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Member
Join Date: Jul 2007
Gender: Male
Posts: 19
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The Beach
The Beach
I, John, lay exhausted, not knowing if I was sleeping or if I was daydreaming that I was sleeping. Gently I rocked back and forth in my hammock, a hammock woven out of the eyelashes of 1000 deer. There was a always a gentle breeze at the top of the 300-foot stainless steel trees where my hammock was located. All the trees were stainless steel in the Shiny National Forest. Some of the trees had been sawed down and cut into 60-foot lengths, then sold as flagpoles to people who lived in reality, many many years away. I had never worked so hard in my life as in these last few hours. My clothes proved that I had labored, stained with confusion, compliments and criticism, all things that are not machine washable.
I was living on Water Island. A small island, sizewise. The island had no shore. All islands are above sea level, but this was ridiculous. The entire land mass was 200 feet above the ocean. All sand. Not one human had ever been near the water. And why the hell should they? You don't see fish trying to get on the roofs of buildings.
The year was a very long time ago. The island was ruled by a king. King Sammy. King Sammy lived in the Great Formica Castle, located at the bottom of Sand Valley. The king experienced temporary insanity all the time. The Formica grew wild. The extra Formica would be sold to people who lived in reality, many years away. Nobody ever imagined that parts of King Sammy's castle would end up in kitchens.
The king was the king because he controlled gravity. That was the only reason he was king. Monarchy; the first and purest form of government. If King Sammy didn't like you for any reason, he would snap his fingers and you would float higher and higher until he snapped them again and you would stay at that height forever or until he brought you back down again. Maybe.
People were living at different heights all over the place. Me, I'm not afraid of heights, I'm only afraid of widths. The people the king hated the most were very high up in he sky, sitting on stainless steel chairs. The people who lived in reality, many years away, would look into the sky and invent the word "star". They would also invent the word "shooting star" which was actually a person on a chair that the king was moving to another position.
The reason I lived in a hammock at 300 feet was I was a waiter at the castle, and one night, entranced by the beauty of the king's niece, I accidentally served soup in flat dishes. I smiled at the young girl, the king snapped his fingers, and I went up through a skylight and have been living at 300 feet ever since. I overtook Styrofoam Canyon.
To please King Sammy and again live on the ground was indeed my goal. I was notified of my chance to do this one day at about an hour before the beginning of time. A bird flew to my hammock delivering a small letter. An invitation to a possible fate. It was from the King. It said, "Dear John: As you know, this year I will be celebrating my birthday on August 11th. If you can arrange a unique festival I will again allow you to live on the ground or at least eye level and maybe date my niece, Princess Evelyn. I know your great-great-grandfather invented socializing. That is why I am giving you this chance. If not, I am sure you will be reaching further heights. Sincerely, King Sammy."
I laughed for the first time in history. My great-great-grandfather was really a hermit that invented socializing as a joke.
So here was my chance to redeem myself and live on the ground again. I decided I would go to sleep and dream about what to do, because that's where all ideas come from, whether someone thinks they just thought of it just in that moment, they really are just remembering it from some dream they had. How smart someone is directly proportional to how good his dream recall is. Have you ever heard of Socrates? The guy never wrote stuff down, he just talked to people. He also took 5 naps a day. Often I would wave goodbye to people when I went to sleep. As a kid I would sometimes sleep with my eyes open so all my dreams would be in my room. It was raining. There was a huge rainbow. Rainbows over Water Island were made out of a light plastic.
I was standing on a cliff looking out into a great ocean. The ocean was called Land Ocean. Just then a herd of deer ran by. None of them had eyelashes.
The water was beautiful. The king loved the water. The king was extremely fond of the water, to the point where he installed a pool all the way around his castle. Other kings would later copy this idea.
King Sammy couldn't swim. There's a picture of King Sammy in the dictionary next to the word "oxymoron". People who were great swimmers were despised by the king and forced to live on twelve-foot chairs. I then killed myself in my dream, you can do this manually by closing your eyes really hard. Killing yourself in dreams wakes you up, but if you don’t do it right you might die in reality. Luckily I didn't live there. So I did it all the time.
Yes, the king loved water, if only Water Island had a shore.
I began to work. I got rid of the sand the only way I knew how, I vacuumed it. Night and day I vacummed until the sand on Water Island got lower and lower, closer to the ocean. Inadvertantly, I was inventing the beach.
It was the night of August 10th. I needed a lot of help. I hired thousands of small children to help remove the sand. I gave them little plastic buckets and plastic shovels. The children removed tons of sand. They worked very hard, although they thought they were playing.
Soon the land was level with the water. An unusually beautiful sight to see for the first time: the shore, the beach. I walked up and down this peaceful area trying to avoid the broken glass.
I wrote a letter to King Sammy, "Dear King Sammy: Meet me where I'm going to be. Sincerely, John."
I hear mail in reality sucks. It doesn’t even carry thoughts. I hear they just give you a piece of paper. Now wonder people are trying to escape all the time.
I then prepared a festival. I brought loads of food and ale packed in boxes that were built in the Styrofoam Canyon. I brought small, horizontal fireplaces that stood on little legs. I hired a group of minstrels that wrote their own songs, but they couldn’t read music. They just kind of banged stuff around to make sounds. I don't know, I liked them.
Fate lessons of the past and present were now in session. Tradition was about to begin. King Sammy arrived at the beach with fifteen court jesters, his wife Edna, Princess Evelyn, and several other men and women who were walking at different heights. Some of them he really didn't like and made them arrive in the underwear. People in reality would do this willingly, many many years away.
The minstrels began to play. The king danced with the waves. I danced with the shadow of the king, and the idea of Princess Evelyn kissed the back of my memory of the events that had taken place. Memory is a little guy who lives on my shoulder. I've been carrying him around since I was like 5. I still don't know why she kissed him. He can be annoying sometimes.
We drank until we almost drowned on land.
A seventy-two-year-old childhood friend of the king cut the plastic rainbows into circles and filled them with air to create colorful bouncing balls. As the king snapped his fingers to the music, people were flying up and down all over the beach. The children with plastic buckets were now heavily into the construction of little castles made of sand, so the king would feel more at home.
The more the king drank, the more he liked the people, and the more he liked the people, the lower they were to the ground. The people began to like me a lot. I made a note to myself to always give someone a drink if they're sad. I hear that reality has stuff that is supposed to do the same stuff. I think they call it Zoloft.
I laughed for the second time in history. Zoloft was the name of my cousin who was a dung beetle. What a shitty life.
Soon people were actually lying down on little cotton flags all over the beach.
I invited a few of the great swimmers on twelve-foot chairs. The king ordered them to stay in their chairs unless someone was drowning. They wore bright orange shorts.
Some guy named Bic gave me a waterproof pen with his name on it. The ocean was calm. The king wanted waves. So I drew huge waves on the ocean. The ships didn't understand. I hear that guy still puts his name on a lot of pens.
As the madness continued, I made my way over to Princess Evelyn. I asked her if she wanted a massage. She said, "Yes, but not physically." So I read her poetry and we started doing tai-chi. I asked her, "How do you like the beach?" She answered, "Well it's kind of sandy." I apologized for the beach being sandy. Little did I know that beaches were going to be that way for the rest of time. I said, "Will you marry me?" She said, "No you're boring and besides I've seen fatter legs on a bird." I hated the way people went straight to the point. By the way, later I invented what reality people call "small talk".
I smiled at Princess Evelyn and accidentally served clam chowder on flat dishes again. Stupid me. The king snapped his fingers, and I went up 300 feet onto my hammock in the sky.
Memory lit me a cigar. He told me that if I wanted, he could kill himself so I wouldn't remember anything. I told him to forget about it and so he leaned back on my shoulder and took a nap. I lay there swinging in the breeze, knowing that a situation such as that would never take place again.
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