hallucinatory sleep paralysis comedy hour
I wrote this last week. I really like it even though it sounds like it was written by a frumpy old guy from the 19th century who smokes opium and wears spectacles. This is just a rough draft and the ending isn't really finished.
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I'd like to introduce you to a friend of mine.
Every morning my clock radio blasts forth, at a jarring volume, the latest top forty hits mingled with static. Unless I happen to be feeling extremely motivated and energetic, I usually roll over and slap the 'snooze' button anywhere from one to fifteen times before finally arising. At some point during this cycle of falling asleep and waking up and falling asleep again, my friend comes to visit.
My friend never seems to be in a particularly good mood, but he's attached to me like a tumor. Some cosmic force has brought us together, and it seems that neither of us can will eachother away. He will not leave until he has taken hold of me and brought me to his own dimension.
Just this morning, my dream took the form of a videogame involving a well-built man swimming in a pool underground. Suddenly a giant fish rushed up from behind and ate the poor fellow, dying the water dreadfully red, at which point I opened my eyes and found myself back in my bed. I looked at the window, feeling as crisp and alert as the fresh snow glowing through the blinds.
My body felt a bit stiff, as though a heavy weight were pinning me down. I flipped over the covers to find my boyfriend laying on top of me. Naughty boy! He must've snuck into the house in the middle of the night, I thought. How unusual. His head was tilted downwards so that his hairline touched my ribs; I couldn't see his face. He silently lifted his brown arms from under the covers and grasped tightly on to mine, pinning me down.
We layed motionless like this for what felt like ages. As the seconds passed, I felt a deep rumbling, the source of which I could not discern; it grew louder and more intense as menacing vibrations shook my entire bedroom. I felt as though I was tied to train tracks and the train, conducted by some sadistic minion of Satan, was fast approaching.
Then at the 'click' of my clock radio, those terrible sensations abruptly ceased, and the nasally voice of James Blunt filled the room mid-song. All was calm. My eyes settled back on the crinkly black hair of my boyfriend, who was still frozen in the same position. Seconds passed, and an odd feeling came over me; I suspect similiar to the realization of accidentally drinking poisoned wine intended for someone else.
At this moment, I became fully aware that the man lying on top of me was not, in fact, my boyfriend, nor anyone even remotely human. Rather, it was my good friend paying me an especially sinister visit. My heartrate quickened to an unbearable pace and I felt bile rising up my esophagas. My eyes bulged in abject horror as my visitor slowly lifted his head, exposing a hole where his face should be. I was staring directly into, not a few inches away, a black hole, an invection in time and space; a doorway to a world filled to the brim not with physical, material objects, but with the worst of human emotions: all of the pain, depravity, sickness, death, and fear on earth, multiplied tenfold.
I couldn't scream or vocalize at all. I could move my limbs but they were in slow motion, while the beast atop my chest flailed his own arms around in an epileptic frenzy. The music on the radio sped up to sound like a Chipmunks song, then slowed to a snail's pace like Barry White possessed by the devil, before speeding up again-- and on and on, while the rumbling sensation made its comeback. I knew that all I could do was wait it out.
Suddenly, like the snap of a rubber band, my friend and all of his accompanying dreadfulness disappeared. I was fully awake in the same position, drenched in sweat. I threw the covers off and jumped to my feet in a panic, eager to separate myself from my bed, the gateway to all that is wretched.
Perhaps one day I'll lose the battle. My curiosity may even get the better of me, and, augmented by some foolish sense of courage, I shall embrace him, embrace the darkness; let him ravish me, and carry me off into his world where we'll be united in a marriage of utter perversity.
But as long as I retain my base survival instincts, I will not give in to him, for I can't shake the feeling that I may never wake up.
doomed fiction
I will never, ever finish this. I know it. I have tried and failed to write this same damn story about 50 times over the course of the past year. I always get to a certain point and then I just can't continue. I know the characters, I know the plot, the conflict, the "symbolism", whatever, but I will never finish this. Arrgghhh.
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I couldn’t help but insist that Joel reschedule the birthday party for another day. I simply couldn’t be there. Naturally, he objected: “You’re going. You don’t understand the preparation I put into this. I spent a lot of money and I intend to make it the craziest, most awesome night of your life. It might be your last birthday, after all...”
He no longer skirted around the subject and I liked it better that way, even though I knew he only did it in emotionally trying moments as a poor attempt to shock or hurt me, as if I was just finding out for the first time. “Oh, that’s right, I’m dying! I had completely forgotten! Shoot!”
Now his eyes were glaring murderously, as though he would kill me if the illness didn’t get to me first.
“I’ll compensate you,” I said.
“Are you crazy? This is your birthday. Don’t think you can just shove bills in my face and expected me to forget about it. All I want is for you to just show up. Have a good time, forget all the shit. This means so much to me, you don’t even understand.”
His voice was pleading now—hurt—his baby blue eyes glazed over with a tearful sheen. I felt a little rupture in my abdomen, somewhere beneath my lower ribs, deep inside—the grinding gears of guilt. Of course it meant a lot to him. It had nothing to do with me.
“What is so fucking important that you have to miss this, anyway?” he demanded.
I shifted uneasily. Gulping was painful as my mouth was dry and there was a sore on the back left of my tongue. “I’m sorry, Joel. I just have other plans—a previous engagement, I guess you could say.”
“Well, you’re gonna have to cancel it,” Joel sputtered angrily, rising from the couch. He pulled his jacket from the coat hanger and violently shoved his arms in the holes, staggering awkwardly a bit before regaining his balance. His face was red and fuming, his platinum hair disheveled. He couldn’t intimidate me if he tried, looking like a whimpering, helpless little boy who didn’t get the BB gun he had asked Santa for. Diligently taking out the trash and doing his homework every afternoon had all been for naught—the world had turned on him and he no longer believed.
“Don’t expect me or anyone else to treat you like a frail little doll all the time,” he spat. He took a few steps towards the door, hesitated, and turned around. With a pointed finger, as though speaking to a misbehaving dog, he continued: “You need to stop using your condition to walk all over people. If you don’t come to this thing, I swear to God I’ll never speak to you again. You can be on your fucking deathbed, waiting, just waiting for someone to show up and hold your hand and tell you that everything’s gonna be okay, but no one will come, not even me, because no one cares whether or not an asshole like you lives or dies, you miserable piece of shit.”
With that, he stormed out and slammed the door, causing the house to shudder in his wake. I felt slightly nauseated. I had been foolish to expect any less of a reaction. At least it wasn’t the first time. The most painful part of this whole situation came not from the knowledge of my own pitiful mortality, but rather from having to witness the effects of it on those around me. Well, on Joel, anyway; he was all I had.
I hated to see him angry, depressed, cursing at the heavens. It was awkward, and not to mention, pathetically sad. If I cared about my own fate a fraction as much as Joel did, I wouldn’t have been able to get up in the morning. All I wanted to do was take advantage of the limited time I had and at least try to enjoy it, which was hard to do when I had a blubbering manboy sobbing at my feet every afternoon, or blowing up in frustration and existential desperation and abusing doors and jackets with his violent reactions.
Joel was, all in all, a great guy, and I suppose his sensitivity made up for my lack thereof. We had been friends since that autumn day in kindergarten when we shared a pudding cup behind the slide at recess. We cheated off each other, pulled pranks, and spread unfounded rumors about the kids we hated. Even when my parents sent me to private school in the vain hope that it would transform me into some overachieving, Harvard-bound douche bag, we still kept in contact.
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Not finished, oh noes!
funeral
in the event that i am lowered down
deep into the ground
i'll go to bed though i may not be sleepy
curl into the folds and nurse a faint heartbeat
as my eyes roll back and i learn the art of ceasing.
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Or should it be cessation? Fuck I don't know.
procrastination station
Eh, I don't know. I'll come back and work on this later.
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Grandma was an admirable woman. Approaching eighty, she still had all of the grace and charm of a woman in her prime, and double the energy. Her wrinkled, pale face could not conceal her past attractiveness; one could tell upon first glance that she had once been a strikingly beautiful lady, emanating that classic, red-lipped 50's knockout look. She was strong and bold-- a woman of the home for over half a century-- the posterchild of Good Housekeeping.
We all sat at the same table on the porch outside, grandma, my sister, and I. The late afternoon sun waned in the sky; that, combined with the home-made wine I had been consuming for the past couple hours, left my eyelids heavy and my mind dulled. I sat quietly while the other two conversed; I didn't have much to say. The smell of roast beef wafted outside through the screen door.
"Just look at Kim and Kris!" Grandma screeched. Her voice was loud and piercing, due in part to her lack of hearing. "Just look how happy they are! Both of them had just been wandering around aimlessly, with no goals and no sense of purpose, up until they had kids."
My sister nodded her head cautiously.
"Now, I know you're not like either of them," Grandma continued, "but at some point, you have to stop and reassess your life. I mean, you're not nineteen anymore. And where has this whole music thing gotten you, anyway?"
These words had dragged me out of my lethargic state. I sat up straight and glanced at my sister, who seemed to be squirming in her seat. She opened her mouth to respond, but grandma was on a role: "Andrew is SUCH a great guy. You should stay here, with him. You do most of your work from the computer anyway, right, so why does it matter? I definitely don't think you should go back to Nashville. You don't want to spend all your time with *those people*, do you?"
