A short story for Talula.

James grudgingly held his mother's hand as the automatic doors hissed open. He knew that day as he strapped on his Velcro shoes, knew as they drove in silence in the hot, stuffy car, knew now as they stepped onto the mopped tile floor of Home Depot, that this was going to be a very long day. James was only eight years old, but even then he realized that whenever mom went shopping for home renovation items, it took what seemed like forever.

After about twenty minutes (five hundred years to James) of patiently letting himself be dragged along as his mother pored over different tints of wood stain, he had spotted an area with furniture for sale. He plotted his escape route, and waited for the optimum moment to make his break for it, which came in the form of a young man with overly bleached teeth, clad in a funny-looking orange apron, talking to his mother and gesturing towards the shelves which seemed to stretch endlessly on. As her back was turned, James decided it wouldn't be a bad idea to sit down and rest for a while. Just until his mother stopped talking about stuff so much.

It didn't take him long to find the biggest, fattest chair in the room. As he flung himself into the arms and plopped down gratefully on the buttery leather, letting out a loud, dramatic sigh, he noticed just a few inches short of his fingertips a small array of buttons and arrows. A control panel, like a space ship. Timidly, he stretched one arm out and pushed a button. With a quick mechanical whir, the back of the chair had risen for a couple inches. Delighted, James let his fingers dance across the panel, manipulating the chair-ship, to rise, fall, lean forwards, back, up again, to the left, footrest in, out, in, incline the back, raise the seat... James was having so much fun, he didn't notice his mother being led away to view the impressive new shipment of crystal light fixtures. He was concentrated on a man in a long black coat about ten yards in front of him, closely examining a shelf. James locked his space gun on the alien, raaaaaaaaaaaaaised the gun to the target, took aim...

BANG!

Aleksandr jumped, whipping around to find the source of the startling noise. An older man in an orange Home Depot uniform grumbled as he bent to recover the heavy box that had just toppled off the cart he'd been pushing.

Exhaling, Aleksandr turned back distractedly to the shelf which had previously been occupying his attention. He picked up a small can of paint, turned it over in his damp palm, scanned the chemicals. Set it down, took up another, read. Ethyl acetate, formaldehyde, iron oxide. Nitroglycerin, nitric acid, parafin. In other words, the perfect concoction for a moderately destructive paint bomb, when added to a little dry ice. Tonight, his anarchist group would create a dozen or so of these bombs and drop them on the police cars at the station. They would show the Machine what they were up against. A couple shattered windshields shouldn't mean too much to those ignorant war-fighting bastards next to their big guns and their depleted uranium fire. It was Aleksandr's duty to provide the paint, and as conforming to society's consumerism would be against his morals, he was planning on employing the old five finger discount.

Absorbed as he was in his rebellious thoughts, he almost missed the small, raven-haired boy in the blue shorts staring at him from a chair in the furniture-cluttered clearing. Aleksandr stopped what he was doing and turned. The boy, who had been staring at him absentmindedly while beating his skinny legs 1,2,1,2 against the protruding footrest, stopped what he was doing as well. Aleksandr saw innocence and humanity in the boy's eyes, his head slightly cocked in curiosity. Aleksandr looked down at the can of paint still in his calloused, long-fingered hand, looked back up at the boy. The boy's bright, rounded face broke into a smile. Aleksandr's cigarette-dried lips cracked as he smiled back.

Behind the boy, Aleksandr saw a middle-aged, harassed-looking woman striding purposefully towards the chair. She had been crying, and she was breathing heavily as she came around the back of the chair and grabbed the boy. Her eyes registered him looking their way, stooped and began to loudly scold the boy. He sat with her vice-like grip on his arm and his hands between his knees.

Aleksandr placed the paint can back on the metal shelf, walked out of the aisle, past the checkout counters and out the door. He decided he'd give his little brother a call when he got home.

The smile was broken as James felt a violent, and rather painful, tug on his arm. "I've been worried sick, James!" his mother breathed. "I've told you never to leave mummy's side when we're in a big place like this! Oh, what if someone had taken you?" She glared accusingly at the man looking at them for a second before returning her red-rimmed eyes to her son. "Get up, we're leaving. We're going to have a talk at home about listening."

As he was wrenched upwards on his feet and firmly marshaled away, he looked back at the strange, smiling man, who was walking to the exit empty-handed. I guess he didn't find the colour he wanted, James thought. He turned back around and followed his shaken mother to the parking lot, where he sat in the backseat and breathed in the hot, heavy, unpleasant air that only comes from a car sitting out in the sun for extended periods of time. By the time he got home, his mother had calmed down and he was allowed to catch his favorite t.v. program before bed.

He went to school the next day. And the next day. And the next.

Vice

Wish away this coat

A heavy mass that hangs upon my bones

Subtraction helps me gain, but not in that physical sense.

Handfuls, armfuls, ugly things.

My bones would like to shine, gleaming white, sharply contrasting the gray of my teeth. They grit and they grind, resisting temptation. Weary soldiers guarding the winding path of my demise. I train them to open only for what must come out, blocking that which shan't come in.

While it all comes up, I know I'm going down. The irony makes me smile. My bones smile as well, for they have finally won the war. Their victory is sly, cheapened by cheating, but a victory all the same.

I've never been one to play fair, after all.

Disgust

Contaminate, adulterate.

Pollute, Pervert, Corrupt.

Infectstaintaint. Waste, Warp.

Canker, murder, bitter, venom, ROT RUIN SCOURGE SLIME

Debase.

Deprave.

Destroy.

Christianity.

Something vague.

I observe the audience's rapt attention, study their shining faces lit by the searing overhead beam as I announce, "Now, my comrades, hear this story."

The story has no beginning and no end. There is no plot, no gradual escalation, climax, nor a decline. It is simply a state of being. You will understand.

All my life, I have been haunted by a wall. I live on a deserted beach, which hosts a small expanse of forest and enclosed by a massive, imposing, intimidating steel wall. This is the biggest wall you have and will ever hear of. The tallest, thickest, most seemingly impenetrable wall your imagination can muster. Most days, it blocks the sun from gracing the island, from filtering down through the trees to make pretty green patterns on the damp forest floor; it is always dark, always cold. As I bleakly wade to my knees in the little bit of shore provided between the beach and the wall, I let my mind wander sadly to the sea, something I had read about but never seen. I press my palms to the wall and know that something infinitely larger exists just a few meters short of my fingertips, and this knowledge pains me. 

Dark, ominous clouds hover menacingly atop the wall, coating the island in permanent shadow, polluting the air with their foulness. I would scream at them to summon winds to blow down this blasted fortress, my prison guard, but their earth-shaking roars crippled my fruitless cries. Whenever this occurred, I found most comfort in retreating to the forest, enjoyed the large, sheltering leaves embracing me. Oftentimes, my protests began deep in my stomach with promises of power and strength, only to catch in my chest and feebly wither to nothing. The words ceased to come.

I was desolate. I yearned with all my being for the forbidden openness of the sea. The wall simply looked down disdainfully from its cavernous altitude. 

One day, while exploring the shallow expanses of shore, I discovered in the wall a gap. Under the water, there were holes in the wall, barred off of course, to allow the beach water to circulate, to flow. Every day I tugged, pushed, kicked, wiggled the same bar in the same hole, hoping with all of my soul that it would eventually come free.

That day came on a dismally gray morning. 

I stared at the dislodged metal bar in my calloused hand as my heart pounded and almost escaped out my mouth. This was my chance. Excited as I'd never been, my body oozed gracefully, almost liquidly through the gap, like it was meant to all along. My head broke the salted water, I surfaced, and the sight was enough to blind me. 

I had never seen such an open expanse. A mighty ocean, lapping me gently with its ebb and flow, stretching as wide as the earth itself. I lay on my back and swam leisurely backwards, still shell-shocked, into the open welcoming cerulean. The clear, warm, friendly sky winked down at me, leaving the ugly black clouds to grimace scarily at my retreating frame. 

Suddenly, before I could truly savour this new reality, the sea's gentle lapping ceased to be, and was replaced with a deadly calm. The skies darkened. I was a pinpoint, surrounded by miles upon miles of black sheets of glass. I inhaled sharply; the calm before the storm. No sooner had this realization come to me, that I felt the winds pick up. The gentle island breeze had whipped up into a frenzy, the whistling escalating to a scream. I was swept up in ice cold currents which flung me, tore and tugged at my body this way and that. I was struggling to stay afloat, my head disappearing under the surface every few seconds, my breaths coming in gurgling gasps - smothering. I thought this was the end. Before I closed my eyes to accept the finality of my death, I caught in my peripheral vision something big approaching me. Bigger than the walls, bigger than I could ever fathom. I turned and my lungs failed me as I saw the biggest wave you shall ever read about, hundreds of feet tall, reaching high, up, up, over my head. So very high. 

At this moment, for reasons unknown, I was struck with deja vu. Somehow, I know exactly what to do. As the wave reached its colossal peak and broke, I took one spluttering, shuddering breath and dove into the wave. Into the deep, to the bottom of the black, now silent sea that absorbed me so easily. Enveloped me completely. A great black veil. It was freezing, but I was calm. I knew that no harm could come to me here. Down in the deep, I was in my element. I felt a monstrous lurch as the thing passed over me in one huge motion. However, I felt it numbly, for I was in a different reality. I calmly, gratefully savored this underwater peace for what seemed an eternity. 

Finally, when my lungs screamed out for my mercy, I regretfully let my body rise to the surface. All was calm again, the sea was rippled, sparkling, the sky once again smiling its wide-toothed grin, but now somehow with a deceitful air that was not present before. I would come to resent this smile more and more each day, but I didn't know it at the time. I came to find that every night, the sea repeats its storm. The more distance I placed between myself and the walls which had caged me in for so long, the more the sea seemed intent on bringing me back. 

I am still swimming out here.

I am quite alone and have been swimming for a very long time. 

Every night I dive to my calm place, my secret kingdom which only I inhabit. I am the only creature in this sea. 

I am naturally one to put up a fight, so I never thought I would say that I'd be one to dive down to calmer waters rather than brave the storm on the surface. But I find solace in the silence. Its dark, peaceful surroundings comfort me, much like a mother's soft hand, as I wait for the storm to pass. I am not afraid. 

I do not know how long I have been out here, nor how long I shall be. The story has no beginning and no end. I simply know that the tide is taking me somewhere. Will take me somewhere. 

I wait at the bottom of the sea. 

The spring has sprung

It's ironic how when we cry, our mouthes assume the shape of a smile.

Nucleus

I don't want to be the center of my own reality. Looking out for number one, you'll never be happy. It gives you too much time to reflect on yourself, what can be improved, what must be altered. We are all tailors meticulously working, working, working to create the perfect, most flawless garment on earth. Take it in here, let it out there, shorten the hem. Re-stitch the ripped, the torn, the worn. But who are we to consider ourselves the perfect, most flawless beings to don this garment of ours. We will never reach perfection, and yet even with this knowledge we continue to disappoint ourselves with wasted efforts. 

Whether there is a God or not, I cannot say, but I sure as hell hope something's out there. And I don't mean aliens. The idea of a city, a nation, a planet believing in nothing but their own flesh and blood, their own selfish consuming ideology, makes me want to cry. I'm not religious, and I never have been. I don't sit with my ass numb on a hard wooden bench every Sunday, praising a man who, with all the power of God behind him, allowed himself to be demoralized, hammered on a cross and left there to die. Deluding myself with holy water drawn from a sink. 

Or maybe that's just me being ignorant.

But I want to believe in something. A Holy Tea Bag. A Holy Kleenex Box. I don't care. Just as long as I don't believe in just me, just me living and dying. A whole nation of people, living and dying. Constantly concentrating on holding yourself back from something instead of working towards building something. Picking themselves apart until they're whittled down to nothing. It's when we become this nothing that we begin to hate ourselves, for lack of anything else to hate. We all fight some sort of addiction to escape this hopelessness. Your life becomes centered around the effort of NOT doing something. Your life becomes a battle against yourself.

I tried to describe to my mother the sadness I feel, the frustration at merely living in the reality that we are forced into. Our birth is both a blessing and a curse. We spend our lives looking to the future until we find ourselves at the end of the road, looking at the past. Wishing we had spent it differently. We die in self-induced regret. Our free will is as free as a trained monkey. We are programmed to want what we want. Nothing is ever new. I tried to tell my mother that my childhood, this generation could not be more of a polar opposite to hers. She spoke in whispers of a world of kneeling on hard corn, of children polishing shoes, of night terrors involving drunken fathers. I thought of a world of middle class workers working their five to nines, coming home to a dysfunctional, two story home where the mother reads diet books and the kids rooms are empty. With the newly renovated kitchen, the shiny new tiles and the couch dented from the husband's sleeping body every night. Everything is one big show. My mother told me that I had no idea what suffering was. Even in her time, with abusive drunken fathers, with wars and racism and beatings at school, I can say that our world today, my world, is far, far more fucked up than ever before. The drunken fathers were just trying to escape something of their own. The wars were fought by men who still gave a shit about their country. Schools laid rulers on the knuckles of children because they refused to give up on them. I wanted to tell her all this, but the words wouldn't come. A cigarette is just another portal to escape. Our lungs will never become as polluted as our minds. I have a feeling she wouldn't understand anyway. 

"Our generation has had no Great War, no Great Depression. Our war is spiritual. Our depression is our lives."

My thoughts have awakened in ways I never thought possible.

There are, quite literally, no oxfords in this town.