Thursday, January 20, 2011

Gas, time, and LSD


It was 2010, and my family sat together. I can almost remember it like it was yesterday. Christmas and its cool carols chirping under jazz rifts outside our cozy New Orleans home while a slight breeze slips through the house. We were all sitting around the table having the yearly Christmas feast, when my mother stood up. “Josh will get the house when I die.” She said. Not surprising. My mother was obsessed with death, though the doctors tried to convince her she was perfectly healthy and in rather good shape. We ignored her and continued eating.

The next year presented trouble though. She developed cancer, and whispered whenever she spoke, fearing death now. If whispering could save us… That house would never be the same. Holding three bathrooms and housing piles of unremarkable trashy books, I used to think it was probably best that my brother got the craphole. He was the screw up, and when he ran out of money for the mortgage, he could sell the shitty books inside for food or make an indoor flame (for insurance purposes only, I assure you). My brother and I were not fond of each other.

Today, long after the passing of my dear mother, my failed pursuits in happiness and business, and my sister’s wedding to a homeless guy, the house stands in disrepair. But, please understand, the house stands in disrepair only in yesteryear’s standards of comfort and well being. In our present day, life is fleeting and gangsters own the streets. Robbery is banal, death unremarkable, old age a nuisance.

Our markets collapsed long ago (my failed pursuits are not purely owed to my faults), after an innovative company decided to build a phone capable of transuniversal communication with three cup holders, and motor neuron connector to free hands of the extreme pain associated with transuniversal communication. Markets couldn’t handle the new influx of companies trying to make accessories for the phone and a bomber scared everyone into believing that the phone would cause the end of the world. People withdrew stocks and sold their possessions to the aliens answering transuniversal lines. Even today, I maintain that the phones were a good idea, but just not practical.

Well, my home sits in the middle of one among many chaotic clusters, in which Bolivians (most of the world is owned by Bolivia) terrorize the general population, while constantly taking LSD. Can you blame them with this economy? Maybe. I live here now with my brother, Josh, my sister, Sart, and my niece, Maldor. Everyone changed their names, except for Josh. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Things aren’t terrible here. We live only to survive, but we pass the time with games and puns. Everything becomes acceptable after a while, you see. Masturbation is something you do in corners between puns. Josh doesn’t participate in games or like puns (having developed a God complex after letting us stay with him in his moth ridden house) so he just exists most of the time. More for us, I guess. We’re bound to run out of wordplay one day.

We would say something to Josh about his pretention, but it is easier to let demons live, so that angels can admire themselves by comparison. We also can’t leave, because the thugs who roam the streets at all times, hardly ever let roamers live. They believe them to be fire dragons, you see. We leave only to get food, and sometimes use of the transuniversal cell phone (Too fun). Sart and Maldor were planning a trip for food a few weeks ago and then things changed for me. Time's looped noose wrapped around my throat.

They wanted to leave, but Josh forbade it, disregarding their imminent demise without food. The two protested and then Josh wished death upon them if they left the house. This was of course ludicrous to hear, and we all had a hearty laugh at his expense. How silly, how utterly barbaric of him! To assert that words could breathe life into the wheels of fate, and men could become gods in speech. Needless to say, the two left the house. No sooner than they left did Josh and I begin to bicker. He was moody and would insult me for moving too loudly, and staring at the thugs outside. I would point out his inferiority and weaknesses in the past. Our brains boiled and steamed gushy secret thoughts into the air, clogging the house up. Time. Eventually, gases go from high areas of concentration to low ones.

One day he came into the kitchen, where I usually sit sharpening knives, and began to point out how psycho my behavior was. In the family, it is a well known secret that once in my mid 30’s I sought hospitalization in a mental institute. You can see then that his words were low blows, but mine were unfounded and thus many times worse. “At least I’m not impotent!”I shouted. The words came to me from nowhere, and in that void I grabbed a tool for success in this argument. But what man would say that winning means hurting the ones you love?

Josh’s eyes squeezed out tears slowly, and he stood deathly still with his mouth agape and his arms rigid. The room was mostly silent, although I do recall a moth’s wings flapping. I stood up, thinking I would embrace him and apologize for my transgression. He ran towards me, pushing me upon arrival, sending me stumbling backwards, into the stove. A struggle entailed. Me pushing him trying to get at his neck, he kicking me and punching my face. The battle progressed into the living room, where there are three windows out which the gangsters can be monitored. We were loud and grunting beings, as we fought with dear anger carrying our striking arms. Finally, I had him. I was positioned in a terribly good position with one arm below him and the other gripping his shoulder. Picking him up quickly, with limited malnourished strength, I threw him with magically realistic force out the window, with a great crash giving my mind awareness of the event. Then it was just me. Now, there I was, standing on the first floor, as my brother lay silent on the ground outside. The horrific picture of the glass is burning into me, melting into my soul.

The gangsters outside had been watching from neighboring porches, and they all gave distant hallucinogen soaked stares to my brother down below. Then I rushed to the window and saw his body begin to move, as he crawled toward the apartment we own, (50 meters behind our house). His arm nearly separated from his body, legs with no heart, he was my broken dollman, searching for safety from the thugs and me. I didn’t help, I didn’t say anything. I was frozen. And then the laughter came. One by one, each of the thugs let out a giddy laugh at my brother, who moaned from the pain and maybe the loneliness of being forsaken. My mouth now stood agape as I watched them laugh at Josh, as I watched our butterfly with a broken wing, flap ever slowly to solitude. Crawling, falling, crawling, moaning.

The thugs then noticed me and their faces greeted mine with a smile, as they called out “Ay! Nice one cholo! Hahahaha!” More laughter, more praise, by the captors outside. They were proud of me. And now the most deplorable thoughts crept into my mind. ‘Shouldn’t I be happy for the praise?’ ‘Which emotion should I show?’ ‘How much of each?’ Of course there was no ‘What should I do?’ Then, one such giddy thug raised his gun and shot at my brother, hitting him in the ankle. He wails out in pain. Another laughs and shoots at his torso. The moan is not human. Another. The sound of blood flowing. Another. Another. Another, until my brother is no more. Then one gave me a thumbs up, and I took a seat on the couch and listened to them praise my actions in between jumbled comments about the shapes they saw in the wind. My brother transformed for both the thugs and I. He turned into my "late" brother and their bleeding pile of leaves.

A week later Sart and Maldor returned. Apparently because my sister married a homeless man, she decided to visit with him and they met some nice people while away. Sart noticed the blood in the drive way toward the backhouse. Deluding herself, she asked about the cat or rodent which must have been murdered there. Only an internal lie can make eyes dart and fly like hers. Maldor, my niece, was quiet. My niece, my beautiful niece, thank you for that. But in reply to Sart’s questions and leadings, I answered with quick, hastened honesty, honesty never known before. My story came and went so fast and ended with a slowing ‘And so you see…it’s my fault.’ She then looked at me with apathetic eyes. She looked at me and then began to cry. My niece then followed suit. And thinking about this, I realized I must cry. I killed him so should I be less upset or more? They must know i’ve been sitting with the “pain” for days now. I know: I’ll cry louder than both. My roars oscillated, rushing through the house, blaring one moment and calming to the sound of moth wings, only to repeat again and again. My endless farce. The two just looked at me. I won the competition. My analysis told me I should be the most hurt, and then, in that moment, I was. Words, sounds, thoughts, so deceitful and conniving, that even the inventors of the transuniversal phone seem good in comparison to me. Now what will our silences be without our demon drifting from the angelic? Now who was I, but a falcon opportunistically striking at prey to show the other falcons that I was, indeed, a falcon? I’ve never been anyone. Now they mourn my brother as he becomes no one. I sit on the couch, only hearing the echoes of the thuggish applause, and the moth wings drowning out the butterfly’s wings. These are my thoughts as I wander the world, using transuniversal telephones to ask for help, hoping the thugs, the aliens, or some being will end this existence in such a laughable way as they deigned to give my dear brother. Telephones, LSD, thugs. The noose tightens, but no one kicks the chair. PV = nRT.

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