Bar Crawl

Bar Crawl

The place smells damp. That hot damp that hits you in the face as you come in, and gets into your hair and your clothes and doesn’t get off your skin for hours.
Sun’s down, but it’s too early for any students or happy petite bourgeois. Just the bar tender, the regulars, and me. Wine’s overpriced. Sour. Not as bad as the pint at the last place.

A dishevelled woman wanders up to the counter beside me. Too big for her blouse, fly-away hair, shade of lipstick that clashes with her tanned skin, smeared over too-thin lips. Is she drunk, or foreign? Ah, drunk and foreign.

Take a tall seat by the fire. Start to write, more to avoid the stares than anything else.

Slow, old, pickled men beside me, the words the mumble unconsidered for all they are chewed over. Gummed.

“Pacific islanders…mass exodus…What’s that all about…you reckon?” quoth the first.

“Britain’s getting’ smaller,” respondeth the second. “Erodin’ inta tha sea…”
The first murmurs inarticulately, bald head bobbing in the over-large collar of his mint-green vinyl coat. He creaks to standing, shuffles to the toilet, slowly, slowly. Socks and sandals.

I steal a surreptitious glance at the second. Grizzled, lead grey hair tied back loosely, week’s beard growth still retaining darker strands amongst the mass. Soiled t-shirt, the complimentary beer swag variety, hangs loose on him. He doesn’t see me, staring into his pint.

Two fat Americans enter, too old to be students, late 30’s, maybe. They talk shit about whiskey at the bar, revealing their ignorance even as they try to outdo one another.

My attention is drawn to the far corner – two middle-aged women cackle over a shared jest. American again, by the accent. Different from our new compatriots, who sound as if they’re from the South. No, through the cackles, they actually sound like me. Why so certain they’re American, then? The way they carry themselves, the content of their conversation. The self-satisfied disrepair of their bodies.

Our friends at the bar have switched to electronics, bullshitting about hardware specs. Once again, it’s clear they aren’t even fooling one another.

I drain off the last of the glass and leave, headed to the next stop in this dreary march.

Four Vignettes

Vignettes

 

I.

His face was dominated by the nose – it was a nose that Rushdie would have described as the genesis of a patriarchy. Beneath it, enshrouded in thick, close-cropped beard, was an expressive mouth shielding strong teeth. Between the two, here was much for the eyes to feast on. It would be easy to stop there, to spend a goodly amount of time watching the way the mouth formed its words, the cast of the shadow off that patriarchal prow.
Spend more time on it, though, more time gazing at that face, and you would eventually find your way to the eyes. The delay is an honest one, getting there, as the detailed features deserve the attention bestowed. The eyes, though – they redefine the rest of the face. Deep-set, ringed in an already dark face, they express an honesty. If there is pride in that face, the eyes show that it is a pride not over-ambitious, a pride that knows its own limits. It is the eyes that make sense of the halting, stuttered way that the words come from the mouth. It is the eyes that transmute the nose from something comedic to something dignified. The eyes, then, cast the face in a diffident power. A human face.

 

II.

Like many of his kind, the ones who gibber, a constant stream of half-way enunciated words, resorting to verbal tics one in three, the weight of verbiage stands inverse to the skill in conversation. There is no enjoyment in interlocution there, no savouring of the play of words nor the animated exchange. No – like cannon fire, each utterance stands alone, signifying only by way of its volume and presence. Tangential at best, responses flow of almost their own accord, the pressure of personal silence building until they are peremptorily ejected. Unless the opposite number can dispel the new volley, batting it back faster than any racquet could muster, this is usually followed, once more, by a stream of sound. It gurgles, it hums and haws, and it is continuous.

 

III.

A heavy-set face – cheeks saggy with weight – weight that didn’t belong: the rest of the body, what little could be seen, thin. Lines in the forehead, pocky and deep – prematurely aged. Face covered in a greasy, several-day beard. Frenetic movements as he rushed about, neglecting his immediate surroundings and focussing on his own tasks. Haughty in his movements, but not purposefully mean-spirited. You hate him immediately. That doughy self-importance, so inappropriate for the station. Lack of humility through idiocy, rather than intent.
Several days later, you see him in public. As anticipated, trackpants, t-shirt. He looks you in the face, unrecognising. Your earlier impression is affirmed, his lack of regard for others extends to five hours’ shared presence. Schmuck.

IV.

…the dignity of ugliness in old age. Gum-line grey, teeth directed back and in, too large, too long. Sprightly eyes deep-set in a horsey face. Hair, receding and thin, thatching a flushed head. Voice stentorian, accent received. Near-constant susurrations of ‘mmm, yes, mmm,’ as if his own deepening deafness might be delayed by a steady utterance. Neck a snarl of folds, his chin disappearing into the mess of his throat whenever he draws his head back.

Gift, Forcibly Lent

Bit of fan-fic. Gave it a miss in my teens, but there’s no time like the present. Top-marks to whomever can guess the identity of protagonist!

Gift, Forcibly Lent

“One crack two crack three crack four,
five cracks and there’ll be no more!”
The crone warbled as she shuffled about the cluttered garret, nimbly weaving her way through the assorted refuse littering the space. Over-turned oil lamp, filled only with clotted residue. Stack of half-way tanned leather, best not to examine too closely. A hoe of antique design, propped against mouldering wainscot and jarringly out of place.

The ancient finished her circuit and came again to the prone figure beneath the sole window, who, chilled once more by the cruel shadow, shuddered a whimper.

“Ah, duck, don’t cower so,” the beldam cooed, drawing a long, yellowed nail across the soft flesh. “Soon it will be over, and you’ll regret having made such a fuss!”

The girl only answered with another sob, trying against her restraints to get away from the talon’s rasp. Bad as the sharp scratch felt, it was at least a point she could concentrate on, a star of pain within the shrouding mist of her thoughts, muddled by whatever foul concoction had been forced upon her…what seemed like hours ago. The following embrace of the parchment-skinned hand, cupping the girl’s bare stomach, sent tendrils of repugnance through her drug-addled mind. The dry yet clammy embrace cut through her befuddlement, and the horror of the situation was brought home to her.

She could just make out a gibbous moon through the window, riding high above her in a sky of blue velvet, as she tugged wildly at the head strap. To her left, a shapeless mass of dark hair, gaunt hands grasping a winch. Directly in front of her, the object of her misery – the witch of legend, the terror of the all the Dark Barony. Blood-shot eyes with xanthous iris’ starting from her face, hair so much straw, pulled back with in a rough twist, teeth crooked and gapped. Her chest, visible as her virdigris gown rippled with the manikin movements, slim as a pre-pubescent boy, thinner, sunken in amongst the ribs and cartilage.

“Yes, soon it will be over,” the fiend sighed, her breath redolent of grave earth. A sharp glance towards the heap of impossibility in the corner, and another twist of the chuck. The apparatus the girl was fastened to heaved, pulling fearsomely at her bound extremities, till, at last in her agony, she heard a pop as her body rearranged itself to the strain.

“Ooo hoo hoo hoo!” the hag giggled, clapping her hands and jerking about in delight. “Hear the pop, hear the crik craketty crack!”
“Crack, you say?” A far-away light seemed to awaken in the crone’s eyes. “If not a crack, then, then maybe…a shatter?”

Rictus horror imprinted itself on her whipcord visage, and she pulled at her hair, and she ran about the room, shrieking.

“It was just a chime, a little chime! How was I to know? How was I to know!? I’m sorry! I’m so-so-sorry!” she cried as she ran, ample tears sluiced the pre-graven lines of her face. Without any outward warning, she stopped of a sudden, hunkered down and pulled her bony knees towards her chest.
“Alone, all alone now. Alone forever and a day. Alone forever more,” she whispered pitifully as she rocked back and forth.
“All alone here in my Spire of dead rock.”

Despite the terror of the situation, despite the raw agony she was feeling in every inch of her body, the young maid was moved to something like pity at the sight of this creature, obviously insane and yet possessed of an acute pathos. In the swirl of her foggy mind, she wanted to make some sign of commiseration, some effort to lessen the sadness on display before her.
She murmured what she hoped was a comforting sound, difficult, given her secured jaw.

The sound seemed to lance through the other woman, who immediately stopped her rocking, and, for a time, simply stared into the middle distance.

As she drew herself up, she said
“Ah, but then, my beautiful Grandson, he came and he opened the tower. He came and he showed me how much fun there was to be had in this new and blear homeland of ours!”

A quick twist of the neck, and the tawny eyes were boring holes into the girl’s nude body.

“Isn’t that right, duck? Such fun!”

Before the thrill of terror she felt could more than but blossom, the girl saw the withered head jerk once more to the side, and, following another pop, everything went dark.

-:-

The furred thrull, not much more than ball of hair, scurried about cleaning. Cleaning gore off lewd machinery. The crone, gem-encrusted goblet in hand, flexed her skin, reveling in the restored suppleness of it, the vitality she could feel coursing through her. Time to spread a bit of fun!

Lethargy

Lethargy

“Believe!” the wall-eyed man shouted, raising Bible in one hand. A couple of tourists laughed nervously, uncertain how to take the clearly disturbed street preacher. Anne continued on down Dundas, this was nothing new – he’d be there the next time she used the subway, startling another group of Asian tourists or moon-eyed suburbanites.

“Believe in what?” she thought to herself, cutting across the busy street. “It’s not like that’s any sort of argument – who would be convinced by that?” Christmas lights began to wink on in the drawing gloom, casting green red blue reflections in the icy snow crusting the curbs. A gust cut threw her light coat – time to change to something warmer.

Across the way, plastered on the side of an office building the other side of Yonge and Dundas Square, was an advertisement for Suncor – “The Oilsands, powering Canada’s economy into the 21^st century and Beyond!” it proclaimed, above the smiling visage of a man decked out in heavy industrial gear, standing arms folded in front of a mammoth Cat 797 truck.

“Ha, might as well believe in that as anything else,” Anne thought sardonically, reflecting on the latest reports of the disastrous spill at Kitimat. Anne was born the year the Exxon Valdez ran aground. Kitimat made that look like a stain on the garage floor. Suncor, Syncrude, Enbridge, they were running some serious damage control now, for all the good that it would do them. The shipping channels were devastated, the Natives had been occupying the roads and important buildings since the spill, demanding an end to the destructive practices. There had been violence. A Mountie had died, and dozens had been arrested. Great stuff for the current news cycle. No, it didn’t look like the oil companies could provide a future, any more than a crazy man with an old book and a bad case of halitosis.

Anne got back to her Annex apartment, perched over a franchised coffee shop. Mug of hot chamomile in hand, she cleared her desk of pencil nubs and soiled paper, sweeping it all to a side. Sitting down, she looked out into the night – snow had begun to fall, big, fat wet flakes. Heavy weather due for the weekend, the news had said – lake effect snow squalls to start Friday evening and carry through till the middle of next week. Maybe it would hold out until the 24^th, for a change.

Christmas. No chance to see her family, this year. No chance to get back to BC, not on this budget. Her dad has just lost his job, and both her parents had always been terrible at budgeting their money, so no hope they could fly cross-country, either. She shrugged off the spasm of guilt – she had come to Ontario to escape the doldrums of Vancouver Island, to get away from the hum-drum sleepiness of it all – to start her future.

A car lazily drove down the street below her, leaving slushy tracks in the newly-fallen snow. Left to start her future, and now here she was, in snowy Toronto, while the whole country held its breath and looked back home. British Columbia, where tomorrow was being decided.

Did it really matter, though? The damage had been done, would continue to be done, whether or not the Natives won this one or not, whether or not the public had had its fill of petro-company crude or not. There would be no change, not any real one. Things would continue to grind down, the sickness would spread.

Anne looked around her apartment, the scattered, half-finished canvasses, her current work, the pile of laundry growing with silent reproaches. Her eyes fell on the easel, where the painting sat, waiting for her. Waiting and writhing, or so it seemed – eager to be enfleshed, eager to be realized and shout its ominous message. A great hole – swallowing the future. Shouting from its horrible encompassing maw, there is no tomorrow. No improvement. These are the end times.

She looks beyond the partially composed omen to her bed, left rumpled from her quick exit this morning. It would be easy to climb under the sheets, lying open for her. Easy just to slip away for a few hours, and leave the painting to itself, leave it alone with its needs and hungers. After all, isn’t that the point? Isn’t the objective of this freeze of progress, this suspension of movement, just that – to just stop? To leave things stuck, unfinished? Why go through the trouble of it, what’s the point, if there isn’t a tomorrow where it can place itself, and have it’s own time? No tomorrow…

Received Wisdom

Received Wisdom

Look, ok, I admit that we were wrong about the FEMA camps. The Chemtrails, too, of course. I mean, I say “we,” but, you know me, I never really believed any of that shit. Still, I didn’t see it coming, the way it did. How was I to know, how were any of us to know, that it was just gonna be all them regular folks, those, those sheeple, that came to get us in the end?

That’s what they are, don’t doubt it. Sheeple. One day, they’ll wake up, and realize how good they had it. One day, they’re gonna get tired of all their cheap handouts, all that third-rate, nanny-state healthcare. One day, one day soon, they’ll regret sending us to this island. Us, the ones that couldn’t be cracked, couldn’t be bought with their “social welfare,” with their enforced equality. They’ll come crawling back to us, because they’ll likely have forgotten even how to work a proper society, the morons. The willing slaves.

Like, when it kicked off, yeah? When it was all starting – people were saying the most ridiculous things, that the government was going to take care of them, or even that, without the corporate fat-cats – their words, not mine – there’d be more to go around. More what? More of everything, they said! Listen, I know how this works, I’ve got a degree from Chicago. You can’t just remove the top layer of society, it’d be, it’d be chaos! Who’s left that would have the expertise to properly invest? Who’s left that can properly guide the corporations?

What d’you mean, there aren’t any corporations now? How do you organize society? Who gives the instructions on what needs to be produced, most efficiently? Who funds and directs new development? Central planning? Oh boy! It’s a wonder you haven’t descended into savagery yet. How, exactly, do you think this wonderful utopia of yours is going to turn out? I’ll tell you how! It’ll be just like what happened in Russia, exactly the same thing!

Bureaucratic centralism? Nothing like what you’ve got? I don’t know about that – you’ll see, soon, without an open, unfettered market, like we have here, like we were trying for before this revolution of yours, cartels are gonna form. The power is going to go to those at the top. And, then, who are you going to look to? Is there even anyone left there who actually understands macroeconomics?

When it really starts to get grim, I bet we’re gonna see a bunch of you people trying to get out here. Our economy is going to be so strong that we’ll be rich, because, don’t you see, it’s the only way to do it? You’ve gotta trust in the invisible hand, man! The markets balance themselves out, and no amount of well-meaning tampering can do the work of good, sound, rational self-interest. The models prove it!
Oh, that’s all the time you have for the interview? You’ve got to go, so soon?
…
Hey, can I ask you something? You’re going back to the mainland, right? When you get there, could you, could you ask them to send some more food shipments? We’ve got a bit of a supply side issue at the moment – it’ll work itself out, eventually, don’t worry! But, right now, y’know, well, there’s this guy, other side of the island. And he and his buddies are hoarding all the food. Until the rest of us can break the monopoly, well, you get the idea…

New Vistas

New Vistas

You ask me to ‘tell it like it is’, but how can I explain it to you, when the language itself lacks the words, when your very mind cannot form the experience?

How can I tell you of the wonders of seeing a flush of pleasure, a real, physical change, at the meeting of a friend or loved one?
How can I relate the wonders I see when I look at what you call mundane: a blast furnace; a steel girder in winter?

You think the aurorae are beautiful? What know you of the beauty I see, whenever I look to the sky? I can see the photons of the sun, the sub-atomic particles of the solar wind, propelled faster than sound to annihilate themselves in the ozone layer. I can see the interactions of the magnetosphere, the vast currents that dwarf this planet.

I will ‘tell it like it is’ – your weak, fleshy body, sum of a thousand million accidents, its day is over. You are anemic, and you are old. Beauty is not for you, for it has surpassed you. Sight itself outstrips you. What are your measly 310 nanometers, your “visible spectrum,” compared with all the wavelengths I can comprehend? You’ve not even the words to call it by, not even the concepts to think it by.

‘Tell it like it is?’ Your model is too old for the future.

Update on NaNoWriMo, of a Sort

So!
The month, more quickly than I had anticipated, is up!
I’ve posted below a selection of some of the better things to come out of my personal challenge – in all their over-written, under-edited grandeur! I’ve kept one or two back, thinking that I can maybe make something more out of them. Watch for those to arrive at a later date.
Just as a note on reading, “Neo-Diet,” “Mid-level Resistance,” and “Clashing Currents” all share a narrative, and have been posted in a way that allows for a steady reading.
Hope you enjoy!

-K

Post Fertility

Post Fertility

            New hole in the watering can. Gonna have to patch that up. Tomatuh plants looking kinda scraggly. Blasted wind been shifting up the dirt something fierce these days. Gonna have ta rig up a shelter – think I ‘member seein a sheet a corrugated iron back up the road, few miles. Head out t’morruh, see if I can’t find ‘nother watering can, maybe a tarp fer some shade.

Huh. Sun’s up. Mighty fierce t’day. Seems like it’s getting hotter, day by day. Wonder what that’s all about. Must be my ‘magination. How could the Sun be gettin’ hotter than it already is? It’s already 100, 110 most days. Can’t get much hotter, can it?

No clouds in tha sky. Guess we’re not gettin’ any rain agin t’day. Been weeks since it last rained proper. Jus’ ‘tween you and me, and I knows you ain’t gonna tell no one else, seein’ as you ain’t the talkative type, I’m not so sure we’re gonna see much rain around here anymore. I heard, fellah passin’ along the road, ain’t rained over in Louisiana fer a good six month. Now when’s the las’ time you heard it not rainin’ in Louisiana? Swamps dryin’ up, he said. All sorts a nasty beasts climbin’ up outta that dryin’ muck, lookin’ fer water jus’ like us.

I don’t like it, no I don’t. Dust storms we had last summer, well, you was here, you know how bad they got. No rain, be as bad agin this year. Bad.

Perhaps

Perhaps
Perhaps I’ll learn calc, and become an engineer, and get us to full automation.
Perhaps I’ll figure out how to make a bomb, and blow up crooked politicians, and do some good in the world.

Perhaps I’ll take up painting, and express my inner spirit, and bring some light to this life.

Perhaps I’ll start a business, and nurture it to success, and become a philanthropist.

Perhaps I’ll move to Aldabra, and be alone with the coconut crabs, and wait as the sea swallows us up.

Perhaps I’ll not do anything, and drink my tea, and dream.

Perhaps.

Collision

Collision

 

Life is a dance of Death.

Everything that is, is the building of a corpse.

There will come a time,

Though there be none to witness it,

That even the Galaxy will die.

Just as Death is fore-doomed for all

This Destruction is Inevitable. Unchangeable.

It speeds towards us in both time and space.

Andromeda, chained to her fate, approaches.

There will be no Perseus, no last minute saviour.

The space is vast, and the Collision,

When it comes, will be subtle and terrible.

No direct interaction, no.

A more oblique force, unseen but not unfelt,

Will be the machine of this Doom.

Gravity itself will, after giving Life to the Galaxy,

In its own good time, End it.

Gravity itself will rip apart worlds, and stars, and atoms.

No contact, no butting up against one another,

The Titanic forces, the weighty masses, will suffice.

The Fabric of Reality itself

Will be rent asunder.