LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks
His mom tugged on cords that raised the venetian blinds. They had this medicinal white look, very ordinary, which bugged the hell out of him. He glued his face to the pillow. The position was not very comfortable, but he would have rather been uncomfortable than get up, brush his teeth, wash last night’s dishes, take out the damn smelly garbage, and listen to his mom bitch about how he should not be so dismissive of his chores and all that maternal crap. He shut his eyes tight. He felt a small hand over his big shoulder. His mom rattled his shoulder like a maraca. A bovine moan escapes his mouth. ‘Stand up, you lazy cow,’ she said in a slight German accent. She went off to the kitchen to make some organic omelets. With her gone he lost the urge to retaliate, and got up to brush his teeth. He glanced over at his typewriter, which sat by the window. His brother had called it an “anachronism.” It helped him get into the mood for writing, though. He hoped to write a novel someday, something that criticized modern society or something.
His room looked as if someone had thrown a grenade into a thrift shop; old, worn, hand-me-down shorts and T-shirts littered the field. He lived on extremes; either his room had to be awfully neat or properly disheveled. He thought he might have mild ADD or something, but his mom refused to take him to the psych doc, since she thought the quack would pump him full of meds and he would metamorphasize into a pill-popping junkie, crawling the streets for a fix. He only tried pot once, twice, but It did not really do anything. He stepped over a guitar and a couple of stuffed monkeys that lay near his doorway. He did not know why, but monkeys were always his favorite animal. Maybe because they were a few percentage points off from humans, genetically speaking, but did not have any of their problems; they did not fight wars or kill themselves or make their children do chores, and they never argued over unimportant crap. He had had dreams where he had swung in the jungle from vine to vine, not worrying about anything.
He worried an awful lot too; stressful things made the butterflies in his stomach do cartwheels and Fouetté en tournants. After he brushed his teeth, he stomached down some organic crap his mom had laid out for him. There was a sorry excuse for a pancake on his plate, as well as some tasteless tofu; the eggs were not too bad, but the soy milk tasted like piss. It was about eight a.m. now. School was about to start in two weeks, but his mom was bent on conditioning him to get up early. He did not mind too much, except that he got morning wood and had to painfully lie on his stomach until she went away. For some reason the wood would always recede when school would start.
No one was really up this early; all his friends did not get their shoulders torn off for another couple of weeks. He go to his room and typed for a while. On the wall behind the typewriter, he had all these homemade artistic cut-outs; that was his friend Cindy’s work. She created these cartoon versions of birds and monkeys and other animals, and cut them out and put them up on his wall with duct tape. There was also some birthday cards from her. Right above the typewriter there was a picture of him when he was about nine, which was like five years ago. He looked really serious in it, like something had gone askew at the time, and his expression said ‘is this really a time to be taking a photo?’ The only thing that’s really out of place in his room was this small dream catcher right up by his bed, hanging on a lamp that was on this old bureau his great aunt gave him before she went up to the wild blue yonder. He noticed that it still smelled like her.
He started boxing the keys, and got this cool free write going. After about forty minutes his fingers were vibrating in all the wrong places, and he had this acute writer’s block, so he stopped typing and decided to take a walk and climb some trees. Going out helped him get over the Block. He took a notepad just in case and did not say bye to his mom; she would yell about the garbage, which he was really not in the mood to take out at the moment. These walkabouts always made him think back;he did not remember much, maybe some blurry memories of taking the bus to the city a lot. His mom had said it was for business; she had some real estate job back then. His brother had said it was to meet with her boyfriends. When he had heard this he shouted at his brother and promised to tell on him, but he never did. He reside in the ‘burbs now, though, permanently. His usual walk around was a disjointed rectangle of houses, his house being the top middle point of the rectangle. After walking down five houses he made a right, went down three more and made another right. He stopped near a huge, ancient, branchy oak that looked like a hunchbacked old man with an unlimited supply of arms. Him and Cindy called it Quasimodo. He shoved the pad halfway down the back end of his pants and monkeyed up the tree. He took his usual leafy spot, which was almost entirely hidden from the public eye. He could clearly see what was happening below though, about three houses down even. He took a meditative breathe and held it in, closing his eyes. He breathed out. He listened to the birds and the wind and the mangy cats scrambling below and also footsteps. He open his eyes, and looked down to see Mr. Dardanos approaching the tree and talking on a phone. He froze and kind of cocked his head towards the ground to make out Mr. Dardanos’s conversation.
‘Look shithead, you cut it up way too much last time. You think I can’t tell what a fucking eight ball looks like? Yeah well, I’ve never seen one that small. What do you mean why didn’t I say anything? What am I going to do, fucking scrutinize it on the spot? Look, you know I’m a lucrative customer you prick, so how about you don’t freeload as much next time, eh? Greedy fuck…’
Mr. Dardanos shut the phone and paced below the tree, said ‘fuck,’ and walked away.
He motioned quickly for his pad and realize he had forgotten his pen. His hands were shaking. He did some more meditative breathing; in, out, in, out. Mr. Dardanos was already out of sight. A picture popped up in his head of Mr. Dardanos doing all this illegal stuff while protecting people with the law. He shut his eyes and played out the movie in his head; he saw Mr. Dardanos roaring away in his Mustang and breaking the speed limit and talking on the phone with some client while smoking cigars. The movie got interrupted by more footsteps. he peeked down and saw two kids walk over to the tree. They started making out. They were not from his rectangle. They remained nameless.
‘Hey, let’s do it in the house, right now’
‘No way, it’s so dirty, we could catch something. It’s like infested with roaches or something.’
‘What about under this tree? Nobodies around anyway.’
His eyes widen to the shape of saucers. The boy started taking off the girl’s shirt, but she pushed his hands away and started giggling in a really annoying high-pitched way, like a hyena being tickled. It got on his nerves, but he wanted to see the girl’s shirt off, so he stayed silent.
‘Come on, you have to be adventurous! I told you I don’t date boring girls. Now come on, we’ll do it fast.’
He thought about Cindy touching him.
‘I’m not boring, ass!’ more shrieks from her.
‘Then at least suck me off.’
She smiled and looked around and got on her knees. He did not want to see this at all. He could not just leave so he let out an explosive scream that made them both jump and spasm. They were so bugged out, they ran off.
More meditative breathes; in, out, in, out. He cursed himself for not bringing a pen with him. All these movie scenes appeared in his head out of nowhere and he knew he could not remember them all. He needed to put this down on paper. He scrambled down the tree, scraping his hands a bit, and ran home; left… three houses… left. He did not pass the last five because he could not see anything. He had a dizzy feeling and realized he was on the ground. He open his eyes and saw an old man, about forty or something; what his father would have been about now. The man’s face was all wet and blushed and he held a phone in his hand, which was lowered by his side. The man kind of stared at it sadly. It was Mr. Veritas. He never saw Mr.Veritas this depressed.
Mr. Veritas was the kind of guy who said “Hey there buddy!” in this exaggerated, overly enthusiastic tone, obviously trying to appear delighted even if his day was total shit. Mr. Veritas’ fake greeting always creeped him out. Mr. Veritas sort of levitated his head upwards, and then their eyes met.
‘Hey… didn’t see you there.’
Mr. Veritas shut his phone and put it in his pocket and looked at the ground for what seems like a minute.
Mr. Veritas looked at him with an intermittent stare, as if looking at a flickering TeeVee screen, losing interest every time it went out.
‘Hey.’
He told Mr. Veritas that he needed to get home, to his mom. Mr. Veritas kept talking.
‘Hey… let me give you some advice, okay? Don’t ever… ever give yourself up to a woman. If you do, that cunt will fuck with your soul and mess up –‘
He sort of sidestepped and made a half circle around Mr. Veritas and sprinted home. When he looked back, Mr. Veritas was still standing there. He went in and took out the garbage, washed the dishes, and went to bed. He tried falling asleep, but could not. he did not feel like writing anymore. His butterflies were acting up, and he tasted bile. After several different, uncomfortable positions, he curled up into a ball and fell asleep. Later, he heard firecrackers in his dream.
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks