Hell's minor demons

Sweat hot grease

In streams flowing down

Their warty foreheads.

Their double chins.

They bob and smile,

Teeth stained dark as old ivory,

While reaching for knives

Dulled by use.

Their fingers twitch,

Still eager

After eternity

For new acquaintance.

Abe sensed their regard

As he dream-walked

Down the White House stairs

Past burnished brass -

Buttons and buckles -

The sentry’s shell jacket,

Black in the gaslight.

Only the tick of a distant clock

Shivered midnight’s silence

Beside the ebon-draped

Catafalque.

Who lies dead in the White House?

The sentry’s rigid squared shoulders replied:

The President lies here,

The President.

Abe Lincoln noted his soldier’s stern gaze and pondered

Who is just in war?

Who is clean?

Abe Lincoln?

Angels never visit presidents' dreams,

Only meek demons

Smiling.

One way to escape this world and to appreciate emotional truths of it at the same time is to write fiction, another way to escape is drinking or to smoke weed or take on even harder stuff. The healthiest of all these options is probably hallucinogens.

For whatever reason, like a disease, the writer strives to keep on writing, even though, in comparing it to drugs, often the act of writing is stale or old and doesn't take and the trip is without value.

I had set aside today, my only day off this week, to put down a thousand or even a couple thousand words for a parody story of the founding of America I'm writing about a pirate during the Revolutionary War. I haven't written a word all day long. I've watched football, talked on the phone to a lady friend and drank a few beers with some friends outside in the cool weather under the sun of their back lawn sitting in rocking chairs measured at six feet apart from one another. If anyone were to ask me what I did today I'd tell them what I consider to be true, that I was trying to write. The entire day, like Moses wandering through a barren desert with the pressure of thousands of followers, my mind trekked down the images of this cropless story I want to write so bad, all day long, without putting down one decent sentence to prove my worth, on my day off, the days we supposedly live for and long for and hope for and strive for.

There’re ways to overcome writer's block I've been told. Reading will help. I like cross reading, nonfiction--Jon Meacham's pretty good I think and Harold Bloom is a great writer of literary analysis, books of poetry by Frank X. Walker and Matsuo Basho typically mesmerize my heart bound toward the tracks of inspiration, old poetry considered canon--Dante and Milton and Homer and clips of Shakespeare and the Bible, and interviews--the Paris Review has some good ones and so does Lit Hub and so does Belieiver Magazine. "On Becoming a Novelist" by John Gardner is something of a spiritual reading for the writer. Music is likely to inspire visions worth putting down but this is a theory and it works sometimes but it's not the Messiah of freedom from being unable to write. I believe David Lynch, in the 90's, was obsessed with the art of mediocre commercials and I too every so often will spend some time watching commercials I remember fulfilling something of my soul or mind or senses. Sometimes writing poetry for fun works and sometimes it does not. The same is true with trying to learn how to draw. Cigarettes, driving around for a half-hour-or-so without direction and multiple showers are always an option to strike up ideas and sentences in the mind's eye but they are in no means an approach to come down an absolute trail towards the Word.

In truth the decaying loss of creativity and productivity is like a shadow that rises each morning with the fire of the sun. Every day, every sentence is a struggle, as it were the stuff of suffering. If I've ever beaten or overcome the emptiness that is what is called Writer's Block, I can't remember the day I did. All I can say is that I know it awful well. I can't help you if you're way down there in the depths of it, but I can feel the pain of it that you endure. I’ve been there and am always there, as though I'm chained to it, a prisoner of words. I can't help you, but if you need a cigarette or to hear an inappropriate joke or a poem to read, well, at least I'm down there with you.

I didn’t mean it. Honest.

They say never to make decisions when you’re angry; but considering there’s not a moment in the past year where I haven’t been angry, I figured an exception could be made.

Why wouldn’t I be miffed? Three-hundred years in the service just to get canned—pension revoked, pointy shoes confiscated, jingle bells ceremonially muted. Truly it was the walk of shame.

The Big Man caught me skimming toys off the other elves’ lines and just like that I’d been handed my notice. ‘Freeloader’ they called me. Where to go. What to do. For a time I considered heading south and trying my luck at blending in, but vestiges of that Will Ferrell movie began to stir in my head and suddenly moderate (s)elf respect turned me against the idea. I could not, I would not end up like that. I’m not an object of amusement—I’m an elven being!

Why do I gotta’ pay the price? It was Bauble who asked if I’d retrieve a few nutcrackers for her. I got ’em off Tinsel’s line, then Mistletoe’s line, then Bob’s. Little did I know none of the aforementioned had given the green light for this. Bauble had been falling behind off and on all year, and she’d been threatened with the dreaded pink slip (yes they still have those in the North Pole; I know—dreams crushed, childhood ruined). She told me all these elves had consented to help her by donating a few wares to the cause. And I could give a very detailed explanation of her sins, but why do that when I could just consolidate it—she lied.

She lied and I got caught. Then she gave me the puppy eyes, so I wound up taking the full rap like the sucker I was. Yep, I’m the freeloader. Me. Employee of the Month 1859 through 1940. Not a deadline missed, and I tell you I was a legend. But that’s over, so...I’m not bitter. I’m still sugar sweet. Sweet as a candy cane. Whoops, it broke. Ignore that.

But onto my regrets. I almost forgot. Two weeks ago Christmas whirred around, as it is wont to do, so I decided to play a little trick on Santa. See, I’d heard of this...special mirror known to invert the personality of the subject and thence materialize said personality. The elves all knew of this mirror, informally nicknamed Rorrim. Nobody really knows where it came from. Legend has it that a thousand years ago a group of elves accidentally messed up building...something and their mistakes culminated in Rorrim. To which I reply, how in the South Pole do you even manage that? That takes some talent in itself. But no matter, it exists, and it’s kind of a taboo among the elves due to its inherently dark nature. Fortunately we have a system. We throw a sheet with happy snowmen faces over it to hide the evil aura seeping from its pores. Problem solved.

But I, being a genius, removed the sheet, and swapped Santa’s normal mirror with Rorrim. Banal revenge, blah, blah. I didn’t think it would be that big of a deal. I mean, Santa’s antithesis is already rumored to exist. Krampus anyone? But Rorrim put something of a darker spin on it. The thing that stepped out of the mirror looked like a scrawny, leathered Santa, who wore chains like a Christmas tree wears garland and whose eyes were much, much redder than my comfort zone could tolerate. He scrambled off, jacking Santa’s sleigh and leaving all the presents behind in the snow. It didn’t take long for us to realize: what’s the opposite of someone who gives?

Someone who takes.

And this wasn’t just a ‘bad kids get punished’ sort of deal. Anti-Claus was bent on punishing everyone, naughty or nice. Like Santa, he made a list and he did indeed check it twice, but this was more in the vein of...the death list from Kill Bill. You DID NOT want your name getting checked off of that list.

Beside himself, Santa rushed to check the coordinates of his sleigh. You see, there’s a tracker installed near the backup motor, in the case of something like this happening—well, not this specifically, just a sleighjacking in general. I’d...be highly concerned if it was the former. Anyways, Santa got the coordinates and it turns out Atnas (yes I just called him that) had yet to reach any houses. He was flying over a field, so Santa hit the emergency eject button and changed his course if you catch my drift. Yes there’s an emergency eject button in Santa’s office that’s synced with the sleigh. I think it’s in case terrorists hijack it—I don’t know; the man’s thought of everything.

So Atnas fell—but he didn’t die. That would’ve been too easy. No, it wasn’t two hours before a breaking news report came to our attention. A strange figure had been spotted wandering along the outskirts of a forest in Iceland.

I’d like to pretend I acted all cool......but honestly I had a practical aneurysm over the prospect of this thing actually killing someone because, yeah, it would kind of totally be my fault. We needed a way to subdue him. But how?

How did we resolve this giant pickle, you might ask. Well, I could tell you that we dispatched a whole elven militia complete with Glock 17s and full drone warfare to perform reconnaissance and terminate Atnas. But honestly Clumsy Klaus just snagged his toe on the mirror and it tipped over and broke. Apparently that’s all you needed to do to kill a Rorrim creation.

That’s it?

WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF THAT?!?!?!

Maybe I deserve to be fired.

So yeah. Moral of the story. Stay away from anything that seeps evil aura: even if it’s covered with a pleasantly inviting snowman sheet.

-------------------------------------------

Notes: And yes Rorrim has been done before, I think multiple places but I could be wrong. When I was younger I saw the “My Babysitter’s a Vampire” take (having looked it up--a tad different; I think it was just a vengeful spirit in the mirror that possessed people and made everyone it possessed bad regardless; I don’t think it turned you opposite or materialized anything) and I and my friend(s?) consequently paired a similar take with Santa Claus...for some reason. I once did a picture of Santa looking into a mirror and seeing his evil reflection. I...don’t know what became of this drawing, but it was pretty cool.

#fiction, #strictlyfiction, #donttrythisathome

Last time I trust Henry Malone for anything.

Since the day we met he’s made his way pedaling snake-oil in the backalleys of Brighton Street. An alley cleaver like that isn’t to be depended on, not ever, least of all by a teenage girl.

It was early and my common sense had yet to wake up—it usually lags in about three hours behind me. I’d befriended this boy from school, Diggy, and for a few weeks we’d been conversatin’ in the cafeteria. I wanted to have him over. But I knew my last grounding had yet to release, which meant no company. We devised a plan where Diggy would sneak in through the window of my bedroom but therein resided the problem. My window was about twenty feet off the ground. Not even NBA jumping legs could get him that high. He offered to catapult off the dumpster, but alas, even Brighton’s notorious mountains of garbage couldn’t gain him enough leverage. So I made a rope by tying bedsheets together. Fortunately when it came untied he was less than three feet up.

Never one to surrender, I spent the night tossing and turning, desperate to form a plan. I’d have to utilize my creativity for this one, or so I thought till an answer broadsided me like a freighter flying 180. On my way to school the next morning I ran into Henry, his hair all greased-back and his trenchcoat hilariously oversized. Never one for subtlety, he threw it open, brandishing a vast spectrum of wares, from off-brand watches to off-brand perfumes to off-brand smartphones. If he had an off-brand kitchen sink in there somewhere I wouldn’t have been surprised. That was Henry.

“Hey kid. Wanna’ buy a watch?” he pressed.

“No thanks. I can miss the bus on my own. Those things are five minutes slow. You set ’em and a glitch stalls ’em out again.”

“Oh, come on. Perfume?”

“I have bad enough acne without a rash adding to the fray.”

“Smartphone?”

“Hear those things have a penchant for exploding. I want to keep my face.”

“Why?”

“Shut up.”

“Okayyy, Miss. What do you need?” he pursued. “Name anything and I’ll get it.”

The answer was only meant to be facetious.

“Got anything that’ll let me sneak someone in through my window? It’s two stories up and tying sheets just ain’t cutting it.”

“Yeah,” he shrugged.

“Just as I thought, you— Wait, what? You do?”

“Yeah. May sound crazy, but if yer willing to experiment I’d say there’s a way. You got real nice hair, see...”

“Okay. Creepy. Did your brain just short-circuit because that was totes non-sequitur.”

“Just listen. A tonic. It’ll make your hair grow at a hyperaccelerated rate, and you can use that hair as a rope.”

“That’s...the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” I declared, before mulling it over a bit. “I mean it’s ridiculous. I feel insulted that you’d even—How much is it?”

“For you, five bucks.”

“Why do I pay you?” I huffed. “I’m not an idiot. But fool me this many times, shame ain’t even a factor anymore. It’s all numb.”

We made the exchange, and I slouched low in case anyone off the main road recognized me in passing. It felt dirty, like a drug deal. Was that it? Was I no more than his junkie now?

Speaking of junky, I slathered the stuff on my hair that night, hoping I wouldn’t die in my sleep. Maybe there wouldn’t be any bad reactions, or bad vibes. Maybe the hair wouldn’t grow inward and crush my brain to pulp. Like I was using it anyway...

The next morning I awoke to find myself an island amid a sea of hair. My golden locks churned around, leaving me to stifle a scream, be it from terror or joy I know not which. Well, at least I knew Henry hadn’t lied. In my cynicism I’d poured the whole bottle on, figuring it to be water. It was colorless and odorless. Easy mistake.

How was I gonna’ hide this from my parents, from my teachers, from everyone? I grabbed a baseball cap off my nightstand and attempted to stuff my hair into it like I used to. When that failed I slid on a hoodie, leaving my hair tucked inside. One problem—it flowed out the bottom like a fountain, dragging across the floor. So I gathered it and stuffed it under the hoodie’s copious flab, till I was inflated like a weather balloon. Thankfully Dad was already at work and Mom was busy with the baby. So I managed to slip out undetected.

“Dang. You cold, Zel?” Diggy made a face when he saw me. “What is this, a dare? Are you doing that dumb fifty hoodie challenge? You’re supposed to take them off right after. You’re not supposed to wear them around.”

Looking like an unhinged blob of humanity, I took him by the shoulders and guided him gently to the janitor’s closet where I proceeded to spill both my hair and my guts.

“This is insane,” he spat.

“Just one visit and I’ll cut it all off,” I pouted. “I want you to see my room.”

“That’s a long ways to go just to show me your room.”

“I’ve done stupider.”

“I believe you.”

That evening I was elated when a rock hit my window. I yanked the sash up and poked my head out to see Diggy standing below.

“Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!” he cried. I did. But I misjudged the distance and wound up crushing him. Slight collateral. He survived. And in five seconds he’d latched on and was shimmying up. I gritted my teeth, straining to hold his weight. Guess I didn’t really think that part through either. He weighed twice what I did, so it quickly became a contest of whether he’d make it or whether my head would pop off first. That would be unfortunate.

Speaking of unfortunate. When I was a kid I had this rope swing in the backyard of my fam’s old place. I’d enjoy hours of gliding through the air, till one day it snapped. Dryrot had eaten it from the inside, and though it looked perfectly intact and safe from the outside—it wasn’t. You probably get where I’m going with this. I even recalled the sensation. The rope jerked a bit, gave, gave more, then snap. I felt a similar sensation right then, as Diggy scaled my hair. He was almost to the window. But my hair was starting to jerk. The strands were breaking from the inside-out.

“Diggy!” I tried to scream, but it was too late. He was already on his way to the ground and I was already mentally throttling Henry Malone. A profound lapse of judgement. One of many.

The doctors said Diggy had a broken leg and a couple sprains. Nothing too serious. The tonic I’d used had worked, initially, but its cheap hack-job formula had weakened the hair, so while it was technically longer, that full look was just a brittle artifice. It wouldn’t have held a feather up long, let alone a human body.

Next time I saw Henry he had an ointment all whipped up that could supposedly heal Diggy’s broken leg.

“Woah, what happened to you?” he paused, after I’d lowered my hood and displayed the shaggy remnants of my new bob.

That was my only reply. Throttling him would’ve been overkill.

So I just kept walking.

#fiction

Jon Bodine was quite a man.

Jon was not at all like the others who worked in the quarry. In fact, he was not like anyone I had ever known, or even seen. I told myself that I did not like him, that he was all flash, and would not last. After all, history was on my side. The flashy ones seldom do last when the work turns hard.

Like many of us in the quarries, Jon Bodine was cajun, his skin coppery, his hair long, in the style of the curly black mane of a Friesian stallion. In fact, a Friesian stallion was what came to mind whenever I looked at Jon Bodine, or watched him with his shovel, or hammer. While obviously muscular, he was not a particularly imposing man. He moved with a light, unpracticed gracefulness- seeming to flow through time and space with the ease of thin water over a submerged bayou log, rather than depending upon clunky muscles and sinews for locomotion as the rest of us must do. Jon would arrive at the quarry every morning already shirtless, his eager muscles rippling beneath dark skin. He ignored the clusters gathered to loiter, sip coffee, gossip, or complain. Instead, Jon Bodine took up his hammer, and strutted gamely to his place on the line. When that hammer began swinging our curious eyes lifted to watch it; envious, cautious eyes, two-by-two-by-two. When it did, conversations tailed away. It’s ring brought forth from each clot of men a collective sigh. Cold coffee was pitched aside, the day having begun, as though the silvery clang of Jon Bodine’s hammer was in actuality the sounding of our work bell.

And a beautiful bell it was, producing a crisp, sharp ping upon impact, with no mis-strikes, or “shin poppers.” It was a ring that produced in the others, myself included, a desire to pick up their own hammers with the aim of making them replicate that same, lovely chime. We were proud men, and were all a bit jealous of Jon Bodine’s hammer, and his stamina. In our pride we strove to match it.

I was often called the toughest man on the lot back then, and the strongest. I was proud of all of that, though not eager to show it off. I was good enough with a drill, a pick, or a hammer, so that one day I shamefully tried to match strokes with Jon Bodine, but did not last long. While my swings broke rock, they were long, jerky, and slow, while his were quick, efficient, and powerful. The muscles of his back and shoulders rolled the hammer with a fluid ease that I could not hope to equal.

The ends of our days at the quarry were much like their beginnings. Jon Bodine never hung around to talk, nor did he join those others of us at the “The Tin Cup” for a cold one afterwards, we not being eager to rush home to unhappy, and unsatisfied wives, the wives themselves being victims of the hard work in the quarry, every bit as much as their men were.

Curious as to where Jon Bodine hurried off to every evening, one night I followed him to a dimly lit street in the old quarter, and to an antiquated apartment building with crooked shutters and weathered brick patios hidden behind twisted ivy, and scrolls of rusty ironwork. Jon soon again emerged from the building with wet hair, glowing skin, and brushed trousers. It was the first time I had seen him in a shirt, and it a collared, pressed one; sparkling white, with pearl buttons.

I spied on him as he crossed the street then to an undesignated, freestanding house where well dressed men of varying ages hurried up and down the front porch stairs without lingering, their heads bowed, their lowered hat brims shading guilty, but pleasurable secrets. When finally satisfied as to the unsavory nature of the Victorian building and its business, I found myself curious about it... about it’s insides; it’s smells, it’s furnishings, it’s “agents.” For a man like Jon Bodine to rush so from work to get here the faster, those agents inside would have to be beautiful, young, and alluring, would they not?

I felt a curious sensation as I stood gazing at the house, an emotion never before realized. I found myself desiring. I found myself wanting to enter that house, to see what Jon Bodine saw, to feel what he felt. I found myself needing to smell those smells, to test that furniture, and to meet those agents. The desire came to me through rushing blood, through a pounding heart, and through a dry, thick tongue. Long I stood there; smoking, thinking, looking, feeling... but mostly imagining.

I imagined velvet sofas where sat nervous, quiet young men. In the corner a woman played softly at a piano, singing with a low, sultry voice to someone from long ago, but never forgotten. I imagined dim lamps, hefty perfumes, painted eyes, and bare shoulders. I imagined an older, whiskered man exiting with an ivory pipe satisfyingly clenched between yellowed teeth while the lingering odor of apple tobacco trudged along behind him and out the door, as if not wanting to go. More importantly, I imagined a young woman with ebony skin reaching for my hand, and I imagined offering mine back to her. I imagined the young woman leading me down a dark hallway lined with soft, plush rugs underfoot, and into a small room with rich wall coverings, and lace curtains.

I imagined the young woman naked then, her skin gleaming dull in the candlelight as she stood over me lying on the bed, staring down at my nakedness, at my erection for her standing tall, and embarrassing.

I imagined her ravaging me then, and then me her, pleasurably, painfully, desperately.

Yes. It was long that I stood there in the shadows of that house, deep into the early hours. It was long that I imagined, and dreamed.

When I did finally snuff my cigarette and start back for my own shack, I wondered that Jon Bodine had still not emerged. Questions filled my mind as I walked, questions I would never know the answers to:

Did Jon Bodine have a girl who worked inside?

Or perhaps he chose a different girl nightly?

Or, and the thought was tantalizingly shocking, maybe more than one per night?

Was he wasting his life, and his earnings?

Or was he right to avoid the trappings, the monotony of marriage, and married life?

Was Jon Bodine’s way right, and mine wrong?

Once home, I threw the questions aside. What did they matter, after all? But I found that my admiration for Jon Bodine had not dimmed. Why would it? Tomorrow would be another long day under a hot, Louisiana sun, and it requires quite a man to swing one hammer with the men through the long day, and to swing another with the ladies through the night. It certainly took a man with more vitality than myself.

But the night was not wasted. There was one thing I was now sure of, one fact gleaned from the night that was certain, and unimagined.

Jon Bodine was quite a man indeed.

Aliens. Every one of them.

With their green, lopsided hair, blue lips and too-tight pants. I met a man early on, who had chains hanging from the massive holes in his earlobes. Another woman had chains hanging from the door-knocker-looking ring in her nose. They attached to a black velvet choker. It sorta’ reminded me of the bridle of a horse, but I didn’t dare say anything.

This is not my time, after all. I’m the odd woman out here.

I’ll admit it’s a bit breathtaking, this future with its glass towers that scrape the sky and its automobiles that no longer look like automobiles--rather resemble some sort of spacecraft on wheels. When I first set foot out of the lab, they warned me to brace myself, that the world had changed a lot from when I was initially frozen in 1952. And that went without saying. But I had no idea it had changed this much.

Not that I’m complaining. The farther advanced the better. I was never content with my own time anyway. When the esteemed Dr. Ronald Haloran of Haloran Engineering began his highly-publicized experiments regarding cryogenic stasis—better known as suspended animation—I was among the first to volunteer as a lab rat. My mother had just passed, rendering me an orphan. As an only child I had no siblings to stick around for. And at thirty-five I was virtually an old maid, unwed and childless. The eyes of my era saw me as a pitiable creature, a good decade beyond her prime. It was my hope that with time would come progress; that I would find greater solace and acceptance in the arms of the future.

So I signed my life away, and put my fate in the hands of a man I barely knew. At thirty-five you’d think I’d have better sense than that. I was always scolded for my irrationality, and that’s probably why.

“Yo!” I look up to see a young man walking toward me. Another alien. An illuminated rectangle rests in his hands. Most people carry them nowadays. I’ve yet to find an opportunity to ask what they are, but they must be something special, because everyone I’ve met seems quite enamored by them. “Uh, you look kinna’ lost, bruh. Need any, like, directions or anything?”

“Oh, yes, thank you,” I smile warmly. “Do you have any idea where 412 Grenadine is?”

“Uhhh, that’s real specific-like. Can you be more broad, Ma’am?”

“East side? I used to live in an apartment there. The building itself was painted a sickly shade of pink.”

“Oh, yeah. That way,” the man pointed. “Though I think they...tore that place down when I was little. Can’t remember so good.”

“Yeah, I remember when it had that fire in ’49. They almost condemned it then. I’m amazed it held out as long as it did.”

“Uh,” the guy narrowed his bleary eyes. “How...old are you? You look, like, twenty-something.”

“I...” my voice caught. “I guess I don’t really know how to answer that. Biologically I suppose I’m still thirty-five.”

“Biologically? Yo, are you a vampire?”

“No. I’m an experiment.”

“Oh! So you’re more like Frankenstein’s monster. Cool. Cool.”

“I was cryogenically frozen. Do you know what that is?”

“Yeah. I think they did that on Cowboy Bebop.”

“They did that with me. In real life.”

“Woahhh. What year are you from?”

“Fifty-two.”

“Can I get a selfie with you? Lady, you’re like a living artifact!”

“Your grandmother was probably alive in nineteen-fifty-two. I wouldn’t exactly call us artifacts.”

“Yeah, but my gramma’s my gramma. You’re...kinda’ hot. Wait,” he paused, his forehead gathering as he attempted to think. It looked like he was quite unpracticed at that. “Dude, I just called someone my gramma’s age hot. Ewww...”

“What’s a selfie, by the way? I’ll gladly agree so long as it’s not vulgar.”

“Nah, man. I just hold my phone out like this, flip the camera to us, and take a pic.”

“Is that what the rectangular bar is? A phone?”

“Yeah. Duuude...you don’t know what a phone is? You got so much to learn. I think you’re gonna’ love it here.”

I laughed a bit.

“I already do.”

#fiction

With trembling determination I

survive through an unforgiving present,

With nostalgic sighs I recall a memorable past,

With apprehensive dread I glimpse an uncertain future.

Who knows, who will with liberated words reveal this elusiveness of meaning; free the longing SOUL from the grips of Time and limitations of Space?

Love is a malady of emotions.

One minute the yearning is gone,

Only to return with a vengeance.

Love is a dull ache that won't go away,

Ever constant, a nagging reminder of then,

What we shared, what we did.

The lengthy phone conversations,

The discreet visits, the long hugs,

The languid kisses, the trembling caresses.

I truly, truly miss you, my love.

(I wrote this on 10/02/2014, to my then-girlfriend)

My heart in one palm,

unaware of the other

holding a hammer

extra, extra, extra.