Flightily Must I Write

Wind-whipped birches whistled at the crest of the hill, right before it dropped off into a veritable canyon.  Cobbled hunks of lumped stone, piled into moss-hugged cubes and pillars, looked minute. They peeked from the surface of the lake’s serene face; there seemed an endless chasm between those shapes and Arthur as he stalked to the edge of the overgrown path.  The longer he stared into the abyssal blue of the water, the deeper a sense of dread dug itself; it fomented beneath the springing stress that had propelled him thither.  Backpedaling gingerly, he suddenly lurched back-and-downward as he blundered over an exposed birchroot; he landed with less of a traditional *thump* or *crack*ing sound than a plump, dew-stuck *thoomp*.  As his head concussed against lumps of crinkly leaves, his eyes locked onto the gaze of another: it was the piercing glare of a pupilless eye, perched beneath a knobby birch branch.

This entire moment wound itself into the infinity of the surrounding forest, with its mole holes; its soft fox dens and bushy glens.  Arthur’s breath begged to be let free —if only he knew how. Every ampule of intention within pulsed beneath the glowering beauty of the thin birch tree.  At last, cowering unreasonably within his chittering carapace, Arthur whipped himself from the prostrate position, ready to pose an incisive accusation to his blanch-bowed companion.
“So you see me, do you?” he bellowed.  At last, scrabbling from his tummy to his knees, he jettisoned himself toward the flaky bark iris of this eternal eye, which judged supernaturally from the bark of this silent interlocutor.

“Do you see what I deal with? The bullshit? A hysterical wife, who speaks in words that Babel on… a home in the middle of nowhere, when what I need is the city.

”Oh, God, The City.  Where answers are short and precise, and small talk is rare —none of this soft ambiguous metaphor SHIT that I get here. Just for once, simple answers to my questions, instead of fucking questions in return.” In a surge of his purest frustration, Arthur hugged the birch, mashing his forehead into its staring eye —that one he’d perceived as so critical.

Muffled by his own melancholia, Arthur rolled his brow over the bulging scar in the tree’s trunk, muttering to it and himself, “my eyes don’t cry any more. Do yours? Only when it rains, huh? Next time you do, would ya cry for me? No one seems to know or even see how hard it is for me, starving for success like this.  What does this podunk place know of success, or progress? This dead-end hole is the farthest thing from my goals —no offense, buddy.”  Turning his cheek to the tree, he reached around its “back” and gave it a solid pat, before continuing his thought.

“As a tree, I bet this place is great! Mostly abandoned by the more enterprising folks, even the quarry’s been taken back by the earth; no man can care for this land.  Why would they? Ground as hard as marble —and why not? It is.  I don’t understand how Dina can try to tend that yard, gardening her days away.  Who could try with such fervor to fight against these inhuman rocks and ravines?  Not me; that much I see.” Exhaling the last phrase, Arthur pushed himself off of the tree, straightening his jogging jacket; brushing the dirt and leaves off of himself; trying to brush away the frustrated shame of the whole situation.  But he couldn’t leave it.  He had more to say.

“What do you really see, you goddamned tree?  Do you know the relief of finding a taxi in the rain? Or the the taste of a Bloody Mary 10 in the goddamned morning? What about the violent vertigo of being on top of a skyscraper? It’s not the same sense that I feel here, amongst all these trees, with the cliff right there… even though a fall from both would amount to the same. You know what is lacking, here?”  Turning around with arms raised in mock surprise, Arthur shouted in savage syllables: “AN AUDIENCE.”

“But you don’t know shit about people, or what it’s like to imagine them below you when you’re safe and behind massive glass windows.  You don’t know about cars as small as ants beneath your feet, and lights brighter and more beautiful than any night sky; you don’t know the first thing about people.  You’re the ilk of Dina and her bucolic bullshit, and I hate you for it.  You simple piece of pre-lumber, you aren’t worth the toilet paper you’ll become.  You and your scrubby friend stifle my potential. You impede my goddamned progress.”  Arthur rises to his feet.  His face has solidified into a smug grimace that assures himself that this outburst was necessary and constructive —Gods forbid he ever spoke his mind in front of Dina… she’d probably go insane, poor little thing.  Arthur is sure that he’s spared his meek princess the torture of seeing him so upset.  Feeling logical and obvious, he is bolstered by the belief that he is protecting his beloved.  He smiles and turns east, ready to head home.  Remembering that he’d resolved to walk the lake —that was, after all, why he’d come outside at all —he reasons that his eruption at the cliff was sufficient action before dawn.

Hands napping in his fleece jacket’s fluffy pockets, Arthur strolled back to the trail, and continued to meander homewards.  As he approached the apex of the hill, Arthur sat down to watch the sun creep onto the horizon.  

Shlosshing around in my wimbly wombly brain (it feels like it’s loping up and down a hill  —an elliptical gait), I see so much more… I see, with powerful perception: This perception, this power, has its form; the gossamer shreds of maypole flags sag in the bows of California Red Firs and Oracle Oaks  ”—-May Day, May Day got away.”

But what was left? Ours, it became! 

Two weeks ago my job as wage-slave at The Songbird Society hair salon came to an abrupt, but needed, end.  They told me that they can’t afford 2 receptionists AND a manager, and that they’d be letting me go.  Despite my personal opinion that I was the most capable and willing of the 3 employees from whom they had a choice of laying off, this makes no appreciable difference; I WAS the only one who never voiced an inclination to resign from my post, however —both the manager and my coworking front deskwoman whined regularly about the job which, to be fair, was too much responsibility for far too little pay.  Today I received my final pay-stub for last week’s 40 hours of ghost-work… being that this is the only time I’ve ever been released from a job NOT of my own accord, I have been inculcated by the concept of severance.

Today, I am working for my part-time boss, the lovely Renee Rhyner, helping her prepare for her Los Angeles trip this upcoming Wednesday —she is going to look at the work of another potential addition to RR&Co., meet with clients, and the like.  I am writing some blog and media posts about recent work from other members of the Company while I restart her tragically slow Dell laptop —from which I update her  digital portfolio, client and contact lists, etc. —I notice, to my alarm, that it is faining to install updates….. so, not wanting to be a lazy employee, I am feigning blog writing… well, not really —I AM writing a blog, just not one that she can readily utilize.

Oh look, the computer is finished “installing” crap.  Back to real work! 

(Source: scissortits)

She didn’t have the foggiest idea where he was —there was a fluffy thought that, perhaps, he had sojourned to pick up groceries… and perhaps a pack of cigarettes!  As her mind scrumbled and slurred, she became frenetically aware of her presence in bed; the musty, acidic scent of old sweat on sheets alerted Dina that she had been asleep, reeking of tarry tobacco.

Weakened by comprehension, feeling utterly exposed, she shuddered.  She ripped the pillow from beneath her head, replacing her face with the feathery mass.  Deep, crackly breath was muffled by the thousands of down feathers held within a soft satin membrane.  The satin surrounding her face had absorbed her heat, but the opposite side’s sweaty surface was cooling in the fan-powered breeze.

From within the pillow, Dina felt the quills of some goose-down scratching at her face —“Silly geese,” she thought absently, “I wonder if they knew their fate.  Does anyone? I wonder, still.”  She wondered what on Earth, Neptune, or even Venus she had been up to for the past three years… Mercury couldn’t even interpret it all right.  She’d bound herself to “Her Man” years before, so it was merely a matter of course —this sickening penance for settling so soon —that she would assure herself that she was, in fact, horrid, lazy, and cowardly in her relationship with Arthur; failure had made itself manifest; and it was deserved, then, that she was unhappy in her marriage.

Since the second year of matrimony, Dina had felt that her life with Arthur was a test of her emotional stamina.  The traces of rote affection, with its phrases as clunky and smothering as a straightjacket, rattled amongst exasperated sighs.  In a game-show fashion, tepid expressions of intimacy, had become checkpoints in a competition, which ended only in death, or insanity —which was, after all, death of the soul; it was the body malingering once one’s words had left.  Her game was to bamboozle everyone until she lost every sense of herself, becoming another believer in this façade of her very creation.  In bed, pondering the darker, dingier points of mania, Dina could be nearly certain that she would —like most of us who love too densely —give herself away to strangers in this piecemeal fashion, until only a pygmied portion of self remained inside to work the skin-n-bone stilts that toe the earth; yes, thought she, she was doomed to die far before her corpse could entropically decay, or else burn away.

Soulsucked and screaming for a silent spirit, Dina’s body itched from within.  Her marrow had been replaced with pinkish fiberglass; something had flayed her joints and put in this cotton-candy carcinogen; it set the bones ablaze, flowing beneath muscle like flames.  Clawing at the sheets frantically, Dina was toxic.  There was some creature inside her, consolidating in her beating breast.  Her muscles cracked and crunched as she flailed, moaning helplessly.  What was happening? She had dreamt of insanity many times before, but it always seemed like it would be a drifting, sinking swim into darkness —not this. Not fire.  Not acrid acid in her brittle body. Dina wiped her beading brow, admonishing her mind for wandering so whimsically before; what had made her think that madness would be cool, calm?  Medea didn’t flee with water dragons, did she? No; FIRE DRAGONS.  Fire.  Madness.  But this hadn’t been the expected outcome.

Retching, Dina felt a wretched sting climaxing in her extremities.  The limbs of her body shriveled, stymied by fiery fascism —and it was clear that Helios’ granddaughter was leader.  Like some amalgam of absinthe & ouzo, noxiously sweet (while arrestingly alcoholic-hot) sap seeped under Dina’s nailbeds, into knuckles and the spaces beneath her hot-as-the-latest-scandal skeleton.  As the sugary warm poison trickled ever deeper, a syrupy Führer —her own real Jägermeißter —hunted for her heart.  With sudden fluidity, it struck —and she went limp, at last.  Like so many times before, Dina tumbled into her abyss; but this descent was both slowlier and suddenlier than any drunkard would have imagined before, or ever would again.

At the bottom of the abyss was She: She was a revelation in the dingy, sickeningly illuminating, light of Chthonic infestation.  She was an articulated cadaver, green and bloated from rotting offal in her belly; She shuffled out of the mottled shadows, an absolute image of viscous, grinning terror, holding what appeared to be an array of drool-dripping daggers —no, Dina didn’t believe it.  But, all the same, She was handling talons —they seemed draconic, at the mildest. Jagged nails dug into the hulls of this vision’s once-upon-a-time-these-were-hands… She appeared so macabre at the foot of the bed that Dina could hardly focus without feeling ill.  Dina had never seen this monstrous creature before, though it felt like she had a knowing dread of what She meant… And yet, the only certainty was the power of her own looming uncertainty.

The dusty ghoul smiled, while cryptic trails of cried mud slipped & dripped onto her hollow, hungering breast.  Her green-graying skin maintained a humid, marshy suppleness, despite the ooze that trickled omnipresently downward.  Tresses on her patchy scalp hung heavily, like algae-soaked boat cables, flapped into her face, while her cheeks’ crimson claw-marks deposited bloody rivulets of red upon her battered, craning neck.

Ominously, the wraith began to rattle. “You will break. Moorings decrepit and lusterless, you will fall away, into the foggy Oblivion of the denizens that surround your crackling corpse. Your necrotic flesh will tear into flecks, which will nourish fish and fowl alike —poison has begun to lump in your lymph and replaces your blood. Legumes latch to your legs as you listlessly lope onward. Bones snap; ever onward, lost and loveless, they march in a gait that matches one you used to use. What once was yours to try to control —that gassy, ghastly bushel of blood and briny bile —is now reconciled to stay on the shores of the Styx, waiting vainly for the ferry. But you will never pass the marshes, nor will you glimpse the ruby-eyed Cerebus —instead, your children will devour your very self, and you will be laid on the wayside for the fertile extent of eternity.”

The passionate illumination left Dina’s eyes raisined and leaking, slow and low, upon her sweat-shining face. The immaculate idea, hope for a seed inside her, had become as sullied as Dina’s surrounding senses.  She could not sow a single thing there, now.  She wanted to vomit; to cry; to lash, serpentine, at herself; to scream.

“So scream,” the vile vision wheezed, cackling phlegmatically. Dina saw dust crusting off the skeletal wretch’s heavy hair as She laughed.

“Rend your lungs, before I do it for you!” She continued, extending her arms while brandishing the contents of her pincerlike hands: She was clutching at massive fangs, slime-riddled, and brown with dried blood.  In a moment of grim recognition, Dina began to shriek.  She laughed all the more violently, waggling the reptilian teeth at Dina —a playful threat.

“Shout the truth, even if your ears are the only that will hear.  Mark these words —they are not mine: If babied appendages amalgamate within you, yours will encounter the earth —but you will be alone; though your shrieking lungs may soar above the earth, you will be beneath it, unmourned and improperly wrested from life. Scream. Shout and sob until all of you putrefies into this prophecy.”