Just a Blissful Renal Strategy

I was allowed to lounge beneath the static sizzle for most of my forties: patient like a meal uneaten, dull to anxieties, promised to the gentle pull of entropy. I was seen or unseen by relations and colleagues and strangers, an occasional reassuring reminder of existence. 

The throbbing didn't begin until the lichens had gained purchase, transforming flesh into vapor and light into flesh, transforming ambition into a gauzy sense of retreat upon its fresh exposure to the electrochemical background noise of the home neighborhood. Standing erect, the concrete was hot white foam and the fiction crackled like ribbons of ceramic.

Pre-sensitized Succulent

Upon graduation, I grabbed a pumpkin-shaped hand and it took me somewhere new, the dominion of odorless doctrines. I found most of the relevant equipment there defective, most of the tissue friable and pale, most of the beverages inoffensive and listless. I let go of the hand after several days of purposeless chaperoning and fell immediately into a shallow trench, where I was allowed to have sex finally. Great sex! Certified, I plagued the starchy citizenry with strident requests for clean garments, none of which have, as yet, been granted.

Emil "Slab" Chastain

The sugar bear is my spiritual mother. The luster of her fur dazzles passersby while she naps in the town square. I buy buttered bread and eat it while I recline on her heaving sparkly body. She smells like ginger. I will buy her a cool digital watch.

Real Plastic Biscuit

This thing I found has tendrils, hirsute vining threads that leave welts. I cover them with gloves, but then I'm wearing gloves, and people ask me about the gloves. Is it an affectation? No, I  hiding the welts I got from handling the thing my living mannequin friend sent me via UPS.

Crumbs of a Jewel

A green face witch questions my choice to wear two aprons: one in front, one in back. But I have been told that a mess can sneak up from behind. I listened to her counsel and removed the front apron.

This left me with an extra apron. Which I sold to a duckfoot gnome under the pier at Golf Beach. With the payment (seven striped crab carapaces), I purchased my own swift little wooden scooter.

Slathered in the Heathen Goo

As a current hunter and science fiction fan, Joshua is always ready to become extinct. The governor of Nevada will survive if he has life changing allegiance. Going ahead with his plan to quit smoking or die, the man behind daytime television series dated both of my parents. That is unbelievable!

I was inadvertently involved with a serial killer when I became a bounty hunter. The casino workers didn’t cooperate with a policeman. The “cowboy” was a rookie police officer, the son of a powerful father. The catholic priests that murdered the youngest mayor in California had lots of enemies. If I didn’t cooperate with a crooked cop, I would have grown up an only child!

Characters in a Teal Box

Chime and we fall theatrically. Rubber snakes on concrete, startling the occasional passerby for a moment, but we're quickly forgotten as they walk, the next place and the place after that. They might hear the chime themselves, but they don't know.

We fall as we do and let the things on the ground traverse us. A hand might fall on a calf or a finger might attract a sourceless trickle of blood. A tuft of killed plant (maybe a sweetgum seed) might sneak under a sweatshirt or blouse. A gaze might line up with another gaze and the exchange will never rise to the verbal like a plunged thing desperate for the surface of the water. The chime, the specific type of fall, and then silence for the allotted time. Sometimes things fall on us. Insubstantial, usually.

The things on the ground learn us and ignore us again. The people come to scoop us up, load us into the truck. And eventually we'll find our way back here, or another place, form another clot, hear the chime, fall in the customary way.