphonies. Knock-kneed neighbor kids thrust ivory-tipped elbows between grinning ribs around the autumn-bare crepe myrtle. Father grows a mustache and shuffles holes into brown slip-on loafers. Brother inhales the sky and leaps up into a passing goose V.

Trinity

I saw a man, and he was me,

In part, in whole, we three were we:

Was, are, and will; being as he’s been,

And will be as after, seeing him then.

The Sea

Only I see the sea;

Minute, hour, mist to foam,

A plank among the wreck, I

And a seething hiss, a shore.

The taste and smell of rust

Many days old, moan and creak;

My teeth grind on iron sand,

But only I see the sea.

Heady swells greet the dawn,

Riptides tear the day in two;

Lifeboats drift just out of reach,

And only I see the sea.

Happy faces turn about,

Blind and smiling endlessly;

Make it stop, just make it stop,

Yet only I see the sea.

Friends long gone, long ago,

Now a distant memory;

Floating between sky and sky,

Only I see the sea.

The Mall

I, like so many others before me, have had to venture into a place both dark and sinister. A place that welcomes all but wishes none to leave. I am, of course, referring to the mall. Yes, the mall, perhaps the very bane of my existence where store after store informs me that I am ill equipped to face the world as I now stand, and all my needs can be met today for a price 25% less than it was yesterday. I enter, pretending it is of my own free will, but this is just an illusion. It brought me here; it knew I had to come eventually.

            I am under the impression that the mall maintains a minimum population at all times, residents even. These I call “the mall people.” I make my way through their midst, trying to hide the fact that I am not one of them, hoping they will not notice that my every step forward carries with it the caution that it could just as easily be a step back, mainly because I have no idea where I’m going. In spite of this, I remind myself that I have to keep my eyes forward and my steps sure in order to avoid the massage therapists that would flock and insist I look tense and could use a little relaxation. Just keep walking, even if it means I’m walking in circles.

            Arriving at whatever destination I may be looking for, the battle is not over. Smells of leather, new clothes, and maybe even crop-dusting-volumes of cologne immediately affront the senses and cloud the mazes of merchandise in a fog of “stay, look around for a while.” I’m amazed at the intelligence network that the mall undoubtedly employs because no matter what it is I’m looking for, they have discovered it beforehand and hidden it in the farthest corner to insure that I see everything else they have to offer before fulfilling my original errand. The consistency with which they do this almost elicits a sense of admiration; they’re good at what they do.

            Finally, checking out, a high school student smiles and asks, “Did you find everything all right today?” I refrain from muttering “Just barely,” and return the smile. I decline to mention that I spent 15 minutes looking in the women’s section of clothing before I realized where I was, and even after I corrected my error, it took me another 10 minutes to realize the shirt I was after was hidden behind the headless mannequin sporting the summer’s trendiest swimwear. Clutching my plastic bag in hand, I resume what I hope is my incognito walk back to the entrance from which I came. At least, I think it was the entrance from which I came. I can never be absolutely sure.

            Emerging into the light of outdoors, I intake a deep breath of free air. It’s all I can do not to throw my fist in the air and shout “I survived!” Instead, I shuffle forward in front of a car that so kindly stopped for me and try to remember where I parked.  

The Silent World (Intro)

         Adrian lurched awake, breathing in as if submerged underwater for the last minute. He reached up to touch his face, small beads of sweat collecting and melting against his fingertips. Why was this happening now? Why after so long? He moved to get out of bed, his hand coming down on brown, crusted sheets. Strings of pus and sticky orange jelly trailed against the backs of his legs as he swung them free, placing his feet firmly on the ground. Heavy, warm breath licked the back of his neck, but he did not turn around. Instead he looked down to see that his carpet had been replaced with a writhing mass of spider and centipede legs. He closed his eyes and took a slow breath out. The tip of a cold nose traced his spine from the base of his neck to his hairline.

            “I thought we were done with this,” he said aloud. He stood, doing his best not to shake or tremble. The little legs tickled beneath his feet and between his toes and he shuffled through them to reach the bathroom. He flipped on the light and grabbed either side of his sink, staring at his reflection in the mirror. The black marble was cool between his hands, and he tried to focus all of his attention on the sensation. He suddenly felt a firm, uniform pressure in both of his arms as if someone were blowing them up with a bicycle pump. “I’m not doing this,” he said, maintaining eye contact with himself. “Goddamn it, I’m not doing it.” He felt small incisions being made on his ankles. Many of the legs on the floor had found their bodies, and they were making cuts in his ankles so they could crawl up just beneath the surface of his skin. He felt lumps of various sizes making their way up towards his knees. Gritting his teeth, he looked down. The sink drain was open, and fingers were inching out like cockroaches fleeing the sewer. Gripping the edge of the sink harder, the pressure in his arms continued to increase.

            How long until sunrise? Looking through the mirror, he saw the reverse image of 3:26 on his bedside table. Only a couple of hours. The two green dots winked at him, knowing.

            Little Henry Warner sat on a stool out by the shed,

            He melted Mama’s clock,

            Watching it all day, listening to “tick-tock, tock-tick”

            Of cogs and wheels, chalky with dust

            And Mama’s powdered face.

His arms had swollen to the point that every pore had a puffy ring around it, each one butting up against the next, their centers starting to dilate. He put his elbows on the cool, black marble and clutched his temples between his hands. There was now no place on his legs that something was not crawling under with tittering, rhythmic footsteps. He raised his head, meeting his own gaze with wide, angry eyes. He saw in the mirror that white, fleshy heads were crowning in the center of the swollen circles all over his arms: maggots. Wriggling in reaching, twitching motions, first one then the next freed itself from his pores as if they had gnawed themselves into the open air from some central nest within him. He may have been screaming as his fist flew at the mirror before him, shattering both his knuckles and the glass in a mess of shards and blood, but within the dark halls of his empty Wisconsin home, certainly no one else would have been aware of it. 

Cowboy

Once he had reached a certain age, his mother had told him “You can’t be a cowboy. There aren’t any cowboys left.” The words hit his soft boy-heart like a meteor to mud: it had stuck, and it had stuck deep. Even now, between the quiet gasping of his oxygen tanks and the static of his helmet headset, they clung to his eardrums. Dropping down from the ladder, he landed almost silently on the fine gray dust below. He couldn’t help but imagine all of the night skies this same dust had illuminated, though it wasn’t so white or glowing up close. He half stepped, half hopped a few paces forward, feeling as if an invisible bungee cord aided his progress. Then, he stopped. Hanging in the blackness like half of some kind of ripe fruit, he beheld an unfamiliar view of a very familiar place.

…

            Back in Houston, 39 pairs of tired, straining ears gathered around a speaker that had just crackled to life. They made out a voice, but any words were lost in a steady chorus of static. “Please repeat, Apollo, we’re not hearing you,” said the team leader, setting down his half-filled mug of lukewarm coffee. The speaker paused for just a moment before two words pushed through the white noise.

            “Yee haw.”