We flew the AngelSphere through the sun. Science powered and protected us. It was hotter than Hades, and the solar winds were fierce, but we did it. Deep inside the sun, we discovered a wormhole that transported us through Time and Space to God’s Workshop. He was busy designing new galaxies and cosmos. God was just as surprised to see us as we were to confront Him. It seems God had completely forgotten about humanity, His earlier, flawed creation. He’d been busy elsewhere in the universe, doing this, creating that. That explained a lot of things.
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The couple embraced at the foot of the slight mound of dirt marked with twigs fastened into crosses. Harsh autumn breezes rattled second story windows silhouetting tiny onlookers.
Kelly could feel Trevor’s flab pressing against her lean torso, illuminating the true recipient of her gourmet dinners and settling suspicions of late night fast-food consumption. Mourning the loss of his beloved friend, Trevor offered prayers of thanks for the family pet. Blinking away remaining tears, his eyes became piercing--reaffirming that his wife was indeed trying to kill him. Detaching, they spoke simultaneously, “Shall we check on the children? “Hey, Ian!” he says as he skips past me down the stairs, 55, fit as a fiddle due to his exercise regime.
A fellow middle manager, his self-esteem needs met by the respect of his subordinates and the trust of his superiors, he saunters off on his lunchtime break, copy of the latest “Game of Thrones” novel in hand. Yards ahead of me, he believes he’s moving forward in time, space, and life. Everything is congruent, all is right in his world. Clutching my edition of “The Flowers of Evil” I smile to think what Baudelaire would make of him. He pressed the button and stopped the lift between floors to have a chat.
They stared at each other. He had long admired her dazzling green eyes and the auburn hair. They stared some more. When he saw the puddle forming around her shoes he knew the idea had been a mistake. Sorry, he said. You're nervous. No, she said, just desperate for a piss. He jabbed the restart button. Today is St Andrew's Day.  Haggis giganticis (r. sinister – left legs longer than right; r. dexter is less common) Entering the dining room, the guests gasped. A giant haggis sat on the table, legs splayed, belly-up, stomach sliced open to reveal steaming entrails. As tradition demanded, its shorter left legs pointed north.
A female expert on haggis giganticis explained that it was self-disembowelling. "They cry 'Freedom!' doing it," she said. Most diners, though, wanted to know what the beast was made of. "Take and look," said the expert. As they bent over to see, the diners were sucked inside the haggis' belly until all were consumed, making it larger still. The belch made a hole in the ozone layer. Scene: Heavenly Café, early-morning, Hawking in deep-thought about God’s existence, rumored omnipresent without sighting. Morning-coffee turned ice-cold.
Entering, Einstein pulls a chair next to Hawking’s wheelchair and begins venting. Einstein: What a mess you’ve left behind, while busy in figuring the mystery behind creation? No more order, chaos everywhere; even the “Chaos Theory” became useless. Hawking: Me, blaming me? I was just following your footstep of deeper understanding of our origin. Einstein: Absurdity, even the Iron Lady going to Scotland to gain support! Hawking: You’re right. Look outside. Floating diapered yellow baby-blimp defies gravity and brings chaos to heaven’s serenity. TOP SECRET INCIDENT REPORT
Date: December 28, 2017 An Army squad responded to a report of a fast flying craft in the skies above the desert near Blanding, Utah. At the scene, they found a large circular spaceship. When they approached, several small aliens emerged. Since the beings demonstrated no hostile actions, the soldiers tried to communicate. Through a machine, the aliens spoke in English and said, “Take us to your leader.” The stunned Captain in charge replied, “We can’t let you see the President.” The aliens paused and conferred, then they said, “You misunderstand. We want to meet Oprah. Through murky water I wonder at the brown sky above. Then I’m snatched up into the arms of my mother.
At age ten, I asked my older brother as we pounded baseballs into gloves. “You know the Raccoon Lake story, when the speedboat wake swamped me, and Mom pulled me out of the water?” “Boy, she flew across the grass.” “What if she didn’t notice?” “Then I’d have a room to myself, stupid.” After a pause, he looked at me. “You were just two years old. She saved you. It’s that simple. What about it?” The bad news came straight from the white house. We traded our ambitions for jobs that we hated. A needed sacrifice to keep our unborn and the two of us safe. Then, homelessness got declared as the new fast growing american home model. Despite our best efforts, spartan living wasnt enough if we were to make it. It was a while after they removed it that we established the bedtime ritual, which was saying “fuck him” , every single night. Ironically, years before this mess he had made, he had promised he would make america great again.
“If you lie,” the tester said, “it will show up on the polygraph.”
Lyle was asked questions in rapid succession, including the final one, “Were there any laws that you have broken?” “I honestly can’t think of any,” Lyle said. “No.” The machine made a loud beeping noise with the needle moving wildly. After the final question, the tester walked Lyle to the door and said, “You’ll get the results in the mail. You can appeal, but you’d be wasting your time.” Shortly after, Lyle remembered that he once sampled a hard candy from a supermarket without paying. John Madden, surrounded by top-notch international marathoners, was crossing the Brooklyn Bridge in New York’s annual event. Glancing side-wise, he viewed water meeting distant horizon with morning sunshine piercing clouds. Suddenly, the mystic imagery evolved into Dutch artist Vermeer’s canvas. On left, the poverty-stricken asylum-seekers with terrified little children in tow getting chased and tear-gassed at country’s southern border. On right, the modern Iron Lady, across the Atlantic, beamed receiving the assurance to dissociate her country from the rest of the union.
Smiling Nigerian Kepcho Keano passed John. He felt grateful, just to be surrounded by the sea of humanity. Randy yawned and stretched as he awoke. Then he gasped. He was flying through space! He saw colorful planets and stars all around, yet he seemed to be in no danger. What was going on?
It started coming back. The creature he’d found that had said it would grant him one wish. His request to travel amongst the stars, referring to his favorite athletes. The creature’s misinterpretation, sending him flying through the heavens. Space really was beautiful, but not what he’d requested. “Must be more specific when wishing,” Randy lamented. “Or just stick to writing instead of making crazy wishes.” I didn’t hate any of my jobs – I tolerated most, disliked some, stretched my competence in others. I would find a better job before quitting a disliked one, and, thereby step up one-rung each time. No job ever became a job I loved; I learned from all of them, including when I was fired twice and laid-off four times.
Currently, I have done well climbing that proverbial ladder; learned to think for myself and take responsibility for all that I do. I am still seeking that “dream job” – perhaps I will find it in retirement. Your scar cuts deep into your elevation. The twists and turns of it impossible to navigate, yet your words are rose, pine, cedar and ozone. Your ramparts equally full of pruning monkeys and noble hawks with piercing gaze. You stand like a soldier after all those tests. Refinement in your treeline.
Infantinily gripping her father’s finger, he mutters, “My Pet.” The diminutive spreads.
The movie M.A.S.H. fills her with delusions. She pursues the role of angelic nurse in the manner the boys' dream of John Wayne heroics. The battlefield surgery reveals a different reality, of bustle, overlain with the incessant demands of doctors barking orders without the time for niceties. The mangled, ruined Marines course through endlessly, expiring on the stretcher canvass. Self-medicated with vodka, the sex was consensual. However the occasional “Thank you Pet,” from a battered boy who inexplicably knew her diminutive, helped the most to quell the disillusionment. She was a techno-babe; her mother joked she smelled of smoking computer-chips.
“How’s Emily, Mrs Jones, does she have a boyfriend yet?” “No, but she’s got this great new job with NASA, programming their something-or-other space-mission rocket. She’s moving to the USA.” “Wow! Clever girl! Oh, hi Emily.” “Hi, Mrs Frost. Hi Mum.” “Argh! A frog in your pocket!” “Good morning ladies…” “God, it speaks!” “I’m in reality a high-born prince and if your daughter would only kiss me…” “Emily, aren’t you…?” “Naw. A talking frog’s cool, a prince, so what? Wait ’til the guys at work see him!” “I bought that ugly neck tie you see on this picture here. I went to an interview, got that job I hated and your grandma found one she hated too. See, school and ambition had no room for commoners like us. News declared homelessness the new big american home model! Every night, after going to bed, we`d say “fuck him!” for the situation he`d put us in, a bed time ritual we shared with many others, surely. He was to blame. Even the republicans agreed on this:
How could a president who was also a business man, destroy economy?” “Madam, I’m Adam.”
“Eve.” He nodded. “Well, now that our palindromic introductions are taken care of, shall we two crash-landed astronauts, the last representatives of our respective former galactic civilisations, set aside our mutual antipathy and begin populating this barren planet with a new race?” Her eyes narrowed. “Not even because you are the last man on Earth,” she said, and zapped him into smoke with her moidelizer ray. She sighed, enjoying the solitude. There was no more High Command, but still she composed her requisite six-word report. At last — some peace and quiet. From the trees, primates watched curiously. Outside grows dark - damp, dead day, last of the leaves mulch, curb fodder.
Her class of 30 adolescents, apathetic, disinclined, avid only for the shift of time. But English. Poetry. She recites: ‘November. The month of the drowned dog.’ Slight sniggers. At least someone is listening. She tries again. Repeats Hughes’ line. ‘ …drowned dog.’ Now someone laughs, says something obscene under his breath. But another boy looks up. Says, “What, Miss?” She repeats it. More confidently now. He mutters the words under his breath. “I like that. That’s good.” And suddenly the afternoon is brighter. Some light restored. At an unremarkable kitchen table, Lawrence poured another, possibly his fifth--it was scarcely noon. Yesterday’s farewell cake in the faculty lounge officially extinguished the only thing that ever tamed his vice. He wasn’t exactly forced out, but only a fool would forgo the incentive package, and the trending technology was becoming overwhelming. He jotted a list of possible alternatives: gardening, jogging, traveling, romance. Defeated, he exchanged the pen for the victor and drained the rocks glass.
Minutes later, a brief stroll led him to the corner convenience store. At the newsstand, he feverishly scanned the employment classifieds. Happy Thanksgiving to all our American cousins. Look, I don' know what went wrong down there. I thought we was just-a-gonna help those "Pilgrim" guys in their hour of need, ya know... help pick a few squash, make some soup, maybe. Boy were those guys ugly by the way – some of them had hair on their heads! How gross is that?
Anyway, those Pilgrim guys acted like they was John Wayne and it got a little nasty. But they sure seemed grateful afterwards and promised to cook a nice big meal for us at Christmas. Y'all invited. They're promisin' we'll end up feelin' real stuffed. Sounds nice. Honorable Justice Levy took his seat at the head of the dinner-table. It was nation’s “Thanksgiving Day”. All grown-up children with spouses and grandchildren came over to celebrate. But what’s there to be thankful? His country already descended deeper in a black hole than anybody ever thought possible! Murderous dictatorial regimes overseas are getting free passes, while the civil liberty within getting trampled.
Looking at grandkids’ smiling faces, he suddenly remembered his closed-knit friends from Auschwitz death-camps; some survived, and many perished. But all believed that liberation would come. He began the festivity uttering “Dream remains indestructible, even in darkness.” The house was unguarded, and its lone occupant was away. He sneaked in quietly as a cat, picked up a few things and ran out of the house nimbly as a dog. No one noticed him. In a jubilant mood, he scurried back to his house. Before he could unpack the contents, he was appalled to see a lot many things missing from his own room.
The next morning, the newspaper reported the happenings, along with a sketch showing faceless people standing one behind the other in a circle with their right hand fingers buried in each other’s back pocket. It started raining hard that night in San Francisco, so I ducked into the old theater on Market Street that played film classics. Buying a ticket, I sat down to dry out in the middle of Tod Browning’s 1931 Dracula.
But the ending was different this time—Dracula didn’t die; he killed Van Helsing and escaped. I wondered what became of the vampire then, when suddenly the man sitting behind me, in tux and opera cape, and looking a lot like Bela Lugosi, leaned forward to whisper, “You would be surprised.” Then bit me savagely in the neck. Her face was painted to look like a tiger; with black and golden stripes and with the addition of white whiskers shooting from above her top lip, she looked both striking and frighteningly real.
She roared at all the passersby who stared at her; they recoiled in surprise, clearly terrified of this monstrous apparition; this powerful creature, roaming through her territory, in search of her next prey. Her mother tried to ignore her but Carolyn had a way of fidgeting in her pushchair that made making progress difficult and anyway secretly she was really enjoying the attention. |
