More old writing
posted 15 November 2009, 16:08 by Mike
“Life isn’t mysterious,” said the old man, sipping at his juicebox, “not an ounce of mystery to it. Start to finish. Here to there. Nothing mysterious at all” He was begining to cough more frequently, the hugging tightness in his chest pulling his thoughts closer together.
Lisa offered a cracker but he refused. She sat down beside him and lit a cigarette. She paused and took a drag, blew out. “My favorite artform is mosaic,” she said. “All those little stones, one after another. I saw a documentary once. There’s these guys in little rooms filled with tables full of rocks of all different colors and sizes, and they riffle through the rocks for the one they want, or need, and take that one rock and put it, stick it onto the picture. Then they go back and look for the next one. Little rocks and shards of glass, one after another.”
“Over and over,” he said. “Not a bit a mystery to it.”
“May I have a buttered roll, please.” he asked. Lisa went to the kitchen and obliged. He sat nibbling the crust gently, thinking. “Thanks.”
Sloan walked in the front door and started describing his day at work: “We made clocks for ten hours. I had to be careful with the gears. They were ultrathin watches for the young jet-set crowd, stylish things, so some of those gears were skinny as paper. I was afraid they would melt if i held them too long. I don’t know where the watches went. They took them away in boxes.” Sloan blushed, looked down, and seemed about to weep.
“Forgive them,” the old man said between a fit of coughing, “they are only human. Everything they make must be sent away in a box.”
“Yeah,” proclaimed Lisa, nodding with exagerated sympathy.
Sloan began to pout openly, mumbling about the fragile little gears he once fashioned into a ticking machine. Everyone became embarassed for him, and looked bleak.
After some silence in which everyone attempted and failed to find something else to do that didn’t involve communication, Lisa looked up, half shyly and half exasperatedly, and decided to continue. “Those mosaic stones,” she said, “come first as big blocks of a solid color. the artists chip off what little bit they need and set the rest, the huge leftover bit aside.” Her tone became more astonished and fascinated. “Such a tiny tiny bit, such little pieces, and one after another they fill up a wall with unicorns or roman soldiers or whatever. Like painting, just as colorful and detailed as one, but coming from everywhere. It’s just so. I mean, my God. Jesus. My God. God damn. Jesus.”
The old man was getting a little tired, but figured Lisa couldn’t help herself. He bit a big chunk out of his bread and chewed pensively, listening piously to the woman’s enthusiasm. He tried to feel it too.
“Jesus,” she said. “My god. Jesus Christ.”
“Shut the fuck up already,” said Margaret. “Who gives a shit about rocks and fuckin whatever. Damn.”
Lisa shut up. Sloan had stopped pouting and was now fiddling with the cuff of his blazer, loose threads being tugged and flicked or chewed on. He eyed a new hole in at the edge of it, and penetrated it with his index finger. “Hm.” he said. He wiggled his finger inside.
“Last night some naked african guys somewhere in africa made a drum and beat it for hours before going off and hunting rabbits in the dessert while fully clothed American salesmen on vacation stared into their dark eyes and saw something like their mother and became frightened and ran off with all the money and the african guys laughed and ate their rabbits with brown sauce and had a conversation as best they could with their inferior african brains,” the television said, matter-of-factly.
“I would like very much,” said Hubert, “to live in a far away island where I could raise a family without the displeasure of having them fuck anyone without my permission.”
Somehow this rubbed Sloan the wrong way. “I’d fuck your whole family” said Sloan, bitterly, “in front of you. I’d kill them and fuck them again. I don’t care.”
He was thinking of his clocks again. Poor sensitive Sloan.
Hubert turned deep blood red all over. “You motherfucker,” he said in a dangerous whisper. “You cocksucking motherfucker. Did you just. Oh my fucking god.”
He began to breath heavily, and deep dark wrinkles could be seen now under his eyes, as if his eyeballs were casting shadows. Suddenly he was screaming and pounding his fist with loud booming crashes onto tables and walls, breaking glasses and scaring the pets and children.
The whole room woke into bloodshot awareness, all eyes on the rampaging Hubert, who was at this point heading towards Sloan.
Sloan was slumped on a bench chewing his cuff. He was thinking about all the clocks he had made and would never see again. Tomorrow he would’ve had to go back and do it again, but Hubert fixed that when he used the nails he hadn’t clipped for at least a week to dig into the flesh on the side of Sloan’s neck and rip out a nice sized piece of skin, deep enough to loose the jugular blood in a magnificent spray. Hubert dug a couple finger into the gap and ripped more, tossing the flesh aside so as to rip again. the right side of sloan’s neck became a giant red hole pouring blood onto the ground.
The old man was outraged. So close to the end of his life, so close to having to piece his life together into a package he was willing to send off in a box, and here was a guy soiling his last page with bodily fluids, with blood. “What do you think you’re doing? How could you do that!” he screamed. “The poor boy was just angry and sad! He had a bad day at work is all! You asshole!”
Lisa was crying loudly behind the old man. She held onto his robe at the shoulder, and peered over at Hubert, who’s starched collar shirt was completely stained red. She trembled.
Hubert panted and stared with sleepy eyes at the old man and Lisa, like a giant bear with a bloody mouth, carcass at his feet, staring at another opportunity to feed. He considered. The blood on his hand began to cool, and Sloan ceased to leak. Tendrils of Sloan’s juice spread on the tile flooring, breaking into long branches and rolling streams of scarlett across the room.
Margaret, all this time having stood observantly, chewing gum, polishing a set of glassware like a waitress at a diner, blew a bubble and popped it coyly, as if she were the coolest bitchgodess on the planet, and said “What a bunch of bullshit. Hahahaha!” Then she walked away, and the lights went out. No one knew what to do, or felt like figuring it out. They all pretended to be asleep.
——
Probably written around 2007
Very nice, I really enjoyed that. Do you know of somewhere I can check out more about it?
— Colgan4103 · 8 April 10 · #
It’s always nice when you can not only be informed
— Term papers · 4 May 10 · #